Part of the outgrowth of Meta Commerse’s work in racial healing is the development of The Race Relations Station. The Race Relations Station is a community action project which has the vision of a well, diverse, and just community and has as its mission racial healing and relationship building through story.
In this episode my guests, Liz Huesemann and Father Dennis Fotinos, introduce us to The Race Relations Station, its beginnings, and its ongoing work.
As I say in the episode, healing work is a form and part of peace work. For those of us who are Christians, peace is rooted in the Jewish concept of shalom. Shalom is a state experienced not only as a lack of conflict but also as one of being well and whole. Peace, for Christians (and not just for Christians), is brought about and sustained by expressions of love. Among those expressions of love is the practice of edification, or the practice of building a person up to enable her or him to be fully who she or he can be. Edification occurs as much through little daily behaviors of caring as it does through bigger gestures. Consequently, healing work and peace work must always mover beyond awareness, understanding, and acknowledgment to specific actions in daily life. The work of The Race Relations Station gives us specific practices that enable us to brings about both healing and peace. You can learn of these practices in detail by participating in the resources offered by The Race Relations Station. You can learn more about those resources from Meta’s website: storymedicineworldwide.com and from The Race Relations Station page on that website.
Liz Huesemann has over 40 years of working in the non-profit world in both administration as well as direct services. She has been an activist for human rights since she can remember.
Father Dennis Fotinos is an Episcopal priest who, since 1972 has served churches in South Florida, Western North Carolina, Western Louisiana, Pittsburg, PA, and Houston, TX. Since retiring to Asheville, Father Fotinos has been active in issues of racial justice and healing, including helping Meta start The Race Relations Station. He also assists with the Diocese of Western North Carolina in providing guidance to congregations in the search and call process of new clergy.
My guests for this episode are the creators and editors of and some of the artists who participate with Foundling House. Foundling House is a website, journal, and resource, birthed in Knoxville, TN, dedicated to exploring the human truths of the Kingdom of Christ through story, art, and music.
It has been the tendency of conservative Christianity to desire and often demand answers that are certain and unquestionable. Consequently, complicated questions, hard, troubling questions are often ignored, handled superficially and inadequately, discouraged, and sometimes even rebuked. But all faiths, and especially the Christian faith, have questions, frequently troubling.
Art has always been a source of exposing troubling questions. Progressive Christian thinkers have as well. What is wonderful about the Foundling House folks is that they bring together the questioning person of faith and questioning art, doing their work, as they say they do, at the intersection of faith and art. You can learn about and enjoy the art of these folks on their website: foundlinghouse.com and their facebook page: facebook.com/foundlinghouse/
My guests for this episode are:
Adam Whipple (to whom, if you have been listening to this podcast, you have already been introduced in PGE14):
Adam is a skilled multi-instrumentalist, arranger, composer, studio musician, photographer, writer, and founder and primary editor of Foundling House. You can learn more about Adam at adamwhipple.com and have access to his albums, poetry, prose, and visual art.
Janna Barbar:
Janna is a teller of stories, a writer of poems, and a lifelong member of the tribe of humanity. The grownup daughter of a Baptist preacher and his Southern belle wife, she now lives in Knoxville, TN, with her pastor husband, two teenagers, and three pets. She is the author of Hidden in Shadow: Tales of Grief, Lamentation, and Faith. You can learn more about Janna at jannabarber.com.
Jeanine Joyner:
Jeanine is a native Texan transplanted into Middle Tennessee. A mother of five, she somehow carved out the time to write her debut novel Paper Dolls: Trust Your Instinctsbetween homeschooling and hosting house concerts. She now lives in a home surrounded by rolling hills and farmlands, appropriately named Arundelle Green, after a character who captured her imagination in the Andrew Peterson book, The Warden and the Wolf King. You can learn more about Jeanine at arundellegreen.com.
Stephen and Rachel Mosley:
Rachel and Stephen Mosley met in a freshman year high school geography class sometime late last century. Married for twenty years, they’ve just recently begun to write and perform their own earthy, soft brand of folk, and to share it beyond their own front porch. Their music is heavily influenced by whatever they’re reading – Flannery O’Connor, Wendell Berry, and G.K. Chesterton are favorites – as well by their five wild and unruly red-headed children. You can learn more about Stephen and Rachel at themosleysmusic.com. Their song heard on this episode, ‘Eiderdown,’ comes from their album, Ordinary Time and is used by permission.
Rachel, Inspired by her artistic, book-loving family, discovered her love of children’s illustration and was delighted to find that she has a real knack for it. She uses a combination of hand drawing and digital illustration in her work, and loves to experiment with new and unique printing processes. As the proud mom of five little citizens of the world, her work is particularly inspired by travel, nature and classic children’s literature. You can learn more about Rachel’s work at rachelmosley.com.
Chris Yokel:
Chris is an Associate Professor of English at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts, and is an arts and culture writer whose works have appeared in publications such as, Tweetspeak Poetry, The Curator, The Molehill, and currently on The Rabbit Room. Chris is also the author of several books of poetry, including his latest collection Autumn Poems. In 2018 he helped co-found The Poetry Pub, an online community for poets. He enjoys walking in the woods, visiting coffee shops, and poking through used bookstores with his wife Jen. You can read some of Chris’ poems at chrisyokel.com.
This episode is divided into three segments. In Segment 1 Adam, Janna, and Jeanine talk about the origin and work of Foundling House. In Segment 2 I talk with Stephen and Rachel. We listen to and discuss their song, ‘Eiderdown,’ and Rachel reads and we discuss her poem, ‘Small Birds.’ In Segment 3 I talk with Chris and Janna. Chris reads and we discuss his poem, ‘On the Problem of Evil,’ and then Janna reads and we discuss her poem, ‘Hesed.’
During my interview with Ken Sehested in the previous episode, and especially as I reflected on the interview immediately afterwards, I felt there was more that need to be discussed and it shouldn’t wait until a date several months in the future as I initially planned. So, I contacted Ken and he graciously agreed to a follow-up interview. This episode, therefore, is Part 2.
What I have understood more deeply form my conversation with Ken is that peace work should be, must be, is, fundamentally, in its essence and defining character, concrete and practical. It is realized in real life and daily situations. While peace theory is vital and essential to providing understanding, grounding, vision, and a framework, the theory is only as valuable as its ability to create real difference in negotiating differences, resolving conflicts, changing attitudes and behaviors, and enabling people to live together productively, positively, harmoniously, and in community, without violence and abuse.
Even though we discussed it some in the previous interview, this episode will focus on the transition Ken made from being the Director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America to being co-pastor of the congregation, Circle of Mercy.
As you will hear Ken explain, disarming the nations is rooted in and linked to the disarming of the hearts of individuals and that effective change begins and occurs through mobilized organization on a local level. This gives local congregations and other local groups powerful opportunities to make real difference.
We conclude our discussion talking about Ken’s most recent transition, that of his focus on writing though his website, prayer&politiks.
As I say in the introduction to this episode, I have two goals in this ongoing series on peacebuilding. The first goal is to enable you to become aware of the extent of people active in peace work and peacebuilding efforts and to learn how each person draws resources from her or his faith or worldview perspective to do her or his peace work. The second goal is to provide for you practical resources for peace work and peacebuilding in your own life.
You may have noticed a change in my terminology. Formerly, I was using ‘peacemaking,’ because that is the term used by Glen Stassen in his book, Just Peacemaking, and Irfan Omar and Michael Duffey in their book, which inspired this series, Peacemaking and the Challenge of Violence in World Religions. However, I like the distinctions Rabbi Amy Eilberg makes in her book, From Enemy to Friend. She describes ‘peacekeeping’ as that which militaries do to prevent further violence in a situation, ‘peacemaking’ as the negotiation process diplomats or mediators do with larger groups or nations, and ‘peacebuilding’ as what ordinary people do in the course of their daily lives. Since my focus in this series is on what we can do, I am changing my term.
Although I didn’t know this at the time of recording, this episode is the first of a two-part interview. In this episode and the next, I focus on resources from my Baptist heritage.
Ken is the editor/author of the online journal, prayer&politiks. Once upon a time he played football at Baylor University, back when few outside Texas had heard of the place (and its sports teams were the ragamuffins of their conference). And a traveling teenage youth evangelist. No longer a teenager, he is still an evangelist, though his understanding of what it means to follow Jesus has changed considerably.
Ken’s closest brush with jobs people understand were as a typesetter and, later, as a stonemason. Being picky about your work means creating your own, as a full-time mendicant with Seeds magazine (1978) when it became a monthly magazine focusing on food security and world hunger concerns; then as the founding director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America (1984); as founding co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, NC (2001); and now as the electronic ink slinger of this site.
In her extensive work with peacebuilding, Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer (Listen to PGE12 below.) stresses the importance of focusing more on the heart than the head. By this she means that building bridges of peace and relationships between people who disagree and/or are in conflict more often occurs when the people involved in the disagreement/conflict tell and listen to each other’s personal stories and life-journeys rather that when each tries to persuade the other through reasoning. Focusing on the head tends to devolve into further conflict and destructive behavior.
Meta Commerse (Listen to PGEs 24-26 below.) speaks of this process of bridge building, peacebuilding, and healing through the telling of personal stories as story medicine.
In the efforts to deal with LGBTQ rights and issues through the head, bitter conflict, destructive behavior, and tragic brokenness has been the result. Drowned out in these efforts has been the stories of LGBTQ people, especially LGBTQ Christians. But heeding the wisdom of Rabbi Fuchs Kreimer and Meta Commerse is vital. It is what changes minds and brings healing and reconciliation. Hearing stories such as the ones you will hear in this episode is what helped change my mind and has helped me to grow in my walk with Christ.
So, the purpose of this episode is to let you hear the personal life stories and journeys of four LGBTQ Christians who span three generations. My guests are Nancy Flippin, Mindy Allen, Amy Cantrell, and Sully Hart.
Nancy and Mindy are married to each other. Nancy is the daughter of missionaries and lived in Seoul, Korea for six years moving back to the United States to attend Biola College where she earned a B.S. in Mathematics. After working for a few years for Corporate America, Nancy knew this was not her calling in life. She worked as a campus minister for three years at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, GA, and then began working in affordable housing development in the inner city of Atlanta for ten years. After that she worked for eighteen years with the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Currently, Nancy is the CFO at Manna Food Bank in Asheville, NC. Nancy serves as a deacon at First Baptist Church, Asheville and as treasurer for the Alliance of Baptists. Nancy’s faith journey has led her to engage in social justice initiatives and to advocate for systemic changes that will lift up those who have been and are oppressed.
Mindy holds both an undergraduate degree (B.A. from Shepherd College) and a graduate degree (M.A. from Marshall University) in Health and Physical Education. She is a life-long educator, having taught in West Virginia, Hawaii, Georgia, and North Carolina. After living and working in Atlanta for thirty one years, Mindy and Nancy moved to Asheville, NC, where Mindy currently works at Evergreen Community Charter School. Mindy is a runner/walker, photographer, and outdoor enthusiast. As a life-long seeker and follower of Jesus, Mindy has a passion for social justice and serves on the Mission Council at her beloved community of faith, First Baptist Church, Asheville.
Amy (Reverend Amy Cantrell) lives, moves, and has her being in the intentional community, BeLoved Asheville where she is deeply engaged in the daily life of loving neighbors and building community with people on the streets, Latinx and African American neighbors, and a whole host of people committed to making love real in the world in our daily lives. She was school educated at Converse College and Columbia Theological Seminary and street educated in Harlem, NY; Ponce DeLeon Ave, Atlanta; and on South French Broad Ave. and Grove Streets in downtown Asheville, NC. She is a pastor in the Presbyterian Church, USA. A queer woman who is married and who loves being mom to twin six year olds. She loves the color purple, playing guitar, studying movement history, and being a pretend alligator with her kids on the playground. Find her on Facebook @Amy Cantrell and @BeLovedAsheville. For more information about BeLoved Asheville, visit www.belovedasheville.com.
Sullivan “Sully” Hart is a native of Asheville, North Carolina. On his path as a musician, Sully has been fortunate to sing with many church communities, learning from different Christian traditions and practices. In 2017, Sully graduated summa cum laude from Furman University with his bachelor’s in vocal performance. Sully earned his master’s degree in vocal pedagogy from the New England Conservatory of Music in 2019. Sully currently lives in Boston where he works as a freelance musician and church chorister. Sully also writes a blog titled Off the Syllabus which you can read at offthesyllabus.com.
As I say in my introduction to this interview, in her superb book, These Truths: A History of the United States, historian Jill Lepore holds a particular understanding of history. She says that history is, ‘…not merely a form of memory but also a form of investigation, to be disputed, like philosophy, its premises questioned, its evidence examined, its arguments countered (p. xvi).’ She argues that such an understanding of history-as-inquiry was central to the nation’s founding and that to study the past is to unlock the prison of the present (pp. xvi-xvii).
In my mind, such an understanding of history-as-inquiry and as a key for unlocking the prison of the present is also central to a church that needs to be continuously reforming. What we call the Reformation was a first occasion of significant Church reform. During that time the Church was in crisis because of the mutually reinforcing interplay between certain Christian doctrines and clerical/ecclesial corruption. While it is true that since the Reformation, the church has been in the process of continuously reforming, it seems to me that we may be in the process of a second significant reformation. The Church is in significant crisis again, and for similar reasons as before. We are in what is broadly being called a time that is post-modern, post-colonial, and post-Christendom.
For a lot of us, especially those of us who have been his students, a person whom we believe to be one of the most astute interpreters of the Church is Dr. Bill Leonard. It is to him that we turn for insight into how the Church has come to be in its present crisis and for wisdom about what Christians and the Church should do moving forward.
An essential resource to broaden and deepen your understanding of the insights and wisdom Dr. Leonard shares in this interview is the archives for his regular contributions to Baptist News Global.
As I say in the introduction to this episode, an article in The Lancet by Jane Davis makes the case that reading literature out loud has potential for healing and wellness. As a part of The Reader Organization, Davis says, “Our hypothesis is that reading literature aloud with others offers something uniquely valuable.” She goes on to say, It “…facilitates the creation of a series of powerful interplays: between the written text and the aural experience; between hearing the text from outside and processing it within; between one’s own experience and that of the author and characters; between the privacy of personal consciousness and the public experience of group…For by reading aloud in a group it may be that readers experience what we might call interpersonality both with the book, and its author and characters, and with other group members…To see oneself in others, to see others in oneself, this is the rich experience going on within the group and with the book (‘Enjoying and Enduring: groups read aloud for wellbeing,’ by Jane Davis, The Lancet Vol. 373, Issue 9665, February 28, 2009, pp. 714-715.).
Jewish and Christian scripture have always ranked among the worlds greatest literature, and both Jews and Christians have known since the time each community was started that the reading aloud of their scripture was something important and profound in multiple ways, not the least of which was for healing and wellbeing.
What I love about the art of Biblical Storytelling is that, as my guest, Dr. Kathy Culmer says, the telling of scripture adds something more that simply the reading of scripture. It enables, as The Lancet article claims, an interplay and interpersonality for people in which they identify with the characters, the story, and others listening to the story. They are enabled to live the story and see themselves in others and others in themselves.
Of course it takes wonderful storytellers to enable such experiences to happen, and my guest is one such storyteller! If anyone can transport you into the story, it is Dr. Culmer!
Dr. Kathy Hood Culmer is an author, storyteller, speaker and teacher and Christian educator. A graduate of Spelman College, the University of South Florida, and United Theological Seminary, Kathy holds a B.A. in English, an M.A. in English, and a D. Min. in Biblical Storytelling. She has taught on the secondary and college levels in a variety of subject areas ranging from English to Speech Communications, to Broadcast Journalism, to Religious Education. As a professional storyteller, she has been a teller and workshop presenter in churches, schools, libraries, at festivals, retreats, on college campuses, in business settings, and a variety of other venues. Kathy has performed at the Exchange Place at the National Storytelling Festival, Georgia State University, Duke University’s Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, the Texas Storytelling Festival, and was the Featured Storyteller at the Network of Biblical Storytellers 2008 Festival Gathering. She was a part of a 2008 Biblical Storytelling Mission Trip to The Gambia in West Africa. Her life’s work is to provide words of encouragement, truth, and inspiration to others through telling, writing, and speaking. She is the editor of a collection of personal narratives called Yes, Jesus Loves Me: 31 Love Stories and is also author of “Big Wheel Cookies: Two For A Penny,” published in The Rolling Stone and Other Read Aloud Stories and “Feasts a Plenty,” published in Holiday Stories All Year Round.
You can learn more about Dr. Culmer here and from her website: kathyculmer.com.
The reason I am seeking to keep Steady State Economics as a subject before you, as my audience, is that few other economic options subsume economics under the ecosystem. Rather other economic options subsume the ecosystem under the economy. In addition, most other economic options growth oriented economies and assume that the ecology can be saved while still growing the economy and this does not provide solution enough to address the stress every world economy is putting on our planet. If those monitoring the changes in our planet are correct, our time to make necessary and important changes is getting shorter. Awareness and implementation of a better economic option is vital!
In every field of thought and research there are the visionaries, pioneers, and trailblazers. In Steady State Economics that visionary/pioneer/trailblazer is Herman Daly!
Herman E. Daly is professor emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. From 1988 to 1994 he was senior economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank. Prior to 1988 he was alumni professor of economics at Louisiana State University, where he taught economics for twenty years. He holds a BA from Rice University and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. He has served as Ford Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of Ceará (Brazil), as a Research Associate at Yale University, as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, and as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Brazil. He has served on the boards of directors of numerous environmental organizations, and was co-founder and associate editor of the journal Ecological Economics. His interest in economic development, population, resources, and environment has resulted in over a hundred articles in professional journals and anthologies, as well as numerous books, including Toward a Steady-State Economy (1973); Steady-State Economics (1977; 1991); Valuing the Earth(1993); Beyond Growth (1996); Ecological Economics and the Ecology of Economics (1999); Ecological Economics: Theory and Applications (with J. Farley, 2003, 2011); Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development (2007); and From Uneconomic Growth to a Steady-State Economy (2014).
He is co-author with theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. of For the Common Good (1989 ;1994) which received the 1991 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas for Improving World Order. In 1996 he received Sweden’s Honorary Right Livelihood Award, and the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1999 he was awarded the Sophie Prize (Norway) for contributions in the area of Environment and Development; in 2001 the Leontief Prize for contributions to economic thought, and in 2002 the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic for his work in steady-state economics. In 2010 the National Council for Science and the Environment (USA) gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014 he received the Blue Planet Prize awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan.
This episode is Part 3 of my interviews with Meta Commerse. In this episode we bring together the threads of Meta’s writing and aesthetic arts and her healing arts into the tapestry of their use in racial healing. As I say in the interview, if we are going to have a better future, especially together as people broken by prejudice, misperception, understanding, and the terrible history of hate, violence, and oppression that is the legacy of white supremacy, we have to know where we are going–a vision of the future and what it looks like– and have a way to get there–a map or guide.
Meta offers one option both for the vision and guide/mission. On her website, storymedicineworldwide.com, there is a tab called The Race Relations Station. Under that tab is a tab for Community Action Project. On the Community Action Project page there is a Vision and a Mission statement. The Vision is: A Well, Diverse, and Just Community. The Mission is: Racial Healing and Relationship Building through Story.
Under Meta’s wise and practiced guidance and the guidance of other good visionaries like her, it is a realizable journey I am eager to take together with any of you willing to join.
One of my favorite posters that I had on over the desk of my office in the church I pastored is one of Sitting Bull saying, “Let us put our minds together and see what life we will make for our children.” If we follow folks like Meta, it will be a better one!
This episode is the Part 2 of 3 interviews with Meta Commerse. Part 1 focused on Meta’s poetry and novel. In this episode we discuss the story/journey of Meta’s development of Story Medicine and her use of it to facilitate healing.
As Meta said in Part 1, “My work with people, it takes them to those stories, to those places that they had not told and they had not spent time with, and that they had spent a lot of energy not telling. And preparing a way, working with them, somehow, to prepare a way for them to find their language and break their silence and go ahead and tell it.” This is the nature and purpose of story medicine.
You can learn more about Meta, her Story Medicine Wisdom School, and her publications (in addition to how to buy her books) from her website: