August 18

On August 18 1920, the United States ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, establishing women’s suffrage—but only, at the time, for white women. This amendment is under threat from the current fascist regime in charge of the United States. 

Today is the feast day of Saint Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine. She was not from noble blood, but found herself in a position of power through marriage (though her husband later divorced her). She was responsible for recovering and documenting many ancient pilgrimage sites from Christianity’s first two centuries, and established the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.

Today also marks the death, in 1952, of Alberto Hurtado, a Chilean priest and social activist who advocated both for youth and for labor unions.

Reflection:

Though I have strong opinions about the way Emperor Constantine hijacked the grassroots religious movement of Christianity and turned it into a hierarchical, settler-colonial tool to advance his own interests, his mother, by all accounts, was a sincere believer who began the “search for the historical Jesus” by looking for relics of his life.  

Alberto Hurtado said,

and

Prayer: God, let us tend your love the way a farmer tends the soil, a sailor sails the sea, and a musician both creates and is carried by music. Amen.