“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Our political behavior does not recognize order as the last word, but rather love, which sets free.

Ernst Käsemann, On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene

Wilhelm Marstrand (Danish, 1810-1873)

Venetian Girls in a Church, 1853

“There is a kind of alchemy to it, when one human touches another and makes the aloneness less terrifying.”

— Samira Ahmed, from Internment (via surqrised)

When heaven actually overturns our morals, when the gospel attacks our basic values, it is no longer directed toward our performance, merit, or ideals. When God makes a pact with him enemies, then indeed moral world order comes to grief, and as a result not even the status quo in the material realm remains inviolable. There are reasons why church decrees oppose the theology of liberation, as once did the scribes and the lay movement of the Pharisees following them. There is also a reason why Protestant theologians would like to separate salvation and earthly well-being from each other, though Jesus not only received souls to comfort and edify, but healed the sick and possessed, thus made earthly well-being a sign of the coming resurrection and the kingdom of God on a new earth. A theology that does not proclaim liberation, even of bodies from demonic slavery, is heretical ideology.

Ernst Käsemann, On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene

Annunciation (Gustave Max Stevens, 1897)

For whatever reason God wants me to blog. Idk why. This how Job must have felt………….

people would often accuse my bisexual parents of turning my brother and i gay and like its silly ofc. its probably coincidence or genetic, if anything.

but. to be fair. we did have prints of neo-classicist paintings of sappho around our house.

people who love to say “the only foolproof method of pregnancy-prevention is abstinence” with that smug grin really do not want to think about abstinence as something with a statistically measurable fail rate that is probably higher than that of condoms

“Even now, after centuries of reductionist propaganda, the world is still intricate and vast, as dark as it is light, a place of mystery, where we cannot do one thing without doing many things, or put two things together without putting many things together.”

— Wendell Berry, ‘In Distrust of Movements’ (1998)

"When the practice of love invites us to enter a place of potential bliss that is at the same time a place of critical awakening and pain, many of us turn our backs on love."

- bell hooks, "all about love"

I don't think it really "means" anything, but I think it's kind of interesting that a lot of human societies have been quite squeamish about sex—in particular viewing it as a worldly pleasure which is gross, sinful, or unvirtuous to engage in—while generally not feeling squeamish about eating in the same way.

I think this is interesting because, conceptually, sex is actually pretty tame. It is (or at least should be) pleasurable for both parties, it's connected with both romantic love and the creation of new life (things which people generally valorize), etc. Obviously I understand the practical reasons why cultures might frown on unrestrained expression of sexuality in a world without birth control, but on a purely conceptual level sex seems pretty wholesome all around.

On the other hand, eating is rather disturbing as an idea, isn't it? Eating necessarily involves killing—even eating plants. As heterotrophs we literally cannot eat anything without ending life in order to do it. And of course most people now and throughout history have eaten meat, which means that eating involves slaughter. It's a gruesome thing; the pleasure we take from food is intimately and inherently tied to death. Eating is an act of destruction which is necessary to nourish the physical body. Surely this should be regarded, by the sorts of people inclined to the idea, as the greatest symbol of the fallen nature of the material world as compared to the spiritual. Surely it is hunger and not lust that should be the archetype of sinful material desire.

While ascetics of various backgrounds do seem to have mentioned gluttony (it is after all one of the seven deadly sins), my impression is that usually lust is a much greater concern for them. Why? Because lust is more tempting, a greater threat? I don't think so. I think it's because food is more tempting. Because you can go a lifetime without sex if you actually decide to, but a few days without food and your brain will basically shut down your capacity for higher reasoning and make you eat. Even when desire for food is railed against, it is generally merely excessive desire (gluttony), and not, as with lust, desire-at-all (hunger). I think only the most hardcore Buddhist monks take umbrage with hunger. Because lust is small potatoes; hunger has us all in its thrall. No matter how pacifistic we think ourselves to be, hunger drives us to kill and kill and kill. Isn't there a little more inherent horror in that than in, uh, people having sex?

At least the Jains seem to have taken the inherent-horror-in-eating stuff seriously.

I don't trust anyone who hasn't acknowledged their capacity for evil.

“Above all, always see Jesus in every person, and consequently treat each one not only as an equal and as a brother or sister, but also with great humility, respect, and selfless generosity.”

- Blessed Charles de Foucauld

'The Crucifixion' by Mikhail Nesterov (1908) oil on copper.

Washington Phillips, “Jesus Is My Friend / What Are They Doing In Heaven Today,” December 5, 1928.

Final Poem in Some Poems by Paul Klee, trans. by Anselm Hollo