To bear witness. To be a part of a greater story, another’s story.
To know that we are known.
This is why I believe in LHM. Because all that it stands for is rooted in the common human experience, challenging each other to love radically and beyond rigid definitions. We exist to love and be loved. The challenge is learning to express love in a way that constructs peace and leads to reconciliation and redemption. The sort of love that fights for freedom of heart, mind, body, and spirit: exposing the areas that we live in secret, in isolation, in loneliness and giving space and voice to those experiences. Maya Angelou has said, “there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” We all know those stacks of brick, pot holes filling with liquid cement that begin to anchor themselves deep within our true selves, threatening to prevent our next steps forward. Sometimes all it takes is space to unload, to be honest, to be raw before an open heart willing to stand in solidarity with ours, ready and willing to bear the weight of our story and respond in love and compassion. A voice that validates our experience, our very existence, and calls on our courage to move towards our potential, towards healing and wholeness: an enthusiast in our quest towards hope. This is why we at LHM call those we connect with "friends", because that is what we all quickly become. We do what we do because we know the absolute necessity of being discovered, known, and loved. We can’t sit with the knowingness that there are too many that remain undiscovered, whose stories remain hidden, shamed, even exploited, and that this hiddenness is what perpetuates so much of the injustice in our world.
The 6th Annual Art Experience will be a taste of this in an always uniquely inspiring Linwood House Ministries sort of way. You should come, with expectations. We can’t wait to see you.
~Emma
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