bell hooks, the internationally known writer, scholar, social justice activist passed away right before the New Year, and I feel compelled to share what her life and work has meant to me, and my hope for all of us as we approach 2022. I know perhaps not everyone is familiar with bell hooks, so I’ll give you a little background. Gloria Jean Watkins had a grandmother with the name bell hooks. Her grandmother was known as a woman with a sharp mind and sharp tongue, and she became a role model for her. Gloria Watkins became bell hooks, with the name spelled in lowercase letters to show that the most important thing was not the person, but the ideas. I might argue with her on that. I find her personhood, how she chose to live, as important as her works. Bell hooks lived in a rural Kentucky town that was completely segregated. What I’ve learned from bell hooks is the importance of rootedness, of rooting yourself in a particular place. She went to Stanford, went to grad school, moved to California, and taught at some of the most prestigious universities in the country: Yale, Oberlin, The New School, but what I found most compelling was her decision to return back to a small, rural community in Kentucky where she lived the last part of her life. Her works on race, feminism, capitalism, patriarchy have influenced generations of people, but all her ideas come from a deep rootedness, a sense of being at home in her body, in her community, in the time she lived.

I found a conversation with bell hooks and another well known Kentuckians Wendell Berry. Both had found literary success and lived in New York City, and bell hooks discussed her decision to settle in Kentucky, in Berea, a small town that was started by an abolitionist minister, who hoped to bring about racial reconciliation. She said “Stereotypes abound when there is distance. They are an invention, a pretense that one knows when the steps that would make real knowing possible cannot be taken or are allowed.” She recalls how people in New York City knew and praised her work, but when she returned to her hometown, no one knew who she was. She talked about the courage to live small, to live in local proximity to a small group of people over time, so you can truly know them and they can know you. bell hooks ideas on a range of topics were eye opening, mind opening, and vast. But all of that work came from a commitment to let herself know and be known by her small, local community. This was how love was practiced; this is how her deep thoughts about liberation, being a black woman in America, came to be manifested. Her work for me is characterized by a commitment to presence and paying attention: paying attention to the body, paying attention to history, paying attention to your neighbors, your local soil, paying attention to your mind and the narratives you’ve assumed without realizing it, the presence of mind to liberate yourself. Many don’t know she was a longtime meditator who described herself as a spiritual seeker, like many of us. She was touched by the life of Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away yesterday, and his commitment to trust that immediate presence and attention in our body could lead to peace, liberation and reconciliation. She witnessed Thich Nhat Hanh’s presence with American soldiers who were sent to his home country, Vietnam: the tenderness and attention he paid to them.

bell hooks also practiced this tenderness, presence, and warm curiosity. She repeatedly talked with people she disagreed with, not so she could change their mind, but so she could know them. She sought out people where there was mutual respect and trust. She repeatedly showed through example that dialogue was not meant to make anyone think a certain way, but a way to embody love, being present with another person, closing that gap between two people. This is not to say that she did not speak her mind. It made news when she was invited to give a commencement address at Southwestern University, and she shocked all the graduates and the administration of the college, by offering a challenge to their graduating class. These are a couple excerpts from the speech: “Every imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal nation on the planet teaches its citizens to care more for tomorrow than today…And the moment we do this, we are seduced by the lure of death…To live fixated on the future is to engage in psychological denial. It is a form of psychic violence that prepares us to accept the violence needed to ensure the maintenance of imperialist, future-oriented society.” At the end of the speech she offers a sober hope: “And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is.” I interpret this to mean that our future lies wholly and completely in our willingness to engage our struggles today – that is our home, that is our hope, that is our liberation. This speech was given months after the 9/11 attacks, and she was critical of any plan that guaranteed the oppression and death of other people as our country entered the Iraq war and then Afghanistan. She predicted accurately that no war with the promise of a better future would be able to fulfill that promise. We have seen that come to pass in the last year.

bell hooks was critical of a culture fixated on the future, so afraid of itself and other people, that the tools of domination were seen as required, necessary for our survival. Bell hooks believed there was another way, and pointed to this other way again and again in her works and in her life. Instead of trying to rid ourselves of perceived threats, whether that perceived threat is another person, our past, or an entire group of people, what if we planted ourselves where we were, and developed roots? What if instead of looking toward the future, we looked with curiosity and tenderness at the life we have today? What if instead of domination, what if we dared to practice closeness, being close with the problems of our time today, trusting that in that act of closeness something can flower?

bell hooks is very clear what she means when she talks about love: it is not a feeling, it is not a perpetual state, it is not something to fall into, and it is not something that anyone can give you or take away. It is a choice, an intentional practice, a path. Once we’re on that path, no one can stop us. The path is not to be in love, or to know love, it is to be more loving. Love is not a place of arrival, it is a way of traveling, searching, doubting, struggling, trying. Love does not conquer failure or disappointment, but it breaks the habit of worshipping death. For bell hooks this worship of death is an obsession with the future and a romanticization of the past. There’s no life in that, because we’re not there, none of us are. Our communities are not there. No one is there. Everyone is here, in a time when no one really knows what is going on, or where we’re headed. Everyone is here in this time when so many are afraid and distrustful, hurt and in search of answers. That is our home, that is our refuge, and that is our life. It can sound kind of bleak, but in practice it’s not. It’s freeing, because we don’t need to have things figured out, we only need to commit to the life we have, a life so many of us are trying to escape. There is a remark hooks makes about love that I feel is very pertinent: “Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” This remark made me wonder about myself and others during this time. In some ways, we’ve been given the opportunity to be more with ourselves during this time. That is the opportunity I’ve felt anyway. And I have felt the shift to not needing to meet with people in order to boost my mood or make me feel a certain way, but to meet people out of a deeper curiosity of what it means to be alive, learning from another person. Just to close that gap, to know and be known.

bell hooks was a great teacher, because like all great teachers, she reminded us all of something that is fundamental to each of us. She showed us that you don’t need to get a special degree or live in an exotic location or be a particular kind of person in order to discover what is meaningful. We just have to trust the life we’ve been given, and to never give up the search, the search today to discover love in everyday meeting with those around us. She spoke to people who have layers of distrust based on our culturally skewed ways of viewing ourselves based on race, sexuality, gender. She wrote and lectured at length at the ways we limit ourselves, and have allowed our culture to limit us, but she also pointed toward liberation. The liberation was not future oriented, it wasn’t the promise of tomorrow. It was the promise of today. It was the promise that each of us can love if we have enough fortitude. We have to give it to ourselves, instead of waiting for someone to give it to us. And then we have to give it away, not to fulfill our own needs, but because it’s who we are, with little expectation.

It’s a very simple, life changing practice. We love not in order to make the world as we would want it to be. We love knowing full well we will be disappointed, knowing full well there are no guarantees. We love because it’s who we are. When we try to mitigate disappointment, when we want a guarantee of personal fulfillment, we end up practicing a form of domination and control. We seek to control others, and we ultimately seek to control the world. We seek to remake it in our own image, our own imagining of what we think it should be. Though this may look like love, hooks warns us it is not. Imperialism, economic exploitation, racially motivated violence, moves to protect masculinity at all costs: these are attempts to control what ultimately cannot be controlled. They are attempts to overpower and tame life, our culture’s attempt to control fear through violence, to appease discomfort through annihilation. There is another way, and this other way is pretty much the exact opposite. Instead of worshipping death, instead of participating in our own annihilation, we try to live, today: even though life is scary, unpredictable, at times painful and disappointing.

We plant ourselves in life rather than distract or fantasize about something other than the life we have, in this community, and in this place. We plant ourselves here because in time we learn to trust that it’s only here that love is real. Only here is where it can bloom, only here is where it can be shared, only here is where our search is meaningful. It has to begin here, rooted here, on this day, in this place.

I’ve been thinking of our neighbors, Congregation Ohev Beth Sholom and Jews in all our communities that have been impacted by the hostage situation last week in Colleyville, Texas. I wonder what bell hooks would say had she been alive then. And I realized that her legacy continues in that wondering, and our actions to continue her search, a search that plants us squarely where we are, in the place we are, and the struggles we have. We are still struggling with violence, and actions to guarantee a better future for some through acts of violence and oppression. I’ve reached out to Rabbi Paula as a neighbor, and offered our congregation’s support and willingness for collective action if appropriate. It feels like a small gesture, and it is, but I’ve learned from bell hooks that is part of the path: planting ourselves where we are, planting ourselves in our values, and where we see violence and oppression, show up, be present to others, and commit to a different way. This different way is not about guaranteeing we will get what we want. It is giving ourselves to what we already have, and trusting by giving ourselves to each other, the future will bloom. We don’t need to predict the future, we don’t need to control it, we don’t need to manage it. We give ourselves back to ourselves, and we give ourselves to each other, especially when tragedy strikes. We give ourselves through a small gesture, like a small seed, and we let it bloom.