Caufman posted:

Do you mean like that you find certain topics of theology that once were interesting to you are now boring, or more like there is no witness-able God-willed inspiration in your day-to-day life?

Positively taking care of one's affairs, doing the things that promote the health of you and others while avoiding the things that will harm you and others, exercising your best judgment over the things you have credible responsibility over, these are all meaningful struggles to me. And since they're meaningful, I contemplate them in relation to what might be the ultimate meaning, which our brother Jesus called our father who art in heaven.


I confess that I've prayed for treasure. Cash, diamonds, career opportunities, favorable market conditions, blatant unrealistic Genie-style windfalls, I'm not particular. In studying what prayerful people have written, even beyond the Christian sacred texts, I'm repeatedly told that this pursuit of material satisfaction is a trap, and in truth I already have more than I need. That isn't the answer I wanted when I started my prayer, but is it the wrong answer? I will get back to you with my findings.

More often I've prayed requesting general or even miraculous well-being for people, myself and you all. This has been more fruitful, as I see that this is a powerful, meaningful motivation for approaching life, the struggle to come closer to what's good. In this pursuit I've learned that I am not alone in two ways: the first way is through the relations with the countless people living and dead who have adopted this struggle, and the second is (again) with the ultimate meaning, the omnipresent was-is-will-be, whom the trinitarians vow to call the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit, or at least as much of it as my fleshy bag of organic compounds is able to get close to.

These days I pray for and about many things and with as many people as are willing to join me and with as much worthwhile scriptures as I can read. If I calculated that out in minutes out of the day, it comes out to a shockingly small amount of time in comparison to what I'm spending farting around or preparing farts, so you are also safe to consider everything I say with a whiff of fart.

The Phlegmatist posted:

Poor Calvinists never got to produce any awesome art since they were afraid of nudity and depicting Jesus.

Until the Dutch Golden Age, which produced some really awesome artists like Vermeer but they still were shy of depicting religious themes.

The Phlegmatist posted:

Poor Calvinists never got to produce any awesome art since they were afraid of nudity and depicting Jesus.

Until the Dutch Golden Age, which produced some really awesome artists like Vermeer but they still were shy of depicting religious themes.

The Phlegmatist posted:

JcDent posted:

That is some dope depiction of a kitty who does not want to be there!

Smoking Crow posted:

But then I realized there's no way to completely cut myself off from God or understand Him completely, so I just decided to quit caring and try to do what Jesus said

Samuel Clemens posted:

Christianity Thread: I decided to quit caring and try to do what Jesus said

OwlFancier posted:

I am sad that the tendency of artists to depict historical figures in contemporary fashions died out.

I want to see John the Baptist in jorts.

OwlFancier posted:

I am sad that the tendency of artists to depict historical figures in contemporary fashions died out.

I want to see John the Baptist in jorts.

cis autodrag posted:

this is my favorite jesus:



also, after having now seen a poo poo ton of historical christian art in european museums for the last month, it kinda pisses me off how all these christian painters were still constantly looking for ways to get a titty into their work. like, y'all puritanical scrubs just as horny as the rest of us but then you act all holy.

P-Mack posted:

It seems you have internalized the puritanical scrub idea that titties can't be holy.

pidan posted:

Is that a snake in his other hand? What kind of hobbies do these kids have

quote:

There have been various interpretations of Judith Leyster's A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel by different scholars. Some, such as Neil McLaren, have argued that it represents the Dutch proverb "Een aal bij de staart hebben" (or "to hold an eel by the tail") meaning that you do not get to hold onto something just because you have it. This moralistic interpretation is supported Cynthia Kortenhorst-Von Bogendorff Rupprath argues, by the eye contact with the viewer made by the little girl in the painting as she wags her finger.

Other interpretations include allusions to other Dutch proverbs as well as the popular pastime in seventeenth century Dutch festivals or kermis of katknuppelen, the bludgeoning of cats. The depiction of children torturing or being scratched by cats was a popular one at this time in the Netherlands - often argued to allude to the Dutch proverbs "Hij doet kattekwaad", which translates literally to "he does the mischief of the cat" , or "'t Liep uit op katjesspel", the literal translation of which is "it ends in the game of the cat", which relate to mischievous or arguing children.

Leyster's own husband, Jan Miense Molenaer, included such an image in his group portrait "The Ruychaver-van der Laen Family" (c. 1629-30) in which a boy torments a girl by dangling a clawing cat at her by the tail while she shies away tending to her scratched hand. While these roles are reversed in Leyster's painting where it is the girl pulling the cat's tail, tragedy has not yet struck and the girl's eye contact and shaking finger leave it perhaps up to the viewer to interpret what result her actions will have. However Kortenhorst-Von Bogendorff Rupprath argues it would be wrong to interpret this painting as moralizing only on the girl's behalf.

The fact that the boy both holds and eel and is cackling bring in another Dutch proverb "Hij is zo glad as een aal" this proverb translates literally to "he is as glad as an eel" and means that one (often a child) is uncontrollable. Some scholars have also interpreted the eel being held as a kat aal or cat-eel, which were fed to cats as they were not worth eating. In this case it would be the boy who had enticed the cat into his grasp and he would be getting what was coming to him. There are other examples of Dutch paintings as well as poems, such as Jacob Cats in his introductory section of his book Kinderspel or Children's Games, which use children as a motif both to mock and to preach morals to adults, and it would seem, as Frima Fox Hofrichter argues, that this painting falls into that category.

The Phlegmatist posted:

Yep.



Heck there are even a lot of extant statues of Maria Lactans in churches which I imagine freaks out a lot of conservative Catholics who scream about concupiscence all the time. If seeing a boob is an occasion of sin for you that's on your head.

zonohedron posted:

Yep; the reason Catholics (should) talk about appropriate attire in church is to talk about respectfulness - if you are able to dress up, doing so shows respect for the place, the rest of the congregation, and Jesus who is always present in the tabernacle - not about tempting someone else. If you look at what someone else in the pew is wearing, and it distracts you from church, your job is to "keep custody of your eyes".

As far as boobs specifically go, I've nursed both my sons in church. Neither would tolerate anything covering their faces while they nursed (and I can't blame them, honestly), so odds are good that if those near me weren't keeping custody of their eyes, they saw some part of one of my breasts. Maybe even all of one of them, if the baby I was nursing decided to just unlatch, sit up, and stare around at everyone while I tried to both keep him from falling off my lap and hastily rearrange my shirt. Babies gotta eat, and I'm not gonna go out to my car and miss part of Mass because someone might have a problem with it.

System Metternich posted:

Detail of the singing angels on the Ghent Altarpiece. Tag yourself, I'm the guy in the middle who's about to fall asleep

System Metternich posted:

Detail of the singing angels on the Ghent Altarpiece. Tag yourself, I'm the guy in the middle who's about to fall asleep

The Phlegmatist posted:

Also there's Frans Snyder during the same time period who made his career out of drawing dead animals on tables. Notice the cat. There's always cats.

Hoover Dam posted:

Christianity Thread II: Scenes from the Development of the Turducken

quote:

Kortenhorst-Von Bogendorff Rupprath

HEY GAIL posted:

the little societies he valorizes terrify me. nobody there talks about how communities like that would deal with someone who was simply different. imagine being on the outside of such a group, and how quickly the sentiment there could turn nasty...

edit: the muenster anabaptists tried to do that, and they went from zero to child prophets, rape, and possible murder very fast

edit 2: human beings can't even manage a furry convention without sliding into dysfunction, what makes him think we can build self sustaining communities from the ground up without getting reeal culty

docbeard posted:

Or, you know, just try growing up in a small rural town and then tell me that tiny insular communities are perfect and blameless and holy.

HEY GAIL posted:

and big cities are just the same, just imagine a small town squished into a single block. i used to live in a building full of chinese immigrants and everyone on our floor would open their doors and sit in the hallways and chat in the evenings, it was a little town just thirteen stories up. small towns or deliberate communities don't make you any more virtuous, and if anything goes wrong it's harder to get help.

HEY GAIL posted:

and big cities are just the same, just imagine a small town squished into a single block. i used to live in a building full of chinese immigrants and everyone on our floor would open their doors and sit in the hallways and chat in the evenings, it was a little town just thirteen stories up. small towns or deliberate communities don't make you any more virtuous, and if anything goes wrong it's harder to get help.

quote:

and, uh, at least you're pacifists now? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

HEY GAIL posted:

edit 2: human beings can't even manage a furry convention without sliding into dysfunction, what makes him think we can build self sustaining communities from the ground up without getting reeal culty

docbeard posted:

But yeah, I get romanticizing things that seem to avoid the excesses you're used to, and there's good and bad in pretty much every way humans organize themselves, but you only have to look at some of the problems that, say, the Amish have had on occasion (I don't have specific anecdotes, but one hears things) to get that, while their way of life more or less works for them, it's not all roses and buggies.