Fear is loud. Loud things tend to get our attention. When we allow loud fear voices to steal our attention we feel shaky, paranoid, hopeless.   Love lives in the quiet. Love requires us to stop what we’re doing and drop in. Is this why it’s called falling in love?   Fear would have us keep talking and yelling and arguing so we never hear love whispering. Love is patient, and it beckons us to be quiet and still. We can only hear love speak to us when we stop speaking and start listening.   Listen is the call of…

  REAL love is not pink and fluffy and rose-y and butterflies. Real love is not shiny and whole and smiling serenely. Real love is not holding hands while running through fields of sunflowers or gazing over chardonnay while wearing sexy dresses and opening boxes of diamonds. It’s just not. That stuff is something else. That stuff is something that can be packaged and sold, which is why we see a lot of it this time of year. Real love is tough as nails. Real love is busted up and scuffed and a little jagged and exhausted. Real love is…

(photo credit: Teresa Kroeger) Listen: The darkness has called forth the stars. We the People, we are together. Together we will say: In this country, we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Come for any of us, come for all of us. We are not afraid. We are patriots, and we were born to do this. These are dangerous times. The values that we in this community have held dear for so long- religious freedom, racial justice, education, marriage equality, care for immigrants and refugees, free press – and truth itself – are at stake. If we want to pass…