My last living grandparent, my paternal grandfather, passed away over Thanksgiving weekend. He was 97 years old. A sailor, a proud U.S. Navy veteran, an active Fourth Degree Knight with the Knights of Columbus, an Italian–American, a devoted Catholic who lived our faith in action. He lived a good life, one of family, love, and laughter. He was unfailingly kind, humble, and gentle. His grandchildren, and the greats and great-greats, meant the world to him. My siblings and I grieve for our father and his loss, who truly cherished his father and with whom he shared a special bond through weekly Knights meetings, Masses, and family gatherings. Those actions—faith in actions—exemplified the beautiful morals and values with which we were raised and only fully appreciate now.
With Saint Paul on my mind of late, the profoundness of the unseen and thus eternal is consuming my thoughts. All of the pettiness that we swear we are beyond but truly are not, the hurt that we hold on to, means nothing at the end. All that matters is how deeply you loved and touched another human. I think about my father’s unfailingly kind and gentle father and mother and my mother’s astonishingly resilient and loving father and mother and only recognize now after they have passed that all of that was indeed imbued in my parents. And I give thanks to God at every remembrance of them. ♥
Often, both consciously and subconsciously, we take blessings for granted in this life. Reflection has the serendipitous capability to instill both sobering and invigorating feels. Lately I’ve been thinking how fortunate, how so very blessed, I am to have been nurtured in a devoutly faith-filled home, one with an abundance of sacrifice and unconditional love. How beautiful, too, for those same morals and values to permeate the education that my siblings and I received, that my parents sacrificed for as ensuring both home and school taught us to live faith, hope, and love trumped all.
When I was a child, I was truly a child in my thoughts and reasoning: shallow, selfish, and unable to fathom the clerics’ extreme sacrifice in devoting their lives to educating my classmates and I. Fourteen years of Catholic education followed by an incredible college experience, I thank God for all that they instilled in me. And I hope that I’m going out and living it every day.
Saint Paul, beautiful human, wrote:
Brothers and sisters:
Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.
And over all these put on love,
that is, the bond of perfection.
And let the peace of Christ control your hearts,
the peace into which you were also called in one body.
And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,
as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another,
singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
with gratitude in your hearts to God.
And whatever you do, in word or in deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.
For today’s children and tomorrow’s future, I support Catholic Strong.
JALALUDDIN RUMI; Iran’s Greatest Poet
December 27, 1998
To the Editor:
I read Don Shewey’s article “An Ancient Poet Suddenly Ubiquitous” [Dec. 6] with interest.
Jalaluddin Rumi, also known as Mawlana, was born in Balkh, then an acclaimed center of learning in Iran. Rumi is considered the greatest mystic poet of Iran. His monumental work, comprising some 26,000 verses known as the Masnavi, is looked upon by Iranian Sufi orders as most sacred. His collected work, also known as Kolliyat Shams Tabrizi, is dedicated to his guru, Shams of Tabriz, another renowned Iranian mystic.
Although Rumi lived much of his adult life, and died, in Konya, Turkey, the bulk of his writing is in Persian. His poetry and parables are part of the popular culture of Iran and are commonly quoted and recited. As an Iranian, I am immensely proud and delighted to see that Rumi’s work is being widely recognized in the West at a time when my country’s image is otherwise tarnished.
EMPRESS FARAH PAHLEVI
Greenwich, Conn.
(Source: nyti.ms)
“Though the Igbo system of thought and existential principles play a critical role in Oguibe’s creative endeavors, dictating his approach to conceptualism, abstraction, and the form of the art object, the vital force of his art is his experience as a child in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s. This monumental human tragedy has shaped his social self. We see Biafra today as refugees cross into Europe from the many trouble spots in the Middle East and Africa. We see the pains of Biafra as humanity drowns in huge numbers in the high seas approaching the Strait of Gibraltar. In their cold repose, the figures no longer roam. They are monuments of our time; asking us to chew on our Anthropocene, and to contemplate the many disastrous events in history with enduring consequences. The past is the mirror of the present.” —
Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi.
May we not stand idly by.
(Source: bit.ly)
When I was 22, I applied for and obtained my dream academic internship. It’s been an interesting road since that time. I’ve developed extreme tenacity in my chosen fields and have accomplished work of which I am truly proud. I also find gratitude a naturally occurring and sobering part of my days. I’m truly thankful for everyone in my life both past and present. It’s through passion and perseverance and love and grief from which I’ve grown. And I thank God every day for my family, friends, and teachers from whom I’ve been spiritually and intellectually nurtured.
I recently listened to episode six, “My Little Hundred Million,” of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History series. Every Rowan alum should listen to it in entirety; Gladwell and the late Henry M. Rowan translate incredibly important and timely moral compass components.
Never forget where you came from. #RowanPROUD
We all occupy our own bubbles. Trust in others, even our neighbors, is at an historic low. Much of society has become like an airplane boarding line, with different rights and privileges for zones one to ninety-seven, depending on your wealth, frequent-flier miles, credit rating, and S.A.T. scores; and many of those in line think—though no one likes to admit it—that they deserve what they have more than the others behind them. Then the boarding agent catches some people from zone eighty-four jumping ahead of the people in zone fifty-seven, and all hell breaks loose.
Insisting that people are equally worthy of respect is an especially challenging idea today. In medicine, you see people who are troublesome in every way: the complainer, the person with the unfriendly tone, the unwitting bigot, the guy who, as they say, makes “poor life choices.” People can be untrustworthy, even scary. When they’re an actual threat—as the inmate was for my chief resident—you have to walk away. But you will also see lots of people whom you might have written off prove generous, caring, resourceful, brilliant. You don’t have to like or trust everyone to believe their lives are worth preserving.
We’ve divided the world into us versus them—an ever-shrinking population of good people against bad ones. But it’s not a dichotomy. People can be doers of good in many circumstances. And they can be doers of bad in others. It’s true of all of us. We are not sufficiently described by the best thing we have ever done, nor are we sufficiently described by the worst thing we have ever done. We are all of it.
Regarding people as having lives of equal worth means recognizing each as having a common core of humanity. Without being open to their humanity, it is impossible to provide good care to people—to insure, for instance, that you’ve given them enough anesthetic before doing a procedure. To see their humanity, you must put yourself in their shoes. That requires a willingness to ask people what it’s like in those shoes. It requires curiosity about others and the world beyond your boarding zone.
We are in a dangerous moment because every kind of curiosity is under attack—scientific curiosity, journalistic curiosity, artistic curiosity, cultural curiosity. This is what happens when the abiding emotions have become anger and fear. Underneath that anger and fear are often legitimate feelings of being ignored and unheard—a sense, for many, that others don’t care what it’s like in their shoes. So why offer curiosity to anyone else?
Once we lose the desire to understand—to be surprised, to listen and bear witness—we lose our humanity. Among the most important capacities that you take with you today is your curiosity. You must guard it, for curiosity is the beginning of empathy. When others say that someone is evil or crazy, or even a hero or an angel, they are usually trying to shut off curiosity. Don’t let them. We are all capable of heroic and of evil things. No one and nothing that you encounter in your life and career will be simply heroic or evil. Virtue is a capacity. It can always be lost or gained. That potential is why all of our lives are of equal worth.
Excerpted from surgeon and public-health researcher Atul Gawande’s commencement address at U.C.L.A. Medical School on June 1, 2018.
Models can normalize activism, especially for young women. How many times have you heard a young woman say, “I’m just not that political”? Actually, all of us are political, it’s really just a question of whether you want to be aware of the impact of decisions or not. And I think there is something to be said for [mixing] a little bit of that with modeling. Life isn’t one-dimensional.
The Women’s March was complicated for me. We do need to talk about sexism and women and gender inequality. But as a white woman, I don’t know that I feel comfortable in this moment asking men of color to march with me, or Muslims to march with me, or women of color to come in and build a better march. I feel like I [should be] marching with them. Ultimately though, I went because showing up, making compromises, that’s the
work we need to do. White women need to be present alongside and
in solidarity with the people who
are most vulnerable. It’s about
showing up for each other.
Cameron Russell for The Edit.
“I wear my hijab as my crown. It takes time to grow into that. When I was younger, I was almost ashamed. People would bully me for not having hair; for looking like an alien. Having that taunting associated with wearing my hijab made me nearly want to pull away from it, but it’s my spiritual identity. When I’m walking the runway I want people to see that yes, I’m wearing a hijab — but I’m also a million other things. I want us to get to a place where we just see women.” —
Halima Aden for VOGUE Arabia’s April issue.
Deki Wangmo (Bhutan), Raudha Athif (Maldives), Pooja Mor (India), Jannatul Ferdoush Peya (Bangladesh), Shenelle Rodrigo (Sri Lanka), and Varsha Thapa (Nepal), photographed by Bharat Sikka for
VOGUE India’s ninth anniversary issue.
Rest in peace, Raudha.
Saffiyah Khan, a Birmingham native of Bosnian–Pakistani descent, stares bemusedly at an enraged member of the far-right EDL movement on April 8, 2017. Moments earlier, Khan stepped in to defend a woman wearing a hijab who was being harassed by EDL demonstrators.
#girlcrush #glorious
A young Muslim girl and her father, and a young Jewish boy and his father, protesting the immigration and refugee order at O’Hare International Airport on January 30, 2017.
Photograph by Nuccio DiNuzzo for the Chicago Tribune.
