"What are the conditions I set for others to receive my love?"
jamal epperson serves as the Assistant Director of Mission Integration
On one of our first days in Kenya, the group sat around a table, breaking bread and reflecting, during which we began speaking about the concept of Agapé. People talked about love for family and friends, and even about radical love — a love that calls for abolition and liberation through compassion, creation, and creativity. As we continued sharing in a circle, Father TT Agorhom, SJ, asked a question that changed how I think about love: “What are the conditions I set for others to receive my love?”This question made me reflect on love not just from a person-to-person lens, but also from a societal perspective. What are the conditions we set to humanize another person, community, society, and justice issues?
That question has stayed with me ever since. As a first-generation college student, I never imagined I’d be part of a program like Ignacio Companions, traveling halfway across the world to learn from communities in Kenya. But throughout that encounter, I witnessed a love that transcended conditions, a love that saw each person’s dignity and humanity.
Throughout the rest of the encounter, I saw Father TT, and our host, Jesuit regent Gerald Kway, and members of the community embody this type of love with our group and with one another. We learned more about how the communities we engaged with saw each other as family — not by blood, but through connections of our souls. Even when talking with strangers, people called each other mama or baba (father); Father Kway explained that this was a sign of respect, endearment, and honor. Immediately after hearing this, I asked our host, “Can I call you Baba Kway?” and after a moment of pause and reflection, he said, “As long as I can call you baba as well.” Throughout the rest of the encounter, we continued calling each other baba as a means of familiarity, but also out of love, a simple exchange that became a reminder of mutual love and belonging.
As we listened to and learned from local community members we met, I was moved not only by their accounts of the historical impacts of imperialism and environmental exploitation, but how they continued to humanize even the people who corrupted the government. Instead of channeling disdain and judgment, they embodied love in hopes of achieving liberation. Members of the community we spoke with never blamed a specific individual but instead blamed the systems that socialized people to cause such profound harm across the country. Their love was unconditional, and they challenged our students and staff to see how we can pour love into others without always expecting the same in return.
Even now, when attacks on DEI initiatives and human dignity feel relentless, I return to what I learned in Kenya. How can we, too, love without condition? How can we see one another, and the earth, as whole, worthy, and interconnected? How can we create a world shaped by unconditional love?