Standing in Power, Acting with Love

[The following comes from an exercise of writing the story of my own hero's journey]

Lauren was the first born child of a force of nature and a dreamer. Her parents sent her to schools that shared their high expectations for her, and through this combination of nature and nurture, Lauren grew to care deeply about leaving the world a better place than she found it. She fell in love with learning and continued to evolve into different roles in education until she found herself a teacher. Her very first class featured students who had already found their passion, and their passion was Palestine. Lauren’s Quaker sensibilities were challenged by these students and their belief that there were only violent solutions for Palestinians, so Lauren went to graduate school to study nonviolent activism. She had discovered her passion. She easily channeled her energy into discussions with students about the power of nonviolent resistance, but she struggled to find outlets for her own activism. Nevertheless, she persisted; she used all the resources she could to learn more and get engaged, and slowly but surely she found her place in local and Quaker activist networks as a committed team member willing to speak truth to power. The connection between her teaching and her activism became evident on November 9, 2016 when she received myriad messages from both friends and former students saying that her work had inspired them to recognize that individuals have the power and the responsibility to speak up and stand up to injustice. That was when she realized she could change the world through the ripple effect of modeling love and light. And so Lauren doubled down on her commitment to being a dreamer and a force of nature. She joyfully shares her own light and seeks to articulate and serve as a catalyst for the light in others. She knows that together they can leave the world a brighter place than they found it.

Love Manifesto

“God is love.” - 1 John 4:8

“Justice is what love looks like in public.” - Cornel West

I have a bumper sticker on my office door that says, “The real revolution will be love.” What that captures about me is not only the fact that I love intensely, but also that I actively wield my love as a force. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  said that, "Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love." It is time to reclaim love from the greeting card companies. Love has the capacity to make the world a better place, but only if we understand that love’s power is not in catching more flies with honey, but in recognizing and acting on behalf of our shared humanity and liberation.

The power of love begins within ourselves. Just as on an airplane we need to put on our own oxygen mask before we help others, so too with love we must tend to ourselves before we are equipped to care for others. While love of self must be rooted internally, it is most secure when it receives validation from the outside. We hear about how often bullies are insecure - they bring others down because of a vacuum in their own self worth. We need to support those around us in loving themselves. We need to reflect their light back to them. Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of human needs illustrated that our being loved as a member of a community is part of the full expression of our humanity. As South African philosophy posits, “I am because we are.”

Once we feel secure in ourselves and our relationships, we can expand beyond our comfort zones. In order to do this, we must embrace a love of multidimensional truth, a respect for the fact that our experiences help shape our realities, so there is no truth with a capital T. Although we often cling to the comfort of our bubbles, research has proven that groups with diverse perspectives are more successful. We can develop a multidimensional understanding of the world both through interpersonal relationships and through stories that allow us to connect with protagonists that are drastically distinct from us. We must remain open to our paradigm shifting.

As we come to better understand the world, we must more fully interact with it. We need a love of civic engagement. Nothing in our community, our nation, our world will get better if those who act out of love aren’t willing to do so publicly. We must find opportunities to embrace our agency and stand in our power. Khalil Gibran wrote that “Work is love made visible.” We must find inroads to the work of community building and the work of systems change.

When times get tough, it can be easy to check out. What allows us to stay grounded is the belief that we are a part of something greater than ourselves. Mother Teresa said, “If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” For the purpose of solidarity, it is important to understand that we are all connected. So is our liberation. We must have love of that which connects us all, whether our beliefs are spiritually or secularly grounded.

Let the love revolution begin.

Prayer for pain, grace, hope

A few years ago I encountered both Anne Lamott's book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers and Mary Oliver's poem "Praying":

“It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.”

Both pushed me to reframe the way that I think about prayer. Because I am Quaker, I had never thought of myself as praying. I thought about holding people in the Light and I thought about connecting with that of God within me, but I never considered any of that prayer. Anne Lamott and Mary Oliver helped me to get to a place in which I engage more directly and intentionally with a higher power. It gives me another tool in my spiritual toolbox.

This spring I developed a prayer model for myself that builds off of that foundation. There is tragedy on the news day after day, but there are also myriad sources of inspiration. When I begin to feel weighed down by a current event, I craft a prayer that names the pain, the grace I have found in the face of the pain, and the hope I have for the future. I have found meaningful spiritual grounding in this framework. It has become a lens through which I can consider the world. It helps me to feel agency.

Yesterday I read an article, "How to Stay Sane if Trump is Driving You Insane: Advice From a Therapist" by Robin Chancer, which offers advice that mirrors my practice. In order to process what is happening in the world, it is important to acknowledge how challenging current events can be to learn about, while also maintaining gratitude and faith. Neither optimism nor pessimism are particularly useful, but mindfulness is key. My pain, grace, hope prayers allow me to move beyond the feelings that I have about the world outside and focus instead on all that I have to share with the world. When challenges erupt around me, I have a place of inner peace that I have trained my mind to find. It is not a backing down, but rather a return to my source of strength during hard times.