In an interview for the Daily Meditations, Sikh activist and author Valarie Kaur places love at the center of our ability to bring about wholeness in a divided world:
What does it mean to return to a kind of wholeness where the way that we love informs what we do in the world and what we do in the world deepens our love?….
What I want to remind us all is that as much as we must fight for our convictions and stand for what is just, remember that all those people who vote against you are not disappearing after Election Day or Inauguration Day. We have to find a way to live together still. The only way we will birth a multiracial democracy is if we hold up a vision of a future that leaves no one behind, not even our worst opponents. So you might be in the position to have that conversation with the neighbor down the street or the uncle at the family table or the teenager who doesn’t want to vote because she’s too cynical. What might happen if you leave them alone? [Philosopher] Hannah Arendt says isolation breeds radicalization. [1] You might be the person to puncture the [social media] algorithm, to sit in spaces of deep listening—and deep listening is an act of surrender. You risk being changed by what you hear.
We don’t see those spaces modeled in the world around us. We have to create them in the spaces between us. Oftentimes it means listening over time, being in relationship. Human beings mirror each other, so if you come with daggers out, they’ll come out daggers out. If you come out and you really wonder “Why?,” beneath the slogans and the soundbites, you’ll hear the person’s story and you’ll see their wound. You’ll see their grief. You’ll see their rage. You might not agree with it, but I’ve come to understand that there are no such things as monsters in this world, only human beings who are wounded, who act out of their fear or insecurity or rage. That does not make them any less dangerous, but once we see their wound, they lose their power over us. And we get to ask ourselves: How do we want to take that information into what we do next?
I invite people to take their wounds [and] their opponents’ wounds into spaces of re-imagination—of imagining an outcome, a policy, a relationship that leaves no one outside of our circle of care, not even “them.” This kind of labor, this kind of revolutionary love, it’s not the sacrifice of an individual, it’s a practice of a community.
When we invite people to practice revolutionary love, we always ask, “What is your role in this season of your life?”…. Whatever you choose, it can be a vital practice of love, of revolutionary love. And if all of us are playing our role—not more, not less—then together we’re creating the culture shift that we so desperately need.
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| We Are All Idolaters |
 Click Here for AudioThe first commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Some of us read that and think, “No problem. I’m a committed monotheist and have never been tempted to worship another god. Let’s move on to the more difficult commandments.”Not so fast.Our reading of this commandment depends entirely on our understanding of the word “gods.” We may understand a god to be an object, a function, or both. For example, a chair is both an object and a function. A chair is made for sitting, but a chair is a chair whether I sit on it or not. Its chair-ness is inherent. A box, by contrast, is not a chair. Yet, if I sit on the box it may function as a chair. The box’s chair-ness is defined by how it is used, not by what it is. The same goes for gods. Some gods, like a chair, are clearly recognized for their god-ness. The word “god” brings to mind deities like Ra in Egypt, Zeus in Greece, and Ganesh in India. But there are many other things that are not gods but may nonetheless function as gods just as a box may function as a chair. Strictly speaking, power, wealth, fame, and pleasure are not gods. Neither is the United States, the Chicago Cubs, nor Nike shoes. And yet, any of these may functionas a god in a person’s life. Therefore, if we read the first commandment as a prohibition against worshiping other deities, it seems like a pretty easy law to obey. If, however, we read it as a warning against allowing anything other than the Creator to function as a god in our life—well, suddenly the commandment becomes more difficult.The theologian Paul Tillich declared that faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned.” He argued that because each person has something of ultimate concern that defines their life and identity, all people are religious—even the atheists. Every person has something in their life that functions as their god. For some, this god-function is occupied by a recognizable deity attached to some religious tradition. But this is increasingly not the case. Instead, the god-function is filled by something else like ambition, self-actualization, a dream, a goal, a social movement, or perhaps a political or cultural tribe. Few of us, in obedience to the first commandment, actually put our Creator in this all-important place in our lives. The truth is we are all idolaters. We all find ourselves bowing to and giving our lives to false gods with stubborn regularity.Ask yourself, what is my ultimate concern today? What occupies my imagination? What do I daydream about, and what motivates my actions? The first commandment is a warning to not give this precious, life-defining position to anything or anyone unworthy of it. It belongs to your Creator alone. DAILY SCRIPTURE EXODUS 20:1–3 MARK 12:28–31 WEEKLY PRAYER Leonine Sacramentary (the fifth century) Almighty God, who did wonderfully create humanity in your own image, and did yet more wonderfully restore them, we ask you, that as your Son our Lord Jesus Christ was made in human likeness, so may we be made partakers of the divine nature; through your Son, who with you and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, world without end. Amen. |
