Love as a Sacred Duty
Background
As polarization rages across the United States, it’s so easy to become fixated on what sets us apart from others, ignoring the ways we’re connected as members of the same human family. It’s become more acceptable than ever to live in an echo chamber where the only voices we hear are from those who think the same way we do, look like us, and act in the same ways.
The result is rising cruelty. Increasing inhumanity. Greater disconnection. More intense crises of spirit.
What might happen if we realized that such hyper self-centeredness is fracturing the precious “we” in our communities? And that loving each other – not just despite our differences but in celebration of them – is the cure for what ails us?
Initiative Overview
The Revolutionary Love Project dares to imagine communities as places where that kind of love can flourish. Starting in California and spreading from there, it’s building a movement throughout the U.S. to make love the foundation of who we are and what we do.
Valarie Kaur, founder, executive director, and also a visionary author and civil rights advocate, describes the organization’s mission like this: “At the Revolutionary Love Project, we’re asking ‘What could change if love became the common goal for everyone?’ The Revolutionary Love Project inspires and equips people to build beloved community, centered on the ethic of love. Together, we’re teaching how to ‘see no stranger,’ be brave with grief, harness rage, listen across differences, reimagine our institutions, and fight for shared humanity.”
Key Components
The Revolutionary Love Project directly supports individuals and communities by providing practical tools and inspirational experiences focused on the ethic of love. Its efforts to date include these outputs:
Organizing educational and inspirational gatherings via The Revolutionary Love Bus Tour, which brings together communities across the United States to learn and practice revolutionary love
Providing keynote addresses, lectures, films, and workshops
Developing and distributing the Revolutionary Love Compass, a downloadable resource outlining 10 core practices, accompanied by a step-by-step guide for incorporating them into daily life
Offering online training materials and courses tailored for educators, community leaders, early childhood professionals, parents, and families to help them apply the ethic of love within their contexts
Impact
“Each of us has a role to play in healing, reimagining, and rebuilding our nation…… Revolutions happen not only in grand moments in public view but also in the spaces where people are coming together to inhabit a new way of being. We birth the beloved community by becoming the beloved community.”
— Valarie Kaur, Executive Directory & Founder of The Revolutionary Love Project
250+ million people reached through in-person and virtual mobilization events
115+ worldwide headlines from CNN to NBC, NPR to the AP, PBS to “People” Magazine
Tens of thousands of downloads of learning materials and courses
250+ partner organizations and visionary leaders supporting and amplifying the movement
#1 LA Times Bestseller awarded to founder Valarie Kaur’s book “See No Stranger”
Conclusion
The Revolutionary Love Project centers its work on reclaiming love as a sacred duty for justice, healing, and transformation. Guided by the values of love, truth, and integrity, it affirms life as a gift and upholds the dignity of every person.
As one participant, Anusha Mehar, a Denver-based writer, producer, and cultural organizer, states, “There is some sort of chemical magic that happens when you bring people together in a sacred place, just by naming it sacred. And we’re trying to create these little pockets of the world as it could be, those spaces in between where you don’t have to confront all of the powers that be all at once. You just create something beautiful and let it change from the inside out.”
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