— Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

— Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being (via quotespile)

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Happy Birthday to Flannery O’Connor!

Fac me vere tecum flere crucifixo condolere donec ego vixero Make me with thee lovingly to weep, with the Crucified one to feel the pain, as long as I shall live

The crown of thorns which was believed to have been worn by Jesus Christ and which was bought by King Louis IX in 1239

Altarpiece with Christ, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint Margaret by Andrea da Giona, The Cloisters

The Cloisters Collection, 1962 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Carrara marble

St Mary, Stannington, Northumberland

Happy Scrabble Day!

Did you know that Oxyphenbutazone is the highest scoring word a player can make in a single turn? You’d need to join all seven of your tiles with eight already on the board across three triple word scores to gain the 1,778 points.

Do you use a dictionary when you play scrabble? 

Santa Maria Novella, Firenze.

may people with pure intentions find people with pure intentions

椿に目白と四十雀図|Japanese White-eye and Titmouse on a Camellia Branch by Utagawa Hiroshige, Asian Art

Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1918 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Polychrome woodblock print

A boy born with just two percent of his brain has defied doctors’ predictions after his brain grew back to 80 percent of the average size. Doctors had told the parents to terminate pregnancy not once but five times.

I saw this before some time ago and it just absolutely fascinated me because there was never any other information provided and the little info that was given was tantalizingly vague. Even with 80% of his brain growing surely he had all kinds of severe issues, right? And even if his brain did grow back he might not have lived very long. So I did a little research on him.

Everything happened exactly like it says in the pic- the parents were strongly urged to abort the baby five separate times, and they refused all five times, and he was born with two percent of his brain and he does now have 80% of it.

What the blurb doesn’t say is that the little boy’s name is Noah Wall and he’s now a very happy, healthy, six year old boy.

Doctors said he would be SEVERELY mentally disabled, unable to see, hear, talk, or even eat. The doctors were wrong. He can do all of these things and more. By age two he was sitting up straight and singing; he can play with legos and computer games, he’s learned how to count, he can hold perfectly normal conversations, and he loves painting. He just recently wrote his name for the first time, and he’s trying very hard to learn how to walk (but that’s still a long way off because he’s mostly paralyzed from the waist down). Most of this probably just seems like boring normalcy, but considering he was born with only 2% of his brain he shouldn’t be able to do ANY of this. The fact that he lived beyond his first birthday is a miracle in and of itself.

Noah hasn’t had a brain scan since he was three years old, so no one knows if his brain has grown more since then, but all indications are that he’s developing physically at a normal rate, and he’s developing well enough mentally that his parents recently enrolled him in a local elementary school- not any special education classes, a normal, mainstream school. It’s hard work for the parents, there’s tons of medical appointments, regular surgeries with lengthy recovery times, they had to shuttle Noah to a neurophysics center in Australia to help him learn how to sit upright. But they both agree he’s worth it.

This is what his mom Shelly has to say:  “I thank him every night before he goes to bed. I say ‘Noah, thank you for such a lovely day. I’ve loved my day.’ And he’ll say ‘I love you, Mummy. Night night.’”

https://nypost.com/2019/02/20/boy-born-without-brain-defies-odds-to-live/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/boy-born-with-2-percent-of-brain-defies-odds-learns-to-count-and-surf_2810231.html

https://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/features/the-boy-born-without-a-brain-is-now-a-practical-joker-who-loves-playing-mar

I saw a video on him and his parents awhile back and it’s such a happy story. ^^ Just another invalid deformed beyond hope and destined to be a vegetable who should have been killed in the womb, amirite?

This really speaks to cases where people think that killing a baby is “the right thing to do” because of probabilities and likelihoods.

Monastery of Vatopaidi, Mount Athos, Greece

“We think we have believed the Good News that “God is love” (I John 4:8) and that He makes “all things work together for good for those who love Him” (Romans 8:28)—and we have, but our belief is mainly what Newman called “notional assent” rather than “real assent.” It is assent to the truth of the idea more than to the reality. It is easy to say a total Yes to the truth of Christ. To do that is simply to be a Christian. But it is hard to say a total Yes to Christ. To do that is to be a saint.

Our faith is true, and precious, and priceless, but it is not heavy enough. It is like a beautiful golden cloud. When life deposits a heavy burden on us, it falls through the cloud like a cannonball because it is heavier than any cloud, even a golden one. Our faith must become more than a cloud; it must become a thing, a thing more real and solid and substantial than any burden. And that thing can only be “Jesus only.” It cannot be “Jesus if ” or “Jesus and” or “Jesus but.” In Christ there are no ifs, ands, or buts. (II Corinthians 1:20)”

- Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Jesus

St Mary the Virgin, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

“Every single day I’m waking up to dozens of messages from people who walked into the film pro-choice to watch it as a critic and walked out pro-life.”

- Abby Johnson, Unplanned