Love More and Hate Less

I started covering a secular song back in March. Stevie Wonder's Love's In Need of Love Today. Just watching the world made my heart hurt. I was schooled by Quakers so we were taught to respect others. To accept others. That doesn't necessarily mean you agree with their point of view, but you respect them enough to accept they think differently than you and love them anyway. Remember love is a verb. It's action. It is NOT a warm, fuzzy feeling.

I truly am growing weary of waking up to horrible news. It's been a difficult two months. I sleep with my tv on, I always have, my daughter does to. It acts as a filter for all other noise. It isn't so great when you wake up to horrible news. Yesterday was one of those days. I was sad. For so many reasons and it was hard to shake it the entire day. Love's in Need of Love Today. I heard that song all day and it inspired me to do something. Just to share a little happiness on a very sad day. My daughter and I went to Dunkin Donuts for coffee and donuts (and yes I know they are bad for you but a Edible Arrangement was outrageous) and took them over to our local police station. I met with one of our Officers and handed it off and told them we appreciate all that they do in our town. I know many policemen. They are great people. I am not anti-law enforcement. My father was a cop. My uncle was a cop.

Here's the tricky part that most people don't want to hear. Black Lives Matter does not mean other lives don't. It does not mean what happened in Dallas is acceptable. But since slavery time the life of black people has been treated differently. From being whipped because they didn't listen. To being raped because the master was on a power trip and had something to prove. To being lynched because a black man looked at at a white woman. Remember hoses being turned on peaceful protesters in the 1960's? Racial Profiling was big in my state. Actually lead to State Police having to retire and this is in NJ not KY. Whether you want to believe it or not this has always been in America. The difference now is everyone records everything!! Black Lives Matter is saying we are tired of the injustice. We are tired of being second class citizens. I fought my mother for years that things have changed. After all, my husband is white. We started dating in the 1980's when interracial dating was still new. We took a lot of flack from everywhere, including family. I still stood my ground that things have changed. My mother and father lived in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1954. My mother looked white and father black. He was in the Air Force. They shipped my mother down to Mississippi to keep my dad from fighting all the time. Surely what my mother saw was leftover from 1954. Not 1990 when I got married. Here's the thing, I wish my mother was still alive so I could tell her how wrong I was. Things haven't necessarily changed as much as they are more hidden. People who are my friends have reacted to the latest in lives lost by blaming the Liberal media. By posting articles of every wrong they victim has ever done as justification for a unarmed black man getting shot and killed. That shows complete lack of sympathy. That also hurts and it is coming from surprising people. This isn't a political problem yet it is being made one. Democrats against Republics. Its sickening. This is a morality problem.

I love what Law Enforcement do but in any community there is going to be bad people. I don't care if we are talking about Priests, Police, Military, Social Work, etc. People lose their way. It's pretty simple. Power corrupts, we all know that. So please keep an open mind to the plight of my people. There is validity to Black Lives Matter and to ignore it is inexcusable. Would you excuse lynching? Would you excuse slavery? Then please don't excuse that there's a race of people hurting and have truly had enough.

So my challenge for anyone reading this blog post is this.....share some love. Open your hearts and listen. Show some compassion. Do random acts of kindness. Say hello to people who pass you on the street. Smile more. Above all LOVE MORE.

1 Corinthians 13:13
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is LOVE.