The Martyr

inspired by the baroque period's obession with martyrs and in honor of valentine's day and ash wednesday falling on the same day... i present the gay angel, ultimate martyr for love.

buy it on stuff here

“We call Lent a ‘penitential season’. It is striking, then, that the symbol with which it begins does not focus so much on personal sin as on our contingence as created beings […] To take the ashes is to confess kinship with this world of dust, to declare our readiness to abdicate pretensions to omnipotence. Standing before God in this way, I profess that I am not God. I admit the chasm that separates me from him. I accept the uncomfortable otherness of God. He is what I am not, yet my being bears his mark. I crave a completion no created thing can give. I walk this earth as yearning incarnate. I am at home, yet a stranger, homesick for a homeland I recall but have not seen.”

— Erik Varden: The Shattering of Loneliness

what if we 🥺 came from dust and returned to dust together 🥺 👉👈

02/14/2024

The dark (chocolate) night of the soul.

___

JOKE-OGRAPHY: Traditionally, on Valentine's Day, couples buy each other gifts and sweets to show their love.  Emo Emi, being chronically unlikable but also a chocoholic, has resorted to buying herself enough chocolate to put her into two consecutive comas.  She's looking forward to those comas until her parents' darned RELIGION gets in the way.  You see, this year, Valentine's Day falls on Ash Wednesday.  For Christians, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting, which means no meats, and no sweets.  In this cartoon, Emi vents to her friend, Olga, about how having all this chocolate and not being allowed to eat it is the absolute height of Christian suffering.  Olga tries to chasten Emi by reminding her that some Christians suffer far worse fates than a day without chocolate -- some even die for their faith.  However, in her delusional state of grief, Emi would much rather the death.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Oops, I've done it again.  It's another "Tomics Resurrection" where I redraw a cartoon from a few years ago and, like God on the sixth day, take it from GOOD to VERY GOOD.  This one is from 2018, the last time this same combination of holidays occurred.  Back then, Emi's personality was still in flux.  Now that she's become a more defined character (petulant pseudo-intellectual Christian-wanna-not-be), I had to adjust the dialogue a little, but I think I've kept the same spirit.  Also, back in ye olde yeare ofe 2018e, I apparently didn't respect any semblance of character continuity, so Emi's shape and colors change drastically between the first and second panels.  Must've been a rush job.  Poor 2018 Tom.  Such a child.  Anyway, how do YOU think the new compares to the old?

Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday ended up on Valentine's day... So I drew this photo first!

There will be an overlap again this year of Lent and Ramadan so we’ll both be hungry at the same time.

THE LAST BRUPPER THE PASSION OF FLRIST

anyone wanna analyze this and tell me what it means

Next week 💀🥰

The Card

ash-entine one

Valentine Arrangement from Armstrong Nurseries, 1951 // Traditional Ash Wednesday Blessing

doing my bi-annual tumblr check-in to drop this off

here it is again, my favorite day of the year. we remember today, we are borrowing dirt. you are not above creation; you are a part of it. you are not living on Earth; you belong to Her, you are a piece of Her. you are dust breathing; you are the ashes of a thousand forest fires, the stuff built from the corpses of stars. you are made and guided by the Force that controls life and death, beginnings and ends, and the pathways in between. death is not a curse, it is a phase of being: a roadway between states of consciousness. you'll return back to where you once were. but God has decided that you should get to be of a separate consciousness; God made you alive and human. do well with that and be grateful. and remember today to whom you belong, where you come from, and where you are going.

i hope the Divine may resonate in your life today in a way that you can see. (the Divine is always there; i hope today your eyes may be open to it.)