Toasting the Power of Love

Last weekend after a dinner with my brother and his fiancee, I posted a picture with the caption, “I love spending time with couples that bring intensely beautiful love into the world. The world needs it.” I continued to feel both of those sentiments throughout this week. The country has been in a lot of pain, and it’s hard not to internalize it. And yet, I always come back to the Martin Luther King’s quote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” I believe in the power of love to change the world. Love pulls out the best in us and pushes us to share the light within us. Love transcends our differences. I knew that deeply from the time that I was little and I had a brother who seemed to be my opposite. For his popularity with his peers, I had popularity with my teachers. He excelled in sports and I excelled in service. And while I can’t say that we kept a classy appreciation for our differences growing up, once I went to college, we appreciated what it meant that he was the yin to my yang. My proof of my love for my brother comes in the form of a January 2004 journal entry in which I wrote, “Oh God. my brother did come in [from vacation] today like he was supposed to. Not a good combination with watching the Ring. I am so creeped out. He had better be fine. He is my m...f...ing partner in crime.” My proof that the feeling was mutual came when he included on his senior page of his high school yearbook that I was his best friend. And while I still have moments when I realize how different we are, like when I looked at his Twitter feed and I didn’t even recognize it as the same program that I have because his is all celebrities and sports and mine is all news and social justice organizations, we are also now well practiced in making sure that the other knows that no matter what the world throws our way, we have a built-in buddy ready to have our back and remind us of our light. Along the way we became a full posse with our step-siblings, and our “blended family”’s love was even featured on the Today show. And just when I thought it didn’t get any better than that, I met sister-in-law. I have cried multiple times telling my new sister about my love at first site for her. I had heard my brother talking about how spectacular and transformative she was for months before I met her. But as I’ve shared, my brother and I don’t always see eye to eye, so I wasn’t sold. And then I met her, and she is warm and funny and sharp and authentic, and on top of all of those reasons why I LOVE her, she also reflects my brother’s light back to him as strongly as he had been describing her light to me. They share a love that makes each of them most fully themselves that and catalyzes the spark of passion in their hearts into a flame. Dorothy Day wrote, “The greatest challenge of the day is: How to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”  My brother and his new wife are showing us the way. And so I toast to them and to a world that is more filled with the love and passion that they model for us us all.