My imagination always seems to return to a table.

Around it are the people Pride month has asked us to see more clearly. The bisexual Christian who no longer has to divide faith from honesty. The trans person whose life is not treated as a debate. The disabled person who was considered from the beginning, not added afterward. The intersex child whose body was never treated as a problem to solve. The young person whose parents chose love before certainty. The refugee, the immigrant, the rural teenager, the Two-Spirit elder, the asexual Christian, the person who came alone and discovered they did not have to remain that way. No one is an afterthought. No one has to earn their place.

That is the kind of community Pride keeps asking us to build. Not one that settles for tolerance, or even welcome, but one that practices belonging until it becomes kinship. A community where another person’s dignity, safety, and joy become tied to our own. That kind of community is not built by statements alone. It is built every time we choose relationship over fear, curiosity over certainty, and love over respectability.

Tomorrow will be July. Some flags will come down, and public attention will move elsewhere. But the work remains. The table remains. Find those people you want to share the table with. Listen before speaking. Stay when leaving would be easier. Pride was never meant to be something we visit for thirty days. It is a way of becoming people with whom others can finally belong.