Where I focus on charity and prayer

[DifRent]

Hugs and thanks to all of you... HeavyD and Bob for your good thoughts and hugs, PigPen for reminding me to lean in, and Fogg, for your sharp empathy. So sorry you are feeling like I am right now. I'd give anything for us all to be able to just leave this forum.

And yet, I doubt we would, because others would need us. There is a real love on this forum, even among people who don't know each other in real life. It's agape love, and it's powerful.

I am reading Deus Caritas Est this afternoon... Pope Benedict's first encyclical, and it's on love. It's really rather sublime, and this line resonates with me - and I imagine with many of you - right now.

He writes of agape as the "the experience of a love which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that prevailed earlier. Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation, and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice."

While our WAS go off and pursue some vague notion of "happiness," we are the ones who really know what love is, and we live it. That is something for me to hold onto here in the midst of so much loneliness and pain. Thank you all for reaching out, and for your agape-like love.