Transcript: VALARIE KAUR on the Ancient Call to Love /253
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Valarie Kaur Who is an ancestor who makes you brave? Can you conjure them behind you now? What made them brave in life? Can you imagine that they might have something that you need to know to be brave with your life now and next?
Ayana Young Valarie Kaur is a seasoned civil rights activist and celebrated prophetic voice "at the forefront of progressive change" (Center for American Progress). Valarie burst into American consciousness in the wake of the 2016 election when her Watch Night Service address went viral with 30+ million views worldwide. Her question "Is this the darkness of the tomb – or the darkness of the womb?" reframed the political moment and became a mantra for people fighting for change. Valarie now leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice in America. As a lawyer, filmmaker, and innovator, she has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project to inspire and equip new generations of advocates. Valarie has been a regular TV commentator on MSNBC and contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, the Hill, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. A daughter of Sikh farmers in California's heartland, Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Valarie's new book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, expands on her "blockbuster" TED Talk and is available wherever books are sold.
Well, Valarie, thank you so much for joining us today. You have been swirling around my mind for years now and so I'm really happy to finally get the chance to connect and tune in.
Valarie Kaur I'm so grateful to be here with you, Ayana.
Ayana Young Wonderful. Well, this is going to be a really great conversation. I can feel it and as I was preparing for our interview, I was reminded of the following passage from author Arundhati Roy, “What does the term anti-American mean? Does it mean you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons? Or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans? To call someone anti-American indeed, to be anti-American, or, for that matter, anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination, an inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you.” And truthfully, I think it's very easy for many of us to identify as anti-American, but as someone who has spent a great deal of time organizing folks around collective renewal and moral visioning, I wonder if you could begin by sharing what you imagine for our country and how this image has been deeply molded by your lineage.
Valarie Kaur You know the words of Guru Nanak, who is the first teacher of the Sikh faith, just wash over me - his vision; I see no enemy, I see no stranger. When I think about my own faith in my own lineage, I realize that there's a mystical stream in my faith that runs through all the great wisdom traditions of the world, and it is this deep recognition of our oneness. I think of it as an orientation to life, through the eyes of wonder that we could look upon the face of anyone around us or any being or anything around us and say, “You are a part of me, I do not yet know.” You are a part of me, I do not yet know. You know, that truth of our oneness. I have just been amazed by how it's increasingly verified by science, you know, we, we share a common ancestry with everything alive that what makes up our bodies are elements that were fueled and born in the bellies of long-distance stars, that the atoms that circulate in our lungs are the same atoms that circulated in the lungs of our ancestors. So this idea of our oneness, our interconnectedness that we can say to anything around us, you are a part of me. I do not yet know. It's not just a spiritual truth anymore. It's also a biological fact, a cosmological fact.
And when I think about our, you know, spiritual teachers or Indigenous leaders through the centuries, hasn't that call to love been ancient? To see all around us as sisters and brothers to expand our hearts to include all of us to love without limit, and yet why is it that we live in societies that have depended on our failure to imagine others as part of ourselves? I look at any society around the world and I can see a sort of hierarchy of human value and the oldest hierarchy of human value on U.S. soil is the story of white supremacy. So for those who think or say that they are anti-American, what you are really saying is that you are anti hierarchies of human value supremacy is that keep one group of people over other groups of people, that's not an American problem, that is a human problem that has existed through the centuries and that is coming to a culmination now. Now we have a choice. Those of us who have heard the call to love, who know the truth of our oneness, it's up to us now, to step into those institutions of power to take the reins, to start to lead them, to start to birth beloved community where we are. And that's why I believe this call to love, love without limit, what I call revolutionary love, is the call of our times if we are to survive.
Ayana Young Wow, what an intro. Oh, so beautiful. It felt really good to hear. It's, yeah, soothing, and there’s another that I want to bring up, you write “At a time when it’s this dark, when the fires are this bright, when the future is this uncertain, each of us can summon the ancestor we need at our back. Who will you summon? Who makes you brave?” And I’d like to ask you about the practice of summoning ancestors during this period of transformation, particularly the importance of broadening our understanding of ancestors beyond those who are immediately related to us...Which ancestors are you currently summoning?
Valarie Kaur Hmm, I love this question. You know, the centrality, the necessity to summon our ancestors that did not occur to me until I was in labor with my first baby, my son. There's a stage in birthing labor that is considered the most dangerous stage; it is the final stage, the most painful. It is called transition, you know, it feels like dying and yet it is the stage that precedes the birth of new life. I remember when I was in transition, you know, the midwife is like, breathe and push. And I just said, “No, no, I can't like it feels like a ring of fire.” And my mother was by my side and whispering the prayers that my grandparents taught us when we were little and at that moment, I, you know, I knew I could not do it alone. I looked at my mother and then Ayana, I saw my grandmother standing behind my mother, and her mother behind her, and her mother behind her - this long line of women that sort of disappeared into infinity. These women who had pushed through the fire before me, and it's only with them did I take a breath almost as if they were just putting that breath in my body and I could push and then my son was born.
I think we're in a kind of transition as a nation, as a human race right now. The contractions are coming fast. The crises come wave after wave, there's barely time to breathe. It feels like dying, and yet is this the darkness that precedes the birth of new life? Can we transition humanity into a future that is sustainable, healthy, multiracial? Where we all are beloved and free, where we last. That's the question of our lifetime. And just as I could not do it alone on the birthing table, I don't think we can do it alone now. You know, how did our ancestors labor for justice before us? How did they, in the midst of so much grief and loss and atrocity and trauma, still find the courage to breathe and push and stay in the labor for future generations. Not all of them did, right? But there are enough of them we can summon now and, and for me, I, you know, I often summon my grandfather, who's the one who first taught me the prayers when I was a little girl. And I think about all that he survived in his lifetime, and how much he taught me what it meant to live the call of my faith, to revolutionarily love. He’s very present to me these days.
I meet a lot of people who say, but I don't have grandparents like that, or I don't have ancestors like that. And so, to your question, Ayana I invite people to expand their imagination of who can, who they can claim as their ancestors. If we're all one human family, then you can look beyond your own family line to recent history, you know, to our collective history and imagine, who was an ancestor who makes you brave? Can you conjure them behind you now? What made them brave in life? Can you imagine that they might have something that you need to know, to be brave with your life now? And next.
When I do this with people, you know, the answers are really beautiful and varied. I hear John Lewis, I hear Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I hear, you know, great aunts and uncles, I hear spiritual teachers from King to Mandela, to thinkers like Audre Lorde and James Baldwin. I think we can look to any corner of our history to find sources of inspiration and I encourage people to develop, you know, a relationship with one or two of them, who you feel like you really need their life as a text for you. And there are some morsels of wisdom there that are available to you if we just get quiet enough to listen to them. We don't have to start from scratch. You know, the body, the body in labor, knows how to breathe and push with every turn to the cycle, and so do we, as a human race. So what wisdom do we need to drop on now from our ancestors? In order for us to find the courage, the tenacity, the audacity to keep breathing and pushing now?
Ayana Young Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure that soothed a lot of people, definitely including myself. And yeah-
Valarie Kaur Who do you summon Ayana?
Ayana Young Well, I mean that was definitely coming up for me in that question while you were responding. And what I'm really grateful for what you're saying is the expansiveness because I know sometimes I feel that tight-chested closure around this question or just many questions, and yeah, I feel like many times I summon our more than human family and kin. And yeah, I feel like I summon the forest as family and that has been probably one of the most important and deepest relationships of my life. And definitely where I feel like I learned what unconditional love feels like and the devotion, the dedication to that unwavering, loving commitment to a being. So yeah, that's definitely who first comes to mind when I think of summoning for strength and vision and guidance and love and comfort. But I definitely want to sit with this question more.
Valarie Kaur That is so profound to me, you know to imagine our trees as ancestors in a way, as living ancestors. You know, when I think of a forest, I think of all that is unseen in a forest. And, you know, we've been learning so much about the mycelium underneath the ground, this kind of network that connects the forest together that, you know, we too, we look as though we are trees standing apart, but we are interconnected and interdependent and can nourish each other across distances, just like the mycelium beneath the forest floor. The more I look into the natural world, the more I see sort of models or examples or beckonings into how we can imagine ourselves as a human race. So I think your answer is deeply powerful.
Ayana Young Thank you, thank you for asking that. Yeah, and before we delve into the beautiful facets of revolutionary love, I wonder if you can give a bit of background for listeners on the ways in which Sikhism has informed your activism, particularly the teachings of Guru Nanak. And how they have remained pertinent 500 years, plus, or 500 plus years later?
Valarie Kaur You know, when I was a little girl growing up on the farmlands of California, my grandfather would tell me the stories of our ancestors and the story of Guru Nanak. It was our origin story that always captivated my imagination that has stayed with me today, and it was a story of a young man who was so distraught by all the violence around him the inequalities and the turmoil that he disappeared by a river for three days, he retreated from the world and sat in perfect contemplation trying to find the answer the solution, and the sun rose and the sun fell, the sun rose and the sun fell, and this is the year 1469 people thought him a dead man, a drown man, but it happened on the third day, he was struck by a vision of our oneness. And he emerged with this, you know, vision on his lips; “We are one we belong to one another - humanity is one, the world is one.” But Ayana didn't begin to give lectures or tell stories or write histories, he began to sing. Like the revelation of our oneness, struck him in wonder, in this ecstatic, divine wonder and out of this wonderment, he began to sing songs of love, that we now call Shabad. So our entire scripture is just made of this ecstatic poetry just praising the divine all around us and within us.
Guru Nanak taught that you know, we could all learn how to see the world through the eyes of wonder, that there is a voice in us, the I that separates itself from you. And we need that voice to operate in the world often, but it tricks us into believing that we are separate. Our separateness is an illusion Guru Nanak teaches, we belong to one another and this meant that we are called to love one another but my grandfather used to remind me, but love is dangerous business, you know, not just love talk, talk, talk, no love, the labor of love, that is dangerous business. For If I see you as a part of me I do not yet know and I choose to love you and I must let your grief into my heart, I must be willing to fight for you when you are in harm's way. The ideal in the Sikh faith was known as the “Sant Sipahi”, the sage warrior or the warrior sage, the warrior fights, the sage loves. It was a path of what I call revolutionary love.
I believe that that call that I heard as a little girl, you know, echoes all around the world through the millennia, but is the call of our times today. What might happen if we saw a migrant child at the border as our own daughter? Or George Floyd gasping for breath as our own brother? Or Brianna as sister? Or the Asian American women slaughtered in Atlanta as our own aunties? What might happen? What would we risk? What movements would we build? What would we demand? How would we harness our rage? How would we reimagine a world in which all of us are safe? What might happen if we made love the ethic that guided all of our actions.
This is why I have been retiring the word activist lately. It's like I don't want to turn everyone into activists, I simply want to invite you into a way of being in the world. And if you see the world through the eyes of wonder and if you see our interconnectedness and you choose to love others, as a part of you, then there's nothing left to do but to to grieve and to rage and to fight and to reimagine and to be invested in a world where we are all free. And so I invite people into imagining revolutionary love, not as a prescription but as a way of being in the world. Anti-racism is the bridge but love, beloved community is the destination. So what might happen if we could inspire a critical mass of people to practice this together? Might we be the ones to generate enough energy and enough change to shift humanity as a whole? This is why I believe the discussions you have on this podcast For The Wild are so essential. I mean, you are contemplating with thought leaders, with visionaries, with artists, and activists around how we create that shift in culture and consciousness, not just about government and sound government, which is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient to create that deeper shift and how we see, how we be, how we do. That's a revolution of the heart. And that's what I think we need now.
Ayana Young Yeah, the revolution of the heart and I also kept holding on the oh gosh, the wonder, I think that's what you the word you used - just holding on to the wonder because I know for myself, I can get so trapped in the whirlwind of this time. And sometimes I feel like I need to break it and like, why am I here? And what do I love? And what am I fighting for? And tap back into the wonder because otherwise, it can just get so overwhelming. And yeah, so I think these practices are so necessary for us.
I often think about the kind of pedestalization that takes place in many movements, and how this ultimately works to our detriment. I was particularly moved by something you shared on Instagram that sort of alluded to this; “I think we commit a kind of violence to our heroes — spiritual teachers like Nanak, social reformers like King — when we turn them into saints. As soon as we make them superhuman, we drain them of their power. Because who can be a saint? But when we see them for who they were — human beings who took their pain and followed their best visions of who they could be, who WE could be — then we let their power take effect inside us. We can be like them. I can see what Nanak saw. I can train my eye to see no stranger. I can sing a song of love for all my days. I can let that show up in how I mother my children and how I citizen.” I think for many, this practice is actually quite difficult, we may be trained to canonize those we esteem...can you speak to how you’ve trained yourself to recognize the collective humanity of our leaders and how this encourages us to show up with grace for ourselves and each other?
Valarie Kaur Oh, I really wrestled with coming to know more about the personal lives of some of the social reformers who I most put on a pedestal, that's how this came to be is that I looked deeply into the life of Gandhi, and the life of King, and the life of Mandela. And I'm a mother with babies you know, nursing on my chest and trying to find a way to create harmony in the home and balance that or do that at the same time as building movements and creating art and putting out this call and it's really really hard and the narrative I have in my own mind around my own failure, my own imperfections, my own neuroses are so large that it's so easy to look at these figures in history, and say “Well I can’t be like them.” The more I looked into their actual lived experiences, you know, we see them for who they were. They were deeply human, deeply wounded, flawed, imperfect, and yet could summon the wisest part of themselves in order to do extraordinary things in the world, to change the world, to call us to higher consciousness.
You know, we know their lives because they're more recent figures. But if you go further back to any spiritual leader we have put on a pedestal, I bet we will find the same thing. And this was a dangerous thing to say, for me to post about Guru Nanak. Guru Nanak, like Jesus, or Muhammad, you know, entire communities are invested in making them superhuman. But I've really embraced this radical notion that as soon as we do that, we drain them of their power because we say we cannot be like them. If we say no, that they were human, like us, they are inside of me, I am part of them, they are part of me, then we are freer, I think, to let ourselves be imperfect and flawed and still summon inside of our own selves, our own deepest wisdom, our own visions for what the world ought to be, and how our lives could be in it. So I say that when people put me on a pedestal, too, it's like, don't do that. Don't do that to those living either, not the faith leaders who inspire you, or the prophetic voices, because as soon as you do that, you drain me and them of their power, and you drain yourself of any of your own potential, you're not seeing your own magnificent light and your own unlimited potential to be able to lead it may not be in the same way, it may not be on a stage behind a mic, but it will be, you know, in a way that is essential for the future of our people. If you are showing up fully where you are, how you are, each of us has a sphere of influence. Each of us has a role to play. Each of us has a set of talents and tools. Each of us has a story, multiple stories that the world needs to hear. We need you, we need each of you. And so to see the Nanuk in you, the Jesus in you, the King in you, is what I invite us all to do. If we are going to truly transition the species.
Ayana Young So much gratitude for this last response of yours because I, yeah, I just feel it so much. And, you outline three main tenets of revolutionary love; love for each other, love for our opponents, and love for ourselves. And I’ve heard you speak about how this practice requires us to “love beyond what evolution requires”, which is such a beautiful ask...Can you elaborate a bit further on how you’ve come to define revolutionary love?
Valarie Kaur Hmm, yes. Okay, so to start with, I will say I'm a trained lawyer. So anytime people had used the word love standing on a stage, you know, I would be the one to roll my eyes. It's like what love is the answer? In the face of entire institutions designed to perpetuate oppression across generations like how is love a force against all of that? I came to understand in a long kind of deep internal journey that I write about in my book, See No Stranger, that the problem is not with love. It's with the way that we talk about it in our contemporary culture, we tend to talk about love as a rush of feeling, as something that happens to us, we fall in love we, you know, it's a flood of emotion and that is certainly part of the experience of what it means to love. But when that's our only definition, then, of course, love falls into the trap of feel-good actions, or civility, or a rush to forgiveness. No. When we think about our closest relationships in life, you know, parents, children, friends, families, and think about your closest relationships, that love that sustains them is really defined by ongoing practical care.
So I began to redefine love as a form of sweet labor, fierce, bloody, imperfect life-giving a choice we make again, and again and again. And when we extend that kind of love, even just a fraction of that kind of love, you know, beyond our immediate circles, then that's when love starts to disrupt the world around us, it can be a force for political social transformation. So I define revolutionary love, as the choice to enter into labor for others, for our opponents, and for ourselves. Now, if love is labor then love can be taught, love can be modeled, love can be practiced, we can learn how to love well, together, we can learn how to build beloved community together. So I took some time to pour through, you know, all of the wisdom traditions that I had been exposed to works in neuroscience, the science of human behavior, psychology, history, case studies of social movements, and began to see patterns emerge of ten core practices of revolutionary love. And I'm really excited to share with you Ayana that these ten practices are how I structure my books, you know, See No Stranger, but we have also just built a Learning Hub, where we imagine these 10 practices as points on a compass. And so we've created a tool that people can hold in their hands and say, “Okay, if I'm in the work of loving another, or in the work of loving an opponent, or in the work of loving myself, what tool do I need? What practice do I need in my life now, our vision is to see pockets of revolutionary love across the country where people are are doing these practices together and our tools are there to support you. And really, you know, I say this is a new framework or a new offering, but we know that love is ancient. And so I often say to folks, like if any of this is resonating to you, it's because it's just touching a deep wisdom that's already within you. It's just bringing it to the surface, we are just remembering how to practice love as a revolutionary act in our lives. If people want to find the Learning Hub, you can go to ValarieKaur.com and all of it is there and available for free.
Ayana Young I love imagining you being a lawyer, rolling your eyes, and just going come on. I love that, it's just so great to know that. I just love it. So yeah, that was a really good vision. And I’d like to focus on declaring love for ourselves amidst a period of time when self-hatred seems to be so pervasive at the subconscious level in all of our communities; be it because of social conditioning, forced severances, or an existence that has been primed for consumption...How have you seen folks grapple with self-hatred, and begin the process of unlearning, through a revolutionary love framework?
Valarie Kaur Yeah, I think there's a voice in all of us, that tells us you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you're not strong enough, you're not beautiful enough, you're not enough, that not enough-ness is put into us, so many of us as children, but especially if we are in bodies that are denigrated by society. So it was very loud in my body as a young girl of color. As a young, Sikh American girl I had that voice very loud. I mean, how do we live in a culture that wants to make a strange to ourselves? When I say see no stranger, I mean ourselves too. I knew that it was important to love oneself, but I didn't know how I mean, how - when were the images that we are bombarded with, with the policies that we're subjected to, with the stories that we are told over and over either disappear us, or negate us, or sexualize us, or terrorize us, or make us into terrorists? Like how are we supposed to see our own sweet flesh as beloved, I didn't know how.
I remember the first weeks of holding my son in my arms, I would say to him “Oh, my love you are so beautiful, you're so strong, you're so smart. You are so brave”. I mean, he's a newborn, he can't do anything. And here I am, and my husband would turn to me and say, “Well, why don't you speak to yourself that way?” Why don't you speak to yourself that way? You see we lay down these neural pathways in our brain through repetition and the more we repeat, the way that we speak to ourselves, the deeper those grooves are. And so I had to lay down new pathways in my brain, I had to learn how to speak to myself differently. And that meant I had to practice - Audre Lorde, great Black feminist said, “We can learn to mother ourselves.” We can learn to mother ourselves. So I got a journal and I began to call it my wise woman journal. And I wrote in it every day, I still write in and it's right next to me, as we're speaking, it's been six years and I open it up and I say, “Wise woman here, wise woman says” and she speaks to me as if I am her own beloved child, or sweet, sweet, best friend, “Oh, my love, you are tired today, it's okay, pour the cup of tea, you can show up to the Podcast, you don't have to be perfect, you can just sink into your authenticity in the moment, just let it flow, just let it be. And then you'll be able to gather your energy to nurse the baby and then do the thing.” You know like she counsels me and she tells me the hard truths, but she does it in this compassionate way, not this way, that is driven by self-hatred, it's a guide, you know, it's a voice that guides me I, I feel like listening to that voice of the wise woman in me, over and over again, you know, throughout the day, for years now, six years now, is how I have finally learned how to love myself. I think this voice of deep wisdom resides in each of us.
You know, we can call it by different names. I know friends who call it Spirit, Buddha, nature, Allah, or Jesus. It's just a voice of deep wisdom within you speaking to you with a kind of unconditional love. You know, I have some friends who call that voice best friend or inner professor. That's one of my professor friends. So whatever name you choose, I think cultivating that voice and getting quiet enough to let it speak to you is important, not just for your own wellness, but for our collective survival. You know, because the loudest voices in the world right now are running on the energies of fear and criticism and cruelty. What if enough of us weren't then responding. reacting to those voices that have our own sense of scarcity or stress? What if we were summoning our own deepest wisdom to say, “Okay, this is how I wish to respond in a way that is deeply aligned with my values and that presages the world to come.” I think loving ourselves in this way, and summoning our deepest wisdom in this way is not only how we can find longevity in life, but how we might build enough collective wisdom to transition society as a whole.
Ayana Young Yeah these questions around self-love, self-hatred, forgiveness, especially for me, I think a lot of it's come from just feeling so complicit and so a part of many of the problems we face and trying to hold the complexity and not justify, but accept what it is to be a human, especially in this country at this time. And I've definitely been walking with this question. So it's really timely for me personally, and I know for so many others because I definitely have a lot of other folks in my community who are struggling with the groundedness of self-love. So, thank you. I just-
Valarie Kaur Yeah, no, I just want to honor your reluctance and your skepticism about it because the term self-love has been sort of co-opted by this self-help industry that is invested in practices that often feel like spiritual bypassing, you know, it's the yoga mat and the retreats and the workshops that give you the illusion that simply loving yourself is enough to change the world, well, then you're still not paying your domestic workers who are taking care of the babies while you're at the retreat, or you're still participating in policies that crush the lives of Black people in your cities, you know. So I think it's healthy to be skeptical because that term has been often used as a way to promote escapism or narcissism.
This is why I say revolutionary love must be practiced in these three ways, you know love for ourselves, love for opponents, and love for others. Any one of them alone is a recipe for disaster, just loving ourselves, we've talked about that. Loving our opponents without loving others or ourselves that self-loathing, and that can create deep deep damage and loving others without loving our opponents or, or loving ourselves, that's ineffective. You know, that's where so many of our movements have been, where we are starting to act like the forces that we are fighting, we're starting to become what we're fighting, or we're forgetting how to love ourselves well enough to last. So how many young people are opting out, taking their lives, are getting sick, because there's not enough collective care to make it a priority for us to love ourselves?
So I have been shifting the term self-love to loving ourselves. I've been shifting the term self-care to community care, like so many, I'm following the lead of Black women leaders who have been using this language, because that gets out of some of the problems that you're naming, about self-love as a form of bypassing or escapism, if we're thinking about loving ourselves as dependent on making sure that the people around us also have the tools to love themselves, then care is something that we are building in our culture, the culture of our home, the culture of our organizations, the policies of our companies, and of our nation writ large, loving ourselves caring for ourselves as part of what it means to fight for the world that we want, is I think, you know, is the feminist intervention here. And it's precisely because too many women of color have not only bore the brunt of injustice but bore the brunt of movements for justice. In other words, the movements are fought on their backs or over their dead bodies, and they're saying “No, no, no, we have to last. We matter.” And we can last together if we are prioritizing each other's care as a way of loving ourselves along the way.
Ayana Young Boy does it feel like you really hit the nail on the head with the cynicism, vibe around self-love. And, you know, dominant culture has sought to commercialize love, and so I think for some, this notion of revolutionary love may be harder to really grasp...How do you situate revolutionary love, not as a feel-good pursuit, but as an invocation of a warrior’s strategy?
Valarie Kaur It's really hard, isn't it? I mean, oh, gosh, you know, to be out there with this message of love has been so challenging and fascinating and, you know, life-giving too. I find a few different challenges and one is that, yeah, I have to really define no, no, no, no love is not the feel good thing, it’s not civility, it’s not you know forgiveness without thought of accountability. It's not these things and then I have to really show what it is. And I do that through telling story, and showing stories of revolutionary love, the book is filled with them. And then even when people hear and understand this call to revolutionary love without limit, some of them are like, what you want me to love my opponents? The demagogue in office, the abuser, the white supremacists marching with the Confederate flag, and then I have to really break down what I mean by the ethic of love, you know, it doesn't mean you have to feel for them, it just means I invite you to wonder about them, to see the wound in them. And to wonder about the cultures that radicalized them, the context that allows them to do what they do. Then I have to remind them that you know, doing this is not just a moral act, it is a strategic act, it is how we become smarter advocates. There is no such thing as monsters in this world, only people who are wounded and the more that we understand those wounds, the smarter our policies will be, our visions for the future will be visions that might liberate the, too.
But then I have to do the work of saying, remember, revolutionary love is practiced in community, it's not the sacrifice of an individual, it is a practice of community. So at any given moment, you know, we have a different form of love that we're called to at this moment. So if you are someone who has a knee on their neck, it's not necessarily your role in that moment to look up at your oppressor and try to wonder about them. Your job is to stay alive to let the next breath in, that is your revolutionary act. If you are someone who is safe enough, or brave enough to wonder about those kinds of opponents, when some of us cannot, then we need you now, we need you in that labor. So this is where role literacy is really vital. You know, where do I belong? What am I called to do in this moment, in this season of my life? Do I need to focus on loving ourselves, to help my community process our grief or trauma or rage? That's certainly where I am as a woman of color after the last year, the last four years, really the last 20 years? Or are you someone who is ready to build those bonds of solidarity with the communities who need you, to march with them, to grieve with them, to fight for them? Or are you someone who is in a position to reach out to some of those opponents to come to be in relationship with them, to give us information about what is driving them, so we understand them more deeply. So we're smarter, but also open up the possibility of transformation. Might not be this year or next, but maybe in five years, maybe in ten, maybe in twenty.
I believe that redemption, transformation is a possibility for almost all of the opponents that we are raging against now, because I've seen it. I sat with former white nationalists, and prison guards, and soldiers, my own former abusers and I tell these stories in this book, in my book, See No Stranger and every time I think it's impossible, I mean, sometimes it is, sometimes no change takes place. But when I choose to wonder and stay in relationship, then the impossible future of reconciliation suddenly opens up and transformation is a reality. So to let wonder lead us in those pursuits and to support each other to play different roles in the movement, I think, to reflect on what my role is, at this moment in my community, in my institution, in my home, in my life. That's what it means I think to practice revolutionary love as a way of being in the world.
Ayana Young Yeah, thank you so much for just being really clear about this, the privilege of being able to love or sit with one's oppressor and how to channel that divine rage. And just that, yeah, I really, I think that was really good for us to hear. I think about what it means for our collective healing to sit with those who we see as our enemy, I think about how a great deal of listening is required, and I’m reminded of a quote from psychotherapist and author, Miriam Greenspan, who writes: “Without a listener, the healing process is aborted. Human beings, like plants that bend towards the sunlight, bend towards others in an innate healing tropism. There are times when being truly listened to is more critical than being fed.” Can you share with us an example of when you’ve seen healing catalyze through the process of listening, particularly amongst two parties that may have otherwise never given each other the time of day?
Valarie Kaur Oh, maybe it's because Atlanta is still in my mind, the massacre in Atlanta, that the last time Asian Americans were massacred at that scale was when it was my people, the Sikh Americans killed in Oak Creek, Wisconsin when a white supremacist opened fire in a Gurdwara in 2012, I was there for many days, for weeks, for months really and I could see exactly what you named, and Miriam's quote. In the wake of the bloodshed, how essential it was for us to be seen, to be heard, for our suffering, for our loss to be recognized by the local community. I remember standing in front of the caskets that were open at the memorial, you know, looking into the faces of people who look like my parents and just feeling like I was about to fall into the abyss when the doors of the high school gymnasium flung open and there were 1000s of people, 3000 people, neighbors, who flooded through those doors to simply witness us. Listen to us, listen to the sons and daughters tell the stories of their parents killed to grieve with us. And how that wasn't some secondary work or something that was nice to do. No, that was foundational to our healing, and to our ability to organize later to change federal hate crimes policies. One of the people who came to grieve with us was Arno Michaelis, a former white nationalist, white supremacist who actually started the hate group that radicalized the gunman. He showed up to grieve with us because he was ravaged with guilt, and he and Pardeep Kaleka, the son of the slain Gurdwara leader, became friends. They call each other brothers. They heard each other's stories, they listened to each other in a way that turned them into brothers. And now they travel together to schools across Wisconsin and the country telling their story about what it means to lead a life after hate. I mean, these stories of revolutionary love, of possibilities opening up when people have the courage to sit and listen to one another. And they're all around us. You know, I think that having the courage to tell them again and again, as much as we tell the stories of atrocity is how we encourage new generations to practice it, to say you can do it too, you can do it in your own life, in your own home, in your own intimate spaces. You can practice listening, as an act of love.
Ayana Young Yeah, and I know for myself, sometimes just listening and acknowledgment is the majority of the healing, just that the relief that can come with that, and connection is so important. Oh Valarie yeah, as we come to a close I think about how I know so many folks who have become disaffected by activism or others who are intimately feeling the scale of the task at hand. I’d like to share one final quote from you: “We can turn to our wisdom traditions for practices that give us courage. In his time, Guru Gobind Singh designed the Dilruba, a string instrument small enough for his soldiers to carry on their backs into the battlefield, so that they could touch the space of joy and love through music, song and poetry in the mornings before they faced the fire.” How have you personally been able to retain joy amidst the fire?
Valarie Kaur Do you know as you're speaking, I'm looking at my actual dilruba in the corner of my room, you know, it was after 2016, after that last presidential election with everything we were up against, I thought, okay, I got to deepen my spiritual game here, I gotta up my game. And so what better solution then to learn how to play the actual instrument that our ancestors had designed for us, to give us a sense of serenity and equanimity, even in the fire. I still can only play the scale, but I can play the scale very, very well. And that is one source of joy, is music, you know, to bring music into the day, you know, to let myself sink into the sensation of bringing the tea to my lips, or, you know, to afford myself a moment of looking out the window and, and taking in the blue sky, or to give myself a deep night of sleep and let myself dream and let myself have some time in the morning to remember my dreams and play with my dreams. And all of these ways, our little ways to let breath in, you know, the midwife says breathe and push and then breathe again and then push and then breathe again. So to weave these little moments of breath throughout the day, and throughout my week, throughout the season in my life is how I've come to let joy in more and more and more.
And my children and I have this practice where we do dance time, almost every night, even the dark nights, even when it's difficult, where we're dancing together just one song, it's only, you know, two and a half minutes. And it's enough, it's enough for me to feel this kind of rising energy in me and I'll leave you with, you know, one last vision from the Sikh faith. It's called charhdi kala, and when you say joy what I really mean charhdi kala, what I really think of is charhdi kala. And this term charhdi kala is really, it's something that we say to each other? Are you in charhdi kala? It’s something that you are in, it's something that happens to you, it's like a current that carries you and it's often translated as eternal optimism. But it's really not about the future at all, or about an idea that you hold in your head about the future. It's about the spirit that you're in, the state that you are inside, here and now in the present moment.
So I translate charhdi kala as an ever-rising spirit, even in darkness, ever-rising joy, even amidst the pain of labor. You know, joy is possible even on the birthing table, between the labor pains, my husband was making me laugh. At my friend Joyce’s side, when I was helping her die, she would make me laugh, even in the midst of pain, even on the frontlines of protest. Even when we are facing the fire hoses, or the army of police officers in the street, even when we are you know, battling our own internal demons or struggles behind closed doors, when we are just trying to find the light, find survival if we can just, even in those moments, just allow ourselves one deep breath, sink into the present moment, let in a sense of wonder, then joy might find us again, might carry us again and it might feel like that sparkling rising energy inside of the body that I have after we dance every night with the babies. When I go to sleep these days, I think of my day as an entire lifetime with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I ask myself what was the hardest part of this lifetime, what am I grateful for, and what was the most joyful? And every lifetime, no matter how hard the day, you know, has a moment and offering of joy. And paying attention to it allows it to grow as a felt sense in my body that returns me to charhdi kala. And in the morning, you know each day is a new lifetime, a surprising gift that we receive. So I turn to the children and we say to each other I get to be alive. I get to be alive today. I get to be alive today with you. And that's enough.
Ayana Young Thank you so much for closing us out like that. That was really beautiful. But just one more thing before we end, which is how can listeners connect with your work further?
Valarie Kaur Oh, I am just so excited to share with everyone our Learning Hub. If you go to ValarieKaur.com you will see the Revolutionary Love Learning Hub and there are teaching tools, videos, original artwork, original music, and opportunities to take courses there, we're just getting started. And we'll keep adding to this Learning Hub as we build, as we grow this movement together, and if you want to be in touch in real-time, then Instagram is where I'm most present, you can find me my handle is @ValarieKaur on Instagram and there I'm posting every few days and often have invitations to keynotes and workshops and free opportunities to convene, to engage in guided meditation, to find each other in community. So those are the two places that you can find me and that we can be in community together. And I just want you all to know that you know if you are feeling this call to love in your heart, you are not alone. It is in the zeitgeist and this is how we are going to lead through this new era together.
Ayana Young Yes, yes, I want that. And thank you Valarie so much for your time and the medicine of this conversation. It's been honey on the heart and I really appreciate it.
Valarie Kaur Thank you Ayana and thank you for what you do every day.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by Amaara and Madeleine Sophia. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Julia Jackson.