To Love Love

February 14, 2023
Beloved:
          Remember making your mailboxes for elementary school Valentine’s Day parties?  Shoeboxes or paper bags, depending on the patience of the teacher for the classroom chaos involved in giving 8-year-olds access to that much glue and glitter.  The boys were done in seven minutes and I never had time to finish mine.  Teachers got their rooms cleaned up just in time for the party a few days later when we got jacked up on juice and cupcakes while tearing into all those tiny valentines.  That was 50 years ago!  I bet school kids do much more serious things with their time now, learn to keyboard and code probably.
          All the same, the idea of a little community writing friendship notes to one another strikes me as a useful use of an afternoon, celebrating with a snack.  I positively love snacks.  I also love Love ~ with all of the kindness, justice, humility, generosity, patience and grace therein.  Love as the ecosystem of a community, spoken or unspoken, that desires and nurtures the safety and well-being of everyone within the community, classroom, congregation, workplace or family.  What a useful use of Valentine’s Day ~ signing little notes of lovingkindness to those around us, in whatever form such notes might take.  Who knows, you might just make someone’s day.

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

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