Love is...

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1 Cor. 13:4-8

When I was 10 years old, my dad wrote me this poem for Valentine's Day.

Love is a pink trombone

Love is a risk and a celebration

Love is a huge toll house cookie

of attractiveness confirmed

Love is a burst of glitter

Love is suffering unto life

Sometimes love is a celebration with pink trombones, cookies or bursts of glitter.

Sometimes love is a risk and a companion amidst life's suffering.

Sometimes love is quiet and deeply personal.

Sometimes love is lived out loud as faith in action. Someone who lives her love out loud in bold and beautiful ways is Linda Catanzaro (seated at the center of the above picture). For over 20 years, she has been the heart & soul of the Women's Spirituality Group at the Northeast Reintegration Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Recently, Linda received the Volunteer of the Year Award in recognition of her commitment to loving and nurturing the image of God in the innumerable women whose lives she has touched (my own life, included!).

Love is manifested and experienced in many, many ways. Yet always, love is rooted in the imago dei - image of God - at the heart of each and every one of us.

That imago dei dwells in you, in me, in our neighbor, in our enemies, in our family, in the stranger, in the widow, in the prostitute, in the outcast, in the least, in the lost, and the list could go on and on and on.

There is no hierarchy of love. ALL are created in the imago dei. ALL are loved. ALL are God's children. ALL.

As the storms around us grow increasingly chaotic, love is the center that can hold us steady and guide our actions. Let us continue to love deeply, profoundly and boldly for that is at the very heart of who we are called to be.

"I have decided to stick with love.

Hate is too great a burden to bear."

Martin Luther King, Jr.