Learning How to See: Love is an Action!

Emma Lee Lewis was born on April 11, 1937. I learned to see the world by watching Mommy watch it. I remember her talking back to her favorite daytime story, The Edge of Night. I remember her laughter and delight at The Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show.

I remember when President Kennedy was killed, I watched Mommy watch the coverage on our black and white television. Walter Conkrite was weeping, and so was she. I watched her watch the casket carried while Hail to the Chief played with gravity. Caroline was in a dress like one of mine; John-John saluted his daddy. Emma cried, and I cried with her.

We watched the Southern Freedom movement unfold, brave straight-backed marchers on a highway peacefully heading to freedom and voting rights. We watched the March on Washington, we watched footage of King on a balcony, lying in his blood, Jesse and Ralph pointing up to a window. We watched Kent State, and we watched Rodney King. We watched the police drag our neighbor out of his house and beat him for some unpaid parking tickets, while he cried over and over, “What did I do?”

Little Jacqui asked, ‘Mommy, can we do anything?’ ‘Not right now, but we will,’ she said.

Mom taught me how to see. To see what violence and hatred can do, the wounding, the killing, the maiming. To see what democracy looks like. The advocacy, the standing up for neighbor, the marching for freedom and a better world. She showed me what love looks like. Telling the truth (she could not abide lying), taking food to sick people, making a seat at our crowded dinner table for our neighbor’s son, so he would not be hungry and alone.

What we see today, family, is not love. It is not loving to grab people off the streets with no due process to enforce borders that keep America white. It is not loving to legislate hatred of Trans people, to erase the stories of BIPOC people, to ban books and history and blind us to our past mistakes, ensuring will will make them again. It is not loving to wreak havoc on the global economy, punishing nations like a petulant child with tariffs that devastate global markets. It is not loving to fire people and cut social service programs, and impinge the flourishing of those on the margins. It is not loving to obliterate Gaza, or to be antisemitic; Jews and Palestinians are Semitic. It is not loving to invade a sovereign nation like Ukraine, to build America on the backs of Congo and Sudan, to ignore the plight of Haiti and nations in the global south.

It is not loving to bastardize the faith of Jesus to build a fascist regime.

To quote my friend Tituss Burgess in his song, Love is an Action

That ain’t love. Love is an action, a verb not just a word.

To abuse and take lightly just said to be heard

And everyday actions and reactions are chances

in making love active and not just a word

Love does not envy, it does not boast, it does not house conceit

There is no limit to God’s and Grace and

There’s nothing love can’t face

This song is the Middle Church anthem. At our annual justice conference a few years ago, Tituss sang this live. When I watch this memory of my communities—our church and our movement partners—I weep from the power of Tituss’ voice, of our multi-all-the-things gathering. Interfaith, many gendered, all the ethnicities. I see how diversity, equity and inclusion are powerful.

Can you see this? Can you see yourself in this movement and feel your ability to change the world with love? Watch and write me in the comments. Tell me what you hear and what you see.

One of my rabbis says, “A loving and ethical life is learning how to see.” How to see yourself in the mirror, and to love yourself fiercely. How to see your neighbor and feel their inextricable connection to YOU. Their story is part of YOUR story. Their surviving and thriving are YOURS. Their suffering and pain are YOURS. They are your people, and you are theirs. Together, if we remember how to see these truths, we can make this world a better place.

My mommy died two weeks after her 80^th birthday, April 25, 2017. I feel her in me in these times and imagine how she would grieve. I am reminded daily that she taught me to see myself as a change agent, as a love warrior; to see the world’s suffering and believe I could do something about it. We can and we must.

Love is an action, not a theory. Let’s love each other. Hard.

Jacqui

P.S. This Saturday, we’ll be at the Middle Church/East Village Street Fair on 2nd Avenue between East 6th & 7th Streets—filled with music, games, merch, and the kind of joy only community can bring. We’ll have outdoor worship and music at noon. Come through. And Palm Sunday at 11:45a, join us online for our rendition of Jesus Christ, Superstar. At 3:00 PM, we won’t be live at Judson Memorial Church. BUT join us online only for a sneak peek of our sanctuary!

Oh—and don’t forget: Freedom Rising: The Fierce Urgency of Now is coming up October 31–November 2. Get your ticket today.