This i believe

This I believe-- love

It is my most sincere conviction that our purpose on this planet, if nothing else, is to love one another with such ferocity that when we depart we leave no doubt that our heart could be any fuller. I am not good at this all time. Many people I know, and most that I don’t, are not good at this either. Our world is full of hatred and ignorance in many different forms: war, racism, poverty, sexism, oppression, genocide, manipulation and bullying and a general ambivalence for anything not happening right outside our front door. I am not good at loving people who are ambivalent and ignorant—even if they don’t know they are that way. This may sound like a judgment, but I see it more as a universal truth.

That is not to say that I am not trying. I am making every attempt to love those who think differently than me, even if their thoughts are painful for others. I believe they feel this way, have this general distaste for others not like themselves because someone didn’t love them enough to be honest with them. No one ever told them it was ok not to be white, not to be straight, not to be American, not to be a Christian nation, to not shelter themselves from the pain of others. No one ever told them that people different from them were worthy of their love and respect.

Convictions are incredibly important in shaping who we are and who we become. But when we allow those convictions to become judgment and hatred we have taken them too far. I am just as guilty of this as any other person but I have made it my goal, my ultimate conviction, to listen without judgment, to respect without questioning and to love without holding back.