2015: The Year of Love

We are coming to the end of the year when holiday celebrations overshadow the ongoing realities of war, poverty and violence. For a moment the good cheer (and good spirits) lighten our hearts and dull our worried minds. Life is good when it is celebrated with friends and family at Christmas and, in many ways, this time of celebration nourishes us for the New Year ahead. December 25 is like hitting the pause button on your computer or television and saying – Wow! It reminds us that we are deeply relational beings; that community and love bind us in ways that transcend our differences; that a shared life is possible.

As we look toward a New Year, I would like to declare 2015 the Year of Love. I do not mean love as sentiment or emotion but love as the highest good, the deep relationality of being itself.

Love is the energy of union, the space between hearts where forgiveness, compassion, joy, thanksgiving and peace flourish in the birthing of oneness. I want to proclaim 2015 as the Year of Love because we are inwardly bone dry and it is time to return the deepest energy of life itself, namely, love. “Love,” Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “is the physical structure of the universe.”  Love is present, he said, from the Big Bang onward: “Even among the molecules, love is the building power that works against entropy, and under its attraction the elements feel their way towards union.”