Our country and our world are in a horrible tangle of harmful “isms,” ideologies that hurt people and harm the planet. And, we are feeling the biting sting of these “isms” keenly these days, for as it has been said, ‘none of us are free until all of us are free.’ I stand with all who resist anything that harms any one of us. I received my Masters in Divinity from Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry, a Jesuit college steeped in Liberation Theology. It is a theology deeply concerned with the liberation of all who suffer from oppressive forces of any kind.
BC is also where I got my first taste of the inner listening process called Focusing, which someone recently called “a missing key in the liberation gumbo.”
In Focusing, we have a reminder phrase to help when inner voices and sensations feel overwhelming, unacceptable, or scary. We say, “This is here and I am the space that holds it all.” We can also apply this to social justice and political issues. Everyone belongs at the table and without everyone we are not only harming those we exile but also ourselves and the entire world…
…. Our world is the ultimate “space that holds us all” and it should have no exiles.
Focusing helps us grow the capacity to keep company with even the most difficult, uncomfortable aspects of our inner experiencing. One foundational principle of the Inner Relationship Focusing process is that nothing that arises within us wants to harm us. In fact, whatever arises in us right now, is there for a good reason. We can listen with open curiosity and compassionate interest within in a way that seeks understanding. We don’t try to fix or label it. We don’t agree or disagree with it. We simply keep it company and really listen. And this kind of listening leads towards transformation. How liberating and world healing it would be if we could apply that principle outwardly to the voices of those who have been harmed or left out. …and stay open to allowing those voices move us deep within.
Only love can save us now…not the soft, warm, fuzzy kind of love (though there is a time for that kind of love too)…but a radical and courageous love that stands with those who are being hurt or left out and says NO with words and actions to all forms of hatred and oppression; a love that does not demonize persons and deeply believes that all of us have the capacity to change our hearts and ways of living.
Two resources I have not seen listed other places:
Privilege, Power and Difference, 3rd edition by Allan G. Johnson. https://www.amazon.com/Privilege-Power-Difference-Allan-Johnson/dp/0073404225/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3CCWIL9P3NRYM&dchild=1&keywords=privilege+power+and+difference+3rd+edition&qid=1597252908&sprefix=Privile%2Caps%2C176&sr=8-2
Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race and Being by M. Shawn Copelandhttps://www.amazon.com/Enfleshing-Freedom-Intersections-Innovations-Religious/dp/0800662741/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1K0W2KLK1F08R&dchild=1&keywords=enfleshing+freedom+body%2C+race%2C+and+being&qid=1597253048&sprefix=Enfleshi%2Caps%2C159&sr=8-1
Feel free to comment below…I love to hear your thoughts…and if you want a good listener… as you practice articulating your thoughts about justice and liberation in the polarized emotional hotbed this world has become…contact me…for supportive, non judgmental listening: https://www.everunfoldingself.com/contact-2/
Get Involved:
“We are rising up to declare that #RevolutionaryLove is the call of our times. We commit to fight for justice through the ethic of love — love for others, our opponents, and ourselves.”–from The Revolutionary Love Project Page.
