Jessica Stanley

Praying in agreement for the only right thing for humanity to do. Humanity is the only part of Creation that looks at the stars and weeps, not because we are lost, but because we recognize beauty we did not make and feel the deep gratitude we somehow belong to it anyway. We are the creatures who bury our dead with flowers. Who sit with the dying so they don’t go alone. Who write letters to people we’ll never meet, hoping the words will find someone who needs them. We build masterpieces we won’t live to see finished. We plant trees in whose shade we will never sit. We sing lullabies to children with a love greater than the need for our next breath to survive. We are the only species that grieves injustice on behalf of strangers, across time, across ocean, across every line that should have made us indifferent. And here is the strangest, most stunning thing: we know we are broken, and we try anyway. We fail each other terribly, and still, in the very next moment, someone pulls a stranger from a burning car. Someone stays up all night translating a poem so another culture can feel what they felt. Someone writes the truth when it would have been so much easier to stay quiet. Our shadow falls on everything we’ve ever loved, and we have loved so much. We’ve loved enough to fight for humanity in the face of the human race’s greatest threat. May we never forget and never, ever give up.

No tricks, no treats for somebody last night? 🧐👀🔥

I was thinking about something I said on a podcast yesterday - when do We the People take back our power and hold the government accountable, the way our Republic was built to function? How does a farmer train a mule to plow with little to no direction? From a very young age, the mule, a quite intelligent breed, is trained. The animal wears blinders, as not to be distracted. It is fitted with a collar and hame, and chained to the plow. Repetitive instruction by the farmer trains the mule to plow row by row, until eventually the mule can plow without handling from the farmer. From childhood, people learned to sit in rows of desks and receive instruction for most of the day. Then, an evening of homework. No questioning the process. The child grows into an adult who has long been trained to work, without question. To obey authority figures, and trust their intentions. To be a good citizen and vote when voting day rolls back around. The rest of the time, like the mule at plow, blinders in place, work and leave the decision making to the decision makers. What if those making the decisions don’t have the best intentions? How would the citizen know? A mule that has plowed the same field for years never stops to wonder who owns the land, or whether the seed going into the furrow is the seed that was promised. It knows the weight of the collar and the sound of the farmer's voice, and over time it stops needing either. We were handed a different design. The founders did not write a Constitution for a people who would plow quietly and check in every November. They wrote it for citizens who would read the budgets, attend the meetings, ask who wrote a bill and who paid for it, and keep asking when the answer was inconvenient. Accountability was meant to be the daily work of the governed. So I'll leave you with two questions. When did you last read something primary, a bill, a vote record, a court filing, a local budget, for yourself rather than trusting someone's summary of it? And if the people making the decisions did not have our best interests at heart, what in an ordinary week of our lives would tell us?

“You talk a lot.” “Why don’t you speak up?!” “You’re a whole lot.” “Are you even listening, seriously.” “You’re like talking to a drunken squirrel.” “Can you finish a single sentence?!” God: You are fearfully and wonderfully made, by Me.

💓💚💥🙌🏼🇺🇸

17 search warrants

In More than 40 years, I still have not fully conquered my fear to going through the car wash.

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918), known as the Red Baron, was a Prussian aristocrat and the leading fighter pilot of World War I. Officially credited with 80 aerial victories, he became a national hero in Germany and a feared figure among Allied airmen, famous for his all-red aircraft and leadership of the mobile “Flying Circus.” In July 1917 he was wounded in the head by a grazing shot, suffered lingering effects, and took leave during which he wrote his autobiography Der Rote Kampfflieger (“The Red Battle Flyer”). He returned to combat and continued scoring, reaching 80 confirmed victories by 20 April 1918, more than any other pilot in the war. Most of his kills were against British aircraft.

Honored does not begin to describe the feels. Nervous as all get out, too. I hope yall hop on; I listen to a whole lotta podcasts, and this space takes #1 hands down.

I wrote this about two weeks ago and have been trying to make a video. It hasn’t worked out very well 😑 But I wrote this for you frens, “The Heartline: WWG1WGA”, inspired by @thestoicplumber beautiful Heartline card. I love y’all, and I’m just grateful 🙏🏼💚

Experiencing God through the soul, mind, and eyes of a child is a wisdom often lost, forgotten as we age.

You have no idea who you touch when they needed a touch the most. You may never know, but they do. They do. You are salt and Light for someone. 🫶🏼

Always, always about those babies 💔💓 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that fully well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. - Psalm 139 Take heed that you do not harm one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven. - Matthew 18 And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ - Matthew 18 That last verse… it gets me every time. The innocence of a child. This is what I would use my faith of a mustard seed to protect. Innocence. Children.

wwg1wga