Friday, February 27, 2026: What if the mightiest word is love?

Legacy reflection by Brother Toby:

I learned a very valuable lesson from Charles “Sparky” Schulz (1922-2000), the magnificent cartoonist of “Peanuts.” He told me never to read a newspaper first thing in the morning or last thing at night. And Sparky was absolutely right! 

I often forget that the night is part of the day. If the daylight hours have been difficult and there are very unhealthy things going on in our country or in the world, the night is a time of purity.

Sometimes I sit beside my cat listening to the crickets, there are so many of them at this time of year. It is really a choral fantasy. And, of course, there are the toads. They care nothing at all about what goes on in Washington, D.C. They travel happily down the gravel paths and at least one is almost always outside my bedroom window. What is the world like to a cricket, a toad, the occasional owl that flies by, or the gray fox that makes her way to the water fountain at 2 o'clock in the morning?

 Looking up there are the stars, calling us to look so deeply into the beautiful unknown. Meteors have quite regularly traveled across the sky, letting us know that everything is both new and fresh, as well as eternal and permanent.

By whatever name we identify the divine presence in our existence, it is there with the crickets, toads, owls and stars. Here is a universe so much more real than what I can find in a newspaper or on a computer. Here are the seeds of hope, no matter what we have experienced during the daylight hours or fear in the hours to come.

- Brother Toby (1931-2025)

Poem: Praise Song for the Day

By Elizabeth Alexander

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,

walking past each other, catching each other’s

eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is

noise and bramble, thorn and din, each

one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning

a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,

repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words

spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark

the will of some one and then others, who said

I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.

We need to find a place where we are safe.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,

the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,

others by first do no harm or take no more

than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

- praise song for walking forward in that light.