Quote for the Day: July 14th, 2021

In this moment, you’re still breathing. In this moment, you’ve survived. In this moment, you’re finding a way to step onto higher ground.

This is a book I find myself re-reading from time to time to give myself a spiritual tune-up. Life is often difficult, messy, and downright disagreeable, but it is important for us to remember this truth: everything we need to keep moving forward is already inside us. We have made it through every single one of our worst days and we are stronger for it. This does not mean that we should ignore our circumstances, or blithely move through our days like a bunch of Live, Laugh, Love simpletons. It simply means that we possess, on a molecular level, the tools for survival. We are not weak beings. By being here in this moment, we have already won.

This does not mean that we should ignore our circumstances, or blithely move through our days like a bunch of Live, Laugh, Love simpletons. It simply means that we possess, on a molecular level, the tools for survival. We are not weak beings.

Just keep breathin’ and breathin’ and breathin’ and breathin’.
Ariana Grande

You cannot earn breath. It is free. So take in a big breath, steel yourself, and know that you are a freaking warrior. Even if you have to stay home today. Even if you don’t get out of bed. Are you alive? Then you’re winning. Until next time, my darlings.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Some of My Favorite Tweets

Sometimes Twitter is just *chef’s kiss* magnificent. While no social media platform is perfect and some are downright godawful (here’s looking at you, Facebook!), I always return to Twitter for conversation, community, clarity, and hilarity.

I am so dedicated to Twitter, in fact, that I have a Google Drive folder full of screenshots of tweets that speak to me. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Note: Under the screenshots, I’m going to re-type the text appearing in the tweet as well as text descriptions for any gifs or photos so they’re accessible to everyone.

@kat_armas: Them: be like Jesus Me: ok *drinks wine, calls people hypocrites, upsets men in power* Them: not like that Me: *shrug emoji*

So, I love this tweet for many reasons, not least of all because it paints Jesus as a rebel contrarian, which he was. If “Fight Me, Heathen” Jesus isn’t your favorite Jesus, what are you even doing with your life?

@socompliKATIEd: Phil Collins created that Tarzan soundtrack with the passion of someone whose parents were personally killed by a leopard

Yes! It has always been my assertion that Tarzan has the best soundtrack of any Disney film ever, and that still tracks. Frozen could never.

@Potatopolitics: Vikings worshipped crossdressing genderfluid gods, I am fairly sure they’d be fine with trans folks actually

The beauty of this tweet is the fact that it’s so many things at once: a call for trans rights and visibility, a history lesson, and a call-out on the ahistorical ignorance of the heteropatriarchy.

@internetanja DKNY: is a fashion label my brain: donkey kong new york

I am so glad I’m not the only person who’s said this in their head. Also, I have a tendency to read initialisms as actual words in my head so I’ve also read DKNY as dick-knee, which is something we should have access to. If I had dicks on my knees and could slap people with them when they’re rude in public, the game would be over. Game. Set. Match.

@CornOnTheGoblin: im a bitch / im a plumber it’s-a me / luigi’s brother

You have to be from a very specific micro-generation to appreciate the humor in this tweet. I am specifically talking about people who were school-age in the early-to-mid aughts, with at least one parent who owned an NES console as a child. Fun fact: my first exposure to the song referenced in this tweet was the critically-unappreciated-but-still-managed-to-get-a-remake banger of a movie, What Women Want, starring the goddess Helen Hunt and the human trash bag Mel Gibson.

@realemilyattack: I’m locked out of my dogs Facebook account that i created in 2010 and they won’t let me back in unless I send over a copy of his drivers license

This reminds me that I used to know a girl who had a Facebook account for her bedroom. Like, her actual bedroom. I’ve also friended people’s pets but in the end, it’s too much to deal with because they always die and I don’t think you can make a legacy account for a non-human.

@dannybarefoot: Gay culture is your English teacher being the only friend you keep up with from high school.

Why is this so painfully accurate? True story: when my high school girlfriend and I broke up (stop laughing, you swine!), we returned each others’ books using our English teacher as a go-between. Nothing says petty like telling your English teacher to tell your ex that you want your Capote back. Jesus Christ, how did no one realize I was gay?

Nothing says petty like telling your English teacher to tell your ex that you want your Capote back. Jesus Christ, how did no one realize I was gay?

@_RobertSchultz: millennials love picking a movie they watched once as a kid that has a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes and then making it their entire personality

Okay, first of all, I saw Batman & Robin way more than once and I’m fairly certain it has something like a 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t understand the lack of appreciation for this cinematic masterpiece. People didn’t like the Schumacher Batman films because they were expecting them to be like the Burton (and later, the Nolan) Batman films, and that wasn’t Schumacher’s schtick. Those movies were *supposed* to be campy and overdone, and so what if they were a little too focused on the bat-nipples and bat-codpieces?! Chris O’Donnell is the reason a lot of comic book-loving little boys grew up to be raging homosexuals—it’s science.

Chris O’Donnell is the reason a lot of comic book-loving little boys grew up to be raging homosexuals—it’s science.

@SHEsus_Christ: The fact that we blur women’s nipples but Ted Cruz’s face is still visible is blasphemous.

This one pretty much speaks for itself.

@BibliophlMarie: tfw you’re tidying your bookshelves & find that book you were thinking about buying.

Is this callout culture? This has happened to me so many times, but more often than not I don’t discover a book until I’ve already purchased it for the second time and then not until it’s way past the date by which it was returnable.

@VinMan17: i know ben shapiro is going to lose sleep over a gay black man doing a lap dance on satan and id like to say thank you lil nas for that

Y’all, people in the Evangelical Christian Right really lost their minds over that video. My question is: what did they expect? If you tell someone they’re a vile and irredeemable sinner enough times with enough vitriol, damning them to an inescapable hell, why do you get mad when they say they’re going to enjoy the trip?

Fun fact: did you know that Mara Wilson (of Matilda fame) and Ben Shapiro are maternal first cousins? Don’t worry, though; they don’t speak and she has him blocked on all the socials.

I really don’t like any of the right-wing blowhards, what with their demagoguery, proto-fascism, and intellectual dishonesty, but I really dislike Ben Shapiro. He’s an idiot’s version of a smart man—all bluster and no substance. Not to mention that whole Aryan master race thing he’s got going on with his face.

He’s an idiot’s version of a smart man—all bluster and no substance. Not to mention that whole Aryan master race thing he’s got going on with his face.

@billielurked: Quarantine has me living like a sim. It takes me six hours to cook spaghetti. If something is blocking my path i just cry

Ah, Sims. I *loved* that game. I was also a bit of a sociopath with it, though. Apologies for the armchair self-diagnosis, but what do you call it when someone makes a Sim-ulacrum (see what I did there?) of someone they know in real life just to sabotage them and ensure they fail in the world you’ve created? You deserved to flunk out of Sim College. You know who you are.

You deserved to flunk out of Sim College. You know who you are.

@danielleweisber: how do astronauts not cry all the time from being scared

I would also like to know the answer to this question. Being in space would be like the mega-souped-up version of when you’re a little kid and you’re staying away from home for the first time and it’s the middle of the night and you don’t want to be a little bitch and admit you want your mom so you sit in the bathroom with the lights on and wait for daybreak. There’s no one you can panic call in the middle of the night from space.

Being in space would be like the mega-souped-up version of when you’re a little kid and you’re staying away from home for the first time and it’s the middle of the night and you don’t want to be a little bitch and admit you want your mom so you sit in the bathroom with the lights on and wait for daybreak.

@bigestaban: RIP to the citizens of Pompeii, they would’ve love that song by Bastille

Would they have, though? Wouldn’t it be kind of like when Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it first premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris? Would it have been so far outside the listeners’ experience that they couldn’t really appreciate its artistry? I think that’s a question worth asking.

Wouldn’t it be kind of like when Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it first premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris?

This post was so much fun to write. If you enjoyed it, please let me know and I’ll make more of these in the future.

From the Archives: Shameless: A Sexual Reformation by Nadia Bolz-Weber (Part 2)

Allow me to first offer my sincere apology to all of you, my devoted readers, for making you wait so long for Part 2. This part is going to be a lot different from the first one because I’ll be sharing and discussing my favorite passages from Nadia’s book. Are you ready for it? Let’s go.

God planted so many of us in the corners, yet the center-pivot irrigation of the church’s teachings about sex and sexuality tends to exclude us.

This is so life-affirming. For all #exvangelicals out there and for people who still have ties to the church, the feelings of exclusion that we experience in relation to our religious upbringings are so strong that they almost manifest in corporeal form whenever we’re exposed to the teachings inculcated in us from when we were congregants.

We were taught that the body is a site of shame. We were taught that we were tainted by Adam’s original sin, that our flesh is something we must overcome in order to become one with God. We were taught that sharing our bodies with others outside the confines of monogamous, heterosexual marriage separates us from the holy.

We were taught that sharing our bodies with others outside the confines of monogamous, heterosexual marriage separates us from the holy.

We were even condemned for finding pleasure(s) on our own. Masturbating was something we all discovered by accident, performed in secret, and never talked about. It was the secret sin that tainted our relationship with God, with our families, with ourselves. The rose is not branded an apostate when it blooms, so why then should we be branded? This is not even mentioning the shame accompanying your masturbatory fantasies if you were anything other than 100% straight.

The rose is not branded an apostate when it blooms, so why then should we be branded?

But our sexual and gender expressions are as integral to who we are as our religious upbringings are. To separate these aspects of ourselves—to separate life as a sexual being from a life with God—is to bifurcate our psyche, like a musical progression that never comes to resolution.

I love the imagery Bolz-Weber (I think from here on out I’m just going to refer to her as Pastor Nadia) uses here. So many of us who were raised in the church had to develop a dichotomy between our spiritual and corporeal identities, thus the bifurcation she’s talking about here. We were all musical progressions never coming to a resolution. If you ask me, we were robbed. That forced separation caused us to become less of ourselves, meaning that in the end we had less to offer God and less to give to others.

That forced separation caused us to become less of ourselves, meaning that in the end we had less to offer God and less to give to others.

What would we be like if this bifurcation had not caused us to tear ourselves asunder? What if instead we read the Scriptures with new eyes?

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is within you, whom you have [received as a gift] from God, and that you are not your own [property]? You were bought with a price [you were actually purchased with the precious blood of Jesus and made His own]. So then, honor and glorify God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (AMP)

At what point did the church carnalize our bodies? When we are taken in totality, no bifurcation is necessary, and if we are to believe the Scriptures, our bodies house (contain) the Holy Spirit. Now, I am by no stretch of the imagination a Bible scholar or theologian, but there’s nothing wrong with my reading comprehension.

When we are taken in totality, no bifurcation is necessary, and if we are to believe the Scriptures, our bodies house (contain) the Holy Spirit.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’
Genesis 3:6-11 (NIV)

Here we see that shame was a consequence of the first sin—before sin, the first humans were naked, without shame, and free.

So what are the implications for us? Because man fell [from grace or right standing with God], we all have an awareness of our nakedness, of our bodies as a site of inherent shame, and this inherent shame is a direct consequence of the serpent’s temptation. So every time a little effeminate boy is called a faggot and beat up by his classmates, or a transgender Black woman is murdered for having the audacity to exist in public, the serpent wins, and the anti-LGBT people of faith rejoice with him. Is that saying a whole hell of a lot? You bet it is. I said what I said.

So every time a little effeminate boy is called a faggot by his classmates, or a transgender Black woman is murdered for having the audacity to exist in public, the serpent wins, and the anti-LGBT people of faith rejoice with him.

I refuse to accept or participate in a faith tradition that excludes some while exalting others, that prizes some bodies above others, or draws lines of demarcation between who can and who cannot be joint-heirs with Christ. He didn’t just die for them. I don’t know which version of the Bible they’re reading, but in every one of the baker’s dozen I own, Jesus welcomed everyone to his table, and there are no garbage tables in God’s Kingdom.

From the Archives: Quotes Graphics Part 3

I have a lot of these, but this will probably be the last batch I’ll share for a while. I have a lot of reading to catch up on because my day job has been incredibly time-consuming recently. Let me know what you think!

From the Archives: Quotes Graphics Part 2

As promised, here are more of the quotes graphics I made last year.

Listen, I know I’m not going to win any awards for graphic designing but these were so much to make. Stay tuned for part three!

From the Archives: Quotes Graphics

There was a time last year when I became obsessed with making quotes graphics like a bored suburban Pinterest Princess.

I’m not going to lie, I’m probably going to do it again sometime in the future. It was a good way for me to have a creative outlet that wasn’t writing and that didn’t require me to practice delayed gratification, which is not something people with ADHD are good at.

This time in my life also coincided with Taylor Swift’s surprise release of folklore, and let’s just say I was *really* in my feelings. As we all probably were.

This time in my life also coincided with Taylor Swift’s surprise release of folklore, and let’s just say I was *really* in my feelings. As we all probably were.

This is probably going to be a three-part series because I have a lot of graphics to share. I hope you enjoy them!

From the Archives: Shameless: A Sexual Reformation by Nadia Bolz-Weber (Part 1)

My first introduction to Nadia Bolz-Weber was through her book Shameless: A Sexual Reformation. Now, because I was raised in the church, I am almost immediately skeptical of books or lectures or even tweets by people who claim to be speaking for [as representatives of] [in the place of] God. I was subjected to a lot of harmful and hateful ideology at an age where I was too young and too innocent to reject it.

I was subjected to a lot of harmful and hateful ideology at an age where I was too young and too innocent to reject it.

I still consider myself to be a person of faith, but I don’t go to church. I don’t attend services virtually. I do not have a spiritual community of like-minded people. I cannot hold space for the holiness of God’s love and the hatred of dogmatic theological teachings under the same roof. The dissonance is too strong. The wound is still too fresh. Every note rings hollow in a place where you are told about love and never shown it.

I cannot hold space for the holiness of God’s love and the hatred of dogmatic theological teachings under the same roof. The dissonance is too strong. The wound is still too fresh.

So in walks Nadia Bolz-Weber. Looking at her, she is the reason we have the identifier “biker chick”. She is tattooed and foul-mouthed and feminist and angry. She’s also a Lutheran minister and was the founding pastor of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. She’s equally as likely to pray for you as she is to tell you to fuck off if she hears you spouting biblical untruths.

Needless to say, I had a feeling I could trust her. She would not fill my head with bullshit about what God supposedly thinks about me. I might finally hear the Truth. I was more than ready for it.

She would not fill my head with bullshit about what God supposedly thinks about me. I might finally hear the Truth.

I read Shameless in (nearly) a single sitting. Reading it helped me to vomit up so much of the filth I was forced to swallow about my body, my gender, and my sexuality. Inside, you’ll find a new sexual ethic based on individual care and attention (biblically-backed). Some readers will thrill and others will cower at what they find between the pages of Shameless, though if I’m being honest, I doubt that Nadia cares one whit what her detractors have to say.

Be warned before you begin: this book is not for the faint of heart or those who are overly-attached to dogma. It has to be approached with an open heart, mind, soul, and notebook (you will be writing things down, so keep a pen handy).

Note: As I started writing, I intended for this to be only one post long. However, being as there are several quotes from the book I’d like to share and explore, I decided to break it into two.

Book Review: The Undressing: Poems by Li-Young Lee

Every poem in this firebrand of a collection is worthy of its own celebration; taken together, they are a paean to the body and its wonders, an elegy for time lost and time regained in a lover’s arms. The Undressing will do just what it promises: undress you and remake you in your own image —purer, lighter, and free.

Favorite Quotes

It’s really difficult to pull favorite quotes from a collection this breathtaking, but nonetheless I’ve done so. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

“There are stories we tell ourselves, she says. There are stories we tell others. Then there’s the sum of our hours death will render legible.”

“The initiating word embarks, fixed between sighted wings, and said, says, saying, none are the bird, each just moments of the flying.”

“Bodies have circled bodies from the beginning, she says, but the voices of lovers are Creation’s most recent flowers, mere buds of fire nodding on their stalks.”

The Undressing: Poems is available wherever books are sold.

Moving Memoirs: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

“There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.”
— Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed

Wild is without a doubt my favorite memoir. I love its grittiness, its recklessness. I love that it doesn’t give simple explanations for complex truths.

Sometimes people die. Sometimes our marriages end in divorce. Sometimes it’s our fault. Sometimes the road not taken is the road that would lead you home. Sometimes home is the open road. Sometimes home is nowhere. Sometimes it’s a place deep inside you: dark and irrevocable and mysterious.

Sometimes home is the open road. Sometimes home is nowhere. Sometimes it’s a place deep inside you: dark and irrevocable and mysterious.

Cheryl Strayed writes unapologetically about the worst (and arguably the best) time in her life. After losing her mother less than a month after her lung cancer diagnosis, she becomes unmoored. Her mother was her anchor. Her marriage ends and her life as it exists doesn’t give her the space she needs to grieve.

Having no clear path forward, she forges one herself. This may sound corny, but sometimes you have to have a clean break to let the light in. She decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, alone. 1,100 miles from the Mojave Desert to the Bridge of the Gods into Washington State. She had never hiked before. We can probably alter the idiom “Go big or go home in Cheryl’s case to “Go big to go home,” home being the place where you can finally breathe free.

This may sound corny, but sometimes you have to have a clean break to let the light in.

Wild was Oprah’s first pick for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and spent 52 weeks on the NPR Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller List. In 2014, through her production company Pacific Standard, Reese Witherspoon produced the film adaptation of Wild with Jean-Marc Vallée as the director and Nick Horby, the novelist, as the screenwriter. Her mother was played by Academy Award-winning actress Laura Dern. Both Witherspoon and Dern received Oscar nominations for their roles in the film.

Since Cheryl Strayed is one of the most quotable writers on the planet, I feel like it’s only appropriate to end with a (longer) quote of hers that’s imprinted itself indelibly on my soul.

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
— Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed

God, those last two sentences just speak to me: What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was? Our culture has such an unhealthy obsession with redemption narratives, redemption arcs. Like we’re all a bunch of derelicts needing to be scolded into submission. Submission is just a word that means you’ve relinquished your power to someone else. And no one else can guard your power like you can. Own it.

Submission is just a word that means you’ve relinquished your power to someone else. And no one else can guard your power like you can. Own it.

I’m such a liar, saying I was going to end on that quote. Oh well. This is my blog and I’ll do what I like. Wild is available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Favorite Quotes: Hybrida: Poems by Tina Chang

I come from the broad birds and the day demons, the ash from a childhood burn, tin cans of dried pens, newspaper, seashells, a phoenix fixed in a souvenir bottle. Every bit saved as if discard were memory itself.

Cheryl Strayed says that quotes are like “mini instruction manuals for the soul”. I love that. It’s always rang true for me. If I’m feeling morose, despondent, angry, or even hopeless, coming across the right quote at the right time can make all the difference.

I keep a series of Google documents filled with quotes from not only the books I read, but the films I watch, articles I read in newspapers and magazines, and even profound things I hear people I know in real life say when I’m with them.

Hybrida: Poems is available wherever books are sold.