Greetings, 2021. 

My prayer is that you will be the year in which we come to appreciate our interconnections with each other and all things on Earth and in the heavens. 

May you be the year in which we came to understand and value the importance of health, and to see that as we are all interconnected, one cannot be healthy while others are sick. 

May we embrace the entire Earth community as our tribe, recognizing that peace and plenty in one part of the globe cannot be lasting if others are starving and in strife. 

May we remember the sensitive arts of diplomacy, negotiation and mutual respect. 

May we remember how to listen deeply, how to open our hearts to strive for understanding, even when we are confronted with radical difference. 

2020 taught us the hard way that climate disruption is well underway, accompanied by fires, storms, melting ice and parched or flooded farmlands. We learned the hard way that the globalization of human civilization has opened pathways for pandemics as well as for profits. It has become clear that our favorite toy, the Internet, has the power to connect us as never before, but also to shred our trust in one another, undermining the stability of our social and political systems. 

As we step gingerly into this new year, 2021, and this new decade begins to unfurl, may each of us find the center of calm in our own hearts, and radiate that out into the world. I know this is not easy when it seems like everything we have known is under assault; when we are separated from our loved ones; when we are faced with disrespect, violence, hunger and fear. 

But for those of us who have our immediate needs met, who have the luxury of sitting on a safe, if crumbling, shore—for us, there is a simple, but not inconsequential practice we can undertake for ourselves and for others.

We have simply to center ourselves, open our hearts, and radiate our love and compassion out into the world. 

Buddhism calls this tonglen. Other religions call it prayer. It needs no name, nor the seal of any established religion. Each of us has a direct connection to the steady light of the sacred, which grows brighter as we focus on it and call it forth into the world. 

Each of us can be the love we want to see in the world. We can embody and radiate the divine love we seek, and become a channel for the beauty all around us. 

May the glow of our collective light form a healing matrix around our beleaguered planet, harmonizing with the divine light that connects us to the cosmos and all the other stars, suns and planets out there. 

May 2021 be the year we realize our profound interconnection with all that is. 

May the light that animates each of us strengthen and protect all of us. 

Namaste.