Valarie Kaur: the path of revolutionary love

The future is dark. Is this the darkness of the tomb—or the darkness of the womb? Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, innovator, and best-selling author of SEE NO STRANGER. She leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice. In this conversation, Valarie Kaur reframes the present moment in history as one of transition and calls on us to show up in the labor of birthing a new future.

Watch the video, here.

George: [00:00:00] Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm your host, George Mason and I am so pleased to welcome to this conversation, Valarie Kaur. 

Valarie is an activist and a lawyer, a civil rights advocate and a well to me, kind of cultural phenomenon right now. And it's, wonderful to welcome you to [00:00:30] Good God, Valarie and soon we will welcome you, to Dallas, because Faith Commons, our organization, is bringing you here. So, , Let this be, , an initial welcome, and then we'll see you in person.

Valarie: Oh, I'm so honored to be here with you, George. I cannot wait to see you all in person in Dallas. 

George: Terrific. Well, I'm going to hold up the book. I have another copy, a hard copy, over my shoulder, so everyone should see it. And this is the paperback version it's titled, See No [00:01:00] Stranger: a memoir and manifesto of revolutionary love. I, I think I'd like to begin just even with the first word, Valarie, "See," because I think in your book, you really tell us that this is a first step.

 Sometimes in our religious traditions, we become geared toward the things we believe, primarily. [00:01:30] And, I've been challenged by Barbara Brown Taylor and others to think, theologically in a different way first, and that is maybe before believing, beholding

Valarie: Mmm... beautiful. 

George: That, that we have to learn to see differently, and that leads us then to believe something different and behave differently. Right... So, I'd like you to unpack this language of "See No Stranger" which comes out of your[00:02:00] own religious experience and your Sikhism and I'd like you to talk about that idea a little bit with us as we begin. 

Valarie: Mmm, Nā ko bairī nahī bigānā, Nā ko bairī nahī bigānā. "I see no enemy. I see no stranger," this was the vision of Guru Nanak, the first teacher in the Sikh faith. He taught that we could look upon anyone or anything and [00:02:30] say, "you are a part of me I do not yet know." 

George: It's just an incredibly opening phrase. Yes.

Valarie: You know when I was a little girl, George, that way of seeing came easily. It was effortless. I grew up in the farmlands of central California among the cows and the horses and the, the orchards and the stars at night. I could see all of them and it was as if I could look at anything, any, anything around me and, and say, I, you are a part of me I do not yet know.

It [00:03:00] was as if wonder and being wonderstruck in our faith is called visman to live in visma, to live in the beholding, as you describe, is the primary orientation.

George: Mm-hmm

Valarie: ...that invites us to love. Because if I see, you know, we begin with like the ant on the leaf and the bird and the tree. But if we begin to look at other faces and say, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, sibling, beloved, you are a part of me I do [00:03:30] not yet know. I mean, that, that way of seeing then shapes everything that we do. What, what questions we ask, you know, who, who we sit next to on the school bus, where we choose to live, who we choose to love and marry, and ultimately what policies we support, what leaders we elect. It sounds like such a simple intervention to invite one, to see through the eyes of wonder, but in fact is revolutionary because it shapes the [00:04:00] world around us.

George: And yet, while it should be natural and it should be easy and it's part of the way we're made it a curiosity, a sense of wonder and awe, which is really at the beginning of all religious experience, nonetheless, it becomes difficult. , what are those things that get in the way of it that make. hard work for us. 

Valarie: Oh, I remember when it shut down for me. I was six years old on the [00:04:30] schoolyard. I was playing a house, so I was the baby and my best friend was the mommy. And I was on my knees when a little boy ran up to me, a little boy didn't know, older than me and looked at me and said, get up you black dog.

George: Wow. 

Valarie: I wanted to correct his mistake, George. I wanted to say, "no, but we're playing house not..." but I

saw the cruelty in his eyes and the way his lips curled. And I realized that nothing I could [00:05:00] say could change how he saw me to me, to him. I was black. I was brown, which made me black in his eyes, which made him superior and me inferior.

It was my first lesson in white supremacy, but I had no language for it. And when you're that young, what, what it shows up as they call it internalized oppression. But I feel like that little boy, I mean, what happened? The, the bell rang. He ran away, never saw him again. and then I got to, you know, but I complied, I, I got up, I got off my knees and my friend [00:05:30] who had, was holding my hand, let let go of my hand.

And, and we walk back to the line in silence as if both of us like the spell of our love had been broken by a messenger. Who who brought a message? That was actually not his, it was just came down through the centuries of white and black of inferior and superior. And it was like she was learning her social location as I was learning, but I wasn't angry.

You know, I was, I was ashamed. [00:06:00] I was ashamed that I feel like that was the beginning of me hearing a voice in my own head. That was like, you're, you're not. Good enough. You're not smart enough. You're not strong enough. You're not brave enough. You're not white enough. You're not Christian enough. You know, you are not enough.

And I think that that, that, um, severing that could have led to a complete shutdown in wonder for me, 'cause if, oh, you are going to see me [00:06:30] as an other, then that immediately invites a mirror reaction. Well, I will, I will see you as a them, but when I went home to my grandfather, you know, in tears, it was just ikun ikun God.

It was the, it was the oneness at the heart of our faith. He just sang the shabeds and he returned me to Nanak's vision that you have to even you have to refuse to hate others, even when they choose to hate you. to insist on wonder to insist on [00:07:00] seeing others as kin in this culture that is so hierarchical and death obsessed requires a vigilance.

George: Right?

Valarie: It requires a vigilance. And so my whole life has been this power struggle between the wise woman, the warrior woman that my grandfather projected in me. 'cause he would say my dear, don't abandon your post. You know, I'm a little girl in two long braids, but he saw me as a warrior, you know, a warrior to walk this path of love in, in our faith.

The, the, the ideal is the Sant Sipahi the sage warrior, the warrior fights, [00:07:30] the sage loves it's a path of revolutionary love. And my whole life has been this, been this power struggle between walking that path as the wise woman and the little critic who wants me to get strong, who wants me to get small who wants me to diminish others as- and diminish myself -as I have been taught. But I have finally learned that that vigilance requires a sovereignty to follow that compass of love that we hold in our hands, that our traditions have given us. And I think I am not [00:08:00] alone in this George. I think so many of us have heard that call to love have been struck by wonder early on in life only to see it shut down. And that means that if anything that I'm saying is resonating with you, it's just touching, uh, a wisdom that's already inside of you. It's just about how to surface it and strengthen it. And strengthen it in our connections and our community that we can build around us. And that is the birth of beloved community.

George: Well, that's, that's beautiful. And I think that one of the things that [00:08:30] those of us who have read your books, you know, stranger have, resonated with is your own story. Those who have just heard you talk about when you were six years old and, and all of that, that's just, oh, that's just a taste. I mean, Brene Brown would be so proud this vulnerability that you're sharing, right.

That you really have opened up in some of the most intimate ways about, , your own sexual abuse and your own experience with racism and your own struggles. That have given us a [00:09:00] mirror to ourselves in many ways. But, before it seems to me something can become a manifesto, the other part of your subtitle, this memoir idea, uh, gives us access to how this love works in a person.

Hmm. 

I also think that, you know, from many of our traditions we've begun to hear this phrase that all theology is autobiography, in some way. And you've helped us, I think, in that way. [00:09:30] Talk to us about your decision.

It seems quite brave and courageous to have revealed so much this, this memoir idea. You haven't just said, I have a prescription for the world I'd like to offer. You've told us what it's cost you to say these words and to practice these things.

Valarie: Yeah. I'm getting a little emotional . [00:10:00] I never planned to say and to share everything I did. I, I don't, I don't really subscribe to the, you know, share the sensational story for the sake of it. No, I, I, I, I had learned these hard truths through lived experience, both my communities and my own. And I remember it was, it was chapter four. It was, it was a chapter on rage and I was beginning to ask [00:10:30] myself, how did I learn that anger was a practice of love, like rage is the force that protects that, which we love. Like how did I learn that the hard way? Right. And that's when I discovered I, well, it was through the sexual abuse and it was through the healing and it was through the...

and I went to my husband and I, you know, he's more private than I am. So I was like, okay, my love let's, you know, give me another way. I can say these things so that I don't have to go there. And he looked at me and he said, tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth. [00:11:00] He said, don't censor yourself now. Pretend like no one's reading it. Tell the truth on the page. So, you know, for yourself, how you learned that thing about love and then come back and then we'll decide together what goes in and what stays out. And so, ah, fine! I have to do the work, you know, to sit with all that trauma and work through it and figure out like, why am I even telling it?

It feels, feels like a curse, but when you, when you find the meaning of it, it turns into a blessing. because then you're sharing it with others who may be going through the same [00:11:30] fires and can see that there's a way out and that they're not alone. And so I, I wrote it. And I went to him at the end and he read it and so said like, Well, it all, it all stays in.

George: Wow. OK. 

Valarie: So the brave thing may be let, letting it stay in 

George: Your mother though was helpful to you in, in, in dealing with that too. And I think that's, that's also, uh, a powerful part of your story too, when others were saying. No, you should hold your [00:12:00] tongue about these things that, uh, anger, rage is not appropriate and it doesn't bring about wellbeing and love and all of that.

She, she stepped to your side and, and coached you onward. Didn't she? 

Valarie: Yeah, that, that moment in our home, I'll, I'll never forget. We were in the, near the front door and of our house. I just have this picture of our extended family, my immediate family, just so beautifully supported, but there were members of my extended [00:12:30] family.

When I broke my silence around the sexual violence, who didn't want me to speak out. And it was my mother who stood between, she put her body between me and them. And there was fury in her eyes that I had never seen before. and, you know, my mother had an arranged marriage when she was 18. She struggled against a, a matriarchal figure in my mother-in-law, who was quite abusive.

Finally my father and [00:13:00] her finally found freedom, found stability, found peace, but she suffered a long time and, and she suffered and fought so that I wouldn't have to live the life that she did. So she, she was standing between us and saying not, not my daughter; no more. And that rage inside of her. I... ... She... 

My whole life I couldn't see her summon that for herself, but she summoned it for me. And she was [00:13:30] teaching me that my body was worth protecting that my life had value and that I could summon it for myself in order to fight for myself. And I, I think that's what. That's the great lie that so many women and women of color have been taught that that rage is the opposite of love.

That we're only as good or polite or lovable or spiritual as our ability to suppress our rage. But my mother taught me that no, your [00:14:00] rage carries information and energy and the solution is not to suppress it or to let it explode like so many men in our culture have been conditioned to. The, the solution is to process our rage and safe containers like, like our ancestors did.

So my mother, like the screaming and the sobbing and the shaking and the wailing , you know, how much I did with her and the singing, you know, the dancing, the moving, moving that energy. And once that energy's on the outside of you, you can ask what information [00:14:30] does this carry and how do I wish to harness this energy for what I do next?

And I call that harnessed energy, divine rage. The aim of divine rage, not vengeance it's to reorder the world, 

George: reorder the world... exactly vengeance. So, uh, so let, let's go to, to this idea, you talked about what you were feeling in your body and much of this book is about honoring that very thing. That is you, you even, you know, use. , the,[00:15:00] , imagery of birth and pregnancy and all those sorts of things to tell, tell us, to pay attention to our bodies in this way. And it's a beautiful metaphor that even a man, , can, , pay attention to. And learned from too, but you know, pain is a gift to us to tell us something is wrong. Right. And if we only, , medicate it, , repress it or whatever, then we don't, we don't honor the way we're [00:15:30] made and that gift. And so. I think so much religion is, is taught about being ideas that you have, , that to be spiritual is more in the world of ideas, but you've given us. A theology of the body to follow that, , helps us practice, , whatever faith we have , to reorder the world. Tell us about your sense of this connection to the body and why this is so important in revolutionary love. 

Valarie: [00:16:00] Oh, I just, I love how you describe that. Theology that comes from the body. I, I would say perhaps comes from the land too, like to be able to read our bodies to read land, to read space is, is a way to gather information for what we might be poised to do next in the practice of revolutionary love. Nanak said higher than truth is the living of truth [00:16:30] so you're right. It's very much out of like a thing that we believe. And rather it's a way of being, an orientation to a way of being, and the reason I think the body is so, um, central as a site of information, is that so many people ask me, 'cause we developed this gorgeous revolutionary love compass, you know, love for others. Love for opponents, love for ourselves. Love for others, the practic is: see no stranger. Love for opponents, the practice is tend the wound. Love for [00:17:00] ourselves, that practice is, breathe and push, let joy in. And they asked me, well, where do I begin? Where do I begin? Where do I start? And I was like, you know, I could sit here and tell you what I think you should do, but. If we just get quiet, your body has information for what you're ready for. For example, when it comes to loving, approaching our opponents with love that practice is called "tend the wound," but it begins with tending our own wounds. And so I'll ask someone, you know, at any given point , there, there [00:17:30] is, um, a practice that you're ready for and you're not ready for. Um, so when it comes to our opponents and wondering about them and listening to them, you know, bring to your mind's eye, someone, you consider an opponent, someone whose beliefs or actions, um, have hurt you or people you loved. And oftentimes people go to the, the hardest opponent

So I ask you to find someone that's a little bit easier to work with. You see their face in your mind. All right. [00:18:00] Well, notice what's happening in your as you picture them. Notice what's happening in your throat, your belly, your breath.

Hmm. If you are noticing a lot of activation and it's really uncomfortable, like fire rising in the cage of you, right? Like that's that's information [00:18:30] that this is not the time to wonder or reach out to that particular opponent, your, your task, my love, is to tend to your own wound, your own healing, let other people do that work, give them permission to do that work.

But if you are noticing just a little bit of discomfort, but there's still spaciousness inside of you to wonder about that opponent. Why? Why do they believe that? Why do they do that? What [00:19:00] are they listening to? What stories are they clinging to that make them feel like this is the only way they can be in the world and be safe?

Like what, what is their wound? And if those questions are arising from a genuine place inside of you, then that is information that you might be ready for that one conversation, or to listen to that one story or to do that bridging work. I think at any given point, we have a different role in the work of revolutionary love.

That's why we are [00:19:30] part of a movement, a broader community. 

George: Well, and, and this movement of a broader community is interesting because, you know, Faith Commons tries to say, we want everyone to bring their faith into the commons and to work together. And we don't want you to leave your faith away from the commons so that you can come together.

We want you to bring your faith and, , then we will learn more of each other and we will learn more of ourselves [00:20:00] because of that conversation. , much of this mindfulness that you're talking about, these practices of revolutionary love come from, , your Sikh tradition. A, , tradition, I think in America that many people do not know very much about.

We all know, and your book describes beautifully, just how often you are confused with Muslims, , and sometimes to tragic effect. , but, , Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world, right, a half a million in [00:20:30] America alone. And, , yet we know so very little about it. , yet it informs your whole life.

And in some ways, here you are, , in this moment of challenge in, in America. , stepping into a place of being a bridge person for us out of a minority, , place religiously and as a, , [00:21:00] woman, , where all the power structures and hierarchies of our American tradition are being challenged now in a way that is actually in my mind helping us to achieve , the great ideals of, our country to begin with and this robust religious pluralism and true democracy. , and so I'm, I'm wondering, , if you would just take a moment to say something about this sense of your place, [00:21:30] personally, and spiritually out of your tradition that you find yourself in and how, , how does that strike you? Does it strike you as, ironic in some sense, , surprising to you to find yourself in this place? 

Valarie: Oh, George, I feel it when you hold it up a mirror this is what you did. You held it be mirror. 'cause I, as I was hearing you, I said, yes. You know, as, as a Sikh, as a woman, as a woman of color as a mother from, from the central valley and from farming [00:22:00] farm country in California that little critic in me was so loud because all the messages I was getting from the powers that be are that you don't matter...

right?

Your faith doesn't matter. You viewed your stories don't matter. You don't matter. And only when I. , you know, you, you, you said something about all theology being autobiography. And I just wanna add to that layer of depth, because I think it's ancestral biography as well. It's like only when I was able to reach inside of [00:22:30] myself and feel my ancestors and the way that love coursed down through the generations through them and to me and gave me this way of seeing, could I sit in my sovereignty and say, no, I have something to offer. My people have something to offer that this struggle, we, you know, sit, I became an activist after 9/11, after a dear family friend was murdered. The first person murdered in a hate crime after 9/11 was Bebe sing Sodi.

And my entire life was spent [00:23:00] jumping up and down, trying to get Americans, fellow Americans to see us as victims. Just to know this was before social, just to know that we were being killed was the goal . And it wasn't until the massacre in Oak Creek, 10 years ago that I realized that it's, it's not enough to be known.

You know, black people are known, indigenous people are known, and their still oppressed. Like their still, we need to be more than known. We need to be loved. And that means it's up to us to switch from like, we're not just [00:23:30] victims. No, we are survivors. We are warriors. We are healers. We are teachers. We are visionaries and we have something to offer America about what it means to stand in love, to see no stranger . So it's taken me a long time to. To, um, embrace because I, you know, I've been in the interfaith movement for 20 years. I was, I was honored that I was just even in the space, you know, we could, we could say God and call him a he and have Christian prayer in Christian music and Christian setting.

And none of it, I, [00:24:00] none of it bothered me because I was just happy to be there. And. I'm realizing that, and now my fellow Christians are reaching out and saying, we don't want you just to be in the room. We want you to change the room. You know, and so I, I have found that my journey has been, um, sinking into an embracing the, um, the particular point of view that I have been given, knowing that there is wisdom here that can push the United States as a whole, because I, I believe you are right George the way that [00:24:30] I am describing this era that we are all living in is that this is an era of great transition. 

George: Right.

Valarie: And that just like on the birthing table, transition feels like dying, right? The crises come like contractions that are barely. Now there's barely a minute between them barely seconds between them before the next shooting, before the next images from the war between the next SCOTUS decision between the next death toll from the pandemic.

I mean, it's just upon us, upon us. There's barely time to breathe. And so it feels like dying. It feels like [00:25:00] disarray. It feels like it feels hopeless. And yet. On the birthing table. Transition is the stage that precedes the birth of new life. So that's why I return to the wisdom of the midwife when she says to breathe my love and then to push there's a kind of cadence, a kind of rhythm to sustain one's self through any long labor. And this is the longest labor that we are faced with. Will we birth a multiracial multi-faith democracy? [00:25:30] 

George: Precisely 

Valarie: a nation that has never been, you know, will we birth a species that learns how to live sustainably with the earth? 

George: Nice. 

Valarie: This all of us who are alive right now. we'll shape that outcome for future generations.

And so what we do right now, and every, not just the big actions, the way that the, the thousands of tiny gestures, the conversations, the encounters, the kind word, the, the brave step, [00:26:00] all of those. Shape what happens next? We are co-creating culture at every moment. And if at this moment, if everyone decided within them, wherever they were in the classroom at the boardroom in the home, on the street to, to see no stranger, it wouldn't take that long to transform our culture as a whole.

And, and, and so that, that is the, you know, I was always as an activist. I was always fixated on the march and the policy change and I believe sound government is necessary, [00:26:30] but not sufficient that the only way to transition our country and transition humanity is through a shift of culture and consciousness, a way of being, and seeing that leaves no one behind.

And that means each of us are midwives to that future that is longing to be born. And then every choice we make matters. And is enough and that you're not alone. And so my I've spent the last 20 years of my life organizing around hate. I have made a, a, a sacred vow, a [00:27:00] promise to spend the next 20 years of my life, organizing around love, building this movement with you for revolutionary love.

George: And we're eager to do it with you as well. 

Valarie: That's why I'm so excited to come to Dallas! We're building it together. 

George: I think the energy I hear in you actually answers the question I wanted to get to sort of last, I suppose, almost last. And that is, you [00:27:30] know, it's been almost six years now. Since the watch night service, , in Washington, DC, when you stood up and said the future is dark, but is it the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?

And since that time we've had the January 6th insurrection... capital riot. We've had, , the social unrest that comes from Supreme court [00:28:00] decisions and, , and so many other things. And we've just had the 10th anniversary of the Oak Creek massacre, , when, , there was such a tragic loss of life at the, , gurdwara in, in Oak Creek, the Sikh temple.

And, , yet, , I hear you. All the more committed to the idea that we have to give birth. We have to accept that it's painful, like a death for us to give [00:28:30] birth to new life, but dark as it is, , there's light ahead. And we have to be that.

Valarie: I want to show you my, my heart, George.

Some days are so deadly that I can taste the Ash in my mouth and it feels [00:29:00] like the darkness of the tomb.

Other days. I see people who have no obvious reason to love one another. come together. to grieve, to organize, to laugh, to dance, to eat, to serve, to become, [00:29:30] inhabit, to embody the beloved community that we believe we can be.

And that's when I, I see the darkness of the womb, I see glimpses of the world that is wanting to be born. I don't know if I'm gonna live long enough to see it, but I know that the most meaningful way I can be alive is if I show up with my whole heart, to [00:30:00] my particular role in the labor. When I am called and we are all being called right now.

George: Wonderful. Well with that, I will just say. What a joy it is to get to know you, , to have read you and to look forward to your coming to Dallas. , for those of you listening in before, , Valerie comes, , she will be with us on Thursday night, September 8th, at [00:30:30] Temple Emanuel, and also, , for a workshop at Paul Quinn college the next day. For those who want to go deeper and want to be part of this revolutionary love project here in Dallas. , and , , you can go to our website, , www.faith, commons.org, and you can register and come and join us. , you can get a book there at that time as well and meet Valerie. 

Valerie, it's been a joy to get to talk with you in this time, and can't wait to see you in [00:31:00] person. 

Valarie: I can't wait to be with my sisters, my brothers, my family. I can't wait to be with you, George. I'll see you soon. 

George: Thank you so much. 

Valarie: Thank you.