Christmas Letter, 2005

It has been a year of catastrophes. A year when nature showed us how powerless we really are. A year when the richest and most powerful nation in the world failed its own people and left a city and a region at the point of death. A year when the partisan slur and the suicide bomb seemed to overmaster reasoned discussion and drive it from the arena.

Death and destruction, it seemed, were everywhere. Hope and light were not to be found.

Yet still we stand-battered, discouraged, too small and weak for the problems we face, we still do what we can because it is what we must do. Simple compassion, born of the love that is central to every spiritual and moral tradition, gives us no choice.

This, then, is a time to celebrate love. Love may not overcome-but if it does not, nothing else can. Violence, hatred, and indifference have brought us to where we are. Only love can bring us out of the darkness and into the light.

We have tried other ways, and they have failed. But, if we are lucky, we may have learned what events have to teach us: We must love one another or die.

W.H. Auden did not like that phrase when he wrote it. He deleted the poem where it appears from his collected works. It must have seemed too optimistic and facile to him in a world that had seen two terrible wars.

Now we know it is not. Love, like hope, does not solve problems. It is an essential starting point. If we abandon it, we will surely fail. But if we hold to it and live by it, we may yet succeed despite the odds.

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