This is the time of year when darkness closes in on us, and we feel again the need to gather around sources of illumination: Christmas trees, menorahs, and the stories and rituals handed down to us through time that foster an understanding and appreciation of our world. As people adjusting to the cold and dark, we feel the need to stick together — to cohere. And in our togetherness we are drawn to seasonal narratives of coherence, old and new, sacred and secular, to illuminate a path through the darkness. Even in a year like this one, when fear and ignorance have joined forces to justify intolerance, division, and ultimately vengeance against those seeking unity and peace, there is light.

Last week, that light emanated from a series of “Love Wins” meetings and mental health conferences sponsored by the Ana Grace Project. Coming, as they did, as the mass murder in San Bernardino unfolded and with such proximate timing to the third anniversary of the 12/14 tragedy in Sandy Hook, the sessions rose against the heavy weight of trauma, both in our community and in the world. But rise they did with reserves of compassion and heart to stand against suffering and isolation — two cold and dark realities of our time — in support of resilience, healing, and the medium from which these grow, community.

“This is about meeting the basic needs of all families and recognizing that those basic needs include taking care of the heart,” explained Nelba Marquez-Greene, a licensed marriage and family therapist, who with her husband, Jimmy Greene, founded the Ana Grace Project to honor the memory of their daughter, one of the 26 Sandy Hook School shooting victims.

Highlighting the conference was a talk by the trauma expert and author Dr Bruce Perry, who chronicled the many challenges facing children with a history of trauma. Yet he also traced a path of resilience and healing, supported by research, that originates in relationships, which he described as having durable connections to a community, or a family, or even to a solitary person providing unconditional love.

The coherence of life, then, is rooted in our relationship to others. Fear, ignorance, division, and the vengeance they breed is ultimately the stuff of incoherence. This is exactly the kind of illumination we need most at this time of year.