We are wired for care
We belong to each other. r.nial.bradshaw/Flickr/CC BY 2.0 On the Sunday following the 2024 election, I couldn't wait to get to church. My battered spirit was craving my community, one I know after my years of participation is guided first by compassion. In the face of political results I saw as evidence of a national dearth of empathy, I needed a spiritual reminder of capital-L Love and the deep wellspring it feeds in each of us. As our pastor preached on the Gospel reading about the poor widow who "gave not from her excess but from her want," he reflected how only four years ago at the onset of the pandemic, the parish's food pantry went from serving 150 families to 700 "in the blink of an eye," and today serves 900 every week. Recalling how he had no idea at the time of how to meet such exponential need, he said : "We put a call out to the parish and it spread to the wider community, and suddenly the fishes and the loaves multiplied and we were abl...
