February 2023 Catholic Lesbian/Queer
Women’s Conversations
Love, Love, and More Love: A Valentine for YOU Every Day!
Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 1 pm ET
by Diann L. Neu with Mary E. Hunt
Preparation: Have a symbol of a heart, photos of your loved ones, bread and drink.
Welcome
February opens our hearts to love. Today we gather together to focus on loving ourselves, loving others, loving the world, and loving justice. This Valentine’s season, let us share with one another and the cosmos loving kindness and loving gratitude.
Let Us Love Ourselves
Audre Lorde, (1934 – 1992), a self-described “black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet,” writes about loving self.
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” ~ Cancer Journals
“And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” ~ Audre Lorde quotes on love
“Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.” ~ The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
Sharing: Hold up your heart symbol so we can see these images of love.
Song: “How Could Anyone Ever Tell You” by Libby Roderick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctdUBOk5t14&t=124s&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
How could anyone ever tell you You are anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you You are less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you’re connected to my soul.
Let Us Love Others
Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019, right), an American poet, and Molly Malone Cook (1925 – 2005, left), an American photographer, at the couple’s home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. For more than forty years, they lived on Cape Cod.
Oliver — who refers to Cook simply as M. in most of her writings — reflects in the opening essay of Our World:
“Though you have known someone for more than forty years, though you have worked with them and lived with them, you do not know everything. I do not know everything — but a few things, which I will tell. M. had will and wit and probably too much empathy for others; she was quick in speech and she did not suffer fools. When you knew her she was unconditionally kind. But also, as our friend the Bishop Tom Shaw said at her memorial service, you had to be brave to get to know her.”
Sharing: Hold up your pictures of loved ones.
Song: “Something about the Women” by Holly Near
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSPvJ9lvpas&ab_channel=HollyNear-Topic
I look to you for courage in my life.
I promise it’s not foolish idolatry that makes me to gaze at you in wonder and love.
O there’s something about the women (3x), in my life.
Let Us Love the World
Our own Mary E. Hunt challenges us to love the world in her award-winning book, Fierce Tenderness:
“I venture to say that for women friends love is an orientation toward the world as if my friend and I were more united than separated, more at one among the many than separate and alone.”
Sharing
What have you heard and felt about loving the women you have loved? What love do you hope for in the future?
Let Us Pray for Those Who Need Love Today
Let Us Love Justice
The Eucharist is the sacrament of love and justice, a tangible reminder of the Divine calling us to love tenderly and do justice.
Think of the women with whom you have staked your claim for justice, with whom you have struggled in the streets, in the classroom, online, at home so that justice might prevail.
Hold your bread and drink as we pray “Brigit’s Table Grace” from St. Brigid’s Convent in Kildare, Ireland.
I should like a great lake of finest ale for (all the people).
I should like a table of the choicest foods for the family of heaven.
Let the ale be made from the fruits of faith, and the food be for giving love.
I should welcome the poor to my feast, for they are God’s children.
I should welcome the sick to my feast for they are God’s joy.
Let the poor sit with (Sophia) at the highest place
and the sick dance with the angels.
God bless the poor, God bless the sick, and bless our human race.
God bless our food, God bless our drink, all homes,
O God, embrace.
Let us eat and drink and be grateful for love.
Song: “Give Love” by Sweet Honey in the Rock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEaL4jbVeVw&ab_channel=SWEETHONEYINTHEROCK
Let Us Radiate Love
May love be within you as you love yourself. May love be beside you as you share love with others.
May love be around you as you love the world.
May love nourish you as you bring love and justice to all in a weary world.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
© 2023 Diann L. Neu with Mary E. Hunt, co-directors of WATER, dneu@hers.com, www.waterwomensalliance.org
