if you can see the problem, you can be the solution

I used to spend a lot more time talking about what was wrong with the world than I did actively building a different world. I was taught that “raising awareness” was the key to liberation. I was angry. And I also was pretty darn disempowered.

Subconsciously I was not actually in touch with my leadership capacity. I was still stuck in a paradigm where the change would happen by convincing the people “in charge” to do something different. Rather than by paving a new path.

If we can see where systems are failing, we can sense how to innovate an alternative. If we can identify what others are doing wrong, we can show up for what we can do right.

We’ve all heard “be the change you wish to see in the world” (Gandhi) many times, but are we truly embodying it?

We’ve been so programmed to see ourselves as small, weak, and incapable. To see positive social change as something that takes a long time and that only some people can accomplish. To put off the small shifts that accumulate into big results. To pretend like we don’t know the answer because we’re afraid to witness our power and potential. To resist shining because we’ve been conditioned to think that our light harms rather than helps others.

Our world is going through tremendous change. And we are all being called forward to play our part in our collective rebirth. The sidelines are less and less safe. The illusion of security in the old system is crumbling. It’s time to evolve. And we have everything we need for the journey, if we’re willing to commit.

redefining purpose

Your purpose isn’t your job title. Your life is your purpose.

Your purpose isn’t something to find. It’s something to accept that you’re already living.

Finding your purpose is not about what you do. It’s about how and why you do it. It’s about making art of every inch of your life. It’s about living as a prayer for the world you dream of. It’s about devoting yourself to love in every moment.

At the most macro level, there’s only one problem: separation from love.

So there’s only one objective: return to love.

And how we do the work is the work, so, no matter what we’re doing, the “purpose” is still to embody love, to be the change we seek, to live as if the work is already done.

Of course, separation and reunion show up in myriad nuanced forms.

And we’re all encoded to play a very specific role.

But we’re often pressuring and limiting ourselves by viewing purpose through a capitalist lens where we’re reduced to a singular function serving an external objective. We try to simplify ourselves to create a feeling of safety through clarity, rather than embracing the multidimensional nuance of it all.

We’re not cogs in a machine. We’re human beings living gorgeously complex lives. We don’t have to fit ourselves into a single title like “relationship coach” or “carpenter” or “sculptor” or “doctor.” Even if you did that “job” your whole life and you loved it, that still wouldn’t be your whole purpose.

This perspective has allowed me to flow from role to role over the years – from activist to teacher to farmer to artist to consultant to coach to writer to inventor and beyond – while feeling like my mission has remained the same.

When I’m getting to know people, they often are surprised at how many different “jobs” I’ve had. I’ve designed curriculum, led activist campaigns, built regenerative water systems, taught sex ed, consulted on diversity & inclusion, unionized workers, and much more.

From the outside, it might look like many disparate parts, but to me, it’s one totally cohesive journey in which I’ve been living the same purpose.

I serve God, I devote myself to love, I am committed to building a better world, and the “what” evolves depending on what’s needed for that perfect sweet spot where my personal highest good overlaps with the collective’s highest good.

dehumanization is not a social justice strategy

What does justice feel like to you? Does it feel like transferring your own feelings of shame & constriction onto another? Does it feel like exterminating people who you feel are trying to exterminate you? Is it a victory over others? Or does it feel like a stretching, a growing, a releasing... a believing into a future where we all belong, where the ends never justify the means, where we have the tools to process our trauma and the humility to play our part, where somehow against the odds we have all returned to love?

Personally, I used to only have access to the former: a feeling of long-awaited vindication over The Oppressors. But I could only chant “none of us are free until all of us are free” so many times until I realized that, oh shit, the “all of us” includes... All. Of. Us. And that those with material power were often spiritually bereft and in need of reconciliation & healing just as much as the rest of us.

I’ve been witnessing, and attending to, the fearful trauma drama of mainstream activism for many years. (Context: For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been an activist since I was 14 and have worked within many different movements for justice, in addition to training leaders and consulting on diversity and inclusion for over a decade.)

The instinct to turn on those who seem to be the problem and call them names, attack their character, and seek to extinguish their lives/livelihoods, is the programmed reaction if we feel deeply unsafe and subconsciously ashamed. It’s basic projection.

But I feel us all growing into a new way of being. I see my clients praying for the people who are attacking them. I see myself asking God to show me what it looks like to have honorable boundaries and a generous heart. I see the People of The Internet realizing that we cannot treat each other as disposable. I see our devotion to love calling us forward: stretching us into the willingness to consider a world where all wounds have been healed, where our bad guys are just guys, where unity includes sovereignty, where we are all free.

love is the solution

The 2016 election woke me up. The hyperbolic polarization broke my somnambulant attachment to hating others as a form of self-defense. I already knew the government was at best an impotent no-show parent, and at worst an insatiable cannibal. But I was hooked on the us versus them battle. The cycle of expecting others to do what I had not: to love all people completely, to treat others as myself, to not treat anyone as disposable.

As a lifelong activist, my teenage years were spent pouring over MLK’s speeches, analyzing Archbishop Tutu’s reconciliation committees, trying to wrap my brain around Gandhi’s non-violence.

It seemed impossible to me. To love those who harmed me. The world seemed to overflow with pain. My life did too. Discrimination. Violence. Being hurt for who I was. Fending for myself when I was still too young to drive or vote. Finding camaraderie with others who had been abandoned by a system designed to keep us struggling.

And yet something in me kept returning, magnetically, to the call to unconditional love. I kept zooming out. I kept noticing that the anger in me matched the anger in the others, that their hatred for me mirrored my own stomach-sinking sense that I was not good enough. I kept wondering how we would achieve peace via war. I kept wondering who would drop the weapon first.

Am I brave enough to lead with love? Am I strong enough to not confuse love with boundary violation? Am I committed enough to liberation to want it for everyone? Am I humble enough to love everyone the way God loves them? What does that even mean? These are the questions I’ve been living for years.

For those who call this bypassing, I used to feel the same way. All I can say is, I have been devoted to the liberation of all since I was little kid. And this is where I’ve been led. Over and over. Back to love. Love mends. Love moves. Love FEELS whatever needs to be felt. Love takes accountability. Love heals from the inside out.

If we don’t feel that love is the answer, we need a different definition of love, not a different solution to the problem.