Love. LOVE. love.
Let love start this day. Let love end this day. Let love transform the minutes in between.
-RACHEL MACY STAFFORD-
This recent “Word for the Day” has been rolling around in my head. Love is such a spacious word and feeling. It is also conveyed most often through simple, sincere actions. Cliches aside, it is the answer and it does win. To do so, it must rise above all of the fear, power struggles, pain, loss, and mistrust that resides in each of us and also in our world.
Love is up to this challenge and only needs an invitation from a warm heart, open mind, humble soul. It only needs me to look with care into the face of another human, stranger or friend. It only needs me to see that you and I have the same goals for our families and our communities, even if they are different in location and day-to-day cultural operations. It only needs me to extend a hand to help hold a door, literally and figuratively.
Writing helps me understand and process my daily world. The one within me and the one I move through in the hours of each day. Writing assists me in grasping this idea of love; simple and profound, vast and miniscule. Today’s writing is in the form of acrostics. Last week it was STOP. This week it is LOVE. Here are a few:
Let Opinions Vary Evenly
Lots Of Varied Emotions
Listen/Learn Open-heartedly Validate Equanimity
Laughter/Love Outweighs Vitriol Eventually
I invite you to pause, consider love, write an acrostic or two, and carry LOVE into your day. And I encourage you to watch this amazing TedTalk on the idea of Revolutionary Love. Thank you Valerie Kaur! In so many ways, love begins with forgiveness.
