Left Hand Lettering

I have so much grief and anger. For a long time we’ve had to watch people loudly proclaim a faith in Jesus that is deeply entangled with faith in MAGA, and this week has been particularly rough. You act as though you’re having a massive American Evangelical™️ revival—and I believe that you are—but I don’t think it’s one where the Jesus I know has even made the guest list. Or if he has, he’s been shoved in the back somewhere behind the merch table.

You claim biblical love, but you see immigrants get abducted and disappear and your heart doesn’t break? What’s more, you think they deserve it. Your brand of Christianity hears “welcome the foreigner” and responds derisively, “You must be missing the context”—a constant refrain.

Families are being torn apart. People are going to court appointments and being abducted on the way out. Many Hispanic and immigrant community members are retreating into their homes because the way they look is enough to have them shoved into a van by masked men. It’s not some Radical Left propaganda. I can attest to it all. And I’m so mad because even though I know not to expect more, the callousness toward migrants (and people in poverty, unhoused people, people who just need some help) still rips my heart into pieces after all this time.

No rapture yesterday, I suppose, but I’d really love for Jesus to come flip all your tables.

Painting 2 for this art show I’m doing. I think I liked this one the most. It’s an 18x24 inch canvas. Very, very simple little boat and birds but it feels peaceful 💛

Hello, internet. I remembered you’re here again, and I’m back…with a repost of some very simple lettering from 2018. Cause some of you haven’t learned anything in the last 7 years. “Born on third base thinking you hit a triple” applies to SO MANY Americans pretending you had any control over the circumstances of your birth.

Christian Nationalists would have you believe that Jesus has wrapped himself in the American flag, that your place of birth or your success is a reward for your godliness. That your circumstances are a total and direct reflection of your virtue, ignoring how much of your life stems from getting lucky. Christian nationalists would have you believe that having empathy and compassion for migrants makes you weak, pathetic, “toxic” even. Cool. Sign me up, then.

Am I saying you didn’t work at all to get where you are? No. But I’m saying you’re flat out delusional if you think immigrants and asylum seekers are not by and large also working as hard as they can to care for and protect their families.

Some of you act like undocumented immigrants are violently pushing their way into the country, assaulting whoever is in their path.
When in fact mostly, they're just overstaying their visa. Mostly they're members of your community. Your neighbors, your child's classmates, people in your church congregation.

We desperately need immigration reform. The system is broken. But expecting the average person to flawlessly navigate years of paperwork, deadlines, meetings, confusing policies and procedures, not to mention the financial burdens of it all, all while never having a clear picture of when it will end— years? Decades? It's absurd. It's unattainable for so many. And raiding communities-ripping people from their jobs and homes families and schools indiscriminately? Detaining people who are going to their meetings! Who are TRYING to do things exactly like you tell them to! Treating them worse than garbage. It's far, far more violent than the few protestors throwing rocks and lighting fires. How on earth can we talk about the protest violence and ignore the government-sanctioned violence that got us here??? And how on earth can we ignore that, regardless of their immigration status, every human being deserves to be treated with dignity?