Last week, in our journey through the practices of Revolutionary Love, we began to listen more deeply to where we may be holding or feeling rage. Like pain in our bodies, our rage can help us be more aware of where it is we have felt wounded or threatened or violated, and help clarify for us where we, ourselves, need protection or healing. Especially, if we can let ourselves identify it and really feel it, we may find greater hope to not act upon it in destructive ways, but instead find constructive means to get our actual needs met.

This week, we’ll turn our focus from loving others to the deeper and more challenging invitation to grow in our love for our “opponents.” Valarie Kaur is careful to not focus this practice on loving our “enemies,” because the label enemy implies a more permanent, fixed relationship. Whereas, an opponent may be so only for a time or in a particular circumstance. 

I had a painful realization during the pandemic about how we had been engaging in (or rather not engaging in) ministry with certain members of our community. Prior to the stay-at-home order we received in 2020, I had been in staunch opposition to “online ministry.” Eventually, though, we all were thrust into an online-or-nothing season, for which I relented.

Then I met Gee Gee Ferrier.

We have officially entered into the season of Lent—an oft considered wilderness-like journey from the ashes of repentance to the dawning of new life in resurrection.

If nothing else, the life of faith should be one of transformation in which we are spiritually, socially, even physically, at times, moved from one place to another—one way of being to another. Moved from brokenness to wholeness, fear to assurance, despair to hope, grief to joy; from isolation to restoration, oppression to liberation, judgment to forgiveness, all as we follow on the path Jesus leads.

Has it happened to you that you’ve experienced certain moments in your life and knew immediately that you’d forever be changed? Okay, maybe not always in HUGE ways, but even on some subconscious, internal level, you knew that moment would stay with you a long time.

The first time I saw a dance show put on by the performing arts school at Southern Methodist University was one of mine.

As his disciples, we get to enjoy the blessings of Jesus’ presence with us—personally, intimately. And, there are times he invites us to follow him beyond the more comfortable spaces and relationships we have built to share what we have witnessed with others—broadening the experience of hope and blessing, and perhaps even the community with whom we can celebrate this good news of peace and joy.