#body empowerment

A NOTE ON #VALENTINESDAY & every day:

When I was a kid, my parents would say, “I love you so whole in the world.” It became the family mantra when saying “I love you.” My mother just texted it to my sister and me, and added, “Maybe it has a metaphorical meaning.” For three decades I’ve received and heard and said that line “I love you so whole in the world” without a second thought or further contemplation. When my mother slowed it down enough today to ask me pause, to consider the metaphor, I felt the phrase so wholly and holy.

There is so much importance in loving each other and ourselves wholly and whole. Unconditional love towards the self and each other is a key in unlocking the fear that ultimately manifests as violence and oppression. The myriad overt violence and oppressions in the last week alone have been - like all those before - unconscionable. So much of it - I can only assume - a result of perpetrators of said violence not feeling whole, or seeing the holy whole in others.

Today is a powerful day. It’s a day that began as a liturgical celebration of Christian saints with various legends and narratives surrounding its origins in the early Roman Empire. It’s become a day propagated by consumerism to tell us how we should be loved or how to love or who to love. And it’s also a day that the V-Day movement has turned into a global campaign to end sexual violence worldwide.

There are so many ways the world asks today to take shape. As if love - itself - can even be defined or contained. As if love - itself - can even be measured or sized. Even the notion of that which is “whole” - how too can even that be defined?

And yet, the notion of loving something so whole in the world - of loving it fully and entirely - feels like another key in unleashing the myriad fears that again and again separate us and perpetuate violence, in all unjust forms.

Regarding the devastating fire impacting Houston’s Muslim community this week, a friend noted how exhausting it is for the Muslim community - locally and at large - to have to convince others they are human. And I think about how again and again that happens with every marginalized body and voice. That #BlackLivesMatter came out of that very injustice and pain. That again and again this happens and still still still it must stop immediately immediately now.

And so, today, and every every every day - may we love each other and ourselves so whole in the world.

Happy February 14 - in whatever incarnation you choose to hold it.