← Contemplify
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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to Contemplify, where we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. I'm your host, Paul Swanson. Today I welcome Dr. Liza J. Ranko, who is an interfaith minister, educator, activist and author. Her life work centers the deep healing that is essential to personal and social transformation. Liza is the founder and former executive director of One Life Institute, which for almost 20 years supported the well being of frontline changemakers. She has been a spiritual counselor and teacher for more than three decades, working with individual clients, facilitating healing retreats and offering classes and workshops in a variety of community and academic settings. Liza is the producer and co editor of the Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman. Her new book, Soul Medicine for a Fractured Healing, justice and the Path of Wholeness is the focus of our conversation today. And we ride the waves of bringing us deeper and deeper into the infinite ocean of mystery. So buckle up. And a reminder, you can always visit contemplify.com for the show notes for this episode and learn more about Dr. Liza Renko as liza ranko.org now join me in raising a glass to my guest today, Dr. Liza J. Renko. Conversation with you today. And I always like to begin just by naming where we are. Like, we live in place, we live in context. Where are we finding you today? What is the setting of your whereabouts?
- [01:55]
B
I am at home in Oakland, California. And before we got on this call, I went out to my little patch of earth behind the apartment building and just sat with the green things and the few birds that that survived the city and felt really nourished by the presence of nature.
- [02:29]
A
Is that a common practice for you to step outside and be absorbed in all of nature's offerings?
- [02:37]
B
That is my sanctuary. Yeah. Yeah.
- [02:40]
A
That's lovely. I've only been really spent only one significant day in Oakland and I just was kind of charmed by the fullness of life that seems to be operating at all levels. Is that a fair introduction to Oakland, the all levels?
- [03:03]
B
Yes, very much so. I grew up in Manhattan, which, which was a very different kind of city. Oakland is a much smaller city and so there's a lot more green spaces and backyards and trees. And that to me is so life giving. Oakland also has a tremendous creativity and resilience. Like many cities, there is a lot of pain here, but there's also a lot of joy, a lot of beauty as well.
- [03:44]
A
How long have you lived in Oakland now?
- [03:47]
B
Oh, almost 30 years. Wow. Yeah.
- [03:52]
A
And does it very much feel like home to you?
- [03:56]
B
It does. Prior to This I lived up and down the east coast, never imagined myself living on the Left Coast. And I've now lived here longer than I've lived anywhere in my life. I've lived in this apartment longer than I've lived anywhere in my life, which is both surprising and kind of wonderful.
- [04:21]
A
I love hearing that. There's something I find when you've lived in multiple places, when you. A place really becomes a home and starts to kind of blossom in ways that you can't always know unless you. You kind of claim it as a place that you are giving back to and growing in from. With that sense of neighborliness.
- [04:49]
B
It's a reciprocal relationship.
- [04:52]
A
Yes, yes. As we were talking about, I share that the. The through line of contemplify is to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. And I always love asking guests, like, what does that word contemplative mean to you? Is that a word that you identify with as a moniker for yourself or your work, or do you see it otherwise?
- [05:19]
B
It's not a word I often use, but it is very much a word that I identify with. And I do feel like I live a contemplative life. To me, I guess it signifies reflection, availability to the subtle, you know, to the voice that's beyond words, a quality of presence that is a listening presence, like listening with your whole being. And somewhere mixed in there, I would add an attitude of awe. Like I am. I am so regularly experiencing awe, like little awe, sometimes the great big awe, but very often just the smallest little moments, little pockets. And that feels like it's part of the same fabric to me as living a contemplative life. It's noticing everything or to the best that we can, right?
- [06:43]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So appreciate that response and the different inroads into how that word, how you absorb that word and then, like, allow it to take different shapes. It's really lovely to hear.
- [07:01]
B
For full honesty, Paul, I guess I should add I also less spiritually will ruminate, which is different than being contemplative. Going back over an idea and replaying a conversation, which is a way less helpful practice.
- [07:30]
A
I can relate to that. Liza, for you, is there a spiritual or philosophical tradition or maybe many that speak most deeply to your life, that inform who you are?
- [07:46]
B
Many. And also out of that many, one, you know, from the book that I draw great nourishment, wisdom, inspiration from the mystic traditions. I am enraptured by what to me feels like a common essence, you know, not to paint all of the mystic Traditions with the same brush by any means. But I'm less. Less involved in the particulars of religious practice or certainly not doctrine, but that. That breath of the spirit that breathes into these different embodiments, but the breath itself. And I delight in reading and studying and listening to humans who speak from that in the beauty of whatever their tradition may be. But I also personally find it, particularly in this season of my life, most directly in nature. And so there are nature mystics, but even without adding mystic, which is, I'm sure will likely get into that, but, you know, it's a problematic term because different folks mean different things by it.
- [09:33]
A
Yeah.
- [09:35]
B
What I mean by it is a direct experience of the divine. And I add for myself in all of life.
- [09:42]
A
Yeah.
- [09:43]
B
And that, I would say, is at the heart of my spiritual life and practice and who I be.
- [09:55]
A
That comes so clearly through your work. Your response there, it just vibrates on every page. And that's a real gift to any reader or seeker to be able to have that be translated through the page, because that can be very, very hard to do. And so I really appreciate that.
- [10:19]
B
Hmm.
- [10:21]
A
Well, Isa, for some folks, this might be the first time they're hearing about you or your work as a way for folks to get to know you a little bit. If someone were going to teach a class on the formation of Dr. Liza J. Rankow, Ranko, am I saying that correctly? Ranko Ranco. What would be the three mandatory readings or works or places that formed you that would definitely be on that syllabus?
- [10:51]
B
So I knew this question was coming, Paul, because I've listened to some of your episodes, and I still don't have a concise answer for you. If I can give a little back context. When I teach, particularly when I teach in graduate school, in seminary kind of places, I pretty much always create my own course reader. There's not like a text or even a few texts that do what I'm seeking to do, that invite learners into the breadth and depth of voices. And this is particularly, I should say, I teach spiritual formation and mysticism and social change. Those are the ones that I really have a good time putting together. The reader. When I teach about Howard Thurman, I use Thurman's texts for the most part. This is a way to bring in people from different cultures, different spiritual walks, different historical moments, practices from different traditions to broaden the conversation beyond just one author's perspective. The other thing that I would kind of offer as preamble here, the preamble is going to Be longer than the answer. Just so you know.
- [12:31]
A
This is great. I'm loving this.
- [12:33]
B
Yeah. You know, there's a way that I'm constantly in formation and I hope that all of us are. That we continue to learn and grow and deepen throughout our lives. Right. That we don't say, well, my formation was, you know, by the age of whatever. And that's who I've been since then. You know, writing the book gave me the opportunity to really reflect on my life. And I was surprised at the consistency, particularly from, you know, my childhood years. And now there was a little more variance in the middle, but the through lines have been surprisingly consistent. So all of that said, for the sake of your question, if I was teaching a course on me and my influences, if I was not me teaching a course on me.
- [13:34]
A
Yes, yes,
- [13:37]
B
definitely. Sending students outside to be in nature. Nature is one of my most profound spiritual teachers and formative elements also. It would have to include Dr. Howard Thurman. And then, you know, I'm going to cheat. And for the third thing, include one of my readers. Right.
- [14:07]
A
Please. Yeah.
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B
An anthology, an imagined anthology of the people I call mystic activists from different cultures and different faith walks. Those folks whose, Whose experience of their innate spirituality, whether they call themselves a mystic or not. Right. But that, that it's an integration of inner transformation and social transformation, that our experiences of and with the divine compel us to engage in the work of justice making and collective liberation.
- [14:56]
A
What a lovely list. And I like that that reader holds so much like. Just from reading this, your. This work, I know how many folks that you highlight and draw from, some of who I knew well and others who I'm excited to get to know. But when were you first introduced to Dr. Howard Thurman's work?
- [15:21]
B
Would have been in the mid-1990s. I actually recently did an interview since the book came out with Reverend Michael Beckwith at Agape International Spiritual center in Los Angeles. And he asked me about that and the answer was actually him. When I lived in North Carolina, I used to get the Sunday service cassette tapes right back then from the Agape worship services. And they began with a reading, an inspirational reading from the pulpit. And every so often the reading would be from the writings of Dr. Howard Thurman. That was the first I heard the name. Didn't know anything about him. Knew that I liked those readings, but didn't. Didn't go research him. This was pre Google. In my life, Google might have existed, but it didn't exist in my life at that time. And Then maybe a year, like in 96, I was with a friend visiting Morehouse College. She was doing a presentation there in the chapel. And after the presentation, you know, folks wanted to come up and talk to her one on one. So I went out and just walked around the building. And in that building are portraits of many of the more influential folks who have either been students or faculty at Morehouse. And I found myself face to face with Dr. Howard Thurman. And, of course, I later learned his ashes and Mrs. Thurman's ashes are interred there. There's an obelisk monument in the courtyard across from the statue honoring Dr. King. And I started reading from there and included a very extensive dive into Thurman's works as part of my doctoral studies in the late 90s, early, very early 2000, ish. Started teaching classes on Thurman. 2002, I was out here in the Bay Area. I got involved in Fellowship Church, the church that Thurman co founded. Met many of the original members who at that time were elders and now are all in the ancestral world, and felt him as not just someone whose words I discovered in books, but as a presence in my life.
- [18:19]
A
Yeah.
- [18:20]
B
Particularly working on an audio collection of archival recordings that I worked on in. I think it published in 2010 with Thurman's daughter Olive, with Dr. Vincent Harding and Dr. Luther Smith. And the four of us were the midwives for this very rich undertaking. And I just. It brought me into such a deep intimacy with Thurman.
- [19:00]
A
Yeah.
- [19:00]
B
And he's still one of my most profound teachers.
- [19:06]
A
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I sometimes will say some of my best friends have been dead for a long time.
- [19:16]
B
Exactly.
- [19:18]
A
Their presence just continues to speak, not just through their work, but just in difficult to articulate ways that they seem to show up and play a guiding hand or a mirror back. And one kind of final question, just to kind of get folks to get a sense of what juices you up in the world. I love the arts, whether it's literature, poetry, music, visual arts, sculpture. Is there any piece of artistic inspiration that has recently given you that sense of that awe that you spoke about earlier, that has given you pause, but lifted the spirit at the same time?
- [20:09]
B
Leaving out nature, which is an incredible artwork that is ever evolving? And we're in early spring here in Oakland, so there's a lot of very exciting new creativity every day. I don't know that there's a single work. Music is such a vital part of my life, but there's not like an artist or a piece, it's more kind of DJing as needed, depending on how I'm feeling or what I'm trying to evoke in myself. This has not come up in any of the interviews, but there was a very long period of my life where if you asked me what I did, I would say I'm an artist. I was a visual artist, and I miss that. Perhaps it will circle back in this later season, but I have not been as in touch with the visual art of others, sad to say, other than like on social media. But I do, I do try to curate beauty in my own, in the aesthetic of what I put up. And I'm very attuned to. To beauty that other folks may be creating. So, yeah, not a you can put it in the, you know, in the footnotes to go find it kind of an answer, but.
- [22:10]
A
Well, that. That tracks. I think about your reader, this is almost very. I almost hear a similar thing of like, yeah, it's not just one, it's many that speak into that space, that support the enlivening through the artistic space.
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B
And poetry, not a specific poet, but as an art form, because I am a lover of words and I whether it's poetry in poetic form or the poetry of good prose, but that delicious language is deeply inspiring and nourishing to me.
- [23:04]
A
I love it. I love it. And there's certainly In Soul Medicine for a Fractured World, you have a wonderful way with words to bring to use poetic prose to draw readers in. And I'm excited to dive in to talk about your book. I want to say that you set the table for this book so nicely. You welcome reader into the framing and in your words, all around us, worlds are dying and new worlds are being born. All around us, life is dying and life is being born. And within that, we find our own location within this pattern. And we explore personal, collective, ancestral wounds and places of growth as well, with this sacred charge of becoming people who can sustain a reimagined society. So as I let that sink in, I honor the courage it must have taken to chart such a course with this book. Did it feel courageous or risky for you to commit yourself to guiding readers on this bold trajectory?
- [24:20]
B
That's an interesting question, Paul. In many ways, I wrote the book that I needed to read. Some of it emerges from, you know, my own lifetime of experience and study. But some of it was new research, things that I had never thought of before, that, you know, spirit whispered, there's a connection here. Go, go learn about it. Some of it was, you know the wisdom of trees. So I learned a tremendous amount through the process of, I'll say, co writing this book with whatever spirit called it into being. And also the deepest calling that I seek to live in the direction of is teaching, guiding, supporting, counseling, accompanying folks on the journey of life. And there's only so many people that I get to have for tea in my garden or in a classroom. And so the book was in hope of contributing something of value, That it will speak to people's pain and seeking and spiritual depth in a way that would be sustaining through this time. Right. This exquisitely difficult season of life on Earth. And particularly, how do we navigate this? Not in the short term. How are we going to wait out till a new administration comes in? Right. This is a much larger season that we're in than that. How do we cultivate what is needed in ourselves to, as. As you quoted, you know, to become the people who can live into a new way of being in relationship with each other and with the Earth. And that, you know, includes both different perspectives, different ways of looking at this time on the planet. And also practically, you know, what are some practices that we can be supported by?
- [27:33]
A
Yeah, well said. One thing I so appreciate about your book is I always try to pay attention to when I'm reading. When I crack open a book, start at the beginning. Does it slow me down to pay attention to what's actually here, or am I racing to get through it? And your book slowed me down to the pace of reception, which I wish was a more common thing in my experience of reading books. And so there's this qualitative difference in your book that I really appreciated of slowing down to be able to journey through what you present here. And just to give folks a sense of how I'm understanding the framework of your book is that I think it provides this like a trustworthy map to explore with one's heart as the compass. And I think you use that at times as a. As a working metaphor. And there's four parts to this book, and please feel free to correct me if I'm not summarizing this correctly, but part one is kind of the phases of initiation. Part two and three focus on, and to quote you, healing our personal, planetary, and ancestral wounds and the conditions of social division that arise from those. And then part four, we discover or rediscover our inherent belonging to expansiveness of all life. Why does this multidimensional framing of map encompass internal and external wounds and healing personal and planetary and ancestral and belonging to life matter on the path of wholeness.
- [29:27]
B
They're not separate from one another. Our wholeness requires all of that. The inner worlds and the outer worlds are part of a single wholeness. That is the foundational principle. And to me, it is a mystic principle. That mysticism is about recognizing the oneness of all of life. The first section, I wouldn't necessarily say it's about the stages of initiation. The third chapter does look at the archetype of initiation as a framework that can give us some insights to what we're going through. Now. The first chapter is looking at the. The archetype of apocalypse, which. Not in the sense of, you know, zombies and the fiery end of everything but the cycling of life. Right, that apocalypse is death and rebirth.
- [30:41]
A
Yes.
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B
Destruction and renewal. And these are cycles that human beings and earth have gone through many times before. And we are in the chaotic destruction part. But even in the midst of that, there is new emergence happening simultaneously. And then the second chapter is about purpose, you know, discerning what is our calling in the face of this. So I. I think I would put that more as the key foundation in part one to carry us through the rest of the way.
- [31:25]
A
Thank you for that. Thank you for that. That expansion. And I. I appreciate that there's a practice by Dr. Howard Thurman that you. You bring up about embodying purpose, which I found to be so revelatory in its simplicity, but also it's not simple. This is based on Dr. Harvard Thurin's work, where you invite readers to meditate with three questions and to really meditate with them. Who are you? Pause. Who are you really? What do you want? Or what are you for? How will you get it? And then that kind of bonus question, after wrestling with the first three. How have you lived your life in the knowledge of your truth? And this embodying a purpose, I just thought was. Was thrilling to read on the page because it. It is so alive and again, simple to write, but profound to honestly engage in that. What do you see as the fruits of this meditative practice for those who take it on?
- [32:40]
B
I'm not sure that Thurman thought of it as a practice. Those were questions that he used to just drop on people all the time. And they appear often in his writing, in his sermons. And people I know who were in relationship with him during his life, they give testimony to him, asking them, you know, in different times, in different ways. But that sense of purpose is such a deeply important spiritual compass. And the dominant culture in the US and really in colonial Capitalist modernity anywhere has been cheapened to where we're told that your purpose is your career path or your purpose is your accomplishments or whatever gains you notoriety. Purpose belongs to the soul rather than the ego. Those are shallow, right? Purpose is what is the quality of being that we live in the direction of. It's not a project that we complete and check off our list and look for the next one. It is more about that inner discernment of who are you really? And that understanding then can be expressed in our doings. So the beingness, to me is the primary thing. And then from there, how. How will you express that in the world in service to the larger good? There was something else I was going to say, and it came and went that fast, and hopefully it'll come back, no problem.
- [34:55]
A
Yeah, I so appreciate, and I see these articles and studies about people feeling a lack of purpose or lack of meaning in their life, and that is not an occup. I mean, yes, there's occupational hazards with that, but the primary thing is it's a soul hazard. If we're not living out of a sense of purpose, we can flounder in ways that are. I mean, we just get absorbed in empire consciousness of the dominant narrative, and then get swept along with that without having that kind of true north that I think your book is inviting us to discover or rediscover within ourselves.
- [35:41]
B
Yeah, and I'm glad you. You brought up meaning, because to me, purpose and meaning very much go together. The piece that I forgot to add before it did come back doesn't always come back, but it came back.
- [35:57]
A
It's nice when the boomerang returns.
- [35:59]
B
Yeah. Is that when I talk about discernment of purpose, it's not a single answer that you get. And then you go, okay, now I know my purpose. Now I can go do stuff. Right. It is a living with the question, living with the inquiry, a deepening, layered understanding. And year over years. Let me just make that part plain too. Over years, and it's not like prior to having that awareness or prior to asking the question, we're somehow living a meaningless life. As I gained clarity over years on the subtleties and dimensions of purpose in my life, it made sense of all that had gone before. It was a weaving together of, to me, things that might have seemed disparate and it made them all part of. Oh, that fits under this larger understanding. That was another expression. Our purpose is within us. It's not somewhere external that we have to go and find it and lure it in before we can start living a life of meaning. Right?
- [37:36]
A
Yeah.
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B
Our purpose is part of our deepest self. Capital S. Self. Right. Of course we're going to be giving expression to it consciously or unconsciously. Having the conscious awareness, though, I think, allows us to have a better focus about it. And it can help us in times of decision in our life, like should I take this job or that one? Should I move? Should I be in this direction? We can ask, does it. Does it further my purpose? Does it hinder my purpose? Or sometimes it's neutral, but it gives us. It helps to shepherd us in the direction of our truth and our gift to the world. Because again, to me, the purpose is not about me, me, me.
- [38:44]
A
Yeah.
- [38:45]
B
It's about what is the medicine that I carry for these times. I really believe that any of us that are alive now in this season of profound change are here with purpose. This is not an accidental, casual time to have a human incarnation.
- [39:05]
A
Yeah.
- [39:06]
B
So what is my calling? What is your calling? What is anybody's calling? And how we can contribute to these times in a way that is beneficial to the collective wholeness of life.
- [39:26]
A
That's beautiful. And I'm thinking now about, I think, what Dr. Thurman called life's working papers, where the purpose is held, but they're constantly being revised, too. That. Right. Like, it. It's. And I don't necessarily mean like changing a purpose, but almost like getting closer towards the. The fuller flowering. How. How would you talk about those kind of relationship to the life's working papers?
- [39:59]
B
Right. Well, I think what you're describing is what I was really just talking about. Thurman's use of the term life's working paper is looking at. Is this another way to look at the same thing? Perhaps? How do we devote ourselves to the imperative questions of our time? Right. How do we respond to the deeper questions of life? What are our values? What are our. What's our ethical principle? The dominant culture, again, does not encourage folks to reflect on their values and ethical principles. Either they hand you a set and say, here you go, or it's ignored entirely. Or you get pop culture values about, you know, be a celebrity, look young, make a lot of money.
- [41:03]
A
Yeah.
- [41:05]
B
So the working paper, as Thurman spoke about it, he writes about it in the epilogue to the book Jesus and the Disinherited. And he talks about. It's very short. It's just like two pages long. He talks about the working paper of the prophet Jesus of Nazareth and how we might begin to discern that from things he said and what is described as how he lived his life in the Gospels. And he says, and also we can study life itself and understand more about life's capital L. Life's working paper. What is the purpose of capital L life? And we can get clues by observing. I'm looking out my window. By observing how it expresses how all the different parts support each other, feed each other, nourish each other. What are the synergies of, you know, like the water cycle. Right.
- [42:19]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [42:20]
B
I mean, there's just so much wisdom. Thurman was a nature mystic. He was a Baptist, ordained Baptist minister, but he was a nature mystic from his childhood throughout his life. And so I think it's an invitation there to look more deeply, to listen more deeply. Yes. To ourselves and our own deepest truths, but also to understand the world that we inhabit.
- [42:54]
A
Yes. I'm just thinking about that pause that you took just even to look at your window and how that's so indicative of. I feel like how you do this work is looking for patterns that are already ready and available and to tune in to what nature is, the givens of nature. And I just. I'm grateful for that because I think that there's. There's something that just flows out of you, that. Of that constant, kind of like turning to nature, to capital L life. How is that speaking into the moment that you want to pay attention to as you carry out your purpose in this work? I'm thinking about how, as we've talked about Apocalypse and what gets revealed in times of change. And you use this phrase of wilderness times. What does that mean, to use that phrase, wilderness time? And why does it matter for those of us reading and listening to this work, to engage in wilderness times and how we show up in it? Why does that matter?
- [44:22]
B
Wilderness times in scriptural study. And I'll say I'm more of a. An allegorical reader of scripture. And Wilderness is a place of formation and transformation. It's a place of difficulty, of wrestling. Every place that the wilderness is referred to, people are going through something, and they're being changed by what they're going through. And they're seeking an answer or some guidance or some understanding or some support from a power beyond the tangible. And so the wilderness is in some ways a crucible. And I feel like that is where we are now, in the collective of humanity, that we are in a period of difficult transformation. And so hence my reference to it in the book. I don't remember if you had more of a question behind that or not. I've lost Track. So, please.
- [45:53]
A
It's okay.
- [45:53]
B
Yeah, call me back in.
- [45:56]
A
One thing related to the wilderness space was it's not just something to get through, but to learn how to inhabit the wilderness for as long as it takes to complete our transition or metamorphosis, as you say in your book.
- [46:10]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [46:11]
A
That is a skill set, a mentoring that seems difficult to come by. How to inhabit the wilderness.
- [46:20]
B
Yeah. Our instinct is we want to get out of there as fast as we can. Right. It's. It's painful, it's uncomfortable, it's hard. Who would want to stay there? Like, wouldn't the answer be, like, show me the first way out or how to get through it quicker? And, in fact, we need that alchemy. Right. We need to sit in the fire. I'm mixing all the metaphors now.
- [46:51]
A
I love it.
- [46:53]
B
In order to go back to what you were quoting earlier, to become the people who can live in a new way. If we just change the systems and the structures of, you know, domination and empire and all that without changing ourselves, without changing the underlying worldview, the underlying paradigm, without developing the maturity, we're just going to recreate the same dysfunctional dynamics. Now, I'm saying we. We is a. A loaded term. So let me specifically say we of the dominant culture of modernity. There are cultures who never lost track of this, many of whom have been decimated by colonialism and the genocide of colonization.
- [48:02]
A
Mm.
- [48:04]
B
But it. We need the wrestling of the wilderness. We need the. The heat of the crucible to really awaken what has been forgotten. I believe that all of us, no matter what our ancestry, if you go back far enough, we come from people who knew this. We come from people who reverenced the earth, who lived in healthy relationship with nature, and who had spiritual practices that supported that. It's not that we're called to go back, but to remember, reawaken, so that we can go forward in a new. You know, it's a different time on the planet. Yeah. Yeah. So how do we call on the best of that ancestral wisdom and that deepened capacity to listen to that which is beyond our own best thinking, to collectively dream, live, imagine, create ourselves into a world that honors the dignity, the beauty, the sacredness of all of life, human and beyond human.
- [49:47]
A
Yeah. Every time you share something, I just want to, like, take five seconds of just allowing it to sink in. I'm thinking about the quote you bring in from Malodoma Somay around. Initiation of finding one's purpose is the primary goal of initiation. It also teaches responsibility towards Community, village and culture. And I feel like this connects to what you're saying of like bringing what is the best of the past into your own embodiment. And we all, we need to be initiated into that, to be able to. To bring that purpose through the wisdom of the ancestral lineage we come from, the traditions that we carry and the communities that we're a part of. How do you see initiation in our current days? How do you see whether it's the need for formal or informal initiations for folks as they learn to grow as wisdom bearers of their own lineages and also just the love and wisdom of current communities?
- [51:15]
B
Yeah. So again, to clarify, I use initiation in the book as an archetypal lens for the kind of transformative process that, willing or not, I believe we are undergoing. I am not saying we need to come up with some ritual that if we all just go through this ritual, everything will be fine. Elder Malidoma comes from a culture that has an initiatory practice that is part of the fabric of the culture and has been since the beginning. Yeah, that is his cultural context. He is very clear that he's not recommending folks who. That is not their cultural context to borrow from another culture or even figure out what our ancestors did and somehow apply that in the present time. He uses the term erratic initiations to describe the traumas, the difficulties, the life changing, the life upending experiences that we have individually and in these times collectively. At other times too, collectively. And his point is that it tracks with the stages of initiation. The first stage, as he describes it, is separation from normal life. Something happens in his formal initiations in his culture and tradition. You leave the village and you go into the literal wilderness. Yeah, right. And you go through in that a period of prescribed ordeals. We have ordeals aplenty going on all the time, individually and collectively. What we don't have is the third stage of the initiatory archetype, which is returning, coming back into the community, being guided and making sense of your experience, integrating what you've been through, helping to discern the way forward, what are the gifts and purpose? And it's always in service of community. It's not me, me, me. It is how. What's my contribution here? So what I'm asking is how can we supply that missing piece in the context of our contemporary lives? Ritual may be part of it. I lift up an organization called Ritual for Return that I was so delighted to discover they engage ritual practices as a way to. For formerly incarcerated folks to re enter their Communities with a deeper sense of purpose, with an integration of the traumas that they've experienced by being incarcerated or that led them to incarceration. So it's the same principles, the same ideas applied in contemporary times, on contemporary issues and traumas. What might open up in our lives, each of us individually and as a collective, if we looked through that lens at the experiences that we are going through and how might that offer some resources? Resources, meaning, approaches, perspectives, guidance to help bring completion and integration and to harvest the gifts. In the book, I talk about my almost lifelong experience with chronic life threatening illness as really my most profound initiatory experience. It's ongoing, but there was an integration, there was a. A recognition of the gifts and the wisdom I talk about. We could add this to the list of textbooks for the course on Dr. Liza, but I talk about illness as one of my most profound spiritual teachers. It wasn't that I went through some weekend initiatory ritual workshop, but I did. I can look at what Elder Malidoma talks about and I can see how it applies to my life experience.
- [57:04]
A
Yes, thank you for that word and that clarification. I think part of what comes up for me is the need for that initiatory imagination so that when life is initiating us, how do we have a shared sense of that so we can help say to someone that sounds. To speak what they went through and support them through that integration so that it doesn't become. That sounds tough. And then you kind of move on because I think. I shouldn't say, I think. I wonder about what a shared imagination around that, how we could then honor the different seasons of life to help honor the. Those experiences that one goes through. And I think you do that so beautifully in the book about the different points of integration. You're never ever dismissing someone's wounds or traumas, but inviting the integration of that for their own healing, but also for the healing of communities and serving the world. And I struggle to think of a lot of other. I know they're out there and I've met them, but the different models of folks who are actually inviting that initiatory imagination and process to be applied in a context without trying to steal from someone else's context or culture. So what I hear you saying is how do we bring those principles, those seasons, those passages, and honor what's already happening at play in our reality?
- [58:58]
B
You know, so much about the things that we encounter in life is how do we engage them? Right. Experiences of suffering can diminish us, can lead us to shut down to close in on ourselves, or they can open us to the larger life. It's our moment of agency is how we engage. That's not limited to. Well, we have to look at it like it's an initiatory experience. Right. That's an offering of one window that might invite us into agency, into choice about how we engage it to give value and meaning. I talk about it also in relationship to post traumatic growth, which, you know, we all hear about post traumatic stress, but we rarely hear about post traumatic growth, about how people can find meaning and move forward enriched by sometimes the most horrible experiences that you would never wish on anyone but that are part of our human life.
- [60:31]
A
So well said. A thread that's coming to me in your book. There's no denying about the hardship of life's experiences. And you bring in lament. And lament feels like, I think about Dr. Barbara Holmes and her work with lament.
- [60:58]
B
You know, she's a. Or was, still is in the ancestral world, a very dear, dear, dear friend of mine.
- [61:06]
A
Yes. And I love the way you honor her work through your work. But lament is something that she speaks of. You speak of. What is the importance of lament, particularly in our times now and in this work of whole making injustice.
- [61:27]
B
Yeah. You know, lament and grief are another thing that we want to leapfrog over. Like I was saying, the wilderness, we just want to, like. Yeah, we just bypass that. Isn't there.
- [61:41]
A
Isn't there a show on TV I can watch instead?
- [61:44]
B
Yeah. Or a road around it or something. Yeah. There is so much to grieve anyway in human experience, but now especially, there is so much trauma and pain and injustice and trespass and harm, whether we watch the news or not. We feel it. We feel it. If we deny that or try to, you know, water bug our way across the surface of it, we are denying our depth. We're denying our connection to each other. We are denying that which gives us the capacity to love. Right. There's also tremendous healing. And this is something Barbara writes about and I, you know, I reference her in the book about this. Lament is a healing expression that honors that grief. And lament can be catalytic both of individual and community healing, but also of transformation of injustice. It calls out and says, no, this is not right. And as we gather together in that whale, not only are we helping to release what we have been carrying inside ourselves, but we are connecting with one another. And there is a force that then can rise up and say to the oppressive powers. No. Very recently in Minneapolis, the Shooting deaths of. I mean, we gotten a whole lot more press about Renee Goode and Alex Pretty, both of whom beautiful souls that need to be recognized. But there have been other people also killed before and since by ice.
- [64:26]
A
Yeah.
- [64:29]
B
Instead of just letting it slide, people collectively grieved, gathered in the street, brought flowers, cried, sang and raised a voice that said, this is not acceptable. That, too, is part of lament.
- [64:54]
A
Yeah. There's so much in lament and the ways that it can. What it can do for the collective, but what it can do personally.
- [65:07]
B
There's so much lost when we stifle it.
- [65:11]
A
Yeah.
- [65:12]
B
Or when we isolate. Right. You know, we're acculturated to. To privatize our grief.
- [65:19]
A
Yes.
- [65:21]
B
And lament as a practice invites us to collectivize it. We are held by something larger than our individual selves as we experience our grief.
- [65:37]
A
That's a word, as I think about that, like the way that we are encouraged to privatize our grief or lament. And then when I look out at the landscape before us and think about the way that empire juices people up, you talk about this through fear and rage. And then you add a third piece of seduction, which I thought was such a wonderful. Because we talk about the fear and the rage and that's publicized so highly, but the seduction stoked by empires. What can you tell us about seduction as a tool of empire consciousness,
- [66:31]
B
Lifestyles of the rich and famous. You know, all of that stuff. Right. Don't you want to have this big tv? Don't you want to have this sexy girlfriend? Don't you want to have this car? Don't you want to have everybody envy you and admire you? And then it gets tangled up in bad theology, too, about all these material goods are a sign of God's favorite. Just talk about spiritual malpractice. And it's not new. Right? It's not new. It's. It divides folk who might otherwise be aligned and allied against the oligarchy by giving a few privileges to some. And in the United States, maleness and whiteness are two of the prime characteristics that are strategically given a few bonus points that make you want to side with your oppressor rather than align with the larger number of people who are quite obviously the targets of harm. Fear keeps people in line. Seduction also keeps people in line, you know, especially when there is so much lack and so much need, both material need, like can I pay the rent and feed my kids? But also emotional need. Am I worthy? Am I acceptable? So being affirmed, feeling seen and accepted, we need that as human beings, but it's manipulated by the few who are seeking to hold all the power to play to the pain points of folks, to move it out of the US and out of contemporary times. I think Dr. Thurman might have even talked about this at one point, but Adolf Hitler told the disenfranchised youth, I love you. I will take care of you. Trump did the same thing. Yeah, but we. We yearn to have somebody say, I love you. You are important. I will take care of you. And then that is exploited. That's a very short answer to a much longer analysis about how seduction works in. In domination.
- [69:40]
A
Yeah, Well, I, I just so appreciate you bringing that up because it is, in some ways just. It's not as. Because that's what seduction is. Right? It's veiled in how it's practiced and
- [69:56]
B
who it benefits and who it benefits.
- [69:58]
A
Paul. Yes, well said. And then when you step back and actually are able to see it, then all the. The traces are there. What that is leading to and who that is privileging and who that's giving power to, or I will love you. If this. I want to do a quick. I know we're a little bit over. Is that okay if we go a few minutes longer or.
- [70:21]
B
It's fine with me. Your listeners will hang in there for a longer conversation.
- [70:29]
A
Yeah. This is fantastic. I mean, and I always knew there will never be enough time for. This is such a deep, rich book that we. There's so many different things that we could talk about for hours.
- [70:43]
B
Thank you. Well, I know you only do 12 a year, but if you ever want to have me back, we can do part two.
- [70:50]
A
Great. Great. I want to bring up a person that you kind of name as an exemplar of mystic activism. Vimala Thacker. Am I saying her name correctly?
- [71:06]
B
Vimala Thakkar.
- [71:07]
A
Vimala Thakkar. I took so much just from learning the little bit I learned about her and excited to learn more about both the inner and outer transformation in which she participated in. What is it about her life that you have taken so much from? It just seems like there's a kinship there that maybe I was reading between the lines, but that you're clearly just seeing something just so vivaciously alive in her.
- [71:47]
B
Well, she is one of the folks that I call mystic activists. She was an Indian woman, Hindu. She was part of Vinoba Bhave's Land Gift movement. She was deeply influenced by J. Krishnamurti to go out and teach. He said you got to go out and teach a spiritual teacher. Part of why she's highlighted in the book is because there was writing and speaking that I could quote and refer to. She certainly embodied that, that integration of spirituality and social justice, social change. But many people also do. But she articulate, like Thurman. She articulated it and left us words that we can quote in a book and lived a life that was publicly documented so that she can help clarify this thing that I'm trying to point toward. And the point of all of it, of course, is not, well, let's all just admire these amazing people. But here are some different examples of how different folk in different cultures, of different faiths, of different historical moments and movements gave life to the integration of deep spirituality and a concern for social justice and transformation. And then how do we, in our own lives, give life to that integration in our unique embodiments, in our unique context? Right. It's looking at them to get a sense of what are the elements that are woven here? What are the different ways this can be expressed? And then what would that look like in my life, in my spiritual life, in my social engagement, whether as an activist or being in service to community in some way? How might a deepened, contemplative spiritual life allow me to bring something different into my activity, to engage, whether it's, again, justice or service or some combination to engage that from a different place in me? How can that be informed by my spiritual life? That's the invitation that I'm offering readers through these examples. It's not study Vimalathakar. Study Howard Thurman. Yes, study them. Great. Study them for inspiration and insight. But then the way to honor them is to find your own particular, unique, stumbling, gorgeous way.
- [75:37]
A
Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying there, because it's so easy to kind of highlight the mystic activists who are also teachers, because they can articulate it in a way which is wonderful. But to live out of your own purpose in that way, you don't have to be a teacher to do that. You could live into that without that public articulation and word and way, way,
- [76:06]
B
way more people do that than you know. Yeah.
- [76:11]
A
Yes. I do want to read one quote from her that I just thought was mic drop. Let me ponder for the rest of my life. She writes, revolution, total revolution implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that. Individual love, she says, is the force of total revolution. That doesn't fire up your Bones to go live this. I don't know. Will, how does that quote land with you when you hear revolution? Total revolution implies experimenting with the impossible because it seems like you've done some experimenting with the impossible.
- [77:00]
B
It reminds me of the quote from Nelson Mandela, it only seems impossible until it's done. Or it always seems impossible until it's done. Right?
- [77:10]
A
Yeah.
- [77:13]
B
Impossibility, I think, is contextual and ever changing how many things just in the span of my life that seemed impossible in earlier years are now routine.
- [77:29]
A
Right.
- [77:30]
B
Yeah.
- [77:32]
A
I could literally talk to you for hours. And we've only touched on a smattering of things in the book because the arc of this book is so clear and the invitation that it invites readers into can truly shape a person's life and help ground them in their own heart and soul and see their own purpose, potentially with new eyes and how to go and live into it. So I hope everyone listening will pick up a copy of your book, which, again, the title is Soul Medicine for a Fractured World, Healing, justice, and the Path of Wholeness. There is so much in this book, more than we were able to talk about here, but hopefully this gives folks a taste of what they're being invited into, and you end it with this beautiful sense of wanting folks to know that they belong to life, you belong to life, which is such a meaningful message and feels like a sacred charge to live that and invite others into that as well. I always like to close my conversations here by keeping it embodied, by asking the guest, if you were going to pair our conversation with a drink, what would be your drink of choice and why?
- [79:00]
B
When I sit with folks, either with friends or with mentees, I bring them into my kitchen and I open the cabinet where there is a ridiculous number of different kinds of tea and offer them a cup of tea. And we sit together and we go deep. So I am drinking during our conversation. So ginger tea. And that would be my drink. But my invitation is whatever cup of tea people might enjoy and to put it in, in a mug that you can, like, wrap your hands around so that your hands are warmed and preferably drink it in in a garden.
- [79:57]
A
That sounds perfect. Thank you for that. Ginger tea is my favorite. Tea is how I start every day, is with a cup of ginger tea. There's something about it that is so medicinal to the. Not just the. The body, but also just feels like, to me, to the soul. I just love ginger tea. Good people, thank you for listening to this episode of Contemplify. May it aid you in plumbing the earthy depths of this shared cosmos. Pop over to contemplify.com to find the show notes for this episode or sign up for the monthly Contemplify non Required Reading list or sign up for the weekly Contemplative practice. Lo Fi and Hushed. If you are enjoying Contemplify, you can rate and review it on your podcast player. It helps fill the cup of contemplative cheer. The theme song of Contemplify is called Langside by Charles Enns and Darian Hofius. Fellas, thanks as always. I'm looking forward to bringing you more musings here and conversations with contemplatives in the world in the near future. Until then, be well.