EP 107: The Inner Work of Racial Justice | Rhonda Magee JD

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and.

Shame, where we explore the issues you.

Care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi, Fleet Maul here for the Radical Responsibility podcast. In today's episode, I'm happy to share with you a conversation that I had with Rhonda McGee, a renowned law professor from the University of San Francisco, very prominent mindfulness teacher in really worldwide, well known, speaks at conferences worldwide, and a.

Well known advocate as well for diversity, racial justice, diversity, equity and inclusion. So in this conversation we talk about the importance of bringing. We really talked about our political social landscape and how divisive it's become and how unhelpful some of the rhetoric can be from both sides of the political spectrum. And the importance of bringing more rigor and objectivity and evidence to these conversations to really ground them more in, in what we really know through an objective look at the data of our society and our social relations and so forth, what's actually going on, which isn't in any way to hide from the realities, but to get out of all the rhetoric and the blame and shame and approach this in a way that can actually create positive transformation. We talked about the importance of having a very strong ethical culture to run beneath our economic and political structures and the role mindfulness plays in helping us attend to the suffering, really our own suffering, others suffering, and the societal suffering that often arises around the fault lines of injustices of various kinds. So we had a great conversation about all this. And for me, Dr. Rhonda McGee, in line with the Radical Responsibility podcast, For me, Rhonda McGee is one of the advocates for racial justice that approaches it in the most radically responsible and genuinely relational and contemplative approach that I know. So please enjoy this conversation.

So again, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. It's good to be with you.

So I've heard you speak quite a number of times, I'm very happy to say, and a number of times I've heard you kind of begin with your background in North Carolina. And since we're talking about resilience and we're talking about it in the context of this incredible pandemic that we're all going through all over the world, which is hard to even talk about in ways that do it justice, and then looming behind that is.

Either the looming climate emergency or the one we're already in, and all the incredible disruptions that can arise from that, environmentally, economically, socially, politically, the still in process landscape, at least in our country, around social justice and racial justice. And so there's a lot going on. And in order to have any chance of meeting this in a responsive, relational way instead of a fear and survival based way, it seems like resilience is key. And I think we sometimes forget that our resilience, besides all the ways in which we build resilience in our body, our resilience also is rooted in our sense of who we are and where we come from and our place on this earth. Anyway, I wonder if you could just start there.

Yeah, well, thank you so much for inviting me into this conversation about resilience and inviting me to kind of enter into it through that door of looking at and examining how.

How resilience is not just a personal experience or capacity, it's really kind of interpersonal. It's an aspect of our experience as part of community and coming from communities. So, yeah, I know I often like to start out by sharing how I.

Am from North Carolina. You know, I was born in North Carolina, and I often go right to what year. So I think it's important to name the year of our birth because that says a lot about the social, cultural context within which we've, you know, traveled our journeys. So for me, I was born in 1967, and you know, that among many other things, was an important point in the American cultural context in what we call the civil rights movement. And we certainly had, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. Was still with us and a leading light in that. But it was the last year of his life on the planet. And so that was a period of a lot of change then, actually.

And part of what was changing was the sense of what could be possible for a person like me. You know, born in an African American family and in a particular African American family whose roots had always been among the working class.

My ancestors were among those who had been enslaved.

And so, you know, I grew up in a. In a community where frankly.

Making do without a lot of additional resources and developing a kind of resilience was just sort of essential to living. And, you know, I remember my grandmother, for example, being a person who, you know, herself born in 1906, right. Born in that period in American history in the south, where segregation was really being.

Re. Entrenched or extended and deepened and women of color, women, African American women, were given very, very little opportunities to even get an education in. My grandmother's life bore that out. So she had become a, you know, she did the work that she could do. She picked Tobacco in the tobacco fields of North Carolina. She ended up cleaning houses. And so when I was a young girl, she was, you know, doing that for a living. But she had also been called to a kind of spiritual journey. And so one of the things I really remember seeing her do every day was get up before dawn, actually, before she got the children and others in the house up and out and fed us and got us off to our days. She started her day with a discipline of centering practice. Now, for her, it was prayer based, Christian based. She wouldn't have used the word meditation, but it clearly had something in common with the kinds of commitments that I later came to make around, sort of featuring a commitment to daily centering practice as a support for enabling me to kind of recharge, reconnect with a sense of my own value and worth, first and foremost, I think. But really also a sense of how to make the most of whatever opportunities might come my way on that day, and how to do that in a way that.

Enabled me to sort of continue to feel the love in my heart and feel the ways in which I, no matter what my circumstances, have things to offer to others. And so, yeah, I really credit that upbringing at that time for all this sort of relative deprivations in a certain kind of sense. There were definite gifts of that experience that I still lean into when it comes to knowing something about resilience.

So, yeah, that's amazing. And it's really good to place that in time. I mean, I was just feeling into the time you were talking about. You know, I was coming in age at that time. And I graduated from high school in 1968, one of the most tumultuous years in American history. The year that Martin Luther King was assassinated and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and the Kent State killings and all the rest of it. And that had been after years. I grew up in St. Louis, and we had tremendous unracial arrest almost every summer. There were. There were riots and unracial unrest and protests from really, 65, 66, 67. I was actually on vacation with my family and staying at a little motel in Santa Monica, California, and going back and forth on our old station wagon between there and Disneyland while the Watts riots erupted. And remember seeing that from the highway and then being back in the little motel and Washington TV and all these people being completely crazy with the commentators and just being deeply impacted by that. And that whole period really destabilized my life in a big way. I just lost faith in everything and just went headlong into the kind of craziness, of the counterculture of that area and anti war politics and all of it. So those were tumultuous times that I came of age. You were born into that same time, which I'm sure leaves a big impact.

Right.

And I think it's important to think about the journeys in these ways that we've each kind of differently traveled and yet we can see the ways they kind of form part of a mosaic. Right. We are, you know, sort of traveling at different, you know, places in this, in this time period. You as a kind of a young, you know, young man coming of age and me just being born. But we certainly haven't come and having, you know, lived through a certain really tumultuous period in our history. And so we know something about what, you know, what, what can happen to us as we are buffeted about by.

Much broader than our own particular situation. Circumstances that are much broader than what's happening right around us in our family of origin are impacting us all the time. And so we're in another moment like that.

Absolutely. And of course, my circumstance, I was growing up, you know, middle class, suburban St. Louis, going through that period. You were born in North Carolina in much different circumstances. So the whole gulfs and chasms of privilege and lack of privilege and all the rest of the injustice is there. But still this feels like some touchstone there that I feel a connection with you around.

That's interesting too. Yes. About how it is that, you know, even in circumstances of relative privilege, I think, you know, part of what we want to begin to do is open up our understanding of.

You know, how.

Well, even in those circumstances we may be suffering. Right. So that there's suffering that can attend to all of our lives, regardless of, again, how we might in relative senses be more or less conventionally materially resourced. So I think that's part of, you know, part of what I see as a potential opening and shifting in consciousness. In this moment.

We'Re starting to see the great leveling effect of climate change, the great leveling effect of COVID 19, how we're all, you know, we're not situated at the same place there, there really truly is still vulnerability and privilege. And some of us in some communities are suffering quite a bit more than others. So that's all very, very true. And it is also at the same time revealing the fundamental vulnerability of humankind.

It's important, I think, for us, as we think about the relevance of situatedness, to kind of hold that in conversation with the commonality of Our human.

Vulnerability and opportunities to thrive.

Yeah, I think it's always important to point to both of those. I mean, the unique thing that we're going through right now is that commonality of this were going through all over the world together and. And you know, when was the last time the whole world was really focused on one thing? When World War II to an extent. But even then probably wasn't as universal as this. And you know, apart from that, in the media age now, do you know the biggest times things like that happen is the World cup or the super bowl or something like that, you know, but here though, you know, here the whole world is focused on one thing and there's think tremendous opportunity in that and to experience the commonality of our suffering. I mean, the first noble truth from the Buddhist teachings was the truth of suffering. We all suffer and that that can be a gateway into our shared humanity. And at the same time, we can't allow that to just level things out and forget that many of us are suffering much more greatly and have fewer resources to deal with the suffering because of still the many layers of. Of unearned privilege and the layers of injustice that still exist in our world. So I think it's holding both of those is very important.

That might be a good starting point because I'm wondering. So we are having this shared experience right now where at least we're all kind of related to a common threat which can kind of bring us all together in a sense, across all of our divisiveness. So is there a way we can capitalize on this?

I would hope that, you know, a generation from now, they look back at this event and go, wow, that's when humanity finally woke up and got its act together and started really correcting its relationship with the earth and with our fellow species and with each other and dealing with all the injustices that do we look back, that was the moment when it really shifted. Because change is really hard one normally because things are so intransit and habitual and structured and systemic. So there's a huge opening here. Of course, there's no guarantee which way it'll go. It could get regressive. But there is a huge opportunity. So how do we capitalize on this? And kind of where's the landscape of mindfulness resilience? Not only individual resilience, but our relational collective resilience and the whole issues of social justice and racial justice. I'm just wondering if we could explore what might be some of the things that maybe would get us to a Much more just maybe post racial society on the other, you know, in another generation on the other side of this.

Yeah.

Well, it's a good question.

I should say post racialized is maybe a better term, you know, where race is such a factor in injustice.

Right, yes, I hear you, and I think I understand what you mean here. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's a question that I think a lot of us are asking because we, many of us see that, you know, whatever is happening, it's probably too soon to really be able to get our heads around all the changes that are opening up and the opportunities that are kind of unfolding in our midst right now. But we, even if we don't know how exactly to fully describe them, we know things are, you know, radically changing every day during this period. And we don't know how much of it is going to stay with us in our lives. We have. Humans have a remarkable ability actually to kind of bounce back and try to reinstate, put themselves right back where they were after, even after.

Challenges. And yet there's something about this one that, at least for me, feels inevitably, radically transformative. And as you note, there's no eventual or inevitability to exactly what that transformation will look like at all. And so while I do, I mean, it's so beautiful to see the many different ways that the potential for waking up to our common humanity is right here, and the actual experience in some measures of, you know, these sort of new and beautiful ways that we're relating to each other, even the ways that we're relating to each other differently, using technology, using it much more intentionally as a support for connecting.

In more of a humanizing way, putting the texting aside a little bit more, picking up the phone or actually doing video conferencing when we haven't necessit, you know, in circumstances where we might have chosen some lesser form of contact before, let's say, or less immediately, less embodied in a certain way. So it's a very interesting time. You know, there definitely are signs that this could be the thing that many of us have been hoping for as some sort of sign that humanity was sort of waking up to common humanity and our common predicament here on this, on this beautiful planet. And at the same time, I think we would be remiss if we didn't also see that times like this, times when.

Things are changing and uncertain, when there are threats and heightened levels of vulnerability that we feel as individuals and as members of collectives, differentiated collectives still Nation states, state countries or groups within nation states. So, yeah, I think waking up to the potential for mindfulness and compassion practices to actually assist us in really seeing clearly that the outcomes are not inevitable. The outcomes of just sort of even practicing are not inevitable. I think, for me, it's important to really see that acting with intention is important, that collaborating with others.

In ways that maximize the potential for positive, altruistic humanity, affirming outcomes to flow. I think that's something that we, in this moment, might help sort of amplify as a kind of a potential in practice. In other words, you know, sometimes I think in our mindfulness communities, there's a temptation to feel like simply practicing is enough. And while I think. While I think there's something to be said for that, I also believe that. And again, this will probably be my law and my activist background, but that, you know, there's that saying, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I often feel my read of history shows very clearly that it doesn't just been people act in ways that help bend it. In other words, I wouldn't be in this conversation literally with you today, Fleet, had it not been for people like Martin Luther King Jr. And, you know, just a generation of others who were actively engaged in an effort to kind of shift that moral arc or bend it toward justice. And I actually believe that we, in a certain sense, may be called to act in ways in this moment to help amplify the potential for altruistic, positive outcomes from here.

But I do believe if we do that.

It'S almost beyond our ability to conceive, to see and imagine what good could come out at this moment.

I think you're right on it there, because I feel like, you know, in general, for us to change collectively as humanity, we have to envision that it's possible, and we have to feel good about ourselves. Yes, we have to have some shared sense of our own goodness and value and that we, you know, and I think if we. If we get the. More of us get through this feeling like we really rose to the occasion and did manifest more mindfulness, clarity, thoughtfulness, compassion, kindness, that. That gives a certain momentum. I mean, it's just another side to that. Some people are saying, oh, everybody's realizing now that Bernie was right. You know, people are saying every government in the world is becoming socialist, at least temporarily. Right, Right.

Yeah. I mean, so again.

There'S possibility. There is a possibility this moment where we're recognizing where this crisis is revealing, again, certain things that hadn't been obvious to everybody before.

So from, again, not to speak too much about something, you know, that I'm not an expert in. I, too, have just been beginning to learn more about the disparity, the racial disparity in the severity of the impacts of coronavirus, you know, the disparate incidents and then the disparity in terms of severe consequences and death. African Americans suffering more than others in many, many areas where they're looking at the data.

And, you know, there are, from what I can gather and from what I have looked at, so many indications that this is about, you know, again, what we have known for a very long time about structural inequality and discrimination and the intersection between those. There's lots of data out there that show the ways that discrimination happens within hospitals, for example. So you and I show up at the same hospital. We cannot guarantee, none of us could guarantee that we would get the same exact treatment because these things literally interpersonally impact the kinds of treatments that we are offered that we're given and so on. And on top of that, all of the different structured vulnerabilities, differential access to health care, differential types of jobs, differential wealth. Right. In terms of resources to offset.

The kinds of dislocating impacts of all things that render certain communities and populations more vulnerable when something like this occurs. And yet, you know, it doesn't take much actually to see all of the different ways that we've set up our societies in ways that perpetuate inequality and inequity. So to the question of can we set them up differently and, you know, where Bernie and others come in. Right.

I truly do believe that we have to set our societies up differently and that it's, you know, it's an ongoing challenge for us as humans.

Find a path through and away from the sense of us versus them that can so easily come up when it's time to actually allocate resources and, you know, not to get into the current political kind of landscape too deeply, but I think it's, you know, we have to be.

Much more kind of rigorous, I think, about how it is that we. That we look for evidence, not rhetoric and not, you know, just statements about things, but we actually look at what is happening. You know, how are resources being distributed from this point and how are we rebuilding institutions that can help put us in a better position to manage the next crisis so that those who are currently vulnerable are not, once again, that we're not having this same conversation every several years when the next set of disasters unfold. So I Do think.

We are. I was actually privileged to be a part of another conversation about these issues earlier today in which, as it happens, always at a certain point, I want to feel called to say, we know Jon Kabat Zinn, one of the teachers who says this most frequently to me and to others. He's one of my teachers, that whatever else is going on, if we're breathing as individuals, let's start there. Because I often think that justice begins with personal justice, than interpersonal and systemic. If we're breathing, there's more right with us than wrong with us. We as a society, as a collective, have so many beautiful aspects of what it means to be alive together that we're seeing around us.

And so much in the direction of caring for each other and wanting to be more equitable. And I just, you know, I think what we might. In the work that we're doing, we might support others in really structuring in actual concrete policies and programs that make good on what I think is really arising in our hearts. People are feeling the desire for a way of living that actually enables all of us to thrive. And so how can we take this bubbling up like, you know, the impulse to sort of make things right and actually move from impulse and rhetoric and talking about it to. And here are the concrete ways we are doing things differently? That is going to always be our challenge. And how is it that we've come to this sort of landscape where basic hospital needs are so unevenly distributed? And that's true in the US it's true in Brazil, it's true in France, it's true all over the world. And so many people are waking up to these basic vulnerabilities and really wanting us to think deeply and well about how to meet them. So I have heard people having conversations for the first time about could we have some sort of international or global health care system that was an actual global health care system? I mean, this is beyond our capacity to even imagine, probably from here, because it's so hard to even imagine a national global system that works for all. But I do think that the consciousness raising around global vulnerability is such that there is a moment to kind of think much bigger than we ever have about how to put us in a position to be resilient and as humankind going forward.

Absolutely. And clearly we need a much different and much more robust partnership between the private sector and government and NGOs.

And a partnership, not a conspiracy.

Unfortunately, in our country, the government's been kind of taken over by the private sector in so Many ways, but actually the incentivized aspects of a market economy, there's some really good things in there, drive innovation and drive technological process and so forth, needs to be much more regulated. But it's only the government that can provide the redundancy and even out the landscape. Right. To make sure that schools are equally resourced no matter what neighborhood or state you're in. To make sure that hospitals are equally resourced no matter what neighborhood or state you're in. I mean, that's got to be the role of government because otherwise the purely market approach is just going to exacerbate that disparity all over the place. So this is something we're really missing. And then you extrapolate out to the global level, of course, you know.

Yeah. So I mean, to me, underlying all of these potential outcomes that we, you know, might imagine could flow from, you know, better, more mindful, more compassionate response to what we're seeing today is kind of a call to, I mean, I would use the word, the words ethics or ethical commitment to giving.

Our values and our, you know, I mean, people don't like the word morality and morals. But I think the truth is whether we use that language or not, we're always acting from some innate sense of right and wrong or some, you know, more or less articulated code. And I personally, when I think, for example about capitalism and the fact that as you point out, there are certain things about it that can be quite beautiful and you know, liberty enhancing and economically transformative. But if we don't have a basic commitment to, you know, a certain sort of ethics and values underneath that engine of capitalism, we know where it leads. You know, we know how it can render any. If you can't find a way to marry with marry capitalism and you know, frankly, you know, democratic systems as well, you can't really deeply entrench a kind of a universal human dignity commitment where everybody is really deeply respected as human beings. If you can at the same time now embed a kind of a much more robust, almost like dignity based approach to the earth, to the environment, so that we're not seeing it as, you know, this separate set of resources that we can just use. We've got a lot of work, in other words, I think, to do around creating a narrow, deeper, you know, humans are storytellers and we are again, as I believe that we are in ways that we realize and in ways that we don't. Always feeling as if we're doing some version of the good, we're trying to do some version of what's right. But if we don't embed in our notions of how we want our systems to operate a sense that what's right is to honor, you know, all human communities and to support their thriving and to see the interrelationship between humanity and the climate and the earth, that we don't exist separate from each other and we can't abuse each other. I mean, this has to happen, I think, no matter what you overlay. Whatever you call the system, whether you call it socialist, communist, capitalist, whatever, if you haven't embedded, I think that deep commitment, and this is where I do think mindfulness and compassion practices can help us with.

Really feeling in an embodied sense what these values and ethics are about. We all want to breathe freely and well. We all believe we deserve support for thriving, access to clean water and opportunities to develop to our highest and best.

Mindfully kind of contemplating what can get in the way. If I know this to be true as a human experience, how can it be that we can all participate in this establishment of systems that don't allow all of us equal opportunity to really develop, to have clean water, to have publicly financed.

Water systems that are trustworthy and reliable for everybody. How could we have gotten to this place? There are people like Joanna Macy, these elders and people who've been teaching for decades about all of these things, that we really have sort of failed to hear some deeper call that the earth and the universe and humanity together have been trying to say. And I feel like this moment that we're in is kind of a moment where we're stopping long enough to actually begin to hear that unified call between climate and humanity for a much more reverential. I sometimes use the word sacred embrace of this life, of our lives, of what it means to be alive and to work and to. And to see the kind of sacred call, if you will use another word, if you appreciate it better. But what I'm pointing towards some aspect of like, awe and reverence that I think if we, if we understood that to be more prevalent, not like the sacred is over here, the rest I don't care about. If it's just sacredness or respect at that deep level is running through everything, then we build systems that help enable us to keep, you know, attending to the suffering more effectively, that are inevitably more resilient in that sense.

Absolutely. And, you know, that's been, I think, one of the really downfalls of modernism and the, you know, the technological advancement of human beings. That's that book called Homo Deus, the Idea that we've kind of made ourselves into gods and we, you know, we have all. For our technology, we've lost our awe and reverence for the earth and for the mystery and for, you know, each other, for each other. And if we, if we don't, if we don't restrain, you know, that this capitalistic system, I'm. It's just math. We're going to destroy ourselves and destroy the earth, obviously. It has to be radically retained and changed. And all these things are so interconnected. I have a colleague and a friend who I actually hope is going to join the summit. A wonderful First Nation actress and filmmaker and activist named Michelle Latimer. And she's working on a film right now showing the connection between extractive technologies like mining and oil productions and shale production and violence against young native women. And so all these things are. Are so interconnected and we clearly have to move away from this very extractive, exploitative form of development or we're not going to be around much longer. And we have. We've been ignoring the voice. The. Our indigenous elders have been speaking this to us for decades. Wisdom holders like Joanna Macy have been speaking to us. And now a lot of the futurists and scientists are saying, look, it's just math and it's getting closer and closer.

Yeah, and physics and all of it.

Yeah, math and physics. You know, it's just like. And so, you know, hopefully this is the wake up call. And you know, one frame that sometimes is used in terms of our thought, in terms you brought up morality and ethical principles. One frame that sometimes uses when we're, you know, we're kind of egocentric and we're making our decisions primarily on what, what's good for me, what I need. And then we can, you know, we can bro. Many of us go broader and we start shifting the locus of our decision making around our family. What's good for our family, what's good for maybe our local community. And then there's sometimes what's called ethnocentrism, which is more about my people, my clan, my tribe. But then there's moving out to world centric and you know, there's an opportunity here where maybe everybody's gonna get a little bit of nudge in the world centric. People actually saw what was going on in Italy and I think people really were, I think their hearts were touched, you know, whereas especially with America and especially with our current administration, there's such an isolationalism. Isolation. I'm not pronouncing it right. And tendencies to nationalism that, oh, the Italians, you know, you know this. But I think people were heartbroken seeing what was going on in Italy, Spain and other countries. So I think there's the possibility for people to get a little nudge towards that world centric thinking. And then sometimes we think about, you know, earth centric or echo to where we start thinking in terms of I need to align my life and what's good for the whole all of humanity, what's good for all species, what's good for the planet. And then what's that moral from that perspective? Right. I mean, even sometimes, you know, it was a good development to have ethics within my clan, but you know, I'm going to be very ethical within my clan, but it's okay to treat those other clans any way I want because, you know, that's just that limited. But.

Moral development, I think you're absolutely right. The key is really our ongoing moral development as human beings.

Exactly. You know, and I mean, I think that as you laid that out so beautifully.

I think that the sort of difficulty sometimes can come from the way we tend to think about how things operate. We don't realize, as you pointing out, not just that sort of arc of, you know, the maybe the moral development that might help us think about the different, you know, sort of.

Ways that we set up our boundaries around, you know, moral concern.

Not everybody go needs to go through that entire arc. It's like that, just that even that idea is a kind of a western centric, you know, from a certain kind of place and background. And so I just think that to that point about how we've got wisdom teachers of, of, you know, of long standing throughout time, really trying to remind us of all the ways we've forgotten in our own arrogance and in our own, you know, all of the different ways that we've kind of gotten acculturated to thinking about things in certain kinds of ways that support capitalism, that support some of the ways that we have in our ego, in our more ego bounded ways, wanted to thrive for ourselves. We've developed all these ways of thriving thinking that make it okay to kind of disregard the suffering of so many. But actually all along the way, as you know, and now I think maybe more so we can hear them, there have been folks who have been saying, you know, that's just not necessarily so and definitely doesn't need to be so.

You know, I really like.

The way Dan Siegel talks about resilience and you know, as we develop more individual resilience, neurobiologically it's really moving into the relational field because it's. It's ultimately relational. And. And the idea of we, you know, he really calls it integration. There's. There's a greater diversification and greater linking and greater connection individually, relationally, community. And. And he has that question of, you know, we all want to go to the we. So that's expanding circles. Right. But you don't lose yourself. You need to bring yourself on. So he has that expression, we can't exactly roll off the tongue. I don't know if it's ever. But I do like it.

Conversation, too. Yes.

So. So the we could be, you know, as I move into larger spheres of my ethical concern and moral concern and engagement, I don't have to leave myself behind. Or as I. As I move beyond my family, I don't have to leave my family beyond. Or as I move beyond my clan or my ethnicity or my race, I don't have to leave that beyond. Right. So. Or even, you know, we can. We can be Americans and still be global citizens, you know, so that the we. I feel like that we can happen at every level. It's not about abandoning anything in terms of where we come from, our gender, ourselves, our race, our ethnicity, our clan in order to embrace that bigger view. We can. We can have. We can bring it all together.

It's a great question and it's a great inquiry, like how we live this. And I don't think there's any one way to live it. And so the way that you just described and Dan's kind of way of articulating we and how it is that we can be both sort of, in a certain sense, where we are and integrated at the same time. You know, I think that's. That beautifully makes sense. And I think.

You know, mindfulness, for me, deep mindfulness, you know, invites kind of a constant waking up to, you know, the emptiness of all of these constructions. So it's both. It's, again, another facet of the both.

Yeah, they're just maps. And. And we're all going to go through it in a different way, in different ways, so we don't all have to go lockstep in any way, shape or form. But it's. You know, I think it's. That idea is even. We know mathematically that even just a little 1% shift or a 3% shift, you know, if all of humanity just gets nudged a little bit in the right direction, of course we'll all be at different places where we're starting. But just that what Dan here talks about, 10% difference or whatever it is, it just takes a little twist of the dialogue and we could see a very different world and we would all participate in that in our own way.

Right. I think that's absolutely. That's absolutely right. And, you know, I would say the sociologist and lawyer person to me is always aware too, that, you know, there are always these competing shifts. Right. So while we shift it down a little bit this way, we have to be very aware. We can, we cannot afford to not realize there is a whole organization trying to shift it the other way.

Exactly.

The whole equally energized, equally feeling that they're, you know, in the right place, trying to shift it in a different direction.

Yeah.

So that's the humility that to me is like the kind of like analytical and practice grounded humility in recognizing what we're fully up against. That keeps me, you know, wanting to name that power differentials matter and that, you know, you know, as we try to do what we can, we might bring a little bit more of the kind of commitment to organize our efforts because, you know, organization, you know, what I can do by myself and what you can do. We know right here, right now, what we can do is as often, you know, synergetic, synergistically, so much more. So I do think those of us who are kind of wanting to be forces for good might do a little bit more around organizing our efforts. But yes, failing that, yes, we can continue to do the little bit of shift that we can to make a difference.

Absolutely. Yeah. I'm not suggesting that just some cosmic twist is going to save us all. It's going to take hard work. And you're right, there are progressive and aggressive energies and forces and momentums happening all the time. And, you know, that's all points to at the same time that we are, I think many of us anyway, want to broaden civil liberties and human rights across everyone.

Free of any distinctions of gender or sexual orientation or gender orientation or race or any of it. And at the same time, we may all be faced with, you know, various forces asking us to give up our civil liberties in exchange for more security. Because as fear levels rise or as chaos rises, you know, there's going to be saying, we'll keep you safe, but you got to give over more your privacy, more your civil liberties. And this could come from the right and left. I think it's equally dangerous. It can come from the right and left. And so, you know, this, this and that comes back to, I Think you're absolutely right. You know, don't agonize about it. Organize. Right. It is going to take grassroots organization and real active engagement in society and, you know, really becoming. I started offering a training last year that kind of got put on hold, but I hope to redevelop it one of these days called Engaged Citizenship. Because we kind of abdicate so much of our, you know, we like to sit back and complain, but we really have no reason to complain. You know, if we certainly, if we don't vote. But if our whole level of civic engagement is just a boat, you know, every couple years and we're not engaged more than that, then we really can't complain about how things are going. We will, but I mean, because it really. We do have to engage or we just, you know, it's going to be done by other forces.

Yes, this is true. You know, and I always come back to what, you know, how supported are we in entering into that engagement on some sort of place of common.

Ground, common language, common story, I think, you know, so for me, that I've been thinking about a kind of contemplative.

Democracy or.

Constitutional convening, like, who are we? What is that? I mean, that project around having adopted something called the Constitution was meant to be a place where we would enter into a common conversation again and again. But somehow it seems we've lost that as a support. There's like a lot of different kind of ways in which we've kind of put that aside. But as I think about at least where we might begin to really invigorate a kind of engaged citizenship in the United States. And actually this applies, you know, with equal measure around whatever the founding document there is in all nations. We do have some, you know, some place to start. But I think what pains me as a law professor is having, you know, seeing over the years how we've kind of eroded under, of and commitment around some of our founding documents and commitments. So you have people today even questioning whether we, you know, whether we need a constitution or whether, you know, all the things are up for grabs. And that may be all right, but I do think it's worth naming that that is kind of, you know, where we had been, what we had been able to kind of enter into common conversation around. And if, and if those, if, you know, this moment is going to evolve us into some new conversation, we need to actually at least be clear about how to shape that conversation, what the story is of, what binds us, what we owe one another. Let's have the Robust conversation, guided by our common commitment to shared connectivity, recognizing our interconnectedness, guided by and supported by our practices. But I do think that we sometimes start to act without really realizing we are kind of not on the same page. And if we can't, at least, you know, we're not going to be exactly on the same page but be talking the same language. This is why it seems like so many good efforts fall apart. So I do think that's a part of what mindful resilience in an engaged way might support. Like what are our first principles? How can we have these conversations? Fluid and supple, right? Not rigid, but conversations that invite, like, who are we at the foundation as we enter into this work together?

Well, you just beautifully articulated the whole reason for this summit and really the purpose and mission of this summit so beautifully. And yeah, my notion of engaged citizenship is deeply grounded in mindfulness or some other kind of reflective practice, contemplative embodiment from whatever secular faith based tradition. But you know, maybe that's, there's a possibility here of the intersection of mindfulness with shared concerns about social and racial justice maybe getting tipped into a little bigger view because of what we're going through together and, and then being willing to get out there and do the work. So maybe there's might be some possibilities here of coming out because, you know, it's going to be as we go along with some of the things I think are coming down the road, we're either going to have to retreat into our own kind of survivalist little structures or we're going to have to get out and engage or things are going to fall apart. So.

Right. And some of us are going to be trying to engage while others are retreating. So I do think it comes to like it'll come to, and I feel it's coming to for me. In fact, this question is a really alive one for me. What is the next level of my engagement going to look like? And what am I waiting for really? You know, the moment seizes me now and maybe in a certain sense we're not waiting. Like maybe in a certain sense right now we're involved in, in this conversation and in the conversations that we're involving ourselves in putting ourselves in volunteering for. We're already kind of creating the path that we're going to walk into, you know, this, this new way of being engaged. But it's going to be a journey. And this is why I think courage is something we need to name as a part of it. Courageous engagement around the Things that we see as very important.

Emerging out of the common kind of commitments that come out of our practices and our heart. You know, our willingness to be in caring engagement with other people. So here we are. And it seems, you know, all we can do is take the next most right step that we see before us, knowing that we might not have it right and we might have to correct. So with humility, trying to act on the values that we hold dear in ways that respect and support the thriving not only of ourselves, but of others as well.

Well, I'm so happy, Rhonda, that you're living into that question and that inquiry, because certainly this is a time we're recognizing that the time is now and we are the leaders we've been waiting for. So I'm really happy to be with you and you are one of the leaders we need today. So thank you so much. It's been a really rich conversation and opens up a lot of further inquiry. I think it'll really open up some conversation for all of us during, during this summit. And so I would like to invite you, if you would, to lead us in, you know, one of your favorite sort of resilience building practices or mindfulness practices. If you could just lead us in that way, I'd really appreciate it. Sure.

Yeah. Okay.

Well.

One practice that I often rely on for myself is really just a basic sitting practice infused with a lot of compassion and loving kindness.

So what I'd like to do is invite everybody in this moment, this is going to be a relatively short version of it, to pause and to. With gentle appreciation for.

All that you are in this moment, all that we carry.

Really just allow ourselves to fully be here.

Allowing the body to be a guide, settling into the sensations of being connected to the earth in this moment, noticing the points of contact between the body and the ground, through the chair, through the floor beneath us.

Then just in the next few moments, really allowing ourselves to rest, pause.

Give ourselves over to.

Feeling the support that exists for us in this moment.

From the ground up, let's say, or perhaps from the crown of the head, down through the nostrils, down into. As we breathe in and out.

Feeling the support of the air and the environment around us.

As you breathe in and out. This is an opportunity to come home to the body.

To allow awareness of the breathing body, to remind us of our connection to the earth.

The air, the wind around us.

Feel the warmth that is in our hearts, sort of the fire element in us.

As we sense into flow of.

The lifeblood within us.

Running through Our veins, the fact that we are constituted.

In a percentage much higher than we usually think of by water. And in that sense we're always in some kind of motion. Our bodies, the systems within us, are just in this miraculous fluid state, even as we appear to be so relatively solid, so sitting and breathing, feeling our connection to the earth, and through this experience of sitting and breathing, feeling their composition by the elements we are of this environment.

It is of. And through running through us.

We'Re always able to be nurtured by simply sitting and breathing.

In that way, even as we sit here realizing that we are not only these limited, soft bellied, carbon based beings, but we are part and parcel of the air that we breathe, the earth that we walk on and that walks, in a certain sense, through us.

We are much bigger sometimes than our narrow stories might present for us to see.

We are always already a part of so much more.

So breathing in and out in a way that allows us to feel the ground beneath us, our embodiment in this moment, but at the same time recognize that we are right now floating together in the heavens, grounded in this body, but part of a universe that is vast beyond measure. Right here, right now.

So from this place of, in a certain sense.

Feeling our vulnerable, soft bellied humanity, but recognizing the vastness of our interrelationship with all things.

May we feel the strength of our human existence, the innate resilience that comes from the fact that we are part and parcel of a rich, vast universe.

May we feel the strength that comes from the heritages that run through our bodies.

The parts of the world that we represent as we walk.

And may we realize that this moment, this now, is a long and broad and deep now that encompasses.

All of the heritages that are showing up brilliantly in who we are and supports us in what we might do as we move into a future unknown to us at this moment.

So I thank you for sitting with me and exploring that practice a kind of a awareness of body embodied in the elements practice that for me, helps when I get stuck.

Well, thank you so much, Ron. That was fun. I'd like to hang out there the rest, hopefully I can hang out here quite a bit.

Felt like a really good place to be right now.

Yes, it's all here.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. This has been wonderful. Thank you for giving of your time to be part of the Global Resilience Summit and really contributing so much to this conversation. And this is hopefully just the beginning that we can really, really have a global conversation across.

All the differences that sometimes are often do divide us about how do we become more resilient not only as individuals and communities, but as a, as a human people together on this planet and in alignment with this earth. So thank you for your contribution.

Thank you.

It's always good to see you. So thank you so much.

You too. Thank you for all that you're doing and all that you are.

It is Ryan Seacrest here. There was a recent social media trend which consisted of flying on a plane with no music, no movies, no entertainment. But a better trend would be going to chumbacasino.com it's like having a mini social casino in your pocket. Chumba Casino has over a hundred online casino style games all absolutely free. It's the most fun you can have online and on a plane. So grab your free welcome bonus now@chumbacasino.com sponsored by Chumba Casino.

No purchase necessary vgw group void where.

Prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply.