My wife and I live in an over 55 community of modest prefab homes in the Hudson Valley. It is populated mostly by supporters of Trump, and I have made it my business to get to know my nearest neighbors for the simple reason that they are our first responders and we are theirs. In that sense love-as-caring "trumps"politics and religion. When we neighbors lament the ways of the world, as we do, I find that what we have in common is far more important than the ideologies that separate us. We are concerned for the future of our children and grandchildren. We feel a deep anxiety about security, about power failures, about gas prices. No need to blame or to speculate about remedies; we have no incentive to argue, only to greet one another in the shared practice of amity. "Amity:" It comes from the same root as the Latin word for love, but it is also, for me, a pun on the Hebrew word for people (the first two syllables of dear Amichai's name). Amity---amicable: capable of regarding anyone and everyone as one's people, not perhaps one's "tribe." That is another matter entirely.
My wife and I live in an over 55 community of modest prefab homes in the Hudson Valley. It is populated mostly by supporters of Trump, and I have made it my business to get to know my nearest neighbors for the simple reason that they are our first responders and we are theirs. In that sense love-as-caring "trumps"politics and religion. When we neighbors lament the ways of the world, as we do, I find that what we have in common is far more important than the ideologies that separate us. We are concerned for the future of our children and grandchildren. We feel a deep anxiety about security, about power failures, about gas prices. No need to blame or to speculate about remedies; we have no incentive to argue, only to greet one another in the shared practice of amity. "Amity:" It comes from the same root as the Latin word for love, but it is also, for me, a pun on the Hebrew word for people (the first two syllables of dear Amichai's name). Amity---amicable: capable of regarding anyone and everyone as one's people, not perhaps one's "tribe." That is another matter entirely.