Whats Love Got To Do With This And Rage Grief And Despair
what drew you to this conversation
it’s got this um idea of this this
thought question what’s love got to do
it at the heart of this
um this moment that we’re sharing
together what’s love got to do with it
and what about rage and grief and
despair
really what i want to share with you all
is a little bit of how
my work with mindfulness and bringing
mindfulness together with
um the challenging work of turning
toward
uh the suffering that is in our midst
even as we do the best we can to take
care of ourselves
attend to our own needs for wellness um
maybe in some ways rest on
a mindfulness practice to support us in
our individual efforts to
navigate this very challenging time the
question at the heart of my work is how
is it that
by not only exploring how mindfulness
can support each of us
right because that’s really important we
all need to be doing the best we can to
maximize our resourcefulness
our resources our ability to stay strong
and resilient
during this time but a real question is
as we do that
how how may we at the same time be
deepening our resourcefulness
for supporting one another and for
deepening our ability to help be a
positive part
of what wants to be born in the world at
this moment
this period in which we know we don’t
know exactly what’s going on
but we know something important is
happening in this
moment we’re we’re witnessing and living
through
multiple intersecting pandemics
so while we are trying to heal through
um
and from and bear up against the risk of
coronavirus we’re also bearing up
against the
heightened awareness of the pandemics of
social identity-based bias
racism and other kinds of isms and
schisms that separate us
i just want to share the thought that
mindfulness which is often
disseminated and offered as a very hyper
individualized personal practice for
well-being
can actually be a really important
technology if you will or support for
engagement in the world for working
together with other across lines of
real and perceived difference and for
doing the absolute best we can
with the moments we have in this
relatively short life however it is
long it is on this planet right it’s
gonna
you know we we all know that it’s the
human predicament that we
must do the best we can and then pass
the baton to the next generation
how do we make the most of this
opportunity to transform the world in
this moment of
radical transformation that we’re
already in the midst of somehow
can we be a part of the solution
and so mindfulness in my estimation
is a way of being a part of the solution
it can help us in the moments where we
are feeling disconnected from love
we’re feeling rage or enraged because of
injustices that we see
we’re feeling sadness and grief because
hidden and under under acknowledged
grief i think is one of the
the traumas of this time that we have
yet to even figure out how to deal with
mindfulness to me supports radical
emotional agility
being able to sort of be present to
acknowledge what we’re feeling
really allow ourselves to feel it but
also ask this radical question
what else is here so even as i’m feeling
anger even as i’m feeling sadness what
else is here is there also
a sense of warmth a sense of peace at
this moment
a sense of ha what is
working well within my body and spirit
and so inviting this capacious ability
to hold
a little bit more reality and flow
in and out of the things that trouble us
that’s called equanimity in some of the
teachings
mindfulness can help us in other words
with i think this
this invitation that we’re all trying to
listen
for or open ourselves up to answer which
is all about
how do we find ourselves more at home
together more at peace together
more able to work together on this
beautiful planet
for the healing and liberation of
all of us so i want to pause and say
thank you and invite gil and jack
into this conversation with me and all
of you
thank you so much rhonda thank you thank
you so much
i i don’t want to leave the campfire you
know i just
i just want to stay here and absorb
everything
i get the honor of the first question
and it’s not even on my list it just
came
from hearing you speak i want to know
from you ronda
what was the the catalyst that that
really
uh changed things for you to bring you
to the to the point where
part of the answer is going on inside of
you and you needed to focus and we
needed to focus
on what was going on inside of you i
would say
um that you know that the
my my evolution as a person who
is um both committed to doing what we
can with the systems that we have being
engaged in the world and certainly
law gives us an opportunity and a lot of
challenge
around how to be engaged with what’s
happening around us and
and try to work for change with others
so i was really aware from my own
experience of
what a difference law could make in
changing
and creating circumstances of
possibility
where there had been none before but
what i’d come to see was that there was
something missing
that there’s something about the
conventional ways that we’re trained
uh for leadership and and um
and for working to resolve conflict
using these traditional methods
something that was leaving out the heart
something that was leaving out a sense
of empathy and compassion
the one teacher that i saw manifest that
more than any of the others i had in all
of these different
you know wonderful settings for higher
education
and training and this and that was my
grandmother
a woman named nanny suggs who had been
denied the opportunity to get much
education at all born in 1906 and
segregated north carolina
whose life had been very difficult as a
black woman at that time
but what she had learned was how through
her own practices which for her were
basically christian-based centering
prayer
how she could begin every day with a
commitment to um
this discipline of her own inner work
and how that could be a support for
really making the most of whatever
opportunities might present
for making a positive difference in the
world and so there was a point
in which i realized i needed some
similar
modality or you know method for
grounding myself in the possible and um
you know it wasn’t going to come from
studying more law books it was going to
come from studying more legal opinions
and arguing with people about what we
might do
but that capacity to stay engaged in
those hard questions could be supported
by a commitment to personal practice
i’ll start out with us
with a phrase that we found in one of
your writings from a while ago it says
we live in the 21st century
a radically diverse world and yet we
have never developed the intentional
kinds of technologies
that address in deep ways what it means
to bring people together
across cultures so how do you talk
how do you help us in dealing with these
issues
and trying to reach across these divides
to bring people back together
you know all i can offer is what i have
been learning as i’ve been trying
you know learning as i
you know get up each day and accept
whatever um invitation i have on that
day
to you know turn back toward
this these hard questions of how do we
um connect rather than uh reinforce
the patterns and trainings and
separation
and segregation how do we instead find
ways to
reinforce that which wants to connect
all i can say is that we all know
something if we’re
willing to pause and reflect about what
it means to be included and excluded
disregarded or disrespected because of
what we look like
we also know something about how it is
that when we’ve been wounded
one of the ways we respond is pushing
people away and defending against being
vulnerable again
so in so many ways mindfulness can help
us
help me has helped me like recognize my
own woundedness and therefore be a
little bit better able to see when
somebody else is acting from their own
their wounds how do we get this into our
school systems at an early age
that it’s so crucial to future
development how do you feel
that we can get mindfulness into the
school system
is that even a possibility yeah you know
i mean i’m actually very excited to
answer this but just by saying
you know stay tuned and look around in
your neighborhoods
look in your you know local um
preschools even head start programs you
can surprise
um how much uh is happening and changing
out there
because we’re all recognizing that the
way we’ve been doing things
hasn’t been working so well i don’t know
if y’all have noticed
so we’re noticing that what’s been
happening in k through 10
- what’s happening in higher ed what’s
happening in law schools
what’s happening all around us whether
in law
politics we need to do this differently
so there’s an opportunity being created
by these crises
as always happens and more and more
people actually are bringing these
practices in
um there’s a mindful schools program
there’s a piece in schools
and social justice initiative that’s
part of the mindful schools program
right now
and um i’m just just going to name these
things and
encourage you to sort of just be on the
lookout because you would be surprised
um one of my law professor friends
pointed out to me when i started
bringing mindfulness
into um the law school environment more
frequently after a few years she came up
to me and she said
i have to tell you i’m starting to you
know understand the power of this
because my little girls in their
kindergarten and elementary school
have been getting some mindfulness
training and so they’re coming to me and
noticing when i’m getting a little bit
tense and they are pausing and they’ve
recently said things like mom
i think you might need to pause and take
a breath you know
right so the kids are starting to learn
and we’re starting to understand the
importance of social and emotional
learning
it’s funny my my four-year-old uh often
tells my two-year-old when she gets
upset
let’s pause and count to four because
that’s the thing that we have to tell
him when he gets upset so it’s working
it’s spreading it’s spreading like a
rainbow
yeah absolutely is social bias caused
only by
persons with social bias and i think
you’ll see these questions are kind of
tied together so
part two is how do you distinguish
between justice and revenge
so who doesn’t have social bias i mean
are there people i don’t know
how could we having been born in a world
inherently embedded in a social context
is there a way we could have somehow
sealed ourselves off
from the trainings and embeddedness in
our culture every every human being has
different kinds of biases
and their bias is obviously around
social identities tied to
those identities that have historically
been privileged and subordinated
uh valued and dis disrespected in our
culture
we sort of don’t recognize how much
we’re up against around the
pervasiveness of
bias at our peril and there’s all kinds
of
resources out there to help us
understand how pervasive bias is
there’s online surveys the implicit
associations tests
you can go online right now and get a
sense for the different biases that
might
be part of what you’re working with but
we all work with them
um justice for me one way of thinking
about it that is
it’s what love looks like in public so
there are these more you know technical
definitions for justice
of justice but for me i lean heavily
into this idea of it being kind of
a version of love in action everybody
deserves a certain kind of
you know basic dignity and and security
in their person we all
deserve kindness we all deserve the
means to be able to thrive
and so um to me justice invites us to
figure out how we can work
more toward thriving um that encompasses
us all
and so it’s not about revenge in any way
for
me so i think it’s important for us to
have these conversations what do we mean
by justice
and so the invitation is to heal those
separations
recognize that everybody is entitled to
love and protection
and that actually does include all of us
and we are all suffering
no matter what our racial background
from the notion
that we’re somehow superior or inferior
what are
some specific ways that you have brought
mindfulness into your law practice
uh is it only personal are there ways
that you’ve brought mindfulness into
your teaching or
interactions with clients or other
lawyers yeah
so i think of another way i think about
um this work and the work of
transforming justice
is is to think about it as an ecological
project that includes our personal i’ve
already alluded to this without laid out
personal interpersonal and systemic
efforts
so the question of what can we do
personally individually what can we do
together and how can we change these
systems
it’s always a part of the projects that
i’m involved with
so yes personal practices of the kind
that i’ve alluded to including the stock
practice meditation practice loving
kindness practice
daily practices for me movement
practices
um of a variety of sort right we’re
sorts where we kind of
ground ourselves in the feeling of our
being well and
connected and belonging on the earth i
bring these practices into classes
into retreats for lawyers and social
justice advocates and
teachers of mindfulness and leaders and
business folks all over the world now
because we’re all in some way wherever
we are we can do
the work of justice this isn’t limited
to lawyers and law professors and law
students anymore
is there anything that you would want to
any uh parting words that you want to
leave all of us with
well i guess i want to invite us to just
take a breath pause together
and feel again the unrepeatable nature
of this moment
and be reminded that that’s true for
every moment of our lives
and that if we can ask ourselves what
else is here in those moments when we’re
feeling distressed
and try and turn toward what is well
within us and within each other and
in this experience of life from that
place i think we might be able to bear
up a little bit better every day
against the pressures of this time and
we need each other
to be as resilient and strong as
possible but we can do this
humankind has been in trouble before and
struggled before and we’ve gotten this
far
so every one of us can do what we can to
make the best of this
this time and i thank you all for doing
what you can in this moment and joining
us here
thank you so much rhonda thank you thank
you