Cook: The most powerful force

photo David Cook

We forget.

At least I do.

The TV yells and we yell back. Politicians push us this way, then that. Take our temperature: we're hostile, frustrated, and scared. At least I am.

So we forget. All these sirens - media+politics+fear - drive us toward the rocks. Our minds get cluttered, our hearts shipwrecked.

It's good to remember what's really behind the curtain.

"Love," said the Rev. Becca Stevens. "Love is the most powerful force in the universe."

Stevens runs the Magdalene House, a residential program in Nashville that's become a global model for the healing and recovery for female victims of sexual violence, prostitution and addiction. An Episcopal priest, Stevens has seen the worst violence has to offer - "so horrific I don't know how people repeat the story," she said - yet still believes this world spins on goodness and grace, that evil may take the stage, but never gets the last song.

Say it again, Becca.

"Love is the most powerful force in the universe for social change," she said Wednesday, at the Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga's annual luncheon.

The Women's Fund - when you help women, you help the world - has as its members some of the most powerful women in Chattanooga. They are fund-raising, lobbying and partnering to reduce female violence and oppression in its many forms.

> The Women's Fund lobbied our Legislature, which has passed some of the toughest anti-trafficking laws in America.

> The fund is distributing local grants and encouraging philanthropy among professional women in their 20s and 30s.

> The fund helped place anti-trafficking hotline posters in every welcome center and rest stop in Tennessee.

"You and I are called to use our voices for the sake of love, for the sake of our daughters, for the sake of our sons, and for all those who want to find a way home," said Stevens, just before the room of 200 or so women gave her a standing ovation.

Women come to Magdalene traumatized ("100 percent report rape," Stevens said) and are given residential care, safety, therapy and opportunities in Thistle Farms, the connected social enterprise. More than 70 percent of the women graduate the program, and Thistle Farms generates close to $1 million in annual revenue.

Here in Chattanooga, a group of women is creating our city's Magdalene House: a home has been donated, and one woman is ready to leave the streets to take residency there, said the leaders of the Naomi Project.

"We need voices that are courageous and brave [reminding us] how powerful love is," Stevens said.

Why don't politicians speak this way? Why is there no mention of love in any State of the Union, or campaign platform? Think of all your high school and college courses: Did you ever formally study peacemaking or reconciliation? Even just one class?

Even just one day?

Love has become our most censored four-letter word, culturally relegated to the land of Nicholas Sparks novels and Hallmark gift balloons. Few take it seriously, and to even write about it here is to draw criticism, like I'm speaking of some silly Huggy Bear utopia.

"Like John Lennon singing 'Imagine,'" one reader emailed.

"Liberal weenieman," said another.

Love is a force that we must stop being embarrassed of, a term we must reclaim and reintroduce into our lexicon, and a phenomenon whose time has come.

The protests in Hong Kong. The doctors and nurses rushing toward Ebola, not away from it. The Rolles on Dodson Avenue, and their supports across the city. Parents sacrificing for their kids, strangers giving to help other strangers, firefighters rushing into buildings, the ten thousand ways we act each day to foster something better for someone else.

This list is as long as you make it.

Love is no teenage feeling; it's the ground of all being, both a spiritual and scientific truth: We are connected in bread-and-butter ways with one another.

This world, as mean as it may be, is not fundamentally a mean place. We cooperate more than we dominate.

We participate in the healing of each other. We remember ourselves.

"There is just one issue," said Stevens. "Justice and love, above all else."

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.

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