Experiments in Love
/The following is the reflection I offered to my beloved church community on this sixth Sunday of Easter (May 9, 2021):
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48, 1 John 4:7-10, John 15:9-17
Happy Mother’s Day! Whether this day brings joy because you are celebrating your own mother or you are being celebrated yourself, whether this day brings complicated feelings that may include grief or anger or shame because your experience of being mothered or being a mother has been challenging, may you experience expansive love on this day.
Today’s readings include more than a dozen references to love. We are to love one another because God is of love, God is love, we are loved by God and by Jesus.
Love, love, love.
What does it mean to love one another? Before I explore that, I want to briefly highlight a sub-theme.
In the first reading we hear Peter say that “God shows no partiality, but rather, that any person of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God,” a continuation of a theme of inclusion, an expansion of the WE of the early community of Jesus-followers that has run through the readings, and the resulting homilies, of the last several weeks. Both today’s first reading and the gospel reading encourage not only inclusion, but a sense of equality as Peter tells Cornelius to stand because the two are equally human, and Jesus tells his disciples that he calls them friends, rather than subordinates. So we continue on the path of moving from a ME mentality to WE to EVERYBODY. Everybody in the fullness of our humanity, our dignity, even our divinity. Welcome all. Love all.
I suspect that as you’re listening to these words, many of you are thinking “Yes! Welcome all! Love everybody!” When we talk about these practices at St. William, we often highlight certain groups and enthusiastically affirm our commitment to remembering and loving them, because they are so often forgotten, ignored, dismissed. If you want to join me today, I invite you to raise your hand and, while staying muted on Zoom, saying “Yes” to affirm these commitments:
Love members of our St. William community- Yes!
Love our Black and Brown siblings- Yes!
Love our LGBTQ+ siblings- Yes!
Love our immigrant and refugee siblings- Yes!
Love our siblings across the spectrum of physical and mental abilities- yes!
Love all our siblings who are marginalized in one way or another- Yes!
Love our siblings who stormed the Capitol on January 6-
Wait! What??
If I were tech savvy, I’d insert a sound of a car coming to a screeching halt. I suspect that some of you, like me, have more difficulty raising your hands and saying “Yes!” to loving this segment of EVERYBODY.
I’ll name a few others who elicit the same hesitation from me. Love our siblings who pass laws that amplify inequities and exacerbate needs. Love our siblings who believe owning guns is a God-given right. Love our siblings who commit, cover up, or excuse abuse of any kind. Love our siblings who do not honor the sanctity of the spectrum of ways that we humans love each other. Love our sibling who was the 45th president. As I speak these words, I notice my body tensing, my stomach churning, and my voice getting quieter. I even struggle to use the word “sibling” in some cases. I’d prefer to distance myself from these members of EVERYBODY, rather than acknowledging our kinship, our interconnection, and that God loves them just as much as God loves all the people I easily say “Yes!” to.
So back to the question: What does it mean to love one another, and to include everybody in the EVERYBODY?
Love is a practice. It is an ongoing experiment.
Nonviolent or Compassionate Communication is one of the tools I use in my experimentation. In the last year I’ve had the opportunity to share this tool with many people, including juniors at Sacred Heart through a workshop about communicating across divides. In the workshop, I always model a conversation that for me is a challenging one. The example I use with the students is a conversation with someone who says things like “All lives matter! I’m so sick of hearing Black lives matter! Saying that is divisive. White privilege isn’t real. Can’t we just move on? Can’t they just get over it?”
My focus in the model conversation is to connect with the other person, not to argue, or one-up, or prove them wrong, but to connect authentically both in the way I listen and the way I express myself. I ask for a volunteer and say it doesn’t matter to me if the person actually holds that perspective or is role-playing it; my goal either way is the same. Twice I’ve had girls volunteer for whom the conversation was real; the first admitted it, the second didn’t, but it was clear by what she said and how she said it that we were having a real conversation. In those two conversations the stakes were particularly high as I tried even more carefully to practice what I preach.
The Free Listening Project has a quote on their website that says something like “Being heard is so close to being loved that most of us don’t know the difference.” As I listened to the girls express perspectives that were so different from mine, I worked to hear the deeper messages beneath the words and to reflect back not their words, but the humanity, dignity, and divinity that I was witnessing in their vulnerable, even if challenging, sharing.
These modeled conversations were only 5 minutes long and when the timer rang, I found myself wanting to continue talking to them. It takes time to move from the headspace of “How can you possibly think that/say that/do that?!?” to the heart space of “I am willing to see your vulnerable humanity, the part of you that simply wants to be loved and accepted, and acknowledge your precious divinity, the part of you that is love and acceptance.” Sometimes that movement takes minutes or hours or days. Sometimes it takes weeks, months, years, decades. It’s easier to make the movement in a role play or an anticipated conversation than it is when the conversation comes as a surprise or when I or someone I know has been deeply hurt. When I am able to move into that space, my willingness to acknowledge and expand my understanding of EVERYBODY grows. Practice. Experiment.
Earlier this year I took Loretta J. Ross’s class, Calling In the Calling Out Culture. One reminder she offered that has stayed with me is this: Angry people need more love, not less.
When we are angry, we need more love, not less. When we encounter angry people, can we practice giving them more love, not less? When we see people doing harm, can we remember that hurt people hurt people and practice giving them more love, not less? More understanding, not less? More connection, not less? Can we move from justice models focused on retribution and the idea that harm-doers are beyond redemption toward models of personal and systemic restoration and transformation?
One of Dr. King’s principles of nonviolence is that “Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate. Nonviolent love is spontaneous... unselfish, and creative.” As we experience the love of God, the love of Jesus, the love of so many who have come before us and surround us now, may we choose to practice love, to experiment with it spontaneously, creatively, and generously with EVERYBODY.
Love, love, love.
