Meet Valarie Kaur, a Sikh activist, author, lawyer, spiritual leader, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. Her children's book WORLD OF WONDER was released on August 20th followed shortly after by her book SAGE WARRIOR on September 10th released by Random House. Additionally, in this crucial election year, Valarie is taking the Revolutionary Love Project on a bus tour across 40+ cities in the United States from September – October. The tour will energize hearts, build community bonds, and equip thousands of people with practical tools to integrate Revolutionary Love into daily life. Here is fascinating conversation between Craig and Valarie. EnJOY!
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me, buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know what's happening, and it is. The tour kicks off late September and goes through the end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour. They are available at the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour or at your local outlet in your region. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
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I know sometimes on this podcast I have stand up comedian telling dirty stories about what they do, and that's fun, but that's not today.
Today.
My guest is activist and filmmaker Valerie Core. This is a deep one, I think a really good one. Please welcome, Valerie Core. I'm very interested to see that you're using little wiry headphonts because I think of you as a very ex savvy person. I thought you would be very bluetoothy.
No, I'm not, mostly because I lose things or my children pick up the little tiny things.
Oh they do. That's right.
When my kids were very young, there were no air pods because I imagine it's like a really choky thing, right, you'd have to be really careful with air pods.
I mean they're five and nine.
So my little things disappear all the time and are part of like my daughter's doll scenes. So it must have maybe like it would have been a soccer ball or something for her dolls.
Now, listen, I wanted to I want to start with the idea because I I became aware of you through your ted talk, Right, that's how I become and and your message is relentlessly and very.
Aggressive is the wrong word. But but but.
But stridently positive, right, You're it's a it's a positive. I think it's a positive thing, a force for.
Good, if you like, I'll take that. I actually don't use the word positive, but we can. We can come back to that.
All right, good, well, let's talk about that, because the reason why I bring it up is because I thought, well, when someone like when when I when I come across someone like you in the in the zeitgeist, there's not many like that seems unfair like this, when when I came across you and the Zeitgeist or you on the Internet. Let's let's be honest. I thought, well, the Internet seeks a balance all the time. So if if you're saying something like which I think is positive or I think it is a good message, there will be plenty of people trying to redress that with negativity. And if you have a revolutionarily love project, then you're going to get I think you make yourself a target for some Internet hate. For that, well, just because that's the way it seems to go, people don't they need to have.
Some balance for it.
So what I wanted to do first is talk to you a little bit about you so that people can't say, well, you know, she was a Nazi, and you know, I know you were in a Nazi But I mean it's like people can't, you know, let's learn about let's consider the source before we consider the message.
Do you know what I mean?
That's really was because I know next to nothing, even although I grew up around quite a lot of I used to say the word seek, but you say the word sick.
Is it pronounced sick?
It is pronounced sick.
But really we're just so happy you know who we are in the first place, so we usually don't correct.
I was raised in Glasgow. There is a sick community in Glasgow. It's not you know, I had been around people from your community before, or people from your from your background. There is that exists in Glasgow, and and so I was familiar with it, but not really in the sense of how it differs from It's it's.
Hindu, right, Is it a Hindu thing?
No, it is.
Oh, it's just separate, completely, separate completely.
It's its own, it's it's it's its own religious tradition, its own wisdom tradition. It's one of the youngest wisdom traditions in the world. There are twenty six million six worldwide, half a million in the US. And it emerged from a time where the dominant religions were Hinduism and Islam. But is it is it is its own wisdom tradition.
And it is Is it a tradition that you still practice? Are you still very much involved in it or is it? Are you more secular in your in your life now?
I grew up with the stories and most song prayers that my grandfather used to tell me as he tucked me into bed at night. You know, I grew up on the farmlands of California. My family has lived and farmed in California in the United States for one hundred.
And ten years. So deep history here.
So I could have been someone who kind of floated away from the tradition, but it was poured into me by my grandfather and his songs, his stories, His love infused me with a like I inherited a treasure chest that I could reach into to find courage to live my life.
And that's what I do still.
What is the Sikh religion? That was sick religion? I big a part of the Sikh religion? Is it? Is it?
Is it? Is it monotheism? Is it? Is it? No?
Yeah?
Western category?
Yeah, I really don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a it's a It's a tradition rooted in love, love above all deeply loved and maybe the best way to share it with you was through the origin story.
Okay, great, so that would be great.
Like I'll play my grandfather, you play me.
Okay, that's good. All right.
I have to say visually, you've let yourself go. But okay, if I viewed that there, it is all right.
Let's let's go.
Half a millennium ago, halfway around the world, in South Asia and the land of Punjab, there lived a man named Nanik.
And Nanik looked around him.
It was a time of conquest and cast and cruelty, and he took all that pain into his heart. He meditated by the river every morning for fourteen years, and then one morning he did not return home. People thought he was a dead man, a drowned man. The sun rose and then fell, The sun rose and fell, and then the third day the sun rose, and Nonik emerged from the river.
But he was stricken. He had a stricken look in his eye.
He did not speak, he did not stir, until finally he gave one utterance, Na Goo Hindu, na Goo Musliman there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim, which means there is no me against you at all. This was beyond love thy neighbor as yourself. This was beyond like taken the stranger. This was see no stranger. That we are part of one another, we belong to one another, that we constitute each other, and that belonging to each other is the wellspring of love. That you can look upon the face of anyone and say you are a part of me.
I do not yet know.
And so the origin of the faith is it, Oh God, oneness ever unfolding. And Nonik began not to give commandments or stories, but he began to sing, sing songs of love, because to taste the truth of oneness, you have to get out of language, out of dichotomy, out of subject and object. You have to you know, those moments when the music swells, or you look in the face of your child, or you're on the mountaintop and you're just there's just no language at all. Good. Eonik was saying, like, those are not incidental moments, those are not throwaway moments. Those moments of wonder are actually sacred insights into the true nature of things, the oneness that always is. And so we can't stay there. We have to live, Like Craig, you're over there and I'm over here right. We have to live in a world of separation, but separation is an illusion. So how do we we have an experience of oneness and then we remember the truth of it. And the way we do that is we move through the world seeing all others as sisters, as brothers, as kin And if I see you as my brother, Couric, that means I gotta show up for you when you need me, serve you when you need me, fight for you when you.
Are in harm's way.
And so our people became sounth sabahi, sage warriors, the warrior fights, the sage loves. I learned it as a path of revolutionary love.
It's a beautiful story and very poetic. I think, you know, I'm about a little contrarian. So I wonder like when it's interesting because I think, well, you fight again, you know, you fight when, fight for me, when you fight for your brothers or sisters when you need to. But who you fighting against if we're all, if we're all brothers and sisters.
You know what I mean.
It's the other thing. I think it's fascinating though, because I have this is me talking.
I don't know about anybody else.
But I tend to like, before I hear someone's story, I judge them, do you know what I mean? Like it's like if I see someone, look at that guy, I look at that jerik, you know, on a bus or on an airplane, and then you and then you hear someone's story and you and and every everything changes if you get to know who someone is, you know it kind of do you have someone else there with?
My mother just walked in with a big players.
That's lovely, that's very nice.
Do you want to say hi, Craig Ferguson.
Hello, Oh hello, very nice to meet you. What did you make for breakfast?
I she made me eggs?
Thank you lovely?
I love you. I haven't seen her in weeks. I got in last night and she just comes in.
That is very nice. That's that's very nice, very nice. That is very nice.
So so you just got in last night where you're away with your way working because you go around a lot, right.
Your book just came out. Stage Warrior just came out. So yeah, we.
Did our big we it's a movement building tour because we did a big New York kickoff of it. We're going to do La We're going to forty five cities around the country, and we're spreading the message of revolutionary love. We're telling stories, we're bringing songs, we're bringing tools for how to What is the.
Message of revolutionary love? Then? What is that?
Revolutionary love is the call of our times. Revolutionary love is the choice to leave no one outside of our circle of care?
How do you do that?
Especially when people when people are you know, if someone rejects your message, Yeah, you know, I mean, I mean because sometimes it's difficult to help. I know this because look, I spend my life around people who are either focused on not drinking or focused on drinking alcohol. And so sometimes when you want to help someone, they don't want to help. They don't want to be part of your movement, they don't want to be part of your thing, and they'd rather literally in some cases, rather die.
How do you reach out to someone like that?
Yeah? The first thing to know, because I like what you said about, Well, you're fighting if everyone's your brother or sister, or who are you fighting against?
Here's the thing.
We have opponents in this world. An opponent is anyone who's ideas, believes, or actions oppose your own. I don't call them enemies, and that's the radical intervention. An enemy is a fixed and permanent position, but an opponent is a fluid category. They might be they might stay your opponent this whole lifetime, right, they might never see you or want to support you, or just saying opponent opens up the possibility that transformation could happen. And how do you practice loving one's opponent? That practice I call ten the wound because I've I'm an activist for twenty years. I've sat with former correctional officers, police officers, murderers, people who have killed people in my community, my own former abusers, And every time I want to hate them, I have to do what my ancestors taught me what to do, to wonder, to wonder about them, Why why do they say that?
Why do they do that?
And beneath the slogans and the sound bites like when you want to hate them, if you hear their story, you see their wound, and I've come to understand they're Oh, there are no such thing as monsters in this world. There are only human beings who are wounded, who act out of their fear or insecurity or rage. That does not make them any less dangerous. Sure, but when we see their wound, they lose their power over us. We become free and we become smarter about how to respond. All right, it's not just enough to like remove bad actors from power, Like what are the cultures, what are the institutions, what are the what are the norms that drive that behavior?
And then I get smarter about how how to respond.
Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
I mean, I remember talking to a long time ago, talking to a man who changed my life. I'm sure you're very familiar with it. Is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Yes, who was talking about the idea of you know, resentment being you know, as like drinking a poison and then expecting someone else to die.
Yes, you know, it's.
The the idea of because father Tutu was one of the architects of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Is is it similar to that idea that trying to resolve conflict through resolution rather than continuation of conflicts?
Is that the idea?
Absolutely, it's you know, I'm saying it's coming from my tradition and my ancestors, but it's really the heart of all the great wisdom traditions.
It is, sure, I understand that.
Yeah, I wonder is it is it something that applies because America right now, particularly as you run up to the election, the it's very it's it's quite tribal.
There are apps right now.
Right, Yeah, I mean, and it's and it's it's really hard to to reach across the I want to see the aisle, but it's just like to reach across any any gap without people in a post truth environment. Right, It's kind of where I was at the at the beginning that you know, what I wanted to establish with everyone that I talked to, especially about something like this, is there d angels for talking about it? Because people will lie about you? You know, how do how do you take that? I mean even if you see someone's wound. I'm sure that you know, if if if someone says something hateful about you or your family on the internet, how do.
You deal with that? Do you just ignore it? I mean how do you how'd you cope with it?
Yeah?
James Baldwin said, love has never been a popular movement, Like it's never It's never been popular or safe or easy to stand in one shared humanity or stand in love. And I certainly I mean I I my message sort of is challenging for people across the political spectrum. You know, sure, you know, I fight for social justice in this country, So of course I have people on the far right who see me as their opponent or their enemy. Really, but then I have people who call themselves progressives, and when I call for for love as like the most revolutionary necessary force to transition this country, they're like, oh, we're ready for war.
We're not ready for love. We're ready for war.
And so that's when like the hate that I get is from across the spectrum, and what I invite people into is understanding that everyone has a different role in the labor of revolutionary love. At any given time, when we are being so hurt in the face of onslaught assaults injustice, it is okay, it is rightful to feel rage. That our rage is loaded with information and energy. It connects us to our ability to fight for ourselves, to defend ourselves. So if I'm getting attacked and my family's getting attacked, yes, like this is why people were warriors, right, we defend ourselves with one hand. But then we don't lose the sight of the sage because in the next moment, maybe not out, But in the next moment, next season, there might be an opportunity to say about what about their children? What story are they telling themselves?
How do I create?
How do I respond in such a way that after the battle is on, after the election is over, we can still find a way to live with each other.
How do you come to this?
Is there a radical moment in your life that you say, Okay, look, because you studied you were you studied divinity, right, that was your college.
Yeah, I studied religion.
I studied law and became a lawyer, a filmmaker, and an organizer, a faith leader. But you know, out of all the things I studied, nothing showed me more than living.
I think the.
Moment that that changed me was I became an activist after a family friend was murdered in the wake of September eleventh, more than twenty years ago. Now, the racial violence that exploded across the United States and the aftermath of those terrorist attacks targeted sick Americans because our people to show their devotion to love and service. Where articles of faith keep our hair long, and our men some women wrap their long hair in a turban and so since nine to eleven, looking at the screen and seeing a picture of Osama bin Laden again and again said, oh our nations do enemy looks like my family. You're right, And so sick Americans were at the forefront of all of that violence in this country, alongside our Muslim brothers and sisters. And the first person murdered in the aftermath was bulbursingh so deep. He was standing in front of his gas station in Mesa, Arizona when he was killed, and his death turned me a whole generation of us into activists. Twenty years later, the backlash, the aftermath never ended. Hate violence never went down to the levels they were before nine to eleven. And so we're just living in a world where the threat of terror and violence is this constant. And so for many years, for fifteen years after Bilbi your uncle's murder, I could only think of the killer with rage, a rightful rage, right and hate bordering on hate, like he took so much from us. And it was fifteen years later when I just you know, it's what Desmond Tutu said, right, Am I drinking?
Am I drinking this poison and hurting myself?
Is he?
Fifteen years later, the younger brother of Bilbier uncle.
Rana and I decided to try to change the story. We made a phone call to the Arizona State Prison federal prison where Frank Rogue was being held.
And this is the gentleman who murdered Uh, yeah, well be here.
Yeah, that's right. And Craig, at first, I thought this was a terrible mistake.
I mean, it sounds like a really bad idea.
If I would have been around you at the time, I'd like, this is probably maybe something else would be a bad idea.
Yeah, limits to love, like you don't call your uncle's murderer and try to make things better like that, right.
So and in the beginning he said, well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
He was kind of flailing or he's like, I'm sorry for what happened to your uncle, but I'm also sorry for the thousands who were killed on nine to eleven.
Refusing to take a response, but I'm feeling rage rise in me, like fire in a cage.
And maybe because I was holding that rage, it gave Rana the space to wonder about Frank, to listen and to hear what I could not hear. Rana says, Frank, this is the first time I've heard you say you were sorry, and Frank says, yet, yes, I am sorry for what I did to your brother. And when I go to heaven to be judged by God, I will ask to see your brother and I will ask for his forgiveness. And Rana says, We've already forgiven you. That moment, I realize forgiveness is not forgetting. No, forgiveness is freedom from hate. And sometimes forgiveness comes at the end of a long healing journey, like it did for us. Sometimes it comes at the very beginning, like it used to make me cringe to see people look into the eyes of murderers and say, I forgive you. But now I understand they were saying, you cannot make me hate you. You don't have that power over me. Sometimes forgiveness comes in the messy middle. Sometimes forgiveness does not come at all. The survivor withholds her forgiveness because it is our only active agency, and that is okay that it is up to the survivor to decide.
What I do know is that once you do forgive, it frees you.
It frees you, like knocks that poison out of your hand, like you. And and because of that, I began to meet with Frank. I began to talk with him and hear his story and see his wound, and I learned so much, Craig, I learned so much. I learned that so much of white nationalist rage in this country is a symptom of unresolved grief, Like they're grieving the notion that this country ever belonged just to them in the first place.
I might not agree with that grief.
I might not think it's right, but and I might not be It might not be my role to tend to that grief, but someone's got to, Like, someone's got to. Like when I think, like I think about people like if you who.
Do you think should if if it's something like that, who who should tend to it?
Is it your uncle sitting at that kitchen table spewing that eight?
Is it your neighbor down the street? Is it?
Is it your child's classmate? Is it the teenager who is caught in the algorithm? Like like you said, because our algorithms don't give us a shared sense of reality anymore. We're in our own. If you're not, Hana Arend said, isolations radicalization, Like if you're not puncturing that bubble, who who is who is right?
So it's very interesting. So how does one puncture of that bubble? Then? How how do you go about it? Yeah?
Our are like our thinking is like I'm going to go and just tell them what's what's what?
I'm gonna go to what's that?
Yeah?
Like ever try to lecture your children into obedience?
Yeah?
I know, right like you, I can't. I have to like show my children that the insight lives inside of them.
And how do I do that?
I ask to ask questions, Like human beings, we mirror each other. If you come out with daggers out, they're going to come out with daggers out.
But if you come out and you're like you you really want to know why?
If you wonder goes back to wonder why, like why why do you like that video?
Why do you like what that guy says? Why do you like that policy? Why do you like that candidate?
Why you get and then you unearth the story and you unearth the story and you unearth the like.
Oh I care about my kids too.
Oh you know, you affirm whatever you see that as deeply human inside. And then because we mirror each other, they might just start wondering about you too.
They might want to hear your story.
And when that happens, Kraig, it's like like a magical portal opens up of deep listening. Right Like, sure, deep listening is an act of surrender. You risk being changed by what you hear. It's a process of relationship and it might lead to transformation. It might not, but that's okay because you've gained information for what to do next. When you're out in the world and you're standing for your positions, can you hold up a vision of the future that doesn't leave anyone behind, not even them?
How does that manifest itself in like you're going on the the books just come out and you're going on a tour and you I mean you use the word movement yourself, which is interesting to me. How does it manifest itself in a in an event when you go to something left there are people who sayd we we're agree at your Valerie boo, we don't believe what you believe. How do you deal with that in the moment? I mean, do you say, I hear you? What about the people that are there to hear you? I mean, the the the division? How do you cope with it?
Yeah?
Because because really, oftentimes I think people who who radically disagree with a stance, sometimes I think it's just about it's just about the disruption that might not even be your message there against, it's just about make it a lot of noise because because they want to do that. I sometimes wonder in acts of terrorism, if it the means is the end that you know that someone is just enjoying the terror of it? Yeah, you know that there the polemic may not be as identifiable as yours. You know that it's just they're just agents of chaos.
If one has to enjoy the terror of it in order to be seen and heard, imagine the pain that is lying beneath that.
Sure I can. But what do you do?
Yeah? Well, right stage and warrior, there's a there's a protection?
Like is there security? We have security at all of our events?
Like is there a way to make sure that they're not hurting us, that they're not hurting themselves?
Like I get it, I understand.
And then I but then I turned to the audience and I say, let's slow it down.
Notice what's happening in your body.
Notice that tension we are so accustomed to taking that oh, that tightness that small, hard parts of ourselves that feel threatened, and then responding to there From there? What if we created some space and moved into the part of ourselves that can see them, Oh it's hurt, brothers and sisters, and decided, well, you're we're going to respond from our deepest wisdom. We're going to respond from a place of love. Just that shift of responding instead of from trauma, responding from a place of wisdom. Whatever that looks like for you, is the shift I'm inviting people into.
I hate to be kind of it seems almost vulgar to ask it, But is there an end game for it?
Is the result? Is there a mission accomplished sign at any point? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Is there?
What does what does success look like in an environment like this? What's the achievement?
The vision is beloved community. The vision is.
A healthy, carrying, multi racial democracy where you see my child as yours and I see yours as mine. The vision is a planet where human beings have learned how to live sustainably with each other and with the earth. The vision is a world of love and liberation and safety. And Craig, I may not live. You may not live.
We may not live to see that.
And I understand that that my ancestors labored and sacrificed for freedoms that they could not have imagined that I get to live into now. And so as much as I want to see that world, as much as I want to see it, I know that my sacred task is to show up to do my part in the labor and if.
I can get it, yeah, I understand. It's like, there's a lovely phrase.
I'm probably messing up, but it is the mark of civilization that a person would plant a tree knowing that they would never stand in the shade of it. That's it, Yeah, I get.
Can the planting be joyful? What I've discovered?
Like, well, for me twenty years as an activist, I only knew how to push.
I only knew it to ground my bones to the earth.
I was always comparing my suffering to the people I was serving, so I was never worth worthy enough to care for like I had. By the time my babies were born, it was a twenty sixteen election season. I hate violence was skyrocketing, and I'm like, what am I doing? They're growing up in a country more dangerous for them than it was for me. I had an all out crisis. I only knew to use your metaphor, had to plant out of desperation, how to plant and miserably, you know. And because I didn't know how to love, I didn't know how to operate with love for myself. So that's when I spend a year in the rainforest. I was another pivotal moment in my life. And many indigenous cultures believe that the rainforest is like the womb of the earth, like it's warm and wet and safe and generative. And I was able to breathe for the first time. The midwife says, breathe and push and then breathe again. There's like a cadence, a rhythm to sustain one's energy in any long labor. And I finally learned how to breathe. And in other words, I finally learned how to how to love my own body, my own heart, my own mind as much as I was putting out into the world.
And that's where I developed.
I wrote my first book, and I developed this compass, the Revolutionary Love Compass, as a tool, a practical tool.
What does it do? This practical tool I'm interested in this.
Yeah, how would I use this if I found myself in a jeopardized by my own resentment? How would I use the revolutionarily Love compass?
I want to put it in your hand right now, all right, So imagine that you're holding it because it's an actual legendary artist Shepherd Fairy is actually created a new rendition of it.
It's so beautiful.
People can find it online Revolutionary Love dot work, So it's a compass. Revolutionary love is a choice to labor for others, opponents, and ourselves, And at any point you can point it to the person you're practicing loving. So let's say you have another in front of you, Craig, You're my other, I'm your other. That practice is called see no Stranger, and it begins with one. And it's like you said, right, how quickly are to judge? We all carry implicit bias. Within a split second before conscious thought, our minds decide whether the person in front of us belongs to them or us, And who we see is one of us, shapes whose stories we hear, what grief we let in, what policies we support, and what leaders we elect. Right demogogues demogogus get elected because they succeed in shutting down the ability to wonder about people that they are dehumanizing and so wonder.
It's a real challenge, I mean, because like if I take the example of, Look, it's seven o'clock in the morning, you're in an airport, and.
You were next to someone.
In my case, it's usually a really annoying gentleman in cargo shorts and flip flops who's drinking alcohol at seven am. Look, God bless them. It's up to hem. But I'll like get the hall away from me. And I can't help but judge an individual like that, and I don't. I mean, it's interesting though, even as I talk about it, though I started to go, I'll light it up.
You know, what's the big deal?
There's another voice in you?
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
The dialogue's going all the time, the young in duality, you know, I mean, it is, it is going all the time. But the thing is, it is it comes an equal measure. And what I'm fascinated by the idea of for me it comes an equal measure. I don't know if it comes an equal measure for everyone, but I my my snap decisions about people or my Look, I'm not as angry as I was when I was a young man.
I'm just not. But you know, I've had a lot.
Of therapy and I've been sober for a long time, but I still I can make snap decisions about people, which it's almost like I'm not in control of the situation. Is that what you talk about when you're talking about the Yeah, it's like it's like someone else suddenly took the controls and made me a jair.
Yeah, and that's okay. That's okay because it's not yeah yeah, because it's not the first response that we're responsible for. It's the second response we can We're all breathing in the stereotypes. We're all being wired by the US and them's in this culture, you know, and so we can either go with what has been done to us or we can flow it down and say why, why Why did I respond that way?
It's like what you just said, Oh, lighting up. I wonder if that guy.
Like is going through a hard time in his life and wonder to me's really tired. I wonder if he's on his way to see his kid, you know, Like I wonder, I wonder really simple.
It's very it's very useful. I have used it myself. This is a thing that I do again. It's on airplanes usually if I'm sat next to someone. First of all, if I'm sitting in the seat first, then the seat next to me actually really kind of belongs to me, and I don't really like the fact that someone else is sitting at that seat because here are Sometimes I.
Just put my tea on that center. Yeah, don't get comfortable.
And I glare at them and I'm like, oh, suddenly, well, Johnny, come lately, I've been sitting in this seat for upwards of three minutes, and then I forced myself to say hello and try and be nice, and I could. Sometimes I get the same thing back, you know, which is like you say mirroring hello, and then sometimes it goes really badly, and then you end up talking to someone for seven hours and hearing all about their life and times that I don't want that either.
You know that happened to me yesterday. On my right, I put my tea in the center. I'm so tired. That was amazing, but I'm so tired. Put my teen right and then you know, who's.
That next to me?
An Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Bishop Nice take the seat next week in the robes with the cap see.
I would be like, I would love that to like tell me all about that, because I got to know what's.
Going on there.
We ended up talking for like three hours.
It's interesting, though, because when somebody has I am interested in people, particularly people who who have a faith which is identifiable and faithful, you know, in the sense that you know, I have quite a lot of atheist friends, and I'm envious of the amount of faith they have that they're correct. I like, wow, you really you're the most faith driven person I've ever met. You one hundred percent believe you're right. I've never had that in my life. Now, with what you're doing, you've really got to believe you.
Do you doubt? Do you ever doubt? Sometimes that you think what am I doing here?
I don't know if it's well, I feel like I'm gonna I'm going to crack this open for a minute, because Okay, I think it's.
A West It's a Western constrain to think of religion or faith as a belief that you hold in your mind, as opposed to a way of being in the world. Even your first question when you're like, are you still sick? I was like, I don't know what else to be. I don't know how else to.
Be in the world.
Then then then through like you know, making love my compass, and in the in the sick tradition, and maybe there's something about the sick tradition being as a mystical tradition. You know, it's and then it's a young tradition. So it's it's a tradition that we do not proselytize. We do not believe that our way is the better way, even the only way is right.
See that's I think any any group of people that say, look, this is what we do, but it's not the only way to do it. Immediately you have my attention. I'm like, okay, well that seems reasonable to me.
Yeah, let's start with reasonability and then we'll get to then I'll get to get you to be inspired. Because the the invitation is like wherever you are, whatever path you are.
On, is a path where you can awaken.
Even like the atheists are talking about, if you're inspired by poetry and music and humanity, you you can whatever tools that you have can be a tool to awaken to to transcend a taste, to like, to wonder, to become a sage, and and then from.
That because the underlying it all is our is our connection.
That in the tradition, the belief is that the horror problem to all of our crises, social, economic, political, is disconnection, disconnection from the earth, disconnection from each other, disconnection from ourselves. And so whatever path that gets you to return to a sense of connectedness in your body and your heart and your spirit will return you to the ability the capacity to love.
Okay, so let me ask you this, because you're a human being, You're.
You're on a book tour, You're tired. I know what a book tour is like, and it is hard, and that you are tired. I'm sure you're tired. And you have young children.
You're tired.
Is there ever a point in your life where you think this is Do you get discouraged, if not necessarily like doubt, but discourage. Do you think this hell is insurmountable?
Yeah?
This goes back to why I reacted so strongly when you said the word positive earlier.
Right, it's interesting to me. Yeah, I was like, oh, okay, because my.
Sometimes I feel deeply hopeless.
I put my babies to sleep, I pick up my phone and I'm scrolling, and my aith algorithm delivers me to the front lines of Gaza, where I'm looking into the shut eyes of children who look like my own, and I just the despair, I mean, the last ten months low despair is so deep, so deep, and the hopelessness for me, hope has become like a feeling that ebbs and flows, that waxes and wanes. Sometimes it's really big and bright and luminous, like a full moon, and you would.
Say that was really, that's really positive.
And then sometimes it's a cresset, and sometimes it's just not there at all. And I have come to understand that what matters is the work that my hands do in the dark.
Can I keep myself going?
Can I can I keep Can I wake up in the morning and still give my kids breakfast even when I And what animates me to keep doing that is Joy, your podcast Joy. In the Sick tradition, Joy is trying to slated as jardvi Kola, which literally means ever rising spirits, even in darkness, ever rising Joy.
It's it's not about the past the future at all.
It's about the present now, here now, can I show up with the buoyant energy in my body to keep moving my hands, to keep moving my voice, to keep moving my body in the world, to play my role in the sacred labor that that is before me.
Whatever it is, I think that's beautiful. I think that it's it's uh. I think it's a wonderful, embraceable philosophy. But it's interesting though that it has echoes of so many, like you say, so many many other Yeah, I know so little about the Sikh tradition that I know so little about you know about Eastern religious My back ground is in Western mostly you know, Judeo Christian religions, and and I'm I'm fascinated by them. But the more mysterious they are when you look at them. And what I mean by that is if you look at the you know, Moses on Mount Sinai, or or the or the or Origin of Alexandria and early Christianity and the Christian mystics. Basically it's the mysticism. It's the mysticism, yes, that I find fascinating. And there was a there's something you said about about the the Origin story which I thought I found fascinating, which is about the silence and the choiet, the the I saw something on YouTube years ago when one of my kids was very small. It was just we're looking this thing about the planets, and it was you know, outer space and the planets, and it was you know, some science program from or something, and but basically it said, the universe is made up mostly of black holes, and mostly black in black holes, mostly it's silence, and most of the universe is quiet and nothing is happening, and that is the that and it is in the silence. It's in the silence. It seems to tie in to the mysticism of the religions I know, and I know nothing about yours, but but the the idea that that God is in the silence, that the like, the like, the mysticism and the the peace is in that feeling of like nothingness, even if you like almost like oblivion. And a personal level, I saw that when I was drinking, you know, when I when I was alcoholically drinking, I was seeking oblivion. I was seeking nothingness. And I wonder if if that wonderful. Wonder first of all, if that's my wound, but also where does that could that nothing that's come from that just that quiet, peaceful nothing's really going on. You know that feeling you get when your kids are asleep and the house is asleep. Yeah, everybody's asleep and you're awake, but you're nearly asleep and the children are sleeping.
That quietness. I love that.
I love that, and that I think is the that's the center of the universe for me. Is that in any way related to what you're talking about?
Absolutely? Absolutely well.
I feel I'm beginning to understand it a little now.
No, I'm fascinated by it because when I said the word positive and you did react quite unexpectedly. For me, I was like, oh, I didn't expect you to say no, I don't see it like that. I expected you to say, yes, I am very positive. But that's good. You know that it's good for me. How would you describe.
It then, if you don't describe it as positive.
M joyful, powerful, yes, fierce, alive, wise, And maybe we go back to that compass for a moment, this compass.
You might appreciate this actually, because all all of these wisdom traditions call us to love. We've heard it for thousands of years. But are you know why aren't we practicing it. Why hasn't it transformed the world already? And and so I was obsessed with this question of how, how how do we put it into practice as ordinary people?
And we got together with a team of researchers.
And neuroscience and ethics and history and psychology and and identify these ten core practices which I began to see as points on a compass. So this compass is actually an evidence based tool, and this is going to go come back to you because we realized, I realize that the problem in this culture is that people think about love is a feeling like you fall in love. And certainly, when my child was placed on in my arms, my son the first time, I was shaking and sobbing, and I was like, this is love.
I'm falling in love. I'm falling in love.
And I was, I was falling. But my mother then opened up her bag, took out her doll and jol and began to feed me like you just saw her do, like feeding her baby while I'm feeding my baby, Like she's never stopped laboring for me. My mother has known what I took me a long time to get that love is sweet labor, it's fierce it's demanding, it's imperfect, it's life giving, and that if love is labor, then love contains the whole range of human emotions.
Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love.
Rage is the force we harness to protect that which we love, and when we feel like we've reached our limit, wonder is what returns us to love.
All of these emotions, would you grief, rage?
You know? To push to to listen. People might not think of them as positive emotions. Sometimes they don't feel good, right, they don't feel good, And that's why we like try to numb ourselves. I don't know if that's part of why you reach for the bottle, Like it's hard to feel. It's hard to feel all parts of ourselves. It takes courage, right, But can we tend parts of ourselves like we would our own beloved child and say, oh, my love, this grief is welcome, This rage is welcome. Let me accompany you, Let me wonder about you. You are a part of me I do not yet know, And that wondering accompanying is the process of alchemizing that energy into courageous action, into how we respond. And so that's what I'm inviting people into revolutionary Love is like a way, a constant. It's a framework for being human together, fully alive, together, fully in community, together with all parts of ourselves in here and out there.
I'm very intrigued and delighted to have spent some time with you.
I I am.
I wish you'd so much luck with us. I don't think you need luck. I don't think I think. I think it's you're doing the right thing. And it's not that you need my permission or even my endorsement, but it's but I I'm fascinated by it, and.
I feel like, at the risk of offending you, I feel like it is.
A force for good and it is positive, and I for good. I'll take that. I'll it is though. It is a force for good. But I in my own I'm just kind of try to wrap this up a little bit. But in my own kind of cynicism, I fear for you a little bit because when you start, it's like that thing that you said earlier. You know, when when you go out there spread the message of love, it's going to make a lot of people angry, a lot of people angry, especially because they.
Will not believe you.
Yeah, I know that, I know you do.
I guess I'm just saying it to hear myself say it. I think no.
I had to go back into my deep, into my own ancestors wisdom about this. And we're getting on a bus to forty five cities in the middle of this election season where there have been assassination attempts, where people are marching in the streets, hoods off.
You know, with the Nazi bit. Why am I going into the hot winds.
I'm going into the storm with this message, with this medicine, with this antidote, and it's never been safe. And every night for centuries, our sick ancestors have sung a song called Sohila, and in Sohila we sing of death as a wedding day, as a return to the beloved. I hope I live to be a very old woman, Craig, will both be old on.
Our rocking chairs. You're not that much older than me, are you?
Oh? I think I'm I think I'm shockingly older than your You're.
Going to moisturized, keep doing that. I want, I want, I do. I want. I want to live as old as my grandparents.
And even if I don't get to even if this message puts me in harm's way, I I know that when I leave this earth, I'll be returning to the oneess that always is the silence that you speak of, and there is joy in that too.
Whenever that take comes, it should be.
So it's lovely to spend some time with you, Valerie. I wish you would have a good time on that. Don't forget to have a good time. Thank you, and please, I feel terrible because your mom made your breakfast you haven't eaten it yet, So go and eat your breakfast and say I to your mom, and I'll I wish you luck and I'll speak to you sir.
Thank you, love you, love bye.
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