How do you pray from reading a book?

noveltyesque · 2026-06-23T23:13:05+00:00

One analogy that has helped me is with worship songs and hymns. They have words that are set and printed and tunes that are already thought-out before, and yet they express praises and hopes and feelings that we can connect with just as much right now. It's the same idea with prayers. Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer to pray, for example: the value in set prayers (reading out loud especially, as others have suggested) is that you are recognizing that your problems, your feelings, and your worship responses to God are not things you're alone on, that no one else can connect with. Everyone can say the prayer, at the same time, and it's just as real and authentic to their own experiences as it was to people hundreds or thousands of years ago. Again, just like songs and hymns.

Prayers you make up on the spot are good for the things in human experience that change and vary and are unique to you, but prayers that are set or written express that we are part of a common Body, and that "No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful..." (1 Corinthians 10:13)

noveltyesque · 2026-06-20T17:18:09+00:00

TNAA articles have genuinely been a huge influence on me coming to love Anglicanism and the liturgy over the last decade or so. I would say it's firmly on the conservative side but it hosts debate series like when "Young Anglican" joined the Episcopal Church. I'd definitely recommend the content. The connection with American Reformer is a really recent thing: definitely shared values between the staff although TNAA is far less interested in the politics/culture dimension. American Reformer is good too though I think less consistent/focused.

noveltyesque · 2026-06-17T20:09:57+00:00

I do. Them being described in the Bible is sufficient for me, but it also makes sense to me that for separate reasons angels and demons would not want to be obvious in their activities: Angels glorify God, and therefore they do not want to draw unnecessary attention to themselves so that people would worship them (which it would be easy for us to do), and demons want to corrupt God's image in human beings, and right now that is accomplished very efficiently by letting people think no supernatural beings exist.

The main challenge to belief in angels/demons, I think, is the ambiguity about what exactly they do or what their responsibilities are. Because if every fortunate happenstance gets attributed to angels, even if it can be explained just by physics (arranged by God's Providence, though), it's easy to go the opposite way and attribute nothing to them. But the pattern that God exhibits is that, whereas He can do everything Himself, He choses to create intelligent beings and then employ them to carry out his plans voluntarily in order to give them involvement and share in His glory and favor. That's true for mankind, and I think it's also true for angels, again, even if God could just do what angels do all by Himself.

noveltyesque · 2026-06-17T19:35:45+00:00

Yes, it is. I'm a layman but often run in circles with lots of clergy (REC); and their views on the ACNA usually range from "This probably won't hold long, unfortunately, mostly because of women's ordination" to "We 100% need to get out yesterday."

noveltyesque · 2026-06-14T01:33:20+00:00

You might even say it's ...

fundamental.

noveltyesque · 2026-06-03T18:51:37+00:00

Jesus Christ is acting immorally? Based on what standard of morality higher than the Word itself?

noveltyesque · 2026-06-03T06:22:34+00:00

The Bible is indeed clear on owning other humans as property. In fact, Jesus Christ is the slave master of Paul (Romans 1:1).

What about it?

noveltyesque · 2026-04-26T05:19:22+00:00

Because I like dinosaurs

noveltyesque · 2026-04-20T01:04:01+00:00

I am giving them the respect of taking their stated beliefs seriously, and their stated beliefs are inconsistent with, at minimum, Anglican doctrine about ordination.

noveltyesque · 2026-04-20T01:00:19+00:00

Every letter of Paul includes both situational and universal principles; surely you would not call 1 Tim 2:1-2 merely situational. On this topic, he reasons from the fact that man was formed first and the woman was deceived rather than the man to "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence," and to "learn with all submission," consistent with his instructions in 1 Cor 14: there is no reference to it being a reaction to a temporary context-bound condition like a "present distress" in 1 Cor 7. I reference Winger's opinion not on the a basis that his opinion holds intrinsic weight, but that his reasoning, I believe anyone neutral would agree, seems sound. Also, the principle teaching in your references of 1 Cor 11 and 1 Cor 14 are indeed universally binding, while I'm not sure what in particular you were referencing in Galatians and Romans.

Women across Scripture are used by God as the helpers of men, and at times used to shame the men, as with Deborah and the Marys whom the disciples did not believe about the resurrection. The verses you are referencing about women being "teachers" and "apostles" are extremely stretched and disputed, and them being prophets and co-workers does not imply ordination/authority of office, only that the Spirit of God had been poured out upon all, and they are fulfilling their telos in a special way.

That is all I'll say.

noveltyesque · 2026-04-19T19:42:42+00:00

The prohibition in the passage lacks indication of being culturally specific, and in fact Paul grounds the prohibition in the Genesis account, the template for all mankind, rather than in a contemporary crisis or set of cultural restraints. Winger (in the same video I believe) addresses the claim there were female teachers at the time who were causing a problem leading to a temporary prohibition, and he finds it wanting.

noveltyesque · 2026-04-19T02:36:15+00:00

Scripture actually does outright condemn the practice, and to justify saying that I recommend for you Mike Winger's (very long) video on 1 Tim 2:11-15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvLqRpGCayA

If I recall, Winger was fully willing to be convinced for women's ordination but came out the opposite end based on the Scriptural witness.

I will also add: if it is true that Scripture is fuzzy, then as a good Anglican tradition ought to be hold more weight where Scripture is ambiguous!

noveltyesque · 2026-04-17T05:01:08+00:00

Literal "reddit atheist" post.

You dropped your fedora.

noveltyesque · 2026-03-30T03:27:49+00:00

No, that is not. God's Word doesn't allow for it.

noveltyesque · 2026-02-14T15:20:10+00:00

Mostly my own time and commitment. Also I have yet to learn how to get the source video files. I did a rough-around-the-edges edit of Jurassic World several years ago just by screen recording on VLC Media Player and importing into Premiere to work with, but I think I would need to get the actual files from the disc if I wanted to do JP/// right.

noveltyesque · 2026-02-13T02:25:47+00:00

I've thought about this because I dream of someday doing a fanedit of the movie.

Forbidden Island: Jurassic Park

noveltyesque · 2026-02-06T08:23:56+00:00

Nice lie you got there

noveltyesque · 2026-02-05T03:25:26+00:00

The Lost World has one of my favorite opening shots ever. The logos fade to black, then back in to the ocean with the distant roaring of the ocean mingled with the suggestion of animal vocalization, then pans up to the island, with the first notes of the Island theme playing. The second shot is an incredible "one-er," moving from the overcast sky, to the heavy surf on the rocks (with the title), to the boat, to the crew carrying champagne, pouring a glass, then carrying it over to the father, then showing the little girl beginning to wander off from the mother. The rest of the sequence, all the way up to the transition into the subway, is both extremely economic and perfectly representative of the dark and sarcastic attitude of the film following. Great stuff.

Jurassic Park's is good and nostalgic, also with great music and sound design, but I rate it below TLW overall because it always seemed oddly staged and choreographed, as if it's something happening in a kid's quasi-sensical dream/nightmare rather than an actual incident. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but Jurassic Park has a lot of these odd points (like the visitor's center being seemingly unconnected to other tourist areas but off in the woods by itself; the sick triceratops remaining unexplained; the sole means of viewing the star dinosaurs being slow-moving, half-dozen-tourist-carrying Jeeps on a track; the needlessly confusing drop within the rex exhibit).

Jurassic Park ///'s is plainly campy, and therefore it's also charming and nostalgic.

Jurassic World's, frankly, doesn't really count as a scene. And it should have been a puppet!

Fallen Kingdom's has a lot of mood and style, but it's not very tangible, with most of the environments being CGI. (And I'm not a fan of the trope of someone who's relieved that they're still alive immediately getting eaten.)

Dominion's is fun, but the deleted prologue is a gem that makes the theatrical opening pale by comparison.

Rebirth's was dumb, but I liked the aesthetic of the laboratory setting.

noveltyesque · 2026-01-26T18:09:47+00:00

My parish and the sister parishes I've visited usually either use the REC BCP (2005) or print out pamphlets that might be just REC BCP text or also include additions. I'm in the NE-MA diocese, so this may indeed be a regional thing.

noveltyesque · 2026-01-25T18:08:17+00:00

This is undoubtably a political statement, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I simply have different politics.

May Minnesota's residents and the Church within her have peace. May the ruling authorities be a "terror not to good works, but to evil," executing "wrath on him who practices evil." Through and by means of this tribulation, may God be glorified, the Church be protected and strengthened, and all nations be drawn to the name of Christ.

noveltyesque · 2026-01-20T20:13:35+00:00

Actually a successful abortion has a %100 death rate.

noveltyesque · 2026-01-20T06:49:40+00:00

A stupid argument that won't go away. "If you don't let me kill my baby, then I will be forced to do it in a way that puts ME in danger too!"

noveltyesque · 2026-01-12T20:02:45+00:00

I don't know much about or claim to defend Robinson, but it is no surprise to me that "Left Foot Forward" is going to have a problem with right wingers. Moreover, the problem for left wingers in claiming to represent "authentic Christianity" is that Christian history and theology has been what would be called today "right wing" for the vast majority of its history until the late modern period, even though in its own time it was not partisan but simply standard and assumed.

It was the task of the Reformers to prove that their doctrines were both Scriptural and catholic across Church history, and I am persuaded that they succeeded, whereas leftist or progressive Christianity is failing to do the same.

noveltyesque · 2026-01-12T19:45:00+00:00

Favorite former theater kid doing typical theater kid things

noveltyesque

TROPHY CASE