Yesterday a twenty-year-old in Connecticut shot and killed his mother — his mother — then drove to an elementary school — an elementary school — and killed twenty-six women and children. Then he killed himself. If NASA had satellites that could scan the planet for emotional and spiritual well-being, they would register massive wounds radiating from the crime scenes. Everyone is saying, Enough with the guns!, and I agree. But we also need something more. These wounds need a deeper treatment as well.

I say this because of something that happened once when I was studying the biochemistry of how muscles work, an intricate choreography of ions swinging back and forth across cell membranes. I’d never encountered anything remotely so complex and elegant. I remember looking up from the textbook in a state of wonder. Without conscious volition, my hand lifted up in front of my face, and my index finger bent and straightened. In that moment, I felt like I apprehended the entire chemical dance happening in my own muscles. Then that perception broke open, and I apprehended everything. I mean the entire Universe, its operations and majesty and beauty, and I was engulfed in an overwhelming, everywhere presence of love, like a fundamental force of physics.

I’m here to tell you it exists, it is infinite, it is available, and it eclipses all our ridiculous evaluations of worthiness. It loves you, it loves the victims, the families, the town, the nation, and it loves the shooter. It is where healing comes from. But we block it, each in our own ways and for our own reasons. We block it by not loving. Which brings us back to today. The holidays have been gruesomely destroyed for too many people. It’s time for whomever can to be the season, to embody its spirit. It’s time to wage peace-craft like grown-ups, to live our love like we mean it, and bring light to the world out of darkness.