#and praising practice and exercises and imitation

[fictionadventurer]

Mary Oliver: Because people nowadays aren't exposed to much rhymed verse, they find metrical verse unnatural and are much more comfortable with free verse.

Me, whose earliest poetry experiences involved falling head-over-heels for rhyme and meter: I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

[narrans]

The Orion's Daughter : To Lands Beyond | Chapter Twelve : On The Horizon

**~~~~~**

Chapter Twelve | On The Horizon

**~~~~~**

“Positions seven, thirty-two, twenty-nine, forty-five, three, three, one, seventeen, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-four, one, nine, nine, change, sixteen, twenty-one, thirty-one, seventy-four, forty-seven, and eighty-three. Go!”

Steele was drilling me on all of the form combinations he could think of. It was a bit of a game, and it was something I enjoyed doing. The positions were numbered from one to one hundred thirty-six, and I needed to be able to maneuver and combine them as fast as possible without making mistakes.

It was a test of physical ability, mental awareness, and accuracy.

I loved it.

Sword in hand, I let my body fall into the motions of each and every position, performing them with the desired speed and accuracy of a knight or warrior from all of those stories I grew up reading.

I started with my blade in the appropriate position and stabbed it into the ground during certain maneuvers in imitation of striking down an enemy as I rolled and tumbled in the fields. I twisted and kicked, snagging my dagger from my ankle sheath and switching hands as I lashed out and punched with as much ferocity I could muster.

My voice rang out as I shouted from time to time in an attempt to sound intimidating. The wind picked up, making my flowing shirt billow and flare. My auburn hair flowed like flames of a fire off of my head. I charged forward and lunged, spinning on my heel and slashing out with my sword before tossing it into the air, rolling forward in a tumble, and catching the blade at the end as I stood and thrust once more.

Steele, watching me closely, made no movement as he watched me. I could see his keen, militaristic gaze on me. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he evaluated each and every movement I performed.

I had to be perfect.

There was no way I wasn’t spot on with every position!

I knew better than to open my mouth prematurely to protest, but there was some part of me that was getting antsy. Still, I held my stance in that lunge, sword outstretched and threatening to get heavier every moment.

Then, a contagious smile spread across Steele’s face. He raised his immense hands and, very lightly, began to clap, pride shining in his features. Only now did I know it was alright to break position, and so I did, exiting my exercise through the right poses and taking a deep breath. My heart was racing. Every part of me felt powerful and strong.

I did it!

Once my heart calmed, I charged forward toward Steele, my feet unable to carry me fast enough. Instinctually, he lowered his hand and let me slam into his open fingers. I wrapped my arms around his fingers as they closed around me. I was weightless as Steele lifted me into the air, propping his hand up on his leg as he sat with one leg crossed and the other propped up.

I spun around and faced him, seeing the flecks of violet in his eyes practically glowing with unspoken praise. As he spoke, he addressed me in his tongue, speaking in his native language.

“Terrilyn, you have done so well! Every movement was executed perfectly. Your stance and your energy matched our finest warriors. You would be welcomed in the Orion’s ranks as a true warrior for certain,” commended Steele. With that, the Orion leaned forward and tenderly pressed his forehead to mine.

It was a simple gesture, and it was one we had done a million times, but this time somehow felt different. This time, it felt like some kind of acknowledgement of equality. Was that some kind of test he just put me through? Some kind of warrior training test that only the Orion would be familiar with?

I wasn’t going to soil the mood with too many questions now. For the present, I was here with Steele enjoying the warmth of the sun and a job well done in my training.

When the moment ended, Steele glanced toward the ocean and then back to me, a youthful grin playing at his lips.

“Care for a victory swim?” he asked. I knew exactly what that meant, and I crouched on his palm, bracing myself for what was to come.

“Let’s go!” I shouted. With incredible speed, Steele spun from a sitting position to a standing one, giving my head a harsh, swirling sensation as he leaned forward and charged toward the water, running as fast as he could. For being older, he knew how to move quickly.

Steele’s strides shook the earth far below. I dared to lean forward and lean partially over the edge of his hand to watch the blur of bright greens and colorful flowers below. Step after step jostled my entire body, but I had practiced enough with Steele to know when to brace for each step.

The cliffs were just ahead. I felt him accelerate, and for good reason too. Steele needed to time this perfectly if he wanted to jump onto the beach and then leap into the water. His stride lengthened and then in three strides, two strides, and then one, he lowered his shoulders and cleared the edge of the cliff in a single bound.

He made one massive step on the beach, his stability wavering only for a moment, before he leapt out as far as he could. Steele’s hand clutched me to his chest, and I braced myself for the impact of the water.

The sound of Steele’s body impacting on the water was like that of an avalanche, the roar of the waves erupting out from under him as he created a whole new pattern of waves using only his torso. The water encased his fingers, and me with it, within seconds. Together, we sank down a short distance before Steele raised his hand up, breaking the surface of the water and letting me take a breath as he regained his footing and stood on the ocean bed.

I wiped the water away from my eyes and watched as Steele’s face and head emerged from the water, droplets the size of my head clinging to his hair. Playfully, he shook his hair free from the water, splattering me with a round of rain, before we both burst out in a round of chuckles and laughter. Sopping wet, I pushed myself up to my feet before glancing down over the edge of his hand and, taking a big breath, leapt into the water far below.

I plunged into the refreshing water and forced my eyes open to look into the blue abyss around me. The endless ocean extended far below to where I could barely make out Steele’s toes from where I was swimming. Maneuvering through the water, I cupped the water and kicked my legs up and down as I dove further down.

I loved being under the water. It was like I was being suspended in space, moving in three different ways instead of just two. Being completely weightless, I tried a couple of the maneuvers I did on land before I needed to come up for air.

Just as I came up for air, I saw Steele duck beneath the waves, making us eye-to-eye for a moment, before he snagged a handful of sand and followed me to the surface. The waves made it difficult, and my clothes were not helping, but I managed to make it over to the side and onto Steele’s hand where I sifted through the sand to find more shells and teeth.

We did the same thing for nearly an hour before we decided to go and dry ourselves in the afternoon sun’s light. Steele waded through the water, setting me down on the edge of the shale cliffs as he hoisted himself out of the water and onto the grassy ledge.

Happiness.

Fun.

Training.

Educating.

This is everything a life should be.

I laid backward into the grassy hill behind me, staring up at the flowers and, just for a moment, pretending that the flowers were immense, and I was small.

What a fascinating perspective.

I must have dozed off because the sun was much lower in the sky when I opened my eyes next. My momma’s voice calling for Steele and I is what caught my attention. I was about to call back when I heard some twinge of something in her voice. Worry? Concern?

Like being jolted awake by a sudden splash of cold water, I was upright and on my feet, hand on my sword, in an instant. Steele evidently heard the same thing in my momma’s voice too because he was also upright and had turned her attention toward our home.

She was running quickly from our home, her red hair bouncing and flying behind her, giving her an odd ethereal look about her as she ran.

“Mom! We’re here! What is it?” I called, looking down the road and across the fields for anything that might be the reason for her alarm. When she finally made it up to me, I glanced over her in a frenzy. She wasn’t injured. There were no bruises on her face or her body. Her clothes weren’t torn.

What happened?

“Mom?” I asked, catching her light, bark brown eyes with my own. “Take a breath and calm down. What happened?” I felt a calm settling over my body as I prepared for the worst. In reply, momma handed me a spyglass she had bartered for the last time the gypsies came to town. She pushed it into my hands and pointed to the horizon.

Confusion settled over me, but I obeyed her silent command and turned the spyglass to the horizon. I traced back and forth methodically, trying to spot what my momma had spotted. Was she looking for us and see something from home? I swept over the horizon again, much slower this time.

That’s when I saw it.

Sails.

Massive, beautiful, impossibly white sails.

I pulled the spyglass from my eye and glanced back to my momma, but noticed Steele’s reaction first.

His entire body was completely rigid. An odd tenseness settled over him, and there was an anxious energy radiating from his body.

Why was Steele nervous?

“Steele? What is it? What do you see?” I asked as I held the spyglass to my eye once again. I looked to the mast of the ship to see a crest on a white flag. It looked like four odd red crosses against a bright gold background, three on top and one beneath, while the bottom third was a smattering of white and blue triangles. I looked back to Steele, whose eyes had not shifted from the ship in the distance. Even at his age, he could still see and detect so much at such a great distance.

“Steele? Do you know what that means?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Steele, his voice low in a borderline growl. “That is the crest of Iothea – my people – and I suspect I know why they’re here.”

Iothea? Steele’s homeland?

So… that meant…

I looked back to the ship, jaw slackening ever so slightly as the realizations hit me.

That ship was from the Orion – was filled with Orion.

But why were they here?

Steele said he suspected why, but now I felt curious.

Why wasn’t he saying why he thought they were there? I looked at the ship through the spyglass and realized that we would find out soon enough. The sails were furling, meaning whoever was on that ship was coming ashore.

~~~~~^*^*^*^*^~~~~~

Continue

Previous

Beginning

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Book One: The Orion’s Factotum

[phonologix-1]

The Benefits of Early Speech Therapy for Children

Early childhood is a critical period for language and communication development. Speech therapy, when introduced early, can make a transformative difference in a child’s ability to communicate effectively, interact socially, and excel academically.

In this blog, we’ll explore the key benefits of early speech therapy, why it matters, and how it supports a child’s overall development.

Why Early Speech Therapy Matters

The early years of life, particularly from birth to age 5, are marked by rapid brain development. This period is ideal for learning new skills, including speech and language. Early intervention during this time helps children overcome developmental delays, ensuring they don’t fall behind their peers.

Children with speech or language difficulties who receive therapy early are more likely to achieve better long-term outcomes in communication and socialization.

Signs Your Child May Need Speech Therapy

Early intervention is most effective when parents and caregivers recognize the signs of speech or language delays. These signs may include:

Difficulty pronouncing words or forming sentences.

Limited vocabulary for their age.

Trouble understanding or following directions.

Lack of gestures like pointing or waving by 12 months.

Difficulty interacting with peers or adults.

If you notice these signs, consulting a speech-language pathologist (SLP) can provide clarity and guidance.

Key Benefits of Early Speech Therapy

1. Boosts Communication Skills

Early speech therapy focuses on developing essential communication skills, both verbal and nonverbal. Therapists help children articulate words, build vocabulary, and improve sentence structure. For nonverbal children, alternative communication methods such as sign language or AAC devices are introduced.

2. Improves Social Interaction

Speech therapy fosters social communication, enabling children to connect with peers and family members. By teaching skills like turn-taking, eye contact, and active listening, therapy helps children build meaningful relationships.

3. Enhances Academic Readiness

Language and communication are foundational for learning. Early speech therapy equips children with the skills needed to understand instructions, engage in classroom discussions, and express their ideas effectively, setting them up for success in school.

4. Reduces Frustration and Behavioral Issues

Children with speech or language delays often experience frustration due to their inability to communicate needs or emotions. Therapy helps them express themselves more clearly, reducing tantrums and improving emotional regulation.

5. Encourages Confidence and Independence

As children make progress in therapy, their confidence grows. They become more willing to interact with others, try new activities, and explore their environment independently.

6. Promotes Long-Term Success

The skills learned in early speech therapy provide a strong foundation for future communication and social interactions. Addressing issues early minimizes the risk of persistent challenges later in life.

What Happens During Speech Therapy?

Speech therapy sessions are tailored to each child’s unique needs and developmental level. Common techniques include:

Play-Based Learning: Using games and toys to engage children and encourage speech.

Modeling and Repetition: Demonstrating correct speech patterns for the child to imitate.

Articulation Exercises: Practicing sounds and words to improve clarity.

Language Activities: Building vocabulary through storytelling, singing, or picture cards.

The Role of Parents in Early Speech Therapy

Parents and caregivers play a vital role in supporting speech therapy. Therapists often provide strategies for reinforcing skills at home, such as:

Reading together daily.

Encouraging conversations during routines like mealtime or playtime.

Praising efforts to communicate, even if imperfect.

Active parental involvement amplifies the impact of therapy and ensures consistent progress.

When to Start Speech Therapy

Early speech therapy is most effective when introduced as soon as a delay or difficulty is identified. While some children may naturally catch up, waiting too long can delay critical intervention. Trust your instincts as a parent—if you’re concerned, consult a speech-language pathologist for an evaluation.

Conclusion

Early speech therapy is a powerful tool for helping children overcome communication challenges and achieve their full potential. By addressing issues early, parents can provide their children with the skills and confidence they need to thrive socially, academically, and emotionally.

If you’re concerned about your child’s speech development, don’t hesitate to seek professional guidance. Early action can make all the difference in shaping your child’s future.

Would you like tips on choosing a speech therapist or activities to try at home? Let me know!

[niveshkakkar]

Oral Hygiene Tips for Children: Making Brushing Fun

Oral Hygiene Tips for Children: Making Brushing Fun

Encouraging children to practice proper oral hygiene in a pleasant and engaging way is essential to their long-term dental health. Our Dental Clinic in Ashok Vihar, New Delhi, clinic of Dr. Nivesh Kakkar recognize the value of forming good habits early in life. Here are some useful suggestions for encouraging kids to brush while also making sure they practice good oral hygiene.

1. Start Early and Make It a Routine

Start Your Child's Dental Care Early: It is imperative that you begin taking care of your child's teeth even before they erupt. After feedings, gently wipe their gums with a clean, damp washcloth to eliminate bacteria and create a hygiene regimen.

Create a Brushing Schedule: As soon as your child's first tooth appears, give them a soft-bristled toothbrush. Include brushing in their regular schedule, ideally twice a day, preferably in the morning and before bed. Being consistent will teach kids that brushing is an essential part of their day and not something they can skip.

2. Make Brushing Fun with Interactive Tools

Select Fun Toothbrushes: Allow your child to select a toothbrush with vivid colors or their favorite cartoon character. Having an aesthetically pleasing toothbrush can increase their enthusiasm for brushing.

Use Flavorful Toothpaste: Let your kids select flavors of toothpaste that they like, like strawberry or bubblegum. This can improve the encounter and motivate them to brush more frequently.

Incorporate Technology: To achieve the suggested two-minute brushing time, use applications or timers that play music or enjoyable sounds. Many apps are made with children in mind and may make simple tasks like brushing into engaging games.

3. Create a Positive Environment

Brush Together: Kids frequently imitate adult actions. To provide a positive example for your youngster, brush your teeth together. This becomes a bonding exercise as well as a way to set an example.

Use Praise and Rewards: After every brushing session, give your youngster a pat on the back for their hard work. Think about setting up a system of rewards whereby they receive stickers or small gifts for consistently brushing without making a mess.

4. Engage with Educational Content

Read novels and Watch Videos: Dental hygiene is the subject of many children's novels and animated films. These materials provide a fun approach to teach kids the value of brushing.

Storytelling: Make up tales centered on their favorite characters, who routinely wash their teeth to ward against cavities and foul breath. For them, this creative approach might help make the idea of dental hygiene more enjoyable and relatable.

5. Use Games to Reinforce Learning

Brushing Games: Make brushing into a game by timing it or setting up obstacles, such seeing who can use toothpaste to create the biggest bubbles or who can brush all of their teeth without missing any.

Dental Hygiene Chart: Make a vibrant chart that your child may use to tick off each time they clean their teeth properly. This visual aid may encourage students to stick to their schedule.

6. Teach Proper Techniques

Show Your Child How to Brush Properly: Teach your child how to brush their teeth properly by using gentle circular motions and making sure they cover the front, rear, and chewing surfaces of each tooth.

Introduce Flossing Early: Make flossing a regular part of your child's routine as soon as they have teeth that touch. Make it less daunting by using flossers made for children, which are easier to grasp.

7. Monitor Diet and Snack Choices

Healthy Eating Practices: Teach your kids the value of eating meals and snacks that are good for their teeth. Promote foods that are crunchy, such as carrots and apples, as these can naturally clean teeth.

Limit Sugary Treats: Moderation is key, even though it's acceptable to occasionally indulge in sweets. Describe how eating sugary meals can cause cavities and stress the importance of brushing afterward.

8. Regular Dental Visits

Plan Frequent Checkups: Instill a normal sense of dental health in your children from a young age. The dentist can monitor dental health and identify any potential problems early with routine exams.

Make Your Visit to the Dentist Pleasant: Simplify the explanation of what will happen during dental visits to help your youngster feel more at ease. Speak positively and underline that the dentist's role is to assist them maintain the health of their teeth.

9. Address Dental Anxiety

Reduce Fear of the Dentist: Fear of pain or a lack of familiarity with the surroundings might make some kids uneasy about going to the dentist. Try taking them to the clinic in advance to meet the personnel and view the equipment in a non-threatening manner to help ease their fear.

10. Celebrate Milestones

Celebrate Dental Achievements: Give little prizes or special outings to commemorate achievements like losing their first tooth or finishing a month of consistent brushing.

You can turn dental hygiene into a fun activity for your child instead of a chore by implementing these techniques into their daily routine. At the Ashok Vihar office of Dr. Nivesh Kakkar, we think that early dental education establishes good oral hygiene practices that last a lifetime.

Encouraging youngsters to take charge of their dental care while making it enjoyable can not only enhance their dental health right away but also create lifelong habits. Keep in mind that every small effort helps to create a happier smile!

[parentingbyanshu1]

Getting Through Parenthood: Crucial Advice for Good Parenting

Introduction:

Being a parent is an arduous, rewarding, and never-ending learning experience. Although there isn't a single, comprehensive manual for raising kids, there are methods and pointers that can make parents' difficult but gratifying jobs easier. In this post, we'll look at some priceless parenting advice that may support the growth of children, promote positive connections, and keep things in balance in the middle of a hectic family life.

Prioritize Communication:

A solid parent-child connection is built on open and honest communication. Make sure your kids know they can talk to you about anything, and encourage them to share their ideas, emotions, and worries. In the same vein, be open and honest with them, laying out your expectations and boundaries and paying attention to what they have to say.

Use Positive Reinforcement:

Your child's self-esteem can be developed and positive behavior can be reinforced by giving them praise and encouragement. When they err, instead of concentrating only on berating or punishing them, highlight their accomplishments and efforts. This inspires kids to continue in the face of difficulties and cultivates a growth mindset.

Set an Example:

Youngsters are perceptive observers who frequently imitate their parents' actions. It is therefore crucial that you set an example for the morals and conduct you want children to inherit. Kindness, empathy, resilience, and healthy habits are just a few examples of the qualities you may model for your child. Your behavior speaks louder than words.

Encourage Independence:

Encouraging your children to become self-sufficient is just as vital as providing for their protection and guidance, even if it's normal to desire to do so. Promote age-appropriate independence, judgment, and problem-solving abilities. As they go, provide them with support and direction so they can grow from their experiences and mistakes.

Establish Routine and Structure:

Children do best in situations that are predictable and consistent. Creating daily schedules for tasks like eating, going to bed, and doing schoolwork contributes to a feeling of security and consistency. Furthermore, establishing boundaries and clear expectations gives kids structure and helps them grasp what's expected of them. 

Exercise Self-Care: 

Being a parent can be difficult and draining, but it's important to put your health first. Schedule self-care activities that help you refuel, such as exercising, engaging in hobbies, or just taking a moment to unwind. Keep in mind that you can better care for your children if you take care of yourself.

Accept Flexibility: 

Being adaptable and flexible is just as vital as adhering to routines and structures. Because life is unpredictable, plans won't always work out. Accept impromptu, modify your plans as needed, and be prepared to go with the flow. Being flexible promotes resilience in both you and your kids and helps lower stress.

Conclusion:

Although parenting is a trip with many ups and downs, you may handle its difficulties with more self-assurance and efficiency if you put these suggestions into practice. Recall that there isn't a parenting style that works for everyone, and it's acceptable to ask for help and advice when you need it. In the end, the love, attention, and work you provide your kids will create the foundation for their development and happiness.

For more info:-

parenting tips

family relationships

[rocorambles]

Two Wrongs Equal a Right

Pairing: Bakugo x Reader

Prompt: Eavesdropping

Summary: Eavesdropping isn’t right, but maybe...just maybe sometimes the end justifies the means

A/N: This is for the Anylisum’s SFW collab. Masterlist can be found here. Enjoy!

You giggle, laying your head on Tsu’s shoulder as you catch your breath from the impromptu dance party happening in the dorm room led by no other than Mina. You love the boys, but this is nice, hanging out with just the girls, chatting about fashion and makeup, doing face masks and braiding hair, pretending you’re just normal high school girls and not heroes in training. The boys had sulked, pouting and complaining about why all of you couldn’t hang out together like you always do. But all of you had just smiled and cheekily waved as you locked the dorm room shut behind you.

They’ll be fine. You’re sure they’ll find something to bond over themselves and you laugh at the thought of them doing some impromptu sparring or shouting at each other over a video game.

Yes, they’ll be just fine doing something normal high school boys do. Definitely not quietly crowding around the other side of the dorm door, trying to eavesdrop on what all of you are saying and doing like they’re doing right now.

The boys of class 1-A aren’t nearly as subtle as they think they are accidentally banging foreheads and elbowing each other to try and press their ears against the vertical surface. But luckily for them the combination of the music and your voices drown out their scuffling and they eagerly listen in, curiosity keeping their attention rooted to the commotion on the other side of the barrier.

“That’s not fair. I want to dance too!”

“Shut up, Aoyama! They’re going to hear you.”

The hushed bickering continues as the boys continue to subtly bop their head to the music, trying to make out the snippets of conversation between the rhythmic beat and laughter. But they all freeze, even attempting to quiet down their breathing as the music finally stops.

Is the night over? Do they need to make a run for it before the door opens and they’re caught red handed?

Their questions are answered when after some scuffling and movement the girls resume talking and there’s a palpable sense of relief as the boys relax, leaning in once more to decipher what’s being said.

What girls night would be complete without boy talk? You all knew this topic was bound to come up in this safe all-female haven, but there’s still a tittering of nervous and shy giggles when Ashido brings up the topic with a mischievous grin plastered across her face.

It takes some prodding and some patience, but to no one’s surprise Uraraka is the first to speak up and you all smile knowingly when she begins to ramble on and on about Deku, how much she respects him, how observant he is, how hardworking he is…

“We get it. You like Deku! Seriously it would be shocking if you two didn’t eventually start dating.”

“Think about how cute that would be! A romantic hero couple fighting villains and saving the world together.”

Uraraka’s face is so red you think she might burst, but you hide a smile at the fact that there isn’t even a hint or sound of denial from her as she accepts the good-natured teasing. Unknown to all of you, Deku’s face matches Urarka’s extreme shade of red and the boys smile and nudge him playfully, waggling their eyebrows teasingly.

The light-hearted banter has broken the ice and Momo is the next one to open up, demurely looking at the ground and swiping a stray bang behind her ear as she quietly praises Todoroki for his amazing skills and how rapidly he’s learned and improved during his time at U.A. But what she isn’t expecting is the outpouring of support she herself receives from all the girls about how smart and resourceful she is and how quick on her feet she is. And Todoroki silently nods his head in affirmation of the deserved recognition she receives.

One by one everyone shares their thoughts on their male counterparts, but it’s Ashido who makes everyone burst into laughter once more when she practically screams her approval of Kaminari and Kirishima and how cool and manly they can be, imitating their signature moves as best as she can to everyone’s amusement.

However it doesn’t go unnoticed how Bakugo’s name isn’t brought up and it just seems right to bring him into the conversation if the other two musketeers are being discussed. There’s thoughtful pondering and the girls quiet down as they think of their blonde classmate.

“He’s smart and talented.”

“He’s pretty good looking.”

But there’s an almost unanimous vote that his temper is a little bit...scary. Almost.

The boys try their hardest to stifle their howls of laughter as Bakugo begins to deeply scowl, looking like he’s ready to storm away. But everyone shuts up, eyes going wide when your voice travels through the air.

“I actually think his attitude is kind of cute. He’s like an angry chihuahua. All bark, no bite.”

There’s silence as everyone on both sides of the door processes your words, even Bakugo looks uncharacteristically stunned. And then there’s chaos as the girls begin to loudly question your sanity and the boys hold back a raging Bakugo who’s seconds away from kicking down the door and confronting you.

Needless to say there is no more eavesdropping done that night as it takes the entire male population of 1-A to wrestle Bakugo away and safely back to his dorm room.

Cute? CUTE?

Bakugo can’t remember the last time anyone has called him that damned word, if anyone ever has. Not even his own mother has called him anything remotely as nauseatingly endearing as that recently. There’s nothing about him that’s cute. He’s not cute. He HATES anything cute. Yet as he’s barricaded in his room and forced to mull over your words in solitude, it’s not pure rage and indignation that fills him to his own surprise.

He’s not sure exactly what he’s feeling if he’s honest and that only pisses him off more. Anger is something he knows and holds close. But this...this strange, disgusting, fluttering feeling in his stomach? He doesn’t know what that is and he grumpily forces himself to sleep, to leave all these stupid thoughts and feelings behind him. Tomorrow will be just another day of class and you’ll just be another classmate he’s forced to tolerate as he focuses on becoming a hero.

Except tomorrow does come and you aren’t just another nobody like you were before.

Unlike before where he barely even noticed your presence and walked past you like you were nonexistent, too focused on perfecting his moves, he can’t stop being aware of you. He finds himself watching you without even meaning to, observing your movements, the use of your quirk…

“Kacchan, watch out!”

Turns out even when he’s entranced by you, Deku’s damn annoying voice is enough to drag him out of his funk and he narrowly misses the debris about to rain down on him.

“What’s up, Bakugo? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you distracted-”

“I’m not distracted!”

He is distracted and he can feel his short fuse nearing its limit with every uncharacteristic stumble and sloppy movement as he can’t tear his eyes from you. And when Aizawa-sensei awkwardly tells him to maybe consider sitting out a bit until his head is clear he loses it.

Under all the rage, common sense tells him this isn’t your fault, that he’s wrongly directing his ire at you. But Bakugo clings onto his temper, that fire inside of him that fuels most of his decisions as he storms towards you and shouts at you to spar with him.

He knows he’s being too hard on you, punching and kicking you harder than he even goes against Kirishima and his hardening quirk. And he even feels a pang of guilt when he sees you wince when his fist grazes you as you try to dodge. But you don’t tell him to stop, just looking at him with determined, focused eyes holding a shocking amount of trust that he won’t take it too far and actually harm you despite how his irritation is almost visible.

It’s the same look stupid Deku looks at him with, but he doesn’t feel that familiar buildup of anger rising inside of him. Instead he feels that same strange fluttering feeling deep inside of him and his heart is racing more than it should be for the amount he’s worked out today. It’s all so...confusing and to everyone’s shock, it’s Bakugo who abruptly ends your weird impromptu spar with a scoff, shoving his hands in his pocket as he saunters away, trademark scowl on his face.

That’s only the beginning of Bakugo’s strange behavior and everyone watches anxiously as the angry blonde borderline begins to bully you on a constant basis, practically hovering next to you from the moment you leave your dorm room to the minute you go to sleep at night, growling, shouting, and even just glaring at you. But no one steps in, curious about how things will play out when they see how unbothered you are by your new volatile shadow.

Bakugo doesn’t know what reaction he expected of you. Maybe a slight hint of fear? At least some respect? But he certainly wasn’t expecting how calmly you accept your new fate, how casually you interact with him.

He’s forced to silently blink in shock as his jaw rapidly works to chew the fried egg you’ve stuffed in his mouth when he angrily tells you to sit somewhere else, deciding he wants your seat despite the bounty of empty chairs surrounding the both of you in the cafeteria. (He ends up just grumpily sitting in the available spot next to you when he finally swallows, both of you quietly munching on your breakfast together.)

But although your exchanges start off fairly one-sided with Bakugo usually trying to incite some reaction from you, everyone watches in amusement when you begin to meet him halfway. The blonde is mouthing off at you about something or another during sparring exercises which has become a typical background noise to the class by now, but everyone, including Aizawa-sensei stops in their tracks when your voice interrupts Bakugo’s rant.

“Maybe you’d be able to perfect your new technique if you spent more time practicing and less time barking at me.”

There’s a playful smirk on your face as you utter those fighting words and Aizawa wonders if today is the day he’ll have to prevent Bakugo from committing a truly villainous event. But even his jaw drops when all Bakugo does is scoff at your statement, barking at you to follow him to both your preferred area of the training grounds to resume practicing together.

Both of you look almost...friendly, exchanging punches and kicks, no heat behind Bakugo’s snarky comments, a smile on your face when you give it to him right back verbally. The upperclassmen and the pro-hero faculty watch in amused fondness as overtime Bakugo’s glowering and barking lulls down to a muted calm grumpiness as he continues to trail beside you. He’s not too different than a tamed feral kitten (not that any of them would voice that thought aloud and risk being blasted to pieces).

And as time continues on, everyone gets used to the fact that the two of you seem joined at the hip. You’re just...always together in a strange amicable friendship? Partnership? Relationship? No one knows how to exactly describe it and maybe that’s what finally leads to you overhearing an interesting conversation one morning in the dorms.

You yawn as you make your way to the common room to see who else is up, but you pause before you turn the corner from your hallway when you hear Kirishima mention your name.

“So what’s going on between the two of you. Are you dating?”

You don’t even have to peek around the bend to know who he’s talking to and your face heats up, ears perking up in anxious curiosity as you wait for Bakugo’s response. Realistically, you know you shouldn’t expect much. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less when you wait for Bakugo to shut Kirishima’s well-meaning thought down with a rude “why would I go out with that nobody” or some similar derogatory comment aimed at the idea of dating you or anyone for that matter.

Yet there’s only silence and a secret smile spreads across your face when all Bakugo finally responds with is a quiet scoff and a “it’s none of your business”.

“That’s not a no!”

“Shut up!”

Your heart is pounding as hope blossoms inside of it and you slowly countdown from ten, taking deep breaths to calm yourself down, schooling your face into as neutral an expression as possible. When your excess giddy energy is under some semblance of control, you make your presence known, bidding good morning to both boys and teasingly ruffling Bakugo’s spiky hair in a more affectionate version of a noogie. And Kirishima is left with a gaping jaw as he watches Bakugo merely roll his eyes at your antics and grunt here and there in response to your rambling as the two of you make your way to the cafeteria for breakfast together.

[dwellordream]

“The essays of the moderate feminists, Priscilla Wakefield, Elizabeth Hamilton, Jane West, Clara Reeve and Maria Edgeworth, regressed in ways that were critical for Austen's fiction; she praised some of them and paraphrased them all. Astell and the 1790s radicals had hoped to be agents for systematic changes in law, theology, education, and social and economic practices affecting women. The moderates believed that women were mired in patriarchal systems incapable of change, and that therefore only heroic and piecemeal efforts on their own behalf could help them. The moderates tended to shift their targeted readers from both sexes to women alone. Both sets of feminists tried "to account for and excuse the tyranny of man," but the moderates did so with less confidence than the radicals. Between their essays and those of the radicals many male conduct-book writers had emerged, whose main function was to act as policemen to aspiring feminists. 

The prefaces to the moderates' essays were full of appeasing comments: they did not intend to step out of their province; they did not dispute men's superior strength nor the biblical strictures against women in authority; they did not intend to cause domestic and national upheavals; and so forth. But they vehemently disagreed with men who claimed that they would be departing from "the necessary duties" and the "proper manners, graces, and accomplishments of [their] sex," whenever they attempted to "arrange, abstract, pursue," or "diversify in a long train of ideas," since God had not granted them the brains for these achievements (Bennett, Female Education, 88, 7). And yet, to publish at all, they now felt they needed to adopt that rhetoric of "Meekness," conventionally considered sexually "alluring" and in any case, a "duty... incumbent upon all women" (Duff, Character of Women, 256). Just as alert readers have been aware of the muffled despair in Austen, the loyal Anglican churchwoman, which sometimes erupts in satire, so did religious loyalties frequently muffle the voices of the moderates, which sometimes erupt into acerbic irony.

Jane West imitated the male habit of associating women with animals by comparing men to predatory wolves, vultures, peacocks, jackasses, and braying donkeys, simultaneously playing the role of domestic emperor and spoiled baby. Austen's ridiculously self-important and self-indulgent suitors and husbands, her spoiled heirs, indifferent to their sisters' welfare, and her callous fathers of Mr. Bennet's stamp, who mocked his daughters while he enjoyed their miseries, emerge out of this school of feminine satire, no matter what else her own satire addresses. The moderates thought no more highly of marriage than their radical predecessors. Jane West offered the bleak advice that "in the married state, women should never expect too much, nor feel to keenly," and this fact "can never be too deeply impressed on the ardent mind of youth," particularly of that sex whose hearts were said to be most properly at the permanent service of the other sex. 

"'Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,' "and marriage is one long deferred hope: it is "John Bull's . . . prison house!" Throughout life, women "scarcely know the exercise of free will"; they cannot dispose "of their time or their fortunes," nor can they chose their "pleasures," their "friends," or even "the spot on earth where they would reside" (Letters to a Young Lady, III, 97, 130; II, 366, 372). Elizabeth Hamilton, a favorite with Austen, described the painful discipline required of wives: "All the decorums of life, all the graces which constitute the charm of polished manners, are the offspring of restraint imposed on inclination; not till they have acquired the force of habit, are they adopted by nature as her own. Before this can happen, how many painful sacrifices must be paid!" Austen's letters to her sister Cassandra are full of this same sad resignation, chastened by the corrective of her irony. 

But then, not only did every male conduct-book writer urge women never to give way to self-pity, but also he often coupled this advice with the information that women suffered nothing to induce self-pity, while a few pages later, he might insist that the suffering that God had inflicted on women unfitted them for equality with men. In any case, irony can perform the function of allowing its practitioner to accept God's will with as much equanimity as possible, even though Austen's fiction and her correspondence indicate that she thought God was suspiciously partial to his own sex. One evidence of the lost nerve from which the moderates understandably suffered after the worse excesses of the French Revolution and the discrediting of the radicals, was their difficulty in imagining that women would be permitted to form close and nourishing friendships. 

Astell and the radicals of the 1790s had offered imaginary glimpses of libraries, classrooms, and feminist colleagues talking back and forth to each other, thus exemplifying that "play of the mind" usually denied them. They all thought that women could remake themselves, enforce some respect from men, and thus ease their own sufferings. As Macaulay had remarked: the human creature "is as artificial a being" as a portrait "on the canvas of the painter," for it is the "distinguishing characteristic of our species .. . that we can make ourselves over again" (Letters on Education, 10). One of the greatest aids in remaking oneself was the friendship of other struggling women, according to feminist wisdom. But if we think back to Astell's radiant apotheosis to friendships between women, it is sad to encounter some characteristic obstacles to women's friendships described by several moderates. 

Clara Reeve's allegorical Lady A cannot resume a friendship with Reeve's equally allegorical governess, Frances Darnford, without the "permission" of Lady A's husband. Although Lord A "allows" them considerable frankness, their friendship is bound to be tainted by his previous attempts at seduction inflicted upon the vulnerable Mrs. Darnford. Priscilla Wakefield was particularly distressed over a social phenomenon familiar to students of group rebellions, which enforced additional isolation upon intelligent women. Those who struggle against oppression threaten members of their group who do not: "Of the few who have raised themselves to re-eminence by daring to stray beyond the accustomed path, the envy of their own sex, and the jealousy or contempt of the other, have too often been the attendants" (Present Condition of the Female Sex, 7). 

Even worse, among the disciplines that Elizabeth Hamilton catalogued as marital drawbacks was the necessity for women to temporize with women friends, even if the friendship had preceded the marriage. Jane West's anguished remarks about the discomfort that women's friendships often aroused in husbands, sadly repeat what the male conduct-book writers had merely announced as a fact: many men think of their wives' friendship with other women as a form of betrayal. "Friendship is not monarchical in its constitution, like love," but West said that "marriage is constantly the grave of female friendship." A woman's exertions to serve an old friend must be limited by the permission of her husband, and by what she owed to his interests and to those of her children. 

But despite the fact that a rich and trustworthy friendship with another woman is "an inestimable treasure, and we ought to feel its value," if husbands become jealous, "Should caprice . . . so cloud their judgments, I conceive that every humble entreaty, every temperate remonstrance which female eloquence can suggest should deprecate the privation; which, if hard necessity compels, female sensibility must with slow reluctance painfully endure" (Letters to a Young Lady, III, 83, 67, 72-73). Although the moderates lacked the vivid vision of a reconstructed world that illuminated even the accusatory rhetoric of the radicals, Wakefield and Reeve both drew up very precise plans for women's education and for methods to facilitate their entry into the world of work and their survival there. Yet as they both admitted, the double standard about women and work was as cruel as the double standard about women's sexuality. 

Men of the middle and upper classes, they said, all too often posed as women's protectors by imprisoning them at home, then leaving them penniless and uneducated, and then refusing them any entry into work upon which they could survive without penury or indignity. When a woman was faced with the choice of working or starving, through no fault of her own, why should "degradation .. . attend" her merely because "her good sense and resolution enable her to support herself," and why should she be "banished from . . . the company of which she had perhaps previously formed a distinguished ornament?" (Wakefield, Present Condition of the Female Sex, 72). Austen's semi-authorial voice, describing the anguished thoughts of Jane Fairfax, creates this same mournful scenario, including some of the same terminology. Jane's foster-sister had a dowry sufficient to purchase a husband, "while Jane had yet her bread to earn." 

Jane struggles with a profound depression brought on by her impending banishment from her lover and from "all the rational pleasures of an elegant society" and the "judicious mixture of home and amusement" in London. Jane and her foster-parents demonstrate "fortitude" and "good sense," but Jane's interior monologue describes her approaching "penance and mortification" as a "sacrifice" that entailed permanent exile "from all the pleasures of life of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope" (Ε, 164-165). Maria Edgeworth's analysis of marriage and of woman's condition was the most damning of all five moderate feminists. Her collection of satirical feminist essays, Letters for Literary Ladies, includes a scathing attack on current gender relations called "An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification." In this mock correspondence, Edgeworth's fictional female advisor describes marriage for women as a military "engagement" against that "enemy," the "husband." 

Throughout this wickedly satirical essay, "the enemy" is usually in immediate syntactical opposition with "your husband." The wife must train herself like an army officer, whose "choice of [her] weapon" should depend upon "those which [her] adversary cannot use." She must never "provoke the combined forces of the enemy to a regular engagement, but harass him with perpetual petty skirmishes." In this war, the conquered can never win, yet by creating an "incessant" military "tatoo," she may be able to manage a "defensive" survival ("Essay on Self-Justification," 7- 8, 20-25). Austen particularly admired Edgeworth, and it is pleasurable to speculate whether she found this satire useful in her own satirical models of marital warfare between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet or Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. Even the full title of Edgeworth's satire, "An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification," is a clear echo of Wollstonecraft's comment about contemporary relationships between the sexes: "defensive war" is "the only justifiable war.. . where virtue can shew its face."

Such a "just and glorious war" against a godless enemy "might again animate female bosoms." But even the impenitent Wollstonecraft felt she must assure her "gentle" readers of both sexes that although she had compared "a modern soldier with.. . a civilized woman," she was "not going to advise them to turn their distaff into a musket," but she did "sincerely wish to see the [male] bayonet concerted into a pruninghook" (Vindication, 145-146). These remarks do indeed deliver a warning that in the war of words, women now had the arsenal of secret self-education and even access to commercial presses. From Mary Astell onward, metaphors describing the nature and the history of the bellicose male express a pervasive feminine terror about marriage, about men's primitive rights over the minds and bodies of women, and their association of these rights with themselves as God's designated scourge and warrior. 

Even Austen's favorite, the moderate Elizabeth Hamilton, described how in the past, "Alters raised to the God of heaven were polluted by human blood," while "parents resigned their children to the murderous knife," assuming that they were thus winning the "favour of the deity." But such "cruelties could not fail to make the people cruel," since they "believed that God delighted in injustice." It is true that "wars and revolutions" appear throughout human history, where "one event seems to grow out of another as natural and unavoidable occurrences," and that they represent "Divine Providence." Yet their immediate earthly cause is the "ferocity in the human mind," by which Hamilton here meant the male military mind {Letters to the Daughter of a Nobleman, II, 5-7, 40). Radical and moderate feminists thought it small wonder that the average husband, taught neither to respect his wife nor to offer her those Christian attributes of courtesy or justice, should resemble a pillaging god of war, some Mars descending upon a weakened Troy, which his troops have infiltrated and then sacked. 

The moderate Wakefield's advice to women arises out of this pervasive feminine fear. Unlike men, she said, a woman must live, "not for herself only, but to contribute to the happiness of others." The purposes of this feminine appeasement quickly emerge: only by "bearing patiently" with her husband's irascible "tempter" and in learning "to soften his asperities," as though she were pleading for mercy from the emissaries of an advancing enemy, might she achieve the ambiguous blessing of peace in her time (Present Condition of the Female Sex, 36). Clara Reeve was as diffident and as full of the terminology that characterizes appeasement as Wakefield or Hamilton. Yet in her Plans of Education, which defined a rigorous education for women of the gentry classes, she places her imaginary governess, Mrs. Darnford, in an ugly adversarial position with Lord A. His attempt to seduce a penniless upper servant was merely another aspect of the war upon women that was engaging the moral condemnations of all feminists. 

Lord A 's. son was at Eton, and readers would assume that his own education had been comparable. But one of the feminists' most frequent accusations, which have their oblique counterpart in the fiction of Burney, Edgeworth, and Austen, was that boys' education at the universities and at the great public schools lacked as much in ethical and moral training as women's lacked in intellectual. Since Lord A felt free to attack a defenseless woman, his own education had clearly been deficient not only in Christian concern for those stripped of power but it had also lacked that sportsmanship upon which Englishmen pride themselves. In their war against oppressive conditions, the moderate feminists were as fully skilled as the radicals in adopting the weapons of classical logic, such as arguments about cause and effect, first principles and premises, and ends and means. 

But of these five moderates, only Edgeworth's series of essays in Letters for Literary Ladies fully spells out the rhetorical process necessary for women's defense. In her "Letters of Julia and Caroline," the war of "the woman question" has been declared between two women, each thinking about what women owe men, or what, if anything, they owe themselves. And just as Austen's Elinor Dashwood argues vehemently with her sister to try to protect Marianne against Willoughby's insidious attacks, and just as Elizabeth Bennet tries to arm her naïve sister Jane against the male tendency to enter a town, capture female hearts, and escape for further conquests elsewhere, so does Edgeworth's Caroline argue with Julia in her attempts to save this pathetically craven young woman from the wretched marriage she is planning with an arrogant young nobleman. Caroline begs Julia to see how inconsistent she is when she assumes that the "art" of pleasing men is not only "instinct," or "nature," born of women's finer sensibilities, but that "the sole object of a woman's life" should be "to please."”

- Alison G. Sulloway, “Four “Unsex’d Females,” Five Moderately Sexed, and Two Women Novelists with “the Greatest Powers of the Mind” in Jane Austen and the Province of Womanhood

[pamphletstoinspire]

Feast of the Holy Family – Sunday after Epiphany - Latin Calendar

Little Litany of the Holy Family

Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Hear us. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Help our family.

That we may love poverty, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love humility, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love labor, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love order, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love quiet, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love kindness, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love charity, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love courtesy, Holy Family, hear us. That we may love peace, Holy Family, hear us.

O Lord God Who on earth loved poverty and humility, teach us to live in our families in peace and quiet order and with charity to all. Amen. 

by Abbot Gueranger

This Sunday has been chosen by the Church for the celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family; the liturgy of the day, as expressed in the Gospel, harmonizes well with the mystery of this Feast, for it carries us forward to the childhood of our Emmanuel and gives us those wonderful words of His Blessed Mother, we must ever ponder within our hearts: “And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.”

The Feast of the Holy Family is of recent origin. In 1663 Barbara d’Hillehoust founded at Montreal the Association of the Holy Family; this devotion soon spread and in 1893 Pope Leo XIII expressed his approval of a Feast under this title and himself composed part of the Office. The Feast was welcomed by succeeding Pontiffs as an efficacious means for bringing home to the Christian people the example of the Holy Family at Nazareth, and by the restoration of the true spirit of family life, stemming, in some measure, the evils of modern society. These motives led Pope Benedict XV to insert the Feast into the Universal Calendar, and from 1921 it has been fixed for this present Sunday.

The Lessons for the Second Nocturn of Matins are taken from the Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII, Neminem Fugit, of June 14, 1892:

When a merciful God determined to complete the work of human reparation which the world had awaited throughout long ages, He so established and designed the whole, that from its very inception, it would show to the world the sublime pattern of a divinely constituted family. In this all men should see the perfect example of domestic unity, and of all virtue and holiness. Such was the Holy Family of Nazareth, in which before He had shone forth in full light to all nations, the Sun of Justice, Christ Our Lord and Savior, led a hidden life with the Virgin Mary for Mother and most Holy Joseph for foster-father. There is no doubt that all those virtues of ordinary home life, those acts of mutual love, holy behavior and pious practices shone forth in the highest degree in this Holy Family, destined to be a model for all others. Accordingly, the benign dispositions of Providence fashioned that Family so that every individual Christian, whatever his condition or station, by turning his attention to it, could find in it easily, reason and incentive for the exercise of every virtue.

Fathers of families, for example, have in St. Joseph a shining pattern for watchfulness and foresight. Mothers have in the most Holy Virgin Mother of God an extraordinary model of love, of modesty, of submissiveness of mind, and of perfect faith. Children of the family have in Jesus, Who was subject to Joseph and Mary, a divine example of obedience to admire, cultivate and imitate. Those nobly born may learn from a Family of royal blood how to restrain themselves in good fortune, and to retain their dignity in ill. The rich may learn from this family how much less estimable are riches than virtue. If working men and all those sorely harassed by family distresses and meager circumstances would but look to the most holy members of this domestic society, they would find there reason to rejoice rather than to grieve at their lot. In common with the Holy Family they have to work, they have to provide for the daily needs of life. St. Joseph had to work at his trade to earn a living; even the divine hands toiled at the artisan’s profession. Surely then we need not wonder that wise men who were rich, cast their wealth aside willingly, and chose poverty in company with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

For all these reasons, therefore, it was right and proper that devotion to the Holy Family should have been introduced among Catholics and once begun should have grown from day to day. Proof of this lies first in the sodalities instituted under the invocation of the Holy Family; then in the unique honors bestowed upon it; and above all, by the privileges and favors granted to this devotion by Our predecessors to stimulate fervor and piety in its regard. This devotion was held in great honor, even in the seventeenth century. Having been widely propagated through Italy, France and Belgium, it spread through practically the whole of Europe. Passing over the vast tract of the Atlantic Ocean, it was extended in America, throughout Canada, where under favorable circumstances, it flourished. Nothing truly can be more salutary or efficacious for Christian families to meditate upon than the example of the Holy Family, which embraces the perfection and completeness of all domestic virtues. When Jesus, Mary and Joseph are invoked in the home, there They foster charity, there They exert a good influence over conduct, set an example of virtue, and make more bearable the hardships of every life. — To increase devotion to the Holy Family, Pope Leo XIII prescribed that Christian families should be dedicated to It. Pope Benedict XV extended the Mass and Office to the whole Church.

In the Third Nocturn, St. Bernard comments on the Gospel of the day (given below):

“And He was subject to them.” Who? To whom? God to man! God, I say, to Whom the Angels are subject, Whom Principalities and Powers obey, He, indeed, was subject to Mary. Nor to Mary only, but to Joseph because of Mary. Marvel, therefore, at both, and choose whether you will most wonder at the benign condescension of the Son, or the exceedingly great dignity of the Mother. Both are amazing; both miraculous. That God should obey a woman is humility without parallel. That a woman should rule God is sublimity without equal. In praise of virgins, it is sung, that they follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes. But what praise can set forth Her dignity, Who leads Him.

Learn, O man, to obey. Learn, O earth, to be subject. Learn, O dust, to submit. The Evangelist, in speaking of thy Maker says, and He was subject to them. Without any doubt he was subject to Mary and Joseph. Be ashamed, O proud ashes. God humbles Himself, and you—do you exalt yourself? God subjected Himself to men, and do you, longing to dominate men, place yourself above your Creator? Should I, at any time, think such a thing, would that God would deign to answer me as He answered in rebuking His Apostle: “Get behind Me, satan… for thou dost not mind the things of God, but those of men.” (Matt. 16: 23) As often as I desire pre-eminence over men, so often do I strive to go before God. Truly then I savor not the things that are of God. For of Him it was said, and He was subject to them. If, man, you disdain to imitate the example of men, surely it will not be an indignity to you to follow that of your Creator. If, perchance, you cannot follow Him whithersoever He goes, deign at least to follow Him when He humbles Himself for you.

If you are not able to walk along the sublime path of virginity, at least follow God by the very safe way of humility. Should anyone depart from this straight way—even though he be a virgin—he does not, the truth must be told, follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes. The one is not able to ascend to the spotlessness of the Lamb Who is without spot, nor does the other deign to descend to the meekness of the Lamb Who remained dumb, not before His shearers only, but before His murderers. Yet the sinner following in humility chooses a more salutary way than the proud man who follows in virginity, inasmuch as the humble satisfaction cleanses the uncleanness of the first, whereas pride defiles the chastity of the other.

In the Holy Sacrifice, the Introit recalls the joy that must have filled the cave of Bethlehem on that Christmas night; let us again rejoice with Mary and Joseph and sing the praises of the resting-place of the Lord of Hosts:

(Prov. 23) The father of the Just rejoices greatly; let Thy father and Thy mother be joyful, and let her rejoice that bore Thee. (Ps. 83) How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts: my soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord. V. Glory be to the Father…

The Church prays in the Collect that the home life of every Christian family may be sanctified and perfected by the example of that of the Holy Family; this is Her unceasing wish for Her children:

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who by subjecting Thyself to Mary and Joseph didst consecrate family life with wonderful virtues: grant that, by Their joint assistance, we may fashion our lives after the example of Thy Holy Family, and obtain everlasting fellowship with It. Who livest and reignest…

After the Commemorations of the Sunday and of the Octave, there follows a Lesson from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Collosians:

Brethren: Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience. Bear with one another and forgive one another, if anyone has grievance against any other; even as the Lord has forgiven you, so also do you forgive. But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection. And may the peace of Christ reign in your hearts; unto that peace, indeed, you were called in one body. Show yourselves thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly: in all wisdom teach and admonish one another by psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing in your hearts to God by His grace. Whatever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (c. 3)

If we would attain to charity, the bond of perfection which unites all Christians together in the one great family of God, we must pay heed to those virtues which the Epistle puts before us. We must be full of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty and patience; we must bear with one another and forgive one another, after the example of the Incarnate Word. Then the peace of Christ will dwell not only in our hearts, but in those around us, and our homes will truly become like that of Nazareth, where Jesus, Mary and Joseph were ever singing in Their hearts to God by His grace.

In the Gradual Holy Church again celebrates the praises of the House of the Lord; She proclaims the blessedness of those that obtain lasting fellowship in the heavenly home above; yet in the Alleluia verse She recalls the lowliness of the earthly home of our Emmanuel, which made Him truly a hidden King:

(Ps. 26) One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. V. (Ps. 83) Blessed are they who dwell in Thy house, O Lord; they shall praise Thee forever and ever. Alleluia, alleluia. V. (Isa. 45) Verily Thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior. Alleluia.

The Gospel is taken from the Second Chapter of St. Luke:

When Jesus was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. And after they had fulfilled the days, when they were returning, the Boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem, and His parents did not know it. But thinking that He was in the caravan, they had come a day’s journey before it occurred to them to look for Him among their relatives and acquaintances. And not finding Him, they returned to Jerusalem in search of Him. And it came to pass after three days, that they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who were listening to Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. And when they saw Him, they were astonished. And His Mother said to Him, “Son, why hast Thou done so to us? Behold, Thy father and I have been seeking Thee sorrowing.” And He said to them, “How is it that you sought Me? Did you not know I must be about My Father’s business?” And they did not understand the word that He spoke to them. And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them; and His Mother kept all these things carefully in Her Heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men.

Thus, O Jesus, didst Thou come down from Heaven to teach us. The tender age of Childhood, which Thou didst take upon Thyself, is no hindrance to the ardor of Thy desire that we should know the one and only God, Who made all things, and Thee, His Son, Whom He sent to us. When laid in the Crib, Thou didst instruct the Shepherds by a mere look; when swathed in Thy humble swaddling-clothes, and subjected to the voluntary silence Thou hadst imposed on Thyself, Thou didst reveal to the Magi the light they sought in following the star. When twelve years old, Thou didst explain to the Doctors of Israel the Scriptures which bear testimony to Thee. Thou gradually didst dispel the shadows of the Law by Thy presence and Thy words. In order to fulfill the commands of Thy Heavenly Father, Thou dost not hesitate to occasion sorrow to the Heart of Thy Mother, by thus going in quest of souls that need enlightening. Thy love of man will pierce that tender Heart of Mary with a still sharper sword, when She shall behold Thee hanging on the Cross, and expiring in the midst of cruelest pain. Blessed be Thou, sweet Jesus, in these first Mysteries of Thine Infancy, wherein Thou already showest Thyself devoted to us, and leavest the company of Thy Blessed Mother for that of sinful men, who will one day conspire Thy Death. 

Prayer for a Catholic Family

God of goodness and mercy, we commend to thy all-powerful protection our home, our family and all that we possess. Bless us all as thou didst bless the holy family of Nazareth.

O Jesus, our most holy Redeemer, by the love with which thou didst become man in order to save us, by the mercy through which thou didst die for us upon the cross, we entreat thee to bless our home, our family, our household. Preserve us from all evil and from the snares of men; preserve us from lightning and hail and fire, from flood and from the rage of the elements; preserve us from thy wrath, from all hatred and from the evil intentions of our enemies, from plague, famine and war. Let no one of us die without the Holy Sacraments. Bless us, that we may always openly confess our faith which is to sanctify us, that we may never falter in our hope, even amid pain and affliction, that we may ever grow in love for Thee and in charity toward our neighbor.

O Jesus, bless us, protect us.

O Mary, Mother of grace and mercy, bless us, protect us against the evil spirit; lead us by the hand through this vale of tears; reconcile us with thy divine Son; commend us to Him, that we may be made worthy of his promises.

Saint Joseph, reputed father of our Saviour, guardian of his most holy Mother, head of the holy family, intercede for us, bless and protect our home always.

Saint Michael, defend us against all the wicked wiles of hell.

Saint Gabriel, obtain for us that we may understand the holy will of God.

Saint Raphael, preserve us from ill health and all danger to life.

Holy Guardian Angels, keep us day and night in the way to salvation.

Holy Patrons, pray for us before the throne of God.

Bless this house, Thou, God our Father, who didst create us; Thou, divine Son, who didst suffer for us on the cross; Thou, Holy Spirit, who didst sanctify us in baptism. May God, in his three Divine Persons, preserve our body, purify our soul, direct our heart, and lead us to life everlasting.

Glory be to the Father, glory be to the Son, glory be to the Holy Ghost. Amen.

(Indulgence 200 days Leo XIII)  

[anastpaul]

Saint of the Day – 29 April – St Peter of Verona OP (1205–1252) also known as St Peter Martyr – Dominican Priest and Friar, a celebrated Preacher, miracle-worker, Marian devotee.   He served as Inquisitor in Lombardy, was killed by an assassin and was Canonised 11 months after his death, making his the fastest Canonisation in history. Patronages – inquisitors, midwives, Castelleone di Suasa, Italy, Verona, Italy, diocese of, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. St Peter is the the first Canonised martyr of the Dominican Order.

In the English-speaking part of the world especially, all too little is known about this illustrious Friar Preacher.   Possibly this is in part due to the well-known bias in England against the old-time inquisition, which spread thence into the colonies founded by that country, for Saint Peter was closely connected with that institution.   Indeed, by not a few he is considered as a man without a heart.   Yet he was most compassionate.   His character was rounded out by an admirable strength of will and a mind so judiciously balanced that he neither shrank from duty, whatever the sacrifice, or even danger, it involved, nor allowed his heart to control his judgement.

Father Thomas Agni of Leontino, another noted Dominican, archbishop of Cosenza and later patriarch of Jerusalem, was the first to write a life of the blessed martyr.   His testimony should he all the more reliable because he lived for many years with Saint Peter of Verona, had been his superior and was an eye-witness of the principal events in his life.   The work shows no signs of undue predilection.   Agni’s original manuscript was for long years at Saint Mark’s Convent, Florence. Another, with some additions by Father Ambrose Taegio, was preserved in the Convent of Nostra Donna delle Grazie, Milan.

Peter was born in Verona, Italy in 1205, of parents who had embraced the heresy of Cartharism but he did attend a Catholic school.   He was educated at the University of Bologna and was accepted into the Dominican Order by Dominic himself. 

Because the Dominicans were theologically trained preachers, the popes entrusted the Inquisition to them.   In 1234, Pope Innocent IV recognised Peter’s virtues (severity of life and doctrine, talent for preaching, and zeal for the orthodox Catholic faith) and appointed him Inquisitor in Lombardy.   He spent about six months in that office and it is unclear whether he was ever involved in any trials.   His one recorded act was a declaration of clemency for those confessing heresy or sympathy to heresy.   In 1251 his jurisdiction was extended to most of northern Italy. Although he attracted huge crowds with his preaching, as an inquisitor he also made enemies.

Marvellously filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, he laboured continually for the propagation and defence of the true faith, being zealous for its promotion among the people.   To this end he established the Association of the Faith and the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.   He was a fervent of promoter of community and fraternal life and served the brethren wisely as a prior.   He was also greatly solicitous for the spiritual good of the sisters, lovingly assisting them with his advice and exhortations to their spiritual benefit.

In his sermons he denounced heresy and also those Catholics who professed the Faith by words but acted contrary to it in deeds.   Crowds came to meet him and followed him, conversions were numerous, including many Cathars who returned to orthodoxy.

Because of this, a group of Milanese Cathars conspired to kill him.   They hired an assassin, one Carino of Balsamo.   Carino’s accomplice was Manfredo Clitoro of Giussano. On 6 April 1252, when Peter was returning from Como to Milan, the two assassins followed Peter to a lonely spot near Barlassina and there killed him and mortally wounded his companion, a fellow friar named Domenico.

Carino struck Peter’s head with an axe and then attacked Domenico.   Peter rose to his knees and recited the first article of the Symbol of the Apostles (the Apostle’s Creed). Offering his blood as a sacrifice to God, according to legend, he dipped his fingers in it and wrote on the ground: “Credo in Deum” “I believe in God”, the first words of the Apostles’ Creed.   The blow that killed him cut off the top of his head but the testimony given at the inquest into his death confirms that he began reciting the Creed when he was attacked.   Domenico was carried to Meda, where he died five days afterwards.

The murderer Carino, renounced heresy, became a Dominican co-operator brother and died with a reputation for sanctity.  He is the subject of a local cult as Blessed Carino of Balsamo.

Wherever he went, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the lame and people sick with every kind of ailment were brought to him.   Ordinarily all were benefited by his prayers.  They praised God for the power of healing which He had given His servant.

Peter of Verona and with reason, was considered a learned doctor.   Yet he ever continued to store his mind with new knowledge, whether through prayer, meditation, or reading the Sacred Writings.   The example which he set his religious brethren showed them by what means they could perfect themselves in their state of life and make themselves useful to the Church.   Never did his degree of Master in Sacred Theology cause him to neglect study.   Study never prevented him from being the first at all the regular exercises.   Well did he know how to combine the practices of the cloister with the labours of the apostolic life.

In private conversation, just as in his sermons, he stimulated the faithful with his personal sentiments of love for the Blessed Virgin.   Because of his influence in their favour the Servites (they were investigated to ensure their orthodoxy) have ever regarded Peter of Verona in the light of a second founder of their order.   After his Canonisation, they placed him on the list of their holy patrons and protectors.

The Bull of Canonisation was sent at once to all bishops and ecclesiastical superiors, with an order that the feast of Peter of Verona should he celebrated every year on 29 April. This day was chosen for the celebration because that of his martyrdom, 6 April often falls in Holy Week, or within the octave of Easter.   Alexander IV and several of his successors, prescribed that the feast should he of the same obligation as that of Saint Dominic. Finally, Clement X, by a papal decree, ordered that the feast of Saint Peter Martyr should have the rank of a duplex for the whole Church.   This was in 1670 and the practice is in use today, wherever the Roman breviary is recited.

However, veneration of Peter of Verona is especially noteworthy in the Order of Friars Preacher and in that of the Servites.   It is particularly the case in Italy, the land of his birth, the field of his labours and the place of his holy death.   There many are the churches, chapels and confraternities erected in his honour.

The body of the martyr is still preserved and venerated in a magnificent chapel of Saint Eustorgio, Milan.   Princes and noblemen of France, Germany, England and Italy (particularly the archbishops of Milan) imitated the king and queen of Cyprus with their rich gifts for the enshrinement of the saint’s relics.   At each time of their various translations (1253, 1340, 1651 and 1736) many miracles were wrought.   Suffice it to say that the Acta Sanctorum, in the third volume for April, where they treat of our martyr, give a long list of attested wonders worked by him.

Saint Thomas of Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, was an ardent admirer of Peter of Verona.  In 1263 he visited the martyr’s sepulchre.   While at Saint Eustorgio’s Convent, the great theologian and poet wrote the following verses in eulogy of the valiant athlete of the faith, which were afterwards engraved on a marble slab and placed near his tomb, where they may still he read:

Here silent is Christ’s Herald. Here quenched, the People’s Light. Here lies the martyred Champion Who fought Faith’s holy fight. The Voice the sheep heard gladly, The light they loved to see He fell beneath the weapons Of graceless Cathari.

The Saviour crowns His Soldier. His praise the people psalm. The Faith he kept adorns him With martyr’s fadeless palm.

His praise new marvels utter, New light he spreads abroad And now the whole wide city Knows well the path to God.

Saint of the Day – 29 April – St Peter of Verona OP (1205–1252) Saint of the Day - 29 April - St Peter of Verona OP (1205–1252) also known as St Peter Martyr - Dominican Priest and Friar, a celebrated Preacher, miracle-worker, Marian devotee.   

[phonologix-1]

Cultivating Speech Development: Creating language-rich home environments for children with delayed speech

Speech delay can pose challenges, but language-rich home environments can make a significant difference in the journey of developing children's speaking ability. In this blog, we will explore practical strategies for parents to support speech development.

1. Join the conversation:

Talking regularly with your child, no matter their age, will promote language development. Talk about your daily activities, ask open-ended questions, and actively listen to their answers.

2. Read Together:

Reading aloud not only improves vocabulary but also introduces sentence structure and storytelling. Choose colorful, engaging books and encourage your child to participate by repeating words or completing sentences.

3. Vocabulary development:

Introduce new words in daily activities. Label objects, actions and emotions, expanding your child's vocabulary. Use descriptive words to expand on your experience and encourage them to do the same.

4. Encourage imaginative play:

Imaginative play, such as pretending with toys or dolls, promotes creativity and language skills. Encourage your child to narrate his play, creating stories and dialogues.

5. Limit screen time:

Excessive screen time can hinder speech development. Create designated screen-free time that promotes interactions and activities that involve talking, listening, and interacting with others.

6. Use simple language:

While encouraging speaking, use simple and clear language. Be patient, give your child time to process and respond. Avoid fixing errors; Instead, repeat the correct form in your answer naturally.

7. Incorporating music and rhymes for preschoolers:

Songs, nursery rhymes and music engage the auditory senses, enhancing rhythm and melody of speech. Sing together, clap to the rhythm, and encourage your child to imitate sounds and words.

8. Play a talking game:

Play a talking game like "I Spy" or a rhyming game. These activities make learning fun and teach important verbal concepts in a fun way.

9. Praise effort:

Praise your child's efforts to speak, emphasizing their effort rather than focusing on perfection. Positive reinforcement builds trust and encourages more communication.

10. Seek professional help:

If you notice persistent speech delay, consider seeing a speech therapist. They can offer tailored exercises and strategies to meet your child's specific needs.

Creating a language-rich environment requires patience, consistency, and love. By integrating these practices into daily life, parents can contribute significantly to their children's speech development, helping them to communicate effectively and confidently, even if they are slow to speak. Remember that every word spoken at home is a building block in your child's speech development.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Pride

by John Taylor

"When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the lowly is wisdom." - Proverbs 12:2

The writings of Solomon are filled with such observations upon the nature and life of man as to be the result of long experience, assisted with every advantage of mind and fortune. It was an experience that had made him acquainted with the actions, passions, virtues and vices of all ranks, ages, and denominations of mankind, and enabled him with the divine assistance to leave to succeeding ages a collection of precepts that, if diligently attended to, will conduct us safe in the paths of life.

Among all the vices against which he has cautioned us (and he has scarcely left one untouched) there is none upon which he denounces with more severity, or to which he more frequently recalls our attention by reiterated reflections, than the vice of pride. Pride is a corruption that seems almost originally engrafted in our nature. It exerts itself in our first years, and without continual endeavors to suppress it, influences our last. It mingles with all our other vices, and without the most constant and anxious care will mingle also with our virtues. It is no wonder, therefore, that Solomon so frequently directs us to avoid this fault, to which we are all so liable.

Pride was probably a crime to which Solomon himself was most violently tempted; and indeed it might have been much more easily imagined that he would have fallen into this sin than into some others of which he was guilty, since he was placed in every circumstance that could expose him to it. He was a king absolute and independent, and by consequence surrounded with sycophants ready to second the first motions of self-love and blow the sparks of vanity; to echo all the applauses and suppress all the murmurs of the people; to comply with every proposal and flatter every failing. Could any superiority to the rest of the world make pride excusable, it might have been pardoned in Solomon. But he has been so far from allowing it either in himself or others, that he has left a perpetual attestation in favor of humility--"When pride comes then comes shame, but with the lowly is wisdom."

Pride, simply considered, is an immoderate degree of self-esteem or an over-value set upon a man by himself, and, like most other vices, is founded originally on an intellectual falsehood. He who overvalues himself will undervalue others; and he who undervalues others will oppress them. To this fancied superiority it is owing that tyrants have squandered the lives of millions and looked unconcerned on the miseries of war. In this manner does pride operate when unhappily united with power and dominion, and has in the lower ranks of mankind similar though not equal effects. It makes masters cruel and imperious, and magistrates insolent and partial. It produces contempt and injuries, and dissolves the bond of society. Nor is this species of pride more hurtful to the world than destructive to itself. The oppressor unites heaven and earth against him. If a private man, he at length becomes the object of universal hatred and reproach; and if a prince, the neighboring monarchs combine to his ruin--so that when pride comes, then comes shame.

Every man has noted the indirect methods made use of in the pursuit of wealth--a pursuit for the most part prompted by pride. For to what end is an ample fortune generally coveted? Not that the possessor may have it in his power to relieve distress or recompense virtue, but that he may distinguish himself from the herd of mankind by expensive vices, foreign luxuries, and a pompous equipage. To pride therefore must be ascribed most of the fraud, injustice, violence and extortion by which wealth is frequently acquired.

Another consequence of immoderate self-esteem is an insatiable desire of propagating in others the favorable opinion he entertains of himself. No proud man is satisfied with being singly his own admirer. His excellencies must receive the honor of the public suffrage, he must make himself conspicuous and to draw the eyes of the world upon him. It is impossible to enumerate all the fictitious qualities, all the petty emulations and laborious trifles to which this appetite, this eagerness of distinction, has given birth in men of narrow views and low attainments.

There is a dangerous species of pride arising from a consciousness of virtue. Spiritual pride represents a man to himself as beloved by his Creator in a particular degree, and, of consequence, inclines him to think of others not so high in his favor as himself. This is an error into which weak minds are sometimes apt to fall, not so much from the assurance that they have been steady in the practice of justice, righteousness and mercy, as that they have been punctually observant of some external acts of devotion. This kind of pride is generally accompanied with great uncharitableness and severe censure of others.

Having thus proved the odious nature of pride, I am in the last place to show the amiableness and excellence of humility. Upon this head I need not be long since every argument against any vice is equally an argument in favor of the contrary virtue. But to evince beyond opposition the excellence of this virtue, we may in few words observe that the life of our Lord was one continued exercise of humility. The Son of God condescended to take our nature upon him, to become subject to pain, to bear from the time of his birth the inconveniences of poverty, and to wander from city to city amidst opposition, reproach and slander. He did not think it beneath him to converse with publicans and sinners, to minister to his own disciples, and to weep at the miseries of his own creatures. He submitted to insults and revilings; and being led like a lamb to the slaughter, he opened not his mouth. At length, having borne all the cruel treatment that malice could suggest or power inflict, he suffered the most lingering and ignominious death.

God of his infinite mercy grant that by imitating his humility we may be partakers of his merits. To whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be ascribed, as is most due, all honor, adoration and praise, now and forever! Amen.

[jasperlion]

Dances in Rigel and Zofia

Rigel and Zofia both have used dance as a means to worship their Gods and to celebrate, as well as for courtship. Even when the land was not yet riven, the united Valentians had many a use for dance (and song, but this might be more touched upon later if I survive) that they would pass down the generations. After the division of the continent, many of the dances were re-purposed or even completely forgotten.

There were many uses for what was considered an act of worship, entertainment and storytelling. While this will focus on dances, sometimes songs will also be mentioned, as song oft comes along with dance.

Religious 

Dances in Rigel and Zofia to appease, please or otherwise thank their Gods were commonplace in nature, especially within the Priories and Temples that dotted both countries. Even within the more abandoned of temples at present, many a traveler might stop to offer a dance, song or simply a meal for passing through, especially if they used the place as a shelter.

Hymns, music and dance were said to bring one closer to the God they were praising, and the dances tended to flow in tandem with their God’s Tenants.

Zofian dances to Mila tended to flow like the water and sway like the trees and flowers shaken by a gentle breeze. Many, especially priests and priestesses, would dance barefoot to have a closer connection to the Earth Mother, and many of the movements imitated the nature she blessed with her magic. Twirls, the swaying of arms to imitate the elements, and motions to express growth tended to form part of these dances, though there was no set script for them. It was to be as wild and unpredictable as nature, but as comforting as the Mother. To dance properly in her honor, one had to lose themselves to the dance and flow with their feelings of gratefulness. Music that would sometimes accompany these dances tended to be rhythmic but airy, percussion keeping the beat and strings or winds carrying the melody. [valentian instrument samples]

Rigelian dances to Duma tended to be more rigid in nature, and normally they take in air before striking forward upon the exhale with their next movement (almost like a kata). The movements are forceful and powerful, but no less graceful than their Zofian counterparts. Their dance is meant to be a display of strength, and so their forcefulness oft sees the dancer being capable of pushing back the winds and conquering the earth around them. It is rare to dance barefoot, although some feel emboldened to do so during harsh winters while outdoors just might to prove their worth. The dancers move from one strike to the next with vigor, but upon completion will stand, take breaths, then bow. Oft times the music accompanying the dances is percussive, although instead of rhythmic, the beats determine the pace the dancers must dance in, like war drums. As a note: while sparring before a Temple of Duma is not uncommon and often done to challenge foes so that Duma may witness the result of a spat, it’s not a dance of worship.

Outside of dances on temples for thanks, a dance in common between Mila and Duma was one for the request of Sight, a power the Gods shared. A priest or priestess of their respective order would dance upon an area covered in sand after a prayer, letting their God guide their motions. What is drawn upon the sand after the dance is done is meant to help predict what is to come or something that can be prevented.

Subcategory: Festivals

Dancing during festivals, of course, varied per country, but also per location. 

In Zofia, dances in festivals were usually for harvests, fertility or blessings for the next season cycle. The dance, however, was not the same across the board: being a different age (child, adult and elderly), gender, social status or even being a member of the Devout meant your dance would differ during the festivities, as well as your position around the bonfires and stages set for the festival. In Ram, there wasn’t as much a difference in dances due to the fact that social status and religious positions were not a part of the equation, and as such everyone danced closer to the bonfires and only the village’s leader would dance upon a raised stage (Mycen possibly applied for such honor but may have refused). In the capital, by comparison, the stages had to be set to have multiple steps, with the commoners dancing upon the floor with the lowest noble houses (with the nobles closer to the bonfires), while the social pecking order dictated who went higher and higher upon the ‘steps’ afterwards. The dances for nobility and royalty tended to be more refined and had a flow in the sequence of movements, while the dances of the commoners had far less complexity and often enough was relegated to sways and cheers. Members of Mila Devout would, often times, lead the festivity alongside the monarch, and their dancing took place directly below them or on the same position. Married pairs were expected to dance together, especially pairs capable of bearing children, during dances for fertility. Considered a shameless display by Rigelians, the dance between a pair of Zofians tended to be intimate and fluid, to the point where they were almost always touching in one way or another.

In Rigel, dances in festivals tended to be before the main tournament events or otherwise to praise Duma for the strength granted through the year. For the former, it tended to be closer to the war dances that all children normally learned since five, but had a playful air to it that alluded to the nature of the tournaments being games and tests of strength rather than an actual battle. On the latter, the head of the ceremony will dance first, then pass on a sacred vase onto the next until all have danced and held the vase, which is then deposited at the feet of the God or his substitute effigy. It is meant to symbolize the passing of strength and teachings, from the first to the last, which in the end will return to Duma and with it they will be granted honor, as well as perhaps a chance to seize a personal wish. The scale of this dance will vary greatly depending on the size of attendance (a sizable one will have several vases to help the process along) and the people sectioned by place of providence. If the head of ceremony is the head of the government, they must dance with all the vases, one by one, and hand them off to the next per group. Symbolically, it is also seen as the head of the Empire offering protection to the people as Duma’s chosen ruler. On hunting festivals, a war dance was performed instead.

Subcategory: War Dances

Zofia lost their own war dances long ago when Mila and Duma divided the land in half, almost as suddenly as the battle ended. It is said Mila’s divine decree was to stop such tradition, which was lost in the span of two generations.

War dances in Rigel continued long after the land was split in two, a dance taught to all Rigelian youth since general training began at age five. While those who would never enlist would go on to not repeat the exercises after a certain period, it is a dance never forgotten and even oft used outside of the purpose of battle to energize oneself for a task that requires nimble feet, like hunting. The Rigelian war dances were not as much formal as much as it was a way to limber the body, especially in the cold, and prepare for battle. Warriors with nimble feet dodged weapons easier, and could just as easily move through tougher terrain with more agility — and thus it was believed for a time that a war dance allowed for Duma to grant the dancer with a little of his power so they may succeed. The dance tended to consist of slowly picking up pace side-pacing from one side to another as a common dodge maneuver, and as the overseer of the dance played on the welsh Valentian bagpipes, he would pick up the pace. The dancers would then start to sing the song being played, many of them songs of old lore that told of the War Father’s exploits in an unknown land. As the dance progressed, crouches, backflips, leaps back and other such maneuvers would be employed to exercise every part of the body while practicing such.

Subcategory: Ceremonial

In Zofia, for ceremonial dances for fertility, rain and protection, an important member of the Mila Devout in a town would dance alone to the beat of the instruments played by other Devouts, although the role tended to be relegated to priestesses in particular, dressed in thin robes and adorned with flowers to resemble the Mother. In presenting themselves as a representation of Mila, they hoped to both appease her and inform her that her aid is required in that particular area. Like in temples, the dancer and musicians are meant to lose themselves in the dance, to connect to the earth and the sky and the rivers so that the Mother may hear their joy and laughs, and know they await her aid eagerly. It is done around a bonfire, with other citizens allowed to bear witness to the event.

Similar to Lion Dances, the ceremonial dances practiced in Rigel are done in pairs in costume akin to Duma’s draconic likeness to the beats of percussion. However, instead of a dance to bring fortune to the people, it is a dance to represent Duma gifting his people the knowledge and strength of survival by demonstration. Some complex costumes used in ceremonies in the capital may take up to three people to pilot, making it extremely difficult to coordinate (three-people costumes often include his wings as mobile). At times, the dance is not performed by the Faithful physically and, instead, several magic-using Faithful will move the costume with magic. It is, either way, a taxing endeavor and said to reward the dancers most of all, but the population in general will always see benefit. These dances are normally done after a particularly harsh trial of weather or famine to demonstrate their tenacity to Duma as well as their strength.

Storytelling

Dance as storytelling was often used to tell tales of the past, rather than fabricated ones. Legends, myths and history had long since been passed down through the act of dance, motions evoking emotions and events. While normally seen as entertainment, dances to tell the tales of the past were often treated quite seriously in both countries, as the dancers would have to practice tirelessly to correctly interpret the tales and lessons of the past. Usually, these dances are done by the Devout or Faithful, but it can be done by nobles uninvolved with either sect (in the form of active worship) or even commoners… provided they have their God’s approval. Usually, music played along the dance came with lyrics sung by the master of ceremonies and their choir, which tended to add to the narrative.

Dancing as storytelling for entertainment or teaching history is more common in Zofia than Rigel during the events of the game, as long since has come a time to pass down history through writing, not through dance, song or theater. Even if it is a more accessible form none the less to pass down history, Rigelian weather is fairly inhospitable, making it difficult to hold storytelling dances outdoors outside of the rare good moments of weather. If a town lacked a Hall, it likely did not see storytelling dances performed often.

Stories told in Zofia center around Mila’s blessings, but many also describe both the heroics of their first monarch as well as Mila and Duma’s arrival from the sea. In Rigel, the focus was instead on Duma’s accomplishments in war long ago, along with the heroics of their first monarch and the arrival of both Gods from the sea.

Entertainment

Often during festivities, festivals and perhaps even just parties of something or another, dancing for entertainment is more common in Zofia than Rigel due to their outlook of life. Zofian commoners have more time to dance for fun than Rigelians do from the extra toil required to yield crops or other resources from the more inhospitable land. Even so, both had those present, and both were dances that tended to flow in movement (much unlike the common Rigelian flair outside of storytelling). There are several types of dances that fall under this category, however, but Rigelian dances for self entertainment and the entertainment of a crowd tend to approach that which is similar to tango or paso doble. Meanwhile, Zofian dances for entertainment lean more towards something akin to Zorba and Flamenco.

Dancing in these styles was often more possible for nobility than the common folk, as most of these dances required teaching and free time to do, something many commoners did not have due to the workload required to make a living. As such, for entertainment in villages if they had time and were celebrating festivities, their dances tended to be closer to what was done during festivals or otherwise just moving their body whichever which way along with the music.

Entertainment traveling troupes did handle dancing in their repertoire, and might often bring with them the entertainment dances of the nobles or even parody courtship dances. Many allowed to cross borders between countries may even bring with them a mix of styles, alongside of storytelling dances all around the continent, which they would perform for a price.

Courtship

In both countries, courtship dances are oft most common among the nobility, who hold balls and other such events for finding potential partners or… ‘associates’ to ally with. Dances of courtship in both countries tend to take something closer to rigidity of Rigelians for both, leaning towards formal dances akin to a waltz. It is said that when one dances and flows well with a partner, they may be a good partner in the dance of life as well. These dances, very formal and often taken extremely seriously, mean that nobles must from a young age learn how to dance as well as take their role within the dance.

[themysteriouswriter675]

Empty Frustration

Hello world. Although I’m sure almost no one’s reading this. The handful of followers whose attention I might have captured have probably lost me in the tsunami knows as Tumblr. Today I’ll try to revive myself, bang open the nails from one of the countless coffins Tumblr’s algorithm puts its millions of inactive users in, if you may. I’m a changed person from when I previously used to write- no longer invested heavily in changing the world, but rather scrambling to hold together the broken pieces within. I guess as my younger self sought to change society, to change norms, to shatter systems, and break glass ceilings, it forgot to take a peek inside itself and see that......there was nothing. Nothing but a fiery ego fueled for years by undeserved praise, nothing but a lazy feaster who does nothing besides waiting for the food to come to the table, without moving an inch towards it. And it was possible before. One might as well have forgotten there was anything to contend on the inside to begin with. One of the biggest shams ever sold to young people, was that your life, down the road, would be guided by what happens on the outside- outside events, outside obligations, outside people- that you would drown in your surroundings so much, that you didn’t have to contend with anything in your homeland. Of course, that’s only a torn half of the full page- no one warns the innocent of the real Goliath they have to slay. The real war that no one stocks up for hits them when they least expect it. One day they wake up and look at the mirror, and see more than they ever expected to. The highlights of one’s face brings visions that cannot be penned down, but yet their mind seems to retain even the slightest detail of, the tiniest speck at the most remote corner.

I’ve clearly become a far less skilled writer. But I feel more satisfaction writing this down than I ever did writing even my most brilliant stories. I’ve learnt a lot over the years, and one of the things I’ve learnt is that a machine will rip a human off into shreds when it comes to writing the most accurate, to-the-point piece one can. The chronology of the bulletproof, immaculate paragraphs of an algorithm almost seem to have been constructed, if I may, by decimal-precise instruments whose sole job is to not miss a single detail. And if that is what people set to imitate, then these words become strings of letters- writing loses meaning. I know that now. My previous self would hate the fact that I’ve interrupted my initial musings to go on a completely unrelated tangent. But I don’t deal in paragraphs anymore. Language points and content synchronization is no longer the lens through which I view my writings. I now deal in thoughts. In emotions. In stories. In conversations with voices from the inside. This writing won’t win prizes. But I’m at least able to write messages to the second person that has grown inside me. This person listens. This person responds. This person looks at the world and guides me based on what it gathers. This person isn’t me. This person isn’t someone else either. But this person exists, and will even drive you to a gun, or a bottle of sleeping pills, if it is provoked to. As we grow, this person becomes us. And I’m writing this to pen down what this person thinks of me. 

Our days slowly morph, from the daily operations of an input-output algorithm, from a series of orders, from sports discussions, from childhood tiffin politics, from fretting over results, from mischievous giggles, from escaping relatives, from trying to fit ourselves into the grilles of our balcony, into something more morbid and harrowing. It turns into panic attacks, into anxiety, into stacks of unread books, into clinging onto friends who sometimes don’t cling back as much, into periods of time when the only two things you know are that you are looking at yourself and that tears are flowing out of your eyes, into week-long spans of running out of things to pat yourself on the back for. It is primarily that. The very idea that we can think for hours about what would happen if we die without flinching at the very idea in an instant amidst an unfaltering affection for reality should not be normal, but it is. 

There can only be moments of digging upwards, reaching topsoil, and devouring the trees and the air before the dirt beneath the ground slides apart like quicksand. How long those moments are depends on how hard one can whip themselves into pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. Crafting that whip takes an extraordinary amount of religious dedication towards self-positivity and optimism manufacturing. It requires us to rip the ends of our receptors into oblivion till we are blind to the suffering that pulls us back again, howling, whimpering. The heart becomes heavy, our movements become more erratic during sudden moments to voluminous regret and frustration flowing through our cursed veins. We expect texts from people who, ultimately, don’t text. We expect people to notice us, feel our absence. It is all a fairy-tale. No one cares enough. At least the people you want to do not. You feel like abandoning people. But people do not need you. You need them. It takes a moment to wrap our heads around it. But one day, we look at ourselves, and realize, that the only well that quenches our thirst is contaminated with cyanide. There is no escaping the poisoning, the pain, because the alternative is utter destruction. Sometimes, the cyanide is purely fictitious, a figment of the imagination. But it is all the same. You feel a burning rage towards your friends. You call them scum of the earth, even though all they are doing is failing to live up to the sky-high expectations that the person inside you set. 

But then again, all of this is before one opens the lid and look inside. All of these are simple iron pellets, shot at your body in preparation for the missile to come. You open yourself. Skin the flesh from the bone, rip the bone in half, and inside, there’s only Calcium. No feelings, no emotions, a person without a droplet of empathy. This is the body that you’ve been living inside for years. And imagine realizing that while you are alone, one day, when your life flashes by before your eyes, and the only thing you ever remember doing is hurting others. Hurting yourself. Thinking you are the best in the world. Building the lazy feaster whose body you would occupy one day. Imagine you distinctly remember the day it happened. Imagine that you cried for 4 hours straight. Imagine that the person you spent your whole life building is one that has personality dysphoria every night. A person that has developed the instinct to sit around and wait for things to happen. A person that cannot create order from the chaos he is given, and instead bathes in it, suffering in willingness, in complete submission to his self-annihilating nature. A person, who, in order to be forced to do something, has to be given the opportunity cost of severe physical or social penalties. One can only imagine it. Only those who have gone through it sit in front of a laptop at 1 a.m. and type it for the rest of the world to see. 

One would think this is saddening. It is not. There is a part inside. Like a mother that screams to her child that exams are in 10 days. That part sees the fire that is coming to burn the trees. It sees the eerie calm before the storm. But I have become numb to my sheer incompetence. It is a sort of expressionless torture. It is the stick you grab to beat yourself that you care you do not have the energy to put to use. It is the fire that you light to burn yourself to make yourself feel the weight to your wasted years that you do not even feel like jumping to. I would say I feel like a robot. But a robot is programmed to do what it is told. I don’t even do that either.   

The rotting mascot of a human being I made myself was stripped naked and put up on a humiliating exhibition. I decided that I can talk, and decided to open a page of my life that I want to burn with a lighter, rip slowly with my own fingers, as if to have the illusion that I’m causing it pain, drown it in cold, unforgiving water, and throw away in a lonely, isolated trash-bag. I decided to join debating. I don’t want to talk much about this part of my life(which still continues to this day though), because I know it way too well, and I feel like talking about it does no service to this exercise of self-therapy. 

I didn’t plan an end to this excerpt. This was a photograph of my journey to being the pathetic human I am. Happiness, purpose, drive, love, inclusion- I am tired of being told that these things will come to me. I am not that long-haired sweetheart with a stable relationship and a thousand-page manual on social dexterity. I am not that sweet, wholesome person that everyone ascribes a positive contribution to their lives onto. I am not a sailor with a map. I’m a warrior that does not know how to wield a sword. A “nerd” who doesn’t study. A debater who doesn’t practice. A person that has manufactured a personality that I’m forgetting how to keep up. I’m nothing. There is nothing inside. A defunct car that has been pitched as a speed beast by salesmen who do not know the inside. This isn’t a story. An excerpt. This is a diagnosis. A periscope view. Of my inside. A pathetic, void-consumed, meaningless inside. I thought I would feel better after writing this. Turns out my emptiness has just been replaced by more of it. 

[ganbaramen]

Ultra Jump March 2018: 100 Questions for Ai Furihata [EN Translation]

Profile

Ai Furihata (voice of Ruby Kurosawa)

Nicknames: Furirin, Aiai, Shokunin [TL: Artisan]

Birthdate: February 19

Blood type: B

Hobby: Cameras

Skills: Illustration, photography

Major roles include:

TV Anime: "orange" (Saku), "Itsudatte Bokura no Koi wa 10 cm Datta."

Games: "Mahoutsukai to Kuroneko no Wiz" (Kaede), "Dare ga Tame no Alchemist" (Lisbeth)

Voice Comic: "Tottemo Yasashii Amae-chan!" (Amae)

Questions

What food do you like? Meat! Especially salted beef tongue!

What food do you dislike? None!

What snacks do you like? Calpico!

What do you enjoy most from your family's cooking? Karaage.

What color do you like? Pink.

What scents do you like? Ylang-ylang and the smell of the sun.

What season do you like? Autumn.

What's your favorite event of the year? My birthday!

What sports do you like watching? Basketball.

What sports do you like playing? Badminton.

What animal do you like? Pandas!

What animal do you resemble? A small animal...

Are you a dog person or a cat person? A dog person! I like a Shiba Inu and Pomeranian mix.

What manga do you like? Rumiko Takahashi's works.

What genres of manga do you like? Romantic comedy and slice of life.

What was the first manga you read? Ranma 1/2.

What was the first anime you watched? It might be Pokemon.

What film do you like? The Devil Wears Prada.

What artist do you like? Daichi Miura.

What songs do you listen to every day? Daichi Miura's songs.

What was the first CD you bought? One of Porno Graffiti's CDs.

What's your karaoke specialty? Something like Sayuri Ishikawa's “Amagi-goe”!

What's on your phone's lock screen? DiCaprio.

What brand of clothing do you often buy? I buy from second-hand clothing stores.

What’s your best outfit? Maybe a white one-piece dress.

What's your favorite place in your home? Perhaps my living room.

What do you want most right now? Free time.

What's certain to be in your bag? Taiwanese candy.

What have you been unintentionally collecting? Pink things and yumekawa things. [TL: yumekawa (ユメカワ) is a fairy tale-like style; literally "dreamy and cute"]

What do you treasure? Everyone ♡

What were you like as a kid? I was shy and didn't say much.

What did you treasure as a kid? A teddy bear that I'd had since I was a baby.

What did you dream of becoming as a kid? Being a veterinarian or mangaka.

Who’s someone you respect? My father.

Where would you go on a trip to? I want to go to space.

What country do you want to try going to? Europe! Particularly France!

Do you have any bad habits? Recently, I've been inadvertently touching my earlobe.

Do you have a catchphrase? Outlook on life has changed.

What's your charm point? The mole on my left ear! Don't miss it.

What's your strong point? I don't get angry very much.

What's your weak point? My thoughts sometimes slip out of my mouth.

What's your special skill? Drawing portraits.

What don't you like doing? Exercising.

What are you weakest against? I'm no good with ghosts or horror...

What about yourself do you want to improve? I should listen more carefully to what people say.

What can you confidently imitate? I think I'm good at imitating Ikue Ootani, who voiced Mitsuhiko from "Detective Conan" and Chopper in "One Piece".

What one thing could you live solely off of? My smartphone.

What's your current obsession? Collecting (aroma) diffusers.

What's a buzzword that you've been using? Enjoy!

What's your favorite motto? Have as much fun as you can!

How would you describe yourself in one word? Scatterbrained.

What do you unintentionally fuss over? I keep looking up references for Ruby's eyebrows! [TL: probably in the context of drawing them.]

Fill in the blank with something positive in "Actually, I/I'm ___". I care a lot for my younger sister.

Fill in the blank with something negative in "Actually, I/I'm ___". I'm very boyish and crude (laughs).

Anything but this! Don't call me tiny!

What do you want to disappear from the world? Conflict.

How do you kill time? Katamari Damacy.

How do you relieve stress and refresh yourself? I get Thai-style massages.

What app have you used a lot recently? Animal Crossing.

What do you always do after you wake up in the morning? Look at my phone.

What do you always do when you go to bed at night? Look at my phone! (laughs)

What do you do when riding a train? I keep a mask on, so since people can't see, I make weird faces (laughs).

Is there anything you do to maintain your health? A mask is indispensable.

What do you do on your days off? I go to clothing stores.

What do you do when you're alone? Reading magazines.

What do you do when you're out with friends? We go looking for Insta-worthy places.

Where do you want to go on a first date? A museum!

If you were to confess to someone, what kind of situation would you be in? I'd confess directly at my place!

If someone were to confess to you, what kind of situation would you like to be in? I'd want it to be really romantic, in a place with beautiful lighting ♡

What memories do you have of Valentine's Day? When I was in elementary school, I gave a boy I liked chocolates that my mother had incidentally made for me, and said that I made them myself.

What have you enjoyed recently? Meeting all our fans at the fan meetings!

What’s something sad that happened recently? I couldn't make a recording of the FNS Song Festival...

What funny thing has happened recently? Today, on the bus for our photoshoot, I heard a bird tweeting early in the morning, and I thought it was one of the staff's alarms. But when I asked whose it was, it turned out to be mine (laughs).

What do you want to erase from your past? The time I fell down while playing jump rope in 5th grade.

What moment made you think "It's a miracle!"? Meeting all my fans.

What moment made you think "I'm glad to be alive"? Seeing a sea of pink lights during a live.

What do you want to happen in the future? An Aqours worldwide tour!

What did you wish for that happened? Continuing as Aqours in season 2 of the Love Live! Sunshine!! anime.

What did you enjoy in 2017? The whole year was fun, but going to Los Angeles, perhaps.

What went wrong in 2017? On the last day of 2nd Live, during the MC after "SKY JOURNEY", I was explaining the dance move we called "Sky Walk". But I kept calling it "Aqours Walk", so I ended up doing a dogeza [TL: you may know the pose better as OTL] in front of everyone...

What do you aspire to do in 2018? I'll put all my strength into accomplish everything that falls onto my plate!

What would you do if you won 100 million yen in the lottery? I've been saving up to buy a house. If I had 100 million yen, I'd just buy one (laughs).

What would you do if you had a time machine? I'd go back to the past and practice my jump rope skills.

What would you do with your last day on Earth? I would be with my family.

What would you eat on your last day on Earth? Salted beef tongue, of course! I want to eat the things I like!

If you went to an uninhabited island and could only bring one thing, what would you bring? Everything you need for camping (laughs).

If you were reborn in another world, what would you want to become? A final boss. I want to be strong.

If you were reborn [in this world], what would you want to become? A sloth. I don't want to think about anything.

If you were reborn, would you want to be male or female? Male.

What challenge do you want to take on? I want try startling someone with a prank (laughs).

What's good about being a girl? Growing out your hair and trying different hairstyles with it.

If you were a guy, what would you want to try? Nanpa (laughs). I want to try seducing girls (laughs).

What role do you want to try taking in the future? Maybe an adult woman, someone stable.

What job would you want to do outside of voice acting? Something like dealing with second-hand clothes at a tailor's shop.

What has made you the happiest out of what people have said to you? That I seem like a type A person. [TL: probably blood type.]

Are there any secrets you've kept from the Aqours members? Nope! I'm very open! I have faith in everyone.

Where in Numazu would you want to visit again? I want to go to Marusan Bookstore with King (Kanako Takatsuki).

Praise yourself as highly as you can! You sure did your Rubesty, didn't you! ♪

What are your thoughts on today's photoshoot? It feels fresh to do a photoshoot in personal clothes, and I'm very happy that we could do it as CYaRon!. It's been a long time since I went to the aquarium, and that was a lot of fun!

Finally, a word for your fans! I'll keep doing my Rubesty as a member of Aqours. I really want to surprise everyone and show everyone a variety of sights. I'll continue to be in your care!

Happy birthday, Furirin! (Again.) I hope you’re having a wonderful time on your favorite day of the year.

Please consider buying the magazine! Along with the 100 questions feature, it has an interview and a photoshoot involving all three members of CYaRon!, featuring some wonderful photos. You can order it on Amazon Japan at https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B079NBWSZS.

Translation: @ganbaramen QC: @yujachachacha

[dfroza]

and everything that reveals truth is light to the soul.

This is why the Scripture says,

“Arise, you sleeper! Rise up from your coffin and the Anointed One will shine his light into you!”

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 5th chapter of the Letter of Ephesians:

Be imitators of God in everything you do, for then you will represent your Father as his beloved sons and daughters. And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for he surrendered his life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God, like an aroma of adoration—a sweet healing fragrance.

And have nothing to do with sexual immorality, lust, or greed—for you are his holy ones and let no one be able to accuse you of them in any form. Guard your speech. Forsake obscenities and worthless insults; these are nonsensical words that bring disgrace and are unnecessary. Instead, let worship fill your heart and spill out in your words.

For it has been made clear to you already that the kingdom of God cannot be accessed by anyone who is guilty of sexual sin, or who is impure or greedy—for greed is the essence of idolatry. How could they expect to have an inheritance in Christ’s kingdom while doing those things?

Don’t be fooled by those who speak their empty words and deceptive teachings telling you otherwise. This is what brings God’s anger upon the rebellious! Don’t listen to them or live like them at all. Once your life was full of sin’s darkness, but now you have the very light of our Lord shining through you because of your union with him. Your mission is to live as children flooded with his revelation-light! And the supernatural fruits of his light will be seen in you—goodness, righteousness, and truth. Then you will learn to choose what is beautiful to our Lord.

And don’t even associate with the servants of darkness because they have no fruit in them; instead, reveal truth to them. The very things they do in secret are too vile and filthy to even mention. Whatever the revelation-light exposes, it will also correct, and everything that reveals truth is light to the soul. This is why the Scripture says,

“Arise, you sleeper! Rise up from your coffin and the Anointed One will shine his light into you!”

So be very careful how you live, not being like those with no understanding, but live honorably with true wisdom, for we are living in evil times. Take full advantage of every day as you spend your life for his purposes. And don’t live foolishly for then you will have discernment to fully understand God’s will. And don’t get drunk with wine, which is rebellion; instead be filled continually with the Holy Spirit. And your hearts will overflow with a joyful song to the Lord. Keep speaking to each other with words of Scripture, singing the Psalms with praises and spontaneous songs given by the Spirit! Always give thanks to Father God for every person he brings into your life in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And out of your reverence for Christ be supportive of each other in love. For wives, this means being devoted to your husbands like you are tenderly devoted to our Lord, for the husband provides leadership for the wife, just as Christ provides leadership for his church, as the Savior and Reviver of the body. In the same way the church is devoted to Christ, let the wives be devoted to their husbands in everything.

And to the husbands, you are to demonstrate love for your wives with the same tender devotion that Christ demonstrated to us, his bride. For he died for us, sacrificing himself to make us holy and pure, cleansing us through the showering of the pure water of the Word of God. All that he does in us is designed to make us a mature church for his pleasure, until we become a source of praise to him—glorious and radiant, beautiful and holy, without fault or flaw.

Husbands have the obligation of loving and caring for their wives the same way they love and care for their own bodies, for to love your wife is to love your own self. No one abuses his own body, but pampers it—serving and satisfying its needs. That’s exactly what Christ does for his church! He serves and satisfies us as members of his body.

For this reason a man is to leave his father and his mother and lovingly hold to his wife, since the two have become joined as one flesh. Marriage is the beautiful design of the Almighty, a great mystery of Christ and his church. So every married man should be gracious to his wife just as he is gracious to himself. And every wife should be tenderly devoted to her husband.

The Letter of Ephesians, Chapter 5 (The Passion Translation)

marriage is a sacred bond of husband & wife according to our Creator’s design, which is the only “safe place” for sex.

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 9th chapter of the book of Jeremiah about the importance of truth:

Jeremiah: O that my head were a spring of water

and my eyes a fountain of tears;

Then I could weep day and night for my poor people

who have been slaughtered.

O that I had a place in the desert I could run to,

a haven for travelers.

Then I could leave my people,

for they are all an adulterous and treacherous lot.

Eternal One: With tongues bent like bows they shoot their lies at one another.

Truth does not win out in this land; deceit always seems to triumph.

One evil leads to another because they don’t know who I am.

Let everyone be careful of his neighbor,

and think twice before he trusts his brothers;

For every brother is ready to cheat and deceive;

every neighbor is prepared to lie when it suits him.

In this land of liars, friends have no misgivings about deceiving one another;

no one even thinks to tell the truth.

They’ve trained their tongues to utter lies;

they wear themselves out with all their sinning.

Jeremiah, you live in a place where deception is assumed;

as their lies pile up, they refuse to acknowledge Me.

Here is what the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, has to say:

Eternal One: Watch, I will refine this nation and put them to the test.

What else can I do with My people?

Their tongues are like deadly arrows;

they speak such lies;

Each one leads his neighbor with kind words

into a trap that was already set.

Should I not punish them for what they do?

Should I not repay a nation that acts this way?

Jeremiah: I will weep bitterly for the mountains of my homeland

and grieve for the death of her wild meadows.

For they have become a silent wasteland

where no one dares to travel.

Pastures once filled with the lowing of cattle, now are empty and lifeless.

All the animals have fled; even the birds have left the sky.

Eternal One: I will leave Jerusalem in ruins;

her rubble will be the haunt of jackals.

I will wreak the same havoc on the cities of Judah;

no person will be found there.

Jeremiah: Who is wise enough to take all this in? Who has heard the Eternal speak and can explain His ways to others? Can anyone say why this land has been ruined and left a wasteland, a desert where no one dares to travel?

Eternal One: I will answer you Myself. Because they have ignored the law I gave them generations ago. They haven’t listened to My voice, and they refuse to walk in My ways. Instead, they have stubbornly followed after their own hearts. They have chosen to worship images of Baal just as their ancestors taught them. This is why I, the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies and God of Israel, must now take action. Look, I will now give them bitter food to eat and poisoned water to drink. I Myself will scatter them among the nations—nations neither they nor their ancestors ever knew existed—and I will hunt them down with the sword and destroy them completely.

The Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies, has this to say:

Eternal One: Think this over, and summon the mourners.

Send for the women who will chant the dirge, that they may come.

Let them be quick about it: weep and wail,

that our eyes may fill with tears that streak down our faces.

Listen to the voice of sorrow weeping from Zion herself:

“We are ruined. All that remains for us is great shame.

Now we must leave this land that was ours;

they have torn down our houses.”

Jeremiah: So listen now, women of Judah, to the word of the Eternal.

Mark His words well.

It is time to teach your daughters how to mourn,

time to teach your neighbors the song of lament.

For death has found us all.

It has crept in through our windows and slipped past our defenses.

It has cut down our children in the streets,

and our young men in the public squares. Death has found us all.

Tell everyone what the Eternal has said:

“The dead bodies of men will fall like dung on the open field.

Corpses will lie on the ground like grain cut in the harvest;

but on this day, there will be no one to gather and bury the dead.”

Eternal One: Let not the wise boast in their wisdom, nor the mighty in their strength, nor the rich in their wealth. Whoever boasts must boast in this: that he understands and knows Me. Indeed, I am the Eternal One who acts faithfully and exercises justice and righteousness on earth. These are the things that delight Me.

Look, the day is coming when I will set things right with all people. I will punish all those who are circumcised in their bodies but not in their hearts— the people of Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, and all who live in the desert and clip the corners of their hair. All these nations are really uncircumcised, and all of Israel is uncircumcised where it counts, in the heart.

The Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 9 (The Voice)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Sunday, August 22 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons about the pure cleansing of grace:

All of us have unhealed parts, "hidden faults" (נסתרות) of which we are not fully aware. "Blind spots." Therefore king David prayed, "Who can discern his errors? cleanse me from secret faults" (Psalm 19:12). We are cleansed by confession, that is, by looking within our hearts to uncover deeper motivations... If we are honest with ourselves we may discover, for example, that we are angry or fearful people, despite how we otherwise wish to regard ourselves. If you find yourself unable to let something go, for instance, some pain or failure of the past, remind yourself that you must do so if you want to move on with your life. Focusing on how things could have been different is to be enslaved to the past. The goal of teshuvah (repentance) is to turn us back to God for life, but to do this, we must be be willing to let go of what makes us sick.

Note that the Hebrew word translated “errors” (i.e., שְׁגִיאוֹת) comes from a root word (שָׁגָה) that means to wander, stray, or transgress. The question raised by David is rhetorical: “Who can discern his errors?” No one – apart from divine intervention... David asked to be cleansed from his “secret faults,” which are not those that were performed by him “in secret,” but rather those that were unknown, unseen, and unconscious to his own sense of awareness. These are “mindless” sins, unthinking offenses, hidden dispositions, character defects and actions that a person unwittingly performs, perhaps because of deep forces of which he was oblivious. These are the “secret sins” set in the light of God’s face (Psalm 90:8); the “sluggish darkness” of the human heart that leads to death and ruin: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and incurably sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). How many of us, after all, are fully aware of what we are doing when we are doing something? How many of us are completely transparent both to ourselves and before God, with no unclear motives, etc.? We must always be vigilant... There is always the force of habit, or the subconscious desires or conflicts of the inner life, that work on us, not to mention the trauma of our past and the present devices from the enemy of our souls. May the LORD give us the willingness to be healed, even if there are parts of ourselves that seem to resist that healing. Amen and Shabbat shalom, chaverim. [Hebrew for Christians]

8.20.21 • Facebook

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

August 22, 2021

The Face of Jesus Christ

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)

The light that shines in the soul of a lost sinner when he first comes to know Jesus Christ can only be compared to the light that Christ called forth on Day One of the creation week. We met this God of glory spiritually when we first beheld in our hearts the face of Jesus Christ.

But the face of Jesus Christ was not always deemed so glorious. We read of a time when ungodly men “did...spit in his face” (Matthew 26:67), then took a blindfold “to cover his face” (Mark 14:65), and finally with a rain of terrible blows “struck him on the face” (Luke 22:64). Once His “countenance [was] as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars” (Song of Solomon 5:15), but when they finished their assault, “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men” (Isaiah 52:14).

“The face of the Lord is against them that do evil” (1 Peter 3:12), however, and the time is coming very soon when all those who have turned their faces from Him will call “to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16). When finally they will have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in all its consuming strength, not even the world itself could stand, “from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away” (Revelation 20:11).

For those who have looked on Him in faith, however, this will not be a time of judgment but blessing, for “they shall see his face” (Revelation 22:4). The face of Jesus Christ, fierce as devouring fire to those He must judge, is glorious in beauty and love to those who believe. HMM

[holdonendure]

IF then, the seven brethren despised troubles even unto death, it is confessed on all sides that righteous reasoning is absolute master over the passions. For just as if, had they as slaves to the passions, eaten of the unholy, we should have said that they had been conquered by them; now it is not so: but by means of the reasoning which is praised by Elohiym, they mastered their passions. And it is impossible to overlook the leadership of reflection: for it gained the victory over both passions and troubles. How, then, can we avoid according to these men mastery of passion through right reasoning, since they drew not back from the pains of fire? For just as by means of towers projecting in front of harbors men break the threatening waves, and thus assure a still course to vessels entering port, so that seven towered right reasoning of the young men, securing the harbor of the faith, conquered the intemperance of passions. For having arranged a holy choir of piety, they encouraged one another, saying, Brothers, may we die brotherly for the Torah. Let us imitate the three young men in Ashshur who despised the equally afflicting furnace. Let us not be cowards in the manifestation of piety. And one said, Courage, brother; and another, Nobly endure. And another, Remember of what stock ye are; and by the hand of our father Yitschaq endured to be slain for the sake of piety. And one and all, looking on each other serene and confident, said, Let us sacrifice with all our heart our souls to Elohiym who gave them, and employ our bodies for the keeping of the Torah. Let us not fear him who thinks he kills; for great is the trial of soul and danger of eternal torment laid up for those who transgress the commandment of Elohiym. Let us arm ourselves, therefore, in the abnegation of the divine reasoning. If we suffer thus, Avraham, and Yitschaq, and Ya`aqov will receive us, and all the fathers will commend us. And as each one of the brethren was haled away, the rest exclaimed, Disgrace us not, O brother, nor falsify those who died before you. Now you are not ignorant of the charm of brotherhood, which the divine and all wise providence has imparted through fathers to children, and has engendered through the mother's womb. In which these brothers having remained an equal time, and having been formed for the same period, and been increased by the same blood, and having been perfected through the same principle of life, and having been brought forth at equal intervals, and having sucked milk from the same fountains, hence their brotherly souls are reared up lovingly together; and increase the more powerfully by reason of this simultaneous rearing, and by daily intercourse, and by other education, and exercise in the Torah of Elohiym. Brotherly love being thus sympathetically constituted, the seven brethren had a more sympathetic mutual harmony. For being educated in the same Torah, and practicing the same virtues, and reared up in a just course of life, they increased this harmony with each other. For a like ardor for what is right and honorable increased their fellow feeling towards each other. For it acting along with the faith, made their brotherly feeling more desirable to them. And yet, although nature and intercourse and virtuous morals increased their brotherly love those who were left endured to behold their brethren, who were ill used for their faith, tortured even unto death.

MAKKABIYM REVIY`IY (4 MACCABEES) 13 את CEPHER