YUP. It’s a travesty.

So well-earned!

LAPD does NOT need more cops. We need better social services to prevent issues from arising in the first damn place!

If a quiet, dark room was *one option* among several for kids who prefer that for their dysregulation, I’d see the benefit, but this as a catch-all? Punitive and mean.

It ISN’T HARD.

Raised Calvinist and I would fight God on behalf of Woke Pope.

Bestie made cabbage soup and it was delicious. I laid on the floor in a puddle of sunshine for a bit and just breathed.

Many folks don’t. You can also get a tax advocate if something goes awry with the IRS. We’re just…not told about these places for help.

My heart fucking *breaks* for her; for how common this experience is. 😔

This is what happens when men are taught that women and girls are *property.*

What the LITERAL fuck

What a perfect sweet girl! So brave, so strong!

11am isn’t too early to have a margarita, right? 💀

It’s viral and cognitive poison *on top* of a generation that already had lead poisoning.

Having all this happen during perimenopause is just insulting.

I understand this on a deep, albeit Protestant level. 🫂💗

Listening to Part 2 of the Jeffrey Epstein episodes on “Behind the Bastards” with @iwriteok.bsky.social , and I think another reason for Epstein et al’s concerted efforts to destroy public education is because teachers are *mandated reporters.* It’s another way to dodge accountability.

Thinking of Virginia Giuffre and her family. Wishing this happened sooner, but would not have happened at all without her heroism.

I see you. 🫂💗

Been screaming about this bloviating sack of ego for twenty years now. I don’t have the words for how incandescently angry I am that he is finally getting the power and clout he has craved.

Both/and.

Ashes, bread, and wine.

This is all we have. And it is enough.

The knowledge that this is temporary; fleeting, and that what I do with this life-from-dust *can* be the only thing that really matters to me, while also knowing that my tiny little mote in a constantly expanding galaxy doesn't really matter at all--and seeing how that is a blessing.

What I want is the quiet humility of ashes, bread, and wine. The quiet wonder of bearing God's breath with all creation. The dignity and ferocity of justice and grace.

If religions are what their adherents *do,* I want no part of most of the Christianity I see around me: Selfish, abusive, unkind to the poor and desperate and lonely; crying about being persecuted while grasping for power and authority. I want no part of that.

Ash Wednesday in February 2020, just prior to the outbreak of the pandemic in the States, was the last time I sat in a church service. The last time I participated formally in the faith that I no longer know what to do with.

Ash Wednesday is humbling. You walk up, kneel, the priest blesses you, reminds you that life is wonderfully and horribly temporary, and the ashes and oil from the palm fronds of Palm Sunday are thumbed across your forehead in the shape of a cross.

Ash Wednesday is not a church holiday I grew up with; not a part of the rigidly iconoclastic Calvinism that forced my faith into strictly intellectual channels, with even the physical act and metaphor of communion only being offered once a month or so.

Where else are we going to get our mammalian need for feathered helmets met, ROBERT?

If your entire worldview is predicated on hierarchy, with a male God as the ultimate unquestioned authority and male pastors as the divinely “called” voices that speak on His behalf, you are going to develop power structures that MUST have a subject class in order to function.