Where is the Love?

Waking up this morning, I really felt the love. This month we are enjoying a heatwave in England. Everything seems so much better in the sunshine. Bright, white and full of light. But the world around us doesn't feel the same.

Protests have taken place across America after neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, was cleared of murdering an unarmed black teenager by an all-woman jury. An all-woman jury? Really? It took an all-woman jury to come up with this travesty of justice?

In Italy a top Italian senator who likened the country's first black female cabinet minister to an orang-utan highlights the latest high-profile racist episode in a nation grappling with immigration. I mean really? Are you still in the Dark Ages Italy, really?

How far back are we going to regress at this rate? Are we going to start staking people for being vampires like they did in the Middle Ages? Where has our sense of community and human spirit gone? Where has our sense of responsibility and accountability gone? And even though women still bear the brunt of a patriarchal system, it just feels that rather than women changing the system, we have now ALL become part of it.

America hounds Edward Snowden, a man who leaked how the country's intelligence agencies have almost every country secretly tapped - while wired-up with every major internet provider and software giant to track our moves - when instead they should be apologising for becoming the Big Brother they warned us Russia and China would become.

If superpowers can't be held accountable, why should we hold ourselves accountable? A lawyer says Apple wrecked his marriage after he accidentally typed Fuckbook instead of Facebook into the company’s web browser and accessed porn he became addicted to. I mean come on, really?

We have Serbian genocidal maniacs on trial for the mass murder of young Bosnian boys on one side of the world, while in another we concern ourselves with the deeply troubling task of re-branding local sparkling white wine. All the while, our restaurants and eateries hide unsavoury truths about how chefs gob on the food they serve us. Really?

Yes, really. And while for food we have turned our seas into slaughterhouses, we have done the same to people to feed our racial hatred. We labelled parts of our planet holy, spread the word of our chosen deities with the sword to carry out a messianic plan for patriarchal domination. In doing so, we corrupted our world and ourselves.

For instance, in our societies cash is still king, and we still prioritise profit and greed. As illustrated by what "beans for the kids" in Kinshasa, "a glass of wine" in Paris, and "little carps" in Prague have in common. The phrases tell you something about local cuisine - but they are also euphemisms for bribes. The language of corruption differs from one country to the next, but there are also striking similarities, because corruption grows from corrupt systems, and the whole world is filled with them.

In a world that is 7 billion strong and growing, these are just a few of the stories that affect and pass through our lives. But where is the love in all of this?

We have become a tick-box culture, we make a bucket list of things we want to do, but never get the time to, because we always need to feel we are ten minutes ahead of time. We are finding it difficult to commit to anything substantial - to long term clean energy, to long term relationships, to a long term anything. That is just racing to the grave. We need to slow it down, and look for the love in our lives.

Time spent on love is not well spent, it is well stored, because that love will bring many returns. We look at the world currently in crisis, see Brazilian police pepper spray their civilians, watch the death of democracy in Egypt (if it had ever existed there in the first place), cringe as British police beat G8 protesters, and it's not hard to wonder the love has gone. There are more violent riots than peaceful demonstrations filling up the four corners of the world. Looking out for the next riot across our planet is like playing a weekly quiz - who knows where the next one will happen?

This is a slice of summer 2013. When we look back, will we remember the wonderful summery weather, or that the world's temperature was once again rising due to the increasing hotspots around the globe? What happened to our dreams of goodwill at the start of the year? Where is the goddess some believed was going to bring stability to this patriarchal power play we have been in the throes of for so long? Or is the number thirteen - as in 2013 - really unlucky as Western superstition would have us believe?

Some would say we don't believe enough, and that we need some new symbols to inspire a new generation into getting us out of the messes previous generations have left us with. In an article for the BBC, Tom Shakespeare believes that the Church's appropriation of many pagan festivals has left an important gap - the summer solstice.

He suggests in the English speaking world we don't have enough spiritual celebrations of summer, where we can unify in joy and love for what is the greatest life-giving source for the Earth. Shakespeare doesn't suggest we should Sun worship - indeed there are too many doing that already for many superficial reasons. It's about showing respect for the place we live in.

Some 1,500 years ago, our Anglo-Saxon and Celtic ancestors had a much better idea. They celebrated regularly to mark the passage of the seasons that governed the natural world around them and the cycle of the Sun, which gave them light and warmth. Life being nasty, brutish and short, they made the most of these moments of hope and plenty. It's about searching for love, even in the smallest seconds of life.

It's about not just asking where the love is, but allowing the love to shine in your life.

Yours in love,