Ch. 50: There Are No Victims On the Other Side of Preemptive Love

An excerpt from the final chapter of my book, Love Anyway.

As I pause on this pilgrimage to reflect for a few moments, there's a lot I don't know. but I do know this: we have to keep moving forward into the unknown.`

"How do I know if I'm doing this love anyway thing the right way?"

"How do we get to The More Beautiful World?"

"How will I know The More Beautiful World when I see it?"

If you've been asking these questions, you're already here.

Welcome.

When I started, I set out to draw a map, a step-by-step "how-to" guide for all us refugees running for our lives. But the more I mapped, the more it felt as if the terrain was changing beneath my feet. Mountains of injustice have fallen before our eyes. Valleys of oppression that were once dug out to keep people down and dependent have filled with love. Highways have formed for those who previously had only gravel roads. These changes are bringing people out and up and forward as they gain access to power that others of us have monopolized for centuries. And as they beat their path toward equality, their every step is changing the landscape itself.

Drawing maps, then, at this point in history, is extremely difficult. Because maps and models do not stand apart from reality, objectively reporting what "is." Maps actually change our relationship with what "is." They define what we think "is," even when they get it wrong. Which means even the most up-to-date maps can create new obstacles.

When the alpha-male European explorer and his empire-backed entourage took their first journey through the sacred forests of some native people, the path they trampled underfoot became known and accepted as "the way." With the trees felled and the grass matted against the ground, those who came after them pointed at the ecocide and said, "Look, we found the way!"

Others followed. And once the path was pretty well worn, it was drawn on a map, and cobblestones were laid, ensuring that almost everyone who came behind them would accept this road as the king's highway. Centuries later, they paved over the ancestors and the ancient spirits until now only parking lots and shopping malls remain.

I love these trappings we call progress. But the ground our lives is built on and the roads we've taken to get here were not always this way. Our way was not the way. It wasn't the Navajo way or the Inuit way or the Aboriginal way. The very acts of war and commerce defined the path forward and determined whose perspective mattered and whose did not.

Is this kind of map-making all bad? Is this merely The Way Things Are? Or is it all good? Is it progress toward The More Beautiful World? Perhaps it depends on the details. Or where you sit in the room. But this I do know: our maps are not the terrain. We don't have to accept every map or dictionary we've ever been handed. They are often wrong. Some are outdated. Some are too early and speculative. And even still, they always have the profound ability to define our movements and our thinking, where we think we can go and where we cannot, which, in turn, wears a path in the earth and in our collective consciousness that determines reality for everyone.

If that sounds confusing, let me try it this way: we used to think the world was flat. Our maps to the other side of The Way Things Are and into The More Beautiful World—our models for faith, our definitions of kindness and justice, and the realities they aim to represent—are all intertwined. The models and the people who make them and the people who follow them, we change each other.

The maps change our assumptions.

Our assumptions change our plans.

Our plans change our behavior.

And our behaviors change the land.

There is no land beneath our feet, no way forward, no path through, and no people we will encounter that are not affected by the assumptions we bring to the journey. Nothing has come before us that didn't affect the construction of the very maps we use to guide us through. In other words, everything is connected.

Across the globe, the stage is set right now for two kinds of responses: one that says, "Fire the cartographers! They're xenophobic stooges of The Way Things Are!" and the other that says, "Protect the past! They're trying to redefine the very essence of what is and what is right."

And this is the fork in the road where so many are currently stuck: Do we defend our maps or burn them all? Are they holy writ or wholly wrong? And if it ends up not being so black and white—if we dare admit there was wisdom in the hearts and minds of some who have come before, mixed as it may have been with errant assumptions defined by the maps of their time—what will that mean for the future? And if we admit there is wisdom in the voices who are questioning everything, what will that mean for the past?

How are we going to take the next step into the unknown? And who are we going to take it with?

As for me, I refuse to burn up everything that has come before, as though an error in one place could negate the wisdom in another. But I also refuse to accept The Way Things Are just because it's the way things have always been. With this book and this message, I've gambled everything on a third option: a narrow way called "preemptive love."

"But what do you believe now, Jeremy?"

"Defend yourself! Define yourself!"

"What team are you on?"

"Are you one of us?"

I am.

Whether you want me or not. I am one of you.

I share your beliefs. I share your doubts. I share your fears. I share your hopes. I share your dreams. Maybe not all, but enough. Enough to know I have something to learn from you. Enough to let my life speak for itself. Enough to accept that you still might not accept me. And enough to love you anyway.

The response from some will be: "You're capitulating to culture. You used to stand for something. Now it seems you'll fall for anything."

The response from others will be: "You're no friend to the marginalized, co-opting our agenda while refusing to burn The Way Things Are to the ground. You're out of touch. Love anyway is the battle cry of the privileged."

But the rejectionists alone cannot get us to The More Beautiful World, because tomorrow’s conflicts are rooted in the ostracism and estrangement of today. It’s the most predictable thing on the planet, as though we were nothing more than conduits for passing on our pain.

But there's a better way—a better world. It's already here all around us. I've seen it. And surrounded by the heroes in this book, I've lived it.

So here's my invitation: accept that the world is violent and unfair and scary as hell…and make a commitment to love anyway. When the violence comes, we are not required to return fire. When rejection and ostracism come, we do not have to reject and ostracize in return. When we decide to love anyway as a practice and a discipline for life, we can transform these destructive forces and use the energy to fuel us forward in ways the world has yet to see.

But let's be clear: we will be mistaken for the enemy.

If we're doing it right, preemptive love will take us so far behind enemy lines that those who watch the battlefield on their tiny screens will not be able to distinguish us from the actual enemy. Their top-down view of these conflicts will never be able to comprehend what we are living on the ground. We can try to explain the terrain, but in the end, it must be lived. Our decision to love anyway will put us at ground zero with the accused, while the drone operators and social media naysayers drop bombs on our heads. Our proximity and our ability to go back and forth across enemy lines, smuggling people into The More Beautiful World, are our greatest strengths, and they will likely be what get us killed.

But what a way to go!

Of course, they'll say we defected. We left, we lost the plot. We were somewhere we weren't supposed to be. But don't mistake being attacked for being a victim. We chose to challenge The Way Things Are. We chose to go where no one else will go, to love the people no one else will love.

Besides, they can't take our lives if we are giving them away.

So count the cost before you go.

Pay the price up front.

Because there are no victims on the other side of preemptive love.

But grace for the enemy who would slit our throat.

Forgiveness for our own when they stab us in the back.

Release for myself and the things I've done.

Room to grow.

And peace for us all.

Excerpted from Love Anyway: An Invitation Beyond a World that’s Scary as Hell by Jeremy Courtney