The purifying power of prayer?

Content Warning: RantWoman is aware that it is the holidays. Precisely because it is the holidays RantWoman is called to reflect on various moments of religion. Personal faith is important to RantWoman and RantWoman generally believes in a God that can handle hard questions. There  is a moment of light at the end of this post, but between here and there is pretty rough going. RantWoman is feeling really peevish.. Fair warning: if that sounds like more than you want to handle, please click away elsewhere.

It's not a great year for google holiday saint iconography and tactile conversion. Consider St Nicholas day; now feature St. Lucy's day. Or maybe it's just not a great year for RantWoman's patience and bad eyes combing what spews forth from Google to find images that work better.. Either way, the images below honor St. Lucy. The line drawing looks fine as an image but one would need coaching probably to identify the candles and berries by touch.

Peculiarly, St Lucy and an attempt to make tactile art from one symbol of her seem resonant for Friday the 13th.Then RantWoman decided to check out Wikipedia on St. Lucy. RantWoman is just going to leave he thematic melange hanging.

 

Also left hanging: RantWoman got TWO solicitations in one day for SandyHookPromise, the Sandy Hook  survivor families memorial gun control advocacy organization.

The two in one day issue motivated RantWoman to actually READ the fundraising solicitations before deleting them. Tomorrow is the seventhe anniversary of the Sandy Hook mass shooting. RantWoman will be emitting memorial prayers into the universe to all the survivors including the desparate mother who for whatever reason could not connect her son the shooter with appropriate help.

Ditto for all the survivors of mass shootings since then. Is RantWoman also allowed to emit prayers of scorn and shaming for the firearms industry that with a few small exceptions continues to profit from the mayhem and to fight every effort anywhere to hold themselves accountable?

Anyway RantWoman  also will not be joking about "so far I have managed to avoid mass murder, either committing or falling victim." RantWoman will be reflecting on one large family she knows where several members of the family share a disability. RantWoman remembers walking with them through a complicated situation a few years ago: for various reasons, RantWoman thinks of Sandy Hook and of the ways that many small moments of help from multiple directions in a faith community might have saved them from anything as desparate as Sandy Hook. RantWoman concedes she may be reading too much into a small number of Facebook posts. Maybe, though, except for ongoing "oh good grief" personal decisionmaking and the challenges of the disability, things appear to be much better now,

Not better on the religion front: the odious occupant of the White house has declared Judaism a nationality to propitiate some devout evangelicals dragging around their millenarian tropes.

RantWoman already has to pray for the Odious Occupant just so she can stand to share the planet with him.RantWoman is appalled. All the Jewish voices RantWoman reads regularly on Twitter are outraged. Some voices are terrified. Understandably.

Also not festive: on one hand, Mrs. Odious Occupant is at work on her #BeBest anti-bullying campaign. RantWoman strives to maintain the same respect for Mrs. Odious Occupant that she holds for anyone who can conduct interviews in more than one language. RantWoman also finds herself fretting the welfare of any child who lives with the Odious Occupant, particularly if there is disability involved. Enough said?

Today for instance, the Odious Occupant appears to be "celebrating" the House Judiciary Committee vote to impeach him by picking a Twitter fight with teenage anti-climate change activist Greta Thunberg. RantWoman does not know what to make of the internet chewing on the Odious Occupant for picking on a child. The behavior is completely inappropriate of course, but Greta Thunberg is already tough enough to take on world leaders and to cope with her disability. Plus she had the had the perfect approach for handling the Odious Occupant: she just grabbed his mockery and stuck it in her Twitter profile. Go Greta! So RantWoman prays also for paths to humor!