Eighty years ago, my mother dedicated me to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour whose icon is on the left. In the Eastern Orthodox Church iconography, the image is known as the “Virgin Theotokos of the Passion.” This 15^th century Byzantine portrayal of Mary has been housed in Rome since 1499.

I bought the Zulu sculpture on the right more than forty years ago during the Apartheid era. It isn’t a joyful sculpture of mother and child but, instead, a sad image of the oppressed. One can only gaze at it, speechless.

And now we have Gaza, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, Haiti and more. Men killing women and children.

As I look out the window, a bird, a female cardinal, sits safely in her nest patiently waiting for her eggs to hatch.