Religious Sister Puns

I entered the convent at 21 and left just before my 27th birthday. If you have ever wondered what life is like in the convent, feel free to ask.

Some context: I'm in a muslim family. I'm not religious, unbeknownst to my parents, but for all intents and purposes my family is muslim. One of my sisters (I have 3) decided to convert to catholicism (maybe christianity? I don't know the details) some time ago and it caused a lot of drama within the family. My parents eventually learned to tolerate it as long as she didn't bother anyone, but one very big issue has been the fact that she apparently is not allowed to celebrate anything. Whether she cannot celebrate at all or she cannot celebrate with us, I don't know, but she refuses to celebrate birthdays with us, new years, or anything for that matter. According to her, her faith doesn't allow her to. I honestly could not care less what she does with her life, but I cannot for the life of me fathom how that is the case. I have never heard of any religion that does that, and frankly I feel like (knowing her) she just read something online and decided to follow through with it. But I digress.

Here's the actual scenario; At the time of posting this, it is almost 11 pm on new Years Eve. I'm spending the winter holiday in Ottawa. I'm spending time with my family minus her, and we're having a great time. We took photos, ate dinner, the like, while my sister is in Montreal, 3 hours away, for her job. My birthday is on January 1st, in an hour.

Me and my parents aren't always here. My other sisters live here in Ottawa, and me and my parents often come to visit when we have time. My sister who is in Montreal did not get to see us, as she moved there before we arrived a couple weeks ago.

We had asked her if she wanted to come a couple days ago to see me and my parents and spend new years/my birthday with us, and she said yes... with the condition that she stay by her lonesome while we celebrate without her, because she apparently can't due to her faith. We declined. We said that we did not want to drive 3 hours to pick her up and then drive her back 3 hours later after new years, because she wasn't going to celebrate with us anyways. While we were enjoying ourselves as a family in the living room, she'd be in her room doing whatever else. We didn't see any point in wasting our time. Upon hearing this, she said she understood, but I could tell she was a little bummed about it. We decided to compromise and just have a short video call and have her say hi to us.

Are we the assholes? I still think it would've been a waste of time to go pick her up, but I cannot help

I’ve never been one to understand Christianity.

I can say I never truly had faith. As a kid, I would go to church because I was told to. I never really understood God. I can’t say I ever felt the “holy sprit”, or had any religious awakenings. It always felt wrong, the idea of it all.

By the end of my high school years I had come to the conclusion that I was an atheist. My senior year I found the courage to tell my mother. Luckily she isn’t overly religious so I wasn’t too worried but nonetheless nervous. She was disappointed and I don’t think she really understood, but she eventually came to support my decision.

We had both decided it was better that we would not tell my grandmother as we were sure it would break her heart.

Present day me and my older sister were hanging out at my grandmas house when she is talking about the Bible and yada yada yada (in one ear out the other).

My older sister had found out later after I had told my mother in a conversation in passing. Pretty much everyone but my grandma knew about it at this time.

My older sister decides it would be a great idea to tell my grandma about my lack of faith during that visit. I figured she would know better not to do that, but I suppose you have to be careful who you share your personal information with, (even if it is your own blood).

Poor lady looked at me like she had seen a ghost,

“What do you mean you don’t believe in God?!”

“Idk grandma, I just don’t but I don’t really want to talk about it”

This old woman began ranting about how she doesn’t want me to go to hell and how she wants me to go where she is going and she doesn’t want a heaven without me. I just reiterated that I didn’t want to talk about it and it isn’t the time to talk about it.

I feel so terrible that my grandma knows, I almost feel guilty. It was definitely not my sister’s place to tell her. Now every time I see my grandma she is constantly trying to change my mind, and I have to hear the whole spiel about it over and over again. One time she was trying to convince my husband (who is Muslim) to take me to church.

He promptly told her no, and that I’m a grown woman and can make my own decisions.

I understand it’s not really my grandmother’s place, but I think she just has the Christian savior complex that us Atheists have all grown to despise.

Just needed to rant about it, sometimes I can’t fathom the audacity some people have. I’m sure some of y’all, if not most can relate

Hello r/trans. First and foremost, thank you for being such a beacon of light and learning in a murky world for new-ish trans parents. So wonderful to see all the love and support and sometimes heartbreaking to see that support is not universal.

Our 22 y/o daughter came out to us middle of 2020. We were blindsided but supportive from the start. We have a trans niece who transitioned 4 years prior who we are close to so we at least has a road map and supportive people we love who had gone before us. Huge help.

We have honored our daughter’s wishes to allowed her space as she figured it out as far as telling my side of the family (they are fundy religious and Trumpy-maybe even more “Pence-y”). Now she’s ready and does not care who knows or what they have to say about it. We are in the same place so it’s time.

I told one sister/BIL in person a few weeks ago when we were together. While it did not go horrifically bad, it certainly was not great. Looking back, I feel like we ambushed them by not providing any context or soft place to land if they needed a moment to understand what they were hearing. They were shocked and said basically everything you are not supposed to say lol. Things settled down and they said they still loved “he/she/whatever we are supposed to say”. We will take that as a win with this group lol.

We have always wanted to have these conversations face-to-face as we know we have nothing to hide or be ashamed of. However, having that last experience under our belt, we now see that it may not be fair to just lay this on someone who has no idea it is coming. Especially knowing They have strong religious beliefs about this and hear about it/talk about it in church, and likely the media they consume as well. That said, they know we do not share those views and we have a generally loving/supportive family dynamic (with guardrails lol). This will be a huge bombshell though and will likely rip the guardrails right out of the ground- at least for a while.

So our thought is to send a group email with some links to resources that may at least give them a little space to digest then set up a zoom chat with each family with our daughter over the coming weeks to “get it all out there” in small groups. Then perhaps set up small in-person introduction to their new niece gathering/dinner for those who are ready

I know “google is my friend” and all that but I would really appreciate some advice and help from those who have gone before us.

Thank

Dear Christians, and same brothers and sisters in Christ:
Blessing of the Lord be upon you in the new year

Before I start, I realize that this is mostly linguistic, but as it is connected to Orthodoxy, I figured that some people here might be proficient in the matter. If this sub is not the right place for these kinds of post, I sincerely apologize, mods feel free to delete this post!

On to the matter at hand:

I am currently researching some old liturgical books. They are written in Old Chruch Slavonic, and as such are also written in the older variant of the slavic script. I am under no impression that I am an expert in the language itself, however I can (and do) write and read both Old Cyrillic alphabet and Glagolithic. As such I am familiar with the finesse of older sounds which are no longer present in many Slavic languages. Yet I have come across 2 letters in an old liturgical book, called "Cetinje Octoechos of the First Tone". It's a prayer book. In it, on the page of note, there is inscribed a symbol of the local dynasty which ordered this book. Above the symbol is an image of 3 cyrillic letters. I have recreated the letters and their order:

https://preview.redd.it/tzpcwdi5nt981.jpg?width=456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0976c77905c1b94bbcdce16e2e87e3cf7ff643e

They are arranged as you see, in this manner. I am very certain that this has has something to do with the Trinity. Letter 1, I have identified as Б, that being B. And I can only assume it stands for Бог (God)
Letter 3 and 2 gave me pause. Letter 3 is most alike the letter Ю, that being Yu. However the shape of it is more alike Г, that being G. and I am certain that this is not just a stylistic choice, the shape like this requires a very deliberate action of the pen. Letter 2 is even more puzzling, it again has the likeness of Г (G), yet it also has a shape like i or N. What are your thoughts?

Many thanks in advance!

Sadly, my sister has gone off the rails. Trust me, I couldn’t care less about whether she wants a vaccine. The problem I have is that she’s also convincing my elderly mother that the vaccine will cause irreversible damage. She convinced my 70 year old mother that the vaccine is “the mark of the beast” that’s talk about in revelation. She also says that the government is going to keep track of Christians through religious exemptions for persecution (and I quote) “similar to how they rounded up Jews during the Holocaust”. It is so silly watching her bitch about potential persecution in America, where her God is on my fucking money.

Hi,  16 y.o. female here, halfway through high school, and I just need a place to put this feeling of mine into words.

I'm a second child out of three kids. All three of us are female. The eldest is in fourth semester of college, and the youngest has just entered elementary.

I've known for a long time that my father wanted a son. Back from when my mom had my older sister, he wanted a son. Same goes with me and my younger sister.

I never thought much of it before... but recently I just has two conversations with my dad (and mom) which really made me upset.

One of them was when my dad scold me by mentioning gender roles. An oversimplification of it would be as if he was telling me that I was being "untidy for a girl", and I got pissed. I argued with him, telling him that "what if I'm a boy? would you scold me too?" And, from his reaction, I can see that he was having trouble answering that.

My mom had to settle the situation with some bullshit argument, and when he tried to defend himself, I just... lost it. I got fucking upset, and the conversation derailed into me telling him, "thank god you don't have a son, because if you do, I'm sure he'd be your favourite."

Fucking asshole.

The second one was a religious reason. My family is muslim, and so am I. And one day, I was just a bit tired to pray so I rested for a few minutes. But then I got scolded, told that I should pray immediately (it was dzuhur/ashar, there was a lot of timespace in which I could pray). I just needed to rest for a few minute, but he got angry.

I told him that "praying is my personal business with god, not yours." And he told me that "since you're a girl, you're my responsibility." and basically, "if I go to hell, I'll be dragging him down with me."

And... idk, it just made me feel like that the only reason he actually takes care of me is just because of my religion. And... it got me very upset.

I don't blame the belief. I believe in the same god as him. But looking back, he never actually take care of me because he "loved" me. He's only doing his obligation as a father. He doesn't love me, he just doesn't want to go to hell.

And I hate him for it.

So I (16m) was brought up in a religious cult 😭 My parents (61m and 49f) are literally religious 😨 They are bigoted nazis, who ACTUALLY voted for Donald Drumpf!!! 🤢 I have an older sister (21f) too. She is an ignorant bigot normie who uses tiktok, 🤮 just like my parents. And she is very religious 🤮🤮🤮

Recently, my sister graduated from a christian college 🤢. To celebrate, our parents too us to a nice high-end restaurant for a treat (my parents are bigted af, but they are also rich thanks to kkkapitalism 💰) The restaurant was on the top floor of a skyscraper 🏬 While I was eating, I got a slight sniffle, and sneezed 🤧 My sister immediately said, ‘oh my god, bless you’

I looked up at her. She just said the G-word!!! 😱😱😱 I was shaking with anger 😡 I couldn’t control myself anymore. I got up, and grabbed my sister by the throat and dragged her to the edge of the building. I then pushed her right off the skyscraper 💪 She was taken to the hospital and declared dead (LOL!) 😂

After we reached home, my parents decided to punish me. They told me that I need religion in my life 🙄 and are now saying that I have to accompany them to church every sunday 😱 I am really pissed rn because I feel I do not deserve any punishment

So top minds of reddit, AITA?

Edit - I donated all my pocket money to bernie sanders campaign last year 😇

So, for context my twin passed away when we were 18 (I’m 20 now). I’m an atheist and she was never a strong believer. I don’t like to think about her much because it’s heart breaking, but recently I have been allowing myself to and I just can’t get past how upset I was about her funeral. I don’t think it represented her correctly at all. The rest of my family is Christian, except for my immediate family (aka the ones who knew her best.) So I should say my extended family is Christian. The celebrant continued to speak of her as if she died as like a 5 year old child! Things like “the death of a child can be heart breaking, but she is now with god.” So an all so powerful and kind “god” would let MY twin DIE at an age that you consider to be a child!? We even said a prayer despite the fact that my immediate family never even attended church! I thought the whole thing was so impersonal to her and did not reflect her beliefs or honour her correctly in any way. Her tombstone is even and angel, granted it is beautiful, but I just wish it was something that mattered more to her. Like a statue of a cat, something she has know to always love! I just wish funerals could be conducted in a non-religious way and were more to honour the loved one, than to honour the “god” that let them die! This was just a little rant that I was wanting to get some perspectives on. Am I right in being upset about this?

My sister has always tried to find ways to prove that she’s better than me at something, even by small stupid stuff. When I used to be super religious she didn’t give a damn about religion and wasn’t that religious. She never prayed, talked to boys, listened to music, etc. The minute I became less religious she went full on sheikh/haram police mode. She made sure everyone in the house prayed exactly on time, listened to daily Islamic lectures, and even applied to an Islamic school.

She was not like this at all when I was religious. She would say to me with disgust “You used to be so religious what happened to you?” This all started the day my family found out I wanted to take off my hijab, which she literally cried in tears about and told me I’m a bad muslim and should repent. I even heard her telling my mom “I swear I’m going to cut all her hair off, maybe then she’ll keep the hijab.” I ignored that comment bc she’s always been insecure about her hair and jealous of mine.

I’m still confused why she’s doing all this all of a sudden, perhaps to prove she’s better than me through religion? Why go through all that just to prove a dumb point?

First of all, English is not my first language and all of that.

Basically the title. My youngest sister (14) (12 years my junior) came out as Bi to my parents. Their response was very negative. She is not in danger or anything but she is suffering a lot.

I've made it very clear that I'm on her side, have offered her a place to stay, financial support or just someone to talk to.

Trouble is, I just don't feel equipped to offer her the help I think she needs right now. I'm a straight man and have never been through anything similar.

And so I was hoping you guys could recommend me books that deal similar events so I can hopefully gain some insight into what she she is feeling.

My experience with the genre is zero. Are there any must reads I should go for? Maybe something I could recommend to her?

Audio-books are a big help. Portuguese and English are fine, Spanish less so but still OK.

She is a brat who loves to crack the spine of my books but I love her a lot and seeing her hurt fucking sucks, so any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Religion, Christianity] In The Pews| Episode #24 - Daniela Villalobos & Caroline Burciaga| The stories of two prospective religious sisters| SFW |

https://open.spotify.com/episode/52rqotchIBrkGvnZyOyGli

In The Pews is a show that features the lives and inspirational stories of some of the church’s faithful servants.

My question comes from a sense of deep discomfort at the concept of Christ being married to so many women. I have always had a hard time seeing religious as anything but Christ's harem. I'm a cradle Catholic, and it's funny, but this is probably one of the biggest obstacles to my faith. How is God anything but an arch polygamist in relationship to these women?

A bit of background, my parents are very Catholic: as in, they go to mass every Sunday, never miss sunday or other 'holy days', and their whole life is built around the Church. I (33yo) am the oldest of 5 siblings, and my sister is the second youngest. We have been all educated in the faith, but another sibling and I left the church in our early 20's and live our happy 'sinful' lifes openly. My parents were disappointed, no doubt, but never made a scene about this, and I'm close to them.

Now, my sister is becoming more and more religious in the last 4 years- she goes to mass every day if she can, spends her time reading about the life of saints, and mostly hangs out with people from the church. I'm pretty sure she is considering becoming a nun. I'm terrified at this though, and this process is breaking my heart because she used to be such a rebellious and brilliant child. I was sure she would break free from all these superstition and nonsense, and instead she is becoming super religious.

I'm asking advice on how to deal with my own feelings mostly. She is an adult now, and so she should be able to live her life however she wants, like I did, without judgement from my side. Also, I don't want to break my parents trust by trying to steer their daughter away from the Church. I don't think that's my role. I just want to be there for her if she ever wants to ask me questions, and then I would be completely open with her (eg she once asked about incorrupt bodies of saints and I told her about how momification is a natural process). But it hurts, and doing nothing, just waiting, is so difficult. How do you deal with this situations?

This may be perhaps not the kindest question but I’ve noticed while on my discernment path a lot of contemplative orders have said I should get a degree first “just in case” why is this the case?

And not to come off as “this is unfair” but I’ve noticed that many women from other non western countries and older women too (over sixty) all did not have degrees when they joined and joined much younger than I am.

I guess what I’m asking is if being told to get a degree and work a few years is specific to first is something specific to women in Europe/Northern America?

If I follow this lead I would be almost 30 and with a bunch of student loan debt which I would have to pay off before entering. I don’t understand it and I find it perplexing considering the fact that in the same breathe they say I’m the first person in a while (5-10 plus years; some more 90% of the orders were I live have sisters from abroad) that has visited to discern this way of life…

Hi everyone,

Just to be clear, I have nothing against religion if it does not impose on other people's lives. I am not religious myself, but I do not consider myself to be an atheist. I'm also politically independent.

I am 23, and my sister J is 15. We have never been religious in our house, but about 3 or 4 years ago J started following the Christian religion on her own.

This is fine, but a few years ago she informed me that she does not believe in evolution. This was shocking to me, and I tried to understand her reasoning but she wasn't listening to me. I let it go, and thought that she would grow out of it because she was only in middle school.

Everyone in the household has been vaccinated for covid except for J. She is refusing to get vaccinated. She also does not wear a mask in stores. She went to the grocery store the other day without a mask while she had a sore throat and cough.

My dad is not involving himself in this, and my mom is supporting my sister and also does not want her to get vaccinated.

Today she told me that she does not support the LGBTQ movement because she is christian. She's allowed to have her own political beliefs, but it seems to be because she is Christian, and not for another reason.

I am confused about why this is happening. I am happy that she is her own independent person, but she's putting other people's health in danger.

I know that I can't really change the situation, but I'm curious as to if anyone has any similar experiences.

I'm renting a room from a Muslim couple, I mention their religion because they are clearly spiritual having celebrated Ramadan, they pray several times daily with prayer schedules displayed prominently. Now and then the landlord's sister visits who is pretty strict with her attire, wearing a gown from hear to toe, a hijab, she will never show her legs in the presence of a man, yes bare feet at times, but I noticed she covers up and only dresses down so to speak for work, but then covers everything except her face. To each her own I respect that.

The thing is, although she dresses conservatively by covering up, her personality is easy going. In fact she invited me to sit in the same area of the living room as her, we still kept about 4-8 feet apart since not fully vaccinated yet, I even told her I wanted to keep more distance - for months I was living there and sat at least 20 feet away, so coming closer made me hesitate. But when I sat on nearby sofa, although I tried to keep my eyes on the movie, I must admit her accent and friendly personality drew me in. I was thinking I wish she would trust me, and fall asleep on the couch next to me, I wanted to brush her long hair if she had released it from the head scarf, make her feel comfortable, but she was married , so I can't really consider her in "that way". If she was unmarried I might try to make a move , or at least be a bit friendlier ,but again, she's not available, so I restrained myself.

The woman's relatives who own the house I'm staying in are away for a while. When they return should I admit I enjoyed spending time with the lady, or say nothing? Being with her reminded me of what it was like to have a female friend, and made me miss that I haven't been in a romantic relationship in several years. Just spending time with someone watching a movie can be nice feeling. Sure beats being alone all the time.

I found out I was non-binary about a year ago, and kept it a secret from friends and family up until just 5ish months ago. Ive told a handful of friends and coworkers I trust, but at this moment my family has no idea.

My family is really Christian, and my parents have expressed very clear signs of homophobia and transphobia. I’m not telling mom and dad until I move out, but one family member I really want to tell is my twin sister. She is also Christian, and I know she isn’t 100% on board with there being more than 2 genders, but she has never expressed verbal slander of the lgbt the same way my parents have. I want to tell her, not necessarily because I want her to accept me but because I love her and can’t hide it from her anymore. I’ve been in the closet for so long and it’s starting to feel cramped. She means the world to me, I want her to know. I want there to be at least one person in my household who knows my feelings.

How can I come out to a religious family member who I’m uncertain will accept me? Is there a way I can educate my twin sister about gender and lgbt to help her understand my feelings better? And most importantly, how can I prepare myself for a possible rejection?