An Extremist In Love

King Center, Atlanta, 2014

Inauguration Day, 2025

‘“Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.”…So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?’ - Martin Luther King Jr., excerpt from “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”

“Can true humility and compassion exist in our words and eyes unless we too know we are capable of any act?" - Francis of Assisi

Dear President Trump, thank you.

I have such a mix of feelings as I write these words. I go from being in a grounded, centered, loving and compassionate space to queasy discomfort, wondering how on earth I am writing this letter of gratitude to Trump?

And then I realize the latter is a result of my own hurt. Justifiable hurt, I’d say, as I am aware of the possibility that so many of my treasured values are under threat. But, hurt nonetheless. An emotion that lovingly reveals: I am off balance. And from that awareness, I then seek a deeper state within myself–I center down into my essence. I tap into the underground streams of eternal waters that flow through my veins to that transcendent divine awareness that gives me perspective in this human embodied experience. To find my balanced ego and eternal, expansive compassion that simply has yet to be tapped. And in this moment of tension, friction and immense pressure I see it now has the opportunity to be. To access an extent of compassion and connection I have not yet known. And isn’t that how anything great is born? A diamond born under extreme heat and pressure. A baby insisting its way through the constrictions of a birth canal aided by the forceful power of its mother. So I too choose birth. Like Venus rising from the depths of divine baptismal waters. And I bear my beauty, born from the eternal heart of love shared in and among and between all of us.

So, thank you, President Trump.

For shaking me out of the comfort of complacency that I am tempted to dwell in during times of democratic leadership in our country. A leadership that gives me a false sense of “everything is ok” simply because of the name.

For catalyzing my deepened focus on God and commitment to life in communion with God.

For fueling my prayer and my action for an expanded heart and unconditional love not only in theory, but in practice to extents I have never needed to reach before.

Thank you for leading me to prayers that break me out of fear, for I do not want your energy to have that power over me anymore.

Thank you for leading me to the opportunity in which the gospel song “I’m Determined” will perhaps be my anthem for the next four years.

Thank you for helping me recognize again, and with greater clarity, the distinction between our nature as a beloved child of God - eternal and holy in essence - and the mask worn when we have an imbalanced ego and the thoughts and actions that result from such imbalance and disconnection from our center.

Thank you for being an inspiration that gives me the determination to see you and every other being on earth from your sacred center, your belovedness. And, in so doing, by engaging each person from that place, I know I am helping to draw that out. That I’m modeling our essential potential, whether recognized in the moment by the other or not. And since I may never interact with you in person, I pray that for you.

And I thank God for the grace to see the beauty already in my midst, seeing these challenges as opportunities.

I’m determined to love.

I’m determined to live in hope.

I am determined to meet the moment and not fear of the future.

Thank You, Beloved God, for inflaming my heart with yearning for wisdom and the pursuit of it.

Thank You for inviting me into a life of greater authenticity and integrity.

“Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” - the prophet Micah

Photo: "Freedom Now" King Center, Atlanta, GA 2014