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y-rhywbeth2 · 5 months

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Gods and Clergy: Bhaal

Link: Disclaimer regarding D&D "canon" & Index [tldr: D&D lore is a giant conflicting mess. Larian's lore is also a conflicting mess. You learn to take what you want and leave the rest]

I'm in a Durge and Orin mood, so we're getting the full details on Bhaal and his priesthood now. Fun fact, did you know the Dark Urge couldn't even die without Daddy's permission?

Featuring:

Intro: Do you realise this cult is basically a crime syndicate supported by the rich and powerful?

Priests: Hierarchy. Responsibilities. Murder. I rather like the ceremonial regalia, personally.

Deathstalkers: Teleporting! Killing people with your mind! Unlimited ressurections courtesy of Bhaal!! And yet more crazy shit!

Bhaal: Kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day. Also mortal backstory and the Slayer is absolutely nothing like the games depict it

Right then, "Bhaal awaits thee," and blah.

"Make all folk fear Bhaal. Let your killings be especially elegant, or grisly, or seem easy so that those observing them are awed or terrified. Tell folk that gold proffered to the church can make the Lord of Murder overlook them for today." - Bhaal's Dogma

Unsurprisingly for an ex-assassin, Bhaal is the patron god of assassins. Assassins, mercenaries, bounty hunters who aren't bringing their quarry in alive and, presumably, executioners all tend to send a prayer to Bhaal for success. Faithful were called Bhaalyn in the East and Bhaalists in the West. As BG3 takes place in Western Faerûn we'll use the latter.

Amongst these assassin worshippers we find the oh-so healthy individuals for whom killing is more than a job. These killers who regard their murders as a "pastime and a duty" join the clergy.

That said, Bhaalists do not murder indiscriminately. The taking of another life is a holy act, a lot of thought and planning goes into both the kill itself as well as what impact the death may have upon the world. Once the target is slain, they are to smear the victim's blood over their hands and draw Bhaal's symbol by the body with it. If Bhaal is pleased then the blood will vanish.

Bhaal supports and encourages his followers attaining wealth and comfort (it's a good hook to draw them in, and it makes him look good if his followers are successful), and in exchange for their worship his priest-assassins receive the priest spells and administer to the lay worshippers, who benefit second-hand. The assassins have an easier time killing people and getting rich and Bhaal profits from more prayer and death. A win for everyone (who didn't die in the process).

Bhaalist temples historically have spent their time founding and sponsoring guilds of assassins and thieves, including infamous organisations such as the Shadow Thieves of Amn. These guilds survived their patron's death, and while they were mostly businesses throughout the years of Bhaal's death many still paid homage (although there was some confusion involving his replacement, Cyric) and have presumably resumed worship. There's a massive old temple still functioning over in Thay; the Tower of Swift Death, and the assassins work closely with the Red Wizards who rule the country.

Bhaalists have no tolerance for rival guilds and organisations not following Bhaal (which would make them independent of their control) and will eliminate them. They will also root out anybody in the area that will attempt to oppose or otherwise interfere in their business and ensure they have freedom to go about their jobs/worship.

Their other job is to ensure the church has a steady income. They terrorise the commoners into paying tithes in exchange for safety from being sacrificed this tenday (a protection racket, basically) while leaving "economically and socially important individuals live unharmed." I mean, the peasantry have far less enemies to assassinate and gold to spend, so. Plus the rich and powerful are brilliant at turning a blind eye to crime when it benefits them, as well as making sure the evidence never sees the light of day - know which side your bread is buttered on, and all. Baldur's Gate has no law against the worship of Bhaal. Why do you think the original temple exists, after all? Bhaalists actively seek out and sway such potential patrons who would be... amenable to sponsoring and protecting their technically-legal church and its not so-legal activities in exchange for their services.

Urban temples of Bhaal are usually dark, subterranean affairs built under the city streets, containing countless branching tombs that are home to the bodies of the clergy's victims - said victims are usually wandering around down there as restless undead.

Bhaal's clergy can be recognised as Bhaalists by their ceremonial robes - full body robes of black or deep purple with a deep cowl. The robes will be randomly and violently streaked with flashes of violet. Their entire face is fully obscured by a black veil, to both hide their identity and make it appear as though the hood is empty for the intimidation factor.

The leader of the church in an area is the High Primate/Primistress, who can be identified by a red belt/sash they wear over their robes and the fancy curved ceremonial dagger that marks them as a high ranking priest and a specialty priest known as a Deathstalker - more about them in a moment.

High Primates spent much of their time planning the proper strategies of manipulating nearby rulers, inhabitants, and organizations into the deeds and behaviour that the Bhaalyn desired.

The High Primate is directly served by the First Deaths, who in turn can call upon a council of the nine most senior clergy; the Cowled Deaths. Below them were the regular priests, who were known collectively as the Deathdealers and are referred to by the title Slaying Hand. A Bhaalist rises in the ranks by hunting and ritually killing a target with nothing but their bare hands, which they will then report to a higher ranking priest who will confirm that they are being truthful. If they are then there's a party, and a ritual sacrifice is held to celebrate.

When on a job they dress in black - in the form that suits whatever their preferred method of killing in. Leather armour, mage robes, whatever.

Bhaalists pray to their god before sleep. In the temple the entire congregation comes together to pray in a formal ceremony called "Day's Farewell"). Bhaalists are also to pray before setting out on a murder.

Bhaalists only observe one holy day. It's the Feast of the Moon, a continent-wide holiday for honouring the dead and honouring one's ancestors. Bhaalists have their own spin on it where they remember dead Bhaalists and celebrate with stories of murder to honour them.

All Bhaalists are to commit a murder every tenday at midnight, should they be unable to fulfil this duty then they are to kill two people in place of the one who should've died that day. Before the victim dies, the murderer is to ensure that they know their killer and that they died as a sacrifice to the God of Death; "Bhaal awaits thee, Bhaal embraces thee, none escape Bhaal."

The specialty priests of Bhaal, those who dedicate their devotion and worship no god other than him, are the Deathstalkers.

One does not have to be a cleric to join the ranks, though the majority are. Rogues, rangers, barbarians and fighters are the most common, but all classes make an appearance (and most are multiclassed clerics)

To become a Deathstalker one must have murdered sixteen sapient creatures in sixteen different methods with sixteen different weapons. This presumably is also the rite of passage to becoming a member of the Brethren of the Keen Strike - an order of Bhaalist assassins to which all Deathstalkers belong.

Distressingly for people who aren't Bhaalist, Bhaal's Deathstalkers regained their Bhaalist abilities around 1372 DR, following the end of the Bhaalspawn Crisis, and resumed their duties, spreading death and terror in his name as they worked to bring him back to full power. The most popular argument for how the priests of a dead deity were getting their spells is that another god - likely Cyric, was granting them spells disguised as Bhaal. However, in the wake of the Bhaalspawn Crisis and the wave of fear felt towards Bhaal that resulted (which counts as prayer), the rumour mill became very fond of the idea that, despite how the crisis ended, Bhaal had still managed to resurrect at least some scrap of himself through that fear and the God of Murder was haunting the Realms once more.

The various abilities Bhaal gifts to his Deathstalkers include the following:

[From 3.5e] The ability to identify key weaknesses in a target by studying them for only a few moments, killing them in a single strike. They are also supernaturally good at stabbing people with their ceremonial daggers.

[3.5e] The ability to tap into the hatred of a person, stoking it into homicidal rage and direct it at another person who they will kill in a mindless bloody rage (also called the Urge to Slay, an ability Bhaal himself has)

[3.5e] Bhaal's own inability to just fucking stay dead - a Deathstalker Bhaal doesn't want dead will come back to life an hour after it is killed, with a single hit point left. During the time prior to resurrection they are an actual corpse.

[2e] They can point at a person, sending necrotic energy coursing through them and causing them significant damage, agony and possibly death.

[2e] They can inflict severe wounds on a person just by thinking it.

[2e] They can teleport! A Deathstalker can teleport themselves (and other people, if they're powerful enough) to the Throne of Blood and from there they can teleport to anywhere on Toril that isn't protected by warding magic. Bhaal won't do anything to protect Deathstalkers while they're in the Lower Planes - if you're strong enough to get yourself here, you're strong enough to get yourself out.

[2e] They can affect the emotions of those around them, reversing whatever emotions an individual is feeling towards them into its polar opposite.

[2e] They can accelerate the entropic aging process of objects.

Bhaal himself is "violent, cruel and hateful at all times." Being in the presence of the living fills him with an overwhelming urge to kill and destroy. He presents himself as either on the verge of a violent rampage or cold and ruthlessly calculating depending on which suits the occasion best. A Lawful Evil deity, his domain is the Throne of Blood in the first layer of the Lower Plane of Gehenna (Khalas), part of Bane's domain (Banehold). Hilariously, not a single Baldurs Gate game has got this right. BG2:SoA claimed it was the Hells, BG2:ToB changed to the Abyss and, for some reason, BG3 has put it in the Grey Wastes.

Bhaal served Bane, and was in turn served by Loviatar (goddess of pain) and Talona (goddess of disease).

His holy symbol is the Circle of Tears; clue in the name, it's a skull surrounded by teardrops of blood forming a circle.

Bhaal rarely manifested in avatar form. When he did, his main avatar in urban areas was the Slayer, which was not a four armed scaly monster:

"The Slayer look[s] like a corpse with a feral face, [bloodless] skin, and deep lacerations that endlessly [weep] black ichor that vanish[es] before it strikes anything."

It makes no noise at all when it moves. it can talk (its softly spoken and sounds creepy). It can levitate at will and summon floating daggers made of bone, that appeared and disappeared at will. They would cause any living flesh they hit to wither and die. Creatures slain this way would rise again as zombies under its control - or have its skeleton shattered into more bone daggers. Enough of these daggers form an area-of-effect; a wall made of a flurry of sharp shards of bone that would trap the soul of anyone they killed. Oh, yeah, and the Slayer can also inflict the overwhelming urge to murder everyone around you on the people around it.

Bhaal's other avatar was the Ravager, which was mostly an angry 30-foot tall giant with horns.

While in either avatar form, Bhaal also had the ability to create any form of undead loyal to him by touching a corpse (greater undead like vampires would be free once they'd completed whatever task he'd assigned them). He could also immediately destroy any undead, turning them to dust at a touch. Bhaal cannot be harmed by the undead.

Rather than using his avatars, Bhaal usually just manifested as a pair of flying undead hands that can shoot bone daggers at people. Or a laughing human skull trailing teardrops. Both these manifestations are capable of speech, casting darkness and driving everybody into a mindless bloodthirsty rampage - you might have noticed he really loves this trick.

He also invented his own undead monsters, the Harrla of Hate. Harrla are invisible creatures, which if you use magic to see them appear like human shaped wavering impressions. Guess what they do?? If you guessed "fill people with a sense of overpowering hatred and drive people into committing homicide" get yourself a fucking cookie!! (This isn't said anywhere in canon, but Bhaal has less imagination than a chunk of rock, I swear to god...)

According to one version of the story; in life Bhaal was a Netherese mortal wizard named Tharlagaunt Bale. He was one of a few hand picked by Jergal to bear a fragment of the god's divinity and raised from a young age to serve him (a Chosen, basically). Hilariously, one of the others was Karsus. These Chosen were promised godhood for their service as they set about performing a ritual to increase Jergal's waning power and make him one of the most powerful deities. Karsus chose to try and make himself a god instead and blew up the Weave, destroying Netheril and the plan and killing all of his coworkers except Bale.

Bale got a job as an assassin, changed the spelling to Bhaal and dropped his first name, teamed up with a bitter ex-slave with no name except the title "Bane of the Ancients" and a necromancer prince called Myrkul Bey al-Kursi.

His other backstory features him as Arabhal; the spymaster and chief assassin of the Netherese City of Rdiuz, and an ally of Bane. The two became unwitting paws of Jergal, who directed them through nightmares to do his bidding and slay various primordial divinities who threatened his plans.

Regardless of backstory, they all grabbed more divinity by killing an ancient god (also Bane's ex-master) and then he went knocking on his old boss' door for that godhood he was promised (Jergal at this point had embraced depression and just went "yeah, whatever, have it. Idgaf, I'm retiring." Or was manipulating them into becoming his divine pawns. There's more than one take on this story.) and Bhaal walked off the god of murder.

He learned of a prophecy predicting he would die when his stupid ex-travelling companions would decide to piss of Ao who would then kick all the gods out and make them mortal, and Bhaal then decided to sleep with what seems to be at least 25% of Faerûn to produce kids who would hold fragments of himself so that they could all fight to the death and he could resurrect himself afterwards. He was killed by the soon-to-be-god Cyric not far from Baldur's Gate during the Time of Troubles. Cyric proceeded to take his job, and there was a huge fight between Bhaalists who converted and those who didn't and the converts killed all the holdouts.

The rest of the backstory is basically just the original Baldur's Gate games.

#Durge is basically a crime boss #Also; Bhaal please have more than one fucking idea for once in your fucking miserable life I AM BEGGING YOU #dark urge #orin the red #long post #bg3 #durge #the dark urge #baldurs gate 3

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st-valentines-boy · 4 months

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New Years Prayer for Palestine

Lord,

I pray for Palestine.

For their people

their culture

their land

their future.

I pray for the children.

That they may have food and water. Shelter and Love. Care and Comfort. For the orphans, may someone care for them. Feed them. Heal them. Their hearts, their minds, their bodies, their souls.

I pray for the martyrs.

May they be remembered, honored, beloved. May they rest in power. rest in peace. I pray for their justice. May they be justified. May Justice come down upon those who have wronged them.

I pray for the lost families Lord.

On this day, the feast day of the Holy Family, I pray for the families who have been broken, torn apart. Family liniages that have been abrupted and disrupted, Lord. I pray for the families without homes, without food, without water, without care, without basic needs. I pray for the families without a name, without a single living member to account for, those lost in time, may they be honored, may they be found, may they be remembered.

I pray for a miraculous miracle. Something truly great. Something truly Just. A miracle that is truly sanctified.

I pray for liberation of the Palestinian people, Lord. I pray for their FREEDOM their human rights restored. I pray for their victory Lord. Their independence Lord. Their recognition Lord.

In their freedom, I pray they have mercy on the world, though the world does not deserve it.

I pray against the evil wickedness of their opressors

and

those who choose to ignore the pain and suffering of this Genocide; those who wallow hopelessly cynical and selfishly, are wilfully ignorant, and/or are in complete compliance or alliance in the destruction of Palestinian lives.

may justice come those who do wrong, by either what they have done or what they have failed to. May they see the errors in their ways. Bring to light the dark. Expose them. Expose their naked wickedness.

I pray for the fall of the modern Roman empire.

[The United States of America].

The Merciless Money Monopoly Machine. The Oil Occult of Death.

May the empire fall.

Free its victims. Let it be known. Let it be true.

and above all else

FREE PALESTINE.

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twojackals · 7 months

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Change of Pace

I've always said no matter what I think about Kemetic Orthodoxy, or Tamara Siuda, or the House of Netjer, that I always respected and agreed with my full RPD (Rite of Parent divination) that I received from Siuda in 2001.

But that all is about to change.

My Beloveds (from my KO divination) and I have decided on a mutual separation, and while I had been thinking about this issue for years, I finally have the freedom to make these choices for myself since leaving the Kemetic Orthodox religion and becoming an independent Kemetic Polytheist.

But it's not just a choice I am making on my own. This is something that was decided from both sides of the relationship, with a surprise intermediary to help.

Let's rewind though:

In 2001, Dr. Tamara Siuda (Former "Nisut" for the Kemetic Orthodox religion, a specific branch of Kemetic Polytheism with various aspects revealed to its members from and through Siuda) performed a divination ritual for me to find out Who my "Parent" God or Gods was going to be. Some in the Pagan or Polytheistic world would call this a "Patron" God, and I'm OK to call it that as well; there are some KO people who will throw literal fits if you try to compare anything about KO to the 'regular Pagan world' but that's their deal, not mine -- Parent and Patron are literally the same concept. Deal with it.

In terms of Ancient Egypt, your 'Patron God' may have been the God of your nome, city, state, region, household, or a specific God or set of Gods you've devoted your life and/or worship toward for any number of reasons. In modern terms, many Polytheists already follow a specific God or Gods for their practice through personal choice (while others may have none specific in mind at all and work with Whomever can assist with various prayers, rituals, requests, dates, days, holidays, or just Whomever they darn well choose to work with on any given day -- also valid!).

In terms of Kemetic Orthodoxy, those who go through the beginner's class and become Remetj within the House of Netjer (the first real 'level' of Membership), can then choose to undergo the Rite of Parent Divination. It is a cowrie-shell-based ritual, completely modern from Tamara Siuda. The results of this divination system come in two flavors: Your Parent, or Parents (essentially Patron(s)), and your Beloveds, which would be one or more Gods Who have… like… decided to just tag along in your life.

When I was first divined, Tamara told me (verbatim, this is the actual chat log) what Beloveds are meant to do. This definition seems to have changed at least a dozen times over the years, so take this with a grain of salt from the ancient days of 2001: "The Beloveds help you to understand what you get from your Parent." Tell 12 people in the Temple today about this divination, and you will get 12 different opinions on whether or not it is true.

Of course this (Siuda) is the same person who also told me, again verbatim in the same chat log: "Wepwawet is Yinepu", and Wepwawet would like you to all know that this is absolutely not the case. But back in 2001 when I knew so little, it was all about what Siuda told me was true, and that's just how it was.

Fast forward back to the present day:

My relationship with Wepwawet has been strong for a very long time now. We're thick as thieves is how I describe it, and I haven't met anyone else that has ever described a relationship with Him quite like the one I have. It's definitely unique, and I appreciate that quite a bit.

My Beloveds, however, were and are nowhere to be seen… and honestly I think that's the way it was always meant to be.

Hethert and Amun have always been dead silent to me. Not invisible -- They've been "there" because I've expected Them to be there, and I think that's really the only reason They've ever been present is because I was in this religion with someone who told me "These Gods are going to be with you and part of your life". But that edict seemed as baffling to Them as it was to me, causing a lot of confusion and some level of spiritual trauma as well over time (always trying to attain something you were told 'should be', when it was never really meant to be at all, can be quite difficult to deal with).

Truth be told, my relationship with Wepwawet just didn't require "interpretters", nor did He nor I want any split attention in the Divinities department: I had no need in my particular path for any "Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Siblings, additional Parents" or whatever other familial human connection you want to paste onto Divinity. It simply wasn't conductive to the kind of relationship and focus I was meant to have with Wepwawet.

I'm not the kind of person who believes every single person can or should have a strong, daily relationship with every single Deity. I think some relationships will work, some will be in passing only or on an "as needed basis" only, and others will simply not work at all, and that is by mutual design. It's very similar to human relationships as well: no matter how much you pine after someone, the other party has a choice to be in that relationship, or not. And I think Hethert and Amun were simply existing in this disconnection in as best a way They could under the circumstances: They didn't want to reject me, particularly while I was in KO and being told They were "meant" to be there, but They also had Their own boundaries and limitations as well.

Essentially we were simply never meant to have the kind of relationship KO was suggesting we should have.

Today, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that, because now that I'm no longer bound by Kemetic Orthodoxy, I no longer need to tie myself to things I either do not believe in, or things that simply do not work. And the relationship between myself and Hethert and Amun simply does not work. This is never to say I cannot call upon Hethert or Amun to help me in various things, but rather it is about a familial-style relationship that simply was never meant to be.

What about "Nut"?

A couple of years ago, I had an additional Beloved divination. There is a long history behind this for the year prior, most notably a message I received during a Wep Ronpet (New Year) ritual from a completely unrelated Goddess, that I was meant to meet with Nut and receive a message. From that time on, I spent months curating this relationship with Nut that I didn't fully understand. Eventually, I had enough courage to ask Siuda for an additional divination rite to see if Nut was meant to be one of my Beloveds, along with Hethert and Amun.

The answer from Siuda's divination was that I could take it or leave it (She's receptive to the relationship, and I can agree to it, or I can walk away). And Nut thought that was absolutely hilarious and told me, in no uncertain terms, that this was a relationship that was meant to happen, and that if I examine all of the evidence, I would see that to be true (the same way that, had I examined all the evidence regarding Hethert and Amun, I would have known that relationship was never meant to be).

It was that point forward I realized two things: First, Siuda didn't know everything, nor were her shells telling me everything I needed to know for my personal relationship with Divinity. You'd think I would have known that a long time ago, but tradition is hard to break with. Second, for the first time in a long time, I personally realized the difference between a real relationship with an additional Deity (Nut) vs. the relationship that had been a bit forced on me (Hethert and Amun) by another person. [Note that I use the word 'force' very very lightly but, again, in 2001 and for some time after, I presumed what Siuda said was not to be questioned]

So while I say goodbye to Hethert and Amun in my daily life, I am working on elevating my relationship with Nut in a much more substantial way.

I will be deprecating all the statuary of Hethert and Amun from my shrines and altars, not to say I will never use it for something again, but it is a part of the 'moving away from this part of my life' that needs to be completed, and most importantly, Hethert and Amun are completely on-board.

This isn't goodbye -- it's just see you later, in a different context.

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gh-0-stcup · 11 days

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So I've got a tinhat headcanon for Chuck, based on just what I've heard about the last couple seasons.

Chuck's depiction in S11 was legit and truer to the sort of God he was for most of time. He was genuinely on the Winchester's side, despite needing to be distant.

S15 is the boys facing God's wrath. Chuck was fucking with the guys because he got tired of their bullshit. The "I've been controlling every single thing about your life from day 1" and "it's all just literally a show for my personal entertainment" was a lie constructed to really hurt them.

The last time Chuck came down and got involved, he explained very clearly exactly why he pulled away from the world. He wanted a world that could function independently. He wanted his creations to evolve and flourish. In his eyes, trying to fix everything for everyone was preventing this from happening. You can't learn from your mistakes without experiencing consequences.

From this and his conversation with Metatron about why humanity is so wonderful, we can gather Chuck's ultimate goal/desire was growth. The world is not perfect because it was designed to be perfected.

Even though Chuck has grown a bit jaded, he's sentimental towards the Winchester brothers. They fuck up a whole lot, but they always try their hardest to fix it and often succeed. Even their mistakes are generally made out of love or a desire to do good. They remain loyal and devoted to their family and overcome familial drama that even Chuck has failed to sort out.

Up against good, evil, angels, devils, destiny and God himself, they made their own choice. They chose family. And well...isn't that kinda the whole point?

Chuck was pleased with the boys at the end of this, despite it going against the "planned ending". Castiel, for his part in defying """God's plan""", was ressurected personally by Chuck (apparently more times than he can count).

Chuck gives more support to the boys than any other piece of his creation. He has faith in them, even when they don't have faith in themselves. He makes paths for their survival, stacks the cards in their favour, and directly saves their lives twice.

He does what he can so that they have the tools necessary to continue growing and saving his creation. He's the cosmic cheerleader in the background of their lives.

Another important thing to note about his conversation with Metatron - Chuck likes being Chuck. Prefers it, even. He enjoys being a mediocre writer and dating and having a blog. He wants to enjoy his work. He wants to be a part of his creation, not just its overlord in the clouds.

In S11, Chuck makes the effort to personally explain some of this to Dean. In particular, Chuck's policy on not interfering with problems his creations have the capacity to solve - even if that means people die or get hurt or the world ends.

With Amara we get a little peek into why the world isn't a paradise - the imperfections are part of what makes it beautiful. You can't have freedom without things getting a bit fucked up.

But after his feud with Amara is concluded, are the boys satisfied? Of course not! Any conversation about why Chuck can't be more involved is tossed out the window. And there's zero gratitude for anything Chuck has done for them ever, despite him giving them more than he's given anyone in millenia. Chuck nearly sacrificed his own life for the world, for the boys. He allowed their mother to be ressurected as a reward for their good work.

And what does Chuck get? Dean accusing him of actively causing every bad thing that's ever happened to them, despite most of it being the result of their own choices, and demanding Chuck ressurect everybody.

Now it's completely understandable and valid for Dean to feel this way and his prayer is fucking heartbreaking. But just imagine being Chuck. How irritating would that be?

So, Chuck shows the brothers what the God they imagine him to be would look like. A world centered around them with a sadistic overlord who uses them for entertainment. He takes away the meaning of their choices, their skills, and their victories. He pokes and prods and psychologically tortures them until he's finally (finally) overthrown.

The result is the boys get what they want. A God they chose and raised up themselves. A God who immediately comes to the exact same conclusion Chuck had - it's bad for God to interfere with people's lives. But by this point, it's seen as a good thing.

Their lives continue as normal. They still hunt, they still have to mourn the loss of their loved ones. The only thing that really changes from how things were under Chuck? Dean dies. The ending is bleak and pretty fucking depressing for the boys, considering the magnitude of their final victory.

And what is Chuck's ending? He has to actually be Chuck. A part of his creation, rather than above it. No longer will he hear the pleas and cries and condemnations of his creations. No longer will he be blamed for their bad choices. No longer will he be asked for help with things they could (and should) do on their own. He'll live out his days a mediocre writer who blogs about cats and then he'll die.

Chuck just happens to get exactly what he wanted in S11 and the boys learned the lesson he tried to impart back then in the process.

#my chaotic neutral remix of the chuck won theory #he gets what he's been trying to do for the last couple thousand years - peaceful retirement #yes i will jump through whatever hoops i need to in order to salvage my blorbo #in which chuck and gabe have more in common than you'd think #idk what to call this #also the son of chuck's favourite child is the one who inherits the kingdom which is fun #spn #i'm only on the second episode of s13 so idk how this theory will hold up #lbr if i see contradictions i'll just adapt - you can pry good!chuck from my cold dead hands!!!#chuck shurley

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3rdeyeblaque · 1 year

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Today we venerate Elevated Ancestor Dr. Huey P. Newton on his 82nd birthday 🎉

Known around the world as one of THE most prolific faces of Black Revolutionary History in the Americas, we celebrate for his co-creative vision that birthed THE Black Panther Party Of Self-Defense on October 30th 1966 .

Dr. Huey P. Newton served as the Party's leader and it's Minster Of Defense. His Marxist/Leninist perspective (of the Black Community existing as an separate internal colony trapped/controlled within an external colony and its forces) became the blueprint for the Party's founding document, the Ten-Point Program, which sought to equip our community with the power necessary to regain our land, food, housing, education, clothing, justice, & peace.

It was this revolutionary vision of true independence, self-preservation, self-education, peace, & freedom that called to the spirits of many who would members and supporters while striking a legacied fear in the hearts of our oppressors that continues to breed ignorance and fear to this day; an ancestral prayer answered by any means necessary. It is the legacy of his vision & work that lives on to this day.

"You can kill my body, and you can take my life but you can never kill my soul. My soul will live forever!" - Dr. Huey P. Newton

We pour libations & give extra 💐 to Dr. Huey P. Newton on this day for pioneering courage & love for us. May be continue to be a beacon & a blueprint for those committed to the protection & betterment of our lineages/people. ✊🏾🖤

Offering Suggestions: a white candle toward his elevation, libations of water, soul food, & committing energy to his creative vision.

‼️Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.‼️

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4th February >> Fr. Martin's Homilies / Reflections on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. Mark 1:29-39) for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B: ‘Everybody is looking for you’.

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Gospel (Except USA) Mark 1:29-39 He cast out devils and cured many who were suffering from disease.

On leaving the synagogue, Jesus went with James and John straight to the house of Simon and Andrew. Now Simon’s mother-in-law had gone to bed with fever, and they told him about her straightaway. He went to her, took her by the hand and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to wait on them.

That evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were sick and those who were possessed by devils. The whole town came crowding round the door, and he cured many who were suffering from diseases of one kind or another; he also cast out many devils, but he would not allow them to speak, because they knew who he was.

In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there. Simon and his companions set out in search of him, and when they found him they said, ‘Everybody is looking for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go elsewhere, to the neighbouring country towns, so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came.’ And he went all through Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out devils.

Gospel (USA) Mark 1:29–39 Jesus cured many who were sick with various diseases.

On leaving the synagogue Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever. They immediately told him about her. He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up. Then the fever left her and she waited on them.

When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons. The whole town was gathered at the door. He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him.

Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed. Simon and those who were with him pursued him and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.” He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.

Homilies (7)

(i) Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes a darkness of spirit can come over us for many reasons. Such an experience can often be generated by some experience of loss. We sense that we are losing our health. We may be losing some friendship or relationship that has been important to us. A loved family member drifts away from us because of ill health. The most painful experience of loss is when a loved one dies. Job who features in today’s first reading is someone who had lost everything - his home, his children, his health, his independence. A great darkness of spirit came over him, powerfully expressed in today’s first reading, ‘Lying in bed, I wonder, “When will it be day?” Risen, I think, “How slowly evening comes!”,,, my eyes will never again see joy’. It is a heartfelt lament, and as you read on beyond our reading, Job brings his heartfelt lament to God in prayer, saying to God, ‘Why have you made me your target? Why am I a burden to you?’ It is a very honest prayer out of the depths of great distress and darkness of spirit.

Sometimes that is the only form our prayer can take. It was the prayer of Jesus as he hung from the cross. He cried to God out of the darkness of his spirit and the brokenness of his body, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ On the cross, Jesus had lost everything. He had lost his disciples, his freedom, his dignity, and he even appears to have lost God. Jesus entered into the darkness of our human condition. He knows it from the inside. His question to God is the question of all of us when we find ourselves in a dark valley that is not of our making, ‘Where is God in my pain, grief and loss?’ Where was God on Calvary? God was with Jesus, his Son, suffering with him, sustaining him. God had not abandoned Jesus but would bring him through the darkness of Calvary into the glorious light of Easter. God had not abandoned Job either, but would go on to speak to him out of the storm. God never abandons us in our own valleys of darkness, but is always there with us, carrying us, sustaining us, leading us through the darkness into the light.

This is the good news that Jesus came to bring by his words and, above all, by his actions. In the gospel reading, Jesus spends a whole day bringing God’s healing and life-giving presence to the broken in body, mind and spirit. He firstly heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in her own home. The gospel says that ‘he helped her up’, literally, ‘he raised her’. He brought the power of the resurrection to bear on her illness. Having just healed a disturbed man in the synagogue, he now heals a seriously ill woman in her home. The risen Lord is with us in our homes as much as when we gather in church to worship. He wants to bring the power of his risen life to bear on our own brokenness of body, mind, or spirit. We don’t have to go on a journey to find the Lord. He is always journeying towards us, and he meets us wherever we are, whether it is in our own home or in some place that could never be called home.

Having healed Simon Peter’s mother in her home, he goes on to heal large numbers from Capernaum at the door of her home. The gospels suggest that Jesus spent a great deal of his time surrounded by suffering, by people who were in desperate need of healing of one kind or another. There must have been many broken people in great darkness of spirit he just couldn’t get to. At the end of the gospel reading, his disciples wanted him to go back to Capernaum to continue his healing work, but he replied that he needed to move on to the neighbouring country towns. How did Jesus cope with all that human suffering that kept coming at him? The gospel reading suggests that one of the ways he coped was by taking time out on his own to pray. After his day’s work, long before dawn, he got up and left the house of Simon’s mother-in-law and went to a lonely place and prayed there. He knew he needed to be alone with God if he was to keep doing God’s work.

Jesus is showing us the importance of being alone with God, of withdrawing to rest in the presence of God. When we find ourselves in some darkness of spirit, we can pray to God in various ways. Like Job, we can give out to God, or, like Jesus, we can just rest in the loving presence of God, the prayer of presence. We become aware of God’s presence to us, and we allow ourselves to become present to God. I came across a statement recently, ‘Whenever there is no way out, there is always a way up’. Like Jesus, we can come quietly before God who suffers with us as he suffered with Jesus on the cross, and who wants to carry us and bring us into a greater light and a fuller life. Like Jesus, in prayer we can find the strength from God to keep journeying on.

And/Or

(ii) Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the very sad and tragic features of the time in which we live is the number of people who take their own lives. Men in early adulthood seem to be a particularly vulnerable group. It is difficult to understand the bleakness of spirit that must in some way be at the root of such a drastic step. Bleakness of spirit can afflict us all even if it never leads us to contemplate taking our own life. There can be many reasons for such bleakness of spirit. Our life can take a turn for the worst for one reason or another. Something deeply distressing can happen to us or to someone with whom we are very close. It is at such times that the words of Job in today’s first reading find a ready echo in our hearts: ‘Is not our life on earth nothing more than pressed service, our time no better than hired drudgery… months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief’. These are the words of one who has a sense of hopelessness in the face of the darkness of his experience of life.

What saved Job from total despair is that he was able to express how he felt to God. He addressed God very directly, sometimes in very angry and uncompromising terms. A few verses after our reading, he bellows at God: ‘Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle.’ Job had enough freedom in his relationship with God to speak to God directly out of the darkness of his experience. Job teaches us to speak to God out of the depths. The old Catechism definition of prayer that I learned at primary school was: ‘Prayer is the raising up of the mind and heart to God’. At one level it may sound a rather rarefied definition of prayer. Yet, when you think about it, this is actually a very earthy understanding of prayer. If prayer is the raising up of the mind and heart to God, then prayer is the raising up of everything that is in our mind and heart to God. If what is in our minds and hearts are the darkest of human sentiments and thoughts, then that is what we must raise up to God. We speak to God out of the reality of our lives, whatever that reality might be. Job shows us that our prayer does not have to be censured in any way. If prayer is not real, it is not really prayer. If our heart is broken, it is the broken heart that we bring to God in prayer.

There is a line in today’s responsorial psalm which states: ‘The Lord heals the broken-hearted’. As Job continued at length to speak to God out of his broken heart, he eventually went on to find healing. There is another line in one of the psalms which simply states: ‘The Lord is close to the broken-hearted’. If this was the conviction of the people of Israel who did not know Jesus, how much more should it be our conviction? Jesus revealed God to be close to the broken, to those who were broken in body, mind or spirit. The gospel reading this morning shows the closeness of Jesus, and, therefore, of God, to the broken. Indeed, in Jesus, God became one of the broken. On the cross Jesus reveals a God who is broken in body and spirit. A well-known German theologian once wrote a book with the title, ‘The Crucified God’. God entered our brokenness in Jesus, and experienced it from the inside. God could not get closer to the broken than that.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul says of himself: ‘For the weak, I made myself weak’. God could say the very same: ‘For the weak I made myself weak; for the broken, I made myself broken’. If that is the God in whom we believe, then we need have no hesitation in bringing our brokenness to God in prayer. If Job who did not know Jesus had this freedom, we should have that same freedom to an even greater degree. Many of us will be familiar with the saying: ‘A burden shared is a burden halved’. Sometimes it can be difficult to share our burden with another, even with the person we are closest to, with whom we may have shared most of our lives. If we cannot share a burden with our closest companion, it is not the case that the only alternative is to keep it to ourselves. We can share that burden with the Lord. The prayer of sharing, the prayer of the open heart, is a very authentic form of prayer. Sharing ourselves with God in this way is not quite the same as asking God for something, petitioning God. We are simply sharing; we are telling our story to God. We are opening up that story to God’s presence, to God’s influence. That is a very valid and worthwhile form of prayer.

In today’s gospel reading, we find Jesus at prayer. He had been ministering to the broken most of the day. Early next morning, he got up and went off to a lonely place and prayed there. Working with the burdened no doubt left him burdened, as is the case for all of us. His prayer was a time when he could share his burden with the Father. In doing so, he found strength to continue. ‘Let us go elsewhere, to the neighbouring country towns’, he said to his disciples after his prayer. The best teaching is often by example. Jesus is teaching us here by his own example to lift up whatever may be in our hearts and minds to God and in doing that to find new strength.

And/Or

(iii) Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

All of us from time to time can experience life as something of a struggle or a burden. This might be because of some difficulty in our family, or our work may be unsatisfying or troublesome, or in these times of recession we may have lost our job, or our own health or the health of someone we love may be deteriorating. Any one of these or similar experiences can take its toll on us. We might find ourselves struggling to get through the day; we feel stressed and, as a result, we overreact to things, getting annoyed at what we would normally take in our stride. We may even find we have little energy for life.

At such times we can identify easily with the sentiments of Job in the first reading, and with his description of life as ‘pressed service’ and ‘hired drudgery’. The temptation when life becomes a burden can be to try harder, to summon up more of our energies, to do more to tackle the problem. In reality, the better path might be to do less, to step back and be still, to open ourselves to the presence of the Lord. During the past week I heard someone say that we are human beings not human doings. We often find it easier to do than to be.

The portrayal of Jesus in today’s gospel reading may have something to teach us in this regard. Because people recognised that God’s healing power was at work through Jesus, they came to him in great numbers in their brokenness, and reached out to him for healing. He certainly had no shortage of work. He was told initially about Simon Peter’s mother-in-law who was sick with a fever. Later on that day the whole town came crowding round the door of Simon Peter’s house looking for healing. That was only in Capernaum. Jesus could have worked day and night in all the towns of Galilee, healing the broken, releasing people from whatever was enslaving them.

Yet, Jesus knew the importance of standing back from what he was doing and being alone with God, even if it meant doing less. In the gospel reading we find him going off to a lonely place early in the morning to pray. When the disciples realized where he had gone, they were clearly puzzled by this behaviour of Jesus - going off on his own like that when there was so much work to be done. ‘Everyone in Capernaum is looking for you’, they said, as much as to say, ‘what are you doing out here on your own, when you could be healing more sick people back in Capernaum?’ But Jesus was not at the mercy of the demands of others, even the demands of those he was closest to. There was an even more important relationship in his life than his relationship with the needy and the sick, and that was his relationship with God, his Father. To do the work of the Father well, he knew that he needed to be with the Father, even though that meant doing less.

Paul in our second reading declares that he has made himself the slave, the servant of everyone. He was very committed to the work of bringing the gospel to others. He knew he was called to this service and he gave himself generously to it. Our own lives as Christians are very much about service too, serving one another in love, just as people served Simon’s mother-in-law by bringing Jesus to her, and people served the sick of Capernaum by bringing them to Jesus. Within our parish, parishioners serve other parishioners in all kinds of ways. People serve family members who are unwell or immobile at home; people look out for neighbours who need support. In a whole variety of ways, people are involved in the work of service of others. We are very dependant on the little services we render each other.

Yet, even more fundamental than the ways we serve each other is the way that God can serve us. God sent his Son not to be served but to serve and to give his life for us. Jesus revealed God to be our Servant. Jesus went away from the demands of others to open himself to the service of God, to be renewed and strengthened by God’s presence. If Jesus needed to be alone before God and to be served by God’s presence, how much more is that true of ourselves. We need to be before God, to come before him in our poverty and to be renewed by God’s presence.

If we can learn to be with God in stillness, then our service of others is more likely to be the kind of service that God wants for them. After spending time alone with God, Jesus did not go straight back to Capernaum, as Simon and the others wanted him to. He went on to other towns, because he knew this was what God wanted. It is not easy to acquire this habit of being alone with God in quietness and stillness, because so much of our culture today tells us that this is a waste of time, that we should be doing this, that or the other. We pray that the example of Jesus in the gospel this morning would inspire us to be with God, regardless of the demands made on us by life.

And/Or

(iv) Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are all familiar with suffering in one shape or form, whether it is physical, emotional, mental or spiritual suffering. There is no getting away from suffering; it comes to us all and it comes in different guises at different times of our lives. To live is to suffer. Regardless of our differences, suffering is something we all have in common. Some people seem to suffer more than others. Yet, it is difficult to measure suffering, especially in others. Some who do not seem to be suffering can be in great pain and others who seem to be suffering greatly can have a deep peace. The cry of Job in this morning’s first reading is one that comes out of deep suffering. He is in a very dark place indeed. Not only has he lost his health, his property and members of his family but he seems to have lost God. He had been living an exemplary life and he cannot understand why God has allowed so much misfortune to befall him. The God whom he worshipped when times were good now seems a complete stranger to him. The God to whom he related as a friend now seems to have become his enemy. The experience of loss, whether it is the loss of health or property or loved ones, can bring on something of a spiritual crisis. Some can be tempted to abandon God, when their prayers out of the depths are not heard. They feel angry at God; they sense that their trust in God has not been vindicated. That is very much the place where Job finds himself in today’s first reading. Job in that sense is every man or woman. The literary figure of Job is a very authentic depiction of the dark side of human experience, indeed, the dark side of faith in God.

The English writer C.S. Lewis was both a great intellectual and a man of great faith. He set out to give a rational explanation for the Christian vision of life. In 1940 he wrote a book called The Problem of Pain in which he brought his intellect and his faith to bear on the problem of suffering. However, twenty one years, in 1961, he wrote a very different book, called, A Grief Observed. In that book he recognizes that his rational, cerebral, faith has taken something of a battering. The book consists of the painful and brutally honest reflections of a man whose wife has died, slowly and in pain, from cancer. The book gives a vivid description of his own reaction, as a man of faith, to his wife’s death. His rational faith fell to pieces when confronted with suffering of a devastatingly personal kind. He writes at one point, ‘Where is God? Go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that silence’. The name of Lewis’s wife was Joy. He had earlier written a book called Surprised by Joy in which he wrote about the impact meeting her had on his life. His book A Grief Observed has received a wide readership because of his authentic and moving account of the impact of bereavement. Even though his rational, cerebral faith took something of a battering because of Joy’s death, Lewis did not lose his faith. Through the darkness of this experience he claims to have come to love his wife more truly. He writes that God had helped him to see that because the love he and his wife had for each other had reached its earthly limit, it was ready for its heavenly fulfilment.

Faith has to come to terms with the cross and it is at the foot of the cross that faith can be purified and deepened. Jesus himself entered fully into the darkness of human suffering. In today’s second reading, Paul says of himself, ‘For the weak, I made myself weak’. That is certainly true of Jesus. He entered fully into the weakness of the human condition. Elsewhere, in one of his letters, Paul says of Christ that ‘though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’. On the cross Jesus was at his weakest and poorest; it was on Calvary that, in the words of Lewis, Jesus went to God and found a door slammed in his face, as he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Yet, that cry of desolation is itself an act of faith; it is the language faith uses when confronted with the harrowing darkness of loss. God did not forsake Jesus, but brought through death into the fullness of life. The Jesus who was crucified in weakness is the same risen Lord who is with us in our own experiences of suffering and desolation, just as he was with the suffering and the broken in this morning’s gospel reading. He is with us as one who knows our experience from the inside. Having gone down into the depths and having moved beyond the depths into a fuller life, he can enable us to do the same. He is the good shepherd who, even when we walk through the valley of darkness, is there with his crook and his staff, leading us to springs of living water.

And/Or

(v) Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

A few weeks ago Pope Frances paid a visit to Sri Lanka and the Philippines. While in the Philippines, he visited Tacloban. It was there that, on November 8, 2013, the six-metre high waves generated by Super Typhoon Yolanda, the strongest storm ever recorded on earth, smashed into the homes and lives of thousands of people, leaving behind death and destruction. One of the reasons Pope Francis went to the Philippines was to be with the people of this city who had lost so much. He celebrated Mass on the grounds of the airport in Tacloban. Half a million people braved wind and rain to take part in the liturgy. In his homily the Pope departed from his prepared script, and his words touched the hearts of all present. He said, ‘So many of you have lost everything. I don’t know what to say to you, but the Lord does know what to say to you. Some of you have lost part of your families. All I can do is keep silence and walk with you with my silent heart. Many of you have asked the Lord – Why Lord? And to each of you, to your heart, Christ responds with his heart from the cross. I have no more words for you. Let us look to Christ’. The Pope was acknowledging that, in the face of tragedy on such a catastrophic scale, the only adequate response he can make is silence and an invitation to those affected by this tragedy to turn in prayer towards the Lord on the cross and allow him to speak to them.

Today’s first reading is from the book of Job. That book tells the story of a good man who lost everything, his property, the members of his family and, finally, his health. Today’s short reading captures something of Job’s dark mood. His friends gathered round him in his great loss but the words they speak to him only deepen his dark mood and add to his burden. They suggest that all these misfortunes happened to Job because he has displeased God. If he were to repent of his wrongdoing all would be well. Job finds no comfort in these words; they ring hollow. He has been living as good and upright a life as is humanly possible. He is angry with God because of all that has been taken from him, and his friends’ words make him even angrier. A little further on from where our reading ends he turns to God in desperation, ‘Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle?’ Complaining to God like this can be a deep form of faith. Lamenting to God is part of our struggle to find God in our pain and loss.

Some of you may have found yourselves in a dark place because of some deep loss and, perhaps, some of the well-intentioned words that were spoken to you at that time only added to your distress. If we are to be truly present to others in their pain and loss we have to try and enter the darkness with them. We have to somehow suffer with them, which is the meaning of compassion. Saint Paul touches on this when in today’s second reading he says, ‘for the weak, I made myself weak’. This involves a great act of self-emptying on our part, a stepping out of ourselves to be one with the other. Only then will whatever words we speak ring true. When we do try to become one with the other in their pain and loss, we will often get a strong sense, like Pope Francis in Tacloban, that our silence is more appropriate than our words. When we are present to others in this compassionate way, then our presence will be a source of healing for them.

The gospels suggest that this was the way Jesus was present to others. If Paul could say, ‘for the weak I made myself weak’, Jesus could certainly have said the same. On many occasions in the gospels, the emotion of ‘compassion’ is ascribed to Jesus. He suffered with those who suffered and it was out of that identification with their suffering that he could be a source of healing for them. That is why, as we hear in today’s gospel reading, the sick and the broken were drawn to him in such huge numbers. It was above all on the cross that Jesus made himself weak with the weak, identifying with us totally in our brokenness and pain. As the crucified and risen Lord, he is compassionately present to us today as much as he was to those of his own time. That is why, although Pope Francis recognized that words were inadequate, he said to the people of Tacloban, ‘the Lord from the cross is there for you, in everything the same as us. That is why we have a Lord who cries with us and walks with us in the most difficult moments of life’. We too are invited to prayerfully come before the Lord on the cross in our own times of pain and loss. As we do so, we will be empowered to be present to others in their dark valleys, in the compassionate way the Lord is present to us.

And/Or

(vi) Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Most of us will have known difficult and dark times at some point in our lives. We often find ourselves in a dark place. It might be brought on by a sudden experience of ill health or some experience of loss. Someone close to us may be in a dark place for a similar reason and it impacts powerfully on us. Job is certainly in a very dark place in today’s first reading. A great sense of despondency comes through his words. He experiences life as ‘hired drudgery’ and ‘pressed service’. A few verses after our reading ends, he exclaims, ‘I loathe my life’. The striking thing about Job is that he articulates his darkness of spirit before God. All the time he is not talking to myself, but to God; he is praying. Having declared ‘I loathe my life’, he immediately cries out to God, ‘Let me alone’. His way of addressing God is very honest and, at times, very angry. This is prayer at its most authentic. He yells at God, shouts at God, wonders where God is, asks God to leave him alone. Yet, by the end of the book, in and through this raw and honest prayer, he comes to some sense of peace and acceptance, some awareness that, in spite of his loss and suffering, he is being held by God who cares for all his creatures.

The experience of suffering in ourselves or in others can often shake our faith to the core. We struggle to reconcile the goodness of God with our own suffering and the suffering of others, especially the suffering of the innocent and most defenceless. The problem of evil and the suffering it produces is not easily resolved intellectually for people of faith. The gospel reading today suggests that Jesus often found himself surrounded by suffering. Having healed a very disturbed man in the synagogue of Capernaum, he is immediately brought to the house of Simon Peter’s mother in law who is in bed with a fever. All the sick of the town, ‘the whole town’, then come crowding around the door of Simon’s house, looking for Jesus to heal them of their various diseases. Jesus might have had his own questions about the endless suffering that surrounded him, day after day. When Jesus himself entered the dark valley of suffering and loss, he had his own questions. As he hung from the cross, he cried aloud, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ This is not an intellectual question about the place of suffering in a world created by a good Creator. It is a much more heartfelt and personal question. Jesus was asking, ‘Where are you, God, in my suffering?’ It is the kind of question Job addresses to God throughout his long dialogue with God. Just like Job’s question, Jesus’ question from the cross was prayer. He was addressing God directly in prayer.

Although Jesus surrounded by the endless suffering of others, according to the gospel reading, there comes a time when he needed to go off alone to pray. Before dawn, while everyone else slept, he left the house where so much human suffering had gathered and he went off to a lonely place by himself to pray. It is as if Jesus needed to bring all this suffering and its impact on him to prayer. He somehow opened up this tide of human suffering to God his Father, whom he knew to be the Father also of all those who suffered. While he is at prayer, Simon Peter discovers where he is and says to him, ‘Everyone one is looking for you’. The suffering people of Capernaum are knocking on your door, Peter is saying. Yet, even though everyone is searching for him, Jesus knows that he needs time and space to search for God in prayer. Jesus was very aware of the depth of his need for God. He had to pray, just as he had to eat and drink. We can be much less aware of the depth of our need for God. Yet, our need for God is even greater than Jesus’ need, and our need for God is all the greater when suffering presses in on us. Suffering drove Jesus to pray; it drove Job to prayer; it needs to drive us to prayer too. The temptation can be to allow the experience of suffering to turn us away from God, and, yet, it is above all in such difficult and dark moments that we most need to keep the lines of communication open to God, even if it is only to complain to God and to question God.

I am often struck at how some people who have such great suffering in their lives also have a deep prayer life. Invariably such people are never bitter about their situation. They often have an extraordinary serenity and peace about them. Suffering, whatever form it takes, has the capacity to turn is in on ourselves. Yet, in bringing the experience of suffering to prayer, as Job did, as Jesus did, we open ourselves up to the Lord who is always close to the broken hearted, and we can find the spiritual strength to live through our suffering and loss, even though we may not understand it.

And/Or

(vii) Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I had a friend who died some years ago. She had been confined to her bed for many years because of a debilitating illness. She had a poster on her wall which read, ‘Life is fragile, handle with prayer’. She needed everything done for her. Yet, there was one thing she could do for herself, and that was to pray. She was a woman of deep prayer. I am sure there were times when her prayer echoed the prayer of Job in the first reading. Job’s prayer is one long complaint to God, a prayer of lamentation from the depths of distress. The prayer of lamentation is a very valid form of prayer; it expresses our struggle to find God in the darkest experiences of life. Complaining to God can be a deep form of faith. Prayer can sometimes take the form of just giving vent to the darkness within, opening up our most painful struggles to God. In some ways it is a prayer of trust, because we are only that honest about ourselves with someone we can trust.

If the prayer of this friend of mine resembled at times Job’s prayer of lamentation, it took other forms as well. It certainly took the form of interceding for others. Although she could easily have become completely absorbed by her own suffering, she was always thinking of others and praying for them. She also regularly gave thanks to God. She appreciated every kindness that was shown and gave thanks to God for it. The readings today prompted us to ask, ‘How do I pray?’ and ‘Why do I pray?’ That second question is the more fundamental of the two. Some very good and loving people see little or no value in prayer. Why bother with prayer at all? Surely, there are better ways of spending your time.

Yet, if we have faith, even if it is only the size of a mustard seed, we will invariably find ourselves drawn to prayer of some kind. After all, what is faith only a relationship with the Lord, in response to his relationship with us? Like any relationship we have with someone, we need to give expression to this relationship in some way. We will feel the need to connect, to communicate, with the one we have a relationship with. It is true that when our relationship with someone breaks down, perhaps in a very acrimonious way, we no longer feel the need to communicate with them. On the contrary, we may want to have nothing to do with them. We have nothing more to say to them. Our hurt and anger can become a stone wall between us and them. Our relationship with God, with the Lord, can break down too. Life’s trials and troubles can leave us feeling angry with God and, unlike Job who openly expressed his anger to God, we can express our anger towards God by withdrawing. We stop praying, or we just go through the motions of prayer. Yet, whereas human relationships can break down irretrievably, our relationship with the Lord never breaks down irretrievably, and that is because the Lord keeps knocking on our door. He keeps pursuing us, not to burden us but to heal us. In the words of today’s psalm, the Lord ‘heals the broken-hearted; he binds up all their wounds’. The Lord keeps seeking us out in his love because he wants to do for us what he did for Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in the gospel reading, taking us by the hand and helping us up, empowering us to serve others in love.

The Lord who seeks us out is prepared to wait on our response, just as the father in the parable of the prodigal son was prepared to wait for his rebellious younger son. The Lord’s waiting is not a passive waiting because he is all the time drawing us to himself. He said on one occasion, ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself’. ‘Why, then, do I pray?’ I pray in response to the drawing power of the Lord’s love. In the gospel reading, we find Jesus at prayer. He had just healed Peter’s mother-in-law; he then healed many who were sick from various diseases and who had gathered at the door of the house. When Jesus went off to pray, early the following morning, Peter and his companions went looking for him and when they found him they said, ‘Everybody is looking for you’. They were asking, ‘Why are you out here praying when you could be healing more people?’ Jesus was praying in response to the drawing power of God his Father’s love. He came away from that prayer, knowing what he had to do, not go back to Capernaum as his disciples wanted him to do, but go further afield. His time with God in prayer freed him to take the path God wanted him to take. When we turn to prayer, in response to the Lord’s drawing of us, even if it is after a long time of resisting, we will not only experience his healing presence, but we will be helped to take the path the Lord wants us to take. That will always be the path of loving service of others, the path of making ourselves weak for the weak, in the words of Paul in today’s second reading.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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angeltreasure · 11 months

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If I may make a prayer request, I've been crippled by anxiety. I've been in a few nasty car wrecks just a few years apart from one another, and the experience has left me with such severe anxiety around driving, I can't bring myself to do it anymore. It's been three years now that I've driven a car. I still ride in cars with others, but I get so tense over the slightest thing, it makes me fear that if I wear to just try and push through and do it again, any tiny little thing would set off a mini panic attack and I'd cause a wreck. It's awful. I feel like a burden on my loved ones who I have to rely on to go places, and I'm severely limited in job prospects bc I can't drive. It doesn't help that I don't have access to a reliable vehicle to practice anyway, plus outrageous gas prices add another layer of challenge. Please, I feel this is getting in the way of so much in my life, and that most of my other problems would clear up if I could just drive again. It's freedom and independence that I just don't have access to because of my own disordered brain and it's getting in the way of everything. I don't have access to therapy either, and have very little money (again, can't get a job because I can't drive). I just want to be able to get behind the wheel of a car and actually enjoy the process of driving and not freak out if something happens. Cautious but not in a panicky way. Confident but not in a cocky way. Alert but not in a way that's exhausting. Sorry this is so long. Thank you for reading. 🙏🏻

I know this exact feeling and that situation of not having a lot of money. I caused my second car accident in a thunderstorm when I was sharing my mom’s car before I bought my own. The people all around who were witnessing laughed at me and took off. I panicked so much I couldn’t breathe. It meant a mark could be on my insurance and my mom’s for at least 6 years. On top of that I had to rent a car out of my own pocket and give even more to my parents. I was scared that the driver of the other car could drive around to find me or worse, sue me. I was afraid to leave my bedroom. I was scared it would happen again. I felt like I was burden too. As crazy as that sounds, those were real feelings I felt. I had no money for therapy either the only thing that calmed me was God. It took me a while to get over my fear of being on the road again, but I had to keep my job too. Perhaps if you are lucky enough you could carpool with someone for a while or take public transportation (which is very cheap sometimes)…there is also Uber but that can be pricy. You could try this until you get over your fear if that is possible. Keep in mind that it is freedom to drive, that could be your motivation. Take it day by day and don’t be too hard on yourself. I will pray for you.

#prayer request #asks

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resistancekitty · 5 months

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“And finally I recommend, that on the said day; the duties of humiliation and prayer be accompanied by fervent Thanksgiving to the bestower of every good gift, not only for having hitherto protected and preserved the people of these United States in the independent enjoyment of their religious and civil freedom, but also for having prospered them in a wonderful progress of population, and for conferring on them many and great favours conducive to the happiness and prosperity of a nation.”

—John Adams, 23 March 1798

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dionysia-ta-astika · 1 year

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🗽 Lady Liberty 🗽

I recently took over an abandoned space to dedicate it to Liber, the Italian aspect of Dionysus. Previously, it had been dedicated to Libertarianism, and the Lady Liberty Emoji was everywhere. While I initially thought to remove it, I felt she should stay. The following arose out of my complicated feelings about the symbol of Lady Liberty.

The following could be Dionysus in Drag; a female Dionysus; Libertas, the Roman personification of freedom; or Libera, who was syncretized variously with Persephone (She was Ceres’ Daughter) and/or Ariadne (She was Liber’s Wife and Sister).

Read it as you will, and remember freedom is one of the greatest gifts Dionysus, Libertas, and Libera offer us. Content warning for bigotry, violence, and political opinions that have been expressed invoking Lady Liberty. All past events, current political cartoons, and speculations as to the real identity of the model (save the main character) are real (to the best of my knowledge), including the prayer/exclamation of the Greek immigrant quoted herein.

The studio was cold, but she wouldn’t have minded the chill if she had been allowed to move about. The cold isn’t that bad when one can warm the belly with drink or cast one’s limbs about. But she was staying perfectly still, her body being catalogued, her mind wandering, taking the journey her feet couldn’t.

In better times (a vague appellation that she also extended to numerous other periods of time where there was laughter and others would remember the laughter and reminisce - but what most now called Antiquity), there had been such statues as this sculptor envisioned, grand ones. Zeus in Olympia, Helios in Rhodes, Athena in Athens. Countless Pharaohs and deities in Egypt, dotting the riverbanks of the Nile. Many Ozymandiai, six feet under many lone and level sands.

She herself had never been fashioned in such a colossal likeness in those days. Large phallic monuments, sure. Trees hung with masks. People donning her persona, allowing her to flow through them. She was remembered and honored in ways other than stone and bone statues. But now, her time for grandeur had come. Even if her name would never be attached to this figure, if it was just her frame, it was enough.

She would be clothed, she was going to be on full display in Puritan America. Delacroix’ Liberty was allowed to get a breast out for the milk of liberty to flow while its blood stained her bare feet - she, Bartholdi’s Liberty, would wear sandals. Her book was embossed with the day of independence, with broken chains under her feet a nod to the American civil war and the subsequent on-paper liberation of its enslaved populace not two decades past.

She had to stand still, and that did not come naturally to her. She recalled having brandished aloft wands and thyrsoi and spears in the past, but it is easier to move erratically than to maintain stillness. The book was heavy, and she could hold a hand still for the torch only so long before the inexorable pull of gravity made itself known in each aching muscle.

When the human body ached in the temporary present, she turned her thoughts to the immortal future. She followed her statues' construction, her sail to America, the miraculous fact no one died building the damn thing on either continent. She saw the dedication.

Despite ostensibly being a woman herself, her consecration would not be open to any women other than the wife of the sculptor and the granddaughter of a French diplomat. This would not stop a group of suffragists from chartering their own boat and pulling up to the island without disembarking. In Cleveland around the same time, a Black owned newspaper decried the idea of America being a host for the beacon of liberty, and suggested the flame not be enkindled until true freedom was a reality in America.

And yet the ceremonies went on, and the light was kindled - not well, the statue was practically invisible at night. And yet during the day, one could see it stark against the skyline. The scores of immigrants fleeing the old world saw her, and hailed her. Emma Lazarus would compose a poem for her, but her favorite would be the exclamation of one Greek woman fresh arriving. It isn’t that she, the model, truly had a ‘old country’ that would make her favor the immigrant woman above others. Not entirely. But she remembered well the feeling of washing up on a strange shore. And she truly did love the peoples of those islands. She never forget the woman’s prayer:

"Lady, you're such a beautiful! You opened your arms and you get all the foreigners here. Give me a chance to prove that I am worth it, to do something, to be someone in America."

It was only when this woman had uttered these few words in broken English that she realized her statue itself was an immigrant to this country.

She quickly grew tired of the dull copper color, and shortly after the turn of the century, she frosted herself in brilliant verdigris. The authorities would try to stop her, repaint her; but the people of her city would protest. So they would acquiesce, only painting the inside.

When the first world war came, sabotage in the harbor would injure her torch-bearing arm, and the flow of tourists up into the flame would end. It was the same year they’d finally fix the lighting, as she was an eminent propaganda tool - fighting for ‘freedom’ in France, the country which have them the statue. They would fix the lighting to make their point, even as the armies were still segregated.

The lighting would get an upgrade in the 1970’s, but by that time she thought she alone remembered the demand from the Cleveland Gazette. There had been steps toward what those in her statue’s birth country termed ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’. She wondered if those journalists would have deemed the steps the country had taken went far enough to deserve the light. Those attempting to move forward came to her feet, not as supplicants but as demonstrators - illegally, no less. Feminists in the early seventies, Gay activists in the mid seventies, Anti-abortionists in the late seventies. Those in favor of and opposed to the Iranian revolution, of course on separate days. Puerto Rican independence, opposition to intervention in Grenada and opposition to the occupation of the Baltic nations.

She saw the day when the corners of her eyes saw fire and were filled with smoke. She had seen terror and fire mixed with screams and cries before - but in other cities, not here. And certainly nothing like this. Bigger toys did bigger damage, and the more people in a city, the louder it grieved. There were no more activist takeovers of her island after that for a long time. But nevertheless her image persisted.

She saw herself beloved as a symbol of freedom, liberation, tolerance. Loathed as an image of imperialism, racism, injustice. She saw political cartoons that depicted her taking many sides: being groped by a future president, stripping off a Covid mask to the sigh of ‘breathe free’, being yelled at to go back to France and take her huddled masses with her. She saw tax mascots and tourist junk and tattoos and cartoons.

She saw the day when one day the statue would no longer be there, but decided to avoid knowing whether she would have a long, slow, graceful decline into the ocean, or a pathetic rot and decay, or even an explosive disappearance in the span of seconds. She couldn’t think which outcome was preferable, which was to be avoided.

Curious, she thought of others whose statues fell. The fires and thefts that had lapped at Athena Parthenos. The looters who destroyed the Zeus of Olympia, the invaders who destroyed the Helios of Rhodes. Then the Buddhas in Bamiyan, who had not been on the path to India when she had gone millenia ago leading her own charge, nor the second time, following Alexander. but whose construction she had observed when she journeyed east after the closing of the academy in Athens. She would see them again, several times, the last of which was when she traveled the Hippie Trail in the latter half of the 20th century, and she would shed tears when they would be imploded at the beginning of the next.

This sadness brought her back to the reality at hand. She had seen sculptors before. She had looked in mirrors and created realities, and she had taken sculptors to bed, which was such a rapturous experience she shifted the entire nature of the work he was doing. But she saw this one sculptor as only one link in a great chain of people and events that was to follow.

It was those people she thought of when she thought of her future in metal. Above all the glory and the iconism, she thought of what she would mean to people. In her hand was a torch, a wordless flame that can be used to empower or destroy. In one hand a book with a sacrosanct date where many were still not free, under her feet the chains representing an evil not yet fully slain. There would be fights over her identity, whether she was a mother, a muslim, a drag queen, or perhaps all of the above.

There would be millions who would see her, call to her, invoke her for their heartache desires of freedom. She thought of the steps. The many it would take to climb to her crown, and the many it would take to achieve ‘Liberty’, if that was ever a state of permanence. And that’s when she moved.

She changed her posture. Not greatly, but a slight shift. Her body was now caught in the process of moving forward. The sculptor tried to object, but when she opened her mouth, he somehow knew instantly he would do what she said:

“Put her in motion. There’s no freedom in stillness.”

#original myths #tw violence #tw sex #submission

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