Welcome to Yule 2025 Love Never Fails! We’re so grateful that you are here with us.

This weekend - December 13, specifically - is Dick Van Dyke’s 100th birthday. His enduring positivity has been a source of inspiration for me. I need inspiration, because in this current age of increasing tribalism and othering, I get a sense that we are being pitted against one another which is distressing and anxiety-inducing. 

 When I look to people like Fred Rogers, Nelson Mandela, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr, and yes, Dick Van Dyke, I feel hope begin to re-emerge and push aside feelings of despair. 

What did they have in common? They all believed, and practiced what they preached, that everyone matters, everyone belongs regardless of… you name it. 

They all knew that we are part of a single human family, we are all connected, and we all have the ability to live our lives celebrating that connection and doing our best to nurture harmony. 

So, as you wait for this concert to begin, I’d like to share some quotes from the legend himself, Dick Van Dyke: 

“Just knowing you don't have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn - and those are all good things.”

“I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.”

“For the past twenty years I have been involved with the Midnight Mission, a Los Angeles–based facility dedicated to helping men, women, and children who have lost everything return to self-sufficiency. I spend every holiday there; I don’t get the Christmas spirit until I am at the Mission. Early on I approached a large, mean-looking man and wished him a merry Christmas. The menacing look on his face disappeared—he smiled. “People look through us,” he says. “Or they look past us. Nobody sees us. But you’re looking right at me. That is one helluva gift, man.” His smile was an even bigger gift to me. And it has been that way ever since.”

“I’ve always thought that anger is one thing that eats up a person’s insides — and hate. And I never really was able to work up a feeling of hate. I think that is one of the chief things that kept me going.”

“No one is genetically miserable,” he writes. “No matter our current circumstances, we all have the capacity for a joyful life.”

“Hope is life’s essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right. So did the Beatles. Without love, nothing has any meaning.”

Indeed. Love is everything, and love, thankfully, never fails.