{"id":131,"date":"2021-04-03T07:21:22","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T07:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/?p=131"},"modified":"2021-04-03T07:21:22","modified_gmt":"2021-04-03T07:21:22","slug":"2021-4-3-9xkmkj3haxlqpgz183ws55wwmkoqxa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/?p=131","title":{"rendered":"Seeing No Stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valarie Kaur is a Sikh activist and civil rights lawyer who writes about the \u201crevolutionary love\u201d of \u201cseeing no stranger.\u201d Though Ren\u00e9 Girard believed the Gospel could transform our impulse to scapegoat, people of the Sikh faith have been more faithful to practices of nonviolence and compassion than many Christians. Valarie writes: <\/em><\/p>\n

See no stranger<\/em> has become a practice that defines my relationships. . . . Seeing no stranger begins in wonder. It is to look upon the face of anyone and choose to say: You are a part of me I do not yet know. <\/em>Wonder is the wellspring for love. Who we wonder about determines whose stories we hear and whose joy and pain we share. Those we grieve with, those we sit with and weep with, are ultimately those we organize with and advocate for. When a critical mass of people come together to wonder<\/em> about one another, grieve<\/em> with one another, and fight<\/em> with and for one another, we begin to build the solidarity needed for collective liberation and transformation\u2014a solidarity rooted in love. . . .<\/p>\n

Out in the world, I notice the unconscious biases that arise in me when I look at faces on the street or in the news. To practice seeing each of them as a sister or brother or family member, I say in my mind: You are a part of me I do not yet know<\/em>. Through conscious repetition, I am practicing orienting to the world with wonder and preparing myself for the possibility of connection. (Sometimes I do this with animals and the earth, too!) It opens me up to pay attention to their story. When their story is painful, I make excuses to turn back\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s too overwhelming\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s not my place\u201d\u2014but I hold the compass and remember that all I need to do is be present to their pain and find a way to grieve with them. If I can sit with their pain, I begin to ask:<\/p>\n

What do they need?<\/em> Listening to more stories, learning about a community\u2019s history, or showing up to vigils or marches or memorials gives me information for how to fight for them. I seek out organizations that are already fighting for them and offer my voice or time or money or labor to assist them. When I worry that I\u2019m not enough, I ask myself: What is <\/em>mysword and shield? How will I fight? What will I risk<\/em>? When I get overwhelmed, I ask: What is <\/em>my role in <\/em>this moment? <\/em>I remember that I only have to shine my light in my corner of sky.<\/p>\n

\u2014 as quoted by Fr Richard Rohr in his Daily Meditations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valarie Kaur is a Sikh activist and civil rights lawyer who writes about the \u201crevolutionary love\u201d of \u201cseeing no stranger.\u201d Though Ren\u00e9 Girard believed the Gospel could transform our impulse to scapegoat, people of the Sikh faith have been more faithful to practices of nonviolence and compassion than many Christians. Valarie writes:  See no stranger has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}