Ever more capacity to love
Helping Friendly Newsletter, 02.14.25
Every other Friday, I share 5 things to consider. On the Fridays between, I mix things up. This is a 5 Things Friday.
GM ☕️
Here are this fortnight’s 5 things to consider:
Happy Valentine’s Day! I made you a bouquet of love notes:
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“Our hope lies in the reality that so many of us continue to believe in love’s power. We believe it is important to know love. We believe it is important to search for love’s truths…we want to live in a culture where love can flourish. We yearn to end the lovelessness that is so pervasive in our society.”
—bell hooks, All About Love
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“If we are to manage the havoc—ocean acidification, corporate malfeasance and government corruption, endless war—we have to reimagine what it means to live lives that matter…We need to step into a deeper conversation about enchantment and agape, and to actively explore a greater capacity to love other humans…It is more important now to be in love than to be in power.”
—Barry Lopez, “Love in a Time of Terror”
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“And when you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here, and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.”
—Joanna Macy, “A Wild Love for the World”
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“Let the love wash over you and let it wash through you and let it be so grand and humble and tiny it can never be lost and let the love wear many masks and faces and none of them serious, let the love be daring in its foolishness, let the love tremble in its gentleness…let this love and only this love lead you by the hand to a merry-go-round and all the painted ponies rising and falling in a circle that does not end.”
—Robert Vivian, “Plea,” All I Feel Is Rivers
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“Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire.
But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again.
Gamble on humanity one hundred times overCommit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them.
I’d follow love into extinction.”
—Ayisha Siddiqa, “On Another Panel About Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I’ve Got Is a Love Poem”
Prophetic sci-fi author Octavia Butler’s 4 rules for predicting the future:
Learn from the past.
Respect the law of consequences.
Be aware of your perspective.
Count on the surprises.
Midwinter reassurance from
:
How ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” taught Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy to open his mind: “That song taught me that I can’t ever completely trust my negative reactions. I was burned so badly by this one song being withheld from my heart for so long.”
ICYMI, last week I shared a story of improbable hope.
Thank you for reading! This newsletter is a labor of love. 💌 To support it, you can upgrade to a paid subscription, share this post, or engage my services. You can learn more about my work at jenniferlphillips.com.
Peace,
Jenny
P.S. RIP to one of my first favorite authors and the “prankster-philosopher” who taught me through story that bizarre is beautiful. College Jenny was in literary love!👇🏼
