Saints and Others

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