CHAPTER THREE: A POLITICS OF LOVE

Love and Conflict: Disagreeing with Love

CHAPTER 3
LOVE AND CONFLICT: DISAGREEING WITH LOVE

After giving an Easter sermon at a Unity church in Raleigh, North Carolina, I went for Mexican food with four of the church’s congregants. With me sat two ministers, plus the husband of one and the son of the other. I was happy to be sharing margaritas and conversation with lovely people on a beautiful Easter day. Then, after some pleasant chitchat about spirituality, children, and relationships, I ventured into tougher territory.

“So,” I said, “I want to talk about politics.”

A moment of silence. My friends looked at me intently. They had heard me talk about politics the night before (feedback: “I don’t agree with a lot of what you say about politics”), then forgiveness and Jesus that morning (feedback: “I love it when you talk about God”).

“Did you vote for Trump?” I asked the minister’s husband.

“Yes, I did,” he replied.

“Did you?” I asked his wife.

“I didn’t vote,” she said. “I couldn’t vote for either one.”

“Did you?” I asked the minister sitting next to me.

“I did.”

I knew that the minister’s son had voted for Donald Trump, because in the car on the way to the church he had explained to me his conservative politics.

I looked at all of them and, after a couple of moments, said simply, “Can you please tell me what it is I’m not seeing?”

They then proceeded to tell me a variation of something I’d heard before: that they didn’t particularly care for the president as a man, but they liked what he was doing for America. Where I saw an attack on the press, they saw “standing up to fake news”; where I saw the dismantling of environmental protections, they saw “needed deregulation”; where I saw the words of an authoritarian dictator, they saw a man who “doesn’t really mean those things.”

A politics of love has as much to do with how we listen as with the things we say. Partly because I had shared with them an Easter service filled with prayer and meditation that morning, and partly because my friends are lovely people whom I genuinely like, I could hear them at lunch that day without reactivity. I felt no constriction in my heart, no negativity, no judgment. We were meeting in Rumi’s field “beyond good and bad, right and wrong,” which is the only place where souls can meet.

I heard a thing or two that deepened my understanding of where they were coming from, and I like to think that maybe I said a thing or two that had an impact on them as well. I mentioned at the table that it should be part of our spiritual practice to remember that no one has a monopoly on truth. Our capacity to listen to each other is more urgently needed now than our capacity to yell at each other. Hate anywhere is a toxin everywhere, and if we demonize each other personally, then we’re wrong even if we’re right.

It’s my personal goal—at times I’m successful and at times I’m not—to dissolve the personal negativity I sometimes feel toward those with whom I politically disagree, while retaining the passion and conviction of my disagreement. I’ve read enough words of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and studied enough treatises on political nonviolence to know the goal. I know that we have to be the change. It’s practicing all that that’s sometimes hard.

All of us have our fingers pointing at someone today. “They’re the problem.” “No, they’re the problem.” But in a spiritual sense, the pointed finger is the problem.

The answer isn’t what you think or what I think; the Answer, with a capital “A,” is a place in consciousness where no one is demonized and everyone is appreciated for the innocence at their core. That’s the only place where we can all be heard, and heard without judgment. Not enough of us today feel from others—or grant to others—the emotional permission to express our views or theirs without ridicule or dishonor. We’ve become a nation of bad listeners, concerned more with getting our point across than with hearing what someone else is trying to say.

Many years ago, I was visiting then-congressman Dennis Kucinich, a progressive Democrat, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC; at the time, the country was convulsed by the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton. As we entered an elevator Lindsey Graham, then a conservative Republican congressman (now a senator), came out of the elevator, and the two men greeted each other affectionately. After the elevator door closed, I made a disapproving comment about Congressman Graham.

Dennis looked at me like I was nuts. “What are you talking about?” he said. “He’s a great guy!”

I’d heard Graham on television railing against President Clinton, and I had made judgments based on that. I mentioned a particular TV show in which I’d seen conservatives doing political “crossfire” with liberals, and I was decidedly in one camp.

“That’s just TV, Marianne!” said Dennis. “It has nothing to do with how things work around here. Lindsey is a great guy, and we work together on a lot of things.”

Now my blood was boiling again, not at conservative politicians but at what had happened to our public sphere: we had turned our politics into a boxing match, what should be high-minded debate into a psychological blood sport, and it was already doing damage.

I was right to be concerned. Decades later, entire generations have grown up thinking that this is what politics is—a boxing match and a blood sport. Until we address that issue and deal with it, we will continue to spiral into an even darker night of the American soul. How we are talking to each other is as corrupt and corrupting as what anyone is saying.

JUST SAY NO TO CONTEMPT

Some people argue that since it’s so hard to have a political conversation these days without getting into some kind of negativity, we should simply avoid the subject of politics altogether.

I disagree.

Avoiding political discussion is what got us into this mess. We need to transform our political conversations, not suppress them. Disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean we’re “attacking” them. Standing up to evil doesn’t mean we’re being “judgmental.” And there’s nothing holy about using spirituality as a justification for political disengagement. “Spiritual” people should be having the difficult conversations. We should be the biggest grown-ups in the room.

At Easter lunch that day, I mentioned my concern about a pattern of unarmed black men being shot by police. To me, this should not be a conservative issue or a progressive issue. Who among us wouldn’t be horrified when a young man, father of two, standing in his grandmother’s backyard with nothing in his hands or on his person but a cell phone, is shot in the back twenty times by police who’d been called to check out a report of vandalism in the neighborhood?

One of my new friends told me that he couldn’t join me in my concern because he “supports law enforcement.” At which point, I said it was insulting to suggest that those who have a problem with that shooting do not support law enforcement!

“But murder is murder,” I exclaimed, “no matter who is doing it!”

His mother then said that she’d had a problem with the statement in my talk the night before that a country in which police can just kill people at will is called a police state.

“But it is!” I told her.

It doesn’t show lack of support for law enforcement to point out that only in a police state can police kill whomever they want, at will. That might not be a fear that I or any of my white friends live with on a daily basis, but there are people of color who do. That is simply a fact. Does it mean that I love America any less, or support law enforcement any less, that this disturbs me greatly?

I believe that the vast majority of police officers in America are good people who take extraordinary risks to ensure the safety of the rest of us every day. I am deeply grateful for that, as we all should be. But most doctors, most lawyers, and most teachers are good people too. That doesn’t mean that all of them are, or that those who aren’t should not be held accountable.

I can’t see how anyone can defend what they consider “American values” with a defense of attitudes that undermine those values. On the other hand, I know I’m spiritually off-base myself if I close my heart to someone because of my perception that they’re closing theirs. Who among us hasn’t found ourselves at times judging people for “being judgmental”? Ah, the irony. From a spiritual perspective, if someone is driving us crazy, then the deeper issue is still our own craziness. The work is always on ourselves.

While the ego always monitors other people’s thoughts and behavior, the spirit would have us monitor only our own. And since everyone can subconsciously register where we’re coming from, regardless of what we say, it’s only in purifying our own hearts that we have any chance of touching someone else’s. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “We have little morally persuasive power with someone who can feel our underlying contempt.”

That has to be our goal now: not mere defeat of political opponents, but also engagement in the art of moral persuasion—the ability to so commune with the heart of another that real communication can occur.

I don’t think it was an accident that the conversation with my Trump-supporting friends that day took place on Easter Sunday—not for symbolic reasons, but for literal ones. We had spent time together thinking about the infinite power of love that morning. We had prayed and meditated together. It was Easter, for goodness’ sake! We were predisposed to loving each other, and that made all the difference. There was no way I could see them as stereotypes, and I assume that they could not see me that way either. My friends and I were able to honor each other, even while we disagreed, and engage on serious political issues without compromising our convictions.

Our political as well as our personal salvation is indeed a revolution of the heart. I knew that at the deepest level my differences with my friends were semantic. All of us agreed on basic values; we were simply worlds apart on what those values looked like when expressed in political terms.

Gandhi said that “politics should be sacred.” By that, he didn’t mean religious; he meant that the level of our political conversation should be sacred. It should be the level of conversation we have in therapy, or support groups, or intimate conversation. The level from which we speak determines the level of our understanding.

The sacred place within us lies beyond such polarity as liberal and conservative. In the words of Dwight Eisenhower, “The American mind at its best is both liberal and conservative.” High-minded conservative principles and high-minded liberal ones form a creative synergy, a yin and yang of American politics. Both are great American political traditions, and both support the ideals of democracy. The threat to our democracy comes from neither of those traditions. The threat is authoritarian corporatism, which does not respect serious conservatism, serious progressivism, universal humanitarian values, or even democracy itself.

We need to be able to discuss these things. Whenever anyone says, “We’re not going to talk about politics or religion,” I’m so like, “Well, that leaves me out at dinner!” Our tendency these days to have a political conversation only with people who already agree with us—exacerbated by all the mean-spiritedness on social media—is destructive to the social fabric of our country. It is intellectually lazy to stereotype someone just because they see things differently, and it lacks emotional discipline to lash out at people for the simple fact that they disagree with you.

It is essential to nonviolent communication that we affirm the dignity and goodness of other people, even if we disagree with them. That is the sweet spot underlying honorable debate: to first assume someone’s basic innocence and speak to them from there. The ego’s temptation is always to attack, to create separation, to make another person wrong—especially when we’re so sure we’re right! As someone who can jump into snark or sarcasm more easily than I should, I know the dead end those attitudes represent. Making another person feel guilty will never build unity or goodwill; only blessing, not blaming, can do that. All judgment does is to shut people down emotionally and psychologically.

I was struck by a tweet I saw once: someone said that her grandmother had told her: “Just remember that when the two of you are fighting, it’s you two versus the fighting, not you versus him.” That struck me, because who among us has not at times given in to the temptation to demonize those with whom we disagree?

Only in a totalitarian society is everyone supposed to toe the line and see things the same way. No one owes it to us to agree with us about anything, including politics. No side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on righteousness or values, and anyone who argues otherwise represents a viewpoint unworthy of who we are.

FIGHT THE FIGHTING

In 2002, I was invited by Coretta Scott King to speak at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta at the birthday celebration for Dr. King. It was a great honor to be invited, and I was prepared to give a speech about the differences between Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence and President George W. Bush’s statements after 9/11.

Having arrived at the church, I was escorted to a room where I was to wait before meeting Mrs. King. When the greeter came in and asked, “Are you ready to meet Mrs. King and Mrs. Bush now?” I was stunned. I had had no idea that Laura Bush was going to be there. I was totally unprepared.

Okay, Ms. Nonviolent Feminist, how are you are going to pull this off, talking about the president right in front of the woman who is married to him?

I had to think quickly, which was probably a good thing. I prayed for both women, and for myself, and then I had to go on to the pulpit. The only way I could think of to handle the situation was to turn around to Mrs. Bush every time I spoke of the president and say, “Mrs. Bush, we’re praying for your husband at this difficult time.” And then, as respectfully as I could, I’d let it rip.

At the end of my talk, I went to shake hands first with Mrs. King and then with Mrs. Bush. When I put my hand out to Laura, I started to apologize if I had offended her. But she graciously put her finger to my lips and, nodding her head, said, “Shhh! You did good!” I knew in that moment that she realized what had happened. She knew where she was going that day; she realized that I disagreed with her husband, but that I had made every effort to do so with respect. She affirmed me for that, and for her kind behavior toward me that day she earned my respect as well.

My standing with those two women in that moment is a memory that is frozen in my brain. In many ways, we couldn’t have been more different, yet in that moment we couldn’t have been more the same. In our own way, we were experiencing politics as sacred.

We don’t all have to agree with each other, but how we disagree is a crucial issue in a politics of love. I’ve learned the hard way in my life that the inappropriate indulgence of anger is a form of self-sabotage. We’re not only responsible for our thoughts; we’re also responsible for our behavior. And our behavior includes not only what we say but how we say it.

I notice on my social media that there are two different types of critics: those who disagree with me with reason and respect, and those who attack and insult me personally. From the first, I can learn things I hadn’t thought about or known before; I can appreciate what they bring to my awareness. From the latter, however, I feel the energy of attack and then feel my heart constrict in response.

Nonviolence means more than giving up physical violence; it means giving up emotional and psychological violence as well. Whether we attack a person physically or not, an attack is still an attack. Every thought we think takes form on some level, then boomerangs back to us after we put it out there. So many mental missiles are flying through the air today, you can almost feel a new American Civil War raging on invisible planes.

This is not a time for knee-jerk attacks on people who don’t agree with us, although it’s absolutely a time to stand passionately for the things we believe in. That balance is challenging at times, but we owe it to ourselves, and to our country, to arrive at the place where we can bless even those with whom we disagree politically.

Since President Trump’s election, such efforts have been more challenging than ever. Not every situation is like my lunch in North Carolina, where we had to hold on to nonjudgment for only as long as it took us to share a meal! Some of us have close friends or family who vehemently disagree with us politically these days. And in some situations, those disagreements are tearing us apart.

For instance, two of my close girlfriends are enthusiastic Trump supporters and I am not. In both cases, we found early on that not discussing politics was probably the best way to go. But my friend Alana and I have tried to find a way past that: to communicate in a way where we can both be true to our politics, yet true to the bonds of our affection for each other as well. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we don’t.

During the year after Trump’s election, Alana asked me if I would help promote her skin care line on my social media. I didn’t see skin care promotion as appropriate for either my Facebook or Twitter pages, but I wanted to be a supportive friend. I settled on an idea for Instagram; I wrote what I thought was a cute little caption under the picture of her holding her skin care product, saying that we didn’t agree on politics, but hey, who doesn’t agree about collagen! I thought it was harmless, fun, and even demonstrative of how those of us who disagree politically can make it through these times with our personal relationships intact.

Several people who posted seemed to agree and appreciated our efforts to protect our friendship. Yet many did not. Some of those who did not, in fact, were vicious. They would no longer follow me if I was even friends with a Trump supporter! The ridiculous assumptions about who I am, and even more so the outrageous assumptions about who Alana is, were so devoid of anything approaching dignified disagreement that I ended up deleting the entire post.

None of us, no matter what our politics, are invulnerable to the machinations of the negative ego. A smug, self-righteous, intolerant left-winger poses no less danger to the emotional fabric of this nation than a smug, self-righteous, intolerant right-winger. Something I need to tell myself constantly these days is that not every comment needs a follow-up opinion! My mother used to say, “Count to ten before you speak.” Sometimes I need to count to fifteen.

As an author, I notice that if I write something in a book that a reader doesn’t like, I’ll probably never know about it. It’s sort of none of my business. Maybe that person will stop reading the book or even give it a harsh review somewhere. But with social media, everyone now has a public platform from which to espouse their opinions immediately—and boy, do they!

It’s as though no one today has any impulse control; anger and anxiety spew out everywhere, making much of our public discourse dangerously toxic and mean-spirited. From both Left and the Right come harmful shutdowns, aimed at those whose only transgression was the audacity to share an opinion that doesn’t align with someone else’s preconceived notion of truth. Adding to the chaos, a constant bombardment of disconcerting news has millions of Americans on edge each day. Our very nervous systems are assaulted by these things, increasing the possibility of mistakes and inappropriate responses. And all of it mitigates against the wise, deep thinking and communication so needed among us now.

Our tendency to fly off the handle politically can be a challenge for all of us. A politics of love speaks to more than our political opinions; it speaks to the quality of our personhood, our emotional self-discipline, and our ability to embody the love and peace that we claim we so want for the world.

For that, there is no greater ameliorative than prayer and meditation. Aligning our nervous systems with the highest frequency of heart and mind is a prerequisite for enduring and transforming the times in which we live. In the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “In “order to save the world, we must have a plan. But no plan will work unless we meditate.” You can’t be a light of the world and a nervous wreck at the same time.

At times like these, we should stand up, we should express ourselves, and we should rise up to protect our democracy. But we need to do so without lowering our personal energy to the level of those who would seek to destroy it. Michelle Obama said the words we all need to remember, in our personal interactions as well as in our politics: “When they go low, we go high.”

For women—and for any formerly disempowered group not allowed to say much for several centuries—it can be hard to know how to talk at first. It’s like the dirty water that spurts out of a bathtub that hasn’t been used for a while; you just have to let it do its thing for a bit, and then clear water will begin to flow. During that time, however, we can too easily swing between two dysfunctional poles: either we swallow our truth, or blurt it out too harshly.

But angry communication is a self-sabotaging trap. The word communication has the word commune inside it, reminding us that when we speak without love, we’re rarely communicating in a way that will be heard. The ego can be so sly, making us feel we’re “communicating” something when what we’re actually doing is blocking communication entirely.

The fact that I spoke doesn’t necessarily mean that you heard me. To genuinely communicate, I need to be responsible not only for what I say but for creating the heart space between us that enables you to hear it. When people feel judged and attacked, they shut down and do not hear us.

I was just communicating my feelings!” you might say. But being “authentic” isn’t necessarily so great when we’re authentically angry. Real authenticity is more than emotional self-indulgence. It takes inner work to surrender our fear and retrieve our love, remembering that the person we’re speaking to is an innocent child of God no less than we are, and then choosing to speak. A politics of love involves taking personal responsibility as much for how we do something as for what we do, and even for who we are while we’re doing it.

Today, things are moving so quickly that we often text or speak or do whatever we do before remembering to surrender our anger to God. That prayer of surrender matters, because it literally changes our nervous system. It realigns our thought processes and our emotions. This kind of practice is particularly important today, when many have learned the hard way that there’s no way to delete a tweet. In the last few years, major careers have been ruined for no less.

Emotions are running high, and personal self-discipline is hugely important. Through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness, the serious spiritual activist accepts the responsibility of holding to our love despite the temptation to disavow it. In order to transform the chaos in the world, we must address the chaos in ourselves.

About a year ago, I moved into an apartment in New York City. Having moved there from a building that had a beautiful, peaceful view of a church courtyard, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find such peace and tranquility on a busy midtown street. After being in my new apartment for a day, I was gazing at the view outside and realized I was offered here another kind of peace: the spiritual opportunity to bless all the people in the buildings I could see from my window. After several minutes of thinking about how wonderful all that was—about all the people working and living in those buildings to whom I could send my love on any given day—I realized that I was looking straight at Trump Tower from my window!

You don’t have to be an enlightened master to appreciate how perfect that is. Great, Marianne, I said to myself. This is perfect. Every time you walk through the apartment you can bless him in your mind and feel blessed, or you can attack him in your mind and feel attacked.

Spiritual law is unalterable: if we focus on the guilt in others, we’ll see guilt in ourselves; if we focus on the innocence in others, we’ll feel the innocence within ourselves. Perception is a choice.

I have chosen to bless the president, not only for his sake but for my own peace of mind. I pray for his happiness and for his enlightenment. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with him. And it doesn’t mean I won’t do anything possible to resist his policies when they’re counter to the values of our democracy or work hard to defeat him at the polls in 2020.

A politics of love is not naive. It is strategic. It is the only power that can override hate. No amount of intellectual analysis or traditional political strategy can override the dangerous energies unleashed by cultlike political forces. Cultlike figures appeal to something beyond the rational brain; in fact, the danger they present is that they can override the rational brain. And we must override that.

When lies are systematically presented as truth in order to obfuscate the truth, and are done so specifically for political purposes, we have a serious problem on our hands. Neither intellectual analysis nor political strategy nor brute force alone can annihilate the explosive energies of politicized hatred. Only a higher truth can prevail against that which would obliterate truth entirely. Only the power of the heart can triumph over manipulations of the mind. Only the power of the soul can override the mortal dangers posed by soullessness in our politics or anywhere else.

LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE

Many claim today that they’ve been “traumatized” by Trump’s presidency; I’ve even seen articles written by psychotherapists who call such trauma a syndrome! But this is not the time to coddle our preciousness. Surely those who walked across the bridge at Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday 1965 were traumatized, not knowing whether at any time the dogs or the hoses, or even bullets, would be used against them. Yet they walked. And anxiety? Surely the suffragettes who were thrown into prison and force-fed through feeding tubes suffered from anxiety. Yes, we feel wounded, and that’s because the times in which we live are wounding. But who have we become that we’re so enamored with our woundedness? None of us has time to finish our trauma work before rising to the defense of our country.

This is not a time for personal weakness, but for strength. The only real strength is love; love makes us vulnerable, but in a way that makes us strong. It doesn’t turn us into wounded birds. It makes us powerful and strong and courageous, intellectually and emotionally.

We must not indulge our hopelessness now, resigning ourselves to the idea that the concentrated assaults on everything from the planet to our democracy have succeeded to such a degree that it’s no longer possible to stop them. A miracle is a shift in our thinking from fear to love, and when our thinking shifts, then everything changes. Synapses in the brain, relationship vectors between and among us, new possibilities both psychological and material, automatically unfold. Things are hopeless only if miracles do not occur, and because miracles do occur naturally as expressions of love, things are not actually hopeless.

Surely the abolition of slavery at one time seemed like a hopeless cause. Surely women’s suffrage at one time seemed like a hopeless cause. Surely ending racial segregation at one time seemed like a hopeless cause. Hope springs eternal because life springs eternal, and life springs eternal with infinite possibility.

America is down, but not for the count. A new democratic revolution has already begun in the hearts and minds of millions. A powerful resistance movement is making itself felt, and it will not be stopped. People are realizing that democracy is not just a right but a responsibility, a gift we were given that matters to more than just us. It matters to the ages, and that is why we will do whatever it takes to make sure that it survives.

Human beings are the authors of our history. It is a story that we write and have the power to rewrite. For a nation as well as for an individual, the universe is merciful when we take responsibility for our mistakes and do what is necessary to correct them.

America was a country that had everything, was given everything, was blessed beyond comprehension, yet chose to sell its soul to the highest bidder. We put economics before love, sales before ethics, and our government on the bidding block. We have treated the earth with lack of reverence, democracy as though we could take it for granted, and justice as relevant only to ourselves. Too often, and in too many different ways, we allowed the values and principles that made our nation great to fall by the wayside, as though they mattered not.

We wrote that story ourselves—we need to admit that—and now we can write another one. Atoning for and making amends for our errors, we are released from their consequences. Where we have strayed off course we can return to the path of righteousness. What we have forgotten we can remember, and when we have fallen we can rise back up.

No conscious person can sit out the current crisis. Crises are never convenient, but they happen. They demand our attention, and our excellence, often when we are most afraid. But we must be brave now, for it’s not just our democracy that’s at risk. The sacrifice of our values, both personal and political, has put everything at risk.

Our challenge is to rise to the divine within us, casting out the shadows of our own lower nature. We must do this not only as individuals but as members of a larger society. It might be in our lower nature to fight, but it is in our higher nature to love. It might be in our lower nature to exploit the earth for our own purposes, but it is in our higher nature to be good and reverent stewards of the earth. Humanity stands at a crossroads now: will we serve only the dictates of our material selves, or will we rise to the full embrace of our spiritual selves? There will be consequences either way.

A world unaligned with the ways of our spiritual nature has begun to fall apart because anything unaligned with the ways of our higher nature inevitably falls apart. The mind unaligned with love becomes aligned with fear, and fear now threatens to overtake our planet. We are challenged to regain spiritual balance, both in ourselves and in our world.

To do so is our purpose on earth, and it is our only sustainable option.

LOVING HEARTS, PASSIONATE ACTION

Several years ago, I read a wonderful novel by Sue Monk Kidd titled The Invention of Wings. The book is about two historical figures during the nineteenth century named Sarah and Angelina Grimke. The Grimke sisters were born into a slave-owning family in South Carolina, then later became converted by Quakers to the abolitionist cause.

Reading Kidd’s book made me think about what it meant for someone raised in a slave-owning environment to awaken to the evils of slavery. This spiritual awakening is encapsulated in a lyric from “Amazing Grace”: “I . . . was blind but now I see.”

The Grimke sisters took a huge personal journey that is relevant to our own day. Being antislavery in nineteenth-century America would have meant not agreeing with slavery, with practicing it oneself. It might have meant not living in a slave-owning sate. But being antislavery, in and of itself, did not necessarily move the needle for one slave. A huge internal bridge was crossed—psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually—when one went from being antislavery to being an abolitionist. It meant going from “I don’t agree with it” to “Not on my watch.”

A politics of love, then, takes a stand. False positivism has no place in our personal lives or in our political lives either. There are certain issues that call upon us to be as passionate with our no as with our yes. When money and not love is our bottom line—when we place economics before our humanitarian values—then unnecessary harm inevitably results. People suffer, children die, and the earth is damaged. Once you see that connection, you cannot unsee it. In the words of Elie Wiesel, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

We do not transcend darkness by simply ignoring it. There is a difference between transcendence and denial. We deny evil its power not by denying its existence, but by denying it room to fester in the sinews of our hearts and minds.

Some people say we shouldn’t focus on our political problems, because what we focus on expands. But that’s as ridiculous as an oncologist saying, “It’s cancer, but only stage 1, so let’s not think about it.” Some negative things expand for the very reason that we did not look at them.

There’s nothing negative about naming things that need to be named. There’s nothing negative about yelling “Fire!” when in fact the house is burning down. And there’s nothing that we cannot do when the heart is filled with love.

Chapter 4 will be emailed tomorrow!

Chapter 1: Love in a Time of Crisis: Lessons in Fear and Love

Chapter 2: A Revolution of Love: Reviewing the Plot