swirlspice
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@anna3mart1n0 (Taken with Instagram at UCLA Intramural Field)
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summer selfie (Taken with Instagram at UCLA Intramural Field)
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Does not need this sort of temptation… (Taken with instagram)
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For the past three years, I’ve struggled daily with social anxiety and with periodic episodes of depression.
Even though I believe that...
by Bishop Peter Rogness of the Saint Paul Area Synod.
I do not support this amendment that prohibits the marriage of same-gender couples. I believe such a position is consistent with the work our church has done on these matters. We recognize that neither our church nor our society is of one mind. Our church has said both understandings and practices should continue to exist, side-by-side, both held by the conscience of faithful people. We affirm differing patterns of ministry and response to same gender couples. Some congregations have seen it as faithful and appropriate to offer support to what we have called “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.” This amendment would appear to preclude these congregations from offering that ministry and that support. More broadly, the amendment removes the possibility of our coming to an increased understanding of and support for such life-long, committed same-gender relationships as a society. It puts into the constitution one view which denies equal treatment to some couples under the law. I don’t believe it is either a conclusion to which our social statement leads us or a compassionate way for us to shape human community in this state.
Minnesotans, you will be hearing more about this angle on freedom. The freedom of churches who want to marry same-sex couples to go ahead and do that if they wish without interference from the government.
Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
John Scalzi, “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is” (via emm-in-sem)
The analogy seems apt. Scalzi makes a good point about the word “privilege” being offputting. I know it’s exciting when you finally learn what exactly privilege is and it’s all you want to talk about because you see it everywhere. But the word “privilege,” while not quite up there with “racist,” does tend to make people tune out, either because they don’t get it at all or they don’t get it in the same context that you do.
(via emm-in-sem)
When will it end?
Dude. I can’t pretend to know what it was like to be this teenager or any of the other young children who have committed suicide after being bullied by their asshole classmates (who learned it from their narrow-minded parents) for being gay. But this is another reminder that we’re still not safe. This makes me, a grown ass adult who has been more or less comfortably out for 12 years, feel unsafe.
LGBTQ* Spoken Word You Should Hear
“The Nutritionist” — Andrea Gibson
Andrea Gibson’s response to suicide, mental health, physical health, and what it means to breathe in each day.
The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”
The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.
The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.
The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”
The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.
The trauma said, “Don’t write this poem.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”
But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi dove
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poem.”The lamplight. Considering the river bed.
To the chandelier of your fate hanging by a thread.
To everyday you could not get out of bed.
To the bulls eye of your wrist
To anyone who has ever wanted to die.I have been told, sometimes, the most healing thing to do-
Is remind ourselves over and over and over:
“Other people feel this too.”The tomorrow that is coming, gone
And it has not gotten better
When you are half finished writing that letter
to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried
But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back”
There is no bruise like the bruise of loneliness kicks into the spineSo let me tell you I know there are days
it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets
when you break down like the doors of the looted buildingsYou are not alone
and wondering who will be convicted of the crime
of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shameYou are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy
I have never met a heavy heart
that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand
the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside
Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling houseBut my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing
A life can be rich like the soil
Can make food of decay
Can turn wound into highway
Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says
“It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.”I have never trusted anyone
with the pulled back bow of my spine
the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat
Screaming for their pulses to find the fight to poundFour nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge
I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town
Calculating exactly what I had to swallow
to keep a bottle of sleeping pills downWhat I know about living is the pain is never just ours
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo
So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window
When I can see what I couldn’t see before,
through the glass of my most battered dreamI watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin,
don’t try to put me back in,
just say “Here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better
but knowing as bad as it hurts our hearts, made of only just skin,
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming —
let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here
asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet
you — you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.
Raising your bright against the bitter dark
Your bright longing
Your brilliant fists of loss”
Friends, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my God that’s plenty
my God that’s enough
my God that is so so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over“Live”
“Live”
“Live”
Off-label uses of body parts and biological functions aren’t just acceptable and morally neutral. They are some of the most beautiful, honorable, and deeply treasured parts of the human experience.
Human beings took our animal need for palatable food… and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species… and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools… and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language… and turned it into King Lear.
None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction… that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.
And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.
Why should we see this as sinful?
What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?
Greta Christina, “Sex and the Off-Label Use of Our Bodies”
An interesting way to look at non-heterosexual sex.
(via emm-in-sem)(via emm-in-sem)
You’re also probably asking: What the hell are my parents going to say when I tell them I want to kiss other girls? And my friends and my co-workers and my classmates and everyone at my family reunion? And what’s that girl going to say when I tell her I want to kiss her? And how is my life ever going to be OK, and how can I go on being the same, and am I the same, and what else do I not know about what’s alive inside me? And who will still love me and who will start hating me, and is God involved, or the government maybe, and what if it’s only one girl I want to kiss, and how do I label myself and must I label myself, and what if I change my mind and, really, what if I do burn alive?
I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a scared lgbtq teen, not sure if you can tell your family and friends, not sure what will happen to you, terrified by all the Bible verses thrown around by “Christians” on the news — and then you see this. On a nationally broadcast TV show.
Well done, Glee. Well done.
