#Benedict Option

[eternal-echoes]

The virtues of our times should be low-hanging fruit for Christians. Consider:

Today, people care a lot about serving the weak and marginalized. Surely Christian principles about the infinite dignity of every human being can find good soil here.

Today’s secularists want to unite the whole world, regardless of race or economic status. There is one place that actually already does this: The Catholic Church. Let’s propose it.

People hunger for beauty — and the culture works hard to deliver it in every media imaginable. Even our video games are beautiful. Let’s re-introduce people to the source of the unlimited beauty they hunger for.

And why not, instead of spelling out how formidable the intellectual climate is, start reminding ourselves how weak it is?

Secularism is a culture of death that refuses to reproduce. That means self-destruction.

Secularism is built on science — but it refuses to recognize the humanity of the unborn or the chromosomal facts of life. It has turned against science. It is undermining its own foundations.

Secularism prides itself on tolerance and free speech, but increasingly rejects both in favor of a hyper-sensitive new censorship based on political correctness. This fails its own standards.

[possil]

LIVING IN AN ALIEN WORLD Pt 2

How do we face life in a culture which is increasingly moving from indifference to the Christian faith to outright opposition? A world where orthodox Christians have less and less trust in the institutional mainstream church? The question we must face is how do we live faithfully as a small minority in an environment which is sometimes antagonistic, sometimes friendly, but always alien? In ‘The…

[homesteadsissies]

Weekly Update: 10.14.23

For us, homesteading isn't about fear. It's about rediscovering the good life God gave us and showing others that they can do the same.

It’s been a beautiful week full of productivity. The dappled Ozarks October days have provided the perfect backdrop to the longer hours we can now put in. We had a fire several nights this week, and I have to say — waking up to the smell of woodsmoke is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Photo Credit: Grace Gage The change in seasons has ushered in a welcome change in habits. The nights come…

[theexodvs]

The “children should be raised by communities” crowd get awfully pissy when you bring up the Benedict Option.

[sophieswundergarten]

Please feel free to talk in the tags about your opinions, especially if it's something I forgot to mention. There ended up being a lot more than I anticipated when I really sat down to think about it, so I just picked the most recent ones/first to come to my mind.

[acollectionofcuriousreblogs]

Did one for Reynie a long time ago; now it’s Sticky’s turn!

[amysterywrappedinanenigma]

Ranking (bullying) LD Curtain's season 2 fashion choices

Because even if the show seems to have forgiven him, I sure haven’t. 

DISCLAIMER: This is in NO WAY criticizing the costume designers of this show- it couldn’t be farther from that. They’ve done an amazing job with every single piece in the show, and all of these fit Curtain’s personality and aesthetic perfectly. This is just me mocking the in-universe fashion choices that the character makes, because he needs to be bullied more. All lighthearted, all in good fun.

Disclaimer #2: I know literally nothing about fashion, please don’t attack me. 

Okay, from least heinous to most heinous, here we go! 

First up:

As much as it pains me to admit this. I actually. Really like this one. (”And if you told me I would never say something like that, well, I would never say something like that, but here we are.”) I think the silhouette is interesting, and all of the pieces come together well. Plus, in some of the tighter shots you can see that the fabric texture and detailing is really cool:

The leaves as clasps and that crinkly texture kind of really slap, and I really love the way the collar sort of wraps into the placket.

8 / 10

Interview outfit:

Wow, look! Another one that doesn't inspire immediate feelings of rage! We're doing so well.

This one isn't as visually interesting as the first outfit, but I do sort of like it. The collar folds create kind of a cool shape, and the grey accents under the top is a nice little contrast. I don't know how I feel about the zipper right below the collar, it's kind of a weird choice and might look better if it wasn't so visible, but I'll let it slide for this one since we have a much more heinous zipper situation coming up later.

I like the contrasting shades of blue with the button up shirt, and the lavender shirt he wears under it later in the episode, and the fact that part of the collar can kind of fold down to make a different shape.

6 / 10

Clown sleeves:

So the sleeves on this one are. kind of a lot. But they gain a couple of points for being the only thing in this outfit that really pops. They're sort of weird, but I can see the appeal of them standing out against the black vest, and being a pretty nice contrast that draws the eye.

5 / 10

Meh:

Time for the part of the post where I include 6 outfits that I just kind of don't have strong opinions on, mainly because they feel like pretty standard, decent outfits with no real reason to bat an eye at them.

The last image is saved on my computer as "are those your pajamas?" but. acceptable.

sure / 10

Dancy dance:

🧍‍♂️

I don't have much to say about this one other than, for some reason, the visual of him wearing tennis shoes makes me viscerally uncomfortable.

🤡 / 10

Elizabeth Holmes Chic:

He looks like a kid playing dress-up in their dad's giant overcoat, except someone let him go outside looking like this. I know oversized clothing items can be fashionable but here he's like drowning in it.

And then when he takes the coat off:

This maybe wouldn’t be a terrible outfit, it’s just so goddamn pretentious. He seems like he's trying to look like Steve Jobs, but ended up looking more like Elizabeth Holmes.

about to start another pyramid scheme / 10

Vacation dad (derogatory):

On someone else I might like this outfit, but on him it just looks so dumb. He looks like he's about to go skydiving with how much he's buttoned up. Better watch out or he could get carried away and spend 20 minutes unstrapping and unbuttoning it to reveal his fun little vacation shirt underneath! It's somehow stupidly formal and stupidly casual at the same time, and I just think it's a very silly little outfit. He's joining the army as penance for his fashion crimes. If you ask very very nicely he might tell you what's in his four huge, weirdly-placed pockets.

what's in the pockets / 10

And now.

We've arrived. We're finally here. The last one. The moment we've all been waiting for.

The worst of the worst:

I'll be honest, I don't really know where to start this one. There are too many things to choose from. Do I start with the weird asymmetrical pattern on the sleeves, with the red and blue stripes that aren't even made up of the same type of pattern?

Or maybe the fact that the buttons (and the piece of fabric they're attached to) ends too high above the neckline of the top layer?

Or we could talk about the fact that the top layer looks like one of those smocks you'd wear to get an x-ray at the dentist, made in a fabric that must have been rescued from the back of a fabric store after 50 years of not being bought.

I think by far the worst part is the length:

The fact that those strange little smock flaps go almost a foot past the zipper, halfway down to his knees. It swallows like 2/3rds of his body in this horrible block of grey fabric, and this man has the audacity to carry himself like it’s fashionable, instead of an assault on the senses. 

I want to set it on fire. I want to burn him along with it. I want to gently take his tailor aside and ask if Curtain held him at knife point and made him design this monstrosity. TEAR IT TO PIECES, GET IT OUT OF MY SIGHT, TURN IT INTO SCRAPS FOR SQ'S ART PROJECTS.

Anyway.

This outfit is such a menace to this world that I thought everyone should get a chance to tear it to shreds, so presenting, the communal roast:

“GROSS. SHUN.” -@mvshortcut

"prison chic. dentist x-ray chic. ugly." -@mysteriouseggsbenedict 

“the terrible zip up vest that just keeps on going fucked a potato sack” -@bi-demon-ium

“runway model for the most pretentious fashion designer who ever lived” - @sqenthusiast

“Trying to be casual but also Better Than You. The definition of 'you really thought you did something there'” -@echo-delta

“Child with one of those books where you can draw clothes over top the shape of a person” -@mysteriouseggsbenedict 

“Mr Curtain sir I don’t feel very happy looking at this. I think it’s a little counterproductive.” -@mvshortcut

Truly horrendous.

borrowing constance's acid to destroy the outfit and then clean the eyes of anyone who wants to forget they saw this monstrosity / 10

Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me, and as always, send the x-ray bib to hell.

[1-7776]

bonus option: tell me ur fav breakfast meal in the tags

[eternal-echoes]

Eliot says that Christians cannot leave the public square, however, if only out of charity for our neighbors. Deneen adds that those taking the Benedict Option had better construct our “new monasteries” amid the people who are must hurting in this new pagan culture. Our “monasteries” must also be the field hospitals that Pope Francis calls for, or they will be less than Christian.

(N.B., I agree with this, certainly. My contention — and I don’t know that Patrick disagrees — is that we cannot give the world what we do not have. The work of Robert Louis Wilken, Christian Smith, and other Christian intellectuals show that we Christians are very, very thin on the ground. The Benedict Option is not an either/or, but a both/and. That is, it’s not either withdrawal or engagement in the public square, but both withdrawal and engagement — indeed, withdrawal for the sake of more effective and transformative engagement.)

…

My interlocutor said that if paganism really does hold all the most valuable advertising space, then we have to consider whether or not it is more important to devote oneself to doing whatever we can to transmit the Christian tradition to the next generation, or to work to try to transform the greater culture. To be sure, not everyone has the same particular calling. If one discerns a calling to be a Christian Daniel in the academic lion’s den, then by all means one should accept that calling. I think the point of my interlocutor is that we don’t think often enough about dealing with the situation that we’re actually in. We want to fight the battle we want to fight, which is not necessarily the one we really need to be fighting.

I thought later about this principle as it plays out in some newspaper newsrooms. Very few reporters in urban newsrooms want to cover the suburbs. For ambitious reporters, the stories they want to cover are downtown, or otherwise in the city. But what if the stories that are really important — or at least many of the most important stories — are taking place in the suburbs? These places strike a lot of journalists as incredibly dull, and the stories playing out there as peripheral to “real” life. It’s worth considering that the problem is within us, and the limits of our own imagination. Is it possible that at least some of us don’t consider that our calling may be to something else because our pride and vanity blinds us to less romantic but more pressing possibilities.

…

And: “‘Success’ is not a name of God. We all need to learn that, and reflect on it every day.”

[possil]

A FAITHFUL REMNANT

On Life Support Recently a friend, a leader in his denomination, recounted an experience he had in hospital. In the next bed was a gravely ill elderly man. One morning while being given a bed bath he collapsed. The nurse repeatedly pressed the alarm bell to summon help. The alarm didn’t function. The nurse began calling for help. My friend jumped up, rushed into the corridor and called a nurse…

[mbspolls]

UNOFFICIAL ROUND IN MBS SMACKDOWN. Not part of a bracket.

[missjadesfics]

𝐢’𝐦 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐮𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐢’𝐦 𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐲

what is wrong with me 🥲

[reverieaudios]

for research purposes: what kind of breed is eggs benedict??

I could see him being so many different breeds lol, there's a ton that I think would fit. But a couple possibilities that come to mind are

A super fluffy ragdoll, like 90% fur

A Russian blue

And an orange or gray tabby of some kind

But really he could be anything

[sophieswundergarten]

Okay, but, like, did Sticky actually go to school ever before Book one?

He was around seven I think when he started quizzing, which is third grade(?) in America. And when I was a kid I just assumed that he kind of homeschooled himself or whatever because people assumed he knew stuff.

And he has above average academic knowledge by the time he meets the others, not only in very esoteric trivia but in actual math and language arts and things.

Did the quiz shows have a tutor? Did he sporadically attend school when he wasn't on TV? Did his parents teach him? Did he teach himself?

I have questions