What is "Love with Courage"?

Love with Courage is a call to discover and experience our personal and collective power, an invitation to develop intentional public relationships with a wide range of people for the sake of discovering what calling and passion we share and then creating opportunities to embody and live out our shared calling. 

Sound exciting? 

I believe that the seeds of wisdom to address the greatest challenges of our time are stored in the human heart, but these seeds don’t sprout or flower unless we as human beings cultivate the practice of sharing with one another what really matters to us and discerning where we are personally called, whether we experience this call as by love, by God, or by principle. 

As a matrix of relationships emerges based on sharing what we love—our passions, hopes and dreams, gifts, broken-heartedness—a community grows the capacity to embody compassion and justice. 

The forces of the status quo that keep us separate and isolated are fierce. Love with Courage intentionally cultivates the creativity and connections to navigate through and against the currents of rabid individualism, materialism, and the helplessness that comes with cultural isolation. 

Love with Courage is a revolutionary call to wake up not only to the great challenges of our communities but how ordinary people--you and I--can discover thoughtful, fun, and inspiring ways of making a real difference in our own lives and the lives of others.

We need one another. Alone, we cannot live fulfilled or make a difference. But more than that, alone we cannot clarify for ourselves how we want to be in relationship with others so that we can stand for and walk with others for meaningful change. We need one another to discern our calling and deeper longings, to know where others are called, and to act on the calling we share.

There is a strain in American culture that prioritizes the individual over community--and even pits the individual against community. But we need a broader view: Community exists to serve the dreams of the individual. It really starts of each one of us individually and emerges and serves our matrix of relationships. 

This transcends the small-minded view of independence that says, “Well, I’m not as free when I am part of a group.” No, we are ironically freed up to become who we are called to be only in action and in honest relationship with others. This is where we find our fulfillment--acting in alignment with what we love. 

So this is my “theological” answer to what is Love with Courage. Now it is time to live it, embody it, continue the adventure of developing relationships, discovering common passions and commitments and creating opportunities to live out our shared calling!