Our Lady
of the Lifted Veil
2025

What happens when icons collide—when stories of exile, resilience, and divine interruption share a single canvas?

This image is a mash-up, a holy remix, a protest wrapped in tenderness. It began as a pencil sketch from a classmate during our Borderlands Immersion trip to Tucson, AZ—a seminary pilgrimage into the dust, barbed wire, and human ache of the U.S.-Mexico border. My colleague, a Palestinian exchange student, had fused the sacred image of Our Lady of Guadalupe with his own experience of occupation and displacement. Instead of holding a tablet, the Lady cradles the Christ child. And in a bold, liberating gesture, she lifts the border wall like it’s just a curtain—thin, brittle, a lie we’ve mistaken for permanence.

Her face? It’s the Statue of Liberty, stoic and green, crowned in rays. She’s not just welcoming; she’s intervening. The wall, reminiscent of both our southern border and the separation barrier in Palestine, is pulled aside as if to say: This was never the final word.

I asked if I could colorize his drawing—honoring his vision while adding the classic Guadalupe mandorla in golds and reds, the haloed Christ child. Another classmate suggested a small but weighty inscription beneath her feet: Luke 1:46–55. Mary's Magnificat, tucked in like an artist’s signature. A resistance hymn. A mother’s battle cry.

We made it into a t-shirt for our group and wore it when we led worship at the seminary. It became a living icon—walkable theology. A declaration: mercy lifts what fear constructs.