Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. SEE NO STRANGER is a practical guide to changing the world, a synthesis of wisdom, a chronicle of personal and communal history – all joined together by a story of awakening. Revolutionary love is medicine for our times. Valarie Kaur is met with cheers of confirmation as she speaks about minorities in the following video. It just might be our best chance for our collective future. Twenty years ago, a Sikh father was murdered in front of his gas station in Mesa, Arizona by a man who called himself a patriot. Balbir Singh Sodhi was the first person killed in thousands of acts of hate in the aftermath of 9/11. Since his murder, countless lives have been lost or shattered by the way our nation responded to 9/11 - in decades of war, torture, surveillance, deportations, detentions, and hate violence that continues today.īalbir Singh Sodhi was a kind-hearted and generous man, whom many called “Uncle.” He would give candy to children who came to his gas station as if they were his own children. He let people who didn’t have money for gas fill up and go. His brothers would shake their heads in disbelief. Was he a saint or a fool? But Balbir Uncle would just smile, saying God wants us to serve all. He and his brothers had come to America to escape religious persecution against Sikhs in India. Dear Sadh Sangat ji, My name is Valarie Kaur. He was planting flowers in front of his gas station when he was shot in the back, targeted for his turban.īalbir Uncle wore his turban as part of his faith - his commitment to love all of humanity.A healing antidote to our divisive culture, full of evocative storytelling, spiritual wisdom, and psychological insight-by the first female, Black senior minister at the historic Collegiate Churches of New York. I’m a daughter of Punjabi Sikh farmers in California, where my family has lived for more than a century. Her films include Divided We Fall (2008), Alienation (2011), Stigma (2011), The Worst of the Worst: Portrait of a Supermax (2012), and Oak Creek: In Memorium (2013). SikhNet has had a profound impact on our community and on my life. Valarie lives and works with her filmmaking partner and husband Sharat in Los Angeles, where she enjoys dancing, chocolate, and walking along the sea with their dog Shadi. I’ve worked in civil rights for the last twenty years and now lead the Revolutionary Love Project. We are living in what I call “hot mess times”: a world divided by politics, race, intolerance, fear, and rancor. But my experiences-of of being a woman in a traditionally male domain, of being in an interracial marriage, of making peace with childhood abuse-demonstrates that our human capacity for empathy, compassion, and forgiveness is the key to reversing these ugly trends. Inspired by the Ubuntu philosophy “I am who I am because we are who we are” and explained through stories from my own life and those of my mentors and inspirations, in this book I detail the nine daily practices necessary for transforming ourselves, our communities, and our world at large. From learning to put down our emotional baggage to speaking truth to power to resisting joyfully, gaining a renewed sense of the power well all have to create caring communities to stand up for the vulnerable and to change our shared story from one of anxiety, anger, and divisiveness to one of mindfulness, compassion, and unity. Listen to audio from Fierce Love, read by me here. Courtesty of Penguin Random House (PRH) Audio.
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