It’s All Saints and churches have their calendars of saints, and I have my own list of saints and others who I respect and revere.
Some of these people were Christian. A lot of them were not.
Some here were very saintly, others more heroic than saintly.
Some were people of great faith. Others were courageous skeptics.
All of these people were flawed human beings, some more flawed than others.
Many of them gave the last full measure of their devotion.
I am grateful for the lives of all of these people who now rest in peace from their work.
I look to each and every one of them for courage and inspiration.
Aelred of Rievaulx
Mordechai Anielewicz
Hannah Arendt
Willem Arondeus
W.H. Auden
Josephine Baker
James Baldwin
Bartolome de las Casas
Max Beckmann
George Bell*
*I'm mindful of the controversy that now surrounds him. Whatever evil he may have done, the good he did was very good, even if it might not be enough to redeem him.
Isaiah Berlin
Joseph Beuys
William Blake
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Filippo Brunelleschi
Paul Cadmus
Michael Callen
Albert Camus
Mary Cassatt
Jonathan Mirick Daniels
Eugene V. Debs
Hans von Dohnanyi
Donatello
Frederick Douglas
Albrecht Dürer
Thomas Eakins
Fanny Ann Eddy
Erasmus of Rotterdam
Max Ernst
Jan Van Eyck
Fang Li Xhi
Francis of Assisi
Caspar David Friedrich
Artemisia Gentilleschi
Giotto
Barbara Gittings
Emma Goldman
Francisco Goya
Philip Guston
Woody Guthrie
Fanny Lou Hamer
George Herbert
Joe Hill
Magnus Hirschfeld
Mahalia Jackson
Marsha P. Johnson
Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones)
Chief Joseph
Mychal Judge
Julian of Norwich
Frida Kahlo
David Kato
Yevgeny Kharitonov
Martin Luther King Jr.
Marquis de Lafayette
August Landmesser
Jacob Lawrence
Leonardo da Vinci
Abraham Lincoln
Martin Luther
Nelson Mandela
Thomas Mann
Thurgood Marshall
Del Martin (with Phyllis Lyon who still lives)
Masaccio (on the left looking at us)
Thomas Merton
Harvey Milk
Michel de Montaigne
Montesequieu
Jack Nichols and Frank Kameny
Reinhold Niebuhr
Felix Nussbaum
Origen of Alexandria
George Orwell
Thomas Paine
Quanah Parker
Blaise Pascal
Frances Perkins
Nicholas Poussin
Rabia al Basri
Yitzahk Rabin
Rembrandt van Rijn
Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen in 1937 after being beaten up by Ford company goons.
Marty Robinson and Tom Doerr in 1970 during an occupation of Rockefeller campaign HQ
Craig Rodwell
Oscar Romero
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Andre Sakharov
Nina Simone
Jonathan Swift
Paul Tillich
Harriet Tubman
Alan Turing
Mark Twain
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
John Wesley
Rogier Van Der Weyden
Walt Whitman
Elie Wiesel
David Wojnarowicz
Tomas Young
Luke the Evangelist
Mary Magdalene, Apostle to the Apostles
Mary the Mother of God
The Beloved Disciple
Peter the Denying Apostle
Thomas, the Doubting Apostle
Some Saints that I knew personally:
JeDon Washington, the man who inspired me to be an artist
Charles Bewick
JeDon Washington, the man who inspired me to be an artist
Charles Bewick
4 comments:
Wow, you've got all the saints from A to Z! (Or at least to W.) Great to see Elie Wiesel next to David Wojnarowicz!
Have all your saints "graduated to the Larger Life"? Because if not, I think there's a couple I would add under the letter "O". [Actually, Google confirmed for me that Phyllis Lyon is still alive---she turns 92 on November 10: Happy Birthday, Phyllis!]
I would add Mohandas Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and Dorothy Day...and beseech all of them: PRAY FOR US!
Apologies to Ms. Lyon. I have corrected the error.
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