There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done – Liebe ist alles.
(The Beatles and Rosenstolz)

I discovered that you can not just look for your favourite singers and bands on Spotify. You can also listen to, let’s say “Bob Dylan Radio” or “Jim Croce Radio” or “Chappell Roan Radio” – which is not that singer’s radio station but a playlist that Spotify puts together for you with that singer’s music and the music of singers like the one you wanted to listen to.

Yesterday morning, I listened to “Rosenstolz Radio”, Rosenstolz being one of Pádraig’s favourite bands when he was in Berlin for his transition year. They were a German pop duo from Berlin, with singer AnNa R. and musician Peter Plate.

One of their hits was, “Liebe ist alles”, “Love is all”. Which made me think of “All you need is love”. It is, of course, a very different song with different lyrics, but both have the same message. One we all know but sometimes forget.

This is our alternative to the deceit, to the lying, to the taking advantage of others for your own good, to the just looking after number one, to the turning your head away from injustice and misery, to the complicity, and to the pretending you didn’t see.

Germans last week celebrated “St. Martin” of Tours, the Roman soldier from the 4th century, later a bishop in France, who cut his cloak in half to share it with a freezing beggar, and later dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak.

Germans being Germans, they remember St Martin in style, superbly organised, in cities, towns, and villages all over Germany. I went to join this year’s procession in a small town with our grandson. Re-living my own childhood. Kids and their parents got together in the evening with their candle-lit lanterns, walked through the streets singing songs in which they remembered the good deed of St Martin. They stopped to enact the “cutting of the cloak”, and walked back to a bonfire in the school yard where there were snacks and hot drinks for everybody.

The St Martin story lives on. Pádraig’s family, friends, neighbours and even people we have never met, people around the world, have shared what they can with him. There is a whole community looking out for him. People who say that it makes them happy that they can help him.

Without this community, we would not be where we are today. I would have despaired a long time ago in the face of empty promises, a complete lack of empathy or sense of responsibility, and even direct personal attacks. All that negativity did never overwhelm us or shut us up, because of the incredible sense of support from a community that is there when we so desperately need it.

St Martin is alive and he keeps sharing. His cloak, against the bitter cold of the winter. His generosity , against the ignorance and the greed of the heartless.

All you need is love.

Liebe ist alles.

Thank you all. We know that we are not alone.