January week 1 – Arise, shine; your light has come!

On Sunday Meryl Streep received her 30th Globe nomination and was presented the Cecil B DeMille Life Time Achievement Award.  In her acceptance speech, the three time Oscar and eight time Golden Globe winner commented, “This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life. Because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.”

Afterwards in three consecutive tweets Trump commented “Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a.. Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him “groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!”

Like millions of people I find Hilary Clinton and Meryl Streep to be among the brightest lights of hope for creating an equitable world, honoring and empowering woman, and working for human dignity by creating possibilities and policy filled with compassion and justice.  To honor these two women and women everywhere I am sharing with you my first images of light in the New Year and my revisioned account of Isaiah 42 (Sunday’s assigned Old Testament reading).

Arise, shine; your light has come!

Sophia proclaims:  “Live in my light, O peoples of my cosmos.  In so doing you embody me.  In you my soul delights and my wisdom will shine.  In you I shall put my spirit to bring justice to all corners of the earth.

My lovers will act with compassion toward those who are hurting and those who are vulnerable. They will not be deterred from the goal of bringing forth healing for the web-of-life and all beings, nor from bringing forth justice to recreate and mend relationships that empower and lift up my wisdom.”

I am your God/dess, your Light, 

    and I have called you

    I have taken you by the hand and kept you,

    I have ignited you to be Light to the world,

          to open the eyes that are blind,

          to bring out the prisoners from the dungeons

          to practice the healing arts for all, without exception

          to provide for the physical needs of every person,  from food to housing

          to offer light to those who have been overcome by devastating gloom or evil

I am God/dess, your beloved, the one of thousands of names

     my glory, my light, I freely give  … arise, shine!”

PS – my final images of 2016 have no commentary but can be viewed here