The Power of Love Early in my academic career,
I taught at a small women's college in the South.
I was fresh out of grad school and had the language of race,
Class,
Gender,
Sexuality fluent in my mouth.
I taught English and women's studies classes and my syllabi didn't look like anything that the students had seen before.
Not only in what I taught,
But in how I taught them to use their own voices,
Make their own choices,
Decide for themselves what their subject matter would be in papers and presentations.
Near the end of a semester,
A few students came up to me and asked how I got this way.
They were not asking about whom I studied with or where I'd gone to school,
But how I had the courage to speak and teach in the face of tradition.
I paused and then said,
It's because of my friends.
I thought of Anna,
My breast bound gender neutral friend who worked night shifts at the Waffle House to pay for grad school and sat next to me in a seminar where we read a rigoré and when I was speechless about how her French feminist work made me feel,
Anna summed it up by saying,
Mind fuck,
And we burst into raucous laughter.
And Susan,
My best friend since sixth grade,
Whose African American divorced mother hung pictures of black Jesus and Martin Luther King in their home and taught us to see race as a positive force in our friendship.
Ruby from high school whose Chinese father gave her a wheeled suitcase to hold all her school books so she wouldn't waste time going to the locker between classes and could spend an extra 10 minutes studying.
Claire,
A woman who came out in college and later married a man.
My high school boyfriend Javier whose Puerto Rican mother told me that some people are born with money because they are better than others and taught me about class stratification.
Sunita,
Whose parents,
One Hindu,
One Muslim witnessed the partitioning of India and then left first to England,
Then Canada,
Then America and taught her to distrust religion.
So she hid a Bible under her bed so she could read it secretly.
It was love that taught me these languages.
I wasn't afraid to face and teach about race,
Class,
Gender,
Sexuality,
Because I knew these people,
Real people whom I loved.
And I also knew that I didn't have to be something to teach it.
One of my favorite lines in Audre Lorde's writing is when she says,
We don't expect English teachers to be gay men in tights in order to be experts on Shakespeare.
We forgot this lesson along the way.
We started equating who we were with what we know and what is possible for us.
In contrary to the intention of shaking up identity construction,
This resulted in an entrenchment of subject position that teetered on the verge of essentialism and as history will tip back and forth with its cycle spectrum.
The be,
Do,
Be,
Dance led us to this moment in time when the political sphere takes advantage of our pride in belonging to a group and sees other people as enemies.
The opposite of love is hate and hate the world proclaims can be an effective means to the end,
Which is power.
But this is a lie because hate produces more hate and power cannot be gained sustainably through destruction.
Fighting even in the name of justice,
Equality,
Revolution,
And change has the byproduct of violence to the self and to others.
What comes out is determined by what goes in.
Put in love and start with your own mouth.
Self care is a radical form of justice.
If the powers that be see you as an alien and want to use your body identity,
Language,
Labor for their own ends,
Then prostrating yourselves on the altar of activism that leaves you burnt out,
Breathless,
Tired,
Traumatized,
Terrified simply does their job for them.
What they don't want is an energetic,
Empowered,
Woke,
Watchful,
Juicy,
Joyful you.
That juicy you can never be drained dry by them because the source of your juice isn't located outside of yourself.
You are a self sustaining energizer bunny.
The whole world,
Nature,
Music,
Poetry,
Animals,
Seasons,
Feelings,
Breath,
Creativity,
Wisdom will provide your energy source.
It's like an orchestra.
You orchestrate your own symphony by letting all your instruments play with love.
This is the power of love.
We have two journaling prompts today for three minutes each.
Let's go ahead and get your journal.
Open it up.
Write about love.
Who you love.
What you love.
The work you love.
The play you love.
Get a love note to love.
Now you can always sense some love in your own will.
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Good finish the phrase that you're writing now.
Take a deep breath and now write about the connection between love and care,
Self-care,
Other care,
World care.
How does care make love manifest through action?
How does care make love manifest through action?
How does care make love manifest through action?
How does care make love manifest through action?
How does care make love manifest through action?
Good finish the phrase that you're writing now and put your journal to the side.
Very good work.
May you feel the power of love and put it into action through care.
