beloveds, i am basking and reveling in greater love, and feel called to testify!

in my life i have loved many people, in many ways, and been loved deeply in return. but i have also been experiencing something that i suspect is beyond the mutual love any two individuals can have, even at their best. it is a greater love, a sense that we are in the right moment in time, that we are many and enough, and the right people. that we are in the miracle.

greater love is what happens when many people fall in, or are in, or escalate in love with each other. all at once. the edges and sharpnesses soften, and the ways we can fit together become clear, and we realize our purpose is always greater than an individual drive. we are each part of the divine, so each of us has to individually reclaim that within ourselves, bring our piece to something that cannot be whole without us. we realize we belong to our time and place, with our complexities and critiques intact and accounted for; that we do not need to conform – in fact, it is the divergence that makes it feel so delicious.

and, lately, even when i’m alone, i can tap into the greater love, more and more often. it is a relaxing. it is not at all like i once imagined/projected love to be (an encompassing flame, a reaching forward into…some eternal future)…no. this is more profound. an eternal present. this is a moment in which we are completely alive and in connection. which, of course, reshapes the future, bending it away from numbness and complicity. we become part of the present, shaping a future where we can feel each other.

i am grateful that a lot of my life is spent in this state of greater love. i am grateful that i’m learning to tap into it, to choose it. that i am learning what enough is, what it is to work and be satisfied, to generate satisfaction in community with others – to be satisfied by the contributions of others.

i think movements are so strong when we cultivate greater-love with each other. and yes, there’s something about being open about the love between nodes in the pattern that helps the whole intricacy become a pattern of love.

i am thinking of a moment a while ago when a comrade in the throes of new love made a declaration of devotion at the start of a meeting – the beloved comrade next to them blushed and the love was so real and palpable it flooded the room. and all of us, who loved one or both of these comrades, oriented towards the brightness of that love, supporting it, letting it shape all of us in massive possibility.

i am thinking of how, in every place i’ve been for months, i have gotten into conversation with someone who was touched by the great and generous love of malkia and alana devich cyril. in connecting around that love, we, myself and this or that comrade – who i often only previously know through shared internet love of #mittsandmuffy – become more tender with each other, more trusting. we know that no matter what else is there, we share a recognition that love is real, that we have witnessed and participated in a greater love story in some small and meaningful way.

even today, i was in a meeting where we got to celebrate the birth of one of our humble, beautiful, committed comrades. we’d worked really hard for three days, and now we got to sing and speak testimony of someone who has given us so much. and even though the levels of intimacy in the room were wildly different, that greater love flooded through us and filled the room. i could feel us growing our capacity to sustain uncertainty and vision and rigor under pressure because we had love flowing through and between us. i could feel our love helping us grieve and hold the fear of white supremacist terrorism, borders, tyrants and corruption.

as i drove home from the airport, i saw something that looked like the embodiment of greater love: i live in a place i love – Detroit! and in michigan, god is often in the rearview mirror in the form of epic dramatic skies where the sun seems to pull apart the clouds to enter the world, incomprehensible. i wanted to pull over and make a video of that sky, to say to people – when we feel like this inside, i believe we are more connected and free. but i knew that it was the present moment, and my own attention to greater love, that made the moment. the most i can share is my feeling, my invitation to such awed attention.

i am going to keep studying and thinking on this. i want to keep learning how we authentically open our movements up for greater love to move between us, and out from us to those we must compel to join us in our move to freedom. and i want to keep unlocking my own capacity to be with, and in, greater love.

practice with me?