My survey of new images of David and Goliath in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection takes us this week to Nicaragua, where Folk Artist Jose Ignacio Fletes Cruz sets the killing of the giant in a Central American landscape with flowering fields and volcanic mountain peaks. Fletes Cruz belonged to a utopian Christian community, founded in the mid 1960s in the remote Solentiname island chain at the southern end of Lake Nicaragua to put the egalitatian principles of Liberation Theology into practice. The group's support for the Sandinista Liberation Front's rebellion against Dictator Anastasio Somoza ultimately led to its destruction. Fletes Cruz has remained true to the community's ideals in works painted in the Primitavista style associated with the movement, depicting the struggle of the Israelites against the Philistines here as a children's crusade. Nicaragua's slide into totalitarianism in the decades since the Sandinista victory over Somoza shows onetime Davids can become Goliaths once they gain the trappings of power. As the Hebrew Scriptures remind us: "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the LORD our God. (Psalm 20:7, KJV)" Pray for Peace! (John Kohan)