Preemptive Love's: Love Anyway
Mending hearts in the middle of war.
Turning enemies into friends.
Discovering how we can heal what’s tearing us apart.
Love Anyway, Preemptive Love Coalition’s new YouTube film released on Sept 24 2019, sets out with some ambitious goals to say the least. During this 36-minute short documentary/promo/call-to-action mashup we hear from Jeremy & Jessica Courtney and others about what it was that drew them to leave Texas and move to Iraq to live with and love Muslims, an enemy people, land and religion to many Americans.
Preemptive Love is absolutely crushing it I gotta say. They have grown from doing heart surgeries in Iraq to the coalition they are today “stretching across Iraq, Syria, the United States, and beyond, working together to unmake violence and create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” People who care about justice (and many of those who also care about Jesus) follow closely their social media, films and podcast episodes that are top of their game and an example set for many other non-profits trying to tell their story.
But I hadn’t thought of Preemptive Love as being the kind of partner our RHPNA community would immediately connect with.
Until I watched this film.
Aha moments were hitting me left and right, and a few tears were shed too, so get those hankies close by and find some time to watch this film and really take to heart how you can participate in the call to action to participate in helping to love anyway in a place and time when our various affinity groups in North America are more divided then any other time in recent history.
November 3rd is the day to mark on your calendar for hosting or participating in a feast to bring together communities that are divided. Left and right, religious and nons, people that don’t naturally trust one another. Because from personal experience, many of us can testify to the fact that we fear those we don’t know. But when we get to know those who we think of as ‘the enemy’, bridges become more prominent than walls.
It is worth noting that the RHPNA is a loose gathering of Christians. We have chosen to use our common faith to try to enact action from within so that the love of Jesus is evident to all.
Preemptive Love is built intentionally to be pan-faith where people from all walks of life and faiths can love each other regardless of the affiliations we align with. Their website eloquently relays the following:
We Welcome All Faiths, Politics, Etc... Because We Value Posture Over Position.
Many groups force you to leave some part of yourself at the door, in the name of tolerance or shared identity. But it’s only by being together, knowing each other as we fully are, that we can rise above our most divisive, polarizing tendencies.
We bring our whole selves to the table—our faith, our politics, our identities. But most of all, we share the table with each other. We value this posture of openness and honor for one another more than we value the positions we hold.