It’s Palm Sunday (actually it’s now Holy Monday as I post this) and I thought the photo which represents today for me should be a religious themed one.

The photo is of a meter tall wooden statue of the Archangel Raphael which I took in New Mexico back in June 2011 while on a “cultural immersion” trip with a dozen or so fellow grad school classmates.

For me, this icon represents today for two reasons.

First, the “distance learning” assignment I’m giving to my students for Monday is to listen to the story found in The Book of Tobit in the Old Testament.

I dramatically read and recorded the NRSV Bible translation of this wonderful, dramatic, suspenseful and unusual short-story found in one of the seven deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament.

If you’ve never heard (or read) the tale which introduces Raphael, you can listen to it via my Presence Podcast:

https://anchor.fm/presence/episodes/From-the-Bible—The-Book-of-Tobit-ecedgj

The Presence Podcast

The second reason Archangel Raphael is the representative image for today (when I pretty much took a sabbath from reading the news) is because he is traditionally God’s angel of healing.

And God, knows that this Holy Week 2020 this nation and planet needs much healing.