Three major religious events converge this weekend: Easter, Passover, and Ramadan.
To readers who celebrate these holy days, I send good wishes.
To those who are non-religious, I also send good wishes.
To everyone, I send my personal hope that we can share a world without war, a world of kindness, a world of plenty, a world in which we can share the bounty of a healthy earth, and a world in which everyone is respected.
Above all, in this moment, I hope that Mr. V. Putin stops his war against Ukraine. Please end the killing and destruction.
Let us together seek Peace, Joy, Freedom, Democracy, and Justice. Not just for ourselves but for everyone.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amen, Diane.
BEAUTIFULLY stated. AMEN and AMEN.
Stop harping on Putin…It is NATO and the West who have provoked Russia for the last 30 years and people just looking the other way. I too wish the war would stop but…too many profits from weapons’ sales involved.
Thank you, Diane. Happy Easter, Ramadan Mubarak, a zissen Pesach, and hopes for peace-salaam-shalom to and for all, whether adherents of Abrahamic faiths, believers in many gods, atheists, agnostics, or none of the above. Let’s remember that Orthodox Easter is next Sunday, April 24, too.
Wonderful, Bill! And a happy day, today, to you and yours. Heck, a happy every day!
Right on, Bob. I had to get old before beginning to learn to find some happiness in every day. Better late than never.
If positive thinking makes a difference, maybe the majority of us people around the world should seriously start thinking 24/7 about peace and prosperity and reject hate and greed.
Happy Easter, D! Finally made it to Texas, specifically to the Trans-Pecos to visit Guadalupe Mountain and Big Bend NPs (with a little side visit to Carlsbad). Stunningly beautiful country!
So nice!
See some birds! Great Bend is a dream trip for us
Hello dear Diane, I am 84 years old , a retired educator and activist. I follow just four people on Twitter, one of whom is my son and one is you! I don’t often leave a reply. Now is a good day to thank you from the bottom of my heart for steadily holding high a beacon of light in a world of much suffering. This is religion at its best, whatever the names.
Amen
Happy spring to all! God bless the people of Ukraine!
Lovely! Spring is eternally hopeful.
Thanks, Diane, for the beautiful thoughts and for this precious blog, it gives one hope. Pax vobiscum and pacem in terris.
Amen!
I celebrate each day. All holy! The running blackberry adorns the parlors of heaven, right here. But happy all these days to all y’all!
Thank you for expressing what so many of us are thinking and feeling.
Agreed. Every blessing to Diane Ravitch and her family!
Perhaps the symmetry or lining up of the stars (or moon and the calendars) will awaken all to breathe collectively – to walk in another’s shoes – and to stop the shooting (around the globe).
Peace to you and all Diane
Here in Tennessee the cool spring holds back the trees and gives aid to the flowers that carpet the forest floor. Trillium, massive and white. Violets, yellow, blue, white.
We traveled yesterday to the cedar glade, where flowers bloom in a wet spring before hot summer makes the rocks their own little desert.
Hard not to think about renewal in the spring. This spring it is hard to think about it the same way, as bombs fall. Sacrifice and resurrection juxtaposed like is seems to be every year.
Beautiful! I enjoyed reading that. My favorite part of the Passover Seder is dipping karpas (parsley) representing spring renewal in salt water representing the tears we’ve all shed in the past.
Good wishes to all.
Excellent message Diane. Brings back memories of Judy’s and my work with the Beyond War Foundation that morphed into the Foundation for Global Community back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sent from my iPhone
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Peskyvera,
I won’t apologize for “harping on Putin.” He invaded Ukraine. His troops have been shelling cities and reducing them to rubble. He has allowed them to kill civilians. His troops close humanitarian routes for escape and aid. He is a monster He can stop the killing whenever he wants. No war!!!
Beautiful message Diane, as well as many of the comments above. I’m praying for “Peace, Joy, Freedom, Democracy, and Justice” for all, with you.
You are exactly right ✅
A truer statement that most will never understand.
If Trump had been elected in 2020, he would have crushed NATO in service to Putin.
Had Trump won, we know that the United States, democracy, and civilized nations would have suffered greatly.
A rift developed in the Russian Orthodox “Christian” church over Patriarch Kirill’s promotion of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The rift and the media coverage of it is critical to defeating strong men regimes.
The alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals (and, the much, much, smaller contingent made up of men of the Church of Latter Day Saints) came close to electing Trump in 2020. It’s vital that a rift develop in religious America if policies and legislation that is in accordance with Christ’s compassion are to be enacted.
A false veneer burnished by U.S. media protects conservative clergy from backlash.
Pope Francis is a liberal outlier in the American Catholic Church and so is the nun interviewed Easter Sunday by Margaret Brennan of CBS’ Face the Nation (Brennan attended Catholic schools). The nun’s political view favored better treatment of immigrants. If coverage was aimed at informing the public honestly, media covering Pope Francis and media like Face the Nation would have conservative Catholic clergy discuss the priorities that lead them to vote GOP to the harm of the less fortunate like immigrants.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (R) is in the news relative to the overthrow of the election and his support for Trump who he compared to a prophet and “righteous military hero” from the Book of Mormon. Two-thirds of male congregants of the Church of Latter Day Saints voted for Trump.
Sen. Romney has refused to endorse Lee.
The size of the Mormon population in the U.S. is roughly similar to the size of the Jewish population – about 3%.
Love this post (and you), Dr. Ravitch!
Thank you!
You are such a joy in my life! Thank you for your sentiments and the conviction to voice them!
Conservative religion is the origin of the attacks against American rights- including religious employer exemptions from civil rights employment law and denial of civil rights for women and LGBTQ.
The Guttmacher Institute posted research about the ramping up of abortion bans that make no exceptions for rape and incest, that prohibit on-line sales of reproductive medications and, that prevent crossing state lines for reproductive health care.
With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. will become the only developed nation that denies women and men the right to make pregnancy decisions.