June 29 – September 27 | Online and in-person
What do you think of when you think of summer? Building sandcastles on the beach? Swimming in the lake? Singing around a campfire? With Pride celebrations all around the world, maybe you would agree summer brings an invitation for celebrating love. Finding love. Giving love. Opening your heart to love.
“Love is our only hope,” Anne Lamott writes. “It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.
This summer, join BELOVED Way for a Summer of Love. Inspired by Anne Lamott’s newest book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love, we’ll explore what love means to each of us and how we might return to love, again and again, even when we mess up, even when our hearts have been broken.
Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Download a PDF of the introduction to Anne Lamott’s book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love
How to love the one who opposes everything you love: a conversation with Anne Lamott
Present moment awareness guided practice with Dr. Alane Daugherty
Take a 10-minute walk each day and journal what you notice
In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. “Love just won’t be pinned down,” she says. “It is in our very atmosphere” and lies at the heart of who we are. We are, Lamott says, creatures of love.
Anne Lamott is a writer, progressive political activist, public speaker, and educator who lives in Marin County, California. She writes humorously and openly about her own experiences with alcoholism, single-motherhood, depression, and her unconventional Christian faith.
"Even in the darkest and most devastating times, love is nearby if you know what to look for. It does not always appear at first to be lovely but instead may take the form of a hot mess or a snoring old dog or someone you have sworn to never, ever forgive (for a possibly very good reason, if you ask me). But mixed in will also be familiar signs of love: wings, good-hearted people, cats (when they are in the right mood), a spray of wildflowers, a cup of tea."
