We live in a world dominated by fear. Maybe that’s always so. Maybe because I came up in the generation I did, graduating college in the mid-70s, there was the thought that things could change — and would keep on changing.

I guess they did, but the clouds above aren’t big and white and fluffy, hopeful sort of clouds, they are grey and low-hanging. They are clouds of fear and hate.

I’m astonished by the hate. I realize I’m hopelessly naive about the hate and the fear. Between my family, my religious up-bringing, my year abroad as a Rotary Exchange Student, and my tiny, little women’s college attended in the 70s, I really thought we had the blues on the run. I’ve seen hope triumph and assumed it triumphed forever. It didn’t.

The stupid, hateful fear-mongering that is going on now, the casual disregard for one another’s humanity is horrifying to me. And it’s so big. Hard to know where to enter the fight.

As always it comes back to our choices. We can’t give up on the macro level, we have to participate. I do best working here at home with like minded people. Tiny little acts of love and courage. But we cannot be out of touch with those who do the other work. They are our neighbors too. We can help them keep believing that there are reasons for Hope, that change is possible. We must feed and nourish their souls even as we struggle to find ways to feed and nourish the people of our towns and cities and countrysides.

Under threatening skies, let us build shelters for our neighbors and ourselves. Let us build enclaves of Hope and Beauty, Art and Commerce. Let us understand that storms pass, because they do, however horrible they are in the meantime. But in the storms, we can be the light and the hope. We can push back the hate.

If we believe in Peace, we must do so.

I believe in Peace.