TIL… that in the middle ages there was a popular belief in a demon of language, one who collected the words of people women gossiping in church, and the mumbled syllables of priests who weren’t saying mass properly. He was also held responsible for scribal errors. “Later he haunted printing presses, causing typesetters to make mistakes.”
TIL… there is a typo demon, it has a name, and it is Tutivillus (Titivillus).
Does it matter if it’s your kid or someone else’s kid?
Does it matter if it’s your god or someone else’s god?
no, but it doesn’t matter. God would not tell me to kill a kid, because i have already challenged him to 18 fistfights this semester alone and he is sick of it.
how much do you think it frustrates the Joker that a man in a bat costume punching a clown should be the funniest thing in existence but everyone in Gotham has decided to take it seriously
The annual infestation of robins has begun. Each year they arrive here en masse, roosting in our trees and gorging themselves on fermented crabapples and berries. Some of them get completely hammered and fall out of trees or fly into the walls of our house. I haven’t had to rescue any so far this year, but it’s only a matter of time. Each time I step outside to gather firewood, I am greeted by the loud hum of hundreds of wings as they scatter in every direction in a drunken panic.
I’M REALLY FUCKING TIRED AND I THOUGHT THIS WAS SOME REALLY WEIRD BATMAN SHITPOST
“Hello? 911? Jason Todd just threw up on my roof. Please advise.”
We have had to rescue our cats from drunk and belligerent robins who found fermented pyracantha berries a treat – robins too drunk to stand up, let alone fly, but are perfectly willing to take on confused and horrified cats, one-on-one. Or, failing that, to take a nap on the cat.
A communion wafer, according to the internet, is about .25g. Jesus was a healthy young man, who worked manual labor and walked everywhere. The average male in Biblical times was 5′1″ and about 110 pounds so call it 50kg or 50,000 grams. So 200,000 wafers to make up a whole Jesus. At one wafer a week that’s 3846 to eat a whole Jesus at weekly communion. If you went to Mass daily you could do it in under 550 years.
1000 communion wafers from Amazon costs $15, so acquiring a Jesus load would set you back about $3000
But that’s just the body. Jesus also bade his followers to drink his blood. How much of that Jesus communion wafer supply needs to be replaced with communion wine to account for his blood, and how much of that would need to be consumed to have drunk all his blood as well?
The human body contains roughly 5 liters of blood.
Communion wine costs about $66 for a case of 12 x 750 ml bottles (9000 ml).
So half a case is 4500 ml, or close enough if Jesus was on the small side which is reasonable given what we know of the times.
Thus, Jesus’ blood would be about 6 bottles of communion wine, costing $33.
How much of his weight was his blood, now? We can bring down the wafer count.
Osnap what an excellent question.
Water has a specific gravity of 1.0 and weighs 1kg/liter. Wine has a specific gravity if 1.5 thus weighs 1.5kg per liter.
4.5L of wine would weigh 6.75kg or about 15 pounds.
Reducing the wafer load by 6.75kg yields 43.25kg so call it 161,000 wafers or $2450 and change.
Honestly, for a criminal in Ankh-Morpork, being pursued by Samuel Vimes must be TERRIFYING Just imagine:
You’re walking in the Shades. There’s no one around and your gang is gone. Out of the corner of your eye you spot him: Samuel Vimes.
He’s following you, about thirty feet back. He gets out of the shadows and breaks into a sprint He’s gaining on you! Samuel Vimes.
You’re looking for your gang but you’re all turned around He’s almost upon you now and you can see there’s blood on his face My Gods, there’s blood everywhere!
Running from Commander Samuel Vimes He’s brandishing his badge it’s Samuel Vimes Lurking in the shadoooows! His Grace the Duke of Ankh Samuel Vimes Patrolling the streets (Samuel Vimes) Solving all crimes (Samuel Vimes) Arresting the guiltyyyy
Actual By-The-Book Samuel Vimes!
Now it’s dark and you seem to have lost him but you’re hopelessly lost yourself. Stranded with the Blackboard Monitor! You creep silently through the streets
Aha! In the distance! An old safehouse of your gang friends! Hope! You move stealthily toward it… but your scent! Ah! It’s caught by a werewolf!
Covering your tracks (Quiet, quiet) Sneaking to the safehouse (Quiet, quiet) Now you’re on the doorstep Sitting inside: Samuel Vimes
Lighting a Cigar (Samuel Vimes) He’s coming to arrest you (Samuel Vimes) You’re taking out your weapooon Threatening Commander Samuel Vimes
Moving in to fight with Samuel Vimes Get kicked in the crotch by Samuel Vimes Puking on the floooor Arrested by Samuel Vimes!
You limp into the dark streets Handcuffs tight around your wrists And he has won; you’ve been beaten by Samuel Vimes.
Hi there! A lot of people respond similarly to how your mother did when they first are introduced to the notion that God might be called more than “Father,” more than “He.” Hopefully with time she’ll get it a little better.
Here’s a passage from God’s Tapestry: Reading the Bible in a World of Religious Diversity about a not-dissimilar conversation between the author, W. Eugene March, and their mother (for the entire passage, see this google-books link):
‘ Some years ago I received an unexpected phone call from my mother. She was clearly agitated and thought I would share her concern, a theological concern. She was agitated about the language that had been used in fashioning a prayer to God in a study book that she and other women in her congregation were using.
…The issue was a prayer on which feminine metaphors were employed to describe God’s love for Israel. Wombs, labor pains, and nursing at nurturing breasts were used in a prayer to God. When Mom and her Bible study friends read this prayer, the explosion was not pleasant. And not surprisingly, an unofficial ‘denominational’ publication circulating widely in her congregation fanned the fire of my mother’s zeal to denounce perceived heresy.
It took me several minutes to get her calmed down enough for us to talk reasonably. When I did, I asked her to read the offending prayer to me. As she did, I recognized the clear influence of Isaiah. I said, “Hey, Mom, that language is straight out of the Bible.” She said, “It is not!” I said, “Yes it is!” “Is not!” “Is too.”
Finally, I asked her to get her Bible and we had a long-distance Bible study of some selected verses from the book of Isaiah:
For a long time I have held my peace, I [God] have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant. (Isaiah 42:14)
Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49:15)
Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her – that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. For thus says the [Holy One]: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. (Isaiah 66:10-13)
After she had read those verses, there was a long pause, and then she said, “When did they put that in there?” “It’s been there all along,” I replied. “Well,” my dear mother continued in a somewhat subdued tone, “why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”
“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” That is one of the questions that prompted this book. There are so many misconceptions about what the Bible does and doesn’t say, so much ignorance among otherwise well-educated, capable people. In my experience, the people in the pews are often well ahead of the clergy when it comes to the matters that really count in the way we order our daily lives and structure the communities in which we live. Their attitudes are usually based on what they recognize from their own experience of life. But they need knowledge about the support the Bible can offer and encouragement and permission from their leaders. They often think that what they believe must be heretical or offbeat, since no one assures them otherwise. ’
[end passage]
God exists beyond human language; They will surely not be offended to be called by a variety of terms. God has been called mother and midwife and Woman Wisdom for millennia, in Hebrew scripture before Jesus was born as well as in the earliest of Christian communities.
So when it comes to the fear of causing offense over different words for God, whom are we scared about offending? God? or other humans?
Here’s a post that talks about why we might call God other things beyond “Our Father” (we can keep calling them our Father as well!)
Here’s another post with similar stuff, including links to Bible passages. Because the Bible certainly does call God father, but also mother, and midwife, and rock, and light, and so much more. Lots of gendered language, lots of abstract and non-anthropomorphic language. The more variety we use, the closer we may get to just how big God is.
Here’s a post arguing that God is a woman, God is nonbinary, God is trans. (This one might be a little bit beyond what your mother’s ready to embrace right now, so I’d save this one for her for much later or just enjoy it for yourself.)
And our whole God beyond Gender tag contains even more stuff! Good luck helping your mom explores this. God is so much vaster than our human minds can fathom, but starting to explore many ways of thinking of Them helps.
Kimchi and Justice 