The function of our hearts reaches a good deal further than pumping blood and gathering oxygen to still the hunger of trillions of little cells. Our hearts are our life — the borehole for love. It is where thoughts are fitted out with tenderness before they reach our eyes and our hands. It is also where twisted motives are hammered straight again before they turn into deeds.

Hearts carry on their own conversation by means of eye contact. Love equips a mute heart with sound — the alphabet of loving, which speaks sometimes in consolation, sometimes in joy, but most purely in love. The ecstasy of love's violence, which sometimes takes your heart or your thoughts by storm, is not only immeasurably lovely but, for as long as it lasts, the best thing that can happen to any human being.

A heart that is harnessed in front of a tongue carries a lighter load than a heart that afterwards has to pick up the pieces of a hasty tongue.

An ego that is harnessed in front of a heart is a heart running a race. Focused on the finishing line, there is neither time nor patience to help, to give, or to linger. It is barely a heart at all.

Our hearts make us approachable. Without effort, at ease in giving love and in receiving love. Especially when it comes to impulses directly out of God's heart, which make us available to everyone in our village and surroundings, for this season and for this year in which we have been gathered together to bring about a certain destiny — inside us and outside us.

In our hearts we find our truest meaning as human beings, and in our contact with our fellow human being. Here, by grace, the leftovers of the human race become worthy and fit for use and for joy again.

Groete Amanda Kreitzer