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Interfaith Lecture Recaps

V. Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, Darren Walker challenge white privilege with courage

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Telling the truth can be a courageous act in a country built on lies. Discussing the impacts of white privilege and anti-Black narratives on the structural and systematic functioning of American society requires bravery.

The V. Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas engaged in conversation with Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, on Wednesday in the Hall of Philosophy. Their lecture, “New Profiles in Courage,” shares its name with the Week Eight Chautauqua Lecture Series and Interfaith Lecture Series theme. 

Douglas, ordained minister, canon theologian at Washington National Cathedral and dean of Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary, is serving Chautauqua as this week’s chaplain-in-residence. Her dialogue with Walker was rooted in familiarity.

“This is going to be a conversation among two people who know each other and can have a real talk,” Walker said.

As a Black gay Christian, Walker has experienced homophobia in the Black church. He asked Douglas why it is so hard for some Black people of faith to accept everyone who wants to engage in faith and fellowship. 

Douglas said Black people have long faced oppression, subjugation and assault for simply existing, and it struck her as odd that they would do the same to another group of people. She wanted to understand why, as one of her son’s godfathers was gay. She professed that even though he loved the church, the church refused to love him back. 

“What I discovered, amongst other things, is that when we talk about sort of the tropes and the stereotypes that have shaped Black reality, we know that one of those stereotypes has been the way in which Black people have been sexualized,” Douglas said.

On the hypersexualization of Black people, Douglas pointed to white supremacist ideologies that have impacted the treatment of LGBTQ people in the Black church.

“(White supremacy) might not have all to do with it, but it has something to do with it,” Douglas said. “It’s compounded this problem.”

In the merge between white supremacy, anti-Black ideologies and hypersexualization alongside Christian faith traditions, homophobia is born. Douglas believes these ideologies have impacted the rights of Black personhood.

“Now, that’s no excuse,” Douglas said. “… For our own well-being, for our own humanity, … we have got to begin to unravel this. … When we understand it, that becomes one of the ways in which we begin to deconstruct it and refuse to allow it to stand.”

Walker began to discuss systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Research has found that now, one out of every three Black boys born can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, and about 40% of the inmate population in the criminal justice system is made up of Black people. He asked Douglas how people of faith can engage in this large, systemic issue.

“Black children are disproportionately trapped in abject poverty. That’s a pipeline to the system of incarceration. The real miracle is when they don’t end up in jail. The real miracle is when they don’t end up dead,” Douglas said. “Our faith communities have to take the lead, calling it out, speaking the truth. … (They must be) accountable, not to the way things are, but to the way they are supposed to be.”

Describing his grandparents’ experiences in the Black church, Walker said Sundays were a day of liberation, as Black people were able to experience dignity and acknowledgment. But now nearly all religions are experiencing a decrease of young populations becoming involved in their faith traditions. 

Douglas believes this is a failure of the church. Her son, Desmond, has said that churches need to make all people feel welcome and allow space for people to be themselves without judgment.

Walker asked how churches can work to regain trust; Douglas said the church needs to be brought to the younger demographics that are experiencing that distrust. 

“One of the roles you play with Black folks (and) white folks is to be a truth-teller,” Walker said. “Bringing us back to this idea of new profiles in courage, it is hard to have the courage to be a truth-teller in an institution that may not really want to internalize it.”

Douglas said it is easier for people to listen to the changes that need to be made rather than acting on those changes, which makes people complicit. People may want reform and equality, but they often find it difficult to sacrifice their own privilege.

“This ‘Make America Great Again’ environment has exacerbated this whole reality of white supremacists, anti-Black racism, because what we’re finding is downward mobility of whiteness,” Douglas said. 

People of color and immigrants have been blamed for white downward mobility, but this distracts from the root of the problem. 

“Blacks and immigrants have been blamed for that,” Douglas said. “… When you blame those already on the bottom … it protects you from looking at the systems and structures that have created this unjust privilege in the first place.”

This phenomenon, according to Douglas, seems to have increased hatred against Black bodies through physical, systematic and structural means.

As a country, Walker asked Douglas, how can America  stop this toxic cycle of hatred? 

“We’ve got to first have the courage, the moral courage, to tell the truth about our history, about who we are as a nation,” Douglas said. “We didn’t just arrive at white supremacy overnight. It’s embedded in the very foundation of this country. Anti-Blackness is embedded in the very foundation of this country.”

Giving a voice to those who have been voiceless in the discussion of history would bring forward new perspectives. The removal of true history in some schools concerns Douglas. 

Building relationships with people who are different from oneself is another way to remedy these issues of hatred, by creating a sense of understanding and connection, she said. 

“Until we begin to become more proximate to people who are different from ourselves,” Douglas said, “(we won’t be able to) see people as the people that they are and not as the stereotypes.”

Douglas presented findings from the Public Religion Research Institute, that 75% of white people do not have a person of color in their intimate social circles. Out of the 25% that do, their social circles were still over 90% white. 

Douglas believes that white people must address their uninterrupted, uninterrogated whiteness by telling the truth, but Walker feels it is a complicated process. 

“We’ve crafted narratives about who we are as a people,” Walker said. “Those narratives have sustained and inspired us. … And those narratives have helped Americans, white Americans, feel good about themselves and feel aspirational for those ideals. … And so to simply say it’s all a lie … is very hard.”

While some white people play by the rules and feel as though their successes were achieved fairly, Walker explained that the system is rigged for them to be winners, which is a tough pill to swallow. Many white people could find this deeply offensive, as they feel as though they worked hard for their earnings. 

Because of their privilege, white people often do not have to feel uncomfortable. 

White people, according to Douglas, need to start to wake up other white people in their communities, to see and speak the truth of privilege. They must be intentionally committed to creating a fair and equal society.

“There has to be an intentional recognition and interrogation of whiteness and intentional realization of privilege,” Douglas said. “… Every day, you have to make a decision that (you are) not going to live passively into whiteness, but going to live over and against it.”

Soul sisters: Atiya Aftab, Sheryl Olitzky on foundations of Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom

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Atiya Aftab and Sheryl Olitzky are an unlikely duo, but their souls may have been destined to intertwine. Aftab, an American Muslim woman, and Olitzky, an American Jewish woman, met on the premise that they wanted to create a space for women of their respective faiths to connect with and humanize one another.

In 2010, the pair co-founded the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a nonprofit organization that works to build trust, respect and relationships between Muslim and Jewish women of all ages.

Continuing Week Eight’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “New Profiles in Courage,” Aftab and Olitzky delivered their joint lecture, “Being the Change – A Leap of Faith” on Tuesday, in the Hall of Philosophy. Olitzky began the presentation, while Aftab spoke during the second half of the lecture. 

“This is sacred ground, and it’s not a coincidence that we are here today after the horrific Friday that we all experienced,” Olitzky said, acknowledging the attack on Salman Rushdie in the Amphitheater. “We are here today to reinforce that love is stronger than hate.”

While extremist ideologies have existed for years, Olitzky said current levels of extremism have surpassed her expectations. Yet, she is not scared; she is concerned.

“I had a choice: I could sit it out or I could dance,” Olitzky said. “I chose to dance, and I’m inviting all of you to dance with me, to dance with Atiya.” 

The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom currently has anywhere between 5,000 to 7,000 women, ages 14 to over 90, involved in the organization across the United States, Canada and Berlin.

In 2010, the organization, which Olitzky said was never intended to become an organization, started with 12 people. In 2013, it was decided that the Sisterhood would file for nonprofit status. Their organization soon began to expand, as more Jewish and Muslim women wanted to learn more about each other. Chapters were started across the country. 

By November 2016, the nonprofit had 25 chapters and hosted a conference with 1,000 women that grabbed the attention of The New York Times.

“(The New York Times wanted) to put us on the front page above the centerfold,” Olitzky said. “The second that hit their front page, we had thousands of women asking to join, so around January, February, we had 150 chapters. And it grew and grew.”

Beyond conferences and conversations, the organization leads annual Building Bridges Trips, which bring members to a location of significant interest to both faith groups. 

The women use trips like these to bond. 

“The premise of the Sisterhood is very simple,” Olitzky said. “It’s easy to hate someone you don’t know. When you know them, it’s harder. And when you care and love them, it’s almost impossible.”

Aiming to change hate into love and harmony, Olitzky explained the organization’s efforts are based on bottom-up, grassroots initiatives. The sisters share holidays together and learn about each others’ experiences to change negative perceptions and stereotypes.

The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom was studied by an independent research firm, and the findings offer some insight to how much change is created by the organization. 

“(The research) indicated that on average, every person in the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom talks about the impact that the (Sisterhood) has had to 40 others who are not in the Sisterhood,” Olitzky said. “… We are changing the world.” 

Olitzky encouraged the audience to share and listen to the stories of people who are different from them. She said research shows there is no better way to create empathy than through sharing personal anecdotes. 

Olitzky shared one of the “a-ha” moments that first called her to contact Aftab and start the Sisterhood. In 2009, when she was leading a group of 40 people in Poland on a visit to Auschwitz, she noticed the lack of diversity among the tourists. She decided to ask the guide about her observation. 

“He said, as we’re going into Auschwitz, ‘You’re right,’ ” Olitzky said. “He said, ‘Poland is just for the Poles, and you talk about head coverings. We do not have a Muslim problem here. You won’t see head coverings because they’re not welcome.’ That was my final a-ha moment.”

This calling was all-encompassing, and it led her to contact an Imam she knew who provided Olitzky with Aftab’s contact information.

“I call Atiya. I don’t get a call back,” Olitzky said. “Five minutes later, I emailed her.” 

When the pair met, Olitzky described the encounter as electrifying and magical, referring to it as her “hallelujah moment.” She now considers Aftab a sister. 

“The heart of what we do is what we call compassionate listening,” Olitzky said. “It’s celebrating what we share in common, but more importantly, celebrating our differences. Diversity is a blessing.”

As Olitzky concluded her portion of the lecture and stepped down from the podium, Aftab stepped up.

“When Sheryl approached me, my response to her was a leap of faith,” Aftab said. “A leap of faith is acting upon your belief. … It’s an act that acknowledges risk, but understands that there are higher values that make the risk worth it.”

In 2010, when Aftab received the messages from Olitzky, she said she had every intention of saying no to her proposal. But due to Olitzky’s persistence, Aftab agreed to meet with her. 

“It’s faith that made me accept the hand that she extended to me, to take on this new experiment,” Aftab said. “A Jewish woman was asking to get to know me, to stand up against hate, and specifically stand up against Islamophobia. … I had to say yes, but it wasn’t easy.”

In the past, Aftab had less-than stellar experiences with interfaith dialogue. She found it to “lack a deeper meaning,” which was “quite disappointing.”

Aftab, despite all odds, did not want to be paralyzed by fear and inaction, so she took her leap of faith. The pair agreed to work together under the condition that they would create something different guided through sets of rules.

The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom would not discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as they found research showed groups who discussed the conflict fell apart after a couple of years. 

“Our focus is going to be on faith,” Aftab said. “We’re women of faith, so we’re going to focus our organization, our chapter, on Muslim-Jewish interfaith. … ​​And when we’re ready, then we’ll get to the rough stuff.”

The organization would also not host gatherings inside their respective places of worship, as they felt it would be a barrier of entry. Instead, they would open their homes to promote personal interactions. 

It was also agreed that the Sisterhood would be for women and girls only, as they felt women navigate the world in specific ways. The organization would also only serve Muslim and Jewish women, because they share the commonality of being a minority in the United States. 

“We have similar challenges in this country,” Aftab said. “Whether it’s issues of dress, whether it’s issues of dietary restrictions (or) challenges … (of) calendar issues, … we have a lot in common.”

While Aftab is proud that their organization has been in The New York Times, on the “Today Show” and has its own documentary, “Stranger/Sister,” she finds other facets of the Sisterhood more valuable.

“One of the most meaningful aspects of the Sisterhood are the Building Bridges Trips, because there’s something about when you travel with somebody (that builds a connection),” Aftab said.

In 2016, a group traveled to Bosnia, where they visited a site of genocide, and Albania, where they met with families who had taken in Jewish people during the Holocaust. 

Azerbaijan, a Muslim-majority country just north of Iran, was the site of their second trip, as there were two Jewish communities that lived within the Muslim community there.

“What started happening is this goal of just building bridges was now shifting. (It was) shifting from a perspective of getting to know one another across differences to standing up for each other,” Aftab said. “(It shifted to) this idea of justice, this idea of fighting hate and understanding what institutional oppression is.”

While the educational trips continued to Baku, Germany and Poland, members of the Sisterhood began to see themselves as a group fighting hate. Their next destination was Arizona, and the U.S.-Mexico border.

“At this point now, the Sisterhood is issuing … anti-hate statements about what’s going on in China with the Uyghur Muslims, what’s going on in India with Muslims, what’s happening with forced sterilization of women at the border,” Aftab said. “… When we went on the Arizona trip to the to the Mexican border, we met with those who are helping refugees, those who are undocumented.”

When the group learned about a young Mexican boy who tried to cross the wall and was shot and killed by a U.S. border guard, Aftab said “it became very clear that we could not not talk about Palestine and Israel anymore.”

As some sisters attended a board retreat with two days of “intensive facilitated conversation” on Israel and Palestine, the COVID-19 pandemic was imminent. The Sisterhood was able to issue an official statement on Israel-Palestine on Feb. 14, 2020, which Aftab said is “the only statement of its kind of a Muslim-Jewish organization.” 

As preparations were being made to embark on a trip to Israel and Palestine, the pandemic hit. The group continued to work with one another online and take virtual field trips. 

“But what I wanted to focus on again is this power of travel, this power of standing together and witnessing, and what comes of that,” Aftab said. “I don’t think that we would be able to speak about the issue of Palestine and Israel unless we had that journey together, those steps (from our) first trip to Bosnia and Albania all the way to our trip to the Mexican border.”

Their next in-person journey will hopefully be to Morocco, as these trips bring out deep and sometimes difficult conversations that are necessary for growth.

“These kinds of conversations (develop) meaningful relationships and friendships. … This is all humanizing each other, and we know what happens when there’s dehumanization,” Aftab said. “History recognizes that when we dehumanize one another, it is very easy to engage in violence against the Other. … So to change one person’s mind … is to change the world, and we all have the courage to do that.”

Congressman Jamie Raskin shares work of keeping son’s memory alive

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Bearing the loss of a loved one can feel like a nearly impossible task. Losing his son, Tommy Raskin, to suicide on the last day of 2020, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md) learned to move forward by treating others with the love and dignity his son would have. Instilling Tommy’s moral values into his everyday life allows Raskin to reconnect with Tommy, keeping his memory and legacy alive. 

It has carried him through the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and the second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, for which Raskin was manager, and now as a member of the Jan. 6 Select Committee. 

Opening Week Eight’s Interfaith Lecture Series of “New Profiles in Courage,” Raskin delivered his lecture, “It’s Hard to Be Human: The Political, Philosophical and Mental Health Struggles of Tommy Raskin,” at 2 p.m. Monday, Aug. 15 in the packed 1,200-seat venue of Norton Hall. 

Sean Smith / staff photographer Raskin’s lecture, titled “It’s Hard to Be Human: The Political, Philosophical and Mental Health Struggles of Tommy Raskin,” explored the the philosophical and moral courage of Raskin’s son, who he called “a young man of extraordinary gifts.”

The lecture’s location was switched from the traditional space of the Hall of Philosophy for security purposes. This decision was made several weeks prior to the attack on Salman Rushdie last Friday in the Amphitheater. 

Calling Chautauqua “one of the freest and most beautiful places” in the country, Raskin said the grounds are “a space of reasoned, passionate and nonviolent dialogue” in a world that feeds off of violent fanaticism. 

Emphasizing the spirit of Chautauqua and its focus on freedom and progress, Raskin reflected on Rushdie’s definition of freedom. In 2006, Rushdie said that the ability to argue and debate the meaning of all stories allows for the growth of societies. By stories, Rushdie was speaking on the narratives of families, communities, and religions, among others.

“The bloody assault on Salman Rushdie on Friday is not just an assault on one writer of exquisite imagination and moral power. It is not just an effort to silence one man and break one pen,” Raskin said. “It is an assault on everyone’s freedom to think, to write, to create, to argue and to grow. It is an attack on not just this community, but on the worldwide project of democratic community.”

Raskin dedicated his opening remarks to both Rushdie and his son, Tommy, who he called “another unyielding champion of human freedom and dignity.” Although the two never met, Raskin said Tommy admired Rushdie and his work.

“We wish Salman Rushdie a speedy and complete and total recovery, because we love him and we need him,” Raskin said. “… We send Salman the strength and love of a resilient democratic America that knows how to think and read and write and feel without committing violence against other human beings.”

Even though the present moment is one of struggle, violence and trauma, there are people who defy these problems through their very existence. Raskin said his son was one of these people. 

“My son Tommy, a young man of extraordinary gifts, a born moral philosopher, a comedian, a playwright, a prankster, a champion of human rights, an anti-war activist, a vegan, a visionary, a second year student at Harvard Law School when we lost him, a jazz musician,” Raskin said, “was born into this world of violence, trauma, plague and unreason.” 

Tommy grappled with a lifelong battle against depression, which Raskin said ultimately broke him. 

“On Dec. 31, 2020, the last day of that fateful, wretched year, Tommy took his life,” Raskin said. “He left us a note that said, ‘Please forgive me. My illness won today. Look after each other, the animals and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.’ ”

Tommy died at 25, but Raskin said his short life was infinitely valuable. In his time, Tommy wrestled with several dilemmas — moral, ethical, philosophical, political and social — in hopes of finding a path to a more just world. 

“I won’t be able to give you today any kind of complete account of Tommy’s philosophy, his worldview, but the key thing to understand is that none of the problems he faced were abstract to him, or academic,” Raskin said. “They were concrete. They were urgent. They were practical challenges for living a decent life, and he tried to live every moment of every day with deliberate ethical consciousness and integrity.”

When Tommy shared his moral propositions, Raskin said they were nearly the truest propositions one would encounter, as they were filled with conviction and courage to bring them to fruition in the world.

Focusing on one of the lingering ethical problems that lived inside Tommy’s mind before he passed, Raskin said the last thing he wrote about was the trolley problem. This philisophical thought experiment is focused on a fictional scenario in which an onlooker must choose to save a group of people about to be hit by a trolley by diverting its path and subsequently killing only one person; or not act at all and letting fate proceed without human influence. The trolley problem is widely considered an academic favorite, as it is a seemingly unsolvable puzzle that handles several ethical issues. 

“Tommy said that the moral significance of the hypothetical derives from the nervous energy and moral ambivalence that we feel in trying to decide between passively allowing 99 people to die, and actively choosing to kill one person,” Raskin said. “Whereas most philosophers writing about the problem go from there to argue on one side of the equation or the other, Tommy argued that the importance of the problem is in understanding the fundamental equivalency of these two actions.”

Every day, humans passively allow 99 people or more to die of hunger, disease and a lack of basic human necessities, most of them children, Raskin said. Because humans do not feel directly responsible for these deaths, they allow themselves to deny their responsibility and act as onlookers. 

“But the trolley problem forces us to confront, Tommy said, the deep moral intuition that passively allowing 99 people to die is a lot like deliberately choosing to kill one person,” Raskin said. “… (When) we’re just living our lives, we must remember that working to save children from death by war in Yemen, or starvation in Haiti, or from malaria in Nigeria, or from gun violence in Texas or in Buffalo, is an urgent moral imperative.”

It was Tommy’s belief that humans must do whatever they can to save others from unnecessary violence and injury. Acknowledging that this is a nearly impossible task, Raskin went back to something Tommy always said: It is hard to be human. 

“He lived with a tremendous sense of responsibility, an all-consuming obligation to make the world a better place and to assist anyone he could in any circumstance where he could help,” Raskin said. 

Tommy would work part-time jobs that did not pay a lot of money, but he would always donate a portion of his earnings to organizations he believed in. 

“He had very few material desires himself, but intensely passionate, spiritual yearnings for the world,” Raskin said.

A vegan, Tommy thought that humanity would one day view the consumption of animals as barbaric. He also argued that children are natural vegetarians.

While some vegan philosophers and advocates argue that vegans should not eat Impossible burgers or other plant-based foods that simulate animal meat, Tommy found this argument to be ridiculous, as it portrayed “puritanical snobbery.” 

“(Tommy) regarded Beyond burgers and Impossible burgers as a major scientific, culinary, political and moral breakthrough for humanity,” Raskin said. “For Tommy, the ethical question was settled by whether the fake meat protein substitutes reduced animal meat consumption, making vegetarianism a more attractive and robust option.”

It was Tommy’s goal to maximize the happiness and wellbeing of others. And in this debate on plant-based foods that imitated meat, he professed that he does not want to be a part of a vegan club, but rather a vegan world. 

“I could spend all day telling you about the moral and political problems and solutions of Tommy Raskin,” Raskin said. “Even to enter into a few of them just for 10 minutes is to glimpse the enormity and the magnitude of our loss.”

While Tommy lived with depression and anxiety, he was committed to the dignity and autonomy of all people. He kept his illness mostly secret from nearly everyone, but in some of his papers, Tommy expressed the importance of recognizing the reality of mental illness. 

“(Tommy) struggled with (mental illness). He took his medicine, he saw his doctors, but in the end, it was too much for him. And we lost him,” Raskin said. “And that’s just a catastrophe for us that we have to live with.”

There will be a time, Raskin told Chautauqua, when people who have lost a loved one, even those at a young age, will be able to speak their names “without dissolving completely.” He said this time will restore the coherence of one’s life, mind and heart. 

“You will be able to begin to see their life in its entirety, not just the final days, or the ways of their going,” Raskin said. “… (And that will leave us) with beautiful, imperishable memories, specific lessons and injunctions … to look after each other, the animals and the global poor with all our love.”

While Mother Jones once said to “pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” Raskin believes this statement would carry more impact if it was changed slightly to “pray for the dead by fighting like hell for the living.” It is Raskin’s belief that one can show their love and devotion to the people they have lost by serving causes they believed in.

Raskin ended with a quote from Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, revising the gender-based language to fit modern sensibilities, which he acknowledged Paine would appreciate.

“These are the times that try men and women’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink at this moment from the service of their cause in their country,” Raskin said. “But everyone that stands with us now will win the love and the favor and the affection of every man and every woman for all time. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, but we have this saving consolation: The more difficult the struggle, the more glorious in the end will be our victory.”

Building home through healing: Alia Bilal fights against perpetual homesickness

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While many people have the ability to pinpoint where they feel the most at home, Alia Bilal wanted to call attention to other lost souls who do not hold the same privilege. 

As the deputy executive director of Inner-City Muslim Action Network, Bilal’s work focuses on building physical and spiritual homes for those who have often been displaced in one form or another in American society. 

Bilal delivered her lecture, “Homesick in Wakanda: Living, Longing and Fighting” on Thursday, Aug. 11 in the Hall of Philosophy. Her lecture continued Week Seven’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “Home: A  Place for Human Thriving.”

Serving IMAN for over 13 years, Bilal and the rest of the organization aim to foster community health, wellness and healing. From starting community initiatives, to creating public spaces for healing through art, to building homes, IMAN works to enhance Muslim lives.

Martin Luther King Jr. came to Bilal’s hometown of Chicago in August 1966 because he was protesting housing segregation.

“At the time, people were being whipped into the same kind of race frenzy that we’re seeing across the country today,” Bilal said. “And as usual, businessmen were capitalizing on it.” 

These businessmen would convince white families to sell their homes, enforcing the fear that the value of their home would plummet due to people of other ethnicities moving into the area. 

“Those same real estate agents would divide the house up, turn it into tiny little apartments and sell them to the next Black family that came looking for three times the rate,” Bilal said. “Black families at the time were desperate to get out of the tenements and slums that they’ve been corralled into.”

Because of this double standard and overt racism, marches were held in Marquette Park. Even though the park was set in a predominantly white community, on Aug. 5, 1966, King and the Chicago Freedom Movement led a group of less than 1,000 peaceful marchers.

“They were met with 5,000 angry men, women, children and grandparents, holding nasty signs, throwing rocks, bottles and bags of feces,” Bilal said. “And if you can recall the famous image of Dr. King as he’s kneeling in the ground after just having been hit in the head with a brick, that happens right there in Marquette Park in Chicago.”

Despite his injury, King said the march in Marquette Park was worth it because it brought the evil out in the open. Decades later, Bilal does her work in the same neighborhood. 

IMAN was established as a nonprofit in 1997, at a time when the area had a majority Black population, a growing Latino population and a sizable Arab community. 

The organization is now celebrating its 25-year milestone of working to bring together diverse communities.

“On Aug. 5, 2016, exactly 50 years after this historic march, IMAN led the movement to erect the first permanent memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Chicago Freedom Movement in the state of Illinois,” Bilal said. “… They had come into Marquette Park to fight for housing rights, and so we felt it was only appropriate to model the memorial off of the theme of home.”

The memorial was made out of brick as a homage to the bungalows Chicago is known for, and three pillars made up the memorial with the addition of slanted roofs. The word “home” was carved into each pillar in eight different languages to symbolize each ethnic group that had called the area home throughout history. 

IMAN’s goal is to bring people together in the community and cultivate a sense of home, but this was suddenly ripped away from those who needed it the most in March 2020. 

“Three of our young men were killed in the summer of 2020 while attempting to make a virtual program a safe haven,” Bilal said. “How can this be home? When people like those three guys, kids, born into the wrong zip code, living on the wrong side of town with the wrong skin color — statistically, (they) never had a fighting chance to begin with.”

Questioning the state of home in America, Bilal presented more examples: Breonna Taylor, who was killed in the bed of her home, George Floyd, murdered on his way back to his home, and the recent mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo. 

Speaking on her own upbringing and childhood, Bilal said she lived in a loving home in a welcoming community. She attended an Islamic day school from the age of 8 to 18. Most of her friends and classmates were the sons and daughters of Syrian, Palestinian, Indian and Pakistani immigrants. 

“I also grew up constantly hearing my friends talk about this fantastical place called ‘back home.’ Back home was where their parents and grandparents were from,” Bilal said. “… It sounded like a magical place to me, like home.”

Despite the growing Arab Muslim population with generations-deep roots, they were always reminded that they were outsiders that didn’t belong.

“The day after 9/11, the local chapter of the KKK came out of their cubby holes and marched guns and Confederate flags around our school and the local mosque,” Bilal said. “They had to close our school down for a week because of bomb threats, and we learned active shooter drills a decade before they became all the rage in American schools.”

While in college, Bilal studied abroad in Egypt, and she recalled how incredible it felt to live in a Muslim-majority country. For once, Bilal did not seem to stick out among the crowd. 

But when her Arabic would get tangled in on itself, she would be asked the dreaded question: Where are you from?

She would tell the truth and say she is from America, and the question would persist. They would ask, “No, but where are you really from?”

“I’ve learned that if you are African American, there is no good way to answer this question in many places on the planet. If I were white, this would not be a thing,” Bilal said. “… In most other places in the world, in my experience, a Black person in America just doesn’t make sense to them.”

People would assume she was lying about her true birthplace because she was either ashamed or “too uppity.” Often, she would receive looks as if she had just told a bald-faced lie. 

In Egypt, Bilal stayed at a woman’s house whom she referred to as “Auntie,” who was well-educated and traveled abroad for nearly 30 years. 

“I remember very naively asking her, ‘Haven’t these people ever heard of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade?’ And I will never forget the way Auntie looked at me with a face that was half disbelief, and half pity,” Bilal said. “She said, ‘No, beloved, they haven’t. Most of the people you’re interacting with are lucky if they’ve done a few years of primary school. … Have mercy on them.’ ”

Even in America, people are taught that slavery happened, but the true impacts and devastation it has left on the African American population have been wiped away. Personal histories were also stolen, as many Black Americans don’t know where exactly their ancestors came from.

The Marvel movie “Black Panther” touches on these issues of rootlessness as it centers around a country called Wakanda. While outsiders are under the impression that this country is poor and destitute, Bilal explained it is actually the richest and most technologically advanced country in the world. Wakandans keep the country’s triumphs hidden to protect their people.

The movie is highly regarded as an empowering portrayal of Black people and the richness of their diverse customs, and Bilal herself feels it represents a homeland that Black Americans have always longed for.

“Despite the love that I have for it, there is still something so devastatingly bittersweet about that movie, and it haunts me to this day,” Bilal said. 

Black Panther is the hero of the movie, while Killmonger is his foe. Killmonger is a Black American who has been searching for Wakanda for his entire life.

“He’s angry that this rich, bountiful nation has the tools and the means for centuries to lift the oppression of the Black people on this planet, but has chosen to keep to themselves out of fear of losing everything,” Bilal said. “Killmonger is essentially the externalization of all of the anger, the rage, the longing, the loneliness, the heartbrokenness of those who have been ripped away from their homes, that have lived with generations upon generations of systemic oppression, subjugation, violence and cruelty.”

The people of Wakanda reject Killmonger and scoff at the idea that a Black man from inner city America would dare to come to tell the people that they should be ashamed for hiding this land from their Black counterparts. 

“Even as you rejoice for the triumph of the hero, you feel Killmonger’s sorrow, this lost soul searching desperately for a home echoing the same longing that … every Black American feels at some point,” Bilal said. “And you ache with your own loneliness knowing that even a place as beautiful as Wakanda could never truly be meant for you.”

While in reality, Bilal believes that most people who feel lost are homesick, as no one belongs to their town, state or country, but rather, they belong from the Source. 

“We are from the Source, and we will return to the Source. I don’t care what you call the Source — the One, the Creator, God, Allah,” Bilal said. “But I believe that most of us believe that we’re going back to a source and that there will be a final home.”

Despite the trials and tribulations of being a human on Earth, Bilal accepts that it is not worth it to live comfortably when others are suffering. She believes the Wakanda she longs for is real, and she will enter its gates after this life due to the work she strives to do during her time on Earth.

“I can only build (my Wakanda) by rebuilding what has been broken here on Earth. Creating the Beloved Community on Earth is not about sitting back and shaking my head at the evening news,” Bilal said. “It’s about pushing myself, mind and body, through the crowd of angry people that are more powerful than me, but not more angry. It’s about bringing the evil out into the open.”

Sharing stories, wisdom of human thriving, Isay discusses StoryCorps’ mission

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Often, those in positions of power and select historians are the few people chosen to record history for all of humanity. But David Isay, former radio producer and StoryCorps founder, believes history should be written by the masses.

Delivering his lecture, “StoryCorps: A Celebration of Human Thriving,” Isay spoke on Wednesday in the Hall of Philosophy about the nonprofit organization, and played recordings of everyday people telling their stories for Chautauquans. 

Isay’s lecture was titled “StoryCorps: A Celebration of Human Thriving.” Georgia Pressley/Staff Photographer

Continuing Week Seven’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “Home: A Place for Human Thriving,” Isay’s lecture focused on how his organization brings people together through deep conversations. Isay, who has won six Peabodys for his work, shared StoryCorps’ mission: “preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.” 

Prior to founding StoryCorps 18 years ago, Isay found himself more interested in public service than entertaining people as a radio personality. 

“The purpose of StoryCorps is for as many people as possible to be listened to, to be interviewed by a loved one,” Isay said, “… where you can bring anyone who you want to honor by listening to their story — a parent or grandparent or friend … and for 40 minutes you ask questions and you listen.”

After these interviews are recorded, the participants receive a copy and have an option to have their recording filed at the Library of Congress, ensuring it is a part of history. 

“Essentially, because of what happens at the booth, I think what we’re doing is collecting the wisdom of humanity,” Isay said. 

A small percentage of interviews are also selected to be broadcast on NPR and presented around the country at Isay’s talks. 

Studs Terkel, the great oral historian from Chicago, cut the ceremonial opening ribbon on StoryCorps’ first booth at 93 years old. 

“He used to talk about bottom-up history — history through our voices and our stories, as opposed to the top-down history we hear so often,” Isay said.

The first interview Isay presented to Chautauquans featured a fourth grader from Mississippi and his father. The father began to talk about what he was feeling when his son was first born.

“It was like looking at a blank canvas and just imagining what you wanted the painting to look like at the end, but also knowing you can’t control the paint strokes,” the father said. “You know, the fear was just bringing up a Black boy in Mississippi, which is a tough place to bring up kids, period.”

The father began to explain there were statistics that said Black boys born after the year 2002 have a one in three chance of going to prison. This is why the father brought his son to several civil rights protests — to show him what it looks like to bring people from all backgrounds together to create a better world.

Isay clicked play on the next recording, which featured another parent-child conversation, this one from Texas. This conversation was centered around a fifth grader’s experience with active shooter drills, and his mother’s reaction to his powerful bravery — which frightened her.

During one of the drills, the young boy helped his teacher move the desk in front of the door because it was difficult for her to move it on her own.

“The class is supposed to stand on the back wall, but I decided to stand in front of the class because I want to take the bullet and save my friends,” the boy said.

While the teacher did not ask him to stand in the front, the 10-year-old boy felt a calling to step forward as a young martyr. No matter how much the mother pleaded for her son to be selfish if that moment ever occurred, he was adamant that this was not her choice to make.

“Something about this makes me feel sad,” the boy said. “But you raised a good person.”

With the recent overruling of Roe v. Wade, Isay shared an interview from a woman who worked as a counselor at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the only abortion clinic left in Mississippi by 2004, and the clinic at the heart of Jackson Women’s Health Organization v. Dobbs. StoryCorps released the recording the day the clinic was forced to close in July following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. The interview with the counselor was recorded more than 10 years ago. 

The counselor was influenced to work there after her own experience being pregnant at 16 and giving birth to a child as a teenager. 

“(After finding out I was pregnant, my mom) sat me down in a chair to comb my hair, but she never combed my hair,” the woman said. “She couldn’t say it was OK, but a touch can mean so much sometimes. … She forgave me at that moment she touched me.”

While the counselor was able to raise her son while finishing high school and college, she wishes she had the option to choose her destiny. Her experience with her mother and raising her son allowed her to relate to several patients at the clinic she worked at. 

“I try to reach that teenager to let them know that it’s going to be OK. And I’ll make sure I encourage the mom or the dad that’s with that teenager,” the woman said. “… Sometimes I can see the mother look over at the daughter, almost as if for the first time. It takes me back to that moment when my mom was doing my hair.”

Out of the 700,000 people who have participated in StoryCorps, Isay said everyone talks about love, their families, their homes and their childhoods, all relating to the themes of human existence. 

Thinking of one of his own StoryCorps interviews Isay did with his father, he called himself a proud son of a gay father. His father was a psychiatrist, and about 10 years ago, was diagnosed with cancer; he died four days after the diagnosis. 

“I never thought about it or listened to it. But at 3 a.m. on the night he died, I listened to (our conversation),” Isay said. “… I have young kids who are not going to remember him, and … that night, I knew that this was how my kids were going to get to know this monumental figure in my life.”

With this, Isay encouraged the audience to record interviews with their loved ones on StoryCorps sooner rather than later, because the future is unpredictable. 

One of StoryCorps’ first initiatives worked with families who lost a loved one on 9/11, aiming to have each family leave a spoken record of their story. But even 20 years after the tragedy, some families have not come forward, and Isay said it is entirely their choice to decide when and if they want to record an interview. 

“There have been … so many surprises with StoryCorps. It’s changed my life in so many ways and taught me so much about humanity and human thriving,” Isay said. “We have facilitators who travel the country, recording StoryCorps interviews for a year or two in these mobile booths, and every single one of them, when they come off the road, … (comes away with some sort of realization) that people are basically good.”

The next story Isay presented was of a man who was raised by a gay father in the 1980s, speaking on the early days of the AIDS crisis and his experience with loss during that tumultuous time.

“My family were mostly gay guys (who) were my babysitters and the guys who took the pictures at my birthday parties. I felt like I had this amazing family. I called them my aunties,” the man said. “It was a really wonderful, amazing world that came crashing down.”

In ’82, when the interviewee was 10, the first person he knew died of AIDS. His name was Steve, and he died two months after his diagnosis.

“It was pretty much a succession of deaths of my family throughout the next decade,” he said. “My stepdad Bill died in ’87. My dad died in ’91 after a really grueling six months of me taking care of him. I was 19, and at that point, everyone had died except for a handful of stragglers who I now hold near and dear to my heart.”

He knew his aunties held so much love and joy in their hearts, and he said this experience modeled “how to survive an epidemic even if you were dying while doing it.”

StoryCorps’ new initiative, One Small Step, works on building human connection across political divides. The last recording Isay shared was one of the interviews that inspired this initiative. The conversation was between a Muslim college student and a sheet metal worker who both attended Trump rally for different reasons — he for, she against. 

The Muslim woman said the man was being harassed by some ralliers because he was wearing a Trump hat, which led to them snatching the hat off of his head. 

“That’s the point where something snapped inside me, because I wear a hijab, and I’ve been in situations where people have tried to snatch it off my head,” the woman said. 

After she approached the ralliers to tell them to stop harassing the man, the two realized that they shared commonalities. 

“I’d like for this to encourage other people to engage in more conversations with people that you don’t agree with,” the woman said. 

While statistics show toxic polarization is skyrocketing in America, Isay said 90% of people want a way out, and are ready to find a way to fix this polarization. 

“There is a multibillion dollar … industrial complex out there in media and social media that gets rich teaching us and telling us to hate each other. But we’ve got to figure out a way to fight back,” Isay said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to stop what’s going on in our country, where we think that our neighbors are our most dangerous enemies.”

When home is a person who has passed: Kelly Corrigan reflects on relationship with father

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While the comforting feeling of being at home can come from visiting a quaint house, a familiar town or experiencing a nostalgic, tingling feeling, home can also be a person. 

Kelly Corrigan, best-selling author, successful journalist and host of the PBS series “Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan,” spoke on Tuesday, Aug. 9 in the Hall of Philosophy. Her lecture, “Homes: Places that Come to Inhabit Us,” served as a continuation of Week Seven’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “Home: A Place for Human Thriving.”

Corrigan was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2004, and three months later, her father was diagnosed with late stage cancer. This led her to write her first memoir, The Middle Place, which focused on her being both a daughter and a mother during this time.

“My background is as a storyteller, but I’ve also been interviewing people for PBS and my podcast for two years now, which involves an enormous amount of reading and highlighting and synthesizing,” Corrigan said. “For each guest, I have become a student for a few weeks.”

Corrigan is often curious about what her subjects’ first homes were like and how the people who made up those homes exist in her subjects’ minds. 

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett was a recent guest on Corrigan’s show. She said Barrett taught her that humans are contextual beings and develop in response to their environment. 

“Our brains receive all of this sensory data in singular ways particular to our physiology, like what we see is defined by the width of the set of our eyes; what we hear is defined by the particular curve of our ears,” Corrigan said. “… Then our brains make predictions which determine our actions, which we then categorize into great, terrible, dumb, brilliant, hysterical, drab. The brain decides what the sensory data means.”

While one’s environment has an innate impact on one’s being, so does the media one consumes. Books, music, social media posts, advertisements — all of these impact a person’s reality. 

As a child, Corrigan read Mandy, by Julie Andrews Edwards, which tells a story of an orphaned girl. Edwards is one of many creatives who has written about the struggles of being in an orphanage, as the idea of being lost and alone is palpable and easy to empathize with. 

“What we feel, at least until we decide to unfeel it, is effectively what is,” Corrigan said. “There are so many coming-of-age stories, so many odysseys, that you might start to wonder if … each of us will, or does, or has had our own memoir-worthy version of a coming-of-age story.”

Corrigan began to read a short chapter of her memoir, The Middle Place. The chapter described her childhood home and fond memories with her father. It began with depicting the very beginning of Corrigan’s life. After her older brother, Booker, was born via cesarean section, the hospital advised her parents against having another baby. 

“But the lore goes, my dad wanted a girl so much, they snuck me in,” Corrigan read. “I suppose it’s possible they could have had another boy, but it never seems like that when my dad tells the story.”

Corrigan then read about her childhood memories. While her brothers and their friends would play sports in the backyard, her dad would often return home with armfuls of supplies for his tomato garden. The young boys would offer her dad help, but he would refuse; he would never interrupt a game. 

As Corrigan continued to read, she emulated her father’s voice with a raspy, Southern twang. George Corrigan would often refer to himself in the third person as ‘Greenie’ or ‘the green man,’ which was a nickname he was given by his brothers long before Corrigan was born. 

“(He was given the name) after a long, cramped car ride when a case of gas reputedly turned the air around my dad green,” Corrigan read. “My mom hates (the nickname).” 

Corrigan then shared a story about a dentist trip she took with her dad. After neglecting to get a partial plate on a front tooth, the tooth flew out of George’s mouth, requiring the visit to the dentist. When he was told it would be an hour wait, George and his daughter ventured into the farmer’s market, as George didn’t seem to care if he was missing a tooth in front of others. 

“My dad’s relationship with the world (showed) that he paid more attention to the good stuff than the bad stuff, and effortlessly forgave almost all,” Corrigan read.

When her father would get her and her siblings ready for school, Corrigan felt a shift of attitude toward the morning. 

“Cupping his hands around his mouth, he would call out, ‘Hello world!’ And then, playing back to himself in a one-man show, he would flip to the role of the world, ‘Hello, Georgie,’ ” Corrigan read. “ ‘I’m coming out there to get you, world.’ To which world would respond, as of course the world would, ‘I’m waiting for you, Georgie.’ ”

With this morning routine, Corrigan began to understand that not only was the world a safe place, but it had a sense of humor.

“(The world) knew your name, and it was waiting for you,” Corrigan read. “Hell, it was even rooting for you.”

Corrigan shared that while her childhood home made her feel at home, her father made her feel the most at home. 

She also felt at home at her maternal grandmother Libby’s house, but not as much at her paternal grandmother’s house. At Libby’s, Corrigan felt special, as if her presence was yearned for, as if it was needed.

“Looking back at these early homes and homes away from home,” she said, “there are stages I’m starting to think about: You are allowed here, you are welcome here, you belong here, this is yours.”

This is how America should feel to all who live here, but Corrigan explained why it doesn’t feel that way for everyone.

“I think about taking their country away from the people who already lived here, saying, ‘This is not yours,’ ” Corrigan said. “I think about slavery here and around the world for thousands of years, pulling people from their homes and forcing them to live in other homes.”

Since Corrigan left her first home, she has traveled to 29 places where she had a bed to claim as her own — from various college dorms, apartments and friends’ homes.

“I travel about 50 or 60 nights a year, for 15 to 20 years now,” she said. “I feel anxious and lonely in hotel rooms, so I stay with friends who say, ‘Make yourself at home.’ But that is a skill, that is a privilege, that is a progression.”

After reflecting on times when she felt at home, Corrigan came to her final conclusion, her eyes filling with tears: Sometimes, home is a person.

“My home was my dad,” Corrigan said. “And for a long time … he was the nurturer that shaped my nature.”

Corrigan then began to read a letter she wrote to her father five years after his death, with the first words being “Dear Greenie.” She began by updating her father about her children, but eventually admitted her struggles with surviving after his passing.

“My future is blank, and it scares me,” Corrigan read. “I have no ideas and no energy, and grief has made me a pessimist.”

Corrigan wrote about a trip she took back home, during the first year without her father, to visit her mother and her childhood home on a street called Wooded Lane.

“I was staying in my old room, the room where you finished your 48-year run at Wooded Lane,” Corrigan read. “… Somehow, there in the dark, pushing around to get comfortable, I got a whiff of you. I did not like it.”

While Corrigan and her mother both handled George’s death differently, they agreed not to judge each other. She recognized how strong her mother is, as she kept to-do lists of tasks that her husband would normally take care of for her.

The two attempted to play a round of Rummikub, as the family used to do prior to George’s death, with drinks and a platter of Triscuits nearby. 

“With just the two of us, we ended up going to the boneyard over and over again,” Corrigan read. “… I turned on some music, but it was poor compensation for your wide-mouthed frog joy. … Your absence was so glaring, I had to leave (for a walk).”

When Corrigan returned home to California, she brought back George’s coaching jacket and wore it proudly to her daughter’s practice. Her daughter’s coach assumed Corrigan had coached as her father had, and even after finding out that she didn’t, asked if Corrigan would like to volunteer with the junior varsity team. She accepted the proposal.

“I get it, Greenie, I get it. The only way to keep you is to be you,” Corrigan read. “… A couple times a year, someone will stop and ask me my favorite question: ‘Are you George Corrigan’s daughter?’ I am.”

Cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar explains psychological, emotional effects on heart

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In the United States, one in five deaths are caused by heart disease, and one person dies every 34 seconds from cardiovascular disease, according to the CDC. While these complications with the heart are normally blamed on physical, biological factors, cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar argues one’s mental state affects the heart more than one would imagine.

Jauhar, a practicing cardiologist and the author of Heart: A History, introduced Week Seven’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “Home: A Place for Human Thriving” on Monday, Aug. 8 in the Hall of Philosophy. In his lecture, “The Emotional Heart,” Jauhar used his expertise and research in the field of cardiology to explain how emotions not only affect heart health, but how they have the power to actually shape the heart.

Drawing on a study conducted in the small town of Framingham, Massachusetts, in the 1940s, Jauhar said much of what is known about heart disease was born from this study.

At that time, cardiovascular heart disease accounted for nearly half of all deaths in the United States, and the Framingham study aimed to discover why. Even though the study originally considered emotional and mental states as potential risk factors, it shifted focus toward biological risk factors rather than psychological. 

“Questions about sexual dysfunction, psychiatric problems, emotional stress, income and social class were discarded. As one researcher put it, the Framingham study as it emerged in the 1950s had ‘little interest in investigating psychosomatic, constitutional or sociological determinants of heart disease,’ ” Jauhar said. “This would turn out to be a major flaw.”

Georgia Pressley / staff photographer Sandeep Jauhar, cardiologist and author of Heart: A History, speaks Monday in the Hall of Philosophy. Jauhar’s lecture, titled “The Emotional Heart,” opened the Interfaith Lecture Series theme on “Home: A Place for Human Thriving,” and explored how emotional heart health can affect physical heart health.

Key findings of this study, and others around the 1960s, found that high blood pressure, hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol and smoking were all risk factors of cardiovascular heart disease. Later, a 12-year study of approximately 20,000 Swedish men found that four out of five heart attacks could be prevented through Framingham-inspired lifestyle changes.

“But as important as the Framingham Heart Study has been in advancing our understanding of coronary heart disease, it does not tell the whole story,” Jauhar said. “My talk today will focus on these (psychological) factors, on what one might call the emotional heart.”

Throughout history, the heart has been used as a symbol of romantic love and other intense emotional states. In the past, people believed the heart served as the home for love.

“Today, we know that the heart is not the source of love or the other emotions, per se. … Yet more and more, we’ve come to understand that the connection between the heart and the emotions is a highly intimate one,” Jauhar said. “The heart does not originate our feelings, but it is highly responsive to them.”

Strong, negative emotions, such as fear and grief, have the potential to cause profound cardiac injury. Intense stress, Jauhar said, can change the speed of a heartbeat due to a maladaptive fight or flight response. These signals tell the blood vessels to constrict and blood pressure to rise, which can cause damage.

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as broken heart syndrome, is another example of how intrinsically linked the heart is to emotional distress. This syndrome is caused by extreme stress or grief, which acutely damages the heart. 

The shape of the left ventricle actually changes, taking the shape of the takotsubo octopus trap, from which the name of the disease is derived. Often, this syndrome resolves within a few weeks, but during its peak, it can result in heart failure.

Causes of broken heart syndrome vary beyond cases of extreme grief and stress, as Jauhar explained that public speaking, gambling losses, domestic disputes and even surprise birthday parties have caused this syndrome to develop.

There are also examples of widespread outbreaks of this syndrome, which have occurred after shared traumatizing situations like natural disasters. 

“In 2004, a major earthquake devastated the district on the largest island in Japan. Thirty-nine people were killed and more than 3,000 were injured,” Jauhar said. “… Researchers found that there was a 24-fold increase in the number of broken heart syndrome cases in the district one month after the earthquake, compared with a similar period the year before.”

Finding that most of these patients lived near the epicenter of the catastrophe, Jauhar said this gives new meaning to the phrase “home is where the heart is.”

While other natural disasters have caused an uptick of takotsubo cardiomyopathy cases, research has found that populations less prepared to handle disasters experienced a higher risk of developing broken heart syndrome. 

“We can acknowledge that even if our emotions are not located inside our hearts, the biological part overlaps its metaphorical counterpart in surprising and mysterious ways,” Jauhar said.

Jauhar detailed an incident of a prisoner who was made to believe he was being put to death by exsanguination. Jauhar said the prisoner was blindfolded and scratched, which made him believe he was truly bleeding. The study of this incident, from an Indian medical journal, explained that large vases filled with water were even set up to mimic the sound of dripping blood. 

“Finally, the silence was absolute, as the dripping of water ceased. Although the prisoner was a healthy young man, at the completion of the experiment when the water flow stopped, he appeared to have fainted,” Jauhar said. “On examination, however, he was found to be dead, despite not having lost a single drop of blood.”

Describing this as an “emotional death,” Jauhar pointed to other similar incidents of fatality. The commonality of these deaths, according to Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon, is that the victims all believed they were defenseless against an external force that would cause their demise. 

“This perceived lack of control, Cannon postulated, resulted in an unmitigated physiological response in which blood vessels constrict to such a degree that blood volume acutely dropped, blood pressure plummeted, the heart acutely weakened and massive organ damage resulted from a lack of transported oxygen,” Jauhar said.

Reinforcing the idea that broken hearts are literally and figuratively intertwined, Jauhar said that even animals experience this relationship. 

The American Association for the Advancement of Science conducted a study published in their journal Science, in which researchers fed caged rabbits a high cholesterol diet. Half of the rabbits were given love and attention and were petted, and the study showed these rabbits had 60% less aortic disease than the rabbits that received no attention, even though both groups shared similar cholesterol levels, heart rate and blood pressure.

Japanese immigrants to America were the subject of another study, as coronary artery disease is relatively rare in Japan. However, Japanese immigrants’ rate of the disease doubled when they resettled in Hawaii and tripled when they relocated to the mainland. A study in the 1970s by Sir Michael Marmot and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health found Japanese immigrants who continued to practice Japanese traditions had a much lower prevalence of heart disease, even when their levels of cholesterol and blood pressure matched Americans’ levels.

“The authors concluded that ‘retention of Japanese group relationships is associated with a lower rate of coronary heart disease,’ ” Jauhar said. “… Again, we see the importance of feeling at home in preventing heart disease. If cutting traditional cultural ties increases the risk of heart disease, then psychosocial factors must play a role in cardiovascular health.”

In American society, these factors present themselves in marginalized groups. Black Americans in poor urban areas have a much higher prevalence of hypertension and cardiovascular disease than other groups. While some have pointed to genetics, people in West Africa do not experience these high rates of heart issues. 

Chronic arousal, or stress, appears to be the main cause, as prolonged periods with this stress cause hormonal releases of adrenaline and cortisol, which tighten blood vessels. 

“These, in turn, lead to long-term changes, like arterial wall thickening and stiffening, that increase the blood pressure that the body tries to maintain,” Jauhar said.

Recent research has established a connection between negative affectivity traits, such as depression, anxiety and anger, to heart disease. The Lifestyle Heart Trial published in The Lancet in 1990, Jauhar said, found that “stress management was more strongly correlated with reversal of coronary artery disease than exercise.”

With these studies and others, Jauhar is confident that although these correlations do not prove causation, there are so many findings that exhibit the same patterns: Psychological health plays an important role in heart health. But he is concerned that modern scientific medicine may be at its limits when attempting to solve cardiovascular health issues. 

“We will need to shift to a new paradigm, one focused on prevention (of heart disease) to continue to make the kind of progress to which we have become accustomed,” Jauhar said. “In this paradigm, psychosocial factors will need to be front and center in how we think about health problems.”

Calling for the realization that one’s home, family, job and mental state are deeply rooted in the heart, Jauhar believes psychosocial repair is necessary to treat the heart with love. 

Posing the ideas of community-led initiatives to increase walking and biking rather than supporting sedentary lifestyles, or enhancing public life through conversation, Jauhar said there may not be a one-size-fits-all solution. These problems should be addressed on individual or community levels.

“It is increasingly clear that the biological heart is inextricably linked to its metaphorical counterparts,” Jauhar said. “Our mindset, our coping strategies, how we navigate challenging circumstances, our capacity to transcend distress — these things, I have learned, are also a matter of life and death.”

Katherine May speaks on engaging ritual practices to appreciate darkest of times

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On a hot, humid August afternoon, Katherine May reminded Chautauquans that a frigid winter is quickly approaching — not just the season, but phases of isolating darkness that are always making their way to the forefront. And humans have no choice but to bear it. 

The internationally best-selling author of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, May closed Week Six’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “Embracing the Dark: Fertile Soul Time” on Friday, Aug. 5 in the Hall of Philosophy. She gave a lecture titled “Baking Bread in the Dark: Why Our Winters Replenish Us,” highlighting the importance of rest. 

“By the time summer is at its height, the days are already shortening,” May said. “It sometimes feels as though summer slips away before we’ve begun to get the hang of it.”

Several cultures and religions have celebrations throughout the summer, including Lammas and feast days in August, among others. These holidays during the summer signify a celebration of Earth’s natural cycles. 

But May believes people can grow their understanding of all seasons so they can treasure the darkness of the winter as much as the warmth of the summer. 

“(A better understanding of these cycles) rejects the bland indictment that we must be happy at all times and nothing else, and which instead sees the value of the full spectrum of human emotion, sadness and despair included,” she said. 

To illustrate this idea, May began to explain the process of baking a Lammas loaf. The hard dough is made with a dash of butter and kneaded far beyond when one’s hands would begin to feel the toughness of the bread. 

The baker weaves the dough into an intricate design, and May said the product is glorious and almost too beautiful to eat. Her point was not about the delectable bread, but rather what it represents.

“A Lammas loaf is the work of hours. … It’s slow, involved and skilled,” May said. “It’s not a casual endeavor. It’s a process demanding the whole of your attention. … It is effortlessly embedded with meaning.”

Referring to the baking of bread as a ritual, May said this process can provide one with clarity and a renewed sense of meaning. It gives the baker the opportunity to slow down and be truly present with the rising of the dough. 

“Maybe we (would) have some big questions to ask of the world,” May said. “Maybe we (would) have some concerns. Maybe we’ve been avoiding slowing down for a long time, because we fear what thoughts might well up in that lull. Making bread would invite them in.”

Rituals from myriad cultures and historical periods have long provided humans with purpose and reminded them to take a break, she said.

“We need the pauses that ritual gives us. So much of contemporary life is about the denial of personal darkness,” May said. “We’re supposed to be always upbeat, always available, always bursting with energy and optimism. There’s simply no time for negative feelings. … Ritual invites those things in.”

Baking bread, chanting, singing, dancing, drumming and other practices allow one to tune into the cycles of life and release tension. Engaging in these rituals encourages people to appreciate even the darkest and most difficult parts of the process.

“(Ritual) might draw attention to cyclical time, to the way that things come around again and again,” May said. “That helps us to think about change, about how far we’ve come, about what we’ve lost.”  

When May was in the midst of a dark time, she partook in the ritual of baking bagels to occupy both her hands and her mind. But the toughness of the dough broke her mixer, and the dough refused to rise. She still attempted to bake the “sad specimens,” but they exited the oven as if they were two-weeks stale. She realized the yeast she had used was at least five years out of date. 

“This is how winters arrive,” May said. “It seems like they swooped down on us suddenly, but often in the empty space they open up in our lives. We can trace back their lineage through years of slow unraveling.”

These disasters, May said, are not the fault of one’s unraveling; they are rather a natural part of the cycle. However, they often show when one has not been tending to their needs. 

“We live in a system that never quite seems to find balance,” she said. “… Our own requirements — social, emotional, psychological, spiritual — get perpetually deferred in a life in which everything seems urgent all the time.”

While people try to manage their needs through strict regimens and work schedules, leisure and activity, true balance never seems to present itself.

Pushing away from the fear of failure and thoughts of not being good enough, people add to their load of responsibilities, hoping one day, their perfection will come to fruition. 

“Still, it all comes crashing down around our ears, and we find ourselves sitting in the wreckage completely baffled at how this could have happened,” May said. “We tried so hard to get it right.”

May said the process of wintering is painful and isolating, and described it as a time of great helplessness. 

“Wintering is a process of change, and quite often, that change is negative,” she said. “… (But) wintering might be seen as a process of reckoning with the new facts before us.”

May finds the time of wintering as a beautiful season of realization. It allows people to feel the full spectrum of their feelings, if they allow them in.

May spoke on the process of writing Wintering, published in fall of 2020, sharing that the final draft of her book was due that previous March. May began trying to write the summer prior, but she found herself in the midst of writer’s block, in a season too hot to write about winter. She planned to begin writing in September instead.

But that fall, May began to deal with crisis after crisis, and her plan began to crumble.

“I tried to stick to the plan I had outlined in my book proposal, but that just seemed absurd,” May said. “What on Earth did I know about wintering if I couldn’t avoid all this? It was a joke to think that anyone would listen to me.”

Rather than writing the draft of her book, she detailed the helplessness she felt in journals, which was the opposite of what Wintering was supposed to be. The original plan of the book meant to offer comfort, not show despair. 

“Christmas passed and my manuscript stubbornly remained the same length it had when I wrote the proposal a whole year before,” May said. “With nine weeks left until I was due to submit my book, something broke in me. I had to write something, so it might as well be my own story.”

Although May thought this draft was terrible, this story allowed the reader to walk alongside her struggles. 

“The work we do in darkness is different,” May said. “… It’s urgent, necessary, propelled forward by a different kind of energy. … What pulls out of us in moments of existential threat and suffering can feel external to us, as if handed down by another consciousness entirely. To me, that is evidence of the profound transmission that takes place in these seemingly empty and useless parts of our lives.”

Comparing these times of darkness and wintering as a caterpillar’s chrysalis phase of becoming a butterfly, May said the destruction of one’s old self can reveal a more beautiful and powerful existence.

“The caterpillar digests itself. It dissolves all its tissues until all that is left is liquid and some clusters of cells called imaginal discs, which is the seed for the next stage in its life,” May said. 

We also must undergo transformations of this type in a different sense, May said. People must be open to growth, despite how painful and uncomfortable it can be. 

“If we become permeable, we not only expand our wisdom, but we also merge a little more with the other humanities around us,” May said. “Wintering is always a communal experience. If we let it, it deepens our compassion and wisdom, and draws us a little closer to that beautiful community of all of us across all time.”

She touched on the poem “Dark Night of the Soul,” by St. John of the Cross, a 16th-century Spanish mystic and priest, and recognized Cross’ interpretation of the dark night as an ecstatic place. 

“It seems to me that John captures the exact moment after the crisis,” May said. “The moment when we … stop resisting the changes that are already being made (and) can ride in their slipstream instead.”

May is confident that humanity understands darkness better than they might think, no matter how much people may push it away. Humans have always faced darkness, she said, and they will continue to enter dizzying spirals of darkness and light.

“Winter is (not) easy or terrible, but it is a fundamental part of our psyche,” May said. “(Wintering is) an element of a cycle that is, in itself, whole, in which promises to make us whole, too.”

Rabbi Rami Shapiro illuminates power of compassion during dark times

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Chautauqua’s Interfaith Lecture Series is known for its powerful messages, but it is rare that these messages are shared through the power of collaborative song. Rabbi Rami Shapiro brought nearly every Chautauquan into harmony during his lecture.

Shapiro, an award-winning author or co-author of over 36 books and co-director of One River Foundation, delivered his lecture, “Seeing the Face of God in the Shadow of Our Dark Night,” on Thursday, Aug. 4 in the Hall of Philosophy. 

Expanding on Week Six’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “Embracing the Dark: Fertile Soul Time,” Shapiro spoke on how to find the divine through compassion in the midst of the wilting world.

“We are in a very dark, terrible time. Don’t worry — it’s going to get more dark and more terrible,” Shapiro said. “There is a way to navigate it, but no way to avoid it. I’m going to teach you how to navigate it.”

Most forms of spirituality bring forth difficult and painful practices for people to connect to the divine; some argue the best practice is through singing, chanting and creating music. So, Shapiro invited Chautauquans to sing a song by Menachem Nachum Twersky, an 18th-century Hasidic mystic from Chernobyl, Ukraine.

This song repeats the lyrics “I am alive” four times to delight in the notion of being alive.  

“It’s just this amazing thing that you exist,” Shapiro said. “… We’re each a unique part of oneness, and that uniqueness has to be celebrated.” 

The next few verses include the lyrics, “And who is this aliveness I am?” Twersky and other mystics believed it was important to recognize that there lies more within a living being than what one may perceive. 

“Who is this aliveness that is me at the moment?” Shapiro asked. “His answer is the holy blessed one, the Divine.”

This idea continues into the last section of the lyrics with the line, “if not the holy blessed one,” reminding everyone that they are an extension of the divine. 

“Every religion has this understanding of this greater divine reality,” Shapiro said. “But this divine reality is not separate from you. It’s not ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’ It’s this reality that is everything.”

It is Shapiro’s belief that everyone is comprised of parts of God, but no one person is entirely God. He used the metaphor of waves in an ocean to illustrate this idea.

“Every wave is an expression of the ocean, but not the full expression of the ocean,” Shapiro said. “No wave is all of the ocean, but the ocean is all of every wave. That’s what we need to remember when we engage with life.”

Describing the current moment as a “global crucifixion of humankind,” Shapiro believes the dark night that humans are enduring impacts all Earth’s life forms. Although it ebbs and flows, this particular darkness may smother the world if humans do not act. 

“Praying for light in the middle of the dark isn’t going to do any good, because the dark time is inevitable. … It’s part of the evolution of the universe,” Shapiro said. “It’s not the first time we’ve been through it. But it may be the one that is most fraught, in the sense that (humans) could do so much more damage than we’ve ever done before.”

Even though the divine is vested within all beings, Shapiro said religious denominations throughout history have engaged in a multitude of power struggles.

“We’re in this dark time, and our religions feed it. They don’t liberate us from it. They thicken the darkness with their teachings,” he said. “The religions I’m talking about are parochial, and parochial religions are always about themselves.”

Some religious myths written by humans have caused anger, Shapiro said, and more division than unity. Shapiro called for these practices, which fuel the destruction of the Earth, to end through the transition into a new understanding.

“Perennial Wisdom is a completely different understanding of what religion is about, and supports a very different myth from the Bible,” he said. “Perennial Wisdom is global. Every religion has its version of Perennial Wisdom.”

Understanding that humans were placed on Earth to serve rather than rule is the core of this wisdom. Humans are supposed to be “the midwives of divine creativity,” Shapiro said. 

He provided the four points of Perennial Wisdom, with the first being that everything is a manifestation of the divine. Most people wonder if God exists, but Shapiro said God is existence itself. 

Point two is the principle that human beings have an intrinsic capacity to awaken their true nature of God through spiritual practices. 

When one understands that the divine envelops everything — other beings and oneself — point three says they must engage with others using the teachings of the golden rule. 

“The fourth point is awakening to your own divinity and the divinity of everything else, and living life according to the golden rule so that every encounter is a blessing to the one you’re encountering,” Shapiro said. “Those two things comprise the highest calling of every human being. That’s your mission.”

These facets of Perennial Wisdom can work like a telescope during the night, finding the smallest of light granules in the depths of the darkness.

“How we manage the dark night (presents) two choices,” Shapiro said. “… You can go down with the ship, angry and aggressive and violent, which is what we’re doing now, or you can go down with compassion, with an expanded sense of consciousness that realizes going down is just part of coming back up.”

He said working through catastrophe with compassion and empathy strengthens the possibility that “the collapse yields to another rebirth.” 

Teaching a simple practice of Perennial Wisdom, Shapiro explained the implementation of the “philosophy of the face.” He guided Chautauquans to see every face — of humans and all beings — as their divinity. 

“If you truly see the face of another … then you’ll awaken to your own,” Shapiro said. “Then you can only treat that person as a blessing. You can only make that meaning when guided by the golden rule.”

To practice seeing the light of the divine aliveness, Shapiro instructed the audience to look to their neighbor and say, “I place the divine before me always,” while turning to another neighbor to say, “You are God.” 

This exercise honors the uniqueness and the divinity vested in every being, but not the separateness. The individuality of each being contributes to the whole of existence and therefore God, he said.

While the darkness of the moment continues to ravage reality, Shapiro said it is not a matter of escaping, but living through it with compassion.

“(The dark night) is the fierce burning love of the Divine Mother who is burning away all the dross in human civilization, all the dross in your life,” Shapiro said. “Everything you cling to is going to melt away to nothing. … You’re going to cling to it, and you’re going to fight it all the way, but ultimately you will lose.”

Closing with Twersky’s song, Shapiro reminded the audience that their holiness and oneness is a powerful force during trying times. 

“It’s about living through the darkness with compassion, with love, with the divine consciousness and seeing that the collapse is part of the process,” he said. “This is what it is to be reality.”

Monica Coleman shares journey of loss, triumph, with need for faith, mental health

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American society often places a fulgent spotlight on achieving success, but Monica Coleman argued people must be taught how to navigate the darkness of loss. 

Coleman, award-winning scholar, ordained minister and professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware, delivered her lecture, “Learning to Lose,” on Wednesday, Aug. 3 in the Hall of Philosophy. Continuing Week Six’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “Embracing the Dark: Fertile Soul Time,” Coleman spoke candidly on her own struggles with mental health and faith.

“I’m a person who lives with a depressive condition. So I know a lot about loss,” Coleman said. “To me, (loss is) what depression feels like.”

Despite people’s best efforts, failure and loss inevitably enter the lives of everyone in some way, shape or form, she said. 

Sean Smith / staff photographer Coleman’s lecture, which touched on trust and recovering from trauma with the help of others, was titled “Learning to Lose.”

“Losing isn’t sexy. It’s not something you want. We don’t want to work on how to be better losers,” Coleman said. “But that’s what I’m going to talk about: how to lose and how to be better at losing. Not because losing is the goal, but because loss is inevitable. We can’t dodge it, evade it, ignore it or avoid it.”

With a plan to provide Chautauquans with tools to dig themselves out of the rut of loss, Coleman shared three lessons in losing. 

To embrace these difficult experiences and develop bravery in the midst of despair, Coleman said she would discuss “how to lose your mind, how to lose your life and how to lose your faith.”

Children are taught to prepare for emergencies at school in the form of fire drills, lockdowns and sheltering-in-place. Coleman grew up in the Midwest, so she also participated in tornado drills and learned the tell-tale warning signs.

“I knew if we had a hot day and a cold day back to back, that was tornado weather. … I knew the shade of green the sky turns (when) there’s a twister nearby,” Coleman said. “I knew what to do when (tornadoes) happen because I was prepared for an emergency.”

Other crises could be prevented or mitigated with similar means of preparation. Those with preexisting mental health issues are often encouraged to create an emergency plan, she said.

These emergency plans frequently include steps one would take to secure their safety when they do not feel safe with themselves; identifying a few trustworthy friends or family members is a typical requirement of these plans, Coleman said. 

“I didn’t like the idea of putting my faith in someone else,” she said. “More honestly, I was afraid of how bad off I was going to have to be if that’s what I needed to do.”

But around 20 years ago, Coleman was having a particularly difficult time, and needed to use her emergency plan. She was able to call a friend who was both a therapist and a pastor.

After asking Coleman how she was feeling, if she wanted to hurt herself and if she wanted to be alive, her friend concluded it was time for Coleman to receive professional help.

“Now, I heard her, but I felt a lot of conflict about this, because in my mind, we were now at the line between me and crazy,” Coleman said, “between me and really going off the deep end.”

She felt a cloud of shame form above her head; she knew how much stigma mental health issues carried. 

One of Coleman’s work colleagues had a bipolar depressive condition, and Coleman heard her other coworkers talk about it in a way that showed they took the colleague less seriously. 

So, the morning following her talk with her trusted friend, Coleman drove 90 miles away to go to a hospital outside of her community, ensuring her privacy. She also wanted to go to a research center in hopes the doctors would be able to better manage and understand what she called a complex diagnosis.

Coleman found herself able to relax in the secure environment of the hospital. She was able to settle down and focus purely on her mental health.

“I was afraid of losing my mind, and once I got past this fear, I got a retreat,” Coleman said. “I got somebody who would take care of the things that I couldn’t do, so I could begin to focus on what was challenging.”

If Coleman hadn’t used her emergency plan, this story could have ended very differently. 

“Being hospitalized prompted me to take my condition seriously, because I hadn’t taken it seriously enough,” she said. “… So I would say the most important lesson to learn about losing your mind is that you should find someone you can trust when you can’t trust yourself. Because life is more important than being afraid of losing your mind.”

Along with her depressive condition, Coleman lives with another debilitating issue. Her kneecaps naturally dislocate due to a hereditary disease.

Coleman learned more about this condition and realized her kneecap would dislocate every time she walked, but it didn’t hurt because they were accustomed to that pattern. 

“But when it dislocates outside of that rhythm, it hurts a lot,” Coleman said. “There’s certain things that put more pressure on my knees and make them dislocate. And there’s certain activities that help to strengthen (those) muscles.”

Some environments and situations can trigger a mental breakdown, while other practices can help to strengthen one’s ability to cope with these stressors, Coleman said. Physical conditions can be similarly impacted by different stressors.

Coleman once dislocated her knee in a way she had never dislocated it before. She was in severe pain, and needed to see an orthopedic surgeon. The doctor told her that she must rest her knee by using crutches, and expressed how important it was for Coleman to use the crutches for two months after her knee felt better. 

The support of crutches can help heal an injured knee, while medication for mental health differences can provide relief to debilitating symptoms. Although neither support system would cure Coleman’s knee or her depression, they would significantly help her to function. 

Even though using crutches meant that Coleman needed to change her lifestyle and lose mobility, this experience wasn’t a loss. The same can be said of her stay in the mental hospital.

“If you’re willing to rest in order to heal your mind, you can do things you didn’t know you could do,” Coleman said. “You can do more than you could have done before, or you can do something new.”

Speaking on the loss of faith, Coleman, like many others, has questioned her faith after enduring difficult and unjust circumstances. 

“I’m very public about the fact that I’m a survivor of sexual violence. In the immediate aftermath of that experience, I lost my faith,” she said. “Before then, I had the faith of the kind of God … that will swoop in and fix your life if you pray and ask for it. And I prayed for it and asked for it, and it didn’t happen.”

At this time of deep questioning, darkness and loss of faith, Coleman was in her master’s of divinity program, and had to complete an internship.

“I had to do a field education requirement that required me to go be ministerial,” Coleman said. “I had to go help somebody else with their faith when I was losing mine.”

But Coleman learned that faith would find her again if she just showed up to her internship. 

She eventually found the calling to help others heal through collaborating with the pastor of the church where she was interning. Together, they started a church ministry that evolved into a nonprofit organization called The Dinah Project, which was an organized church response to sexual violence crisis in the community. 

“We had mental health professionals working with social workers, working with clergy. We had worship services,” Coleman said. “We talked about rape from the pulpit. We talked about what it might mean to heal from sexual violence, and how we might wrestle with our faith in the midst of that.”

With these journeys, Coleman has learned to accept loss and work through it to get to the other side.

“We should do a better job of teaching us how to lose because we do lose. … We won’t always win,” she said. “But more importantly, most of us are stymied by the fear of loss. We’re afraid to lose our minds, afraid to lose parts of our lives … afraid to lose our faith. But when you let go of that fear, I think we’ll find much more courage.”

Finding light in ‘dark night of the soul,’ Mirabai Starr draws on mystic thinking

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It is said the only guarantees in life are taxes and death, but Mirabai Starr argued living through darkness is an additional responsibility humans must bear. Although this darkness can be overwhelming, it can lead to clarifying vision. 

Starr, an award-winning author of creative nonfiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature, delivered her lecture, “Dark Nights of Our Souls: The Transformational Power of Spiritual Crisis,” on Tuesday, Aug. 2 in the Hall of Philosophy.

Week Six’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “Embracing the Dark: Fertile Soul Time,” refers to a poem by St. John of the Cross, a 16th-century Spanish mystic and priest. 

Starr translated the poem, “Dark Night of the Soul,” from its original 16th-century Spanish to modern English. She began her lecture by reading both versions of the text for Chautauquans, inviting them into a “contemplative moment.”

The poem tells a story of a spiritual crisis, using darkness as a metaphor for being unable to find the fiery excitement of life; it describes a deep loss of purpose.

“There is a reason this mystical teaching has survived for 500 years and may be more relevant today than ever,” Starr said. “… If I were to sum up John of the Cross’ teachings on spiritual crisis in one sentence, it would be: When you’re having a spiritual meltdown, melt. Say yes.”

Times of spiritual disconnection are often deeply personal. This inner state of “conceptual emptiness,” Starr said, does not always need a connection to external circumstances. 

“Now you’re conditioned to see (the crumbling of your belief system) as a problem, as a broken thing that needs to be fixed,” she said. “… (But) John of the Cross says this is a blessing, and that it’s a sign of spiritual maturity, that your soul has ripened.”

Referring to St. John of the Cross’ use of feminine energy to explain this process, Starr described this crisis as God weaning a baby from her breast to introduce it to delicious bread. 

“We throw a (spiritual) tantrum when it all dries up and falls into darkness,” Starr said. “But if we can stay with it, amazing subtle gifts will reveal themselves that wouldn’t if we couldn’t enter into that darkness.”

Admitting she once thought this lesson was deeply private with little connection to external circumstances, Starr learned through her own experiences of grief and utter loss that the internal and external are deeply connected.

On the very day that Starr’s first book came out, a translation of “Dark Night of the Soul,” her 14-year-old daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident. 

“(This) was the day I was plunged into the deepest, most radical darkness I could have ever imagined,” Starr said. “… So what my own soul recognized when Jenny died and the book came out was that yes, indeed, external circumstances can plunge us into that spiritual crisis.”

Despite the irrefutable presence of darkness that accompanies loss, St. John of the Cross and other mystics recognized this blinding darkness as a form of unutterable light. 

“It takes a while of abiding in that darkness before that radiance, that luminosity, can come through, before we can develop those new eyes with which to perceive the light directly,” Starr said. 

One of the most difficult aspects of enduring a “Dark Night of the Soul” experience, Starr said, is the inability to welcome the darkness as a blessing, as many fight and dread what is perceived as a great loss. 

This is part of the process, however, as no one should try to force a grieving person to see the gift in their loss; the one in grieving must be able to find the light on their own, Starr said. 

“But what we can do is accompany each other in the shattering moments and not turn away,” Starr said. 

While many feel the urge to run away from a profound loss, Starr advised people to be present with the moment and feel it deeply. She referred to the loss of her daughter, explaining that she felt a maternal instinct to stay present in the loss to honor Jenny as an act of love.

“(There) was this outflowing of love for my daughter,” Starr said. “(I thought) ‘I’m going to stay with this darkness. I am going to be present to this grief because I love you, and I don’t know what else to do, except to say a very soft, very reluctant, yes.’ ”

In spiritual crises, people are often unable to tell they are in one until it is over. A person may be able to pinpoint that they are in the midst of darkness, but Starr said people often can’t know when they are in the midst of a spiritual crisis of high caliber. 

Through contemplative practice, though, Starr shared that people can train themselves to be present and relax within the darkness because nothing is truly broken. 

“When it’s all empty and dark and dry, it is not a sign of a pathology that needs to be medicated in you,” Starr said. “It’s an invitation to the transformational space of radical unknowing, which is the portal to total intimacy with the sacred.”

St. John of the Cross believed this transformative time to be deeply personal, occurring on an individual basis, but Starr suggested that many, especially in America, are experiencing a collective “Dark Night of the Soul.” 

“Our cherished structures are collapsing. Our systems that we relied on to guide us and hold us are coming undone. We are being plunged into darkness,” Starr said. “And as my friend Valarie Kaur asks … ‘Is it the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?’ ”

Humankind has strived for a system of life rooted in shared values, but through time, many do not dare to believe it is possible to live in a harmonious way, she said. 

“But (this new way of life) can only come out of the ashes of the old,” Starr said. “What we need is brave lovers to stand up as a steadying, rooted, hopeful source for others, even if that means midwifing each other through the death that is unfolding globally.”

Many feel the need to retreat from the world’s problems, perceiving that they could not possibly have the power to revive hope. But Starr fights this notion, professing that the “feminine prophetic invitation” awaits a joint force of all people to work in the ashes.

Georgia Pressley / staff photographer Starr’s lecture was titled “Dark Nights of Our Souls: The Transformational Power of Spiritual Crisis.”

“There is no lone white dude who’s going to come swooping in to save us right now,” she said. “All of us together, people of all genders, and all (identities) — racially, religiously, culturally — it’s only together that we can hope to be instruments of peace in this new emerging reality.”

It seems there is much darkness now, and Starr believes this is not a coincidence.

“What we see on the global horizon is also unfolding in our individual lives, our families, our communities. I don’t think that’s an accident,” Starr said. “It just seems to be a time when we are being weaned, and it hurts.”

Many of the great mystics, whose teachings transcend time, endured darkness in their personal lives. Starr believes their gifts were born from their crises. She created a working list of these figures and their sufferings, sharing snippets of their stories with the audience. 

“Teresa of Ávila … had illnesses, near-death experiences, her whole life,” Starr said. “Julian of Norwich had a near-death experience. She wasn’t meant to recover, but she did. … Hildegard of Bingen had terrible debilitating headaches, probably migraines; also the authorities in the church were constantly trying to destroy her.”

After depicting this mosaic of challenging mystic experiences, Starr reminded Chautauquans that their spiritual crises, too, have the power to ennoble them and open a door to the sacred landscape.

Closing the lecture with a poem she wrote to St. John of the Cross, Starr shared her journey of living in the midst of darkness and placing her trust in the Divine. 

“I have cultivated my faith with enthusiasm and care, yet it lies withered at my feet. Oh, wise brother and God, remind me that this void is plenitude. This aridity, abundance, this darkness, pure light,” Starr read. “… Give me the strength not to turn away from the pain. … Remind me that only by letting go of all hope can I ever come to receive the fullness of God’s love, a tender filling of every fiber of my broken open soul.”

Mark Nepo speaks on tilling ‘invisible soil of spirit’ to foster connection

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The darkest of times can often lead to new, bright discoveries, such as a rainbow after a gloomy storm or the light at the end of the tunnel.

Mark Nepo opened Week Six’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “Embracing the Dark: Fertile Soul Time,” on Monday, Aug. 1 in the Hall of Philosophy with his lecture, titled “Heartwork: Being a Spirit in the World.”

As a poet, spiritual adviser and best-selling author of The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want By Being Present to the Life You Have, Nepo is widely known as “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time.” 

With over 40 years of experience teaching spirituality and poetry, Nepo has authored or contributed to 29 books and recorded 14 audio projects to share his teachings. 

“​​Given our times, I want to explore several things today, including the lineage of care and belonging that we are all part of; the practice of being human; how we are more together than alone; and the hard work that has always been required to be a spirit in the world,” Nepo said.

Throughout history, humans have tended to forget their connection with each other, which can cause rifts in peace. But Nepo said great love and great suffering can help people return to oneness.

In his 30s, Nepo himself experienced suffering when he was diagnosed with a life-threatening, rare form of lymphoma. He felt his mental and emotional journey during this near-death experience was akin to what the pandemic has wrought. 

“When I left that appointment (when I found out I had a large, cancerous tumor growing on my skull), the door I had come through … was gone. There was no way to the world as I knew it before that appointment,” Nepo said. “That kept coming back to me, because I think that’s what the pandemic has done to humanity.”

To move forward, Nepo learned to accept the new world he entered with love, and he advised others to do the same. He recognized, though, this is harder said than done, due to spiritual physics. 

“When things come together, they’re quiet. And when things fall apart, they make a lot of noise. … Things are always coming together, just as well as falling apart,” Nepo said. “We in the modern world are addicted to the noise of things falling apart, and therefore, we miss it when things come back together.”

Joeleen Hubbard / staff photographer Nepo opens the Week Six Interfaith Lecture Series on “Embracing the Dark: Fertile Soul Time” Monday in the Hall of Philosophy.

Nepo urged Chautauquans to listen for things coming together. He views each human soul as a single cell in the whole of the global body, and since cells can be either healthy or toxic, he expressed the importance of having more healthy cells to keep humanity flourishing. 

“The inner work you do, your own journey of your soul’s work, your relational work and your own work of integrity … contributes to making sure that humanity has one more healthy soul than toxic,” Nepo said. 

Nepo used the metaphor of one root system in the “invisible soil of spirit” to describe the nature of human interconnectedness. 

“So if my roots are diseased, it matters to you because pretty soon your roots will get diseased if we don’t help each other,” he said.

Nepo pointed to three enduring spiritual elements — presence, meaning and relationships — that are “as important as gravity.” 

Being present, Nepo said, is how humans know life directly. By interacting with loved ones or nature, or experiencing a great emotion, presence reminds people how rare it is to be conscious and alive. 

Nepo read a passage from his New York Times best-selling book, The Book of Awakening

“When we remember how rare it is to be here, it cleans our eyes, our heart, our mind … and we make different decisions, because we regain that direct presence. … There is a Buddhist precept that asks us to be mindful of how rare it is to find ourselves in human form on Earth, … that offers us the chance to feel enormous appreciation … as individual spirits with consciousness: drinking water, doing the laundry, paying the bills, chopping wood.”

While presence allows people to connect to life, meaning brings together individual presences.

“Paradoxically, while the only way I can experience life is through direct experience, I need your experience because we’re more together than alone,” Nepo said.

Relationships are the thread that binds these two elements — presence and meaning — together. Nepo told an Indigenous creation story about a worm and the Great Spirit to articulate the importance of relationships. 

The worm slowly spun silk from its stomach to build connections for the Great Spirit; the spirit then gifted the worm the ability to wrap itself in a cocoon and become the first butterfly.  

This story, in Nepo’s opinion, represents how humans process their own internal experiences to build relationships with others’ experiences. 

“The reason I tell (this story), what touches me about it, is the things that hold everything together are not spun even from the worm’s heart, but from his guts. So … we have to have the courage to process our experience,” Nepo said. “This is the work of self-awareness. This is the work of introspection. … If we do that, we spin the threads that hold everything together.”

Even though relationships bind presence and meaning together, Nepo said staying and engaging in relationships is “the challenge of our age.” 

He advised his audience to engage in a few types of eternal relationships. 

“I want to offer you that our friendship with everything larger than us is the work of being,” Nepo said. “Our friendship with experience is the work of being human. The one we know the most, our friendship with ourselves and each other, is the work of love.”

Discussing the work of being human, Nepo told an ancient Hindu story about a poisonous spider drowning in water and a holy man trying to save it. Day after day, the holy man would save the spider even though it would sting him. 

“As he lifts up the spider, the spider says to him, ‘Don’t you understand? I’m a spider. I will sting you every time because that is what I do,’ ” Nepo said. “And the holy man, who doesn’t know he’s holy, says, ‘And don’t you understand? I will save you every time because that is what I do.’ ”

This lesson shows the innate kindness humans hold, and Nepo said this kindness dilutes the sting of the world. 

This story also touched on sacrifice, and Nepo said the original definition of the word means to “give up what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred.”

With this, Nepo asked the audience if the way they live life, through thinking, acting or being, is still working. 

Nepo’s friend, Joel Elkes, died five years ago at the age of 102. Nepo spoke about Elkes’ mother, Miriam Elkes, who was a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz.

Before she died, she shared with her son two things that she would do to help her get through her days of suffering: She would carry a piece of bread crust in case she met someone who needed it more than her, and she would brush her hair every night with a piece of a broken comb to affirm her person.

“I leave you with that question: What is it that you carry every day in case you meet someone more in need than you?” Nepo asked. “And what small gesture can you do, either morning or night everyday, to affirm your person?”

Nepo closed with his poem, “If You Want a True Friend,” exploring the idea that even if people are unsure of where they are at and where to go next, admitting their uncertainty opens doors: 

“Then you can begin with nothing in the way.  /Go on, admit to the throb in your heart. / And let the journey begin.”

Wajahat Ali shares personal stories in call for holding onto hope during hopeless times

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Wajahat Ali, a Muslim whose parents immigrated from Pakistan in the ’80s, defied the expectation of his peers. They did not expect him to become a protagonist of the American narrative, but Ali learned to rewrite his destiny in the face of adversity and tribulation. 

Ali, now an author, columnist, political commentator and award-winning playwright, closed Week Five of Chautauqua’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Democracy.”

His lecture, “Go Back to Where You Came From: Or, How to Create the Ethnic Avengers,” titled in part after his 2022 book on being part of a family of immigrants, depicted his struggle as an American Muslim — particulary in a post-9/11 world. 

Ali spoke on the importance of implementing diverse, equitable and inclusive leadership within the current state of American democracy. Yet, diverse ideas are becoming more and more censored, he said. 

“Speaking about diversity can get you fired if you’re an educator. We’re living in a moment where some parents are more comfortable with their kids getting COVID at school or potentially getting shot than reading a book by a Black author,” Ali said. “We’re living in a time where books are being banned. In fact, 1,100 books have been banned in the past year, overwhelmingly by POC writers and LGBTQ+ authors.”

Dylan Townsend / staff photographer Ali closed the Week Five Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Society.”

Beyond limiting access to these educational resources, minorities still face dangerous, life-threatening situations in 2022. Even though people are aware of these issues, they remain complicit, Ali said. 

“Everyone wants to get to reconciliation. But how do you get to reconciliation without truth? You don’t,” Ali said. “The same people who champion such restrictive actions need to maintain fictional stories and myths about this country because these stories are comfortable, … even if it comes at the expense of truth, equality, fairness, accountability and justice.”

Ali argued that it is important to embrace discomfort, read dangerous books and listen to tough stories. He said it is time to invest in hope, during what seems like hopeless times. 

“It will be the necessary medicine that is needed to heal America, and perhaps even save this country. It might even save our lives,” Ali said. “In my opinion, the only way forward in this country … (is to) expand ourselves, our workplaces and our communities so that everyone has a chance to become a co-protagonist of the evolving narrative.”

Ali learned at a young age that these narratives needed to be told to young people in minority communities, as they would have helped him feel more accepted in a society that paints itself as homogenous.

“We’re being told (in 2022) that the age of five, six and seven is too young for kids to learn about multiculturalism and racism,” Ali said. “What’s so funny is that for many people of color, school is when we first learned our place in the American hierarchy. School is when we first encountered racism.”

Ali said that growing up in America as a person of color, he quickly realized that he did not look like the protagonist of the American narrative. The textbooks, billboards, magazines and other forms of media did not show people that looked like him.

“The hero does not have Brown skin or Black skin. At best, I am a sidekick. Or I’m a punchline, or I am a villain. Or I’m completely excised from the story,” Ali said. “What does that do to a young kid? Even though I came from a very loving, super-Brown, super-Muslim, super-American family, you implicitly learn to hate yourself. You learned to hate the color of your skin, the texture of your hair, the shape of your nose.”

Through these struggles inside the classroom, Ali found a calling for storytelling. He reflected on a particular story he wrote in elementary school; his teacher found the story to be so well-written that she made Ali read it to the class. 

“I read the story, and I had them. They laughed at all the right parts. They gasped, they applauded,” he said. “For the first time in my life, my peers respected me. … I realized I might have a superpower. Once in a while, I might be able to tell a story. It was intoxicating.”

Even though Ali felt a calling to be a writer, he also felt pressured to become a doctor or an engineer. By the time he was a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, his major was still undeclared. 

In 2001, shortly followed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ali stepped up to become a student leader of the Muslim Students Association. 

“9/11 was a permanent fork in the road,” Ali said. “… We realized that for BIPOC folks, ‘American’ always comes with an asterisk. It’s always conditional, and overnight, our Americanness was revoked. Overnight, we were the enemy.”

The first time Ali was told to go back to where he came from was on 9/11. Even though he was born and raised in America, he was blamed by some for the tragedy due to his ethnicity. 

Ali’s life was about to encounter a horrific challenge: His parents were arrested by the FBI due to Operation Cyber Storm, which at the time, was the biggest anti-piracy crackdown in America. 

“My parents had nothing to do with these piracy allegations, right? But it was Microsoft and the FBI, so it was a giant net,” Ali said. “… My parents, upper-middle class, immigrant parents (were now seen as) scammers. Overnight, the American dream turned into the American nightmare.”

When his parents were arrested, Ali’s family lost everything — their money, credit, home and community. And, Ali had to leave school.

“I was able to graduate because my senior thesis professor, Susan Schweik, read about it in the newspaper,” Ali said.

She allowed Ali to take an incomplete grade and submit his thesis late, in December, while he tended to his family.

“Thanks to a teacher stepping up and being kind to a young kid who needed a little bit of help, I was able to graduate,” Ali said. “Coincidentally, that teacher is here today.”

Schweik, a regular visitor to the grounds during the summer season, and Ali were able to reunite for the first time in 20 years.

After graduating in the early 2000s with an English degree from the University of California, Berkeley, Ali pursued a law degree and graduated in 2007. Concurrently, Ali wrote a play, The Domestic Crusaders, which broke box office records during its run at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and in fall 2010, was published by McSweeney’s.

His parents’ appeal continued during these nine years of Ali’s professional success. They lost the case when Ali was 30 years old. 

“We lost everything again,” Ali said. “Everyone thinks I’m crushing it. All my friends are saying, ‘Wajahat is the one that’s made it.’ Meanwhile, I’m living in hell.” 

Despite the losses and challenges Ali has faced during his life — a near-death experience and his daughter’s fight with liver cancer — he has gained wisdom. 

“When you hear people say, ‘Well, I don’t see race,’ that means they don’t see racism,” Ali said. “And ignorance, even when it’s sincere and well-intentioned, is also a reflection of privilege. You don’t see because you never had to see.”

As America enters this new era, Ali calls for the supposed “nobodies” to also take action despite the overwhelming catastrophes all around them. 

Ali believes all people can leave a positive impact in their local communities and workplaces through awareness, intention and action. They can choose to listen to others’ stories and defy hopelessness. 

“Cynicism and apathy is comforting, but it’s also cheap and lazy. It requires zero work. It means you have chosen to be a spectator in life,” Ali said. “Investing in hope is painful, because it means it exposes yourself to disappointment. It exposes yourself to a narrative of pain, where your country will betray you time and time again. But it means you’ve chosen to get into the ring and fight.”

‘You have been taught a lie’ — Anthea Butler addresses crumbling American democracy

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Week Five’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme is “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Democracy,” but Anthea Butler called into question if those foundations were actually ethical, and if democracy is functional, at all. 

Butler delivered her lecture, “The Promise of the Polis: Guidance for Living in Trying Times,” on Thursday, July 28, in the Hall of Philosophy. 

As an author, historian and the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania, Butler’s research and writing examines African American religion and history, race politics, evangelicalism, gender and sexuality, and media. She is the author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.

Butler is also a co-director of The Crossroads Project for Black Religious Histories, Communities and Cultures, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, and serves as president of the American Society of Church History.

“We have these perceptions about what we think democracy is, and in America, we tend to think of ourselves as having a fully functional democracy,” Butler said. “… But we are not a fully functioning democracy.”

She described the insurrection of the capital on Jan. 6, 2021, as a “desecration” and a moment that was “the beginning of a long slide into this country’s end.”

After spending about a month of 2022 in Europe, Butler said many Europeans she encountered were concerned about the state of America.

Sean Smith / staff photographer Butler’s lecture, titled “The Promise of the Polis: Guidance for Living in Trying Times,” was part of the Interfaith Lecture Series Week Five theme of “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Democracy.”

“They are afraid for us, and you know why they’re afraid for us? Because they have seen this happen, not just in the 1930s (with) Hitler, but they’ve seen it over and over again in Hungary and Turkey and Poland,” Butler said. “And yet, we walk around as though we’re going to just get through this OK. We may not.”

Butler said she would discuss three subtopics: the history of democracy, America’s myth of democracy, and what American democracy has evolved into. 

Reflecting on the origins of American and ancient Greek democracy, Butler described what ethical foundations were missing during their formations. Both systems of government did not give women power, and violence was prevalent.

These societies also valued religion; ancient Greece was a polytheistic culture, and America is a monotheistic culture. Despite the founding of the United States being based on a fight for religious freedom, Butler said people became convinced that following the Judeo-Christian tradition was the only way to have a functioning democracy. 

The religious values of equality, however, did not transcend into law. 

“(The beginning of American democracy) held inalienable rights for men, (yet) there were no rights for my ancestors,” Butler said. “There were no rights for Native Americans who were in the way of the land.”

Even now, Butler said that the United States, as a Christian nation, is not compatible with democracy. Rather than Christian values being used for good, they have been used to oppress and ostracize others.  

“Catholics and Protestants fought in the streets of Philadelphia in the 1800s. They tried to kill each other,” Butler said. “This has not been a nation that has been tolerant about religion. It has not been a nation that is (built) on Christian principles.”

To explain how America has reached the precipice it is on now, Butler described the Red Scare and its impact. Communism was seen as atheistic; this was part of why many religious communities came together to condemn it. 

“The tension in that time period was … a rallying point for churches and schools and everybody else to get to civic engagement, (but) it was also a way to target people who want to change,” Butler said. “So people like Martin Luther King, and anybody else who wanted to get rid of Jim Crow and have equality, were called communists.”

This pattern of using religion against its own morals continued into the ’60s and ’70s, and even now. Yet many Americans question how the country has evolved into what it is.

“The thing that went wrong was this: Sometimes morality is about how you live your life. It’s not about how everybody else in the country should live their lives,” Butler said. “You’ve asked me to come here to talk about the ethical foundations. But it’s hard to have ethical foundations when the very ethics that we’ve been taught — tolerance, truth, understanding, education — are all being torn down around us … because people don’t want to understand someone else.”

The true mission of Christianity has been lost in the United States, Butler said, creating schisms rather than unity. The Christianity in America, according to Butler, is not actually Christianity — true Christianity does not work to divide, deceive and destroy. 

When discussing the principle of truth, Butler questioned if truth still has validity in this society. 

“My job is to tell you the truth. And so in the midst of this really horrible truth, the truth is the thing that is going to put us into place,” Butler said. “… Truth is not relative. There are some truths that we have to face as a nation. We had an insurrection that almost worked.”

The insurrection did not occur without a series of cause and effect. Butler said it was kindled by rampant conspiracy theories, white supremacist ideologies, the erosion of truth, and the Jericho March in Washington, which created an entry point. 

Although Butler does not have an answer of how Americans will survive this crisis, she believes the only way out is through. 

“We’ve had times in this country where we’ve had to go through some very difficult things, but if I think back on 400 years of this country, far back before 1776, this is probably one of the worst times ever, if not the worst,” Butler said. “Because now we’ve got a divided nation of people who think that democracy is going to survive and that it’ll be OK.”

Faith can be a powerful force, but Butler said it is time to do more than just pray. It is time to do more than just vote. She called for practical steps to be taken toward change, where truth, clear-sightedness and determination are brought to the forefront of action.  

Addressing Chautauquans directly, Butler said it is time to get real and wake up. 

“This is not a playtime. This is a lovely place, but all of this can go, folks. We’re going to split; we are almost split right now. It may be another kind of nation in another four years,” she said. “This little project of making us the biggest democracy in the world will end up being the biggest failed democracy in the world. That is a sobering thought.”

As the system is falling in on itself, Butler called for people to candidly see reality for what it is and fight to change things before the fabric of the nation is entirely torn.

“I feel like for the last 10 years I’ve done nothing but fight. I’ve been fighting about Black Lives Matter. I’ve been fighting about injustice,” Butler said. “… But I look out at all of you, and I’m going to say something. Don’t take it the wrong way: Y’all look like comfortable white people.”

Because Chautauqua is an isolated community, Butler called for the audience to think for themselves about what they can do to preserve democracy. 

“If we go the way I think we’re going to go, you will not have the veneer of democracy. You will have something else,” Butler said. “The question is: Do you love this country enough to make sure to do … something more than just go vote?”

Auburn scholar Adam Jortner places need for trust-building in communities

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The nature of democracy, which puts the power of governance in the hands of the people, requires citizens to trust each other. Yet, this current moment has been referred to as an “Era of Distrust,” with recurrent, tumultuous events chipping away at citizens’ faith in democracy.

Adam Jortner, historian, author and the Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion at Auburn University, spoke Wednesday, July 27, in the Hall of Philosophy, addressing, by citing history, what citizens should do to mend this distrust and enhance democracy. 

His lecture, titled “The Gospel and the Ballot Box: A History,” brought a new perspective to the discussion of Week Five’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Democracy.”

At Auburn, Jortner specializes in religion, democracy and the foundation of America. He has also authored several books and articles. 

“I decided I’m going to talk to you about the history of democracy and Christianity by talking about James Madison, Jesus Christ and Joseph Stalin,” Jortner said. 

Discussing the need for conversation and change by citing the term “unprecedented,” Jortner made the point that using this word can cause panic, while its antonym — “precedented” — makes people relax; neither of these reactions are ideal when trying to create positive change. 

Rather than worrying about whether there is precedent, Jortner said it is important to focus on the responsibility of a citizen in a crisis of democracy. 

Quoting Madison’s words from the Federalist Papers in 1787, Jortner said: “Prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements and alarm for private rights are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administration.”

Madison believed that factions are dangerous, defining them as a group of people — either a majority or a minority — with a shared passion adverse to the rights or interests of a community. Factions normally form through a difference of opinion in religion, politics or a number of other areas.

Pointing to the Bible and John 8, Jortner told the story of a woman who had been accused of adultery and brought forth to Jesus. When her accusers left, as they were also sinners and could not condemn her, Jesus let the woman go. 

“I hope you all can see the importance of this story about Jesus facing down a lynch mob when we are talking about the question of Christianity and democracy,” Jortner said. “Because what we have here is a political majority looking to score some points by promoting a bad idea.”

Jesus was able to work at the local level by speaking to the accused woman, and Jortner said this is a recurring theme in the Bible. 

“What’s interesting is what Jesus does and does not do to restore peace and to seek justice,” Jortner said. “He speaks and he loves. He does not take over the government. He does not lead a counter mob against the Pharisees. He does not condemn the people holding the stones.”

Jortner asked why Americans now believe the government should be controlled by Christians, when this is not the example Jesus set. He hypothesized the reason comes from the believed, supernatural power of God. 

“We assume that God is God because of his power, and we assume that whoever has power will use it,” Jortner said, “and that the goal of possessing power is to destroy our enemies, lay waste the ground they walk on and congratulate ourselves on our rightness.”

People often project their own characteristics and traits onto a more powerful God, Jortner said, and they must be aware of this habit and learn to epitomize the traits Jesus had that they lack. In the Bible, Jesus refrains from violence and revenge, and embodies forgiveness; yet humans struggle with integrating these values into everyday life.

Switching focus to Joseph Stalin, Jortner noted how his party’s rulings and ideologies permeated all levels of society through totalitarianism. While being in charge of political operations on a large scale, Stalin also had a role in personal decisions of people in the Soviet Union. 

“As Hannah Arendt said, ‘The nature of totalitarianism is the inability to think of anything outside the party,’ ” Jortner said. “ ‘Everything must be political — our love life, our family choices, our sports — everything is predetermined by the politics of it.’ ”

Jortner used Stalin as an example of totalitarianism and autocracy, which can be interpreted as the opposite of democracy. 

“Madison says there is a public good. Governments exist to serve the public good. Factions exist to compete with each other for their own good,” Jortner said. “But over and above the factions, there’s the public good.”

To combat the rise of factions coming into positions of power, Jortner said it is vital to elect officials who have a sense of common good and will act to protect the general interest of the citizens. 

“Democracy itself is not the same thing as the public good,” Jortner said. “… But democracy, in Madison’s view, is a tool of the public good. The public good pre-exists the government. … Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness — these things transcend the political order.”

But to protect the common good and confront the issues of factions, Jortner said many do not know what they should do. 

“When we encounter a group of people who are trying to do something wrong for political gain, to help themselves and not the public good, most of us are not able to make those people care about the public good merely by willing it so,” Jortner said. “Our worry doesn’t change the world.”

Many people in modern society use social media in an unproductive way to attempt to preserve the public good; however, Jortner believes people who truly want to preserve democracy must speak up in their local communities and figure out how to talk to people who disagree with them. 

“One of the big challenges of living in a country that has become dominated by social media is that you never have to talk to someone face to face,” Jortner said. “… In other words, it is difficult to have a civil conversation with someone over a social media platform because you will never see them. … They become defined in our minds by their politics alone, and we are never able to see them as a person who exists outside of that.”

Engaging in civil conversation with someone who has different political views builds community, according to Jortner, which in turn helps build public good and serves democracy.

“Having friends and acquaintances with whom we disagree is critical, and it’s in real trouble because we have been allowed … to cut people off because of their political opinions,” Jortner said. “In other words, we say your politics has to pervade everything. I am not saying that we should ignore justice. … I’m not saying we should never get angry, but we can’t just scream into the void. We can’t just condemn and then be done with it.”

Drawing from his personal experience of running for office as a Democrat in the state of Alabama, Jortner said many people were able to hold a conversation with him, despite what their political beliefs were. 

“I ran as a Democrat in a very conservative area of east Alabama. How many people said to me, ‘I won’t shake your hand’ of the 2,000 people I met? One,” Jortner said. “They didn’t agree with me. I know a lot of them didn’t vote for me. But they were able to shake my hand, and sometimes, we shared a couple of words. And to me, that was important. … It taught me that in the end, democracy is government by strangers.”

To rebuild a democracy that people trust, Jortner believes people must try to create trust in every aspect of their lives. 

“When you build trust in the community, you knit things back together, and that gives the public good some strength,” Jortner said. “That can’t be done on social media, but it can be done face to face.”

Sherman Clark recognizes, questions capabilities citizens need to save democracy

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In order for answers to reveal themselves, difficult questions must be asked. When discussing complex topics relating to politics, law and democracy, these questions are especially important to bring to the forefront, and they require deep reflection. 

Sherman Clark’s Monday, July 25, lecture in the Hall of Philosophy, titled “What Democracy Demands,” included a multitude of such questions, aiming to get to the root of what can be done to save democracy. Clark opened Week Five’s Interfaith Lecture Series theme “The Ethical Foundations of a Fully Functioning Democracy.“ 

As the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, Clark has experience teaching courses on torts, evidence and legal ethics since 1995. His current research is centered around the connection between politics, law, character and well-being. 

Clark confessed that he did not have great wisdom to share with the audience, but rather questions. He first asked: “How, if at all, can our law and government help us as citizens nurture the capacities that democracy needs our citizens to have?”

Discussing the immediate, short-term threats and the structural, long-term issues American democracy is facing, Clark said he believes democracy is in a dangerous position. 

“It’s evident that our democracy is struggling right now, and there are many components to that,” Clark said. “Every day, we open up a publication or news and somebody says, ‘Democracy is dying … our democracy is in trouble.’ And unfortunately, they’re almost all right.”

But even with these escalating problems, Clark said citizens are responsible for what democracy will become. 

“Ultimately, we’re going to get the democracy that we deserve. We’re going to get the leaders that we vote for, and I think democracy won’t work unless citizens are up to it,” Clark said. “… Until we get better at talking to each other and listening to each other and understanding our system — and frankly, not being so easily bamboozled and frightened by marketers and politicians — democracy won’t work.”

Describing the current nation-wide model of democracy as a “great experiment,” Clark said other smaller forms of democracy have worked in the past. In ancient Greece, small democratic communities were able to come together and vote on decisions. 

“We established … some version of republican democracy (that could) work on a slightly larger scale. … Still though, that was restricted very narrowly, and frankly, it was supported by an enormous, laboring non-voting slave population,” Clark said. “So what we established in the outset is that if you have a large population to do all the work for you, and you restrict the vote to a very few people, it can kind of work.”

But as history shows, this form of republican democracy was unfair and unsustainable. 

This led Clark to ask: “Can democracy actually work in a really huge country, where we actually invest a certain amount of power in ordinary people?”

All fully functioning forms of government require those in power to be educated and hold certain responsibilities. But because a democracy provides citizens with this power, this inherently means that the citizens must possess these capabilities. 

Clark believes that this power requires citizens to listen and learn from each other, as well as defy manipulation tactics implemented through marketers in a capitalist society. Yet these abilities are becoming more difficult to practice with the internet and social media. 

While it can be inferred that these issues could be solved through better education, Clark argued that law and politics play a huge role in influencing how people act. 

“(Law and politics) are, in various ways, inevitably constitutive of our character as citizens,” Clark said. “The way in which we structure our society, the responsibilities that we do or don’t put on each other, the rhetoric that we use when we run for office — those processes have an impact on the kind of people we become.”

Even though the government’s main role is not to nurture its citizens’ character traits, Clark said its current functions negatively impact people. So, he asked the audience what traits and capacities individuals in a democracy truly need.

While humans have a psychological calling that draws them toward simple stories that reassure their preexisting beliefs, Clark said people must resist this tendency. Often, the complex issues humans face have ambiguous answers. 

Clark pointed to the structure of society to ask how law and politics can help build these necessary traits. Ensuring diverse environments, rather than homogeneous ones, would help people communicate with groups who are not like them. He said placing adequate funding and importance on education would also be beneficial.

When considering what impact political rhetoric has on society, Clark said whatever appeal a politician uses to get into office becomes ingrained in the citizens.

“So if I appeal to the fear and xenophobia of a particular group in order to get their votes, I have indirectly nurtured that in them,” Clark said. “Those are not traits that make for good democratic citizenship.”

Politicians running for office attempt to focus on what they believe the immediate crisis at hand is. But, they should also focus on what long-term effects will arise through their choices, Clark said. 

Returning to two of his core questions, Clark pondered what specific traits need to be instilled in citizens and what can be done to nurture these traits.

Dylan Townsend / staff photographer Clark delivers his lecture, “What Democracy Demands.”

“These inquiries, I think, are vital, and they are easy to ignore because right now we have lots of real crises going on,” Clark said. “… But what’s going to matter down the road is going to be just as much whether we’ve been able to nurture a citizenry that is capable of democracy, that is capable of talking to each other.”

Clark said citizens struggle to find a common ground of which capabilities need to be embraced, and pointed out that, due to manipulation through marketing, it has become more difficult to nurture these traits.

“The thing (marketers try to) sell us might not be good for us, but even the process of selling into us might be debasing us,” Clark said. “… We need to be sturdy enough not to let those processes debase us in the way that they tend to do because of the pressure to sell us whatever we’ll buy.”

The last obstacle Clark touched on was democracy’s cultivation of an anti-elitism attitude. Because the Constitution says, “All men are created equal,” it’s implied that all citizens, despite traits and capabilities, are able to make important decisions through voting.

“(This declaration in the Constitution) tends to make people think that their uninformed opinion is just as good as your thoughtful knowledge,” Clark said. “… Democracy tries to make citizens smarter and more capable, which it can really sound — and maybe to some extent is — elitist.”

Citizens can combat this by challenging the psychological habit of oversimplifying what their responsibilities entail. With this, Clark believes improving democracy by holding citizens accountable can backfire if it is not handled with genuine respect for the people. 

“So a cautionary note would be we’re up against (a precarious democracy) because the forces of capitalism and democracy indirectly cultivate, not the traits that democracy needs, but the traits that they need for consumers and voters,” Clark said. “The project is rendered difficult because the very spirit of democracy rebels against the idea that people need to be made in any way smarter or better or educated.”

While Clark views creating a long-lasting, fully functioning democracy as a long-term process, he said it may not be the correct solution in the face of so many immediate crises. 

“It may well be that my friend and mentor, James Boyd White in Michigan, has it right when he says that the way that we’re going to cultivate … the capacities that democracy needs, is not figuring out theories and writing papers,” Clark said. “It’s going to be in our small interactions with each other. It’s going to be … in the way we treat each other, … (and in how) each of us nurtures the capacity to find and bring … the traits that we need. Maybe that’s the way we’re going to make progress, rather than in some larger way.”

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