Table for two, please. #love (Taken with instagram)
Reporter: I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?
And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?
Scarlett: How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?
The respect given to you if you’re a man in the entertainment business, and the respect given to you if you’re a woman in the entertainment business: all perfectly summed up in one idiotically thought out line of questioning.
(via wontbecomplacent)
[video]
They said that if I entertained the hope that those without access to the gospel might still be loved and saved by God, I would fall prey to the dangerous idea that God loves everyone, that there is nothing God won’t do to reconcile all things to Himself.
They were right. I have.
They said that if I looked for Jesus beyond the party line, I could end up voting for liberals.
They were right. I do (sometimes).
They said that if I listened to my gay and lesbian neighbors, if I made room for them in my church and in my life, I could let grace get out of hand.
They were right. It has.
They told me that this slippery slope would lead me away from God, that it would bring a swift end to my faith journey, that I’d be lost forever.
But with that one, they were wrong.
Yes, the slippery slope brought doubts. Yes, the slippery slope brought change. Yes, the slippery slope brought danger and risk and unknowns. I am indeed more exposed to the elements out here, and at times it is hard to find my footing.
But when I decided I wanted to follow Jesus as myself, with both my head and heart intact, the slippery slope was the only place I could find him, the only place I could engage my faith honestly.
So down I went.
- Rachel Held Evans, “They Were Right (And Wrong) About the Slippery Slope”
My venn diagram of Neil Gaiman’s advice for working freelance from this amazing speech http://vimeo.com/42372767
My morning pay: this view. #minneapolis #worthit (Taken with instagram)
Rachel Held Evans: "Ask a Gay Christian" -
by Justin Lee, director of the Gay Christian Network.
Just a really fantastic blog post. Go read it. My favorite part (but every word is good):
Given all the nasty rhetoric that has been aimed at the LGBT community — and in that sense, at you personally — by Christian and Christian political leaders, what is it about Christianity itself that’s so compelling that you haven’t been turned off completely by so many of its messengers?
One word: Jesus.
The church is human, and we make mistakes. Sometimes we don’t represent God very well at all. But Jesus represented God perfectly as the incarnation of God. He loved the people his culture didn’t love, he interacted with people he wasn’t supposed to interact with, and he refused to distance himself from the people others called “sinners.” Jesus’ harsh words were aimed at the religious leaders of his day who, in their zeal for correct doctrine, were pushing people away from God. He didn’t run for office or yell at sinners through a bullhorn. He loved, healed, and fed people, and then he let them beat him and hang him on a cross.
That’s my God.
(Book group here.)
Like Alison, I tore through this book in a day. It was just far too engaging to put down. Really well written, with very clear voices, and just the right amount of teenager to it.
I ranted to Alison and Ari almost immediately after starting:
Okay, next choice of book is required to NOT be something where I am horrified to turn the page and find out that the narrator / the narrator’s beloved whoever has been CEASED TO BE BURDENED WITH EXISTING. First it was Devoured by the House Monster and now it’s Ravaged with Cancer. Good grief.
I mean, we already know Hazel has cancer. I’m just sort of waiting for her to die, or for her mother to get hit by a truck, or for Gus’ previous girlfriend to come back from the grave and eat her, zombie-like. DREAD. Your book choices so far FILL ME WITH DREAD.
As it turns out, my dread was not misplaced. I guess that’s a sort of obvious consequence of reading a book about kids with cancer (or, as I’m sure Augustus would prefer, “youth suffering from an abundance of unrestricted cellular expansion”).
I struggled a little with the dream-come-true-ness of both delightful, verbose, intelligent Augustus and with the trip to Amsterdam as a whole. I also wanted to throttle van Houten. Maybe I was hoping for less of a violent swing between beauty and insolence.
I really appreciated one thing about Hazel in particular. She is somewhat glib about oblivion. She wants the story of her and Augustus to die with them. She is, really, very philosophically practical about how we will not be remembered forever. And yet she is insistent on meeting van Houten, not to tell him so much how his book has changed her life, but to find out what happens to Sisyphus the Hamster and the rest of the characters. She wants the story to continue. The tension in that is delicious.
Last year, I took a class on theological responses to the existence of evil and suffering. I also watched one of my best friends go through losing her one-year-old nephew to cancer. Suffice to say I have some interesting conclusions on the subject of suffering, particularly in the lives of young people. Most of the Encouragements in Gus’ house, like Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy? made me want to throw a literal brick through their window. I appreciated that Hazel didn’t get nearly as angry as I did about them. The situation, and her life experience, called for wry commentary instead: ”the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.” I also really liked that she concluded, in the end, that funerals are for the living.
Thanks for this selection, team. Keeping this one on my bookshelf and recommending it to others. :)
This is the story
of how our Creator has sustained creation,
having loved the good-but-not-perfect earth,
of having made it needlessly,
out of sheer extravagance.
This is the story
of tripping over ourselves trying
to gain power other than that of great love
though we tried to leave it behind
out of arrogance that we could do it ourselves.
This is the story
of falling down, down, down
to earth to realization to humility to fear
realizing our strength lies only in weakness
and our hope at the edge of despair.
This is the story
of redemption and reconciliation
as extravagant as the first day of creation
in which love outpours in abundance
a love which has grown from the beginning of all things.
(Source: stumblingintofaith.blogspot.com)