 Good morning. Have you ever been to South Bend, Indiana? Well, you're about to. Let's go. I've been thinking a lot about what we love and how we love it. Partly because those loves give us communities, and I feel like we need communities bound by enthusiasm more than ever to combat what Vonnegut called the terrible disease of loneliness. Traffic was terrible, by the way, but Alice and I were able to amuse ourselves by singing the Genie Wynaldum song for two straight hours. Do-do-do-do-do-do. Genie Wynaldum. Do-do-do-do-do-do. Genie Wynaldum. Great. We were on our way to see reigning European champions Liverpool Football Club play a pre-season friendly at the University of Notre Dame, and you know what? I'm just going to save you three hours of driving and go directly to the stadium. I don't have much in common with most Liverpool supporters. We often have different jobs and political perspectives and religious backgrounds, but because our love is oriented in the same direction, we are profoundly and deeply together. We sing the same songs, and even if we don't know each other, we kind of share a history. I've met Liverpool fans from Indianapolis to Sierra Leone, from Hollywood to Stockholm, and it's always the same. We remember together. We tell each other where we were in 2005, when Stephen Gerrard lifted Liverpool's 5th European Cup. I was in Alabama celebrating my engagement to Sarah. My first novel had been published six weeks earlier. I was 27. And now, I guess, we will tell each other where we were in 2019, when Jordan Henderson lifted the trophy for Liverpool again. At the stadium, singing with other Liverpool fans, songs that in cadence and spirit are really hymns. I felt again the great gift that football has given me. It's made me part of a massive, sprawling, inclusive us. But of course, the risk is that us's can also create them's. As Melinda Gates has written, every society says its outsiders are the problem, but the outsiders are not the problem. The urge to create outsiders is the problem. I find this a very helpful lens through which to look at the stuff I love. As a religious person, I've seen how my own religious tradition has created and demonized outsiders to solidify the standing and connectedness of insiders. I've seen the same thing happen in football and, for that matter, in YouTube fandoms and political ideologies and many other places. We have to be careful about what we love, of course, but we also have to be careful about how we love it. So for me, I guess, it's not mostly about whether you love a K-pop band or a sports team. It's about whether that love sustains you and connects you deeply to others. And it's also about whether that love needs to create outsiders in order to survive. Can you be a Christian without damning those who aren't? Can you be a Liverpool fan without hating Manchester United? Can the us survive without a them to fuel it? At halftime, Alice and Sarah and I got to meet Liverpool legends Patrick Berger and Ian Rush, and in a moment of incredible generosity, they brought out the European Cup for us. I'm not afraid to say that I wept. I was thinking about the 14 years between trophies. 14 years with Sarah, two amazing kids, some books, a couple YouTube channels, some hard times, a lot of good ones. 14 years. And Liverpool was with me the whole time. And as I raised the cup in imitation of Jordan Henderson, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the many us's that have loved me up into life. I often wonder what the point of it all is, but in that moment, I knew the point. The point is to gather the verb that gave us together. Hank, I'll see you on Friday. Alice, how old are you? Six. How many times has Liverpool won the European Championship? Yes!