“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.” Inspired by this compline collect from the book of common prayer. Commissioned by my partner Evie, Mary comforts young Jesus, standing among Moonflowers. Giclee Prints, Digital Downloads, and Prayer Candles: kellylatimoreicons.com

Happy Feast Day of St. Teresa of Ávila “The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too” New Signed Giclee Prints available: kellylatimoreicons.com/produ… One of my early icons Commissioned by @stpgallipolis for Mother Leslie Flemming.

“The Good Samaritan” “One does not HAVE a neighbor; I MAKE myself someone’s neighbor” -Paul Ricouer This parable from Luke 10 is considered one of the most well known in the gospels. Like many other Christians, I have heard this story hundreds of times. However, it wasn’t until adulthood a mentor gave me a more significant understanding of this story. When an expert in religious law, a lawyer, asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”, Jesus answers him with this parable. A man traveling down a well known dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho is ambushed by robbers, who steal his possessions, and beat him leaving him “half dead.” Two members of the lawyer’s own religious class pass the man by but the one who does stop is an outsider, a Samaritan, who takes pity on the man, caring for his wounds, and takes him on his donkey to a nearby inn. He is the true neighbor. Jesus tells them to go and do likewise. The Jewish listeners would have winched because at the time Samaritans were considered a member of an excluded group, an ‘other’. Jesus is giving the lawyer a lesson in God’s law of love. In his short essay on this parable Paul Ricouer notes that the Gospel would completely condemn the modern world. Jesus is telling us that we don’t simply HAVE neighbors. We MAKE ourselves someone’s neighbor. This is a very anti-modern attitude. Through a modern world of fences, borders, screens, social media, ring cameras, automobiles, etc. we are increasingly living in an age of a dehumanized world of abstract, anonymous and distant relationships. Many often using, religion, politics or “the law” to distance themselves from the wounded and most vulnerable people in our communities. Immigrants, refugees, single mothers, the unhoused, and those in prison. Like all of the parables, Jesus is using this one for the church to imagine the kind of community it is called to be. The parables are meant to be lived. If you want to love your neighbor you are going to have to go make yourself one. Signed Giclee Prints, Digital Downloads available: kellylatimoreicons.com

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! Nicholas Black Elk Heȟáka Sápa December 1863 – August 19, 1950 Holy Man of the Oglala Lakota People. A vision from Black Elk: “And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.” Signed Giclee Prints: kellylatimoreicons.com

Quote of the Week: “In disarming Peter, Christ disarms all Christians.” ~Tertullian (160–220) Thinking about this quote again today. Icon: “Christ Breaks the Rifle” After Otto Pankok Giclee Signed Prints and Digital Downloads: kellylatimoreicons.com

“Dolly Parton” New Icon “If you are truly a spiritual-based person, if you are a true Christian, your heart is open, to everybody and everything”- Dolly I don’t know what more to say about Dolly. She is the most requested person I’ve ever been asked to paint. She is a saint. May we look to Dolly to remember and pay attention to all of the music, beauty, and sacred people all around us in the here and now… every encounter is a place of joy and light. ❤️🌈💅🏻🎸 I paint Dolly wearing a dress of many colors ( based on one of her most famous songs) With one of her first guitars, standing among wildflowers in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. A Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly flying nearby… Signed Giclee Prints and Digital Downloads: kellylatimoreicons.com

Happy Feast of “Mary: Star of the Sea” Our Lady, Star of the Sea is an ancient title for Mary, the mother of Jesus. The words “Star of the Sea” are a translation of the Latin title ‘Stella Maris’.   This title has often been used as a spiritual allegory. However, I wanted to depict it in a slightly different way.   Mary, who is also called “The protectress of the oppressed” guides a rescue boat to a large group of migrants out at sea. Refugees and migrants are continuing to make these voyages out at sea to find a better life for their families. However, the migrant sea routes have become some of the most dangerous. According to the Migration Data Portal, since 2014, more than 4,000 fatalities have been recorded annually on migratory routes worldwide. 2025 marked one of the deadliest years with more than 8,000 deaths recorded. As the U.S. administration has now openly rejected refugees and is incarcerating innocent migrants, many countries have begun to refuse aid to refugee and migrant boats attempting to come ashore. Many boats are not able to make the journeys at all or can become lost and quickly carried out into the open ocean. Thankfully there are many organizations that now patrol the various sea routes that migrants are taking and when they find boats are able to bring everyone aboard and safely to various refugee camps ashore.   The people making these journeys are sacred. Its my hope that this icon isn’t a version of Mary just up in the clouds but also down in the water with the lowly and oppressed peoples of the earth.   “Merciful God and Father of all, wake us from the slumber of indifference, open our eyes to their suffering, and free us from the insensitivity born of worldly comfort and self-centeredness. Inspire us, as nations, communities and individuals, to see that those who come to our shores are our brothers and sisters.” -Pope Francis Signed Giclee Prints and Digital Downloads available in our store: kellylatimoreicons.com

2027 Calendar Preorder! Limited amount this year… kellylatimoreicons.com/colle… 11x14 in. Wall Calendar Binding on top, printed on high quality 130 lb. Cardstock Easily cut out the images to frame later! Featuring icons of: "The Good Samaritan" "Christ in the Rubble" "The Trinity" "The Three Marys" "Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets" "The Beatitudes" "The Prodigal Son" and More... (Returning customers please note that because of tariffs and other factors, the last 2 years calendars are slightly smaller. However, this allows us to offer this year's calendar again for a reduced price. Thank you to everyone who continues to support my work) Calendars Will ship November

Icons can be Iconoclastic. My friend and Priest Mark Bozzuti-Jones has said something that has stuck with me. Icons can be a window to God and the divine, and the lives of Christ and the Saints. However, icons can also be iconoclastic, ( as in breaking images). There is something about the image of God that will always be resisted and there is something about the image of God that will always be crucified BECAUSE we continue to crucify each other. We continue to fail to recognize the image of God (Imago Dei) in ‘the other’. Christ said he is to be found in ‘the least of these’ and those who suffer. What St. Theresa of Calcutta called, “Christ in distressing disguise”. We don’t get to pick and choose who does and does not have the image of God within them. That’s not our job. Every person is themselves, an icon of God. For those standing up and protesting for the people in Gaza and Palestine/ Keep going. Stand with the most vulnerable and those suffering in your own backyards and across the globe. “Christ in the Rubble” digital image is free for download: kellylatimoreicons.com Pax Kelly

It’s officially fall today. Quote of the Week: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” “Wild Geese” ~Mary Oliver ( Poet and Writer) I read this poem over the phone to my partner Evie when we were falling in love. We had not seen each other for 4 years. We wept together as the words sunk in. We come back to it every time we need to hear it. While painting this icon of Mary there was no question that the wild geese should be there with her. They are certainly icons in their own way. Signed Giclee Prints and Prayer Candles: kellylatimoreicons.com

Happy Feast Day St. Hildegard of Bingen “The earth is at the same time mother, She is mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human. She is mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all. The earth of human kind contains all moistness, all verdancy, all germinating power. It is in so many ways fruitful. All creation comes from it. Yet it forms not only the basic raw material for humankind, but also the substance of the incarnation of God’s son.” ~St. Hildegard Born in 1098, Hildegard was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, musician, composer, artist, philosopher, mystic, forager and medicinal plant writer and practitioner. ( and a Doctor of the Church) She didn’t want to simply visit this world. She wanted to fully be in it. Embracing the wonder and goodness of God’s creation. Signed Giclee Prints and Prayer Candles: kellylatimoreicons.com

Ruth and Naomi “I will never leave you, where you go I will go...” “Ruth embodies the three classic biblical categories of the vulnerable person; she is widow, sojourner, and orphan-by-choice, having left her birth family to accompany Naomi to a foreign land, a small rural town (Bethlehem) where a Moabite woman would be viewed with suspicion. She is a model for me of someone who crosses borders for the sake of life — borders both literal and figurative, as she acts in unconventional and selfless ways to create a new community out of a situation of profound loss.” ~ Ellen Davis Icon commissioned by my best friend Paul Clever in honor of his two wonderful girls with the same names Giclee Signed Prints and Prayer Candles: kellylatimoreicons.com

“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.” ~Wendell Berry, “Jayber Crow” RIP WENDELL Icon: “ Christ in the Wilderness” Prints, Prayer Candles and Digital Downloads: kellylatimoreicons.com

2027 Wall Calendar Preorder is here! kellylatimoreicons.com/colle… 11x14 in. Wall Calendar Binding on top, printed on high quality 130 lb. Cardstock Easily cut out the images to frame later! Featuring icons of: "The Good Samaritan" "Christ in the Rubble" "The Trinity" "The Three Marys" "Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets" "The Beatitudes" "The Prodigal Son" and More... (Returning customers please note that because of tariffs and other factors, the last 2 years calendars are slightly smaller. However, this allows us to offer this year's calendar again for a reduced price. Thank you to everyone who continues to support my work) Calendars Will ship November

Happy Feast Day of St. Clare of Assisi! “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become” St. Clare was a one of the first followers of Saint Francis and cofounder of the Poor Clares. She is known for her deep love of prayer, her radical simplicity, a and her devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Clare, or in Italian, ‘Chiara’ means “light” or “bright.” It reflects her role as a light for the Franciscan Order and the Church. Her mother, during a pre-birth vision, was told she would bear a light that would “illumine the world” The daughter of a noble family living in Assisi, Italy, Clare was known for her deep spirituality and love for the poor. She was attracted to the radical way of life preached by St. Francis. On the evening of Palm Sunday 1212 ,to the dismay of her family, Clare secretly met Francis and his small band of brothers to commit her life to God and to begin a community of women devoted to living the gospel called The Poor Clares, originally known as the Order of Poor Ladies. Everything she and her sisters made or grew they gave to others, and others in turn gave to the sisters. In this way they shared the lives and poverty of those around them. For Clare and Francis, Jesus doubled down being human, wounds and all, and having “no place to lay his head”, Christ lived in poverty too. They felt that the fewer things they had the more room they had for God in their hearts. Her friendship with St. Francis, her love for Jesus, the poor, and most vulnerable among her, shaped an entire movement that continues to this day. I paint St. Clare holding a candle, a bright light in the darkness, as she too was known to be. Signed Giclee Prints and Digital Downloads available: kellylatimoreicons.com

“Homeless Christ” “The Christian community, therefore, is that community that freely becomes oppressed, because they know that Jesus himself has defined humanity’s liberation in the context of what happens to the little ones. Christians join the cause of the oppressed in the fight for justice not because of some philosophical principle of “the Good” or because of a religious feeling of sympathy for people in prison. Sympathy does not change the structures of injustice. The authentic identity of Christians with the poor is found in the claim which the Jesus-encounter lays upon their own life-style, a claim that connects the word “Christian” with the liberation of the poor. Christians fight not for humanity in general but for themselves and out of their love for concrete human beings.” ~James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed Commissioned by Alex Spenik. Signed Giclee Prints: kellylatimoreicons.com

Happy Feast Day of Mary Magdalene Icon:“Mary Magdalene and Christ the Gardener” Signed Giclee Prints and Digital Download Available: kellylatimoreicons.com

Sweet David R.I.P.