Criag

humbly your Cree-aagh, patriotic applicant for under-secretary of swamp drainage. MAGA, WWG1WGA 🦀🦀🦀

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Why does Mary look younger than Jesus in Michelangelo's Pietà?

The answer is one of the most beautiful in art history...

Mary is holding the body of her 33 year old son, but she looks 20. Critics noticed it the moment the sculpture was unveiled in 1499. The mother of a man who has just been crucified would have been in her late forties or early fifties. Michelangelo had carved her as a girl.

His own biographer, Ascanio Condivi, was the one who finally asked him why. The answer Michelangelo gave is preserved in Condivi's Life of Michelangelo and has been repeated for centuries: "Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?"

Most modern critics treat this answer as a half-serious deflection. Michelangelo was famous for his sharp tongue and refused to explain himself to people he considered beneath his intellect.

The deeper answer is older, and it lies inside one of the greatest poems ever written. In the final canto of Dante's Paradiso, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his prayer to the Virgin with one of the most extraordinary lines in Italian literature:

"Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio."
"Virgin mother, daughter of your own son."

Michelangelo, who knew Dante by heart, was carving that line into stone. Mary is younger than Jesus because Jesus is older than the universe... because she gave birth to her own creator.

But there is another reading, simpler than either of those, and it is the one I find myself thinking of today. Every mother who has held her child has held them at every age at once. The infant is still inside the toddler. The toddler is still inside the teenager. The young man on her lap, even dead, is also the boy she nursed and the baby she first carried home.

And maybe that's why Michelangelo did not carve Mary as the years had aged her. He carved her as love had kept her: outside of time, outside of grief, holding her son the way she had always held him...

Happy Mother's Day.

-- -- --

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[Ken Cuccinelli II @KenCuccinelli]

The "yes" vote has won Va's redistricting referendum — but the legal fight is just beginning. Four Va Constitutional challenges are now teed up:
THREE challenges to the amendment process itself:
1️⃣ First passage was invalid. The amendment was taken up during a special session convened in 2024 for budget purposes. The General Assembly's own call to the Governor (under Art. IV, §6 and Art. V, §5) and its governing resolution (HJR 6001) limited the session's scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred. A Tazewell County judge found this action "void, ab initio."
2️⃣ Art. XII, §1 requires that after first passage, a proposed amendment be "referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates." An election must intervene between first and second passage. Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.
3️⃣ Art. XII, §1 requires the amendment be submitted to voters "not sooner than ninety days after final passage by the General Assembly." The timeline from second passage to the April 21 vote did not satisfy this requirement.
Plus ONE challenge to the proposed maps:
4️⃣ Art. II, §6 requires that "every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory." The proposed congressional maps violate this contiguity requirement (rather badly).

Next stop, court. Stay tuned.

[Criag @Criag]

@Devon_Eriksen_ LLM-H and LLM-AI have the intersectionality problem that is seen in John 18:38

[Patricia 🇺🇸 @1109Patricia]

Should have put on Christian music ✝️

[Flopping Aces @FloppingAces]

If you think January 6 was spontaneous chaos, buckle up.
Because in June 2020...seven months before the riot, Washington insiders held a secret war game called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) that literally rehearsed a “January 6 breakdown.”
Not metaphorically.
Not vaguely.
Explicitly. 🧵👇
1/18

[𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 ♱🇻🇦 @BillArnoldTeach]

𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘂𝗽. 🔥🔥🔥
𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘃𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗹𝗮𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲.

Peter’s Barque just dropped “Hasn’t Changed A Thing”, and it is a 𝘧𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘱��𝘮𝘱 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭.

Every century begged the Church to update with the culture.
Every denomination bent.
𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺, preaching the same Gospel she received once for all.

Protestantism keeps reinventing itself.
𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨. ✌️

[Criag @Criag]

@UAPWatchers Old Lowest bidder equipment +solar energy waves

[Criag @Criag]

@In2ThinAir At least 3 words

[Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP @FrAquinasOP]

Everyone should live in a neighborhood where the church bells ring every 15 minutes.

[Trad West @trad_west_]

Have you ever read about the Apparitions of Saint Michael?

Did you know he’s personally appeared on earth to defend the Church in her darkest hours?
The best part? He left miraculous signs that still endure.

The apparitions of Saint Michael the Archangel - a 🧵✝️

[Trad West @trad_west_]

This year you should do the Saint Michael lent.
Why?

He is the mightiest defender of Heaven. The prince of the heavenly host & the shield of the Church

The story of Saint Michael & the forgotten tradition of the Saint Michael Lent, a powerful time of spiritual renewal - a 🧵✝️

[William Penn @penn_williamE]

In 1973, in a quiet convent in Japan, a statue of the Virgin Mary began to weep.

She cried 101 times tears confirmed to be human.
Over 500 people, including non-Christians, saw it.

The Church approved it.
And Mary gave a dire warning for us.

🧵 Our Lady of Akita Miracle:

[☣️ Pleb Kruse = BTC foundationalist in exile 🟩🔆 @DrJackKruse]

No, the light is. Everyone who is ignorant just blames sugar.

[Criag @Criag]

@trad_west_ “I have little doubt that when St. George had
killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of
the princess.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

[Criag @Criag]

@JDVance No doubt their rusty vocal manners needs a lil American lubricant.

[Criag @Criag]

@DrJackKruse @threadreaderapp unroll please

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Very important to understand the corruption machine

[@amuse @amuse]

PANAMA: The Attorney General of Panama admits the deal that gave the Chinese Communist Party de facto control of the ports and canal was illegal - likely a result of illegal bribes and inducements. Panama has a chance to fix it before Trump does.
https://t.co/LC3qI9BR4U

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

Want to see a murder?

Libs in the White House press corps screamed at Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that Elon Musk is “unelected!”

What happens next is a fatality.

I promise you - this is the single best video on the internet today: