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The opening scene of the 2003 movie, Love Actually, begins with a montage of video clips. They’re all taken in London’s Heathrow Airport, and every single one of those clips shows folks embracing, or kissing, or crying, or laughing. As those clips run across the screen, one after the other, the only thing you hear is a man sharing his own observation of what love looks like. “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion love actually is all around.”
Some 19 years later, and I think the general opinion hasn’t really changed all that much. Perhaps it’s gotten even worse. Turn on any news channel or open any timeline and you’ll see all the apocalyptic, end-of-the-world scenarios of today’s headlines. They are reminders to us that the world is bleak, and we’re all on a bullet train headed straight for destruction. Don’t get me wrong, there is some truth there. The world is not as it should be. There is violence and war. There is injustice and greed and hatred. Those tragedies are certainly things we should be concerned about, and actively working to remedy. But what often happens is that those aspects of the world start to take hold of us in such a way that they become the only lens through which we live. We become buried under the opinion that the world is full of hatred and greed.
And it isn’t.
A couple weeks ago, I was on retreat with a group of students. We all piled into a retreat house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by corn and goats and feral cats, and spent the weekend reminding ourselves of who we are and who God is. And while the rest of the world chugged along miles away, the only thing I saw that weekend were moments of grace and kindness and love.
When the world around us seems heavy, and the general opinion gets the better of us, there is always the temptation to turn in on ourselves. That’s the place we feel we have the most control. But it is also the place where loneliness begins to creep in, compounding the weight of the world. We lose ourselves in that place. Don’t succumb to that temptation, as alluring as it may seem. The world is where we live and move and have our being.
As Dorothy Day once wrote: We have discovered that the only solution is love, and that love is found in community. So if the world seems heavy, or general opinion has you starting to believe that there exists only hatred and greed, walk outside your door and look around. Step outside of yourself and into the arms of those around you. Have a conversation. Hug an old friend. Pray with your community. I have a sneaking suspicion you’ll discover that love actually is all around.
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