this is what i do at work all day

I think Neil Gaiman tweeted this link to old people wearing vegetation? I don't really remember where i found it. Anyway, it's awesome. I keep looking at these portraits and wondering what exactly the photographer said to these octogenarians to convince them that putting rutabaga on their heads was a good idea and worthy of art. The last picture is my favorite:

Rachel Held Evans, always a model of compassion, patience, gentleness, and deeply insightful writing, wraps up her Lenten project of turning her hate mail into art.

"What I learned turning my hate mail into origami is that we're meant to remake this world together. We're meant to hurt together, heal together, forgive together, and create together . . . 

And in a sense, even the people who continue to hate me and call me names are a part of this beautiful process. Their words, carelessly spoken, spent the last 40 days in my home -- getting creased and folded, worked over, brushed aside to make room for dinner, stepped on by a toddler, read by my sister, stained with coffee, shoved into a closet when guests arrive, blacked out, thrown away, turned into poems, and folded into sailboats and cranes and pigeons that now sit smiling at me from my office window . . . 

Something tells me we would all be a bit slower to speak if we knew just how long it takes to work those ugly, heavy words into something beautiful, something that can float or fly away."

Sarah Bessey, another incredible model of grace and strength and beauty and incredible writing, has basically summed up half of her blog in this post. (But you should still read her blog, because the writing makes it worthwhile.)

"This is the thing I believe about the Kingdom of God: it's for all of us. It's for the powerful and weak, it's for men and women, it's for the outliers and the insiders. It's for all of us. And so there is no neat and safe and tidy box; instead there is the wild and untamed and glorious riches of Christ Jesus, there is Deborah and Davod, there is Junia and Paul, there is Martha and Lazarus, Esther and Sarah, and there is you and there is me . . .

People cloak it in spiritual language. But don't be deceived: anything that steals the very essence of God's calling on you, God's shalom, God's justice, God's way of life and living as a warrior, as a prophetess, as a mother, as a teacher, whatever-your-vocation-or-calling as a woman after God's own heart, is a liar. There is a big difference between choosing silence and being silenced . . .

There is room for all of us in this story of Jesus. The Kingdom of God isn't created by fear or shame or narrow name-calling or false binaries. The Kingdom of God is created in the rising up, in the singing of the song, in the battle of the every day justice, in the daily mundane gorgeousness of servanthood and leadership, regardless of gender."

My friend is developing a new game. For those of you familiar with Cards Against Humanity, it's like that. For those of you familiar with Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity is like the black sheep version of that. Anyway, this game is what would happen if a bunch of youth pastors who got too old and/or jaded to keep youth pastoring got drunk on Irish coffee, played Cards Against Humanity, and then someone pulled out a Bible and starting gluing pages onto the cards. Except the cards are professionally made. Sign up on the website to get an email when the game is released.

This is another old archive post, but anyone who has ever heard the term "rape culture" and been confused, or heard the term and scoffed, or hasn't heard the term at all, should read it. It's a great primer for learning about the way we protect rapists and blame victims, and why that's a bad thing (you wouldn't think we'd need to explain why that's a bad thing, but apparently we do). This post is kind of in the middle of the story, but it still has enough information for you to figure out what's going on. I'd quote favorite passages, but that would end up being way too long. Just read it.

Google honored an incredible woman last week with one of the most beautiful Google Doodles i've ever seen. I was also really pleased to see that the article focused on her work and its importance, and not on, say, her famous beef pot roast recipe or how good she was at raising babies or something, which articles about important women tend to do.

So here's another Tiger Beatdown archive post. I'll stop sharing them when they stop being amazing. Also, Joan is one of my favorite names and i'd love to give it to my daughter one day.

"And I don't know if I believe in Jesus, but I believe in Joan of Arc . . . I believe that we're human beings, and that the range of human possibility includes Joan of Arc.

Here's a list of things that Joan is the patron saint of, issues on which it is decreed Joan shall have your back: "Captives, France, martyrs, opponents of Church authorities, people ridiculed for their piety, prisoners, rape victims." And soldiers, particularly female ones . . .

And Joan was found not-evil, at the retrial, but she wasn't declared a saint until 1920. The year after American women got the right to vote. Meaning we couldn't take her name until after feminism had won one of its biggest victories. That's another reason I believe in Joan, more than anything: She opened the door, very politely waited for us to walk through, and then came in and took her rightful place."

Two words: infomercial gifs.