Major religious traditions call on their adherents to respond to the causes of suffering, those who suffer, and the prevention of suffering. The ways we respond and serve can take many forms including activism and holding political office. How does spiritual practice support the difficult work of speaking truth to power as well as being in positions of power without losing focus on the relief of suffering? In this book talk and conversation, Lori E. Lightfoot, Esq., 56th Mayor of Chicago, and Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., Th.D., author of Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, reflected on the role of political officeholders and public theologians in the divisive social contexts we live in today.
This event was live-streamed on the HDS Youtube channel, and took place October 24, 2023.
Bios
Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago Law School. She was an Assistant United States Attorney who also served in other governmental positions with the Chicago Police Department and the Office of Emergency Management and later, Lightfoot was a law partner at Mayer Brown. Lightfoot served as the 56th Mayor of Chicago. She was the second woman, first African-American female and first openly gay person to ever serve as Mayor. Her tenure ran from May 2019—May 2023. Mayor Lightfoot is a 2023 Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she is teaching a course on leadership and key discussion-making in public health.
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., Th.D., is a pastoral counselor in private practice, Community Dharma Leader, human rights advocate, and the author of Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinships and Community. Along with HDS's Dr. Cheryl A. Giles, Ayo co-edited Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom. This anthology led to Dr. Charles Stang, director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, hosting a powerful program about being Black and Buddhist. Ayo is also an associate editor with Lion's Roar and Buddhadharma and has hosted many of their podcast interviews. You can visit Ayo's website for more information, including how to purchase the book.
For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/academics/ministry-studies/buddhist-ministry-initiative
Full transcript:
SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: Call, Respond, and Serve: The Role of Spirituality in Public Theology and Politics. October 24, 2023.
CHERYL A. GILES Good evening.
AUDIENCE: Good evening.
CHERYL A. GILES: And welcome to a conversation on service and the role of spirituality in public theology. I'd like to begin by expressing my gratitude to our co-sponsors. This program is sponsored by the Buddhist Ministry Initiative, and the co-sponsors are the Center for the Study of World Religions and the Harvard Divinity School Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
I also want to express my gratitude to our supporting team who made the program possible and may be invisible to you today. So I want to give them a shout out, the audio visual team, the facilities team, the communications team, the Office of Development and External Relations, and finally but not final, Jonathan Makransky, who has done everything to make this thing go. So thank you, Jonathan, and thank you to all our other sponsors.
[APPLAUSE]
Our guests tonight are former Mayor Lori-- former Mayor Lightfoot and Pamela Ayo Yetunde Mayor Lightfoot is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago Law School. She was an Assistant United States Attorney who also served in other governmental positions with the Chicago Police Department and the Office of Emergency Management. And later, Mayor Lightfoot was a law partner at Mayer Brown.
Mayor Lightfoot served as the 56th mayor of Chicago. She was the second woman, first African-American female, and the first openly gay person to ever serve as mayor in Chicago. Her tenure ran from May 2019 to May 2023. Mayor Lightfoot is currently a 2023 senior leadership fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she is a senior fellow teaching a course on leadership and decision making in public health.
Our other guest is Pamela Ayo Yetunde who is a pastoral counselor in private practice, our community Dharma teacher, a human rights advocate, and the author of Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, which is the conversation that we're going to have tonight. Along with that, she has written many books, but the two that I'm going to speak about today, she and I co-edited Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom, and her new book, which is out, which is part of our conversation today, which is Casting Indra's Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community.
In addition to that, Ayo is an associate editor with Lion's Roar Magazine and Buddha Dharma-- if you don't know those two publications, check them out-- and has hosted many podcasts and interviews for those two magazines. If you have any questions about Ayo, please visit her website for more information. And books are outside to be purchased if you're interested. So please join me in welcoming our guests tonight.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: This is Cheryl Giles, in case you didn't know.
CHERYL A. GILES: Sorry about that.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Before we begin, I'd like to ask a favor of us. I know that we have rights, and the expression of our free speech rights have been-- how can I say-- in the news quite a bit lately, especially the expression of thought at Harvard. It's in the news all the time. Actually, I was thinking, you know, that phrase, what goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas. Well, what's being said at Harvard does not stay at Harvard.
CHERYL A. GILES: Right.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yeah. But the favor I'm asking is that we bring to this conversation deep listening skills, deep listening. I'm calling this-- this is an experimental practice called listen up. Listen up as in listen upward. Listen in a way that people can be kind, and also authentic, safe, and seen, witnessed to, and also invited into dialogue. And so this practice is inspired by the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism, and I'll just go through it briefly. Just please consider it as an invitation.
When we listen, we engage in self-forgetting, so this kind of listening is selfless. It's an act of generosity. When we engage in this kind of listening, we do so not to hear what we want to hear. And when we hear what we don't want to hear, we refrain from convincing ourselves that we heard something else. In other words, we try to abide with what is real. By forming the intention to listen this way, we will be perceived, in many cases, as being a listener.
And by being perceived as the listener, the person who is being heard has a better chance of being experienced in their true being, being witnessed to, and having a sense of belonging, which is something a desire that many of us share. Patience is involved in right listening. So as we all know, we can't listen to someone go on and on and on, right? But we can practice patience when we realize that what we want from the communication is not something that we're getting, which will then take us back to the second point because there is likely to be tension in this listening.
There's going to be some tension. How do we resolve that tension? Maybe through the practices of mindfulness and what I would call skillful interruption. Yeah. Right listening involves right speech, which means no unnecessary interruptions and no imposition of our own story to minimize another's communication. Right listening is also paying attention to another's suffering, especially another suffering, whether it's in the story itself, whether it's in the pattern of speech, whether it's in the body, or a combination of all of these factors.
This listening up practice as right listening also means being skillful, to enhance one's ability to listen. And this would include mindfulness and a meditative posture throughout the entire conversation. And then lastly, right listening as a practice, I believe, aids in our individual and collective enlightenment, which then diminishes-- in Buddhism, we call it Mara-- it diminishes the power of deluded thought. So it's an invitation. I hope you will accept it. Thank you.
CHERYL A. GILES: So let's begin with a quote from this book-- sorry-- Indra's Net. It's on page 148, but you don't necessarily need to know that. This is from Ayo. "It is our job, if we are to call ourselves human beings or beings trying to be human in our short time on Earth, to figure out how we are going to be, survive, and support one another to be, survive, and hopefully, thrive. How will we not only reduce the bloody fingers and add to the fragrant flowers on our garlands, but also help others to do the same? It will take help, and it will take some time for us to consider what it means to be part of a community in the cosmology or cosmos of our existence."
So my question, the question that I want to start with is, what does it mean to be part of a community? I think that touches on what you've written and certainly your experience. And also, Mayor Lightfoot, your experience running a huge city, urban city where there are lots of issues that everyone thinks needs to be fixed right away.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: One or two.
CHERYL A. GILES: One or two, right. Yeah. So yeah, let's start there.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Well, I've already spoken, so how about yeah?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Well, first of all, good evening, everyone, and thank you all for being here. What it means to be in community, I think, really depends in part on the circumstances. I wonder if we can lower this microphone a little bit. It's a little loud. Thank you.
That was, I think, a constant quest and struggle during my tenure as mayor because we went through so many really life-upending circumstances, even before the pandemic hit. The winds of change that have been buffeting, I think, our country began blowing long before a certain former president came down the escalator in 2015. And I think where we are in this moment, particularly in light of what's happening every day in Washington, or probably better said, what's not happening every day in Washington is, we have to find our center as a people, as a country, and certainly as a community.
There's so much emphasis placed on what our differences are and exacerbated in every forum, every media mode possible. What I think we've lost track of is what actually brings us together. And as a mayor of a third largest city in the country going through epic upheavals, not only because of the present moment issues, but things that happen in our city from the pandemic, from the peaceful protests turned into violence, to the escalation of violence on and on and on on Earth really, these deep wells of injustice that to me were kind of flashing like neon signs and required us to address them.
We couldn't look away. We couldn't walk away. We needed to address them because that's what the moment, I think, demanded, and that's what our people really needed. So finding that sense of community, that common ground to really come together and solve seemingly big intractable problems was a journey that we were on very early on in my tenure. And really, we continued on that journey, and it had lots of twists and turns, which I'm happy to talk about in detail.
Everything that happened forced us to constantly reckon with the question of, who is our community? How do we find that common ground? How do we bring people together despite the seeming differences, and frankly, the continuing toxicity of public debate? That was a huge challenge, but I think in some ways we were successful. But there's a lot more work clearly that needs to be done. You don't undo what has been building for years, even in four years.
And certainly, we didn't have an even playing that we were traveling on. There was a lot of upheaval, as you all know, and particularly not when people's sense of certainty about life themselves was really ripped out from under them. I never realized how much I depended upon the predictability of today and tomorrow and the next day until that predictability was taken away. And I think we're still trying to figure that out. We haven't arrived at where our level is going to be. So this question of community, to me, couldn't be more timely than what it is right now.
CHERYL A. GILES: Thank you. Ayo, you want to from your perspective?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking about the fact that I moved to Chicago just 3 and 1/2 years ago when you were mayor and how difficult it was, how it was to drive into the City of Chicago that I thought I knew and be excited by how dynamic it is. And the streets were empty. I mean this is-- do you all remember?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Oh, yeah.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: It was such a-- almost like a science fiction existence that we've come out of. I can't even imagine trying to run things in a normal way with the abnormalities that we were facing. And I think we all know, at least scientists know, that we suffer when we don't have community. We have truly suffered.
One of the reasons why I wanted to advocate for being intentional about community making is because we can't escape each other. I mean, that's the fact. We're doing everything-- some of us are doing everything possible to delude our minds into believing that we don't belong to each other. And since there is that, we need to make an effort to remind people we actually are together. There's nowhere you can go where you won't be with others, so don't waste your time and money trying to escape. Let's use that energy to figure out how we can be with one another and enjoy one another, support one another.
And then to the question that you posed, Cheryl, I think the recognition that we do belong regardless of when we feel like we don't, regardless of when people say that we don't, that the fact is that we do. And that recognition, then, can inform what we do next. Now that I am 100% sure that I belong, I would like to take the next step and maybe go to my neighbor's house, or I would like to join a volunteer group, or I would like to vote because my voice matters, or I'd like to show up for something.
So we need to actually get out of, let's say, the mode of having adjusted to our isolation because we have adjusted, because our mind-- this is what I've learned over these years. Our minds adjust to so many things. Now that we have adjusted to isolation and alienation, we need to make an effort for our wellbeing to adjust to being in community once again.
CHERYL A. GILES: So Mayor Lightfoot, would you like to talk a little bit more about Chicago? What did Chicago look like in the pandemic when you took leadership of the city?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Well, I started in May of '19, so it was months before anyone knew anything about a pandemic. But we faced big challenges, as frankly, most big cities do. One of the things I was very focused on and motivated me to run was really starting a process systematically of dismantling inequity that had existed for far too long in our city.
Many of you who know Chicago know that we unfortunately are one of the most segregated cities in the country, and that's been a fact for decades. So acknowledging that, acknowledging the role that inequity plays, acknowledging the role that systemic racism plays in those inequities that build upon themselves was a big part of what we were doing, freeing people to really live their authentic life, but importantly, making sure that the work of my government, my administration, really reflected the lived experience of all Chicagoans.
You know, Chicago has a history of machine politics. And the machine that existed under Richard J. Daley, who was mayor for 5,000 years back in the day, that machine doesn't exist anymore. But the muscle memory that was created, and reflexively people do certain things, act in certain ways, have certain fears and paranoias, that is still very much unfortunately baked into the DNA not only of city workers, but people who interact with city government on a regular basis.
If you indulge me, I'll give you an interesting, I think, example. So there is a now former alderman in Chicago. An alderman, for those of you who don't know Chicago, are the city council members. And we have the great fortune in Chicago of having 50 of them. Topic for another day.
[LAUGHTER]
But there are some who over time stood out in good ways, but unfortunately, given Chicago's history, in notorious ways. And probably one of the most notorious is an former alderman now known as Ed Burke. Edward Burke had been an alderman for 40 plus years. He was chairman of the Finance Committee. He wielded power like a cudgel, and people bent to his will.
While I was running for mayor, the first election, the FBI raided his city hall office and his ward office. And as later was portrayed in the indictment that my former colleagues at the US Attorney's Office brought, he was trying to shake down a Burger King franchisor. Now, this guy was probably the largest franchisor in the country, so he made lots of money from selling stuff from Burger King. But Ed Burke was trying to shake him down to get his property tax appeal work.
He tried this nice way of taking him out for lunch at the country club, you know, plying him with niceties and things that you do when you're trying to woo and recruit a client. That didn't work, so he quickly converted to the hard way. And this particular Burger King operator was doing some work on a drive-through to improve the quality of service for people who were driving their cars through the Burger King to get their Whopper or Whopper Junior or what have you.
And Ed Burke's office whistled a building inspector to their office. We know from the indictment that this worker spent about five minutes in the office, and then he went over to the site of the Burger King where the construction work was going on, and he issued a series of bogus citations to shut down the work. And by the way, Ed Burke is going on trial on November 6, so if you're curious, stay tuned.
Most people looking at this voluminous indictment focused on the tape-recorded conversations that the government had of Burke doing one alleged crime versus another. I focused on that piece with the building inspector, and the reason why is-- and this goes back to my point about the muscle memory of the machine-- this building inspector dutifully went to the office, the ward office of this powerful alderman. And then, presumably, got some instructions to take action against this recalcitrant person who wouldn't yield to the will of Ed Burke, made up a series of bogus tickets to shut down this operation, and didn't think anything more about it.
So the lesson I take from that is, in order to reform a government to bend to the will of the people, not the other way around, you have to make sure that not only you set the vision at the top, you need to make sure that vision is alive and well at all levels of government, particularly those who are front serving, facing, those who have the power to interface with the public, and those who have power like this building inspector.
Because until you change the hearts and minds of people at that level, it's very difficult to get anything done because many of them will think, well, we'll just wait the mayor out. She'll be gone in time. Her people will be gone, but we will be here. Now I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't believe in the deep state and all of that nonsense. But I do believe that governmental institutions and other institutions have been conditioned to turn their back on the human condition for far too long.
And if we're really going to think about this sense of community, that we belong to each other, that we truly are part of Indra's net, as I think Ayo really spells out so eloquently in her book, then we have to break through these silos that are set up to separate us from each other. And there's no more fundamental obligation, I think, of government than for people to deliver services to their fellow residents, to see each other in their work.
So our mantra was equity and inclusion. Every city department was embedded with equity officers. Every commissioner on down understood that they had to view their work through the lens of equity, that we couldn't deprive certain neighborhoods of services, even if that's the way it had been done for forever. We had to append that thinking. Now, I'm not going to say that we changed the world around in four years' time, but I think we made some great strides forward. And it served us well, then, when we went into the equity. I'll stop there because I've been talking for far too long, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done to heal what is broken at every level in our society.
CHERYL A. GILES: I was going to say that-- I hear you. But can you have-- can you create equity-- and this is the topic that we talk about here and we're working on here-- without community and trust or trust and community?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: No, you can't, but you have to do each thing at the same time. You have to demand and talk about as a mantra this notion of equity. You've got to demonstrate in concrete terms what that means, and then lead by example, and uplift those examples. You have to celebrate the people who are the champions for equity within an organization.
So that's the way you start to bake in a different kind of ethos, is really to talk about it, educate about it, and then demonstrate in concrete terms what that means and how to manifest itself. Because otherwise, people who are used to just doing things the old way, when you talk about equity-- and I remember when I first came into office and I'd go into certain rooms, and I'd talk about why we needed to do better for people in our city, not just the downtown area, but our neighborhoods, which were starved of resources, I'd make the moral case for it. I'd make the financial case for it, the economic case.
And people just would-- some would politely smile. Most would just glaze over. But being determined and repetitive in this, and demanding accountability around a certain set of principles, and not letting the criticism really throw you off your mission to change things around, but more importantly, to deliver for people-- and you're going to hear me say this a lot-- in concrete, tangible ways, that's what we really focused on. And then you can start turning around. And my goal was that if people get a sense of and an appetite for what is possible, they will never allow anyone ever again, no mayor, no city council member, to cheat them of their birthright of equity and inclusion.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Well, you said something that-- I'm taking a risk in speaking for all of us in the divinity schools across the world.
[LAUGHTER]
CHERYL A. GILES: Across the world? OK.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yeah, I'm going to do that.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: That's a big, bold statement.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I know, but here it is because you said it: if we are going to change the hearts and minds. That is the contemplation of seminaries and divinity schools and leadership schools that are about transformation. If we are going to change the hearts and minds. And are we going to do the work to change our own hearts and mind? Right? That's our work.
So I just want to throw that out there for whatever purpose that might serve because when we think about whether our service, the call, so to speak-- what am I being called to? What's calling me? What makes me lean forward and sacrifice what I've been doing in order to attend to this?-- has to do with this transformation.
So you talked about-- Mayor Lightfoot, you talked about this change of heart and mind being manifest in everyday government workers, right? And I think largely we don't think about, quote unquote, because we use this word, "bureaucrats," we're not thinking about the transformations that they have gone through or that they might want to go through in order to have equity and inclusion as the end game. And I just wondered if you had an insight on that or thoughts.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: You know, the City of Chicago had 30,000 employees, a large amount, not a small amount. I'm confident I didn't meet but a small percentage of them. But the goal is to set up a structure where this ethos of equity and inclusion touches everyone.
So I hired and empowered the first ever chief equity officer for the city. She built an infrastructure across city government where there were equity officers in each department. They then trained their peers and held-- we held ourselves accountable to a certain set of values manifested in hiring, employment, purchasing, delivery of services, the things that government does on a regular basis, the manifestations of what that means, but doing it in such a way that we were conscious of who we were touching, how we were touching them, and making sure that people felt heard and that their lives were valued in the work that we were doing.
Just going through the motions was not good enough for me. When I have people, as I did, tell me, I've never seen a mayor in my neighborhood before, you're the first mayor that's ever come here, you're the first mayor that I've ever met, I didn't think it was even possible. I didn't even know city hall saw us. This is the first time that we've gotten our roads paved, our streets shoveled. And this is not that long ago, right? Months ago. Every month of every year that I was in office, some person said something like that to me.
And on the one hand, I was heartened by it because it meant to me that I was doing the right things and being in the right places, but it also felt devastating to hear that, that after so long. And people were very proud of being Chicagoans and suspicious of those of us who are not native-born Chicagoans. But to hear people say, I never thought that anybody in government cared about me and my family and my neighborhood, because that's really what they were saying, whether explicitly or not, that meant that we had to do better, that we were on the right path, but that we had to keep going.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: So neglect was a motivator.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: It certainly was a-- the decades of neglect, I think, certainly motivated me and my team. But more, it was getting back to first principles about what is public service. It is serving the public first and foremost. And look, doing the people's work is not easy, as a friend of mine told me when I took on one or more seemingly thankless task. But there's nothing more satisfying when you get it right, and you have that sense of appreciation that people feel when, despite their skepticism, despite feeling like they've been lied to, that there's somebody there who sees them and is doing what is necessary to make their lives better and more vibrant. And to me, I will carry that with me for the rest of my life.
CHERYL A. GILES: So how does this map onto Indra's Net? You write about violence and polarization. And we're just talking about locally here, not globally.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I just think that we have choices. We have choices about how we're going to be with one another. And some of the choices that I see being played out now are in very dramatic ways. I mean, it's been the case for probably as long as this country has been around, but in very dramatic ways now.
I pay taxes, and therefore I should have a say in what you receive from government. And I'm willing to berate you publicly. I'm willing to dox you. I'm willing to go to city school board meetings and attack teachers and school board members. I'm willing to threaten librarians. For me, this is a very heightened level of the lack of civility, as if we don't share space, that we don't share resources, that we don't share common aim.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: You coined a word in the book.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Mobbery?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Yes.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: It's mobbery. Mobbery, like robbery, only--
CHERYL A. GILES: Mobbery.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Mobbery. Actually, I saw that in-- something similar to that in an article recently about discourse, that even our discourse is like mobbery, gathering together in groups of people and yelling other people down until they submit to what appears to be our opinion.
So it is a distortion of how we can be in the web. We are making decisions, this inescapable network of mutuality, what Dr. Martin Luther King called it. It's a distortion of our light, our ability to shine and reflect each other's goodness, that we shut down, that we get wrapped around greed and righteousness and fear, and deprive people of resources. It's the kind of anti-communitas-- I'm going to use that word-- anti-communitas that says that the public schools, the high schools in Houston, that they will close down the libraries in the high schools in Houston, close down the libraries and make those spaces detention centers for troubled kids, which you know just shortens the pipeline to prison, right?
This is the situation we're in. And how are we going to-- we must work through it. And government is going to be part of it, and it is part of the problem. And government is us, right? So changing hearts and minds, as we are inseparable from government, means that we need to find solutions. We need to have elected-- we need to be electing officials who are willing to tell the truth about the situations we find ourselves in and be solution-oriented, I think, rather than retaliation-oriented. When someone has an agenda of retaliation, that's the agenda, they shouldn't be in government in my view.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Well, let me also jump in here and say, yes, of course, the government has a, I think, important role to play. But we only exist in government to serve you, and if people of goodwill stand on the sidelines and watch the destruction and the tearing down, and don't stand up for what's right and values, and treat the vitriol like a sporting event on TV, then we will lose. And there's no path to come back together.
I'm not naive in the slightest, and I think most people who know me well would say I'm pretty much a cynic about lots of things. But I do believe that the vast majority of Americans care about each other, care about our values, care about their neighbors. But we have to show that care and concern in small ways and big ways. And for me, as somebody who watches the government and small D democracy devolve, I think it's really a tragedy if we don't stand up and save who we are, our identity, ourselves.
And not let the people with the largest megaphone, the largest, loudest voices dominate the discussion. They do not represent the majority. And when I say "they," I mean people left, right, and center who are screaming. They don't represent the vast majority of us. And yet, we allow them. We allow them through our passivity, our silence, our standing on the sidelines. We allow them to speak for us. And I think that's something that we've got to right that ship as quickly as possible.
CHERYL A. GILES: So this is my question to both of you. How are we going to shift that? I'm listening to this. I understand Indra's Net. I understand this concept of interdependence, interconnection. And what I see in terms of both community and our government, the kind of behavior that people exhibit is far from that. So how are we-- we're a long way from home. How are we going to get there?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yeah, we're a long way from home. You talked about finding our center. We need to find it. Here's an idea I'd like to share with you. Now, I already shared one very brilliant idea with Mayor Lightfoot some time ago. Did you act on it? OK.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, so here's another one. I think it's a good idea.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: All right.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I really do.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Now, she's calling me out in public.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: No, no, no, no. I know it's being worked on. So I was pondering and pondering. I bet many of you have been pondering, too. I mean, the situation requires pondering, calls for pondering. I thought, what would it be like-- this has a little bit to do with my own service history. I thought, what would it be like if President Biden were to sign an executive order creating a domestic Peace Corps, where volunteers would sign up to work for someone in the party that's not their own?
CHERYL A. GILES: Oh, wow.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: As a way--
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Fooled you with the Peace Corps name, right?
[LAUGHTER]
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I didn't say it would be easy. But what would that be like to encourage people to support people and truly working across the aisle, so to speak, when they are young? And then coming together for meetings to talk about their experiences, sharing, and so on because they will be our future leaders. That's just one idea, so I decided I'd write our senators. I like living in Illinois because then I can write senators who I think would resonate with my ideas.
But I've written Adam Kinzinger. I wrote about that in Casting Indra's Net when he represented-- former representative, Republican, who received death threats because he was not going to be down with lying and so on. And I thought-- and his family abandoning him. And I just felt that. I was like, I know what that's like to have family abandon you, so I called him to offer some pastoral support. This is what we need to do, I think, one of the ways to find our center.
From a Buddhist perspective, one of the things that we focus on is the, you say, the emptiness of phenomena, meaning we put a lot of weight into the belief or the delusion that identities are concrete. They're real. They're permanent. They're unchangeable, right? But from a Buddhist perspective, the phenomenon really is emptiness. It's pliable. It's impermanent. It's changeable. And the reality is far beyond and deeper and wider than the identity, the labels that we use. So to dwell into that phenomenological state of being is one way that we can begin to see each other as, in my view, the relatives that we are for one another.
CHERYL A. GILES: Great.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I bet the cynics don't like that topic.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Well, I was thinking as you were talking about your idea of the domestic Peace Corps, I saw, I think it was on CBS Sunday Morning, which I'm a huge fan of and addicted to, a young man. He has some famous heritage, which I've now forgotten, but the concept is this: high school seniors are graduating, and that summer before they go off to do whatever it is they're going to do, urban high schoolers go into rural areas for a week or two, live with families in those areas. and? Then the kids from the rural areas go to live in urban areas for the same period of time to just get a sense of what the rest of life was.
And this particular episode focused on these kids from the Bay Area who went, I think, to Oklahoma, to a rural farming community where there were actual cows and horses, and people were cowboys. And they got to live with these families and meet their peers who had a very different sense of life than they did. And they came and they had the dyed hair and the piercings and a whole bit but really got to know these kids on a very basic level. And then the same thing, those kids from the rural community went to stay in Oakland and San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area.
And I thought, what a wonderful thing that we are-- they are spending time to get to know each other and having these impressions and experiences at a time, I hope, that their minds are still open and not closed and hardened by life's journey. More of that is what we need.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yeah.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: I don't know what the answer. Is for people of our age, maybe discussions like this. But I'd like to think that the door doesn't close at any age, that we still have the ability to learn and love and open our hearts and be vulnerable. Because I think we are at a precipice, and something needs to happen and happen soon for us to come back from the potential of destruction.
CHERYL A. GILES: As someone that's been teaching here for a number of years, I'm really excited about Generation Z, particularly with their focus on innovation and those kinds of things as an opportunity. And if you pair that with a spirituality or spiritual practice or religious tradition, that gives me a sense of hope. Because I think with that, the sort of religious or spiritual practice, at least our students have some understanding of the kind of embedded values and practices and traditions and beliefs that they're bringing to the process.
And I think that this is my question for both of you. So where is mutuality? Where is spirituality, the spiritual practices, the values? How can they help sustain us through navigating through the kind of polarization and violence that we're seeing?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I think that's the only way that we're going to make it through, if we see spirituality and spiritual practice as imbued with ethical concerns, ethical commitments. If not, you can be spiritual and believe that only your people should inhabit the Earth. That's a spiritual or religious position, but how does that manifest in the lives of others?
And I think the major world traditions to some degree are concerned about the other. How do we treat the stranger? How do we express hospitality? How do we speak truth to power? How do we give when it's difficult to give? How do we express devotion to things that are greater than ourselves? How do we celebrate the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon?
I mean, how do we do all these things? We need to be engaged in all of these things. Otherwise, we continue to feed, I think, the anthropocentric view that only our species matters, and we can do whatever we want to all other living beings on this planet and the planet itself.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: There's a passage that you wrote about from your experience that's reflected in the book that really struck me. And it's a story of, I think you were 12, and you were sitting in church.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Oh, yeah.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: And you heard this plaintive scream from outside, and everyone in the congregation just continued on.
CHERYL A. GILES: I remember that.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: I'm sure everybody had to hear it, it sounded like. But you got up to investigate. Everyone else stayed. And then when you came back, what I read into it was that you felt like they were judging you and looking at you like, why did you break from the form, from the pack to go investigate somebody else's suffering?
And what really struck me was kind of the constant and-- I alluded to this before-- the bystander syndrome. It doesn't affect me. Even in a group of folks who profess to be religious and have a sense of faith, they weren't moved enough in their faith to investigate the potential suffering of someone else. That really struck me.
But I think it's apropos of the moment that we are in and what we've been talking about, which is, people have to stand for something. It's not enough to profess your faith, your spirituality. You know, I'm a Christian, and there's a passage from James 2 that says, "Faith without works is dead." And what that means to me is, you've got to manifest what you believe in what you do, and you lead by example.
As a Christian, I believe that Jesus was here in our midst to lead us and show what it meant to be faithful, what it meant to sacrifice, what it meant to care and have concern about others. And in our lives, if we truly have faith-- and I think that's an ethos that runs through all the major religions, minor religions-- but if we're really truly people of faith, we've got to demonstrate that, and particularly when it comes to extending ourselves to help someone else who is vulnerable and in need.
CHERYL A. GILES: OK, so let me just build on that because I'm trying to figure out how we navigate, how we locate ourselves. So we know that over the last five or seven years, there's been, probably even a decade at this point, a huge increase where people have moved away from churches on Sunday and that kind of thing. And so what happens to our spiritual practice? What happens to the traditions, spiritual traditions, religious traditions?
They're being evolved into different kinds of ways of celebrating, but are people really connecting around their values? Are those values, then, a part of their life and their purpose? I'm trying to see how pulling away from the institutional churches that most of us used to attend in some way, this is a huge transition in the US, the Gallup poll and-- so how do we get reminded about our spirituality and our values and that kind of thing? Is it in the family? Is it in our community? Indra's net?
If there's going to be interdependence, right, it seems to me that there has to be some agreed acknowledgment, somebody that we know. I know that I can trust you, that you show-- you're loving, and you're kind. They're not taught in schools, at least not in public schools. I'm still trying to figure out, what's the map look like? How do we get there?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Where is it that we're trying to go?
CHERYL A. GILES: Well, these are a lovely ideas, but I see the institutional church has pulled back, right? The communities are fragmented, so who is guiding us? Who is our mentor? Who is--
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Here's one of the things that I see. One of the things that I see is the secularization of religious practices. And so sometimes people enter into a secularized form, and then they're like, yeah, this is really cool. Where'd this come from? Well, it came from this tradition. Oh, I'd like to know more about that tradition. That doesn't mean that they become a member of a community in that tradition, but sometimes it's the secularization of something that introduces people to the tradition.
But if the tradition and the traditional methods and modes of being don't help people be resilient in the face of these existential challenges, then what is the point? There's really not much of a point to it other than community. And if that institution is not good at building community and providing those kind of communal needs, then what is the point?
And I think that's one of the reasons why we see people leaving. There have also been many leaders who have bought into other-- I can't say-- allegiances that are not nourishing to the soul and to the spirit. And I don't want to get too political, but I think you know what I mean in that. So I don't think that just being a traditionalist is what's being called for.
But, Cheryl, you mentioned Generation Z and that you have hope in Generation Z because they're innovative. I would like to suggest that all generations have value, and we are stronger if we can work intergenerationally. And it pains me when I hear younger people talk about the irrelevance, the obsolescence of older people. It does. It hurts, maybe because I'm older now. Maybe.
But I know this: they wouldn't be where they are but for where their elders have been. And there should be some appreciation for that. Likewise, we get tired when we get old. And so we can't do--
CHERYL A. GILES: Can you talk to my 15-year-old?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yes, I'm happy to. You have a 15-year-old, I have a 27-year-old. We can't do all the things that we used to do, and so we need young people not just to do, but to think and see and inform us. And we need to share wisdom because wisdom doesn't come just from being cool or being innovative. It comes from living a life, having encountered pain and suffering and working through it. So we need each other.
And the institutions, the religious and spiritual institutions don't look like they used to and won't look like they used to. And we have these big empty buildings, and people are doing all they can to keep them up and running. And they're not going to be up and running much longer. The bricks are falling just right there. Yeah, just falling.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: I guess what I would say, and I'll just draw upon my own experience, that I think people will continue just as they're questioning all forms of institutions, no matter what it is. It's not a surprise that people are questioning the institutions of various religions, no matter what it is.
As I mentioned, I grew up in the church. I have parents that were God-fearing, raised in the South. We went to church on Wednesday for Bible study, on Saturday for junior this, junior that, and then all day Sunday. But when I could, I moved as quickly as I could away from the church. Part of it was, I was realizing my sexuality, and there was no space for that in my faith tradition at the time. Part of it was, I was a strong female, and there was zero interest in having female leadership in my faith tradition. So I moved far away from institutional religion for decades.
But I will tell you, nothing like a pandemic to humble you. And so people ask me all the time, how did you get through it? In a lot of different ways. But I definitely rekindled my relationship with my faith, no question about it. I found myself in prayer frequently, seeking guidance, being still enough to try to listen because I believe that not only that God tries to reach us and send messages by humbling us in circumstances, making us stop and listen and be still to receive the message, I also think that our faith is manifest in the lives of other people. Their journeys are something that's important for us to recognize and take notice of.
Again, I have lots of challenges and struggles with organized religion for the reason that I've said. And unfortunately, as we see, it feels like every week one of the major religions in the country has to admit to some scandal or some other issue. But I think the core beliefs, people are hungry for that, and they're searching for it. And it may not be in the four walls of a church or a mosque or synagogue or some other house of worship, but people are hungry for the truth. They're hungry for something that gives them a sense of attachment to this life and meaning when they don't otherwise find it in other means.
So I actually think-- it's my sense that the spiritual connection is actually going up, even while there may not be butts and seats on Sunday or whatever the day of worship may be. I think that sense of longing and that sense of connection is increasing, not decreasing.
CHERYL A. GILES: Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: She's giving us a hi sign, I think.
AUDIENCE: I'm just bringing questions, the online questions.
CHERYL A. GILES: Oh, great. Is it that time?
AUDIENCE: It's up to you.
CHERYL A. GILES: OK. Well, ready?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Yeah.
CHERYL A. GILES: OK, so one question is, when religion is sometimes used in politics to divide, gain power and position, groups against each other, often at the expense of minority groups, how can we speak about spirituality in such a context?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: That's a great question. And I would just do a friendly edit and say, not just sometimes, way too often. It's constantly being hijacked for people's individual and group political agendas. And there, again, I think people of goodwill, people of faith have to push back and not allow that to happen in silence in a vacuum.
It is stunning to me some of the things that we've seen over the last seven plus years and how religion has been weaponized in this country. Now, that's true throughout time. I know enough of my history to know that, but it really seems dramatic in the last five plus years of how that's happened. But also how many churches have been silent, like your example?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yeah. And I will say this about the weaponization. I mean, this is-- it's truly weaponized in this way. So the previous administration, this was not part of the campaign. It was not part of the campaign to openly target LGBTQ people. Remember the signs, LGBTQ people, gay people for this, gay people-- OK.
But shortly after taking office, the Department of Health and Human Services was basically reconstructed to create systems of oppression against LGBTQ people, primarily transgender people. So there was an Office of Civil Rights where they created a brand new division that would systematically eliminate all the gains made by transgender people under the Constitution. And what I think is the most dangerous part of those policies that went-- I don't think it was ever reported, and it popped up again around abortion issues, especially in Texas-- would be the awarding, if you will, of citizens turning in other citizens.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Yeah.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yeah, right?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: The bounty.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Yes,
CHERYL A. GILES: Bounty, yeah.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Right. Citizens turning in other citizens is one of the most dangerous things that a government can do to-- how can I say-- solidify authoritarianism in a country. And so I would say here, leaders, future leaders, people who are concerned about other people, if you know a person is not hurting another person, please do not try to police other people because we just don't know the consequences of doing that. Do you want that on your head that you helped send someone to jail, to prison, lost their job? I don't think that's the kind of country that we want to be in.
When I think about speaking about spirituality, when they say, the kind of spirituality that they're embracing is the kind that separates us one from the other, one is that that's not really possible. It's not really possible to separate us one from the other. But it's not the kind of spirituality that many of us talk about when we talk about mysticism. And when we talk about mysticism, what we're talking about is transcending these so-called differences that we have with each other and dwelling in that realm of spirit, mystery, love where we don't get caught up in the semblance of difference.
CHERYL A. GILES: So I have lots of questions for you. One question is, what is it about your religious tradition or spirituality to care about those people who had been neglected so long, to care about equity and inclusion? So what from your religious tradition helps you, encourages you to care about people who have been neglected so long?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: For me or for here?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: That's for you.
CHERYL A. GILES: Either one of you.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: I do think there's something innate in us that gives us a sense of empathy and compassion. And for me, it's not just my religious and faith tradition, but it's also just being a human being living through life. I grew up in the '60s and '70s and at a time when discrimination against Black people in this country was still very much the rule of the day. I knew there were certain things I couldn't do, certain places I couldn't go simply because I was Black, even in the Ohio town that I grew up in.
And watching how that discrimination manifests itself, and in listening to my parents who grew up and were born in the 1920s and grew up in the segregated South, and in particular, my father's stories about how being poor and Black in a rural community in Arkansas was life crushing and the daily fear that he felt, his family felt, that if they did a thing wrong, said the wrong thing, went to the wrong place, that the consequence could manifest itself in intense violence. Understanding that, growing up in a time that I was growing up, seeing how that played itself out on a daily basis in my life and the life of my family members, life of my community, It created a sense of outrage for sure, but also determination in me from a really early age to do something about the wrongs that I was seeing.
It made me want to be an advocate. I never thought then that I would be an elected official for sure, but it certainly probably was the seeds that were planted that led me to be a lawyer and led me to feel like my role in life was to fight for people that didn't have a voice fight for people that were just like me, growing up in circumstances like I grew up, and to be that voice. So it was part my faith tradition, but really the way in which the world taught me on my journey and my earliest years is what led me to have that fire of advocacy.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: And I'll just say briefly that as a chaplain and pastoral counselor, one of the things that, especially in a public setting, one of the things that I took a vow in essence to do is to find out what it is about a person's belief system that is most nourishing to them, that helps them survive in this world. And so in listening to many stories, engaging in many traditions, engaging with leaders from various traditions, I think that there are so many things that these world traditions share in terms of compassion, love, service, mercy, understanding others, generosity, and so on that even if the institutions don't survive, the lessons are there.
The lessons are there, and we don't have to recreate the wheel. For example-- no, let me not go there. OK, I have to go there now because I said it in public. When we employ wisdom, we can avoid certain tragedies, right? So in this country, oftentimes we think we're exceptional. This is the United States, the beacon on the hill. The things that happen in other countries would never happen here. And it's happening.
Are we going to let it get to the point of genocide before we say, I wish that had never happened? I saw it happening. I wish I had said something. Or my worst fear, which I talk about in the book a little bit, is, I never killed anybody until I killed my neighbor. I never turned someone in because they belong to a certain belief group until I was forced to because my government asked me to do that. Good Patriots are like that. I never did anything to anybody until it was between me and them, and I chose myself. We don't have to get to that point, but that's the road we're on. Let's be clear about that.
CHERYL A. GILES: So this question is sort of in line with what you just were speaking about. So changing hearts and minds requires not only a skillful teacher and friend, but also a willing listener and audience. Recognizing that the most unwilling audiences are sometimes the ones most in need of guidance and change, what are some ways in which we should approach this dialogue? And when is it wise to leave?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: When should we approach the dialogue, and when is it wise to leave?
CHERYL A. GILES: Yes.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Well, I said the phrase earlier that doing the people's work is not easy, and that's precisely what I was talking about. In my experience, when you go into communities, settings where people have been deprived for so long, when they have been lied to, feel like they have heard it all before, and I engage you with a huge amount of skepticism-- I make the joke often that so many times, I've reached my hand out in friendship and drawn back the hand with some digits missing.
But I think, in all seriousness, you have to be humble enough to listen. You have to have an open heart. You have to recognize people's struggle and what their journey has been, and you have to be committed. And there are going to be times when it is very rough going. I've certainly been in many, many circumstances like that in my 30 plus years of public service. But if you know there's something of value, if you come with a pure heart and the right intentions, and you are willing to listen and allow people to emote their frustration their anger, you will get to a better place.
I know that that's absolutely been my experience. But you've got to be willing to hang in there, and you've got to be willing to take the slings and arrows and have the strength of your convictions to keep coming back, to keep coming back, and be present. I'm looking at two people who work for me back in the day who are now Harvard students, and I think they probably can think about lots of stories through the work that we did in communities that were historically starved for resources disinvested. Man, oh, man.
Just because you come in and you say, I'm here, I'm bringing resources, I want to engage, doesn't mean you're going to be welcome. In many instances, you're going to be regarded with deep skepticism. But we were able to break through over and over again because we were willing to take our lumps, because we knew that we were trying to do something that had a higher purpose. It wasn't about our own individual egos and the wounds that we might suffer. We had to push through. We knew it was important. And when that breakthrough-- those breakthrough moments came, it was no better experience.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I'm looking in the room, and I think there are some spiritual leaders in this room. Yes? Oh, now they're shy. Now they're getting shy.
CHERYL A. GILES: They're out there.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: All dressed up in their religious leader garb, but no one's admitting to the fact that they're a religious leader. I mention that to say that people will be looking to us for answers, a response. And when you engage in being cultivated as a religious leader, I think it's reasonable to think that you're taking on the responsibility of having an answer, of having a response, of getting to the people who are part of your community and saying, you know, what I see in you, I see that you have the ability to fill in the blank, to serve the community in this way or that way. Sorry.
In this cultivation of religious leadership, don't we have to trust ourselves? We have to trust ourselves. And even if we're not as religious leaders, you know when you have that feeling that what I just heard and what I saw made me feel uncomfortable. Oh, God. Hmm. I think I can say, I felt uncomfortable when you fill in the blank. That's an I statement, so you're not blaming anybody for what they said or felt, didn't say, but you're claiming your lack of comfort with it.
Hopefully, they'll be curious about that. Oh, can you tell me more about that? And even if they're not, it's like, well, I know you didn't ask me to tell you more about it, but let me tell you why I feel uncomfortable about that. Because if we're not doing that, if we're not standing up for truth, justice, equity, inclusion, compassion, love, care, and so on, why are we wearing what we're wearing? Why are we showing up for what we're showing up for? Why have we invested in this education? Maybe we just need more work.
When to get out? When it's not safe to be in. Now, I'm not saying when your ego doesn't feel safe because a lot of people say, it's not safe in here because people don't agree with me. No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is, you're about to be attacked harshly, might be time to step back.
CHERYL A. GILES: A few more questions. You mentioned intergenerational communication and cooperation. How do you envision that happening in community, intergenerational communication and cooperation?
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Seems like it would be natural. First of all, if you're in a community and there's only people in your age group, you want to ask, why is it that there's no one else outside of our age group in this group? What are we missing as the result of not having people born in the '60s, '70s, '80s, whatever? What might we be missing?
And if people say, I don't know, yeah, you know because your mother, your father, what have you, your aunties were born before you were born. You can ask them. You know what you learned from them. That's what's missing, right? Or pick up a short book on history. We are where we are today because of many, many battles, many battles, wars and battles that have led us to where we are today. So what have they learned, and why are we not learning from them? All right? Please, take this and now innovate and apply. And make sure the people who are younger than you are are the beneficiaries of this work.
CHERYL A. GILES: Yeah.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Well, I think about that question in a slightly different way, which is, I think we have to be intentional about creating spaces for those points of connection to happen. As we've been talking about really from the very beginning, there are so many forces that pull us apart, that tell us that we don't see that commonality. And I think that definitely happens between the different generations. So building those safe spaces for interaction and, frankly, programming those spaces for opportunities for intergenerational conversations and interactions is very, very important.
And Ayo, I think, is alluding to the fact that sometimes young people don't see the value in people that have grayer or less hair than they do. I think it's really important that it is not presumed that there will be respect for elders. That's not the world we live in these days unfortunately. I think we have to be intentional about showing the wisdom and demonstrating why. The "why" question, I think, is important, not just that it should happen, but why it should happen, the gratitude for people who have come before, who blazed that trail, who made the sacrifices and created the opportunities that now a current generation takes for granted as their birthright when it wasn't. So knowing that history, telling that history, and being intentional about creating those spaces, I think, is very important.
CHERYL A. GILES: Well, this may be a good way to wrap us up. If our goal is to change hearts and minds, what gives you hope that it's possible, that change is possible? What gives you hope that this kind of change is possible?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Look at you all here tonight, on a Tuesday night.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: I was thinking the same thing.
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: There's lots of things that you could be doing with your time tonight. I think that-- I know it's possible because I've seen it manifest over and over and over and over again. Now, it may be in small ways, but I'll take that. That's a building block. And then we try to figure out how we duplicate it and replicate it and scale it.
As I said earlier, I just truly believe that the people of goodwill far outnumber the people who want to tear us apart and the vitriol that we see on both sides of the divide. But we have to be intentional and not be bystanders, not be silent. We can set the cultural tone. We can set the narrative for what should be important in our lives. But we have to care more about that and each other than watching the train wreck happen and being silent and viewing it as entertainment or worse.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: And I'll just say, the belief that things appear solid but are not, that we are constantly in process and can change on a dime conditions and causes being right. So what do we want to do to make that shift, that energetic shift that can be like the butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world but felt in another part?
CHERYL A. GILES: So I'll just add this, which is from my own experience, strengthening connections, staying connected. And the other thing that really has been powerful for me is receiving mentorship, a lot of people mentoring throughout the year, throughout my years, and being someone who also enjoys mentoring. So you got to reach out and ask for help. Our students know that. Hopefully, they know that, that you mentioned somebody else, somebody else. I mean, we pass this along. For me, that's really a kind of a powerful thing. Yeah.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Cheryl was my mentor.
CHERYL A. GILES: I was just going to say that about you.
[LAUGHTER]
This is one of my spiritual teachers, and she's younger than me. So check that out. It's not about age. It's about wisdom, right? OK. All right.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Can we express gratitude?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Pardon me.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Do we have minute to express gratitude?
LORI E. LIGHTFOOT: Yes.
CHERYL A. GILES: Yes.
PAMELA AYO YETUNDE: Thank you.
CHERYL A. GILES: Thank you. Thank you all for coming.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Sponsors, Buddhist Ministry Initiative at HDS; the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging; and the Center for the Study of World Religions.
SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2023, the President and Fellows of Harvard College.