The Activism of Love
“It’s a huge danger to pretend that awful things do not happen. But you need enough hope to keep going. I am trying to make hope. Flowers grow out of darkness.” ~ Corita Kent
Corita Kent, once a nun called Sister Mary Corita, worked to bring religious and secular people together at Immaculate Heart College and assisted in a peacemaking campaign with Physicians for Social Responsibility. As a result, Cardinal James McIntyre began a movement to frame Kent as blasphemous and the college as communist. In 1968, Mary Corita, followed by most of the sisters at the college, made a difficult decision to return to secular life. This ultimately led to the closing of Immaculate Heart. She was named Woman of The Year by The Los Angeles Times, was featured on the cover of Time Magazine and received the American Institute of Graphic Arts Medal. Remembered by many for her Love Stamp used by the USPS, Corita Kent's vast work is held by several art museums and private collectors including The Whitney, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The intense faith demonstrated in Corita’s activism and art remains an inspiration in these times of violence, divisiveness, and rancor. There is a beautiful amalgamation of the holy and the human that we fail to embrace nowadays. We seem to have missed the point that God is Love and each of us is a gift of God. Our mission is to transform the world. Not by fighting against one another...but by combining divine and human love into an undeniable force for good. It is the only way.
