I want
to wish you all a happy Valentine’s week! I confess that I am an incurable
romantic so I celebrate the entire week before Valentine’s Day. (Jill doesn't seem to mind!) I hope you’ll
take time to celebrate this holiday with someone you care about. The older I
get, the more I realize the importance of love and friendship.
What I want to
reflect about today is love and justice. I am glad that the ICUJP’s statement
of principles acknowledges the power of love and sees love as a force for
social transformation. We recognize:
·
the
power of love to overcome hatred;
·
the
power of mercy to conquer vengeance;
·
the
celebration of our common humanity and the sacredness of human life;
·
and
our calling to build a just, equitable, and peaceful world.
Our ICUJP
statement of principles conjures up the core principles of the Abrahamic faiths:
justice, peace, truth and mercy are seen as inextricably connected. You can’t
have real justice without mercy, you can’t have real peace without justice. You
can’t have love without truth. In Psalm 85:10 the Psalmist expresses this
interconnectivity in poetic terms. “Steadfast
love and truth meet; justice and peace kiss each other.”
Justice is essential to the ethical life. It means
treating people fairly, giving each person what they deserve or what they have
earned. When an injustice is done, there should be consequences for the wrong
doer. Mercy goes a step further and gives people what they need regardless of
merit. This may seem unfair to some who are justice-oriented, but it’s the
basis of the Golden Rule: “Treat others the way you’d like to be treated, not
the way you deserve to be treated.” Mercy is not about fairness, it’s about
healing relationships. When someone does an unjust or hurtful act, mercy seeks
to bring about reconciliation through truth, forgiveness, and reparation. This
is the basis of Restorative Justice.
How does this apply to our work as peace and justice
advocates? Let me begin with the example of John Woolman, an eighteenth century
Quaker abolitionist, who spent 40 years trying to convince Quakers that it was
wrong to enslave human beings. Four years after his death, in 1776, Quakers unanimously
decided that you couldn’t be a Quaker if you owned slaves, and most historians
agree this wouldn’t have happened without Woolman’s tireless advocacy. In his
autobiography Woolman talks about how love was the motivating factor that led
him to advocate for the abolition of slavery, and to go to the homes of Quaker
enslavers and “labor” with them, so that they would see that what they were
doing was contrary to the love ethic of Jesus and hurt them as much as it hurt
those whom they enslaved. This work took great patience and love.
When I became a Quaker in the 1980s, Ronald
Reagan was president and we seemed to be on the brink of a nuclear war. During
this dark time I met a Quaker woman named Janet Riley who was trying to
deescalate the conflict between Russians and Americans through a book project
that would dispel stereotypes and show our common humanity. I went with her to
Moscow for the first time in the midst of a Russian winter armed with postcards
with the words of William Penn in Russian: “Let us then try what Love will do: for if men did once see we
love them, we should soon find they would not harm us.” When Russians found out
that we were Quakers, they immediately trusted us because Quakers had reached
out to the Russians after WW I and provided aid when Russians were starving.
Quakers had also visited the Soviet Union during the McCarthy period to build
bridges of friendship. The Russians knew that Quakers were genuine about
seeking peace. We worked with Russian writers and publishers and not only
jointly published a book of stories and poems, we also formed friendships. We
played a small but not insignificant role in the citizen diplomacy movement
that helped end the Cold War.
Acts of love and kindness can bring about profound changes
not only in our personal lives but in society. The Jesus movement was about
dismantling the empire and creating the “Kingdom of God,” a community in which
everyone would be treated as equals, with kindness and respect, and poverty
would be ended. Some early Christians put this ideal into practice, sold their
homes and redistributed their wealth so there was no poverty among them (Act
4).
Gandhi and King believed in the power of love to transform
society and made love and truth the basis for their activism. Both men went out
of their way not to demonize their opponents, but to appeal to their better
nature. Their goal was to bring healing and unity as well as justice.
Many of us underestimate the power
of love, but not Dr. King. In the 1960s he wrote “Love is the greatest force in the
universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos…” Let me add that practicing
love isn’t easy: it takes commitment, patience, kindness, and a willingness to
listen compassionately and admit one’s mistakes.
Everyone concerned about
social change comes to realize that love is essential, so I’ll end with the
words of a young medical student
who traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease
he witnessed, Yes, I am referring to Che Guevara. He wrote these oft-quoted
words:
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous,
let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a
great feeling of love. It
is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality […] We
must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed
into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.”
I think that all the great spiritual
teachers and leaders would agree it is the power of love that transforms lives
and the world. Let us therefore continue to try what love will do.
Margot Johnson is the California Advocacy Corps Organizer for the Friends Committee for National Legislation. She focuses on Environmental Justice and lobbying for the Environmental Justice for All Act. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
Margot Johnson is the California Advocacy Corps Organizer for the Friends Committee for National Legislation. She focuses on Environmental Justice and lobbying for the Environmental Justice for All Act. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
