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- May 13
May 13
Julian of Norwich, Unita Blackwell, Don Ritchie, and Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz
David Barnhart
May 13, 2025
Sweet potatoes, 2023. Own photo.
Today marks the day that Julian of Norwich recovered from an illness that almost killed her. During this illness she had a series of mystical visions that she recorded in her Showings.
Today also marks the death, in 2019, of Unita Blackwell, civil rights activist and first Black mayor in Mississippi. When her son and 300 of his Black classmates were suspended from school for wearing SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) pins in 1965, she filed a lawsuit and started Freedom Schools for children who were boycotting the school. She advised presidents on civil rights issues and always stayed involved in local activism around housing and education.
Today also marks the death, in 2012, of Don Ritchie of Australia. He lived near a cliff, and over the course of his life he saved hundreds of people from suicide by simply walking up to them and speaking kindly.
Today also marks the death, in 2012, of Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, a Mujerista theologian who highlighted intersectional justice and the lived experience of Latina women in her theology.
Reflection:
Unita Blackwell said,
“Politics is not just about voting one day every four years. Politics is the air we breathe, the food we eat and the road we walk on.”
and
“Change depends on people knowing the truth. Change depends on people speaking that truth out loud. That’s what movements do. Movements educate people to the truth. They pass along information and ideas that many others do not know, and they cause them to ask questions, to challenge their own long-held beliefs. … Movements are the way ordinary people get more freedom and justice. Movements are how we keep a check on power and those who abuse it.”
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz wrote:
As the years have gone by, I have accepted that for me to strive to live to the fullest by struggling against injustice is to draw nearer and nearer to the divine. Drawing closer to God and struggling for justice have become for me one and the same thing. Struggling for my liberation and the liberation of Hispanic women is a liberative praxis. This means that it is an activity both intentional and reflective; it is a communal praxis that feeds on the realization that Christ is among us when we strive the live the gospel message of justice and peace.
and
La vida es la lucha.
(To struggle is to live.)
A vision from Julian of Norwich:
And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.
And
Our Savior is our true Mother in whom we are endlessly born and out of whom we shall never come.
Prayer: Creator and Sustainer and Friend, we are conscious of how enormous our struggles, how important is the struggle for liberation, and yet how tiny we are in creation. We launch ourselves into the struggle on the thinnest faith in your promise that you are with us, and that all things shall be well. Amen.