Merry Christmas from Palestine 🇵🇸

“Palestinian Family” Sliman Mansour, 2016

John Donne: “If I should aske the Basilisk, how camest thou by those killing eyes, he would tell me, Thy God made me so. …all things that are, are equally removed from being nothing; and whatsoever hath any beeing, is by that very beeing, a glasse in which we see God…”

💛

‘Nightside’ — Sad Penny 🎶 youtu.be/G6-lbSBs7Fc?si…

Maybe it’d be a relief to everyone if we stopped pretending it’s still “Christian” in cases where it’s been utterly co-opted by nationalism, and worse. Christianity is an attempt to be Christlike. It’s a poem, a largeness of thought; a love of existence, not limited to your own.

The peculiarly English lily crucifix - Christ crucified on a lily

You’ll find the Book of Ruth inverting that interpretation you have of “Christian concepts”, too, JD…

“These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.” - Marilynne Robinson

🚨 Lost & Found! A 19th-century Irish translation of Paradise Lost by poet Tomás ‘an tSneachta’ Ó Conchubhair has been rediscovered in the University of Illinois collection! 🎉 Believed lost for decades, it's now live on ISOS. 📜 🌍 👉 Explore: isos.dias.ie/collection/uni…

Two years. We will never forget. R.I.P. Brianna. 🏳️‍⚧️💔

I love how Moby Dick is wise to the Bible’s tenderness toward “non-believers”, more so than some Christians. We covered Jonah at Sunday Youth earlier — when they knew that throwing Jonah overboard would calm the storm, those pagan sailors decide to row harder against the waves.

Still not OK after Marilynne Robinson answered 5 of the (7 👀) questions I put to her in the Q&A chat box during a zoom thing last night. [it’s my birthday tomorrow, so just about the best unintended gift ever]

Marilynne’s take on the Burning Bush in Exodus, one of my fav stories. She spoke about its modesty as a model of theophany — the world is sufficient, God is content to go unnoticed in it. It implies divine respect to human minds that the whole thing turned on Moses’s perception.

“Because there shall be ever some poor in the land, therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand unto thy brother, to thy needy, and to thy poor in thy land.” — Deuteronomy 15:11 Or, as the 1560 Calvinist Geneva Bible footnotes this verse: “Thou shalt be liberal”