Finding The Strength to Love
In Political Darkness, MLK Shines His Light
Inauguration day fell ironically on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I bought the Reverend’s book “Strength to Love” to celebrate the holiday and tune out of the media shit show. I picked it up looking for distraction, and found the strength to be present instead. For right there, in the center of politics, King placed the anchor of Love. I think now—midst the vitriol and anger, the fear and pain, the chaos and confusion, the division and hate—is a perfect time to revisit his wisdom.
King elevates love above all in this collection of sermons turned to ink, defining it as a spiritual force that unites all life. Love is an action, never a violent one, always the most powerful. He asks us to practice forgiveness, to see even in those who oppress us a human who has good in them, who if he harms, harms out of blindness. His words speak to the anger in my heart, the fear in my head, the exhaustion in my body. I think of the terrifying and oppressive times in which they were first spoken, and the incredible and lasting power for change that they had, and they are indeed fortifying. They make me think, yes. This is what we need today, in our increasingly disconnected world. The strength to love. King says:
“In the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing by intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”
But what is love?
We Americans lack a shared definition of love (the dictionary's many entries include “a score of zero in tennis” . . no wonder we are confused!). Money, power, sex, arousal, obsession, possession—watch Oscar nom Anora for a synopsis of modern “love” confusions, and how actual acts of love can get lost in the mix. Lack of consensus causes us a lot of pain and confusion, and certainly hinders love from becoming a central force in our life and society. How can we rally around something when we can’t even agree on what it is?
I’ve spent my life trying to define love, through methods academic and otherwise. My early understandings were confused and complicated by pain & harm dealt, witnessed and received, by the fact that I could love so much, so many, at once. For me, love was overwhelming and everywhere, intoxicating and terrifying, dark and twisted, full of toothy shadows. It seemed to cause all my pain and pleasure. This all failed to coincide with what culture told me, that love was a precious and rare thing, a blissful and pure thing, a thing of surrender and overwhelm, a cosmic snake oil for eternal absolution and bliss.
When I learned about quantum entanglement, I groked Love in a new way: Love is the force that unites us. It is the most powerful force. It’s a continuous action. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words come from a spiritual angle, but they speak to this same force:
“When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to the ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: ‘Let us love one another, for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.’”
Bell Hooks in her book All About Love, offers that we take on M. Scott Peck’s definition of love as:
“The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
and while this definition alone feels a rough fit for me, combined with King’s it offers a clear pathway forward for knowing how to center that Love ethic.
King asks that we see each other as humans, all capable of love. This is not always easy. It contrasts starkly to the breed of Christianity currently being wielded by those in power, one which weaponizes dehumanization of all those who don’t fall in line with their agenda. A major spiritual movement behind Trump, The New Apostolic Reformation movement, labeled by scholar Matthew Taylor as “the principal theological architects” behind the January 6th attacks on the capital, describes opponents as “demons”. One text, Unhumans, endorsed by Vice President JD Vance, describes political opponents as “unhumans” who want to “undo civilization itself.” The book argues that these “unhumans” must be “crushed.” Leaders of the same movement are telling their followers “it’s time for war,” according to reporting by Stephanie McCrummeen for the Atlantic, and preaching with such rhetoric as “If you’re got a child and he days, ‘Come and let us go serve other gods,’ go tell on him. Tell them, ‘I’ve got a kid who is saying we need to serve other gods. Can you help me kill him?’”
For the NAR, those who oppose are demons. They otherize their opponents, defining them by their actions. The only solution is to be rid of them, even if they are kin. By contrast King defines all humans as essentially good and capable of Love, separating their identity from their actions. This is a restorative justice approach. It is optimistic, it is evolved. The solutions is love.
“These dark and demonic responses will be removed only as men are possessed by the invisible inner law which etched on their hearts the conviction that all men are brothers and that love is mankind's most potent weapon for personal and social transformation.”
King says, we must keep loving our oppressors, even as they try to crush us.
“Forgiveness is not an occasional act; It is a permanent action.”
He calls on us to keep believing in their humanity, recalling the words of Jesus on the cross, which regardless of your religious sway hold core human wisdom:
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do, said Jesus. . . Blindness was their trouble; enlightenment was their need.”
Controversial as Christianity’s history might be, we remember Jesus thousands of years later for his words of forgiveness. We have a national holiday to celebrate King because of his non-violent, love-centered action and the incredible power it had to shift our society. How will we remember Donald Trump in a hundred years? Whose ethos do you want to follow?
My actions this week are small and tender. Reading. Resting. Taking in the news in small, “manageable” bits. The furious pace of our technology-driven culture would have us believe that we can never catch up, that we will never know or do or have done enough. This kind of furious anxiety turns off the thinking brain and turns on flight or fight. But we are not machines, we are humans, and our timeline is more vast than the sensationalist news cycle or social media cycle or machine technology world would trick us into thinking. The best action is the right action, even if it takes time to do, or figure out, even if it's hard to believe that we have that time. Even if we’re told it’s already to late. It’s never too late to show up and try.
That action can be so simple, like a brave pastor asking the president to take mercy on Americans scared by his agenda. Or sending her a post-card to say thank you. Or simply meditating on forgiveness, so we can move forward from a place of Love.
Love,
Alisa May
READ
Martin Luther King JR. “Strength to Love”
WATCH
Planetwalker by dear friends Nadia & Dom Gill at Encompass Films. After witnessing the 1971 oil spill in San Francisco Bay, Johan Francis spent 17 years neither speaking nor using motorized transportation, and discovered his own form of environmentalism. Definitely a Love ethic.
READ
“The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows” byStephanie McCrummen for the Atlantic. “Constructing the Kingdom meant destroying the secular state with equal rights for all and replacing it with a system in which Christianity is supreme”
DO
Send a thank you post card to Rt. Revd Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Church House, Mount St. Alban Washington, DC 20016-5094, USA.
SIT
Tonglen meditation for compassion for a world that is falling apart with Pema Chödrön.