The Art of Radical Love
Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris
September 9, 2007
Call to Worship
These words are from Sharon Welch’s After Empire:
“What if we realized that caring about injustice is not the result of our astute sociopolitical analyses, our compassion, our courage, and our will but is, rather, the result of being loved, recognized, and seen by others?
We see as we were seen; we love as we were loved.
Longing for justice and mourning and raging in the face of injustice are the gift of the ancestors, the gift of “all our relations.”
This recognition. . . calls us away from prophetic denunciations of other people’s hard-heartedness and closed-mindedness. It calls us from any satisfaction in merely denouncing structures and peoples who exploit or ignore others. When we acknowledge the strength and dignity of others, when we empathize with the suffering of others, and when we cast our lot in acts of creating justice, our selves are enlarged by the blessings of openness, the blessings of an open heart, and the blessings of an enlivened imagination.”