As we explore all the practices of Revolutionary Love – wonder, grieve, fight, rage listen, reimagine, breathe, push and transition – at the core is joy! Joy is the gift of love. Joy reminds us of everything worth fighting for. It gives us energy for the long labor. Joy cannot be forced but we can create space and time to let joy in. This week, we will look at how joy is gives us roots but how cultivating joy can also be an act of resistance.

There is a time during labor when you need to push – push through inertia, difficult sensations, thoughts and emotions. Pushing requires that we discern the right times to breathe and rest and the right times to push. To push as a practice of revolutionary love is to choose to engage our grief, rage, or trauma in order to create new possibilities in ourselves and others. Transition is the third practice of Love for ourselves. It is both a noun and a verb and the stage of transition can be a fiery, painful process that moves us from one reality into another. As part of the practice of Revolutionary Love, to transition is to summon the courage to stay in labors of love and justice, even when we feel we can’t and to draw upon collective wisdom to create or birth something new together.

Breathing is the first practice of revolutionary love for ourselves. In any labor, whether you are birthing a human or creating a new way of being, there is a time to slow down and take conscious, deep breathes – literally. It creates space to care for our bodies, minds and spirits. As part of Revolutionary Love, it allows us to nurture one another in community, sustain ourselves and our labors for justice and cultivate and create space for joy. 

Once we fully understand that we are a part of each other and treat those around us as a mother, father, uncle, aunt, brother, sister – a part of us we do not yet know; we can use our collective imagine to reimagine a world that honors the humanity of all of us. Reimagining is more than resisting or replacing people in power in unjust systems. It requires the courage to create systems of justice that represent what we are fighting for, not just what we are fighting against. What does a world that works for all look like?

Rage is the first practice in loving our opponents. It requires us to tend to our own pain so that trauma does not hijack our ability to see another’s humanity. To rage as a practice of revolutionary love is to listen deeply to our rage against injustice so that we have the information and energy to transform ourselves and the world. From that place we can then listen deeply to our opponents as we seek to understand them. This act preserves their humanity as well as our own. Listening as a practice of revolutionary love is both moral and strategic. The goal of listening is to understand our opponents, not to agree with them. Through listening, we gain the information we need to fight strategically against harmful systems and to build a world that includes everyone.

According to Valarie Kaur, grief is a necessary part of loving others. Grieving with others is the practice of sharing their pain without trying to minimize or erase it. You do not need to know someone to grieve with them. Grieving collectively and in community gives us the information to build solidarity, to fight for justice, and even to share in one another’s joy. We get an insight that we wouldn’t have had before that compels us to choose to protect those that are in harm’s way – to fight. The practice of Revolutionary Love calls us to fight against injustice in a way that preserves our opponent’s humanity as well as our own. This commitment to fight comes from an understanding of our interconnectedness and recognizes the resilience of communities who have been historically targeted by oppression: Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), women, queer and trans communities, disabled communities, and others.

Wonder is the first practice of revolutionary love for others. Wonder is the practice of cultivating a sense of awe-filled openness and reflection about others’ thoughts and experiences, their pain and joy, their wants and needs; and seeing the world as a part of me that I do not yet know. When we wonder about other people, we acknowledge that their lives are as vast and complex as our own. This allows us to expand our circle of caring by recognizing that others are a part of us.