Jesus taught and lived
Those who follow the Way
Truth
Life, rather than punishing death,
would be known
by our love,
especially for our enemies.

He did not say, or live,
Those who punish themselves and others with death threats
and war planning
and technology design
and nihilistic absence of healthy purpose
would be TruthLivers
known as restorative peace-makers,
inheriting the Kingdom of God at hand.

For LaoTse
we are Way,
Truth,
Life known
by our Yang/Yin harmonic balance
with darkYin as antagonist of stubborn ignorance,
reflecting unkind outcomes of MotherEarth
and Her thunder and lightning Heavens
bringing cold winds of Yang-dominant terror
and warm flows of Yin-Yang wu-wei
in-between
Tipping Pointed selves as enemies
restoring peaceful balance,
within-egoYang,
as without-ecoYin.

To love your enemies
as yourself
is to actively seek restorative justice
peace-filled balance for all parties,
including anti-let’s-party! haters
and monoculturing weedish and prudish supremacists,
fundamentalists,
evangelists,
zealots,
terrorists,
slave-owners,
racists,
sexists,
homophobes,
missionary colonizers,
AntiSemitic
AntiCreolization
trauma-inducing predators and parasites,
and, Jesus’ favorite love to hate, Pharisees.

To be known by our love for enemies,
is to know our enemies as ourselves,
to love ourselves as both victimized protagonist
and antagonist,
provoking angry retributions,
fear-filled victims
of our own,
and our Elders,
violent misjudgments.

To love ourselves
within this heuristic balance,
doing our best
is to love our larger selves
as traumatizing enemy of love
and yet therapeutic lover of self-inflicted,
other-afflicting,
enemies.

Thich Nhat Hanh
shares a restorative council agenda
as anciently practiced in his Buddhist tradition.

Community facilitators
with unusual strengths for compassion,
begin by telling a personal story
of an event in their owned history
when they have known the shame of offending against love,
against active and integrative cooperation.

Then they apologize for this offense
against those assembled victims.
Atone for their lack of sufficient love,
trust,
faith.

Then, and only then, they invite victims
and offenders
to do as the facilitators have themselves mentored,
to tell their most recent shared story
of victims and offenses
against restoring cooperative love
within this community
of EarthTribe lovers.

For instance,
voting against universal health care giving and receiving
as a basic application of our multiculturally advocated
Golden Rule,
constitutionally protected
as pursuit of resident Welfare
and a more perfect Unity
(NOT fascist military-industrialized uniformity).

I try to picture what stories of restoration
facilitators would invite
if FirstNation CEOs
were to host a Peace Circle
with Christian Evangelical Missionaries
and Military-Industrial Generals,
grandsons of rifle-holders
for ecopolitically racist assumptions
of spiritual therefore naturally endowed
Manifest Destiny Supremacy,
and WhiteMan CEOs,
including grandsons of slave-holders
for HeavenlyMansion and Mammon Goals,
all WesternPatriarchal classroom read and propagandized
as Protagonists in a Western InterContinental Patriotic History of Love,
yet recognizing great-grandparents
in light of larger love’s Win-Win capacities,
now appear as repressive Retributional Antagonists,
rooted in fear and anger and hate,
not always so much trust and faith and justice,
for a polyculturing history
of love as ego-eco balance
between loving oneself
as both related to past Protagonists
and Antagonists
of Earth’s restorative peace
and therapeutic love
for Win-Win bilateral justice.

It is in our most vulnerable shame
for lapses in co-passionate love
that we are most likely to therapeutically recover
shared memories of blame,
and active hope to restore love’s balance
more polypathically inclusive next time.

This rhetorical agenda,
for mentoring facilitators,
is their second-mile walk,
their turning of violently struck both cheeks,
their opportunity to offer a time of personal shame
to open double-binding gates
of collective Lose-Lose blame
and it’s ecological apposition,
Win-Win restorative cooperation
of active Love.

Golden Rules
to do as you would have done justice
and not do and judge
as you could not not do without greater co-passion,
active love for Win-Win restoration
of peace councils,
internal and external,
practiced best each moment
of each grace-filling balanced karma day.

Willing and able to see oneself,
and one’s extended family,
as both sacred protagonists
and sinner antagonists
of co-evolving historic love,
fulfilled in HereNow potential health integrity
of each moment’s Sacred EarthRestoring Wisdom.

Jesus taught and lived
Those who follow this ReStorative Way
Truth
Life, rather than punishing death,
would be known
by our love,
especially for our enemies,
within egos
and without eco-conscious balance.