The Ghosts of Love

“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.” Mahatma Ghandi

I was born to a woman, in a place I call home, in a culture I call mine, to a body I call me. My body is made of bones, nails, tissue, blood, bacteria, and mighty, brilliant organs. I am an animal with language, work, and offspring. I need food, water, sleep, and shelter. Inside my skin, behind my ribs and lungs and skull, is my ghost. My ghost is my body’s guest. My body lives until my body dies (rotting eventually to dirt), but my ghost is like the water of our world, it can move and transform, but it never disappears. It is like the wind too, joining, building, blowing, or sighing into the silence of solitude. My ghost is made out of love, empathy, melancholia, and hope. It is fragile and infinite. It is wise, wounded, and strong. It is evolving.                                    

I want my mother and all my lovers to live. I want all the people in this place I call home, in the culture I call mine to live too. And I want the people in the places I do not call home, in the cultures I do not call mine, and of the bodies I do not call me, to live as well and well, because a world made of only me and mine would be a terribly monotonous one. I am glad that God uses a palette of primary paints: reds, yellows, and blues, so that we can be, see, and know all the colors. We are all made of this mixed paint. To fear me is to fear you.

You were born to a woman, in a place you call home, in a culture you call yours, to a body you call you. Your body is made of bones, nails, hair, tissue, blood, bacteria, and mighty, brilliant organs. You are an animal. You have language and work. Maybe you have offspring. You need water and sleep and food and shelter. Does this sound familiar? Inside your skin, behind your ribs and lungs and skull, is your ghost. Your ghost is your body’s guest... So what happened? Why have you opened your body up and allowed this coward I call fear to enter and torture and fester? Please, journey to your humble ghost where it hides in your feet and feed it, clothe it, love it. You think we’re so different. That we don’t share 99.5% of the same DNA. But I beg you, look at this .05%. For in that little number is all the beauty of humanity. We are the same and a little different, and that is a fortunate truth, not a frightening one.

Do you truly believe that the world would be better if it was only made up of you and yours? Do you really think there’s only one right and that you are it? That you are the right kind of person with the right kind of beliefs from the right kind of place, while me and mine are wrong, all wrong, and therefore, we need to go away so that you don’t see us anymore, so that you don’t doubt yourself anymore? You want me to stop breathing. Stop praying. Stop working. Stop laughing. Stop loving. All this loving! Is that it? Have you no love left? Your ghost was once like us: made of kindness. I’m sorry that we didn’t save you sooner before you fell ill with fear. Are you now soaked in its sweat? Do you shiver from its chills? We cannot live the same life. For a world full of you and yours would be an impossible one. Impossible because the place you call home is different from the place I call home, your culture is not my culture, your lovers are not my lovers, and your mother is not my mother. So if you want to paint our world one color, you will have to kill me and all the wildflowers. You will have to pluck every weed in every forest, squeeze each root, and burn every seed, stem, and leaf.  Do you want to live alone in this world? Will you only then be satisfied?

Since the beginning of our mammalian history, love has been building an army. Now in the year 2017, it has grown to a tremendous, incalculable size. An unconventional force; we have no guns, no bombs, no tanks, no knives even. We are a parade of peaceful protesters holding hands, candles, posies, prayers, and song. We want to press ourselves into the wounds cut and bled by your narrow mind. As you rally into violent mobs to fight for fear, out of fear, you will die trying and your ghost will be left to float like a child’s lost balloon until it pops and its rubber shell drops and flops into a pile of litter, while our ghosts continue to collect and connect into colonies of warm light. Have you ever seen a storm from the sun? That is what we are. The more blood and fear you spill, the more love comes shining down ---sheets of dry yellow rain. Come and see. Touch us even, ghost to ghost, for love is contagious and perfect and the only thing that will heal your fear.