“Worlds are turning and we’re just hanging on” – words that resonate strongly these days when every day feels like a game of catch-up – factually, emotionally and spiritually – with a relentless stream of news stories that with a few exceptions mostly elicit feelings of shock, distress, bewilderment and fear.

Dear Believe Out Loud community, let’s stand together in these challenging times and take a moment to re-center and re-ground ourselves in the truths we all hold in our spiritual core: Human beings want to be free and safe, they want to be able to provide for and protect their families, they like to laugh and they fear pain. Everybody – regardless of what they have done – deserves to be treated humanely and with dignity. We all need love. We all know that love for somebody else feels better than hatred toward them. Let us remember these truths of “inalienable rights,” “inherent dignity,” of “Love your neighbor as yourself” and we will withstand the centrifugal powers of whatever the 24-hour news cycle throws at us.

It is our faith that will help us get through these dark times; faith in God, love, the universe or, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “[the] unarmed truth and unconditional love [that] will have the final word in reality.”

Come to think of it, “Bring me a higher love” resonates even more strongly.

(Lyrics from Steve Winwood “Higher Love”)