#Diana Bass

[fandomnerd9602]

After the Flashpoint Reset…

Female Justice League Headcanons

Kara Zor El/ Supergirl

Kara remembered you. She practically crushed you in a hug when she found you. As for you, it was a mystery who this super gal was but she was beautiful and she gave great hugs. You’ll see where this relationship takes you.

Barbara Gordon / Batgirl

You both find yourselves back at square one. Friends. But over time, love blooms as does little memories that seem like a whole life with one another.

Bailey Allen / the Flash

Bailey sought you out, just hoping she didn’t erase you from time itself. She found you working at the newspaper now as an intern. You didn’t know why this strange young woman was so interested in you but you found her quite beautiful.

Diana Prince / Wonder Woman

Diana couldn’t remember her life with you. But you never forgot. You found each other and you slowly worked to rebuild a life with her. Luckily, she still found herself falling for you, even if it was for the second time.

Allison Currey / Aqua Woman

No longer queen of Atlantis, Allison still found you. Nothing much changed really. You still love one another and tussle around.

Mary Marvel / Shazam

You were no longer the apprentice to Doctor Fate. But yet some small part of you could never forget her face, her smile. Like fate itself, you ran into her. Some small part of her remembers you too. “Hey” she offers you a smile. “Hi” you answer back.

[cartoonishly]

Coming 2024...

If you'd like to see your name in the credits of this one, you can donate $15 USD through Ko-fi. Every little bit helps. Looking forward to showing you when the time comes. 🔫💃

https://ko-fi.com/cartoonishly

[didee-anne]

I went back and watched my church’s livestream replay on YouTube to listen to my playing…… I sounded SO GOOD!!!! 😭

I’m finally starting to feel semi confident and like I do bring value to the worship team

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A new pro-forced pregnancy proposal in the South Carolina General Assembly that would make people who obtain abortion care eligible for the death penalty was portrayed as coming from the fringes of the Republican Party by one GOP lawmaker—but with 21 state Republicans backing the legislation, critics said the idea is representative of the party's anti-choice agenda.

Proposed by state Rep. Rob Harris, the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023 would amend the state's criminal code to give a zygote, or fertilized egg, "equal protection under the homicide laws of the state"—meaning obtaining an abortion could be punishable by the death penalty.

The bill does not include an exception for people whose pregnancies result from rape or incest, and political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen noted its language is vague enough to suggest that some people who suffer miscarriages could become eligible for the death penalty.

The exceptions provided by Harris include only people who are "compelled" by others to have an abortion against their will or people whose continued pregnancies carry the threat of "imminent death or great bodily injury," although numerous cases since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade have demonstrated how exceptions to protect a pregnant person's life often put their safety at risk.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), a rape survivor, spoke on the House floor last Friday about the bill and warned that its lack of exceptions for rape survivors was part of a "deeply disturbing" trend.

"To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges," said Mace, "has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape."

But with nearly two dozen co-sponsors, said human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid, the proposal appears to come from the "horrifically mainstream 'pro-life' GOP."

"It's not just one lone extremist," wrote Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone.

Harris and his co-sponsors—seven of whom have requested to have their names removed from the legislation as it's garnered national attention—are just the latest policymakers to propose punishments for people who obtain abortions. Alabama's Attorney General said in January that residents should be prosecuted for taking abortion pills, and former President Donald Trump said as a presidential candidate in 2016 that "there has to be some form of punishment" for abortion patients before walking back the statement.

A number of Texas lawmakers have proposed making people who obtain abortions eligible for capital punishment in recent years.

"If this surprises you," said historian Diana Butler Bass of the South Carolina proposal, "you haven't been paying attention."

[lowcountry-gothic]

In a week, we may shout our Easter Alleluias, but the truth is that our days cry out hosanna ['save us now!']. Children and teachers die in pools of blood at school, lies pervade and divide a desperate people, the rich steal everyone’s share, courts unwind decades of justice, and even a poisoned earth and sky rage against us. Pax Americana? We may have believed that once, subject to its deceptive promises. But the mask comes off and a faux peace makes itself known. A peace enforced by fear and violence, a peace of privilege and guns.

Diana Butler Bass, “Hosanna, not Alleluia“

[ideeylic]

Sometimes I remember that Jane Lynch can sing and then I think about Diana singing to little Reid and I have to sit down for a minute

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A Grounded Thanksgiving Prayer (2016)

Diana Butler Bass God, there are days we do not feel grateful. When we are anxious or angry. When we feel alone. When we do not understand what is happening in the world, or with our neighbors. God, we struggle to feel grateful. But this Thanksgiving, we choose gratitude. We choose to accept life as a gift from you, from the unfolding work of all creation. We choose to be grateful for the earth from which our food comes; for the water that gives life; and for the air we all breathe. We make the choice to see our ancestors, those who came before us, and their stories, as a continuing gift of wisdom for us today. We choose to see our families and friends with new eyes, appreciating them for who they are, and be thankful for our homes whether humble or grand. We will be grateful for our neighbors, no matter how they voted or how much we feel hurt by them. We choose to see the whole planet as our shared commons, the public stage of the future of humankind and creation. God, this Thanksgiving, we do not give thanks. We choose it. And we will make thanks, with strong hands and courageous hearts. When we see your sacred generosity, we become aware that we live in an infinite circle of gratitude. That we all are guests at a hospitable table around which gifts are passed and received. We will not let anything opposed to love take over this table. Instead, we choose to see grace, free and unmerited love, the giftedness of life everywhere, as the tender web of all creation. In this choosing, and in the making, we will pass gratitude onto the world. Thus, with you, and with all those gathered here, we pledge to make thanks. And we ask you to strengthen us in this resolve. Here, now, and into the future. Around this table. Around the table of our nation. Around the table of the earth. Amen.

[insect-whorefare]

finally hyperpop is good again

[dianaraven]

Me: lol ch*stian r*ck is stupid and weird

Me: *goes outside in Adar and suddenly is reminded that Jewish trance/dance music exists*

[fandomnerd9602]

What They're Like...

Female Justice League Headcanons

Kara Zor El / Supergirl

Curious. She's eager to explore all the new avenues that your relationship has to offer. She loves trying new things with you.

Barbara Gordon / Batgirl

Cuddly. Barbara loves just leaning into you, snuggling with you, taking selfies with you. She loves just being close to you

Diana Prince / Wonder Woman

Gentle. Diana loves taking things slow with you. Walks, dinner dates, other nightly activities ;)

Bailey Allen / The Flash

Fun. Bailey loves exploring town with you and just being with you. She'll find any and all opportunities to rush you out of the lab.

Allison Currey / Aqua Woman

Playful. She loves play wrestling and tackling you. Any and all excuses to get you to the ground, couch, sofa, whatever. You just love hearing her giggle.

Mary Marvel / Shazam

Professional. When you're around her family, you and her are the definition of a professional couple...now what you do when you're all alone is another story completely

[firstumcschenectady]

“The Tower” based on Deuteronomy 29:10-15 John 11:28-44

Last Summer Diana Butler Bass gave a sermon at the Wild Goose Festival that was shared and forwarded to me approximately 100 times, which was good because that's how many times it took for me to read it. And once I read it, I participated in the sharing and forwarding too. Her sermon was entitled “All the Marys”1 and it shared one of the biggest breakthroughs in Biblical Scholarship in generations.

Which, I know, is THE SINGLE MOST EXCITING THING I COULD EVER SAY! Or, perhaps, maybe, it might not be?

Stick with me.

It's worth it. This is a case where a huge break through in Biblical scholarship has pretty big implications for those of us who follow Jesus. I'm well aware they aren't all like that.

What I find interesting is that I've now read her sermon several times over the course of 10 months, and I can't seem to retain it. The implications are actually so big and require such an enormous re-framing of how I understand the early Christian story, that my brain keeps erasing it in favor of the familiar.

If you have spent less time in Gospel commentaries and/or seminary than I have, I suspect you are going to find it easier to accept these very simple truths than I do. Which is great! This is really awesome stuff, and I'd love for people to hear it, know it, and even retain it.

Diana Butler Bass tells the story of Elizabeth (Libbie) Schrader who felt moved to study Mary Magdalene, landed at General Theological Seminary in New York to work on a Masters of New Testament, and wrote her final paper on John 11. Her professor encouraged her to look at the newly digitized version of the oldest known text of John, Papyrus 66, from around 200 CE, and find something new in it.

I'm going to quote Diana Butler Bass here:

And so Libbie is in the library looking at the text and she sees this first sentence. And it’s in Greek, of course. “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Mary.” And Libbie said, “What? That’s not what my English Bible says. My English Bible says, ‘Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha.’” But the Greek text, the oldest Greek text in the world doesn’t say that. The oldest Greek text in the world says, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary.” There are two Marys in this verse. And Libbie went, “What the heck? What is going on here?” And she started digging into the text, zooming in on it to try to see what she could see over the digitized version in the internet. And lo and behold, Libbie noticed something that no New Testament scholar had ever noticed.

And that is, in the text where it had those two Marys, the village of Mary and his sister, Mary, and her sister, Mary, the text had actually been changed. In Greek, the word Mary, the name Mary, is basically spelled like Maria in English, M-A-R-I-A. And the I, the Greek letter I, is the letter Iota. And it looks basically like an English I. Libbie could see by doing this textual analysis that the Iota had been changed to the letter TH in Greek, Theta. That somebody at some point in time had gone in over the original handwriting and actually changed the second Mary to Martha. And not only had that person changed the second Mary to Martha, but that person had also changed the way it comes out in English. It says, “The village of Mary,” that would’ve stayed the same, “and her sister, Martha.” Someone had also changed that “his” to “her”; that “her” was originally a “his,” but they had changed it to a “her.”

Admittedly, the original text is a confused and not very good sentence. “Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary,” it’s almost like they’re heightening the fact that Lazarus has this sister, Mary. They lived in this village together, and Mary is Lazarus’ sister. Someone had changed it to read, “Mary and her sister, Martha.”

Libbie sat in the library with all of this, and it came thundering at her, the realization that sometime in the fourth century, someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha.

She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in at every single place and changed every moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, “Mary.” The editor changed it all.

Now, that's a pretty big deal, but I imagine that maybe you don't... umm... I think the words might be “Care that much.” But let me say, “yet.” I haven't gotten to the part where this MATTERS yet, that was a really important BACKGROUND. It also makes John 11 as we know it really hard to read and make sense of. But that's OK too.

So the underlying question in this is “why?” Why would someone go through so much trouble to create the character Martha out of what was once Mary? The key may be in the part of John 11 we read last week,

25Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: the one that believes in me, though they may die, yet shall they live; 26and the one who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord: I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one that comes into the world.

In the Bibles I have that “she” appears to be Martha but if she doesn't exist, then the she is Mary. And now we're getting to it. Christianity has long claimed that the first declaration that Jesus was the Messiah comes from Peter, the Rock, who is presented as having done so in Mark, Matthew, and Luke (the “Synoptics”) and that answer kinda worked because Martha was a pretty minor character and even though she says so in John, it is easy enough to ignore because Peter is THE ROCK, and Martha is... well, kinda a nobody.

Back to Diana Bulter Bass:

But if it is Mary, the Mary who shows up in John 11 is not an unremembered Mary... This Mary has long been suspected of being the other Mary, Mary Magdalene. Is it really true that the other Christological confession of the New Testament comes from of the voice of Mary Magdalene? That the Gospel of John gives the most important statement in the entirety of the New Testament, not to a man, but to a woman, and to a really important woman who will show up later as the first witness to the resurrection.

You see how these two stories work together. In John 11, Lazarus is raised from the dead, and who is there but Mary Magdalene? And at that resurrection, she confesses that Jesus is indeed the son of God. And then you go just 10 chapters later and who is the person at the grave? She mistakes him, at first, thinks he’s the gardener. She turns around and he says, “Mary,” and she goes, “Lord.” It’s Mary Magdalene. It is Mary Magdalene.

Oh, and now I get to place for you the final piece. Do you remember learning that Christ wasn't Jesus' last name? I do. Christ is the English version of Christos which was the Greek translation of Messiah, which literally meant “smeared” as in “smeared with oil” as in “annointed as king” because the Greek didn't have a Messiah concept like Hebrew did. So when we say Jesus Christ, we are actually saying “Jesus the Messiah.”

Well, a lot of people think Mary Magdalene was called that cause she was Mary, from Magdala. Except there was no village called Magdala. Diana Butler Bass summariezes it this way:

When we call her Magdalene, Mary Magdalene, is not Mary from Magdala. Instead, it’s a title.

The word magdala in Aramaic means tower. And so now you get the full picture. In the Synoptics, Jesus and Peter have a discussion. In that discussion, Peter utters the Christological confession. As a result of the Christological confession, Jesus says, “You are Peter the Rock.” In the gospel of John, Mary and Jesus have a conversation, and Mary utters the Christological confession. And she comes to be known as Mary the Tower.

Between these two confessions, are we looking at an argument in the early church? Peter the Rock or Mary the Tower?

But the John account was changed. The John story has been hidden from our view. All those years ago, Mary uttered those words, “Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” …

Mary is indeed the tower of faith. That our faith is the faith of that woman who would become the first person to announce the resurrection. Mary the Witness, Mary the Tower, Mary the Great, and she has been obscured from us. She has been hidden from us and she been taken away from us for nearly 2,000 years. …

Or, or perhaps and, you can leave here with a question: What if the other story of Mary hadn’t been hidden? What if Mary in John 11 hadn’t been split into two women? What if we’d known about Mary the Tower all along? What kind of Christianity would we have if the faith hadn’t only been based upon, “Peter, you are the Rock and upon this Rock I will build my church”? But what if we’d always known, “Mary, you are the Tower, and by this Tower we shall all stand?”

OK, that's it. That's my big Biblical Studies breakthrough story. Perhaps you might want to laugh with me that the big breakthrough is simply another affirmation that God loves and cares about all people, JUST LIKE THE TEXT FROM DEUTERONOMY said in a lot fewer words.

But, dear ones, what if we'd gotten both stories? And maybe the even more important question: how can we live now that we have both stories? How can we be followers of Jesus who was seen clearly by Peter and by Mary? How can we be people of faith who both follow a leader who is a rock on which we are steadied and a tower who lifts us all up? What if masculine and feminine were allowed to stand together as holy to the deepest core of our faith? What if there is a whole lot of space for both/and in our tradition!?!?

Someone actually didn't want that. Someone edited it out, and made Mary smaller. Dear ones, may we commit ourselves to the opposite. May we go out and make God, and each other, and all we meet BIGGER! Tower like, even. Amen

1 ALL THE MARYS Wild Goose Festival, Closing Sermon, July 17, 2022 by Diana Butler Bass https://dianabutlerbass.com/wp-content/uploads/All-the-Marys-Sermon.pdf

Rev. Sara E. Baron  First United Methodist Church of Schenectady  603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305  Pronouns: she/her/hers  http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 21, 2023

[didee-anne]

I’ve been up since 3:30ish this morning. Played Phase 10 on my phone until Ror for up for work and then after he left around 7 I got up for the day. I usually meet my friend Lori (and sometimes Cindy) for coffee every Tuesday at 9 and then hit the gym with Rory around 11 but since he works Tuesdays now and I was up early I went ahead and got my workout in before coffee!

It was Lori’s birthday yesterday so after the gym I stopped at the store and bought her a card and some helium balloons before meeting at the coffee shop. After coffee I ran to the bank and now I’m home eating lunch before I head out to clean my Pop’s trailer, fill all his water jugs, and drain all his tanks. Depending on how I’m feeling after that I might just take a nap before life group tonight but so far I’m feeling good!

After liam’s team won the championship game last night Jamie brought her bass over and we decorated them with stickers! 😍 I have a ton of those old sarcastic rabbit stickers and I’m tempted to cover the backside of it; the front would be all cute and floral with scriptures and then the back would be snarky and sarcastic. Like me! 😆

[astervoidtheartist]

"🎶rah, rah, like a dungeon dragon🎶"

Been a Nicki fan since I was four years old. still love her to this day <3 made some drawings of her, sorry they're kind of rushed I really wanted to have something to post

[polvuz]

I keep trying to make an justice league rock band au but fuck me there's more than 7 people on that motherfucking group. I cannot count that many. nor I have knowledge of so much instruments

[lowcountry-gothic]

Palm Sunday has always confused me. When depicted as a jubilant crowd, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But, if the crowd is understood as desperate subjects of a bloody empire, Palm Sunday comes into better focus.

Diana Butler Bass, “Hosanna, not Alleluia“

[love-heretic]