church nerds in love

[hermionesviolin]

A UCC church in Connecticut posted this set of churchy Valentines -- which I saw because our Associate Pastor shared it in our church's private FB group.

I tagged Thom in comments and said, "OMG, so many puns! 😂 Some of them are really terrible, but I'm genuinely delighted by a bunch of them."

Which led to this in private chat (I've added some annotations for the reader [in brackets]):

Thom:

Oh, do I get to call you “Grace” now? 😂 [re: Is your name Grace? Because you're amazing.]

And “Faith”? 😂 [re: Is your name Faith? Because you're the substance of things I've hoped for. Which is itself a reference to Hebrews 11:1. Which I feel like whole swathes of people only know from The West Wing episode (S4E20) "Evidence of Things Not Seen."]

me:

Patience, if you want me to flip you off 😜

[annotation: The reader knows this is a reference to our year of ~waiting and "Faith is believing in something so much that you start planning for it before it even happens," right?]

Thom:

Is it hot in here, or is that the Holy Spirit burning inside of you?

#ThanksHolySpirit 🔥

Do you need prayer? Because I'm willing to lay hands on you.

You must be a Bible verse, 'cause I can't stop memorizing you.

Thom frequently asserts that I'm "fucking amazing" (frequently in the context of amazing fucking), so, re: "Grace" above, I said:

That's Fucking Grace, thank you very much 😘

Grace, A. F. is my new penname.

"Grace As Fuck?"

"No, you missed the comma. It's Amazing Fucking Grace."

Do I have "Slayer comma The" from an episode of Buffy to thank in part for this joke? Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFPgvVsKbFc

Is it ~ironic that this is happening on our annual* "Joss Whedon is canceled"? Yes. But we both know I continue to make Buffy references despite having canceled Joss a while ago.

*https://twitter.com/thebilinguist/status/1359712306163314689

Speaking of canceling Joss, I'd heard about Ray Fisher and Charisma Carpenter [Edit: Oh, and what Joss's ex-wife Kai Cole said], but today discovered "an entire horror story in a sentence" about Michelle Trachtenberg 😭