Happy Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day, a day to celebrate love, as if other days were different.

I learned from Grams on Dawson's Creek that Saint Valentine was a martyr who was killed for his refusal to cease marrying Christian couples. In those days, in that place, Christians were not to be married, because they were cultural outsiders without that "civil right."

I pray that today, we look upon the human right to marry the person we love with an even closer lens, and that we stand with those currently considered outsiders in demanding equal rights for all, in every place.

This will be my first Valentine's Day in a long time as a single person. I haven't talked much here about being single, because I am still figuring it out. I also don't know that I have anything too profound to say. I still work too much, I still love the things I used to love to do and do them. I'm still me, maybe even more so.

I'm excited for Valentine's Day, precisely because it's a holiday about expressing love, a force I think runs deeper than any emotion, deeper than one relationship or another, and deep into what makes us human, happy and free.

So I am looking forward to today, and any mushiness I might be a witness to, even as my own kind of outsider. Other people's love is a beautiful thing, and my love for the world, my life and the people in it never ceases to be an amazing gift from God.