Our religious communities at their best are places where we grow our capacities to be with experience in all its complexity and paradox, to listen deeply to one another, to allow ourselves to be seen and held in love, and to respond creatively and collectively.

The religious responsibility of the faithful is to remove and dismantle the systems and structures that prevent the full flourishing of life and to enhance and side with the movement of creative and active love.

We affirm the power of Love to heal what is broken, to hold us together across pluralities of diverse religious practices and beliefs, to hold us when things fall apart, to grow our capacities, and to guide us as we return again and again in our families and communities to side with Love.

"I believe firmly that to practice love is to disrupt the status quo which is masquerading as peace." —posted on Austin Channing Brown's Instagram, June 17, 2020...

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we...

Pleasure reminds us to enjoy being alive and on purpose... Pleasure—embodied, connected pleasure—is one of the way we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world. Pleasure helps us move through the times that are unfair, through grief and...

We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen.

"Compassion is love's response to pain." from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/500901.How_to_Be_an_Adult_in_Relati… To Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Living, p. 36.

"Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution. We cannot 'triumph' over death, or loss, or grief. They are immovable elements of being alive. If we continue to come at them as though they are problems to be solved, we'll never get solace or comfort in our deepest pain."...

“If your love for me requires that I hide parts of who I am, then you don't love me. Love is never a request for silence.”...

"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion." from https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/All-about-Love--New-Vis… about Love, p. 215.

“Those of us who have in our history the commonality of suffering from hate, we know that those who won the day are those who chose love in the midst of hate.”...

“You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”...

We don't live into our redemption very much, or get to win the fight over death. Jesus’ resurrection is a symbol and a promise that we are redeemed and that death’s dominion is not the final word. On Easter the Deep Magic breaks through. We proclaim and sing that love’s redeeming work is done...

Hope is not just a good idea Love is not naïve Faith is not just the brave face we put on a hopeless situation...

"Our universal calling as humans is to be the most loving people we can be."...

“Any religion that puts hate speech in the mouth of God is no religion at all.”...

What makes us human beings so uniquely wonderful in this puzzling universe is that we never give up on love. Against all odds, with no guarantee of being loved in return, out of the hate and hurt so often handed us, in the face of the sad suffering history has let us see, we go on loving....

"Our children did not get their wounds alone. They were created by the actions of our family, our communities and our world. They were created by the things we choose to believe in, the causes we chose to champion and the despair we chose to neglect....

Unconditional love is not so much about how we receive and endure each other, as it is about the deep vow to never, under any condition, stop bringing the flawed truth of who we are to each other.