The more you are motivated by Love, the more fearless and free your action will be.
–Dalai Lama
How do we practice Compassion, which we describe as Radical Love, in times like these?
First, we have to know what “Radical Love” means. Radical Love is a process, not an end. It shifts like currents in a river, it swells and ebbs, but never ends. The radical love journey is the reward, and is as unique as each person’s life, experiences, and wisdom.
In past newsletters we’ve talked about decolonizing, envisioning, the struggle to shift age-old systems of advantage and oppression. Love is the fuel for that work – a fully renewable fuel that grows and returns each time you give it. Radical Love begets Radical Love. It helps me remain present and generous at times I’d rather withdraw and it helps me remain healthy and compassionate when I do withdraw.
As new challenges emerge, we must constantly tend to and renew our capacity to love. How can I really pay attention to what’s going on, yet still maintain the inspiration needed to support the world around me? How can I remain connected without letting the news bring me down to a non-functioning place? It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of large nations and power structures moving in spite of communities; it’s easy to go to a place of grasping and retreat. But grasp and retreat stems from a scarcity mentality.
Radical Love feeds and grows from abundance. When I find myself leaning towards a scarcity mentality, I know there’s no magic answer. But I know putting my hands in the dirt helps. Sowing wildflowers helps. Caring for who and what is around me helps. Being in and on rivers helps. I am renewed by focusing on what I can see, touch and care for, and then really caring for it.
Our Radical Love here at CDE goes out to the strong Ukrainian and Russian communities in our hometown of Portland, as well as to all oppressed communities around the world. Our Radical Love goes out to the communities bracing for wildfire season, to all communities struggling for clean and abundant water. It goes out to Indigenous Peoples battling pipelines as they remind us time and again, “Water is Life.” We send Radical Love to their wisdom, and to the waters. We send Radical Love to all our relations.
Yes, water is life. Love is life. There’s a lot of beauty out there, and our power lies in seeing and sharing that beauty, even as we struggle.
In Radical Love and abundance,
Queta González
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