This weekend, I am going to be a student in Andrew Harvey’s Sacred Activism workshop. What is “sacred activism”? According to Harvey’s website, “sacred activism is a transforming force of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of deep spiritual knowledge, courage, love, and passion, with wise radical action in the world.” Basically, we’ve got shit to do and it’s gotta come from a heart-centered spiritual foundation.

It goes both ways: activist people need spiritual fuel to strengthen their movement in the world and to prevent burnout and spiritual people need to bring their spirituality and love into the world by getting their hands dirty – both literally and figuratively – and putting that love to work. The world is crying for our love and our service. One without the other might result in fixing, but not healing.

I’m a bit nervous. I’m afraid I’ll either a) get fired up with passion about changing the world but feel like I have no real place to put that passion and thereby let the fire fizzle with no action or b) get overwhelmed about the state of the world and feel moved but powerless. When faced with calls to activism, I often experience one or both of these reactions. I become overwhelmed and, in order to keep moving forward, I have to find a balance between taking care of myself and taking care of my mission on earth. Sometimes, I fear that “taking care of myself” translates to a certain level of comfort and convenience. Shouldn’t I be doing more? Should I commit myself to full-time activism? Can I?

Tomorrow, I’m afraid that some of this will get stirred up. I’m afraid I’ll be pushed to a new level of finding myself as a sacred activist.

Then again, isn’t that why I’m taking this course?