No Such Thing as Political Love
Your political leanings are not right. More often than not they should be left out of the work that needs to be done. There is nothing progressive about loving others. Nothing is accomplished when we are conservative with our engagement of the worst elements of our humanity. If anything, the way we politicize our views of the world keeps us from listening, loving, and being graceful when that's all we can and should do. Seriously, try to wear yourself out in doing what is most helpful for the least of us rather than arguing about things that only matter to those who have the most. I’ve read this sentiment somewhere. The print was red I think…
***
Increasingly, I grow tired of the words advocate and ally. I understand the intent and feel better about them than the alternatives. But the results are the same. We plug our efforts into a cause and that cause into the same binary perception of a war have been told we are fighting, whether that fight be cultural or religious or personal (though putting or in the last phrase feels completely artificial). We exist, so it would seem, in shifting states of us and them where winners or losers are judged to be on the right or wrong side of history and what matters most is winning.
The problem—and we all really know this deep inside—is that the game is never fair and the way it is rigged so often means winning is still losing when we embrace a larger perspective. I would argue this notion of living guarantees no one ever wins or loses because, shockingly, life is not a game of horseshoes (a game of horseshoes!).
Instead, we should stop playing and take reconciliation seriously. It’s our only hope. Sure, it’s messier and more difficult. For reconciliation to work, everyone bears fault and blame and responsibility, though not, to be sure, in equal measures. And most of all, everyone must be honest. Unvarnished even. To be reconciled is to expose our rough and wounding edges to ourselves as much as we do to each other, letting their proximity and our steadfast, repeated recommitment to love each other like we love ourselves sand those pieces of us down until we fit together as equally valued, equally seen souls.