"Time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once," and other Madelein L'Engle quotes (Part 1)

Madelein L’Engle (1918-2007) authored over 40 books, including A Wrinkle In Time and all of its sequels.  I still recall my 3^rd grade teacher reading those to us, and being mesmerized by the way they stimulated my imagination.  Her writing reflected her deep Christian faith, a love of science, and a curiosity to ask many questions. I was privileged to hear her give the Commencement Address to my graduating class at Wheaton College in 1977.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from her writings.  Let me know which ones resonate with you.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

Time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe - these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted.

Believing takes practice.

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.

I love, therefore I am vulnerable.

It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.

The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.

Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his mighty actions comprehensible to our finite minds.

Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.

Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.

Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.

Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.

Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.

We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.

Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.

But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.

God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are.

Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.

We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.

Darkness was and darkness was good. As with light. Light and Darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm.

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished." What I believe is alive ... and open to growth.

Love is the one surprise.

She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.

It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.

When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.

Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them.

To be continued…

Let me know which of these speak to you.

Ti Chape (another free chapter from "Embracing the Gray")

Preparing for my sixth visit to Haiti (and first since the earthquake), I’ve been in a reflective mood. Here is a chapter form my book, Embracing the Gray that explains my attachment to this struggling nation over the years:

After passing by the hazed eastern tip of Cuba, our American Airlines flight banked steeply to the right and within minutes we were passing over the northern peninsula of Haiti, so recognizable due to the heavily rutted landscape.  The French had not been kind when they ravaged the once lush western half of Hispaniola of all the mahogany trees and shipped the lumber back to Paris to make fine furniture.  Over 200 years later, the nation is still 90% barren, and what little good topsoil remains is being eroded into the Caribbean. We circled over the Canal du Sud strait approaching Port au Prince, a teeming city I had not been to in nineteen years.  As we touched down on the single runway “international” airport, memories began to take focus.

I had been to this second-poorest country in the world three times in the 80s.  In fact, my very first trip to a developing nation had been here in early 1984 when I was managing Petra. We had begun a relationship with Compassion a year earlier, and had seen thousands of needy kids find sponsors with their enthusiastic concert audiences and via album inserts. It was so humbling for us to meet some of the children we had been sponsoring, and to see the life-changing results that child development in a Christian environment could bring about.

A wiry American with a unique accent was our guide on that trip.  He had been living in Haiti for six years, assisting with various ministries, and eventually signing-on full-time with Compassion.  His deep, expressive voice had been influenced over his lifetime of being raised as a missionary’s son in West Africa, then attending various universities in America earning multiple degrees, as well as serving as a linguist in the Army on the Eastern Front of Europe. Along the way he had mastered seven different languages, and we heard him speak fluently and persuasively in the unique language of Haiti known as Creole.  Thus began a twenty-eight year friendship with the man who is now my boss. Wess Stafford has since gone on to become the president of Compassion International, overseeing an organization that has grown to twenty times the size it was then, now giving manifold assistance to over 1.3 million children in twenty-six countries.

I’ll never forget as we were sitting in some sort of traffic back up—a very common Haitian occurrence—along the N1 Highway near the coastal town of Arcahaie.  I snapped one of my all-time favorite photos: a little boy of about three with a distended belly from malnutrition, wearing a ragged striped t-shirt and nothing else, proudly hoisting his torn little hand-made kite on a ten foot string made up of whatever scraps of twine and wire he had found.  The breeze was keeping it only about five feet aloft, but he was as gleeful as any child I had ever seen.

Wess was seated next to me in our van, and noticed my fascination with the tiny urchin.  “Ah, yes…another little Ti Chape,” he observed. 

“What is a Ti Chape?” I asked.

“It’s a Creole phrase that many parents in these poorest areas of Haiti use with their youngest kids,” Wess explained.  “I’m sure you’ll hear it often over the next several days as we visit homes.  It’s a term of endearment…but it’s also one of a harsh reality that reminds everyone every time it is uttered of how devastating each day can be for people living on the brink.  Ti Chape means ‘little survivor’ or ‘one who has escaped death’.” 

By this time, several others from the band were leaning in close to hear what Wess was explaining.

As a very tenderhearted man, Wess could not conceal his passion for these people, and tears began to well in his eyes, and with a catch in his throat he continued: “Sadly, for the majority of the poor here in Haiti, the infant mortality rate is as high as fifty percent for children under the age of five.  So, often times parents won’t refer to their littlest ones by their birth name until they celebrate their fifth birthday, because they know all too well that many of them won’t make it that far.  While they are still in this most vulnerable toddler stage, they are affectionately called “Ti Chape.”  I guess it is overly painful to consistently call them by their real name for fear of assigning too much hope to their prospects.  This same phenomena happens, by different names of course, in other desperately poor cultures around the globe.”

I watched intently for a few more minutes at that toddler joyfully trying to keep his tattered toy buoyant on the air. Then we lurched forward in the traffic flow.  For the rest of our stay I pondered what his chances were really going to be within the next few months. 

Later that day, I saw my first human corpse abandoned in one of the filthy alleyways of an intense slum on the bay known as City du la Sole. It wasn’t the only one I would ever see in Haiti.  Even now, whenever I look at that tyke’s photo in my collection, it gives me great pause, and it was all coming back to me nearly twenty-five years later as we drove through the packed streets of Port au Prince.

On our final day of this just-completed trip, we drove out the N2 highway along the southern Massif de la Hotte peninsula, weaving past colorfully painted tap-taps (old pick ups converted into buses often over-loaded down with upwards of twenty people), soot-spewing diesel trucks, and UN troop patrol vehicles that help keep the peace in this politically unstable environment. 

As we pass tiny farms, my mind drifts back to meeting Horele Georges. He was the third son of a meager dirt farmer near the town of Miragoane.  Hector Georges supported his family of seven on a rocky plot about one-half of an acre in size.  He toiled with one emaciated cow nearly every daylight hour trying to squeeze each ounce of productivity out of that parched earth as was humanly possible.

When Horele was registered into the program at age five, he began learning new agricultural techniques that showed how yield could be increased dramatically with the help of better seeds, certain fertilizers, irrigation techniques, and so on. 

A year passed as he observed through a couple of growth seasons how the corn at the project was markedly bigger than what was growing on all the area farms.  Horele started asking Hector if they could try these processes on their crops.  At first his father just ignored him, but Horele persisted.  Eventually Hector said, “Son, I’ve worked this land in this way my entire life.  My father before me did the same, and your grandfather and great grandfather before them.  There’s nothing that can be done that we haven’t tried.”

But Horele knew that some of these ideas had not been put into practice…or at least he wasn’t aware that they had been while he helped his father every day before and after school.  So, he continued trying to explain to his poppa what he had been taught.  As it was just the beginning of a new planting season, Hector finally relented, and said, “Alright, Horele.  I’ll let you have one row of this section where you can try your silly tricks.  I’ll be surprised if whatever it is you try even survives the first heat wave.”

Taking what he had learned at the Compassion project, the little boy eagerly set his attention on that modest row of newly planted seeds.  Each morning he tilled and watered.  Each afternoon he blended in the fertilizing techniques he was being taught, pulled weeds, and watered more.

Eight weeks passed, and lo and behold, Horele’s row was two feet taller than the rest of the plot.  His daddy had certainly noticed, but kept waiting for the stalks to wither.  When it was apparent that indeed his little son’s crop was going to be substantially better than his, he sheepishly said “So, son, ummm…what is it exactly that they are teaching you to do?”

By the time the next growing season was finished, Hector Georges’ little farm was producing forty percent higher yield than it ever had.

I look back fondly on Horele, because he was a boy I sponsored for twelve years. And I finally met him less than four months before he was to graduate from high school, near the top of his class. His dad became so good at the farming techniques his little son had taught him that he became a regular volunteer assistant with each new class at the Compassion project.  Skepticism and even fatalism had been superseded by the youthful zeal of his child. Hector eventually ended up on staff at the project. 

Horele in his mid-thirties now, with a family of his own.  He’s a leader in his church and in his community. And on the same tiny scrap of land he’s still raising some of the best corn on that side of the island.    

It would be easy to assess that not much has changed for the better in Haiti since that visit in 1990.  There were still massive piles of stinking refuse at nearly every street corner.  Sewers were packed and overflowing with debris.  The charcoal based energy and cooking lifestyle was still evident with a thick haze that covered most urban areas. And tens of thousands of people packed every sidewalk and spilled out into the bumpy streets…just barely avoiding dismemberment from crazed motorists.

We were headed out to see one of Compassion’s projects that had been in existence for twenty-three years, but had just a few years before added a new program that is helping revolutionize our work.

When we arrived in the rural town of Papette, where the Wesleyan Church had become a real community center over the past two decades, and it was obvious that the one thousand residents had a deep respect for all that the Compassion project had helped them with over the years.

My little group of radio professionals and I were ushered into the sanctuary where ninety-three mothers and their infants had been patiently waiting.  It was amazing how quiet and disciplined the 120 or so little ones were—we commented amongst ourselves that the same scene in America would’ve been utter pandemonium. There was a look of gentle appreciation on the face of each young woman when we made eye contact. 

A handful of the moms came forward to give testimony to what had revolutionized their lives.  You see, over Compassion’s fifty-six years of existence, we’ve always been laser-beam focused on child development for kindergarten age kids through high school.  But in the past five years, we have launched a new initiative called the Child Survival Program (CSP), which supports mothers and children all the way from their pregnancy, on into infancy, and through the toddler years.

One of the young mothers, Irmice, had her little eighteen-month-old boy draped on her shoulder, fast asleep, as she shared with the crowd.  “I serve a living, loving God,” she confidently declared.  “If not for Him or Compassion, I, and certainly not my baby, would be alive today.”  She went on to explain the loving care and instruction she had received from the CSP staff, nurses, and social workers who showed her how to improve pre-natal health via exercise, nutrition, and supplements.  Then after her son was born, the encouraging practical lessons like proper breast-feeding, preventive vaccines, immunizations, and other medicines have continued.

On a subsequent tour through the CSP wing of the project we saw cribs, tiny chairs, baby swings, scooters, tricycles, a huge supply of learning toys and instruments, exercise mats, building blocks, and everything else you would see in a well-run education based nursery.  They even had weekly classes for social interaction/training and early literacy. For these moms, who come from households where the average monthly income is perhaps $40 at best, this is a sanctuary for their babies in the truest sense of the word. The CSP Director, Rose, explained how the tots were regularly weighed, measured, and examined to make sure they were within healthy parameters. There was a full pharmaceutical closet with everything a young mother could need for their child. Extensive files were kept on each mom and baby that was regularly updated with the weekly visits at their homes as well as at the project.  We were thoroughly impressed. And the results were obvious in the shiny eyes, gleeful giggles, and yes, even the healthy full-throat wails of some little nippers. 

We saw the wall charts that were proudly displayed showing the progress of each and every infant that had come through the program…and not a single one had died.  In fact, once the three-year-olds “graduate” from CSP, they then become eligible for Compassion’s regular child sponsorship that runs from pre-K all the way through their late teens. And all of them from four to five years ago were now enrolled there.

“What an ongoing blessing we have seen as Compassion has been involved here for over a generation,” said Rev. Thebaud, the aging pastor who had formed the church three decades ago. “So many more precious little ones have been saved physically and spiritually since we began partnering with you. I am retiring soon, and will probably be going to be with the Lord very soon as well…however I can rest easy knowing that things have changed so much for the better from when we started back in 1985.”

Outside the project, we saw some much healthier looking kindergartners sailing their tattered kites.  But they were in their school uniforms, with good shoes on their feet.  I always like asking these little Haitian dynamos their names.  It swells my heart every time to hear them proudly blurt out their moniker: “Pierre!”  “Camille!” “Sebastien!” “Monique!” “Alain!” “Simone!”  “Yves!”  I close my eyes and see a skinny tyke waving some big ears of corn yelling out “Horele!”

And when I asked these mothers on this day to introduce their littlest ones, there wasn’t a single “Ti Chape” answer in the bunch.

# # #

If you would be interested in reading Embracing the Gray: A Wing, A Prayer, and A Doubter’s Resolve, you can get it via Kindle for just 99 cents via Amazon.com here:

http://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Gray-Doubters-Resolve-ebook/dp/B004L62CN2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342572881&sr=1-1&keywords=embracing+the+gray

Or you can get it as a FREE PDF download at my website here (donations accepted):

http://MarkAHollingsworth.com

It is also available at most bookstores and internet sites in book form as well.

The Real Holy Sights of Palestine and Israel

It’s been a week since my return from the Middle East where I took part in a remarkable peace conference as well as spending four days living with a Palestinian Christian family to better understand their challenges.

People are always curious about what sightseeing I did on my various trips, and certainly the Holy Land is full of remarkable history at nearly every turn. Thousands upon thousands of years of history wash over you as you traverse this rather tiny plot of land where major religions have been spawned, wars have been waged, and kingdoms were built and torn down.

I walked along the walls surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City that were constructed by the Ottomans, gazed up at David’s Tower, entered Jaffa Gate, and wandered thru the maze of shops that make up much of the Christian Quarter. I climbed the Mount of Olives, saw the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, knelt in the Church of Gethsemane, took in the view of the Temple Mount, drove thru the Valley of Kidron, and even stared into the bowels of Gehenna (yes, THE Gehenna, the former Jerusalem city dump that was used as a metaphor for Hell). I was on the route that Jesus supposedly took on his triumphal entrance into the city on Palm Sunday. I peered into the Damascus Gate, spied Mt. Carmel where Elijah called down Jehovah’s fire upon the Prophets of Baal, saw Herod’s summer retreat built into the cone of a volcano, and visited the Mosque in Hebron that houses the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Rebecca.

While In Jericho, a photographed the sycamore tree that Zacheus climbed, and hiked over the many layers of excavation of the self-proclaimed “World’s Oldest City,” including the walls that came a-tumblin’ down. Above there was the Mount of Temptation where Satan offered Christ the whole world. Along the desolate Pat River gorge I looked down onto St. George’s Monastery that was ingeniously built into the sandstone cliffs, looking like a piece of Rivendell. On the shores of the Dead Sea I visited the Qumran Park where the infamous scrolls of ancient texts were discovered in the caves that pockmark those mountainsides.

Bethlehem, where I was stationed most of my visit, is certainly chock-full of every imaginable site that has to do Christ’s birth, not the least of which is Manger Square, and the fields where the shepherds were greeted by the heavenly host.

With nearly every one of these locales there is the seemingly requisite cathedral, synagogue, or mosque (sometimes all three), overrun with tour guides to help you better understand the historical narrative, and a never-ending cadre of souvenir shops filled with the specific bric-a-brac to help memorialize your sojourn there. Upon close inspection, the vast majority of said trinkets were manufactured in China, which tends to diminish the authenticity a tad. Hucksters besieged me in the Christian Quarter as I wound my way through the gauntlet of mercenary consumption (one store was appropriately named “Lord Kitsch”), and wondered if this was not much different than what Jesus fumed about when he threw the moneychangers out of the Temple.

Besides the rather questionable claims of exact locations of Christ stumbling with the cross on his shoulder or what-have-you, there are the ones that are just blatantly made up. For instance, when traversing past Bedouin encampments along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, we saw signs proclaiming “Site of the Good Samaritan.” Hmmmm…that was a parable. And yet it was a common destination for many of the Christian tours.

It got me to thinking that there was some serious shekels to be made if I could come up with my own apocryphal miracle marker. Then it struck me as we were walking the tight streets a block away from Christ’s birthplace that no one had determined exactly where Mary’s water must’ve broken on that special night. Why, with some pseudo archeology and liberal portions of hearsay, I could start declaring that this very spot (conveniently located on a low-rent storefront), is where that glorious gush took place. I could hew out a granite cistern of sorts and fill it with crimson liquid to clearly mark the consecrated puddle. In no time I could construct the Sepulcher of Most Holy Amniotic Plashet and be a quick add-on to the tours of tens of thousands of trusting souls who are bussed in each day to wander about the hallowed nativity grounds. You may think I wax too cynical, but I assure you it is not far from what has been purported as truth in many of these domains.

But before I could become too skeptical of the big tourism business, I would always be reminded of what was truly holy. It was hard to miss, since there were so many instances of it on display: lovely children populating the cityscapes and countryside. Whether watching Israeli kids all dressed up in whimsical costumes to celebrate Purim, or Palestinian girls wearing their pastel hijab headscarves at a bus stop, or Jewish kindergartners walking hand-in-hand across a busy street on their way to temple, Muslim and Christian Palestinian school children frolicking on a playground...I was struck by the fact that Abraham’s descendents were, indeed fruitful and did multiply. Those seeds now populate three of the largest religions on the planet. And it all started there.

The simple joys of these little ones kept me going when I was overwhelmed with the crass commercialism, or the sad tales of terrorism and injustice going on. While walking through the market in Hebron, I spotted some precocious five-year old Palestinian girls who became fascinated with my digital camera. As we visited a Muslim home on the West Bank, I was interacting with a ten-year old boy about silly phrases and moves by WWE Wrestling superstars. In Bethlehem I visited with a three- generation trio of a toddler, his dad, and the grandfather. Near Efrata I was surrounded by half a dozen elementary aged Muslims who were joyfully peppering me with questions in broken English and curious about everything American. Our taxi driver for several of the days, Abed, had the most adorable toddler daughter, named Rancon, who would sometimes ride in the cab with us. We were so excited for him as he had just become a father for a second time when his wife gave birth to a healthy young girl while we were there.

Abeer and Fadi, the mother and father of the Palestinian Lutheran family that we stayed with the final four days, had three amazing kids: the pretty Leena and Gina, and the handsome Hanna. They were doing there best to get along in the land of their forefathers (they come from a church tradition that goes back numerous generations). During our breakfasts and dinners together each day, we learned much about their daily lives, the education of their children and the pride of their extra-curricular school activities. They showed us photos of family milestones, and gave funny accounts of chapters of their familial histories. And we also asked about the hassles of working around a state of occupation.

For instance, Abeer’s sister was purposely given improper forms to fill out when she crossed the border into Lebanon to attend a business conference, and has not been allowed back in through any of the Israeli checkpoints since , forcing her to take up residence in Beirut. So, for seventeen years, Abeer has not been able to see her sister face-to-face. And Fadi’s brother, tired of taxation by the Israeli government without proper representation, was imprisoned for sixty days back in the early 90s. They seized his home, his furnishings, his store, and the goods of his medical supply business. Pretty steep penalties for just half a year of non-payment. He was finally allowed to go free, but none of his belongings or property was ever returned. We heard story after story like this from many of the Palestinians we met. Even Israeli citizens would shake their heads in shame recounting tales of their government’s overly harsh policies.

There is an overarching sense of weariness from the adults in that region. 95% of the Palestinians want a peaceful reconciliation, and even 70% of the Israelis agree. But when you look at the kids, whether teens or toddlers, they have hope in their eyes. Maybe it is the naïveté of youth. I’d rather look at it as a spark of the divine in their eyes. No one ever thought there would be peaceful resolutions between the British Empire and India during the 30s and 40s in their search for independence; nobody thought the Apartheid of South Africa would ever be solved without a massive conflict; the hatred in Northern Ireland between the Catholics and Protestants was considered too deep-seeded for coexistence; none of the experts saw the collapse of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe without bloodshed; nor did anyone think that Civil Rights would ever take hold in America led by a ragtag group of southern ministers…and yet in all these cases things changed due to non-violent reconciliation, often with the younger generations leading the way.

So, instead of giving much credence to the oft-dubious sites of supposed religious significance from eons gone by, it’s these young faces in Palestine and Israel that become the holy sights that get me excited about the future of this fascinating land. When I look back on this trip, and close my eyes to pray, they are the ones I see. May I keep that vision before me. May we all.

You can see some of these “Holy Sights” in my photo collection of the same name on my Facebook page.