The Year Ahead

Conversations about fear and love are spattered throughout history.  They often stand, very much like we discussed at today’s training, as opposites of each other.  Fear is discussed as the motivator for contemporary violence.  Love, on the other hand, is harder to categorize; love is that which is most like faith and God.
    In the course of the two days previous, both of them are beginning to exist inside me, simultaneously competing for my attention and thoughts.  First of all is fear, for I have been afraid before even reaching here.  And yes, fear is a motivator.  It motivated me to join the interfaith movement; I am afraid of a world without it.  But I have also a slightly more selfish fear: the fear of failure.  I have failed before, and I am unwilling to re-experience it, though I know I must.  Failure is inevitable, because it is indefinable.  Looking from whichever perspective, I can say that I have failed at every endeavor I have set out to accomplish.
    However, I also have love.  I have a love for this movement, which is ever changing and growing at a rate that never ceases to amaze me.  I have watched it grow, and have been blessed to be a part of it.  And now I am blessed to be a part of its new expansion, across the borders that seemed, one day long ago, unfathomable to cross.  
It is this love, for the movement and the people in it, which makes my fear dwindle.  It makes me come to terms in my own way with the year ahead: for I have twenty-nine others who understand, and endless more who are willing to help.  I will call upon them when the time comes, and they will answer whole and eager.