“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

WHAT’S GOOD

Thrift Pop-Up & Indoor Market Recap

*One Another Coffee & Nuevos Vecinos volunteers during the Thrift Pop-Up on Saturday*

This weekend’s thrift pop-up was one for the books. With the cold weather pushing us indoors, we moved the market into the Sunset Ridge Church fellowship hall—and the community showed up in such a big way.

Thanks to everyone who came out to thrift, sip, and support, we raised over $750 for Nuevos Vecinos during the pop-up. We’re so grateful for the great turnout and the generosity that made this possible.

A huge thank you to our volunteers who helped make the day run smoothly — we couldn’t have done it without you. Community like this is why we do what we do. 💛

Oriented Toward Love

Jess Lowry, Executive Director, Sunset Ridge Collective

This Christmas at my parents’ house, I picked up the old game of Tetris again. I had forgotten how happy it makes my brain—the simple satisfaction of watching the pieces fall, rotating them just enough to find their place, and the quiet joy when a row clears and order briefly emerges.

Recently, I read a reflection from pastor and theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber, who described following the news as a game of Tetris—except this time, the blocks are dropping faster than we can shift them. There’s no pause button, no satisfying click into place. Just a relentless accumulation that leaves us scrambling to make sense of it all.

What we are living through feels both massive and molecular: something unfolding in our country and communities, and something happening deep within our own hearts. It’s impossible to ignore. And we are not made to absorb this much information, this much pain, all at once. I won’t speak for you, but I know that for me, there are moments when the sheer volume renders me almost helpless.

Last Sunday was one of those days.

I spent much of the weekend letting the news fall on me—moving from bearing witness to what our neighbors are enduring, to obsessively watching, tracking, and trying to rotate the blocks of information into something that made sense. Nothing fit. I was overwhelmed.

That evening, Nathan and I had committed to joining our friend and worship band member Morgan at Corazón San Antonio, where she leads. When we arrived, around 100 of our unsheltered neighbors were waiting in the cold. In less than 45 minutes, Morgan and her team transformed a daytime warming shelter into an overnight one. We cleaned mats. We welcomed people inside. We made eye contact. We handed out warm food and juice, a moment so ordinary and so extraordinary at the same time. My heart snapped out of the helpless overwhelm and remembered what I know, and what I always come back to, is this: we can all do something.

*Preparing sleeping mats at Corazón Ministries.*

Our world is shaped in patterns. What happens in the small ripples outward. The way we think, the words we choose, the actions we take in our little corner of the world—they shape what comes next. Change begins within us and radiates outward as practiced love.

Life is not colored blocks fitting into exact spaces. It is nuance, it’s the small tender moments of connection with one another. It is humanity in all of our magnificent beauty and all of our devastating flaws—complex and oh so messy.

As you continue to walk through this disorienting world, may you be oriented toward love—real love. Love that acts. Love that speaks. Love that changes things, even when the change feels small.

I’ll leave you with a haiku from a brilliant writer and friend, Whitney Fordham:

Always too small to

Carry the world, but never

Too small to change it.