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Counterintuitive
This mailing is our weekly share from the Active Love and Testimony Project writings.
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The Active Love writing likely looks counterintuitive, particularly in light of recent news stories, and the many calls to resist. I can only ask that you bear with me, and trust that I'm not moving this towards passivity, complacency or inaction. Active Love asks how to bring about disarmament? Reconcilliation? Transformative justice? And you are seeing this writing in very small pieces.
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In the present situations unfolding around us, active love prompts us offer safety to the vulnerable through relationship, and community building. Through relationship, you bring resources, which could be financial but also include your skills, creativity, relative stability, and your own relationships to others. When you act in support of people in a vulnerable community, can you think of an option that will open space for accountable, healthy relationship with people who may be causing harm, even if where you are is so far from it? If the action you are considering makes that less possible, see if you can turn your creativity towards thinking of an action that makes it more possible instead.
This week is the second half of the intro to the Testimony Project, and next week we will begin our first "story," a short, true account of experiences witnessed or lived relating to being unhoused. The stories need to be heard in order for justice to happen. Please take in the Testimony Project, practice opening yourself, and share with others.
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Active Love: A Change in Operating System (continued)
This writing on the practice of active love has been developing from three intertwined explorations: 1) the implications of love as the foundation for justice 2) the study of nonviolence in spirituality and action and 3) living and moving with creative energy
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Active Love or Nonviolence, What’s in a Name?
Nonviolence is a term that has been used to describe actions taken by a person or group to resist violence. However, active love names a number of problems with basing our practice in resistance. This is an adjustment that many will want to reject. We will go deeply into the reasoning for leaving resistance behind, but in short, love is always rooted in relationship.
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A lot of practices presently described as ‘nonviolence’ are love-based actions. However, when we focus our attention on being resistant, we see the ‘other’ as something (often not someone) outside of ourselves, our community, our collective being. When we do this, we separate relationship. Not only that, but we try to dominate the other with our position, that our side may win.
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Testimony Project: What it Is (continued)
In this testimony, names of organizations have been left out, though people near them may recognize them. The intent of this piece is not to point a finger at particular groups. Members of an organization can have good intent but make decisions that cause great pain. Within the same work place, some staff members can be aware and helpful, while others are punishing, and others are overwhelmed, and others are inexperienced. Many things that go wrong are linked to a blindness and dehumanization that is insidious in the general population, and a cold refusal by our culture to ensure that people with disabilities have basic survival needs met, much less an ability to thrive.
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It’s important for housed people, politicians, and administrators to recognize the systemic cruelty in place, and for each person to put their foot down and insist on another path, whatever that may cost them. People who have lived experience of being unhoused must be a significant voice in deciding and carrying out solutions. We must have the will to insist that sufficient amounts of housing are built, and that people of all incomes are housed.
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