Love is in the air!  Depending on your level of optimism or pessimism this week, you may have been praising or cursing St Valentine as you rushed around the city to find the last bunch of sweet-smelling roses and the cheesiest Valentine Card left on the shelf – or the ‘forever yours’ pendant for your Valentine.

In his 1375 poem ‘Parliament of Fowles’, Geoffrey Chaucer described the 14th of February as the day that birds found their mate, heralding the start of Modern Valentine’s day. Over the centuries sages and poets alike have expressed their undying yearning love and pined over their beloved.  Love is the principal force behind human life.  In medieval theology, it was held that love literally set the universe in motion.  The praises of love do not, perhaps, extend as far back in time as the first human etchings or writings, but they do go pretty far back. “Amor vincit omnia” is part of a line from Virgil’s Eclogues: ‘Love Conquers all, let us yield to love.’

It is this love that in the modern day and age is in diminishing supply.  We find that far too many of us (Including myself many times) yield to the routines of modern life and succumb to the negativity, doom and gloom of heart-breaking world events. I find personally that the antidote to the ill feeling, hate or negativity that I often feel, is an expression of love or an act of kindness to release the negative energy from within.  I leave you with a couple of quotes that touched my heart and hopefully yours too; the first from Martin Luther King and the latter from the Sufi Saint Rumi, whose appeal is universal:

“Darkness cannot drive out Darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that”

“Wherever Water Flows Life Flourishes, Wherever Tears Flow, Divine Mercy Appears, Love Calls- everywhere and always, we are sky bound; are you coming?”

Love not Hate.