Here's What A Citizen Looks Like

This fellow gives me so much heart, less because of his specific position and more because of his robust understanding of what it means to be an American citizen. I love his line about whatever the Founding Fathers intended, they wrote rights for all. He isn't waiting for rights to be bestowed on him; he claims them because he knows they are inalienable. Bravo!

Not What I Personally Use Them For

From a convention of college administrators.

[h]istorically, restrooms have been a way to reinforce sex assigned at birth (female/male) and gender (woman/man) identities and expressions

Not what I've used them for. Historically. 

Christ is Risen!

Icon by Mikhail Nesterov, I think. 

The women run, they hurry to say: "Here's what we found!" The surprises of God set us on the road, immediately, without waiting. So they run to see. And Peter and John run. The shepherds, that Christmas night, run: "Let's go to Bethlehem to see what the angels told us." The Samaritan woman runs to tell her people: "Here is something new: I have found a man who told me everything I did."
People knew the things he had done. And those people run, leave what they are doing; even the housewife leaves her potatoes in the pot  --she will find them burned-- but the important thing is to go, run, to see the surprise, the announcement. Even today this happens. In our neighborhoods, in villages, when something extraordinary happens, people run to see. They hurry. Andrew lost no time, but hurried to Peter to tell him: "We have found the Messiah." Surprises, good news, always do that: they hurry us. In the Gospel there is one who takes some time; he does not want to risk it. It is Thomas. But the Lord is good, and waits for him with love. "I will believe when I see the wounds," he says. The Lord has patience even for those who do not go so fast.

The announcement-surprise, the response in a hurry: the third thing I would like to tell you today is a question: "And me? Is my heart open to the surprises of God? Am I able to go in a hurry or am I always with the refrain: "Tomorrow I will see, tomorrow, tomorrow?" What does the surprise say to me? John and Peter ran in haste to the tomb. The Gospel of John tells us: "Believe." Peter believed, but in his own way, with faith a little mixed with the remorse of having denied the Lord. The announcement causes surprise, hurry, and the question: And I, today, this Easter 2018, what am I doing? What are you going to do?

~Pope Francis, from Easter Sunday homily 2018 (my refinement of google trans)

Filling A Void

Ilya Repin, Portrait of the Poet Leonid Andreyev 

I went searching for this painting, a favorite, certain I must have put it here on the ol' blog at some point. Doesn't seem I did though. Now it will be handy. 

Happy Epiphany (U.S.)

Image credit: Flemish book of the hours, Adoration of the Magi

13 days of Christmas, just to make America great.

why, we might ask, did the Magi alone see the star? Perhaps because few people raised their eyes to heaven. We often make do with looking at the ground: it’s enough to have our health, a little money and a bit of entertainment. I wonder if we still know how to look up at the sky. Do we know how to dream, to long for God, to expect the newness he brings, or do we let ourselves be swept along by life, like dry branches before the wind? The Magi were not content with just getting by, with keeping afloat. They understood that to truly live, we need a lofty goal and we need to keep looking up.

~Pope Francis, Homily for Epiphany 

Happy Epiphany! (In most of the world)

Image credit: Nikolaus Obilman, Adoration of the Magi

Merry 12th Day of Christmas!

Image credit: 17th c. Russian Flight into Egypt

Wiki call this a Russian icon? Doesn't fit my notion of iconography, but I like the image.  The bottom panel is Egyptian idols crashing as the infant Jesus passes.