Sunday To Sunday Attentive Heart

Welcome to the Attentive Heart Podcast where we explore how an integration of mind, body, and spirit makes us whole and enables us to become more compassionate to ourselves and to others. I'm your host, John Gribowich.

Yeah, I'm just curious, like, have you been able to see a correlation between, say, your practice, your time, and solitude and contemplation? Like, has that been the reason why you've been able to not get that caught up in the things that would maybe drive someone else crazy, let's just say or maybe, maybe it drove yourself crazy before? I mean, like, have you seen some evolution of some sort there?

You know, that's funny because I didn't think of it that way. But because I have a lot of friends and even family members who are Buddhists and how they don't get fazed by things. And I thought that's like meditating. So particularly Zen Buddhists, which is the most kind of strict, kind of meditative practice within Buddhism, sort of don't sweat the small stuff. I know. That's such a cliche, that sounds so California, right? But it's true. But I hadn't comprehensively spent a lot of time around Christian contemplatives. And so pretty recently, when I started to write about them a little bit, I realized it was very similar. It was like, it wasn't that stuff was rolling off their backs, they still got upset, you know, but it was that they were so much, it was so balanced out by their grace.

Graciousness and graciousness in the sense of grace being shared, which I think is something that we also take for granted. Like you don't think about somebody doing that, like that they're sharing grace with you, that they're sharing God's grace with you. And, yeah, so that's been, I think, my own sort of like, I still had some, something's still really upset me, somethings still get under my skin. But I'm more likely to kind of say this is just part of life, rather than this is how it's going to be forever.

And part of that is that contemplative practice because some of contemplation is just letting go of things, right? That you know, too, it's just, you know, where does the verse come from scripture where it's like, “Don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself.” Like, yeah, that's been a real mantra for me. And in the pandemic, like, I can't do anything right now that will control what's happening tomorrow. But what I can do right now, I can control what's happening right now. And my cat just came in and started demanding attention. And I can give it to him, and he's happy right now. But like, who knows how he will feel later?

Right, right, right. It's all the art of being attentive to the presence. You know, I was just thinking about this whole pandemic thing. I think it brought so many of us to this realization that we are really not in control. Like everything we planned for just went up in smoke overnight. But, you know, I just fear like, there was such an urgency to get back to normal to get everyone vaccinated and just come back to life as we knew it before. It's like Jesus, if we miss this opportunity to reevaluate our own lives and what it means to be present in the moment like I almost fear that. I mean, like, we both teach. I teach high school, you teach college undergrads, I mean, what are you seeing with your students? I mean, how have they been able to process let's say, the pandemic, and do you see them being more open to just living life that's in a more contemplative space being more present in the moment not worrying about tomorrow? I mean, what do you pick up?

Well, no, they're much more anxious, unfortunately. I think that our young adults are, there's a real mental health crisis. I don't know if you're seeing this with your high school students, you probably are like, there's a real shortage of resources on top of an increased demand for resources that's coming from a real place. The anxiety is that you have no sense of like things that I thought were guaranteed. Like, for us, our students, they're at UC Berkeley. They worked so hard to get in. And then they get there. And it's like, oh, wait, now I'm with everybody else who worked so hard to get in. And we're in competition with one another.

So in fact, we were talking in class on Tuesday about scarcity mentality. And that idea that there are not enough resources to go around and that they're being pitted against one another for those resources. And that's how capitalism wants us to be. It wants us to be fighting one another for resources, rather than assuming that there is enough out there for everyone. And I think that's true. You know, spiritually to that there's this idea that some people are really good at spirituality and religion, and that they get all the spiritual resources and everybody that there's a limit. It's sort of like God's grace is sort of, like finite. I don't know, it's like this Calvinistic thing that Americans get into.

That's a whole tangent, but I think our students or young adults are really struggling, really looking for community, but also don't know how to find it or not sure. Like, even how one of the things I see a lot is, how they even struggle to be in a course discussion. Because they haven't had practice with that. Right? You know, that's really hard. Because I was actually talking to a friend, oh, another friend. He is a friend who's a Quaker pastor. Talking about contemplatives, right? So like he and his wife are the co-pastors of Berkeley Friends, which is the large Quaker community in Berkeley. And he too, was saying that, like, it's just so so it's so hard, because there's so much of like, we should get together. And then so like, that was like, and then nothing happens, right?

Like, so we're still kind of saying that a lot to each other, like, we should get together and do this. And there's this push to do that. But there's this anxiety to have, like, how do we even talk to one another? How do we even communicate in ways that aren't just at a superficial level of artifice? That's a struggle right now, for real.

Yeah, I mean, it seems to go back to the need for some type of home church, almost, I mean, and not in a formal sense, or not that a home church would ever even necessarily be considered formal. But, you know, as you were saying that I was thinking, yeah, there is this value of like, coming weekly for like, church gatherings. But of course, we've been so just so wounded by a lot of things that happen in the church that we're thinking like, well, that might be the last place I might want to go on Sunday, or whenever but like, there is a need to gather, you know, yeah. And I don't really know what that should look like right now. I mean, I always ask my students every Monday, like, you know, what they did over the weekend, and either they're just not telling me the truth. But I do get the sense. A lot of them don't do much. You know, and so like, I'm wondering, like, what does that mean?

Yeah, I'm not trying to make generalizations. I know, there are lots of students who are very social and whatnot, but not to have like, some type of grounding, that you come back to that's, that's that is home, but is beyond just say your house. You know, I don't know what that looks like today. But it definitely seems to me to be something that is needed in order to kind of foster a genuine community of some sort.

Yeah, I think we've lost that sense of community as a deliberate thing, like something that you cultivate. And to cultivate, you know, to grow right so that you grow a community you don't just stumble into it or your community doesn't have to just be the people who live in your dorm or the people who go to your 5 pm mass. I mean, that is your community but that doesn't liberate slow building of community, that takes a long time like that building. It's like becoming friends with somebody over years rather than, you know, just meeting and deciding like we're going to be friends just because nobody else here likes the same things we do. But that has so many rewards, it's like being in any kind of relationship that is that you put a lot of time into, and then includes your faith relationships. It's much more rewarding when you are patient with it. But our society's impatient and younger people are more impatient, right? Just because of the nature, of feeling like things need to move quicker.

But it's really funny. I asked my students today, we do check in once a week and just kind of go around the room and like, you know, say one fun thing, like last week, it was, where are you from? And what's your favorite thing about where you grew up? And this week, it was what's one thing you're looking forward to? That just even if it's a little thing, like, I'm gonna go get ice cream, or like three people in my class said nothing? It's just Oh, no, really? Yeah. So yeah, that was really sad for me.

Do you think that they just don't want to vocalize it? Do you think that's an issue? I mean, that's something I'm always wondering like, are they just, yeah. Are they doing this stuff, but they just don't want anyone else in the class to know? I mean, like, you know? I don't know. We're in midterms. So that could honestly be strange. Right? So are you looking for the midterm speech? Oh, are there? What's Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm looking. And when students said, I'm looking forward to the end of this, oh. You're looking forward to something.

But I think it is this fear of, on the one hand, they have a lot of pressure to be vulnerable, and like, talk about their emotions. But they also have a hard time being vulnerable and talking about their emotions, just like the rest of us, because it's scary. And it's, and, you know, spirituality is emotional, and we can't separate emotions from that. So, yeah, it's kind of a mess right now, for anybody who's emerging from the pandemic. But I think we're particularly going to see how this impacted people who were teenagers, it seems very dramatic, the impacts on them.

Yeah, I mean, as it is mean, all this contemplation stuff. And there are other spiritual things that we talk about, I mean, lead you to want to be a person of hope. So you look at this, and you're like, okay, bad situation. But where is the light in the situation? I mean, have you been able to search that out? Or is there something that you say, well, it may be bad, but maybe I need to reframe this, or look at this a different way, because I see something that maybe was unexpected, because of all this?

It's kind of like, when you have a tragedy or an illness, and you make it through that, and then you have another one, and then you have another one, and then you have another one. And it's not that it gets easier. It's just that you become and I don't want to say resilient because I think that gets tossed off as kind of like, you know, oh, you just building resilience. But what happens is that you develop more tools. And contemplation for me is one of those. Solitude has become much more important to me as a result of having a lot of difficult experiences. I found that I process things better in solitude, including spiritual things.

Recently, I read something that said, you know, about being an adult, and it's so funny when people talk about adulting as a verb, yeah. But being an adult is sort of knowing that every year three or four really hard things are gonna happen. And it's so true, right? And that you just adjust to that. And that doesn't mean life doesn't have joy and rewards on the other hand, right? So like, you know, when I finally got COVID, after dodging it for a couple of years, I was like, “Well, this is it, you know, like, gonna die when I die, because that's what we've been told for, you know, two years.” You're gonna get it. And I just sort of looked at myself saying that and said, and I just laughed, like “No, I'm not. I mean, maybe I will, I don't know.”

But that awareness of our mortality, that awareness of the brevity of life, that momentum. Or it’s a thing as a contemplation, it gets easier as you go through more and more difficult experiences. So when you're young, like our students, and you're not used to that, it's much more difficult to realize that you have a lot to celebrate and be joyful and be thankful for and to look forward to, in addition to life is hard, right? So yeah, so it's too bad. I really hope that those students who said they weren't looking forward to everything, go get some ice cream.

I mean, like, you gotta hit up the yogurt cart, at least. I mean, I know, right? Every day, there's a different flavor. So Wow, that's great. You know, alright, so maybe we could just end this by switching gears completely. I just want to talk a little bit about music, because it's something that we also have a common appreciation for. I know, we have a common appreciation for Bob Dylan and whatnot. But I mean, I am just more curious about, given everything you talked about in the midst of this conversation. Like, how has music played a role in your spiritual evolution? Or has it, or do you bring that into your practice in a way?

Yeah, absolutely. I have been really lucky in the last few years to write about a few times and I hope to continue to do so the intersections of music and spirituality, in particular, was the singer-songwriter types, because I think there's something about that vocation of being a singer-songwriter, whether you're Dylan or Joni Mitchell, you know, Young, even more, contemporary people like Billie Eilish or Steve Lacey, who are kind of like picking up the torch for that. That you live very closely to your music and that you write songs, as a book. It's vocational, right? It's a ministry. It's about healing people's brokenness. It's that tikkun olam Jewish idea of bringing the broken world back together, I think that music can do that.

Also, like music is very close to us. In the sense that it can create a spiritual experience so I can hear something, anything from Box mass and B minor, you know, to the Bob Dylan “Rolling Thunder Revue” bootleg album, which I think is like a great spiritual album, because it's so much about being with the audience. You can hear how much the audience was alive at those shows. And so we feel in communion, like, so you can listen to music when you're alone and then you can feel connected to the musician to other people who are listening. And you can listen to you go to a concert and have that collective experience. And both of those things are so joyful, and the absence of live music during COVID was really difficult in my house because I'm married to a performing musician. And so I definitely went and it was like, the first summer out of COVID, we went to an outdoor concert, everybody had to wear masks. Everybody was sitting far apart. But it was so overwhelming to be hearing live music again. Like just everybody started crying.

It was just like the first time you know, you hugged your mom or something after the pandemic, it was just like, wow, this is this collective thing. And I don't think it's a coincidence that like, throughout scriptures in every religious tradition, people are always singing and dancing to worship the Deity right so yeah, so in some people do it in clown makeup with a big hat like like when he was in his rolling blender years, or with a wig like he does in the must be Santa's video.

Oh my gosh. It's making me so happy and because it just doesn't get much better. I mean, come on. If Bob doesn't show us, Jesus, I don't know who does. It is made of disguises, you know? Yeah. Alright. So you know, last thing I mean, thanks so much for this time Kaya and maybe you just give us a little insight on the book you're working on maybe. You know, give us a plug for it. Because I think the topic is so pertinent to everyone's life. We all have someone who we need to forgive, we also know who we don't want to forgive. So tell us a little bit about it.

So the book is almost done, knock on wood, I'm almost done with the first draft. And interestingly, the journey of the book went from, I think I'm gonna write about people who think that they need to forgive other people as individuals too. That's some of the board but also to how do we come to peace with institutions that we feel, have failed us, whether that's a church or your country, or the school where you work or the music industry or anything? How do we differentiate much like you were asking earlier about the difference between the church and the people in the church? And how do we come to an understanding that forgiveness is a process, it's not something that just happens once? It's like an ongoing process that involves a lot of making amends and a lot of repentance work, and also how sometimes you just can't bring yourself to forgive someone and that doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. That is probably indicative of the harm. It’s just not just two grades. And that's okay. You know, and that God still, you know, doesn't God doesn't turn God's back on you because of that. So yeah, so I hope that people will read it with an open mind and that they will be willing to. Yeah, it's that they'll be willing to think that forgiveness isn't a one-and-done and it's not easy and it shouldn't be easy. It should be hard, hard work. So yeah,

Awesome. Well, I can't wait to read it. I mean, all your other books, I think are all worth the time to read. I haven't read them off. But every single article and book I have read of yours, I've always found to be a great delight. So thanks for being here with me today. And maybe this will be the first of many of these types of conversations.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Attentive Heart Podcast. We hope that you were able to find it helpful in your spiritual journey in practice. This podcast is produced in collaboration with Sunday to Sunday productions and the Witness podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please subscribe and share it with friends.