Blogaround

"Want to see a bewildered dog surrounded by otters? Of course you do." Image source.

1. Awesome Cosplay Takes Star Wars, Superheroes Back To The 16th Century (posted November 17) Nice costumes.

2. Living authentically as a transgender priest in the Christian Church (posted November 17) "Sometimes the church talks about transgender people as if we are 'out there' in the world somewhere, but the reality is that we are in your churches sitting in your pews, we are called to ministry, and we too are faithful followers of Jesus."

3. “Real Marriage” review: 139-155, “The Porn Path” (posted November 17) "Argument #2: watching/reading/seeing porn will result in All of the Most Awful Bad Things."

4. A Great Dane's Giant Litter: 19 Puppies (posted November 18) You guys they are adorable.

5. Incredible Performance of ‘Mary Did You Know’ Will Get You in Christmas Spirit (posted November 14) This is amazing. And I don't usually even like that song.

6. A World Without Consent (posted 2013) In purity culture, "Protest, conflicted sex, and a veneer of regret functions as a sort of polite fiction, and many of the kids get what they want out of it. They have sex with their partner, and they don’t feel quite as much guilt because they can convince themselves that 'It Just Happened.'"

7. Sex and Respect (posted November 19) " There was nothing holding him back from having sex with me but me—no God, no eternal damnation, no belief that having sex before marriage would lead to broken relationships, just me. And somehow that was enough."

8. 'I’d Rather go to Hell for Telling the Truth' (posted November 13) "Years would pass before I was able to love myself more than my church members, former pastors, and even God supposedly loved me. It’s complicated because the churches I attended were spaces where my spirit was healed and killed. In fact, some of the worshipping spaces I attended were home to some of the most caring people who just happened to proclaim uncaring theologies."

9. ‘Do I need to turn her in?’ — something has gone very, very wrong (posted November 21) "Just consider how many utterly wrong turns one has to take to arrive at the position in which a little girl comes to your Sunday school class and your first thought is 'Do I need to turn her in?' That’s sick."

10. This guinea pig walking a dog:

Image source.

11. Ghostly Grief: On Miscarriage and Loss (posted November 19) "Did I lose a child? Can you lose a child that never really existed?"

12. When God Became the Devil (posted November 20) "The drama of salvation was no longer an external conflict between God and the Devil but an internal conflict within God's own heart, a conflict between God's wrath and God's love."

13. When none of it mattered (posted November 17) "All that I’d done, all that I’d learned, all that I’d believed, couldn’t spare me from the worst pain and deepest heartaches and greatest losses. It couldn’t spare me from it, and it didn’t comfort me in it."

14. Candy Land Christianity (posted November 19) "Evangelicals have been operating under the assumption that only disembodied souls will last for eternity, therefore the only thing that matters is soul conversion." Amen to all of this.