Fire From the Mountain

On December 5, 2008 By JonathanIn Music, Photos, PoetryLeave a comment

Winter has descended with a vengeance on the Tennessee Valley; the weather report from the Smokies informs me that snow has been hanging around up in the high country for a few weeks now. This morning my car door was frozen shut. More cheerfully, sunsets lately have been spectacular. Down on the terrestrial level the leaves are off the trees and most of the herbaceous plants are dead and dried out. But those things also are beautiful.

Also: it is the middle of Advent Fast, the school semester and the year itself are near their end, the economy is on the rocks, and snow is supposed to fall in a couple of nights and the seasons will swing around again and it will be Advent again and again until the End.

First the sunset, from House Mountain just north of Knoxville. These are colours to think the Apocalypse in:

Now, the wintery weeds and other things, from the Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge:

Oh: and for a bonus, some appropriate wintry music: Horse Feathers, Curs in the Weeds. And Fleet Foxes, White Winter Hymnal.

Change We Can Believe In

On November 20, 2008 By JonathanIn Culture, Gospel, Philosophy, Politics, WarLeave a comment

From Spiked: Under Obama No Child Left Unmonitored. Don’t like No Child Left Behind? Notice that Federal intervention in education is producing less than admirable results? Question the validity of subjecting education to the dictates of State and Big Capital? The solution of the statist-left: make it bigger! Upsize! Increase funding! Greater federal control! If the Federalization of all education isn’t working, it needs to be intensified. We must increase the devotion of all levels of education to the needs of capital, er, the business sector. We must make sure poor parents are doing their bit to raise good wards for State and Capital- and remember, there’s no way Federal policy could ever be racist or classist- remember, we did that whole making history thing, right?

This is just one small aspect of the sort of leftist imperialism (external and internal) that in insiduousness and long-term viability is probably more destructive and dangerous than rightist sorts. Rightist statism has lately tended to manifest itself in spectacular and very public outbursts of violence and programs of mass control, though in the past couple of years even the Bush administration has toned down much of its action (probably out of sheer necessity). The left, on the other hand, is rather more clever about things in that much of its systems of violence and control are more hidden. Education is a useful example; abortion is another example of systematic violence that lies beneath the surface (literally in some respects) of society and even political discourse: “choice,” “reproductive health,” and so on are used to avoid the stark implications of reality. Likewise, we call our wars “missions to spread democracy,” “humanitarian interventions,” disguising the actual horrific nature of war.

Both sides also insiduously exploit religion to advance their causes, whether it’s the latest war as a crusade from God or abortion as a “spiritual sacrament.” The left tends to be in denial about its religious aspect, since part of its campaign against the right is “separation of church and state,” by which of course nothing more is meant that separation of rightist religion from the state; statist-leftist religion, whether in the guises of protected Christianities, bourgouis environmentalism, or the whole smorgasboard of liberal pieties used to advance the agenda of the day- none of these forms of religiosity are ever envisioned as being separated from the State. Instead, religion- and the same attitude exists on the statist-right- is perfectly acceptable so long as it remains in the service of a greater mission, that of the statist-left.

This is ultimately my problem also of course and I fall under the label of hypocrite too: I like my religion, just let’s not take this too seriously, eh? Sure, some of that exoticly-flavoured Orthodoxy can show through here and there, since it’s possibly advantageous out here in the academy. But let too much through, and you’re courting danger. That’s the message that is continually broadcast, and my internalization of it is hardly only from external forces- in tandem with my own passions, the desire to keep my “religion” nicely compartmentalized is terribly strong. Only the radical action of God can really ever break me, or anyone else, left or right or sideways, out of it.

Thoughts on Icons

On November 15, 2008 By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, Gospel, PatristicsLeave a comment

1. The icon embraces the tension of the one and the many, of the universal and the particular. Each icon presents the mystery of the person as a particular mystery, the mystery of the named person who participates in the universal- yet particularly received- energies of God, is divinized. Divinization does not reduce the person into indistinguishableness; rather, it “expands” the person into her true self, her true realization in God. So the icon is not simply naturalism, but instead leans towards the mystery of realized personhood, the stylization of the icon indicating that this person has entered into this reality. When I view an icon I see a manifestation of what a true person can be, I am at once connected to that person and I am encouraged to live out my personhood in the energies of God.

The icon is also the possibility- both in itself and in what it says about matter- of the energies of God becoming manifest in a bewildering plurality of people and places and under a massive plurality of names and languages. Ambrosius Giakalis describes this potency in relation to the iconoclastic heresy:

“Fundamentally it was a debate about the locus of the holy. For holiness was not just a matter of personal piety; it was closely connected with the exercise of power in society. The legitimacy of material images as such was never a point at issue. The controversy revolved around which images could be regarded as vehicles of the holy. For the iconoclasts the holy was mediated to the people through material things consecrated by the clergy- the basilica with its liturgy, the Eucharist, the symbol of the cross. To have the holy mediated by a myriad icons seemed to them to dilute it to the point at which it ceased to be efficacious. The iconophiles, by contrast, sought through the icon to enable the holy to permeate the material world.”

The icon threatens the “secular” and the “bourgeois” in a way spiritualism and mere anti-materialism (in the strict sense of the word) cannot: it refuses to concede the created, the crafted, the material to the Devil, to the darkness of the age. The icon resists the commodification of everything, not by withdrawing from the material, from the manufactured even, but by embracing material reality and claiming it also for the Incarnate God. The material is not merely material for commodification and sale, for the use and exploitation of the fallen passions. The world is not conceded to the Devil; the world is not conceded to capitalism or the state or anyone else, but is contested by Christ and His saints. The icon then marks out materiality and material space as God’s; it is a redemption and a sign of redemption of matter, of the physical world, because it immediately participates in and transcends the “physical.”

2. Again, icons destabilize our language, by advocating the breaking in of God upon the world, of elevating the mystery of personhood in a manner we cannot speak. Early apologetics for icons emphasized their utility in educating the illiterate, yet at the same time they speak to the highly educated: the illiterate and the scholar meet on this un-worded ground of the Word, where the image cuts through language ultimately and moves the viewer/venerator to a different plane of knowledge, of participation. Kissing the icon is an action, is a movement beyond spoken language. It is an act of faith that expresses itself beyond what our words- as important as they are- are capable of. The image seen, the prayer uttered, the kiss done: multiple levels of the material and spiritual are involved, all becoming one transcendent act of prayer and veneration, reclaiming the whole for God, while pushing the limits of what can be said and what is expected of the world.

Agrarian Indie Music & A Couple Other Items

On November 14, 2008 By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, Music1 Comment

You might want to give a listen to this guy, who sounds like I would imagine a younger Wendell Berry if he played indie folk: Chris Dorman.

Also, while not agrarianish exactly, but still producers of the sort of music that befits a genuine culture of life, one of my perennially favorite bands, Anathallo, has a new album out next week that will no doubt be really wonderful and everyone should give a listen to.

And while I’m on the subject of music, this album, new(ish) to me, is one of the most beautiful albums of any sort I have listened to in some time. It’s a recording of a collaboration, in Terhan, between Hossein Alizadeh of Iran and Djivan Gasparyan of Armenia, and both musicians are world-class masters.

Scattered Thoughts on Liturgy, Saints, and Postmodern Discourse

On November 12, 2008November 12, 2008 By JonathanIn Gospel, Patristics, Philosophy4 Comments

1. (With props to Ft. Stephen who initiated this idea for me): The Liturgy is pretty jarring. There are all sorts of things happening at once, there is an abundance of strange language (things we do not hear in our day-to-day lives), strange concepts, people standing about at odd angles, children making noise and running about, plus the abundance of icons that attract the eye and carry their own particular discourse (but more on that later God willing). We do not immediately fit into this construction, into all this language about the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, of forgiveness, of angels and archangels: the disjunction of imagery and sounds, the challenges and declarations (the mystery of the Holy Trinity is continually set before us). The “discourse” of the Liturgy clashes with our normal discourses, with our normal way of speaking, thinking, and acting in the world. We- our bodies, our words, our senses- are raised into Heaven, are moved onto a different level of discourse and being. This movement has the potential- if we embrace it and move with/within it, if you will- of opening up our “everyday” discourses, our everyday existence, to the radical new possibilities that are found within the discourse of the Liturgy. Of course, there is a danger that we allow the strangeness and radicalness of the Liturgy to become “normalized” so that we no longer notice it: instead of it challenging us and opening us and our ways of speaking/living up to God, we domesticate the Liturgy (or we simply drift off into our own mental world and act through the Liturgy without noticing it…), we domesticate the whole divine action and discourse that we are confronted with.

Rather, the “otherness” of the Liturgy should break into our language, into our ways of thinking in/about the world. For example, the language of loving one’s enemies, of forgiveness, is continually brought before us, clashing with our normal (unfortunately) discourse, in which forgiveness and love of the enemy is a foreign concept, an unsettling one, along with all those weird troparion abour martyrs and ascetics. What are we to do with this? If we simply “domesticate” it, if we do not accept it as a radical intrusion and opening up of our speech and our very lives, then that language, the Liturgy itself, becomes just an antiquarian artefact.

2. My web browser opens to the OCA daily calender of saints and festivals. Today’s saints struck me as particularly demonstrating the radical nature of not just the Liturgy, but of the whole of the faith. Today St. John the Merciful is commemorated: a saint who does violence to our conceptions of what charity should look like; his actions break through our bourgeouis sentiments and ethics and overturns them. How can you possibly keep giving money to a beggar you know is tricking you? My experience of St. John is similar to that which I experienced the first time I read Yoder’s Politics of Jesus: I hate what you’re saying because I know it is true and truly Christological, and it clashes so much with my assumptions, with the discourses I have assimilated and that keep me comfortable. Yet I cannot reject what he is saying (acting/doing): I see Christ in his actions, I hear the- radical and “breaking-in”- voice of Christ, reconfigured and redeployed in the saint. We need saints to speak into our lives, into our discourses, because we are always taking the Gospel and “normalizing” it, domesticating it, overlaying the words with our own comfortable assumptions. Saints like St. John overthrow this domestication.

Today the Fool-for-Christ St. John of Rostov (the Hairy!) is also commemorated. In the holy fool we find one of the supreme examples of God breaking into our “normalness” and disrupting pretty much every element of our discourse and self-image. What do you do with holy foolishness? What can we possibly do with it? By honouring the holy fool as a saint, the Church canonizes- declares to be canonical, a rule against which to measure our lives- his “crazy” life, his foolishness. Added up, the variety of “canons” declares an incredible plurality of possibilities of being-in-the-world-in-Christ, and this plurality clashes with our sensibilities of what is “respectable” and “allowable.” Again, our attempts at coopting Christ into our non-Christological modes of living are confronted and challenged. Our language of “normality,” of “sanity,” is shown to be inadequate, to be in need of a radical opening to the reality of the life of Christ. For in fact our “sanity” is so often revealed to be true craziness, to be even satanic “normality.” Our language is shown up, so to speak, for its disconnection to reality, to the inner truth of the world. The holy fool asks: who’s really crazy? Your hair is nicely trimmed and your discourse follows the expected parameters, corresponds- so you think!- to what is “real.” Yet- the holy fool in his humility (humility before the true Word) sees the world as it is, and his language is ultimately “truer” than yours.

3. Hopefully the reason I included the nebulous word “postmodernism” in the title of this post is by now clear. Orthodoxy reveals itself to have long been “postmodern” in the sense that it has always sought to confront and open up received discourse. Orthodoxy- in Liturgy, prayer, saints, icons, etc- destabilizes our language, destabilizes our view of ourselves and the world, and inserts the supra-reality of Christ: He who comes with a sword, a sword that cuts and divides and in so doing allows us to move beyond what are so often false constructions. And whereas structuralism and poststructuralism tend to move the reader towards a point of no reality, of nothing beyond constructions and their deconstruction, Christ posits reality and life beyond the ruins of our inadequate and falsifying language. Yes, our words fail (witness apothetic theology). Yes, our language is a mode of power, of coercion and falsification: but it is possible to break through that, into the true Word “spoken in silence” Who breaks up and re-assembles our discourse in the light of His Gospel and saints and in prayer and so on. Where deconstructionism proper can lead to nihilism or irrationalism, the “deconstructing” of Christ leads into the Resurrected Life, from the “death” of language (and author and subject!) into the true life of the Word.

At the Time of Prayer

On October 19, 2008 By JonathanIn East & West, Gospel, Patristics, PrayerLeave a comment

O Christ who are covered with light as though with garment, who for my sake stood naked in front of Pilate, clothe me with that might which you caused to overshadow the saints, whereby they conquered this world of struggle. May your Divinity, Lord, take pleasure in me, and lead me above the world to be with you. O Christ, upon you the many-eyed Cherubim are unable to look because of the glory of your countenance, yet out of your love you recieved spit upon your face: remove the shame from my face and grant an open face before you at the time of prayer.

St. Isaac the Syrian

On Miracles and Wonder

On October 14, 2008 By JonathanIn Culture, Gospel, Patristics, PhilosophyLeave a comment

“The miracle indeed of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby He made the water into wine, is not marvelous to those who know that it is God’s doing. For He who made wine on that day at the marriage feast, in those six-water pots, which He commanded to be filled with water, the self-same does this every year in vines. For even as that which the servants put into the water-pots was turned into wine by the doing of the Lord, so in like manner also is what the clouds pour forth changed into wine by the doing of the same Lord. But we do not wonder at the latter, because it happens every year: it has lost its marvelousness by its constant recurrence. And yet it suggests a greater consideration that that which was done in the water-pots. For who is there that considers the works of God, whereby this whole world is governed and regulated, who is not amazed and overwhelmed with miracles? If he considers the vigorous power of a single grain of any seed whatever, it is a mighty thing, it inspires him with awe. But since men, intent on a different matter, have lost consideration of the works of God, by which they should daily praise Him as Creator, God has, as it were, reserved to Himself the doing of certain extraordinary actions, that, by striking them with wonder, He might rouse men as from sleep to worship Him.”

St. Augustine, On the Gospel of John

How often do we become caught up in the day-to-day mendacity of our lives, as we shuttle back and forth in our closed-up automobiles to and from closed-up spaces filled with the hum and glow of our computers and televisions and whatever other gadgets we have? If it was easy in St. Augustine’s time for people to lose sight of the wonder of creation, of the natural (or, for St. Augustine, supernatural) world all about, how much easier it is, who live in a universe that is consistently stripped of wonder?

In the Syriac tradition, as exemplified by Sts. Ephrem, Jacob of Serugh, John of Apamea, Isaac the Syrian, and others, wonder- at creation, at God, at God’s special actions on behalf of our salvation- is one of the keys of true theology. For Jacob of Serugh especially, without wonder theology is pretty useless- it is dry and without real connection, without real penetration of the heart and mind. Only in love and wonder before the beauty of God, manifested in His creation and His divine economy in Christ, can we truly understand, can we truly live the life of Christ. That is one of the reasons that Christ calls us to be ‘as little children’- to re-open our eyes to the wonder of God, to the wonder of life. This is not an easy thing to do- it’s far easier to settle into comfortable cynicism and detachment, which are fair enough attitudes no doubt for many aspects of contemporary life (or any period’s life), but are destructive if extended to all of life. When we grow so detached, so numbed to the world beyond our reductive science, our electronic screens, and the mundane tasks that we tend to have to engage in, we are not merely losing connection with nature- we are losing connection with God, with reality, and with the possibility of true humanity.

This is not to disparage as sinful or only destructive things like science, technology, work, and so on- but rather to suggest that we must constantly be careful to draw back from those things at times, to have our hearts and eyes open to the wonder inherent in the world that is, for all our concrete and fiber optics, still around us and visible. If we stop to contemplate things as simple as trees- we discover there is nothing simple or reductive about them, but, as St. Augustine tells us, they are a cause for wonder and adoration towards God, as exemplars of His creative power and sustenance. From there we can begin to re-engage wonder at the mystery of salvation, of God’s divine economy in the world. I think that if taken from this tack we are less likely to reduce those mysteries to mere dictum, objects to be analyzed and mechanistically digested or accepted. Instead, we begin to realize, with Jacob and Ephrem and Augustine, the wonder of the Incarnation of Christ, of our Lady, of the Divine Liturgy and the mystery of prayer. From there we have greater hope of doing true theology, of truly delving into the divine mysteries with our hearts and minds, beholding God, not in detachment, but in loving wonder.

As A Living Fire

On October 12, 2008 By JonathanIn Gospel, PatristicsLeave a comment

As at the rising of the sun over the horizon the shroud of darkness is removed from the face of the earth, so that it shows itself in all its beauty, so likewise when the love of Christ shines forth in the soul and the veil of the old nature is taken away, the light of Christ shines forth in it, and the hidden things that were not visible before are now seen by it. And as iron when placed in a fire has the fire pass into it to become one substance with it, the iron united with the fire assuming its likeness and colour, no longer appearing in its former aspect, but becoming like the fire, because they have become absorbed in each other and have become one, so it is when the love of Christ has come into the soul as a living fire which burns away the thorns of sin from the soul; it becomes one substance with him and he with it; then the soul which was old, becomes new; dead it comes alive; and the likeness of its own nature is changed into the likeness of God. And now everything it see appears to it as the likeness of God (for it is granted to created beings to behold the works of God spiritually), and it becomes absorbed in love for all humankind, so that if it could it would let itself perish, so that all humans might live.

St. John of Apamea

Rainy Day in Sefrou

On September 26, 2008September 26, 2008 By JonathanIn East & West, Photos, TravelLeave a comment

Sefrou is a fairly small town south of Fes, placed between the grand valley of Fes and the Middle Atlas. One approaches Sefrou from Fes through rolling groves of olives, mostly, the citadel-shaped mountain that stands guard over the town drawing closer and closer. The town itself sits in a little valley, with the rolling expanse of the Middle Atlas spreading behind; a stream drops down from the hills alongside, over a lovely little (and much locally celebrated) waterfall, and through the Old Medina (where it serves pretty much as a garbage chute, unfortunately). The entire time I was in Morocco this little river was full of water, and Sefrou and its surronding countryside was incredibly green. Walking around the edge of town I was always struck by how incongrous all the greenery- oaks and ivy even!- was in comparison to the usual image of North Africa as all desert and barren mountains: a far cry from reality.

Nor is it all sunshine and heat, as this set of photos relates. I took them on my first full day in Morocco- a wet, cold, and continually rainy day. I had spent the night in Fes after taking a plane to Tangier and then train to Fes; after checking in with the Arabic institute in the morning I trudged through the rain, down the street past Fes’ regal McDonalds, and confidently got in a grand-taxi bound for Sefrou. When I arrived, the rain that had harried me on my trek to the grand-taxi stand in Fes was still pouring down, so I sat in my little hotel room and looked out the window, wondering if had in fact ended up not in North Africa but perhaps England or Ireland. After a while I could stand no more sitting about, so I put on my raincoat and set out into the little medina, where I got lost (not for long- it’s hard to stay lost in Sefrou’s diminutive medina) and thoroughly drenched. In the meanwhile I took these photos, which are a bit drab, thanks to the rain, and work-a-day in their subject matter, I suppose. However, as I was looking back over this set today- inspired by the advent of cool, rainy weather here in Tennessee- I thought that they give a nice snapshot of ordinary medina life, and all the wonderful colours and shapes you can see, and perhaps a hint of the sounds and tastes and smells and feelings attendent to the seen things: the marvelously rich- moreso than any other urban place I’ve visited in the world- sensory experience of the Moroccan medina.

This is probably in the Mellah, the Jewish Quarter- Sefrou’s old Mellah takes up nearly half the Medina, though only a handful, if any Jews, now live there.

The robes some of the men in the photos have on are jellabas, the traditional, and quite functional, Moroccan outerwear.

In the always wonderful and aromatic (particularly compared to the meat sellers stalls…) vegetable and herb section of the suqs.

Along the outside of the walls, on the north side of the Medina.

In the evening, in one of the ridiculously narrow streets of the Mellah part of the Medina. It was rather cold by now, and I did not, alas, possess.

Why I Am Not Voting In This Election

On September 24, 2008September 24, 2008 By JonathanIn Culture, Gospel, Politics, War4 Comments

(Disclaimer: the following may offend you, and if it does, and you find yourself vehemently angry at me, forgive me. Pray for me a sinner.)

I occasionally mention to people that I do not plan on voting in the much-vaulted upcoming election, and could really care less which candidate wins- a proposition usually taken with curiosity, at the least. I suppose I owe an explanation of sorts for this shockingly heretical attitude- no, I’m not a full-fledged anarchist, though perhaps of the Dorothy Day sort… Rather, in appraising the two candidates, I cannot support either one, for reasons of the deepest importance. One may ask, why not vote third-party? For one thing, I am not all jazzed about anyone running- Chuck Baldwin is apparently a moral majoritarian sort, the Libertarians have fielded what seems like a Republican-lite candidate, and so on. Besides, let’s be quite honest, voting for anyone apart from the two is quite pointless no matter where you live. As it is, a vote for either McCain or Obama would probably be pretty pointless here, Tennessee being a state pretty well placed in McCain’s column. But regardless. Why then can I not support either candidate?

Both men represent systems of doing things that are rooted in fundamental violence and oppression; they both reflect and do not question in their own way- alike though not identical- the culture of death that both supports and informs that American State (not that it’s unusual in that). A vote for either one is a vote for continuing systematic, intense, State-funded and supported violence and aggression. They only differ in their preferred targets, and that is all. Obama, to begin with, is not and has never been the “peace candidate,” even excepting his undiminished support for abortion-on-demand. While his early rhetoric sounded anti-war and even slightly radical, he has long since obediently and probably willingly shifted into the usual centre-right position, an advocate of American exceptionalism- one supported only part of the time, in certain places, by bombs and bullets, you understand. Mr. Obama would have us leave off one war- that in Iraq (though not too quickly!)- in order to escalate another, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That even more civilians are being slaughtered by American “smart” bombs in the latter places seems to be of little importance; it is the good war, after all, and that no one disputes. Besides those stated objectives, Mr. Obama would have us continue to proselytize the world for democracy etc etc, and in those promises the threat of force is never far behind, even if the Democrats at the moment prefer to not emphasize it.

As far as Mr. McCain’s approach to foreign policy goes, one hardly need say anything. Obama at least wraps his imperialism in lofty rhetoric and sometimes anti-war sounding evasions; McCain stands on a stage and sings about obliterating brown people with his bombs. He fully and unapologetically embraces the war machine; hatred of the enemy and mass violence are necessary for his campaign’s success after all.

But that is not the only issue in which the two candidates embrace systems of brutal violence and oppression. Obama is an unapologetic, if not particularly outspoken, proponent of industrialized abortion, the systematic violence against unborn child and mother. Not only are we asked to tolerate this subculture of death and violence, but we are asked (well, with the State there isn’t “asking,” only telling) to support it. This violence is in fact made sacrosanct, in one of the great perversions of modern life: the “right” to destroy is not only important, but essential, the underpinning of the all-holy human (well, the right sort of human that is) ability to control all things, from unwanted children to unwanted nations. “Consumer choice” invades the womb and bombs the world.

Neither candidate has seriously challenged or even discussed the ongoing violence and destruction propagated in the name of the “war on drugs.” Its victims do not enter the national discourse; Obama has given vague soundbites about “reforming” in some vague way the war, but just as in his foreign policy, this only means a shifting a resources, the dropping of bombs on a different group of the poor. As for McCain, again, there is nothing hidden here. Both candidates leave unquestioned the pervasive evils of the drug war; neither can imagine or desire to imagine alternatives to this great projection of deeply violent State power. Why should they? Again, State violence becomes virtually sacrosanct: the drug war, the war on terror, are all holy wars, the fight of noble Civilization against its dark, murderous enemies.

McCain, despite having once sought immigration reform of a sort, is now parroting the xenophobic lines of the hard right, endorsing yet another system of dehumanization and violence, yet another front for creating enemies and targets. Racist tactics are, as politicians have long known, particularly in my part of the world, one of the most effective ways for stirring human passions and fears, and directing them into creating you more power.

Knowing all this- that to endorse either candidate is to endorse systematic violence against my neighbor- how can I in good conscience vote for either? How can I listen to the words of Christ, how can I claim citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven, and give my assent to these sorts of things? Do not suggest to me the lesser of two evils- am I too choose which forms of violence and evil I reject less strongly?

Am I suggesting running away from the world because it’s messy? No- instead of voting, do something that matters, go get messy, stand up against the currents of violence and despair, rebel against the culture of death: go find a homeless person and buy him lunch. Befriend a lonely person. Plant a garden. Go to church. Go find your neighbor, talk to her, love her. Go find the closest nursing home and visit the elderly. Volunteer at a crisis pregnancy centre. Treat the immigrant like a human being. Pray. Forgive your enemy. Love him, however you can. Don’t vote for his annihilation.

Thicket & Thorp

Author: Jonathan