What's On This Page?
This lil' blurb is at the top of every page, please don't get confused! Just here to say that since the posts don't have a date system yet, they're in the order of... The most recent are on THIS page. I guess. I think? Most relevant maybe?? Idk how I'm gonna format this. To see the older ones, press the "next" button at the bottom. Number of posts per page is .. Undecided! Also they're all out of order rn! I'm doing my best. Rn it's just a bunch of thoughts and stuff dumped here.
Grammar PSA
Short blog post that I'm porting over from my old writing centric tumblr blog. I heavily dislike the tumblr format honestly but I still want to keep this around, hence the porting over. I've also made some edits.
To start with, if I remember corrently, the reason why I made this post is because I had a conversation with a girl who corrected my use of "it's." Note the apostraphe. She said, "you should only use 'it's' when you're saying 'it is.'" I told her that using an apostraphe before the s also indicates the Genetive case. She said that she doesn't think English has a Genetive case and to "trust her, because [she's] a Grammar Nazi lololololol."
That kind of annoyed me, so here's the petty post about how to properly indicate the Genetive case that I wrote. Maybe you find it helpful, maybe you don't care; I care though. Apparently in the same post I wrote about another grammar rule that is entirely not related.
Genetive Rule: When using the Genitive case (Genitive is the possessive), it is normally proper to add an 's after the noun that it is possessing. Examples:
- Shirley's notebooks are so cute!
- Look at Aki's beautiful coat!
- The ladies' restroom is over here.
In the instance of names that end with "s," having an apostrophe right after the "s" is correct but you can also add 's. Examples:
- Iris' // Iris's
- Jesus's // Jesus'
Pronoun Rule: When referring to a group of people or to someone whom you don't know the gender of, the proper pronoun to use is "he, him, his, he's, etc."
Using "they, them" pronouns when referring to someone whom you don't know the gender of or awkwardly saying "men and women" or using too many words to get the same idea across while trying to be inclusive bothers me. I don't care if it's politically incorrect, I don't care if language changes; I don't like the way language is changing right now and while I may use a lot of text-speak or become lazy, when I'm editing something or writing something with the intent of it being published/somewhat professional then I care a lot about what is considered proper grammar. To me, the way grammar and writing is changing right now, it's degrading; it's devolving. Maybe so many rules are "too complicated" and I'm a "grammar Nazi" for caring about it but, in my opinion, if you're going to know only one language; communicate with the most people in one language; grow up in a language; have a deeper understanding of a language than any secondary language you will ever know; you should know that language intimately. Communication is essential.
About two years after originally writing that post, I still agree haha. Maybe I should make a mini-blog series about grammar - I should touch up on the subject as well, since I'm sure I make many mistakes myself. One of the reasons I talk so very, very much is that I'm always worried about being misunderstood - I want to be clear on what exactly I mean. Having a more clear grammar knowledge base would likely help with my wordiness... Or maybe not. We shall see.
Why I Made the Webring
“For when he understood that the life and profession of the Scots in their aforesaid country, as well as of the Britons in Britain, was not truly in accordance with the practice of the Church in many matters, especially that they did not celebrate the festival of Easter at the due time, but thought that the day of the Resurrection of our Lord ought, as has been said above, to be observed between the 14th and 20th of the moon; he wrote, jointly with his fellow bishops, a hortatory epistle, entreating and conjuring them to keep the unity of peace and Catholic observance with the Church of Christ spread throughout the world.” - Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England
In the 8th grade of highschool, I read small sections of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. We were supposed to read the whole thing but I didn’t like reading textbooks at that time (especially from wordy authors). The one thing that stuck out to me however, was Bede’s instance on “unity in the church.” In the section above, he harped on the importance of keeping the same date for celebrating Easter. “The present time will tell.” I don’t remember what we said in class about the event but I think, tentatively, that Ireland eventually gave in and began to celebrate Easter at the same time as the rest of Europe.
My memory is extremely foggy when it comes to things like this (I’m not even certain if we read it in the 8th grade or later or earlier), especially during that time but it would be around this period and later that I’d find a drive for being a better Christian. Regarding my own journey towards being a Christian, I grew up broken and ignorant. Well, I’m still growing (and argueably still ignorant), against the tides of what my Father believes and what I believe. My family is very Baptist - namely, Fundemental Baptist and extremely Arminian. If you yourself are Baptist, you’re probably aware of the Baptist attitude towards other denominations; or maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about and that’s probably fair. Like I said, I've grown up ignorant and on top of that, extremely isolated.
My family, as a generalization, believes no other denomination of Christians are true Christians. Catholics are heretics, Presbyterians don’t believe in salvation, and my friend is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” for introducing me to the concept of Predestination. (True words that came out of my Dad’s mouth). Now, I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m still just an eighteen year old who Does Not Know Anything. I don’t think my Dad is entirely wrong, I don’t think my friend (who aided my spiritual journey) is entirely correct. What I really want to get down to is the total lack of unity and organization within the church as a whole, and it's important to me because I lack those things in my own family and seemingly, the churches around me.
Bede was bothered by any small amount of diversity in Christian beliefs because he believed that would lead to greater and greater divisions in the universal church. He probably would be absolutely flabbergasted by events that took place after his time. If I remember my Omnibus classes correctly, he believed that unity was essential for keeping the church safe - diversity would destroy it and allow heresies to run rampant with no strong, central force to say “that’s not right.” If there is not one figure who Christians could look up to to tell them what is true about the Bible, what evil could pass on to them?
Keep in mind, this writing was at the very early start of the church (Bede died during the year 735), literacy was not wide-spread so the people were extremely dependent upon their priests, and the church itself was not anywhere near the level of corruption it would become. It still had a “pure heart,” if that’s alright to say, and it’s aim was to spread Christianity, not power.
I have no interest in uniting the denominations into one agreeable force, although 13-15 yr old me certainly had high ideas. However, I do believe Bede was correct in his fears. Heresies do run rampant; I would name a couple denominations that you and I may be thinking of, but I don’t know if that’s helpful. Large swaths of the church is weak and in the grasp of culture rather than forming culture; and as in my one blog post, pastors and teachers in the church seem to be uneducated and unaware and not even certain as to what their goal is. At least, from my limited perspective, that seems to be the case. I’ve only had words written by dead people to tell me anything about the outside world, a world that is not even my time.
Between the vice’s of my parents and the good fruit my friends have given to me, I, personally am in a flux in my beliefs. Trying to interpret the Bible correctly is a terrifying venture to me because my beliefs have been upended more than once and my Father told me “what you believe is evil.”
I don't know what to believe. I just know that I think we could be better. There is a lot of goodness that’s been brought to me. “Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” My friends range from Orthodox (little o and capital O), “Reformed Baptist,” true Presbyterian (I say true because I know there’s a few sketchy groups under the Presbyterian umbrella), and a minor denomination I’m pretty sure you can only find in Arizona.
I think unity is important. I think the church has lost it’s focus and as a result, is being pushed and shoved by the tides of culture. Large swaths of the church seem to be lost and disjointed. You have your liberal churches, you have churches that preach Prosperity Gospel, you have an insane amount of Fundie Baptist churches that are actually cults (true story). People leave the churches because they're treated like children in Sunday School and Youthgroup and church isn't fun anymore when they're adults. You have thousands atheists who hate God because their Evangelical parents hurt them. Christian media is out of touch and extremely cringe.
After the 2nd World War, the "Lost Generation" found itself despondant and hopeless. Men and women were traumatized, broken, and jaded. Many turned from Christ. There is not a small amount of people that attribute the giving of hope back to this generation of broken people to the authors, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein - powerful Christians who, despite living through both World Wars, found it within themselves to have hope and follow Christ. Hope is not a finite source - when you have hope, you can give it to someone else and, instead of having less, you will have more.
Right now, I believe believe we are in a world of brokeness. The world was and always will be broken but there's a particular way it's turning itself about- it's insanity. It's the Postmodernists that say, "the only truth is your truth." I believe that that little phrase, "your truth," has on it's own lead many to Nihilism and suicide. Where are the Christians?
Where are the people who should be giving people hope? You can't give hope when you don't have any to begin with. The church itself is broken and jaded. It feels like we're busy fighting each other for reasons I don't see any sense to. Are we fighting each other because we don't know what else to say? Are we saying the same things over and over, hoping to "plant a seed" in someone else's soul, when really we were never given the tools of the people who came before us? Those people being, Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, or even C.S. Lewis or, heck, Paul!
Am I calling for people to be more educated? I don't really know, I don't think you necesserily need to read a bunch of books in order to be a good Christian. I think, really, what I want is for Christians to focus on Christianity. That sounds odd but as I said, we're busy fighting each other. We're also busy with fighting against or acclimating to culture, when we really should be making culture. I don't really know the perfect way to do that but inserting yourself into spaces where culture is happening helps, I think.
Hence, the webring. I hope that by unifying small groups of Christians, aiming to make culture instead of flow alongside culture, that will help... Something. Obviously this just on neocities and the webring will probably not get very many people. My hope is simply that more Christians will come to understand the importance of unifying ourselves and creating things, rather than tear at each other senselessly when we don’t know what else to do.
