Should I make a side blog to use exclusively for reblogging silly nerdy stuff? I kinda want to do that.
It has been made, for those who want to see my nonsense
xx-jurassic-arthurian-xx asked:
May God grant you many years!
Многие лета!
Congratulations on your namesday
Thank you!!
Today’s my nameday and I’ve never met someone who’d heard of my name-saint before so I’m going to post a link to info for anyone who wants to learn about a lesser-known saint on his feast day.
And for anyone that hasn’t heard me talk about this yet; martyrs being beheaded was a big deal. Christians were often accused of treason for being Christians, which meant that they weren’t considered citizens. Beheading was specifically a citizen’s death, so when a martyr lived through all sorts of horrible tortures that would kill another person and whoever’s in charge of wanting the martyr dead was forced to go with beheading, it was as if the prosecutor were admitting that they were wrong.
Anonymous asked:
Hi! Thanks so much for that last answer. I'm still not 100% clear but it helped. I was trying to picture it as God not deciding what happens, but being like a prophet who sees how future events will happen. So when it happens in real time, it's like a movie he's seen before, where all the actors are going to do the same things he saw them do when he created the universe. Sorry, but I still have a little trouble with that, as it sounds like whatever I do, I was always going to do it anyway. So that means God knew right from the start who would be saved or condemned, and right now He already knows all about what happens to us. So I wonder why He's waiting for us all to change, and we should pray people repent, when it won't change anything and He already knows who will die unrepentant. I know He loves us enough to give us the freedom to reject Him, but I feel kind of bad for Him that He's wishing people will change when he's already seen they don't. So he's wishing for the impossible. Sorry if I'm being disrespectful I don't mean to be.
It might help if you thought about it as God existing outside of time since, well… He does. He created everything, including time itself, so He isn’t limited by it as you and I are. Meaning that it’s not so much that He’s seen it all before (as prophets might), but that He actively sees all of it at all times because He lacks our limitations. So again, it’s not like a prophecy where He knows beforehand what’ll happen and then watches it happen, it’s a matter of Him knowing what happens because He literally watches it happen at all times. He knows what you choose to do because He witnesses it happen as it happens, and He plans around us accordingly because He can see all time and act in all time. If that’s lofty or hard to wrap your head around, don’t worry because that’s what it’s meant to be; His Divine nature is beyond what we can possibly comprehend, so we have to make do with understanding what we can and accepting the rest.
As for why He hopes and waits for all people, it’s because He has to and wants to. He is the literal embodiment of Love and Goodness, the very source of all Love and Goodness in the world. If He stopped loving someone and hoping for their salvation, He wouldn’t be God anymore because He wouldn’t be the everlasting and unconditional Love that He is anymore. This is another thing that might seem crazy to you or I because we aren’t automatically made of His unconditional love and don’t come pre-made with the energy or patience to hope against all hope as He does. But that craziness is exactly why He does it – He’s our model in life for all our moral values and how we must treat other people. We may never reach the level of extreme love and hope God represents, but it’s our job to try and get as close as we can.
And don’t worry about being disrespectful; it’s better to freely ask and try to come to answers than to be afraid to ask at all. After all, if being disrespectful to God was an inexcusable disaster, we’d all just be doomed lol
Anonymous asked:
Hello! Can you help me understand the difference between free will and God's will? Because to me they're contradictory. I know God gave us free will so we had to choose to follow Him, so then it means something, but when anything happens (usually the bad stuff) people say it's "God's will" it happened, that it's all part of His plan so "everything happens for a reason" and we've just got to trust Him as He knows it's for some important reason. I see a lot of folks take comfort in that and it helps them cope in the bad times with grief, but to me it makes it sound like I don't have free will at all, bc it's all been planned out long before I was born and I'm here to serve a specific purpose in His plan, like a tiny cog in a machine of billions of cogs, each one vital to the system. Like creation is one big story God's writing and we're the plotlines. I just don't get how I'm free, yet God knows what's gonna happen to me anyway, so any "shock" life swerve of decision I make isn't so shocking as He knew it would happen from the beginning of time. So I don't get how He can love us and hope we'll change we He knows when we're born our whole life trajectory and if we'll become killers or whatever and never change. So what I'm asking is, are "fate" and "destiny" concepts real things, since it's sort of all already been decided?
The whole thing where people always say “it’s God’s will” when is comes to bad things has always…. Bothered me, because it’s 1) not fair that we only really hear it when bad things happen and 2) isn’t exactly true. Evil isn’t something God wills or causes – it’s antithetical to who He and even impossible for Him to do, as He literally is Goodness Itself. Evil is always the result of us and the world that fell because of us, plain and simple. What is God’s will is what happens after whatever evils happens: we know God will take any evil we could possibly cause and turn it into good. So really, what “it’s God’s Will” in context of evil and tragedy means is that “God’s Will will make something good out of this.” It’s part of God’s plan because He takes all of our flaws and failures and makes something out of it.
As for God’s Will vs our will, it is partially meant to be a bit of a paradox – we can’t truly understand or comprehend everything about God and His capabilities. But, there is a way for us to parse through this a bit.
Knowing what we will choose =/= destining us to make our choices. To demonstrate what I mean, let’s make a simpler example of this; let’s say that there’s a little kid with a sweet tooth sitting at a table. If I put a chocolate cake in front of this kid and leave the room, I know that this kid is most likely going to eat the cake. Knowing that a kid who likes sweets will want to eat a sweet doesn’t suddenly mean that the kid didn’t make the active choice to eat that cake, or that I destined this child to eat cake. Let’s even take this further and say that it’s this kid’s birthday, and because I knew the kid would eat the cake, I hid a box with a present inside the cake to give an extra little surprise to the kid. I knew what the kid would do, and decided to take that choice and make something special out of it.
The same goes for God knowing what choices we make and using our choices for His grand plan for the world. Him knowing what we’ll do doesn’t discount the fact that we had to make those choices ourselves and the life experience we go through because of it, and Him making things out of our choices is part of why our free will is important. Of course, what He knows and is capable of is infinitely greater and more complex than what we can accomplish or understand, but the basic principle is the same.
God gave us free will to choose or reject Him, and even the most vile acts done by humanity can and will serve some purpose in some future good. He loves us enough to let us choose to reject Him if we so desire to, loves us enough to let us experience life (life that comes about because He allows the parents to have the choice to create life – if He didn’t allow someone to come into existence because of what life they’d live He’d be negating our free will) and His love in life even if He knows that life leads us away from Him, and loves us enough to still hope we will choose salvation.
Regaled a bunch of young teens/kids (all siblings) that were talking about their first DnD campaign they started recently with stories from the most successful DnD campaign I’ve ever done with my family during fellowship hour today
Very gratifying to see them be so awed at the stuff I did lol
Anonymous asked:
i feel like i'm without so much by not being able to attend liturgy and other services. a sense of community, being able to make friends, encountering a potential suitor, the ability to volunteer, growing closer to god and learning all throughout. i'm stuck an hour away from the nearest parish, and i can't visit because i have to go to the protestant church that my parents attend. at 25 i feel pretty worthless, stuck and spinning my wheels while trying to make enough money to purchase my own home someday. i'm usually melancholic but the last stretch of time i had to go between going to an orthodox parish was 4 months, i'm not sure how long i'll have to wait this time. i can't even become a catechumen because of my irregular attendence
I’m not going to pretend that you’re wrong in saying you’re missing out by not being able to go to church more. You’re right in feeling so, and really it’s a great testament to how much you desire faith that you despair so at not being able to go. But I will say this; 25 is extremely young. You can afford to have a little hope for the future; you’re not alone (in both your struggles for money and branching out, or in feeling separated from faith) and you’ve got more time than you think. I say it a lot, but my father, a priest, wasn’t even baptized until his 30s, and didn’t even date my mom until after that baptism. You’ve got time.
I do have to ask though; why do you have to attend your parent’s parish? Are they not aware of your disinterest? Is there some condition where they’re requiring you to attend their church in order to have support from them? Depending on what’s going on, there are probably some steps you can take that’ll benefit both you and your parents in the long run. Find some way to gently talk to them and see if you can’t get them to understand what you’re feeling. It can be a tricky thing to do (especially with Protestants) but you never know how much you can get through if you don’t try.
If you can’t make headway, I can at least suggest trying to see if you can’t make time to attend weekday services. How many your Orthodox parish does will vary greatly, but there should be at least a few vespers and liturgies on major feast days throughout the year. Work can make this difficult (especially with such a distance between you and the parish) but it wouldn’t clash with your parent’s church’s services. In addition, try to keep in contact with the priest. He’ll very likely be understanding of your situation and find ways to help you grow in the faith while you’re struggling like this if you just ask for some help. Lots of parishes will also livestream their services nowadays; it’s no replacement for attending in person, but you can still learn a lot from just watching the services, and it will help you find questions you can ask the priest.
This is a difficult situation to be in and I’m sorry you have to go through it. You’ll be in my prayers, anon.
There is little that is more uplifting to listen to than good Mendelssohn music <3
I have come to the very unoriginal conclusion that pop music would as a whole be better if autotune-type programs all spontaneously disappeared from existence
I mean, nothing can save the terrible, repetitive, and often sex-obsessed lyrics so many pop songs use, but at least the singing would be more palatable.
Anonymous asked:
what ever happened to that guy with the manga cat icon and the suicidal girl who kept trying to cut her face open... did i hallucinate them...
I think the guy you’re talking about had the username Aletheius (or something like that… His Tumblr blog got deactivated so I can’t look for the exact spelling). Last I heard, he’d moved over to Twitter a few years ago but that’s all I know.
As for the girl, I have… no clue who you’re referring to. Maybe someone else who sees this ask will have an idea, but I can’t help you there
Most important thing I have learned as a musician; NEVER underestimate how important sleep is to learning new things.
I CANNOT tell you how many times I have torn myself away from struggling through a difficult passage in a piece after I’ve worn myself out in order to let it rest until after I sleep, and Lo And Behold, it’s a million times better the next day.
Sleep (especially good sleep- get good sleep please) solidifies things you learned over the course of a day, especially when it comes to things involving physical motion. If you’re Really Struggling with learning something, get through a rough session of learning and go to bed. You’ll understand it better the next day. It’s hard to do sometimes because when you’re in the groove you want to get it in one go but believe me when I say it’s just not going to happen, especially if you’re getting frustrated.
