#living gospel

[many-sparrows]

If you've been praying and asking to feel closer to God or to have more opportunities to share His love, start by helping the homeless people you encounter. Don't ignore them, they're who Christ asked you to take care of, they're who he came to commune with. And, like, don't preach at them. Help them.

[classycookiexo]

This is literally so iconic

[raks777]

HE LOVES YOU! YES YOU

[hychlorions]

[puhpandas]

somebody fucking save us matpat saying that Gregory "may not be as innocent as we all hoped or believed" is going to turn everybody even more against him we're going to be in the trenches for so long until whenever steel wool decides to save us 😭 the day Gregory escapes the evil child allegations is the day we can all be at peace

[pearlcaddy]

jukebox + endgame julie and the phantoms 1.09

[bebx]

John ♡

[front-facing-pokemon]

[meteorstricken]

I want to take a moment to speak frankly and somewhat personally. Historically, I've praised FFXVI for having an excellent trauma narrative, and for the most part, I still think that's true.

But in this moment, during the final fight with Ultima, I feel it falls short. Clive tells Ultima that he could have never known suffering and implies that if he had, as humanity has, that he'd know that suffering results in togetherness and strength.

In most trauma survivor communities, it's considered a grave taboo and even outright cruel to suggest that one owes their strength to suffering. It's considered a form of toxic positivity. In those selfsame communities, one anecdote you might hear repeated from a great number of trauma-informed clinicians is that part of what makes trauma so terrible is that survivors are not infrequently abandoned, sabotaged, or preyed upon as a direct result of the horrors that befall them--even blamed for it--and tragically, by the very shoulders that should have been there for support. By the very hands that should have lifted them up. That is, anguish and suffering often beget more of the same and bring alienation, despair, and learned helplessness.

Clive is wrong here about his well-supported experience being the norm, and he's dead wrong to connect togetherness and strength as symptomatic of having truly suffered. While I can certainly point to a cohesive string of story events that tell why he ultimately came to rely on this line of thinking, as a trauma survivor myself...this last fight always stings, because I invariably start to feel like I too am on the receiving end of his condemnation. Some of the things Clive says to Ultima are things that people have said to me in the past nearly verbatim. (I have since received apologies from those individuals as they've become better educated, but... their words still haunt me.)

That is no small part of where I found my "sympathy for the devil", so to speak.

And if you want an idea of what trauma recovery might sometimes come to feel like when, all too often, you've received the opposite of support--when the very people, communities, and institutions meant to ensure your survival and recovery have instead turned on you, betraying their intended purpose; when your strength and will to live renew or persist but by your own stubbornness and unwillingness to stay down...well...It's a thing that can wax bitter, counterdependent, and full of rage.

[justana0kguy]

2024 APRIL 18 Thursday

"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."

~ John 6:47-48,51

[worldwide-blackfolk]

Bless this fam — We Gonna Be Alright! 👍🏾🤟🏾✊🏾✊🏾

[thesilicontribesman]

Anglian/Viking Gritstone Cross Shaft, 800 to 900CE, The Yorkshire Museum, York

[raks777]

Cease Worrying! God's Got You

[wolfnesta]

Us nessian/anti acosf folk have the antidote for the ship war which is to literally ship and ignore canon 🤷🏻‍♀️ canon sucks yet we’ve been trooping on with it buzzing in the background like an annoying fly. What does canon matter except provide the characters to us and we can literally just write, commission, draw etc whatever we want 😂

[him-first]

reminder: only God can change your heart. no one else can.

[woobosco]

Afro Culture (My Culture)

@woobosco