with my shirt tucked in & my shoes untied

"[Parents should] recommend some books with female leads that your son would enjoy reading. If your next question is “Why?,” then ask your daughter why she liked Harry Potter. She might say it was a good story, great characters, and a fantastic world. Who cares if the main character was a boy? In fact, girls will pick up a book with a hero or heroine equally. According to my excellent librarian resources, boys will actively avoid books with a girl as the main character. What’s the problem? I have no idea. Why should you encourage your son to read books with heroines? That’s easy. You want your son to grow up knowing that a strong female for a friend, wife or boss is normal and good."

Rebecca Angel (via ablogwithaview)

May 11th

28482

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Via ablogwithaview

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thesufjanstevensmodel5000:

Do I prefer chaos over order? Housekeeping baffles me. I take mild offense at the organizational tools of the home: file cabinet, clothes closet, dish rack, or bookshelf—the “orderly righteousness” of these objects advocates nothing more than passive-aggressive coercion (and/or moral censure). They condescend to their consumers. In seeking containment, they invariably contain us with prescriptive order.

Entropy is not necessarily chaotic, as I once believed: “The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.” Does “uniformity” suggest order, organization, and monotony? I cannot bear that the ultimate outcome is characteristically boring and fundamentally static (death). And what of the immeasurable beauty and diversity of the world in perpetual motion? How did we come to inherit the earth with all its stunning and vigorous amenities?

Inertia is the enemy of all life. We must keep moving while we can.

March 1st

178

Via thesufjanstevensmodel5000

# important things

"He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. He overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it."

Charles H. Spurgeon (via modernhepburn)

March 1st

1737

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Via modernhepburn

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"I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be."

Roald Dahl (via vesperesque)

February 20th

17367

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Via meggielynne

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"Date yourself. Take yourself out to eat. Don’t share your popcorn at the movies with anyone. Stroll around an art museum alone. Fall in love with canvases. Fall in love with yourself."

(via mickeylund1)

February 12th

113628

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Via mickeylund1

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"I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office."

Jennifer duBois, Writing Across Gender (via diandelion)

December 31st

8264

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Via diandelion

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» The best part of this post is quoted here, but some nice Advent thoughts

“As I ponder grieving mothers from Congo to Connecticut to the Cancer Center, I wonder what kind of God they believe in. In fact, I wonder what kind of God I believe in. I grew up in a form of Christianity that claimed to know a lot about God. However, the longer I live and the more I see of the world, the less I think I know about God. In fact, I would say that today, December 23, 2012, I can sum up what I know about God in one word: Jesus. What I know about Jesus is that he showed up in flesh and blood on this sphere of sorrows that we call Earth. He listened, he talked, he worked, he partied, he taught, he walked, he loved, he healed, he challenged, he encouraged, he cried. He showed up. He was Present. Yes, I know, there’s much more to say about Jesus. There is much more truth and wisdom and guidance and challenge to be drawn from his life and the expanse of his redemptive purpose. But today, as I sit in a coffee shop with a television news program looping in the corner and people dashing in and out for liquid shots of energy, this is the little truth that grips me. Jesus showed up. In our broken world. Day after day.”

December 23rd

3

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