Love is both personal and universal. Personal
love exists between a child and her mother, a father and
his daughter,
a grandmother and her grandson and between a brother and
his sister. Personal love also connects friends and lovers.
Love is a gentle hug of hello. It is a kiss
goodnight. Love is waiting up late for your teenage child
to get home safely. It is being worried and it is relief,
joy, fear and hope. Love is looking after each other. It
is the joy of responding to a baby's smile. It is holding
each other tightly. Love is a kiss on the cheek. And it
is a long embrace.
Love is also universal. Love
is peace and it is caring about those we don't know. It is
loving the person on the bus, in the gutter, or beside you
at the market. Love is peace between people cut apart
by borders and ideas invented to keep love contained.
Love is standing firm by crossing over
the bridge of American apartheid and racial
inequality. Love is carrying medicine to hungry children
embargoed by
the walls of greed. Love is carrying a flag of peace in a
world of war. It is working to the bone to bring joy and
justice to the world's poor, trapped in the slums of
exploitation, torn down by the ignorance of others and by
near-death existence.
Love is lifting salt from the sea in defiance
of those who'll deny prosperity
from those in need. Love is carrying the banner of justice.
It is standing in the way of bullets headed for innocents
and demanding better from us all. Love is peace. It is
joy. And
it is justice.
other values: respect
and dignity > sanctity
of human life
