ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 30
but going to its source. Seeing the layers of our righteousness... sorting through the complexities:
anger, sadness, loss, hopes, expectations, ideals, disappointments, fear, pain, trauma, longings, dreams,
aspirations, what we know to be rightfully ours.
Loving our own grief and righteous anger in abundant ways remind us to demand that our voices
and power are present. Each time we give that up, we leave ourselves open (again) to colonization,
subjugation, erasure, exploitation and self-denial.
Each time we claim our voice and power, everything we value, and are about, rises with us. Each time we
tell our stories, we bring healing to our lineage, our ancestors who dreamed of one day shouting loudly,
“We are free…”
A keynote speaker at a graduation ceremony I attended recently was Tim Shriver
who’s the chair of the board of the Special Olympics. I thought to myself, here’s
another privileged white man giving a keynote talk. But in fact I thought he gave a
wonderful address. And his core mantra, which he acknowledged was going
to feel idealistic, anachronistic, and out of time and place was “Love your enemy.”
And he unapologetically leaned into that and said, that’s what we need to figure out
how to do, love those who are different from you, love the other,
love those who you might otherwise hate. Because what are we going to solve
to hate? Where do we get to, what do we generate? What is generative about hate?
It only tears you down and everything around you. I feel like pretty much everyone
could agree with that. I don’t know if you find anyone who would say here is the
productive thing about hate. When you realize that, then you can see that the
solution is focusing on love as a transformative force.
But… I think we’re at a moment where it’s going to be extremely challenging.
To get folks on all sides of the ideological spectrum from us who are gonna embrace
it. But even short of embracing it, to just sit with it. I’m struggling with the reaction
of two young Black women I was with at the graduation who I have tremendous
respect for who are our next generation of leaders. They weren’t having any
parts of the speech because it came from a white man with significant power and
privilege. It made me think, wow, what have we done? To get to the point where
even something as profound as the statement he was making would just
be rejected because of who it was coming from.
I was like, wow, we’ve got our work cut out for us.
—Mark Joseph
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Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper