Speaking Truth To Power With Love: Can it Be Our Most Courageous Grassroots Movement Yet?
I recently saw the new Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown,” and it brought back memories of the 60’s and 70’s when so many of us were full of hope that a wave of peace and brotherly love would spread out across America and around the world. Perhaps we had to grow up and mature to even begin to make that dream a reality in the face of an overwhelmingly industrial, military-minded social order, now characterized by massive disinformation and flagrant abuse of power.
But nothing could be more important today than to keep Speaking Truth To Power With Love… and keep speaking it.
If you’re anything like me, you probably know how very difficult this can be when you’re triggered or caught in everyday power struggles. We’re so conditioned to react with resistance and the need to be right and get our way, that it usually takes a lot of self-awareness and a commitment to heal relationships rather than dominate them, to actually listen and try to resolve an upset.
It’s especially difficult when others seem closed, righteous, or aggressive. It’s so automatic then to either give in (usually with resentment), fight back, or shut the door on the relationship.
Which too often means I have become close-minded, righteous, and combative myself!!!
And so I see the urgency to learn how to Speak Truth To Power With Love. This may be at the top of the list of evolutionary challenges for the human race.
What Does Speaking Truth To Power With Love Mean?
It means I learn how to take a stand for what I believe in without verbal, emotional, moral (righteous judgment), economic, physical or sexual violence.
It means a total commitment to nonviolence. It means exploitation, manipulation, discrimination, and war are off the table. But it means more than that, as you probably know in your own life. It means the goal is to come back to love and connection whenever possible, and a peaceful parting of the ways when it is not.
It seems impossible on a national or global level, doesn’t it?
It seems that what is so obviously desirable in our personal lives is not yet a consideration in the political realm.
Grassroots Movements
But could change really begin with me? Is there really such a thing as a tipping point? Does the Hundredth Monkey phenomenon apply to humans? If enough people learn how to Speak Truth To Power With Love as their service to the perpetuation of the human race, can we turn this thing around?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that there is nothing else for me to commit to.
And it is so much easier said than done…I am rarely able to Speak Truth To Power With Love at times of great conflict and pain in my personal life without, at some point, lapsing into a defensive posture that I have to catch and repair.
But I am fortunate that the people in my life, more or less, want repair and reconnection as much as I do. None of us would think of hitting, shooting, raping, kidnapping, starving, or bombing anyone.
But for many people and many governments, these acts of violence are an unquestioned strategy for dealing with conflict and forcing people to their will.
Writing and talking about America in Therapy has awakened in me an even deeper desire to learn how to Speak Truth To Power With Love outside the relative safety of my home or psychotherapy office.
Why? Because I am an American and a world citizen. I am a family member in the Family of Humankind. I don’t want to be a silent witness to abuse of our own citizens and attacks on people all over the world, and at the same time, I don’t want to fight Fire with Fire.
I don’t want to fight, period. I want to love better– more wisely, safely, powerfully, and effectively.
I want my real power to be the commitment to help heal, not conquer.
Which means, Speaking Truth To Power With Love.
Could a Grassroots Movement of this kind really take hold, beginning with you and me? Could it work?
I think yes, one blade of grass at a time.
*****
“On the path to peace, we will close the gap between Love and Politics”
*****
You can find me at www.phyllisleavitt.com
phyllis@phyllisleavitt.com
*****
Click here for my free PDF The 6 Secrets for Repairing Relationship After Conflict https://phyllisleavitt.com/wp-content/uploads/The-6-Secrets-To-Repairing-Relationships_-How-to-Reconnect-After-Conflict.pdf
Take the Free Conflict Type Quiz on my homepage at www.phyllisleavitt.com and find out your Conflict Type
*****
America in Therapy: ORDER NOW from all major booksellers, and please write a review!
A Light in the Darkness
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Fire-Road-Home-2/dp/0998800007/
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Fire-Road-Home-2/dp/0998800007/
Thanks for being a loyal email subscriber. We appreciate hearing from you. Let us know if you ever have any questions.
0 Comments