A Foundational Change
People have been talking about love and peace for a long time. It’s common to dismiss such talk as simplistic, sentimental idealism. But living according to love is a significantly different life structure from our present social and institutional norms. It requires us to be open to making changes in each of our own lives in order to learn how to live outside of the dominance-based worldview nearly all of us have been steeped in from birth. It includes changing our language, and some of our most basic frameworks upon which we make our decisions.
To develop a society based on love, our legal and justice institutions will need to be structurally and conceptually rebuilt from their very foundations. This statement does not refer simply to the government-operated justice system of lawyers and judges and police officers and jails. It also implicates the justice structures within families, in workplaces, schools, organizations, and religions. As daunting as that may be, love is the foundation both of justice and of peace. If we would do more than daydream of a world that does not rely on violence, oppression, and war to maintain its sense of order, we will need to work and live into such foundational changes.
This writing on the practice of active love has been developing from three intertwined explorations:
- the implications of love as the foundation for justice
- the study of nonviolence in spirituality and action
- living and moving with creative energy
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.
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.
Separating relationship and operating out of a dominance framework are fundamentals of violence. To come to peace, we need to build healthier, interdependent relationships. The resistance-based mindset undermines love-based actions, damaging effectiveness though conflicting intentions.
One of the concepts of practicing active love is in “positive-flow” language and naming. This means naming according to where you want things to go, rather than what you want to stop. Someone who practices active love chooses positive flow language because words have creative force.
Nonviolence is itself a resistance-based term. You have to name and picture violence in order to say or practice it, and in so doing you remain a participant in the perpetuation of violence. In using the term “active love,” you name a relationship-based practice that actively forms communities of justice, peace and safety.
Active love challenges its followers in discipline and courage. It invites us to share lived experiences, as well as to listen to the stories of others. It both drives and grows from spiritual development, and asks for continual work in the integration of body, mind, and spirit. It opens us to bear witness and testify. If we can be brave enough and vulnerable enough to open ourselves to it fully, it invites us to live, move and be out of the fullness of freedom that love affords, the law of love. It is fierce. It is devastating heartbreak. It is also balm. And it is joy. It is fire, and still cool water.
Don’t Do This Alone, Join Together, Confess
Because of the dangers along the path, we need to walk each other home. Practice active love with others. You may think you don’t know any others. But if you begin, and keep your eyes, ears, and heart open as you go, you will find people whose words, actions, and energy resonate. When you find them, walk together as much as you’re able. As you move further, your life will begin to change as your relationship, actions, and choices change.
Join with the communities you feel moved to work and be with. Join the movements that draw you. Join the different people and groups together who seem synergistic. Be a bridge across separations. Sew tears in the fabric together. These things will not happen without heartache, stress, conflict, shame and fear. It’s likely you’ll be challenged in all ways – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. You will need to name these challenges as they happen, to bear witness to your own journey, to put aside pride and move with more simplicity and ease, to offer your life. This can be some of the most difficult work, sometimes the most frightening, but also the gentlest and the most supportive.
Guiding Principles
The core principle of this practice is that the Law is Love. The guiding principles provide direction in what is meant by that.
- Love is Based in Relationship
An environment that is peaceful, that exists in a state of justice, is one in which beings of that environment are in healthy relationship with each other.
- 2. Violence Separates Relationships
Violence encompasses physical harm as well as condemnation, accusation, and includes even words that separate people from each other or from living from their core selves. It includes systemic divisions within communities, and building fear towards a being or group. Violence is addressed in ways that attempt to support healthier relationships.
- Restoration Heals Violence
Injustice, or violence, is fundamentally a tearing in relationship, that then must be mended, reconciled. The practices of restorative justice, including self-opening, witnessing, truth-telling, accountability, compassion for all beings, reparation, and reconciliation are some of our most important tools for justice and peace.
- We are Interdependent Beings
All of us need all of each other. We have different strengths and weaknesses and are meant to work together in order to live our best lives. Independence does not lead to freedom, but rather to isolation, struggle, separation from your core self, condemnation of others, and ultimately violence in some form. Freedom happens through interdependence, which like love, justice, and peace, requires relationship.
- Spirituality Connects Us
Living the “the law is love” is a spiritual practice, conscious of our relationship with each other and all Being. It is fully inclusive, and we are interdependent with each other and all of Life. People of different faiths can enter into this practice together, without losing their culture, stories, and languages. Love, relationship, justice, peace, allow us to experience the richness of each other’s expressions together. There is, however, a need to recognize harmful beliefs that may be associated with one’s religion, which condemn and separate. Look carefully, tenderly, prayerfully at such teachings and discern, what does Love ask of you?
- Creativity Expresses Love and Freedom
Creativity is the generative expression of love, and allows one to live from the freedom of one’s being. Creative energy is stronger than resistance. It can form a vision and a path for change to be possible. Art is a collective creative interaction in which the stories and beliefs people have about themselves are expressed. Art can change the story, vision, and myth of the collective society.
- Love is a Practice
Living and being in community through the law of love is a practice, not a rulebook. Working through trauma, difficult emotions, and conflict are a natural part of growth. Acceptance of limitations, mistakes and imperfect outcomes is a component of justice to self and others.