No Strangers: Opting in to Revolutionary Love
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Welcome to 2021. We have come through a remarkable year of turmoil, inequity, reckoning, and loss. We have made strangers of each other and even, perhaps, become strange to ourselves. How are you? In this new year what is not only worthy of your opting into, but also possible? That’s where Valarie Kaur’s (See No Stranger) Revolutionary Love comes in. It reverberates with Jesus’ calls to love our neighbors as ourselves - and even our opponents - in a way that not only changes the game but helps us stay in it with our whole selves. Join us with your whole self this January!
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Photos and reflections by Jeanette Mayo
The turn of the calendar tempts us with promises of newness—fresh starts, better habits, upgraded versions of ourselves. But what if, instead of charging ahead with self-improvement schemes, we took a cue from winter’s stillness? What if we let go of the relentless hustle and embraced the radical idea that we are already enough?
Fabric’s January series, “Give Up,” has invited us into this counterintuitive wisdom—the grace of resting, receiving, and recognizing our inherent worth. Nature doesn’t demand that a hibernating bear emerge as a “better” bear. Spring’s renewal is not about striving but about unfolding what has been there all along.
In Wintering, Katherine May reminds us that transformation often happens in the quiet, unseen spaces. And in Belonging, Toko-pa Turner challenges us to strengthen our “receiving muscle,” to accept the support woven into our interconnected lives. “You are the receiver of too many generosities to count,” she writes. “Count them anyway.”
So, what if we stopped trying to earn our existence? What if we acknowledged the trees, the friendships, the small kindnesses that hold us? What if, instead of striving, we surrendered to belonging?
You are the gift. That’s enough. May it be so.
-Ian