Love|Balms is.... — LOVE|BALMS

Part I | Love|Balms is…

My living journey towards belovedness. My name is Joy Bronson, and I’m on an intentional journey of healing towards wholeness and fulfilled life, not just back to where I was “before things went wrong.”

And quite a bit has gone wrong, or at least not well. The people I should most expect to love me have harmed me. And I have harmed folks that I do love, and should love. I don’t want to return to how I was, how we were. And it’s not that all harm is avoidable, so much as quite a bit of it is, and also signals a lack of conscious intent to and understanding of love.

We will sometimes disagree with family. But we can choose to fight together with the hope of finding our way towards one another, or to fight against one another for the sole purpose of being the one that is “correct,” and even emotionally crushing a loved one for a sense of our own dominance. The pain felt in the death of loved ones is inevitable. The personal, communal, and global traumas borne of genocides, imperialist wars, maltreatment of refugees, and murders of transgender women are not.

I’m beyond tired of hurting, and of hurting others, of others hurting for no reason. I’m sick and tired of all of us being sick and tired. I desire so much for us to live and be well. I want us to live forward to the vision of loving relationship in which I hope we can be together, that I can be with my genuine Self.

So I began engaging my life journey asking: What do the overwhelming absence of love, evident in the amount of hurt that we have endured and caused, tell us about what is missing or misaligned in how we understand living life?

That God created each and all of us beloved and to love means we are not to just accept and settle for violence, and even mediocre treatment, conditions, relationships, or behavior from or with others. It means that we should not perpetuate or encourage it ourselves. that God created each and all of us beloved means that we are here to Be(loved), and to #LoveOnPurpose.

My be(ing)lovedness, my life, and my healing matter. So do you and yours. Each of our living and our flourishing as we are created and called to be(loved) matters. Yet notice that if we name any hurt, abuse, even form of mediocrity—against our own selves and against others—the purpose of each and all of them is to drive us away from being and living as our whole and beloved Selves. To make us question if we can be who we know that we are, because this group and this rhetoric claims that this aspect of our identity is less than, or even that we don’t exist…according to them, as if they are God.

Living as we are created to and innately desire to be is itself liberation. Discovering and living our belovedness—as our full, whole beings—is liberation.

My focus in life is to take my place, and take my space. Because my greatest gift in this world is to know and live that I am created and God-gifted to be.

Part II | Love|Balms is…

Our healing—genuinely healing—demands that as part of its journey, we address and eliminate unnecessary harm, hurt, and misdirection in life.

Seeking healing, liberation, wholeness, and thriving for our Selves requires that we encourage, support, and seek this for others as each of us are called and able. I can’t be whole or free for just myself. I cannot consider my Self whole and free, while I am restricting or oppressing others. I cannot consider my Self whole and free, and stand idly by while others are restricted and oppressed. Restricting and oppressing others, or turning away from it occurring, in fact means I do not understand what wholeness and freedom are.

Genuine wholeness and freedom inherently recognize the humanity and Divine belovedness in others. The Divine within me cannot resist answering the Divine call from within others to mutually honor the fullness of one another—to share together in love, healing, nurturing, and thriving.

In my Self desiring a life in which I want not to be a “good person” who doesn’t harm, but a person committing to #LoveOnPurpose, I recognize that I can’t outright force most people to stop acting abusively or harmfully—and that at some point near if not outright all of us are harmful or abusive. Given the path of human history, in which so much of it has been a focus towards survival from both invading forces and our own oppressive leaders and governmental heads, harm and abuse is our default way of being together.

Keep in mind—until 200 years ago in the US, women and children had no legal status without the men “responsible” for them. Several thousand years regarding other human beings as property or belongings—which is dishonoring of our humanity, and so abuse—did not simply dry up and resolve itself overnight. Today, women are still largely expected to prioritize men, men’s feelings, and men’s lives, professionally and romantically, as if women exist solely to complement manly being. (And this was standard in many societies long before we had anything called “The Book of Genesis.” If anything, historical Christian interpretations of Genesis in which women become subjugated to men demonstrate that every religion pulls its mores and interpretation techniques from the society around it. Another writing. Another time.) Children, who have no capability to ask to be here or not, are still largely expected to simply behave and emotionally perform for adults, rather than to be nurtured and grow into healthy, well-rounded humans of their own. That the frame of family is itself oriented towards dominance and abuse is significant to how we are as individuals and in communities taught abuse dynamics as part of our everyday interactions, and yet is but one example of the pervasiveness of rampant abuse dynamics in our society.

The overarching fact of the matter is that harm and abuse are so pervasive in how we function that it’s an unhealthy and an unrealistic hope to outright stop them—it’s not going to be tomorrow, next week, or next year. Because we’re not trying to stop people, but behaviors being perpetrated and sustained by people that escalate into systemic dynamics. If God created each and all of us beloved, God did not create people who innately cause harm. People are choosing with our free will, even through passivity, to engage in harm. And though some acts and some groups may at time periods generate more harm than others, many times, we are ourselves participating in harm in small ways. On some level, we all need to learn to live love.

Defending others from harm is one thing, and an inherent call of love. Forcing others to behave a way that we haven’t as humans ever truly practiced together is something else entirely, and at a point (as with any type of force) becomes itself a violence. Force is a violence against others’ free will, and that violence manifests in the reality that it must be continually sustained, and is in fact unsustainable. The “force for good” dies, and with them the energy of those following them. MLK, Jr. named rightly that, “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.” This is defense. And, when the law demanding good behavior is rescinded, as our voting rights have been for the past several years, that that morality law was the only largescale work engaged to transform our personal, communal, political, and spiritual hearts, renders us vulnerable to the swift resurfacing of the un-love in our hearts that had simply been hidden away. No, we shouldn’t have to teach people to love us or treat us well. And, if we have true hope for seeing an end to harm, abuse, and trauma in the world, and the experience genuine love, some of us must.

I have come to accept that I must begin in transformation with the person I most control and can hold in loving accountability: my Self. This is an accountability that begins within me to live the world I desire to see, rather than simply demand it from others while ignoring my own misbehaviors and appropriated privileges. It turns out that when Gandhi said, “Be the change,” he may have actually meant, “create change beginning out of yourself, and expand from there,” and not quite as much to “force change from others.”

I, Joy E. Bronson, am a black, woman-identified person who grew up poor. These are the identities by which I experience systemic oppression, and the identities from whose internalized oppression I must be mindful to heal and not allow to mis-define me or other human beings. Also. I, Joy E. Bronson, am a cisgender, heterosexual, highly educated (Masters, y’all) Christian (I’m a PK of a PK—triple privilege), who is a citizen of the United States of America. As with most people, I am a complex being who both experiences oppressions, and also has identities which carry extensive privileges (mine are all global) which have been historically used to oppress and even kill others. I am as responsible for those histories and privileges, and to engage them—and dismantle them—as I expect white, male, and rich persons to be responsible for theirs.

I can advocate and fight all day for an end to white supremacism, misogyny, and classism and toxic capitalism from white people, men, and rich folks. But if I do not also address the ways that I perpetuate and support white supremacism, misogynist, and classist mindsets—which I, too, was taught, since it’s through these lenses that we are told and tend to tell the history and values of our society—I am my self holding onto and so living them.

I can fight all day for an end to the systemic oppressions that seek to upend my own life, but if I don’t address the heterosexism, educational supremacism, Christian supremacism, and imperialism embedded in the history and current reality of my own identities, I am a hypocrite who cares neither about love nor justice, but only how I hurt. My desire for loving fully as I seek to be loved extends to recognizing and addressing how the normal-to-me ways in which my own life is oriented are the result of others being harmed, oppressed, and even murdered so that I can have my “normal.”

And so, Love|Balms is the construction of the visionary, vibrant world of belovedness that reverberates deep within us—“on a quiet day, we can hear her breathing”—that we feel so called and led to deconstruct hurt, harm, and abuse on our journey of unearthing and meeting her. We are not deconstructing for the sake of deconstruction or simply to get away from, but because we have a place far better, beautiful, and healthier to live. And we are going.

I’m done running away. I’m not covering my eyes and ears any longer. Sometimes we have to take a breath, but we inhale to center and ground so we can exhale in love and return with community. And in pursuing love and justice in our belovedness, I’m no longer under the illusion that I can bring the kindom tomorrow and save everyone by forcing peace. First, because “forcing peace” is an oxymoron. Second, because while it may well be someone’s calling, I now know for certain that it’s not mine. And the longer I live outside of my calling, the longer it takes me to get to living what I can do towards our healing and flourishing.

As part of this journey, I seek to connect with others who are committed to living the same, and then to invite others who may also be interested in this journey. And I Acknowledge: This dynamic of living with others to #LoveOnPurpose—as with any dynamic—works only among those who mutually agree in it, and agree to mutual support and accountability of it. As we all seem to need to learn, no one has legitimate right or love to hold others accountable to uphold an ethic to which we subscribe. But we uphold and agree to be held in account to this ethic because we believe in it, and believe that this is who we are created and called to be.

Part III | Love|Balms is…

For those of us seeking to live our lives of love, how does this call us to love our Selves and others, to call others into love, and to join with those who are committed in finding our way forward in love and justice? Ultimately, I hear the call to:

Continually develop what each of us understands to be our vision of God’s Beloved humans (aka: all of humanity) in life and community with one another. It will not look exactly the same for each of us. And we can only begin to agree with and support one another when we have genuine awareness and clarity of what we each believe. We must keep relearning what we believe healthy love and community look and live like, in order to live towards them our Selves. This means “failing,” learning, and recommitting so that that we are truly growing, and growing together.
Continually learn what mediocrity, harm, and abuse look and live like. By definition, each is anathema to belovedness and thriving. Also, they compromise the majority of oppression and injustice. Unfortunately, they are also many of the typical ways that human beings engage, since our very low bar at this human moment is to “not cause harm” or at best to be considered “good,” rather than to love.
Commit to intentionally engaging in love through each of our own lives, relationships, professional positions, and in our communities. Our “good” feelings, thoughts, and intentions are only those—feelings, thoughts, and intentions. Real relationships are built out of real actions and interactions.
Commit to accept insight, invitation, and encouragement from others when we need redirection for our own walks when it is brought to our attention that we are our selves practicing, perpetuating, and supporting the existence of mediocrity, abuse, and harm. Only through this can we recognize and accept calling back into beloved, flourishing life and community when we have misstepped or meandered from our way. This is in part how we demonstrate that our commitment is towards beloved Selves in community, and not simply to be seen or thought of well.
Refuse to accept as healthy or permissible the ongoing presence of mediocrity, abuse, and harm in all types of our relationships—personal, professional, communal, societal, and global. Assume this is a life process. What we buy, who we befriend, where we work and live, who we partner with—Our intent to love should influence and inform all of these life-level decisions. Learning if we need to definitively need to disentangle ourselves from folks is as much of a journey as committing to disentangle, and then actually doing so. And—we must learn, and we must commit.
Seek to understand, discover, and engage healthy relationship, disruption, and recourse with other individuals and groups within our human community in especial need of safety, healing, wholeness, and love. When we see other folks and groups being hemmed up by unfair behaviors, biases, rules, or laws, we have a responsibility to remember that thriving life matters more than rules or laws. If people are dying or suffering because of a manmade guideline, law, or rule, we are failing at belovedness in preference for our privilege of the pretenses at certainty or control.
Offer invitation and encouragement to each of us when we lose the way that we each profess we desire to walk.
Whatever else the journey presents as integral to traversing it well.

And this is all complex, right? Because at some points we do need to exit relationships. Sometimes I have relationships where a person or community’s life circumstances have made their showing up lovingly a journey that we’re going to have to discover over time whether or not we’ll successfully finish together. Sometimes I am that person! Sometimes one or both of us is so hurtful or simply flippant that we need to separate immediately to mend; to regain focus and alignment; and to discern if there is, can, or might again be life-giving value in our being together.

This is to say that it is entirely possible that relationships will sometimes come to an end. This is a confusing message for most of us in a society dominated by white Western Christianity, in which we are told over and over and yet again that forgiveness is the cure to all that ails us. Forgive the person who punched in you the face, and your broken nose becomes just a spiritual afterthought. Forgive the people who took your baby away and put you both in cages as if you are animals rather than fellow beloved children of God and, even though they’re still doing it, that trauma that you’re experiencing will become overflowing love for your oppressor and nothing else will matter. Or it will help you shove the trauma down inside so that it somatically remanifests as drug and alcohol addiction, depression, anxiety attacks, heart disease, and any and all of the above.

This type of “Christian” forgiveness has always been interesting to me, given that the general reconciliation and healing process unearthed by those who work with communities after genocides strongly insists that, while forgiveness is the healing of the person who has been harmed (we’ll talk another time about why forgiveness is for the person who has experienced harm, not for the person or group that has committed harm), the work of those who have harmed definitively entails apology basically encompassed in what I regard as the three A’s: Acknowledgement and recognition of the harm done to the directly harmed person(s), the self, and the community; Acceptance of responsibility for the damage that the behaviors or actions have caused to the directly harmed person(s), the self, and the community, and; Amends, which is commitment to heal what the person who has harmed reasonably can now, and to transform going forward with the specific intent of not repeating the harm. I mostly find fascinating that apology in reconciliation process is what in Christianity we call repentance, or turning away from engaging in harm and back towards God and love. It seems that right around the time civil rights social justice movements began taking off in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the rhetoric of repentance began falling by the wayside…

Whether or not that is a coincidence, I roll my eyes and sigh while simply pointing out that the white Western Christian church is a perfect depiction of why the offender does not get to set the standards, protocol, or process for healing: given the genocides; theft of land, persons, and lives; denigration and abuse of persons of color, women, children, persons who are poor, folks with disabilities, and LGBTQIA persons that said church has sustained through its very theology for nearly its entire history, it has quite a bit of apology itself to make.

And it is not shocking that, as many of us as human beings and in institutions tend to avoid facing responsibility and potential consequences, the church instead projects onto everyone that the way “forward”—aka, the way for it to continue operating as it has, with no genuine accountability—is to use the rarely questioned influence that it wielded until the 1960’s to focus everyone’s attention on policing the behavior of the abused, rather than asking why we are abusing. This is, after all classic abuser behavior: If those being harmed would just forgive and stop making a fuss—ignore that man behind the curtain!…with the underaged altar boy!—then all would be well. We also see this with white supremacism, with imperialism, with misogyny, with classism, with heterosexism, with domestic abuse, with child abuse, with friends and family when we don’t like being called out on our toxic behavior. Which is unfortunate, because in each of these instances, we are prioritizing how we are viewed over the genuine wellness of others and the community, and our own wholeness.

This is all to say that it actually must be said: No, the purpose of healing and reconciliation is not to get everyone holding hands and singing kumbayah. The purpose of healthy reconciliation is to invite everyone involved to find their healing path forward towards wholeness and belovedness, and how we best do that in healthy relationship to one another—not inherently relationship with one another. Our trifling family members might need to go. It may turn out that we’re the trifling family members, and even though we now recognize it, we can’t reasonably expect given what’s happened that folks want to be in relationship with us right now—if ever again. Healing and reconciliation mutually invite everyone towards spaces of thriving, and they are a process, not an action or a switch to flip, which we engage regardless of whether or not that path indicates that everyone ends up back together.

And “together,” as one of my Divinity professors pointed out, is relative to if we were in certain instances ever together or “conciled” in the first place. We are a world filled with such trauma that, at this historical human moment, there are numerous individuals and groups that need to heal unto themselves before being capable of joining with or rejoining others. And if we genuinely care about healing, love, and lifting up our belovedness and its needs over our wants, our imperative is to respect and support that needed incubation space over instituting a false peace and unhealthy community. We care about, love, and respect our Selves and our neighbors as our Selves to the extent that we desire true relationship and wholeness, and cannot suffer engagement in mere façade.

I truly believe in love and its transformative power. I believe genuine love means that we agree to live our healthiest; to commit to continuing to grow in understanding what “healthy” is; and, if and when necessary, to wish one another well on going our separate ways. When we do this, and only then, we agree to love one another in wholeness. That’s the life and living I feel called into.

This is my journey in being mindful and discovering what it means to live and love well—on purpose.

I invite all who feel so called not to follow along with me, but to walk together (I’m following some of y’all!), for as long as our paths interconnect and overlap.

We all have a journey to healing, wholeness, and living our belovedness--and we can support one another along the way...

Amen, and axé.