Green Wheat Fields, Vincent Van Gogh

Happy 4th of July x

(neither Catholic nor Protestant) chiming in to add another dimension; the problem isn't just that they're not letting Catholic priests keep the seal of confession (that is a problem), this bill explicitly protects E-V-E-R-Y other type of confidentiality and seal known to law, including several I had never heard of.

Just a 'screw you' to religious persons, that is the one type of confidentiality that is expressely being targeted.

I am, among other things, a mandated reporter myself, and glad to be so. I feel strongly about the evils of child abuse and the duty of every person to act & prevent it.

However, this bill wasn't designed to protect children*, it was made to attack religious freedoms.

*please check with the child abuse prevention organization of your choice; note that their advocated approach to prevent/end child abuse has nothing to do with diminishing religious freedom or the seal of confession. That is not the root of the problem, and so cannot be the focus of an effective solution.

NCR

Washington Governor Signs Abuse Bill Requiring Priests to Break Seal of Confession

Spokane Bishop Thomas Daly said in a statement that clergy there would not break the seal of confession even if required to by law.

Hey, pray for these priests extra hard, Washington state just passed a bill trying to force them to break the seal of confession. Pray for your politicians and victims of abuse while you are at it

The way you change your immediate reactions to things is that you catch yourself having an uncharitable/bigoted/overly judgmental thought and you catch it and replace it and then you do that a hundred times a day for your whole life and eventually one day like five years later you realize that you think differently now and you’ll always be working on something but that’s how life goes and that’s fine.

I did a thing

Falco Peregrinus, pencil drawing by T. S. R. Hardy, June 1942.

Robert Hardy was a competent artist, and kept a small number of his own pencil and watercolour artworks produced in his later teenage years during the early 1940s.

Chatting with friends and one joked about not wanting IRL friends to know what she posts on TikTok.

I pointed out that she's linked to her A03.

(also her TikTok)

Stay safe out there

😘

they should invent a day that does not exhaust me and suck the life out of me

An incomplete list of Narnia/Bible analogs that are gorgeous and make me want to scream:

Shasta and Moses (They come out of the desert to meet God on a mountain. Raised among strangers and foreigners, without any idea of the glory for which God has destined them, they run for freedom and find themselves leaders of their people. When they ask, “who are you?” the strange voice answers only, “I am who I am; that is, myself.”)

Susan and Martha (Your sister sits at the Lord’s feet and runs to his side every time, as though nothing else matters. Yet you have people to worry about, practical concerns to consider. People need to eat, after all, and who will care for their needs if not you? Should you weep when your Master chides you for the busy anxiousness of your heart? When you come to him crying for your lost brother, you know that he will comfort you.)

Lucy and David (Glittering, righteous children after God’s own heart who are only too fallible. Writers of songs and dreamers of dreams, both of them. You can’t convince me that Lucy wouldn’t have danced before the Lord in a linen ephod, or that David wouldn’t have run at Aslan to bury his face in that golden mane. Stubborn, both of them, yet able to face correction and turn guilt back to praise. Brave, faithful youngest children turned great kings and queens.)

Emeth and Rehab (We ask ourselves how those who never hear the Gospel can have any hope for salvation and are given such small, human answers. The road is narrow, yet here this stranger says “I know your God.” How did He reveal Himself? we want to plead. No answer. The road is narrow, yet these few strangers know His character and His saving power. Someday, we will see them in Heaven.)

Edmund and Paul (“Why are you persecuting me?” calls a voice from above, and just like that the spiteful child is saved. What great things they shall do in the name of the Savior, sure in the knowledge that the Lord came to save sinners, of which they are the worst. They sail across many seas; sometimes, they sail smoothly on and sometimes they are shipwrecked. Still, the King is just and good.)

Reepicheep and Elijah (I am enraptured by stories of a righteous, brave soul who is taken home without tasting death. One is taken in a ship on the water, the other in a chariot of fire. Full of joy and ready to meet the King, both are taken beyond sight. Yet we are sure that their arrivals were safe and that they are in that Far Country even now.)

Flying fox bat eating some frööt

bro doesn’t even have a certain je ne sais quoi