By Anna Blaedel
In a 1977 speech about children’s literature and the creative spirit, poet June Jordan offered a three-word statement of belief that has become foundational to my own faith, a plumbline for my theology and spiritual practice: “Love is lifeforce.”
A few nights ago I had a vivid dream, in which everyone I love was gathered in one place. Spacetime bent as here entangled there and the dead rejoined the living. My grandma, dead for almost two decades now, was talking with the ex-lover I always wished could have met her. A dear friend who died almost three years ago now was laughing with my sister. The old woman peace activist who first mentored me in Christian solidarity with Palestinian liberation was holding the newborn infant of the dear friend who gave me a copy of Jewish Voice for Peace’s book On Antisemitism not long after the peace activist died years ago; both the book and a picture of my beloved mentor have sat nestled together on my altar for weeks. One of my very favorite people, who really might not know how to cook an egg, was serving all my favorite foods, while my youngest nibling was happily tucked under the table, tickling my feet and eating cake. It was wonderful.
I awoke longing to experience that reality, accessible only in the register of dreams. I also awoke sated, infused by the presence of love palpably flowing through my life.
Love is lifeforce.
Love is an animating energy not bound by space or time.
Love hallows life, exactly as it is–so very precious, and yet so callously made precarious.
Love also haunts life, provoking dreams of what could yet be.
Audre Lorde reminds us that we cannot discount as luxury our dreams, or poems, or love; they energize the creative power necessary to sustain the sacred labor of, as Mother Jones put it, mourning the dead and fighting like hell for the living.
“I believe that the creative spirit is nothing less than love made manifest,” Jordan continues. “I see love as the essential nature of all that supports life.”
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone,” wrote Ursula K. Le Guin. “It has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
Making love is an act of survival.
“And because we coexist on a planet long defiled by habits opposite to love,” writes Jordan, “it seems to me that the task of surviving and/or the task of providing for the survival of those who are not as strong as I am, is a political undertaking: Vast changes will have to be envisioned and pursued, if any, let alone all, of us will survive the destructive traditions of our species. Enormous reversals and revisions of our thinking patterns will have to be achieved, somehow, and fast. And to accomplish such lifesaving alterations of society, we will have to deal with power: we will have to make love powerful.”
In 1982, a few years after her speech, Jordan published a poem about the Israeli military’s massacre of Palestinian in refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila. The backlash was fierce. For the rest of her life, Jordan would point to the gap in her bibliography spanning over a decade, when publishers refused to work with her.
Sriram Shamasunder was a student of Jordan’s taking her Poetry for the People course. He would go on to found HEAL, an organization that trains and transforms frontline health workers, including Indigenous communities in the US. He considers it a form of solidarity, inspired by Jordan’s life. Making love powerful energizes Shamasunder’s labor: “To live life with enough personal risk to grow the circle of who I might stand up for, and to bring the next generation (and the next) into that commitment.”
Over forty years later, destructive traditions–of dominance and supremacy, of militarism and greed and dispossession and careless slaughter, of waging genocide on stolen land–pose no less an urgent threat to survival. A “humanitarian pause” does not reflect a politics of love nearly powerful enough to save our collective life.
Mariam Kaba invites us to allow these urgent threats to radicalize us, rather than lead us to despair. Maya Schenwar believes radicalization is vital to surviving this moment in our collective life. “In a world facing ever more-urgent existential threats, growing more radical–going deeper politically, becoming more courageous in both our dreams and our daily practices–will indeed be a necessary condition for life on Earth.” She describes becoming radical as “a leap toward allowing yourself to believe in the possibility of our collective survival–and to believe that even if we don’t make it, we are all still worth fighting for, to the last breath.”
Powerful love knows we are each and all still worth fighting for, to the last breath.
Powerful love grows the circle of who we risk our lives, or at the very least our livelihoods, for.
Powerful love mourns the dead and fights like hell for the living.
Powerful love energizes us to become more courageous in our daily practices of Spirit and survival: breaking silence, abiding in truth, remembering the wisdoms that root us and radicalize us.
Powerful love holds us accountable to the enormous reversals we need, as Jordan says, “somehow, and fast:” Land Back. Ceasefire. Abolition.
Powerful love haunts us with all that is yet accessible only in the register of dreams.
Anna Blaedel (they/them) is co-director and co-founder at enfleshed, where they tend to the theopoetic intersections of spiritual, academic, and activist engagement. Anna chaplains University of Iowa students, and is a doctoral candidate in Theological and Philosophical Studies at Drew University’s Graduate Division on Religion. Waking before dawn, lingering in poetry, being an aunt, retreating to the woods or their basement woodshop, tending the garden, sharing silence, and feeding people delicious food are some of Anna’s favorite things.