Here is the Poem of the Week, written on April 2nd. Our nation’s government was admittedly flawed before January 20, 2025. Forces of greed held us back from closing the obscene income gap, from legislating a livable wage, from reversing climate and other environmental catastrophes and making the super-rich pay taxes as a form of paying back what they have stolen from the poor, the middle class and future generations of life on earth.

Yet we can now see how much love shaped our government. It’s really extraordinary if you think about it. Our love was compromised, but it was there in our care for the poor–food programs and heat assistance and medicaid and more.

We loved our elders enough to provide social security and medicare. We loved humanity enough to do research to safeguard our health and heal disease.

We loved the earth and all interconnected life enough to regulate, however insufficiently, the polluters and extractors and abusers of the earth, and to fund the scientific research that gave us needed information about our impact and learn how to live on earth harmoniously and sustainably.

We loved our neighbors around the globe enough to offer at least some help when they were suffering, and enough to try to prevent wars and cooperate on global economic and all other kinds of well being.

We loved our neighbors enough to make sure they could have the right to think and speak and vote, at the same time as limiting freedom responsibly, just enough to protect everyone from harmful actions.

I could go on and on–so much love!

And now that imperfect but virtuous government is being torn down to the ground, and will love guide those who are doing the destruction as they govern? Will they create a more loving government for all? We may not know what is coming, but we do know, because history and personal experience have proven it, that love is the highest power on earth. We can be sure that love will rise again.