Love Will Make You Brave

Dear Family:

I love you. I love us. In the wake of the election, I want to say to you urgently: Love will make us brave for what is ahead.  Now, more than ever before –

Revolutionary Love is the call of our times.

We have been building a movement to reclaim love as a force for justice, healing, and transformation. This fall, I crossed the nation on a bus to 40+ cities on the Revolutionary Love Tour. I met thousands of people and heard hundreds of stories. Night after night, we were building a world out of stories, music, song, and ancestral wisdom. I witnessed our collective heartbreak — and our courage. Our community has gained so much power since I started the Revolutionary Love Project in 2016. Today, more than ever, I am committed to our movement; I am committed to you. We are going to journey through the next four years together.

We have everything we need to meet this moment.

I have been asking: How did my ancestors survive apocalyptic times? The first Sikh ancestors built an anti-caste liberation experiment 500 years ago, and survived near-annihilation. I wrote the wisdom they gave me in the book Sage Warrior. This book is a spiritual handbook for us now – how to walk a path of Revolutionary Love when the world is on fire.

Here is what I want you to know:

• All parts of you are welcome. Your pain is not a sign of your weakness; it is a sign of your strength. You are awake to the magnitude of this moment in history. You may want to go numb for a while, and that is okay. When you are ready, ask yourself: What am I ready to feel? Honor your grief: Your grief shows how deeply you care – your capacity to love. Honor your rage: Your rage carries information and energy – it connects you to your ability to fight for what you believe. Soon, we will alchemize this pain into energy and language and action. But we cannot do that unless we allow ourselves to feel it first. Gather with people. Talk. Walk. Process in relationship. Breathe together. Ask:
  
  Where is the grief in my body?

  Where is the rage in my body?

  What information does my pain carry?

  What do the hurting parts of me need?

• The future is dark. Is this the darkness of the tomb – or the womb? It is both. This will be an era of relentless attacks on our communities, our freedoms, our democratic institutions, our planet. We have lost so much, and we are about to lose even more. We must be sober about the assaults before us — the rise of authoritarianism, the normalization of cruelty, the cost of violence. Some days will be so deadly, you will taste the ash in your mouth. Your sacred task will be to lift your gaze and realize that you are not alone in the dark. There are more of us than ever before – millions of us longing for a world of love and liberation. Imagine we are together in the dark. Ask:

  What is wanting to be born of this moment?

  What new forms of courage, insight, and awakening?

  What is my role in that labor?

  How will I be guided by love?

• Our nation is in transition. Our America is not dead. America is a nation still waiting to be born. The story of America is one long labor – a series of expansions and contractions – and we are in a painful contraction. In birthing labor, transition is stage that precedes new life. Transition is dangerous and tumultuous – it feels like dying – yet it is precisely when we must summon our deepest courage to stay in the labor. We are in transition now. And with this election result, this era of transition may last our lifetime. We need the wisdom of the midwife: Breathe, and push. Think of the local organizations that need you. What new forms of labor are you ready for? Ask:

  How am I breathing?

  How am I pushing?

  Who will breathe and push with me?

• Call your wisest ancestors to your back. Through every cycle in human history, people have been thrown into the darkness, and they have a choice: Do I succumb to my despair or do I dare sing a song of love? Do I free only myself, or do I refuse to leave anyone behind? Let us learn from our most courageous ancestors. Think of beloved teachers from your childhood, grandparents, or figures from history. Notice what courage feels like in your body. Ask:
  
  

  Who are the ancestors at my back?

  What do they want me to know?

  What do I need to practice courage?

• Keep the children in your life before you. Our bravest ancestors labored for a future they did not live to see. Their work was multi-generational. So too is ours. I want to live to see the birth of the America I dream – a multi-racial democracy where I see your child as mine, and you see mine as yours. I want to live to see the birth of a human race that knows how to live sustainably with the earth and with each other. But – with this election outcome – I am reckoning with the possibility that I may not. And that is okay. So many of our ancestors — especially Black and Indigenous ancestors on this soil — labored for a future they did not live to see. But they still showed up. So too, must we. We are only asked to play our part in the labor, not more, and not less. Ask:
  
  

  Who are the children in my life who bring me joy?

  How will I keep them before my eyes?

  How will I labor for them?

• Build a space of freedom inside you – a space of rest and pleasure and joy. My ancestors survived apocalyptic times by becoming sage warriors: The sage builds a space of beauty, freedom, rest, and joy within, and from that space, becomes a warrior in the world. We are all called to be sage warriors now. Oppression wants to cut us off from the space of freedom inside us. Oppression wants us to believe it does not exist at all, and if it did, we would not deserve to live in it. But this is a lie. We can honor the truth of our suffering — and refuse to be defined by it. Our bravest ancestors went into the space of freedom inside them, and from that bright place — they sang and marched and organized and insisted on their dignity and worth. The sovereign space within us is the portal to freedom, from the inside out. I have come to build a visual space inside me, a room of beauty and splendor, a place I can close my eyes and rest in. I get there through tools: breathing in music and meditation and poetry, spending time with the earth and sea and stars.  Ask:
  
  

  What does the sovereign space in me look like, feel like?

  What tools do I need to get there?

  How will I make it a practice to rest there?

• Joy will power your courage. In the coming months, we will need to alchemize grief and rage on a scale we have not yet before. AND — we will need to protect our joy. Create conditions for joy on a daily basis. I used to feel so guilty for having joy. I thought that to respond to injustice, I had to live in the misery of injustice — all the time. I learned the hard way the toll that takes on the body. I got sick; I broke down. It turns out we cannot run on the fumes of hostility and last. I began to let joy into my daily life. Joy gives us energy to keep going in the dark. Joy gives us the energy for courageous action. You can’t force joy; you can only create the conditions to let it come and take you. How will you protect your joy every day? For the next four years, the world will be in nonstop crisis every day, but your body does not need to be in crisis. In the Sikh tradition, we are called to live in Chardi Kala — ever-rising spirits, even in dark times; ever-rising joy. Ask:
  
  

  What brings me joy?

  How will I create the conditions for joy every day?

  Who will practice joy with me?

• We can practice the world we want in the space between us. How did our ancestors survive times of cataclysm? They gathered together — in person. They cooked together, ate together, told stories, sang together, and cared for each other. They built a world of love and protection. Let us gather around kitchen tables, share music and food, and stay in each other’s light. Beloved community is not the absence of conflict; it’s where we struggle together with love as our guide. In the coming months, we will need to resist and protect people in harm’s way. AND — we will need practice spaces for liberation. We need to know in our bodies what the world can feel like. Our liberation experiments are not like soap bubbles that pop and disappear, they are like sound waves that reverberate into the future. Your community – where you are right now — is a practice space for the world as it could be. If you don’t have community, find one person to build it with you. It can begin with a simple gathering around food. Ask:
  
  

  Who is my community?

  Who can I reach out to build community?

  What is my practice space for the world I want?

• It’s okay to feel hopeless; what matters is the work your hands do. Hope is like the light of the moon – it waxes and wanes. Sometimes hope is bright and luminous like a full moon. Other times, it is a slim crescent. And sometimes, it’s not there at all, and the whole world goes dark. On those hopeless nights, remember: What matters is the work your hands do. Who will you reach out to in the dark? Who will breathe with you? And what is one brave step you can take together? My best friend Brynn Saito from my childhood once wrote a poem entitled: “Hold fast to the ones who set you free.” Ask:
  
  

  Who makes me feel free?

  Who brings out the best in me?

  How will I hold fast to them in dark moments?

  Who needs to hold fast to me?

• Revolutionary Love is the call of our times. The only way we will birth the world we dream is through a shift in culture and consciousness – a way of being and seeing that leaves no one outside our circle of care. A revolution of the heart. The social, political, and economic crises of our time are rooted in a deeper spiritual crisis, a constriction of the human heart – disconnection from each other, from the earth, and from ourselves. We are all hungering for connection and belonging. When we choose to be brave with our love – when we refuse to leave anyone outside our circle of are – love becomes revolutionary. Now more than ever, Revolutionary Love is the call of our times. Ask:
  
  

  What does love demand of me?

  How will I be brave with my love?

• Let love be your compass. Love is more than a rush of feeling. Love is sweet labor: fierce, demanding, life-giving, a choice we make. I have built a tool for this moment. It’s called the Revolutionary Love Compass. It has three parts:
  
  

  • See No Stranger: How do we love others? Wonder is the root of love. Authoritarians succeed by shutting down our ability to wonder about each other as ourselves — and fight for others.  Be brave with your wonder, grieve with others, fight for those in harms’ way. Deep solidarity is rooted in love.

  • Tend the Wound: How do we practice love for our opponents? Create safe containers for grief and rage — and only when safe, wonder about your opponents. What is driving their behavior? Why did they vote that way? What matters to them? Only when we listen can we reimagine and envision a future that leaves no one behind.

  • Breathe and push: How do we love ourselves? We need the wisdom of the midwife: Breathe, then push, then breathe again. The next four years will be hard labor. Breathing deeply every day gives us the energy to push. It also creates the conditions to let joy in. We are called to transition ourselves as we transition the world. Laboring for the future guided by love – with joy – can be the greatest meaning of life.

Explore the Compass here.

I have spent the last 20 years organizing around hate; I will spend the rest of my life organizing around love. Let’s organize together. This is not a four-year campaign. It is a forty-year vision to transition this country with Revolutionary Love. We will be here with you to offer tools and keep building this movement in the next four years and beyond. Donate to support our work.

Let us give one another the courage that comes from joy — and the joy that comes from community.

Breathing and pushing with you,

Valarie