She is young; some would say very young. But the light in her eyes is mother-light all the same, purified and holy through exhaustion and pain. She forgets the pain for the joy of a man-child brought into the world, and her gaze rests on him, lying there in the straw.
He is an ordinary child with the ordinary, transcendent beauty of a newborn. The man who is not his father washed the blood from him, hands trembling and so, so careful. This Son of God is a helpless baby, but he is still God's Son.
No words can express the wonder of a birth, of nigh unendurable pain that bursts suddenly into eternal joy. The child is crying with the thin, short bursts of a one so newly born; he is healthy, flushed and swaddled well in the new cloths brought for the purpose. There is a mess nearby, but it is unimportant.
There is a commotion; shepherds, gentled by reverence, speaking in hushed tones of angels singing their praises, of a newborn king. They drop to their knees before the baby, as if no wonder in the world had ever been so mighty. And perhaps it had not.
Mary watches, and she stores up all these things in her heart. There is so much she cannot understand. Someday the whole tapestry of her son's life will be shown to her; for now, this is enough.
She gathers her boy to her, and wonders if she, too, can hear the angel's song.
Sam: I have a feeling they might be a part of the big three. Bucky: What big three? Sam: Androids, aliens, and wizards. Bucky: That's not a thing. Sam: That's definitely a thing. Bucky: No, it's not. Sam: Every time we fight, we fight one of the three. Bucky: So who are you fighting now, Gandalf? Sam: Ev- How do you know about Gandalf? Bucky: I read The Hobbit. In 1937. When it first came out.
reblog if you wear glasses. too many mutuals don't know they have glasses wearers in their midsts
them except they never got a wedding
I attended a The Oh Hellos ( @theohfficialhellos ) concert this past Friday, which happened to coincide with Good Friday. One of there songs, Caesar, describes Christ’s Passion, so I had to make a comic and give it to them (I was able to give it to their merch guy, I hope the rest of band saw it!)
On an aside, that night, the concert, was particularly healing for me, as I’ve been going through some dark valleys lately. Sometimes Gods love appears in the form of a banjo ya know?
Headcanon: Bilbo eventually evolves into something of a Santa Claus figure to Hobbits.
“It became a fireside-story for young hobbits; and eventually Mad Baggins, who used to vanish with a bang and a flash and reappear with bags of jewels and gold, became a favourite character of legend and lived on long after all the true events were forgotten.”
Mad Baggins was remembered for randomly appearing with money, but Bilbo Baggins was well known for being extremely generous with his, especially to people who weren’t too well off. Frodo, of course, is just as free with his fortune as Bilbo was, as is Sam when he comes into it, and even Lobelia with what she has left after Saruman’s occupation, and as “Baggins” begins to decline as a name, it becomes somewhat synonymous with charity, and this gets mixed up in the legends about Bilbo’s funny adventures and ridiculous stories until everything’s too tied together to separate.
Bilbo would give out lots of gifts in the winter, to ensure everyone had warm clothes and a roof that didn’t leak, which is how he eventually became tied to Yuletide, and the legends start out as, “Mad Baggins will share his fortune with those who truly need it,” and eventually evolves into, “Good little Hobbitlings might get gifts from Mad Baggins,” and there are all sorts of pageantry and games, like someone will dress up as Mad Baggins and use Hobbit stealth magic and sleight of hand to “appear” in various places, set off a firecracker, and then run for it, and anyone who can catch him can have some candy out of his bag.
Long after Hobbits stop having dealings with Dwarves, and perhaps even after they stop believing in them altogether, they become mystical figures attached to the Mad Baggins legend, coming and going as they please and answering to nobody; anybody who catches a Dwarf may get cursed, but they also may win a treasure off of them like nothing else (and the curses, of course, are the sorts of dreadful things Hobbits can think of; thin foot-hair for a season, or never finding something until you’re looking for something else).
You know those creepy ornate woodland Santas, or like, the horrible Victorian illustrations? They have those too: Mad Baggins (a bright red nose and curly golden hair around his ears, bald on the top of his head and wearing boots of all things) accompanied by thirteen dwarves and a troop of ponies, passing out gifts and then disappearing with more than Hobbit skill. But the classic image of Mad Baggins, the one that springs to mind when children think of him, and appears in whatever their version of The Night Before Christmas is, garbs himself in green and silver and carries a sword (quite an outlandish thing among Hobbits!), and laughs often, being a great lover of song and good food and drink and practical jokes.
And if sometimes the perfect gift does appear out of thin air with no reasonable expectation, well. They say he learned from wizards too, and even though all things are diminished in the latter days, nobody ever said they were going to dwindle to nothing, did they? And it sits well with certain entities that at the end of the day, this is what’s left of a certain Dark Lord’s legacy; a legend borrowing the incidental property of his magic talisman to grant invisibility to bring gifts to children.
A Fflam being fflamtastic is a new comic page worth a Tumblr.
Elizabeth Bennet: the first impression I had of Mr Darcy prevented me from realising how wrong I was about him for so long! Hah, I thought myself clever, but I am just another fool!
Anne Shirley: how long is “so long”, exactly?
Elizabeth Bennet: months!
Anne Shirley, who spent years holding a grudge before realising how wrong she was about Gilbert: nah, I think you are good!
Christian FangirlMostly LotR, MCU, Narnia, and Queen's Thief
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