What DO you believe?

"Kim, I hear you say all of these things you do not believe, so what I want to know is, what do you believe?"
Three weeks ago, a Muslim friend of mine asked me this while I sat around the dinner table with my new family at the Gainesville Catholic Worker House. His question stunned me.

To be honest, it still stuns me today.

After some silence, I responded with something like, “You know, I don’t really know what I believe about a lot of things right now. But I guess the one thing I do believe in is People. I really believe that people need one another. I don’t think independence is always a good thing; I don’t even really believe independence is possible; I think we are all dependent upon one another, and I think that is good.”

But since then, I’ve realized I also believe in something else: Love.
True, selfless, dangerous, contagious Love that sacrifices the well-being of the giver for the sake of the receiver:


"Are you ready to cut off your head and place your foot on it? If so, come; Love awaits you! Love is not grown in a garden, nor sold in the marketplace; whether you are a king or a servant, the price is your head, and nothing less. Yes, the cost of the elixir of love is your head! Do you hesitate? O miser, It is cheap at that price! "
~al-Ghazali (a Muslim philosopher and theologian)

"Poverty doesn't only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity. We need to love and to be somebody for someone else . . . The world today is hungry to be wanted, to be loved."
~Mother Teresa (a Catholic nun of Calcutta, India)

"We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community."
"Love is risky—even more than war. But risk it anyway!"
~Dorothy Day (co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement)


Dorothy Day's quote about the riskiness of true Love reminds me of al-Ghazali's quote about cutting off your head and replacing it with your foot. This sort of Love sounds ridiculous. But it's truer than it first appears. All true, world-changing Love requires a sacrifice few are willing to give: A sacrifice that seeks the well-being of others before the well-being of oneself. Few people ever learn or dare or care to love that way. But that is the only kind of Love that has ever changed the world. Truly, I think that is the only kind of real Love, period. All other forms are false, cheap, worthless imitations. Yet few people ever risk the cost of abandoning the imitation to pursue the genuine. Perhaps they hesitate because – like al-Ghazali – they are aware that the pursuit may cost them much more than an arm or a leg (i.e., it will cost them their head), or perhaps they refrain because they have never seen first hand the awesome beauty and life-changing power of genuine, selfless Love. Perhaps they do not realize that the Real Thing is better than the fake. Perhaps - because they have never experienced it - they do not even believe the Real Thing exists. But whatever the reason, I guess the world’s reluctance to pursue the genuine explains why fool's love - like fool's gold - remains common, cheap, and disappointing while the Real Thing remains rare. And I guess the reluctance to pursue real, world-changing Love explains why the world so rarely changes.

But since then, I’ve also realized that the only reason I believe in such a crazy kind of Love is because I have seen and experienced it firsthand. I know Love works because I have seen it work. I know Love can change the world because Love has already changed and continues to change me. I love others because others have loved me. True Love is a like a contagious disease: Once you come into contact with it, you cannot help but catch it and then spread it.

And so my prayer and Hope for today are that somehow - despite my many imperfections - people who feel unloved will experience the same crazy, life-changing Love through my imperfect life that I have experienced through the lives of other imperfect people. My prayer and my Hope are that – as people continue to catch and spread this Love and as individual lives continue to be changed by this Love – this Love will continue to change the world. Call me idealistic, illogical, young, and naïve if you wish. But I have seen and experienced and felt the healing, freeing, beautiful work of Love.

And so I believe in Love.
And this belief in Love causes me to audaciously Hope for change.

Yes we can.
Because yes Love can.

Love changes things.
And because we can Love, we can also hope for and help bring change.

You and me – we – can love.
We – you and me – can change—first ourselves, and then the world.

One of my new family members just came back from Paris, and she said on Obama’s inauguration day, all the newspapers in France ran his story on their front pages and one even called Obama the “President for the World.” If all world citizens could have voted, they would have elected Obama, too. That makes me happy. That gives me Hope.

But Obama is just one man, and he has his hands tied in many ways. I do hope for him, but I also hope for ordinary people like you and like me. Obama alone cannot bring about genuine, effective, and lasting change. Real change, real Love, must start with you and me. Only when you and I begin to make changes in our everyday lives will we begin to see changes in our everyday world. If we hope for a world that is full of Peace and Love, then we must practice and embody Peace and Love with our own everyday thoughts, attitudes, words, actions, decisions, and ways of life.

We must be Peace and Love to the world.

So for today, at least, this is what I believe.


But now, what I want to know is, what do YOU believe?