Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to OKAP Daily with the
Speaker 1: Meet Your Girl Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: it has been an extraordinarily difficult week, and what scares
Speaker 1: me is that we're actually existing in the in between place.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not yet president for two months, but
Speaker 1: the effects of this reality are really taking shape and
Speaker 1: taking hold. And by taking hold, I mean taking a
Speaker 1: stranglehold over half the country while the other half is
Speaker 1: elated at their ability to cause pain and subject others
Speaker 1: to levels of cruelty not experienced in modern times. The
Speaker 1: rest of us are trying to figure out what a
Speaker 1: path forward looks like. And I don't even mean a
Speaker 1: path forward in terms of our politics. I mean a
Speaker 1: path forward in terms of our day to day lives.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to try and rebuild community, create
Speaker 1: hopefulness when you are in the midst of despair, when
Speaker 1: you find yourself breaking down into tears multiple times a day,
Speaker 1: when you are experiencing a type of grief that takes
Speaker 1: your breath away. And so today's conversation is with Stephen BlackBerry,
Speaker 1: who I will tell you I needed this conversation so
Speaker 1: very much, and the reason being is that we are
Speaker 1: in the need, in need of radical healing and a
Speaker 1: of where we think our lives are going. And Stephan
Speaker 1: is the founder of the Clearing DC powered by Life
Speaker 1: Well and it is a unique ecosystem around wellness and
Speaker 1: community care, and he offers just so much depth and
Speaker 1: perspective around how we need to see ourselves in this moment,
Speaker 1: or I should say, an offering on how we should
Speaker 1: see ourselves and our communities in this moment. And so
Speaker 1: I hope as we close out the week here and
Speaker 1: try and prepare ourselves for the weeks ahead, that this
Speaker 1: offers a bit of solace, a safe space to sit
Speaker 1: in for the duration of this interview. So coming up
Speaker 1: next my conversation with Stefan BlackBerry. Folks, I am very
Speaker 1: happy to welcome to Okay f Daily Stefan Bradberry, who
Speaker 1: is the founder of the Clearing DC powered by Life
Speaker 1: Well and Stephan. I want you to give us a
Speaker 1: fifty thousand foot view, tell us a bit about the
Speaker 1: Clearing DC powered by Life Well and the work it
Speaker 1: is that you are doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely well. First, happy day. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for having me across the life while ecosystem. We're imagining
Speaker 2: new possibilities of care, connection, community and justice. And one
Speaker 2: of the ways that we do that is the Clearing
Speaker 2: Community Center. I envisioned the Clearing Community Center after reading
Speaker 2: Tony Morrison's Beloved, where Baby Soaks Holy brings together all
Speaker 2: the black books. You know, it starts off when more
Speaker 2: and more there came Baby Sokes Holy, followed by every
Speaker 2: Black man, woman and child made their great heart to
Speaker 2: the Clearing, which was this place that Baby Sokes told
Speaker 2: them that they weren't the glory bound pure of the earth,
Speaker 2: and they weren't the meek and mild of the earth,
Speaker 2: but they were people who deserve to be loved in
Speaker 2: all of their fullness. That she told them to love
Speaker 2: this here flesh of theirs. And I thought about what
Speaker 2: it meant for the enslaved to love their flesh, or
Speaker 2: the formerly enslaver, for people who, by Hoko krok have
Speaker 2: found ways to survive and in some cases thrive, and
Speaker 2: so life well really came from this idea that all people,
Speaker 2: in all places, at all times should be free, healed,
Speaker 2: and whole. And at the Clearing. What we've done is
Speaker 2: we have a built up an amazing yoga community. So
Speaker 2: we're the home of Flowel Yoga, one of DC's only
Speaker 2: black owned yoga studios. We're not the only, but we
Speaker 2: are one of the only. Inside of here, we have
Speaker 2: to create well art collective because the artists are the
Speaker 2: ones who screamed the calls of revolution. Artists are the
Speaker 2: ones that help us look inwards to do outwards. And
Speaker 2: so inside of our center we have a community gallery
Speaker 2: where we're constantly up lifting the works of particularly Galus
Speaker 2: of Color, but people who believe that their art should
Speaker 2: stir the soul and should shake us towards being free.
Speaker 2: We also have Advocate Well, which is our politics and
Speaker 2: policy group, because I understand as someone who used to
Speaker 2: work inside the United States Congress that it's an arena
Speaker 2: and battlefield that some people have to be in. And
Speaker 2: so we lead a team that's constantly thinking about how
Speaker 2: do we put our ideals into action and into practice
Speaker 2: and into policy and into law. And then we have
Speaker 2: work Well, which is our well being consultancy. So whether
Speaker 2: you own a yoga studio or you are the CEO
Speaker 2: of a fortune five hundred company, what we do is
Speaker 2: we help you see the limits to your systems that
Speaker 2: prevent people from being well and help you strategize toward
Speaker 2: environments and toward communities and spaces where individual wellness can
Speaker 2: be tended to and communal well being can be uplifted.
Speaker 1: I love every single piece of the collective and the
Speaker 1: world that you're doing. And I must say that when
Speaker 1: I lived in DC for many, many years, Flow Yoga
Speaker 1: Studio was my favorite.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's where I did my teacher chain on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I lived up the street and attended classes often,
Speaker 1: and so wonderful. You know, right now, as you are
Speaker 1: well aware, and as everybody is listening to this, we
Speaker 1: are living in really uncharted territory where people, namely people
Speaker 1: from historically marginalized communities, are now recognizing that their government,
Speaker 1: who has been elected to lead our government in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, has no desire to see any type of difference,
Speaker 1: to see or or create unity in this country, to
Speaker 1: bring our divided states back together. There is a sense
Speaker 1: right now of dread, of impending dread and doom and hopelessness,
Speaker 1: particularly as many see the announcements day by day of
Speaker 1: who is going to be leading some of our most
Speaker 1: important agencies and departments in this country. And I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about a lot of folks are
Speaker 1: saying they desperately need community, They desperately need to figure
Speaker 1: out what it means to care for yourself in a
Speaker 1: country that not only is saying that we don't care
Speaker 1: about you, but that we're going to make targets of you.
Speaker 1: Cruelty is going to be our new compass. Talk to
Speaker 1: us about how we find stuff on grounding and healing
Speaker 1: at a time when there is so much pain, and frankly,
Speaker 1: we're not even really in the pain part. We're in
Speaker 1: the between space right right.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a few things. The first you know,
Speaker 2: we're in these yet to be United States and what
Speaker 2: could be potentially because I've heard a lot of and
Speaker 2: we kind of heard this during the insurrection, that this
Speaker 2: is not who we are, right there was a lot
Speaker 2: of there's a lot of people that were talking like that.
Speaker 2: And those of us who have been relatively conscious, those
Speaker 2: of us who so happened to live on the other
Speaker 2: side of the color line, know that this is exactly
Speaker 2: who America is. This is exactly what we do when
Speaker 2: multiracial democracy begins to show its head. You know, before
Speaker 2: I owned a yoga studio, you know, I was a
Speaker 2: scholar I am a scholl It and you know, I
Speaker 2: was writing my master's thesis a while ago, quite a
Speaker 2: few years ago, and I was in the archive, and
Speaker 2: I learned about these moments post Civil War when multi
Speaker 2: racial city governments were coming up all across the East
Speaker 2: Coast and down into the South, and for what they
Speaker 2: could do, they were thriving and all people were benefiting.
Speaker 2: But the white majority in these places refuse to seed
Speaker 2: their space. They refused to allow the city or their town,
Speaker 2: and let's say, the country to grow beyond this need
Speaker 2: to be white. That there is a history of black
Speaker 2: folks being at the forefront and other folks of color
Speaker 2: being a part of these progressive movements and pushes forward,
Speaker 2: but always with this violent, let's say, hand tapping of
Speaker 2: white supremacy constantly coming through.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And I have thought about when I was in the archive,
Speaker 2: I was being I was very defeated because I was
Speaker 2: trying to make this argument that if the United States
Speaker 2: it was a democracy, we could only be that because
Speaker 2: black people made it so, right, very similar to what
Speaker 2: Nicole Hanna Jones was doing with the sixteen nineteen project Right.
Speaker 2: And I was in the archive and I was seeing
Speaker 2: that here are all these black people, these black folks
Speaker 2: through time who, using this saying by Zoroloherson, by hook
Speaker 2: a crook, found ways to survive and, like I said,
Speaker 2: in some places thrive. And they did it because they
Speaker 2: saw themselves in each other. And it kind of is
Speaker 2: this thing of you could never believe in the veil
Speaker 2: or the midst lies and illusions of what the country was,
Speaker 2: because we bear the brunt of them. Yep. And that's
Speaker 2: how we were able to forge community, not in response
Speaker 2: to this visceral force of white supremacy, but in a
Speaker 2: response in life affirming ways to say that, hey, actually,
Speaker 2: whether or not the United States survived, we will. And
Speaker 2: I've been thinking a lot lot about that over the
Speaker 2: last week or so because in the immediate after, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but Tuesday, you know, around
Speaker 2: ten o'clock, my partner had gone to bed and I
Speaker 2: started to see I said, oh my god, this is
Speaker 2: not going to go the way that we wanted to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let me see a girl. I tried to go to bed.
Speaker 2: I was tossing and turning. I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 2: And then I go to bed and spirit wakes me
Speaker 2: up at three o'clock to see that Pennsylvania and Georgia
Speaker 2: had gone to him, and I said, oh, it's over.
Speaker 2: And I woke up on Wednesday and I was devastated.
Speaker 2: I was devastated because for a moment I allowed myself
Speaker 2: to maybe not forget, but to disremember what the country is.
Speaker 2: But by the time that Thursday and Friday had come
Speaker 2: around and I was here in the center, and I
Speaker 2: was with people who had been nervous for weeks and
Speaker 2: had constantly been asking me about what did I feel
Speaker 2: and how did I think about things? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: on this side or that side, we're going to have
Speaker 2: to take care of each other. This is a long
Speaker 2: way to say, like what is community. Community is more
Speaker 2: than people of shared identity together. People would say that
Speaker 2: pocs this tart, that we're community. Obviously, after last week,
Speaker 2: we see that we are not right right that part.
Speaker 2: And what community is is a vested interest in the success,
Speaker 2: the health, the wellness and the well being of the
Speaker 2: people that we are around. It is a commitment to
Speaker 2: not abandon or disregard. It's a commitment to say that
Speaker 2: I will step up when you have to step back.
Speaker 2: It's a commitment to say that I don't have to
Speaker 2: experience life for way that you do to see that
Speaker 2: you deserve to live a just life, that you deserve
Speaker 2: to live in the fullness of whoever it is that
Speaker 2: you decide to be and in community is something that
Speaker 2: requires a lot of us. And I think right now
Speaker 2: in this moment, for people who are listening and for
Speaker 2: people who are thinking a lot about what do we do,
Speaker 2: I would say start with that small seat community, the
Speaker 2: few people that you let intimately into your life, and
Speaker 2: to start really really sitting there considering that when the
Speaker 2: going gets tough, well the people that you around sell
Speaker 2: you off, that they maybe have some hope and something better. Right,
Speaker 2: because we're seeing a lot of people talk about, well,
Speaker 2: I voted for the economy, or I did this, or
Speaker 2: I did that, and now they're starting to see, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, when they get done with y'all, they're coming
Speaker 2: to us next.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And so what community says is that we have a
Speaker 2: vested interest in ensuring that there is nobody next. And
Speaker 2: that is really at the core of what I'm thinking about,
Speaker 2: because at the end of all of this, we want
Speaker 2: to be able to say that we lived well, not
Speaker 2: in response to visceral and violent forces, but in life
Speaker 2: affirming ways and reminders that it is still worth living
Speaker 2: so long as we keep, you know, getting up to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: Everything that you just said, particularly about and defining community
Speaker 1: and what you said about community makes so much sense.
Speaker 1: And my question for you is what the election revealed
Speaker 1: to your earlier point is that we are not in community? Right.
Speaker 1: What you said about the veil being lifted, this veil
Speaker 1: and I look at it as the veil between what
Speaker 1: we had hoped for America and what America actually is. Yea,
Speaker 1: that is what has been lifted. And when we recognize
Speaker 1: now what America has been who America actually is, what
Speaker 1: does it look like to forge community when half of
Speaker 1: the country hates the other half of the country. Right,
Speaker 1: Like you say, to invite those that you care that
Speaker 1: have a vested interest in your thriving into your intimate space.
Speaker 1: But we now recognize that people that we have had
Speaker 1: in our intimate space, whether they be our colleagues, whether
Speaker 1: they be our family members, whether they be our friends,
Speaker 1: looked at us and put themselves first. Our grandparents voted
Speaker 1: against their grandchildren. Yeah yeah, Husbands voted against their wives.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm hm. And it makes you sit and for
Speaker 2: a while act, you know, and just being real. And
Speaker 2: in my community, we've been saying, you know, out riding
Speaker 2: the Metro or walking in the area and just you
Speaker 2: find yourself just looking at people and you squint in
Speaker 2: your eyes a little bit because it's like, girl who
Speaker 2: sides you? Was it you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. So there's a lot of that, and
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm going to be honest, I don't
Speaker 2: have a clear, cookie cut answer. I wrote this essay
Speaker 2: a few years ago, entitled returning to the Village, and
Speaker 2: it was after reading Tony morrison Soula and reading some
Speaker 2: a New York Times review book review of the book,
Speaker 2: right and this white lady of this white reviewer, she
Speaker 2: essentially says that one day Tony Morrison will grow beyond
Speaker 2: this provincial place.
Speaker 1: Yes, I actually I remember, okay, I remember that reveal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and so one day Tony Morrison will
Speaker 2: She's amazing, but one day she'll get beyond this. And
Speaker 2: you know, Tony never really directly responded to that. And
Speaker 2: I thought a lot about this idea of provincial as
Speaker 2: if black people living in our fullness isn't the center
Speaker 2: of our world. You know, so I'm like provincial, Like
Speaker 2: that doesn't make sense to me. So I started thinking
Speaker 2: about what it means to me to exist in my
Speaker 2: black life, from my black livelihood, and I started thinking
Speaker 2: about what Tony Morrison and word workers of her tradition
Speaker 2: we're trying to do. Was essentially sit us all down
Speaker 2: by a camp fire, and we sat around this fire
Speaker 2: that is in let's say this village, and it's an
Speaker 2: open door village. There are boundaries around it, but there's
Speaker 2: one door coming through the front, and you could come
Speaker 2: in and out of it as you please. But in
Speaker 2: order to make sense of what's happening, you got to
Speaker 2: release some stuff. You got to release this desire to
Speaker 2: make them understand. You have to release this desire of
Speaker 2: constantly responding. You know, they tell you that you don't
Speaker 2: have a language. So you spend thirty years proving that
Speaker 2: we have a language, the language. Yep, come on, they
Speaker 2: tell us that we don't have you know, that our
Speaker 2: communities aren't strong, and then you spend all this time
Speaker 2: creating quote unquote traditional family you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: ripping away the vestiges of who we are and who
Speaker 2: we have been. And I started just thinking a lot
Speaker 2: about this return to the village, and and and then
Speaker 2: I started thinking about, well, this essay isn't about white people,
Speaker 2: but but they they find themselves, and not just whites,
Speaker 2: but let's just say non black people that they find
Speaker 2: themselves with their hands cupped over their ears at the
Speaker 2: village door. They want to study us, They want to
Speaker 2: they want to see how do y'all how does the
Speaker 2: fire stay lit? How do y'all stay so the worst
Speaker 2: of humanity throwing your way, and yet you still create
Speaker 2: the jazz and blues. It's like you still find a
Speaker 2: way to dance and to celebrate. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: one of the things about Kamala is that that was
Speaker 2: at least inspiring to me is that you know that
Speaker 2: she knows what half the country thought about her. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: I don't think that she, by any means was off
Speaker 2: about what the nation thought about not just her but
Speaker 2: the people like her. And yet she found ways to
Speaker 2: get a nation to laugh and dance, or to people
Speaker 2: in fiber Nation to laugh and dance for a sec
Speaker 2: and to just for a moment see that, Hey, life
Speaker 2: is still worth living, even though it doesn't book the
Speaker 2: way that we fully wanted to. So going back to
Speaker 2: this point of people who voted against us, people, I really,
Speaker 2: let me tell you ding they are at the furthest
Speaker 2: edge of my mind. They will have to be dealt with.
Speaker 2: Let me be clear, but I know that the final
Speaker 2: assignment of white supremacy is to destroy whiteness itself. And
Speaker 2: what my God says is that the last will be
Speaker 2: first and the first shall be last. I'm actually less
Speaker 2: concerned about them being dealt with and more concerned about
Speaker 2: have I created the conditions and being inside of the
Speaker 2: spaces that I'm with people who aren't constantly trying to
Speaker 2: respond to them. You know, in the commentary on my
Speaker 2: I'm like or like the people on the news right now,
Speaker 2: black folks going on the news, and I'm like, y'all
Speaker 2: can just say that the nation is racist as hell.
Speaker 2: Let's let's let's actually get to THEO.
Speaker 1: If we want to grow, get to the let's get
Speaker 1: to the root of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's name a thing a thing.
Speaker 3: Let's seek here and say that for certain populations of
Speaker 3: non black people of color, they understand that in this nation,
Speaker 3: if you want to succeed, you know that you have
Speaker 3: to swim in the waters of anti blackness.
Speaker 2: You know that that is what you get in the
Speaker 2: welcome packet when you immigrate here.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 2: And so I'm actually I'm not. I don't really they
Speaker 2: are at such the corner of my mind because again,
Speaker 2: I'm worried about those of us who are on the
Speaker 2: side of life, living and justice. And on that side,
Speaker 2: we got a lot to sort through, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. I think because at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: let's say Kamala did get elected, we would still have
Speaker 2: to deal with these horses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was just going to say, and I
Speaker 1: think that that is right, Like I want I will
Speaker 1: say this. I want to be in the space where
Speaker 1: I say that these people are at the furthest edges
Speaker 1: of my mind, because right now they are occupying the center.
Speaker 1: I am riding this wave of despair where I have
Speaker 1: dedicated my entire career to public service and public offering
Speaker 1: in public education, using various platforms, positions, and spaces in
Speaker 1: order to advance the rights of other people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: to witness America's forceful return to its origin story is wild, right.
Speaker 1: And then to think like, did we come this far
Speaker 1: to only get this far to be pulled all the
Speaker 1: way back. And I feel like that is where people
Speaker 1: are struggling right now, which is where there are some
Speaker 1: particularly you know, black women who you are seeing on
Speaker 1: social media since the election, say I'm done. I've tapped out.
Speaker 1: Y'all take it from here, because we've been on the
Speaker 1: front lines doing the work, being the warriors for justice,
Speaker 1: only to look behind us and recognize nobody has our.
Speaker 2: Right, nobody is there. Yeah. Yeah, And I think that
Speaker 2: that's righteous. I think that that's holy. I think that
Speaker 2: there is because I don't think that like because I've
Speaker 2: been seeing you know again, social media is just a
Speaker 2: hellscape right now, and and I've been seeing so much
Speaker 2: of it, and I'm like, I don't hear that sisters
Speaker 2: are turning away from us. I don't hear that. And
Speaker 2: so when people are like, well, black, you know, they're
Speaker 2: saying that they're done, they're done with y'all trying to
Speaker 2: save you correct, but with me, And what I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about as a black queer person is how how am
Speaker 2: I getting in the ring? You know what I'm saying, like,
Speaker 2: how how do how do okay? You know what y'all have,
Speaker 2: It's time for all of us to step up and
Speaker 2: how do I how do I confront where I can
Speaker 2: the massage andoi of people in community who don't want
Speaker 2: to see the space for black women to lead. Because
Speaker 2: I started thinking about, you know, in my environments and
Speaker 2: stuff that I've been in, you know, there have been
Speaker 2: ample of moments where I have had to say, like
Speaker 2: where we were in the room together and I wasn't
Speaker 2: gonna let nobody play her. I didn't care right or wrong.
Speaker 2: I got her in the same way that she has me.
Speaker 2: And I think that there is something so holy to say,
Speaker 2: you know what, nurse your own baby this time. Come on,
Speaker 2: and I I, you don't have access to my flesh
Speaker 2: no more. I think we should hold that for some
Speaker 2: time now. I also think that it doesn't mean and
Speaker 2: I'm telling no one how to feel about anything. I
Speaker 2: don't think that what I'm hearing is that we're done forever.
Speaker 2: I don't hear that as an y'all, I don't hear that.
Speaker 2: What I hear is is time for y'all to get
Speaker 2: your houses in order, because we're already here. Our house
Speaker 2: is already in order. And when you you know, when
Speaker 2: you get into it with us, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think there's also something about like that Jewish women, Jewish
Speaker 2: women and black women are the people who showed up
Speaker 2: the most. Yep, I just I think that that's that's
Speaker 2: saying something, and I don't know if we fully know
Speaker 2: what it means. But all I know is all of
Speaker 2: us who are not black or Jewish women, we got
Speaker 2: some work to do.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you and the work that you were doing
Speaker 1: to try and help people make sense of what it
Speaker 1: actually means to be well and to live well, because
Speaker 1: there is a and has been a desire to lie
Speaker 1: to ourselves in order to convince ourselves that everything has
Speaker 1: been okay, because the adversity hadn't been so stark in
Speaker 1: our faces as it had been for our ancestors. But
Speaker 1: now that truth has arrived on our door and we
Speaker 1: actually don't really know what's on the other side. History
Speaker 1: can only be your guide to a certain extent. But
Speaker 1: like I said at the beginning, we're in uncharted territory.
Speaker 1: And so my last question for you is in knowing
Speaker 1: that we are in uncharted territory, in knowing that you
Speaker 1: may practice ways to find grounding to build community, but
Speaker 1: that there still may be a bulldozer yeah, that waits
Speaker 1: for you. There may still be flames that wait for
Speaker 1: what it is that you're building. What do you say
Speaker 1: to people that are really in the spiral of hopelessness
Speaker 1: right now, knowing that safety, knowing that their idea of
Speaker 1: safety right and we know that people have said for
Speaker 1: centuries say is an illusion, But now that illusion is
Speaker 1: it's very clear that it was true. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: as saying, So what do you say to people that
Speaker 1: are grappling with that reality right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? First, I would honor that it's really tough to
Speaker 2: go through this type of identity crisis because during the
Speaker 2: uprisings and all that was happening in COVID nineteen I,
Speaker 2: before I had gotten there, I knew America was filled
Speaker 2: with baltz. I knew the stories, I knew the history.
Speaker 2: I come from a Vietnam War veteran who went and
Speaker 2: signed up and served his country, not because he was
Speaker 2: so patriotic, but because, as a black man in Niagara Falls,
Speaker 2: New York in the middle of the twentieth century, there
Speaker 2: were only a few options available to him. And I
Speaker 2: know that when he came back, he went to bars
Speaker 2: and he wasn't able to be served even in his
Speaker 2: military uniform. I know that when Barack Obama ran from
Speaker 2: president of the United States that my grandfather brimmed with pride.
Speaker 2: I know that also because at the time I was
Speaker 2: living in Texas, he refused to send me any of
Speaker 2: the swag that he had made for the family. I
Speaker 2: couldn't get a Barack Obama sweatshirt, a hat, a stick
Speaker 2: that I can get nothing because he understood what the
Speaker 2: country was, and he understood that even in the glimmers,
Speaker 2: even in the glimmers, who we are. I think what
Speaker 2: he says to me and what I would say to everybody,
Speaker 2: it's time to be a witness. And to be a
Speaker 2: witness means to stare it out into the world and
Speaker 2: name exactly what you see, not what you want to see,
Speaker 2: but what's there and what that allows us to do.
Speaker 2: It allows us to become embodied, and only and embodied
Speaker 2: people can be free. I think about those people who
Speaker 2: stole themselves a way to freedom, people who maybe never
Speaker 2: ever ever saw their reflection in a mirror, but knew
Speaker 2: exactly what they looked like. They knew what they felt like,
Speaker 2: they knew what they tasted like, they knew what it
Speaker 2: would sound like for their feet to run on grass.
Speaker 2: They knew what they smelled like and what the hounds
Speaker 2: would smell, and yet they stole themselves away. And it
Speaker 2: gets to this thing that it disembodied. People can never
Speaker 2: be free, and we can't get free, healed or whole
Speaker 2: disembodied or by ourselves. It means that we start seeing
Speaker 2: that my wellness is my responsibility. At life all we
Speaker 2: believed that wellness is the daily, moment by moment endeavor
Speaker 2: of providing care to one's individual mental, physical, emotional, and
Speaker 2: spiritual needs. Right, so it's tending to you that while
Speaker 2: being is the responsibility and obligation of communities, institutions, and
Speaker 2: more broadly, the state, we live in a time where
Speaker 2: the nation doesn't believe it is their responsibility to provide
Speaker 2: for our well being. So let's go to the next tier.
Speaker 2: Our institututions, the places that we're working, that they have
Speaker 2: vested interest in ensuring that we can provide for our
Speaker 2: own individual wellness, and we should. We all ought to
Speaker 2: gather and organize, you know, in whatever ways that we
Speaker 2: can to push that forward, and then go the tier
Speaker 2: under that community. You start to say, hey, actually we're
Speaker 2: going to start putting together a bi weekly dinner and
Speaker 2: you'll host it at your house this week. And we'll
Speaker 2: also launch our book club together, and we'll go on
Speaker 2: our walks here and we'll go and do this together,
Speaker 2: or we'll just sit and be and become together, because
Speaker 2: you start again to see that when we have each other.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that this makes this is a
Speaker 2: quick fix to everything, but I will say that every
Speaker 2: day I come in here to this center, I see
Speaker 2: what's happening in the world that I see what's happening
Speaker 2: in people's lives, and I see the way that they
Speaker 2: still laugh and they find hope and hopelessness. I see that,
Speaker 2: like so long as life is choosing us, we choose it,
Speaker 2: and there is for all the people who are listening
Speaker 2: to this, it does. It does seem dreary, but let
Speaker 2: me tell you. We may be an uncharted territory, but
Speaker 2: this is not unfamiliar. Mm hmm. This is not unfamiliar.
Speaker 2: And you think about it, Not all of us will survive,
Speaker 2: but those of us that do, we demand witness. We
Speaker 2: say that we're going to tell the truth. Because here's
Speaker 2: the last thing. I know. I'm long winded. I'm sorry
Speaker 2: The last thing I'll say is that we always think
Speaker 2: about the New world, and we think about this world. Right,
Speaker 2: we want to leave this one and we want to
Speaker 2: go to the next one. What if we accepted that
Speaker 2: those of us here probably won't make it to the
Speaker 2: New world. But what can we leave for the rebble
Speaker 2: that when this world is destroyed and they start cleaning
Speaker 2: through the ashes, when they start lifting up the bricks
Speaker 2: and the foundation, what did we leave them? Maybe not
Speaker 2: all of it will be useful, but some of it
Speaker 2: should be. And that's what I am living for. Because
Speaker 2: when I was trying to live for the New World,
Speaker 2: I was depressed all the time because I thought it
Speaker 2: would never come. But I am. I am living for
Speaker 2: the rubble, for the place in the in between, that
Speaker 2: wilderness that people will have to map out. And my
Speaker 2: hope is what we're doing here at the clearing, what
Speaker 2: I am doing in my own individual life is something
Speaker 2: that people can pick up hundreds of years from now
Speaker 2: and find some use in it to talk about how
Speaker 2: we relate to ourselves and to other people.
Speaker 1: Amazing, amazing, Stephan, Please tell people how they can connect
Speaker 1: to you, to the center, to your work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, so you can feel free to follow me
Speaker 2: on social media across all platforms. It's stefan as te
Speaker 2: Pho n Underscore JB. Same thing for the clearing at
Speaker 2: the Clearing DC and you can find all the information.
Speaker 2: You'll be able to find our website and I'm sure
Speaker 2: we can maybe pass it along for the show notes.
Speaker 2: But you know, understand that the digital is just one way.
Speaker 2: You know, we understand that someday somebody can come and
Speaker 2: erase all of that. Right. If you are in the
Speaker 2: DC area, I invite you to the Union Market area.
Speaker 2: I invite you to our clearing because from what I hear,
Speaker 2: it is a place like none other. It's a place
Speaker 2: where people feel sustained and fortified. Though the road may
Speaker 2: be rough and weary, we know that we have each
Speaker 2: other and we know that you know, so long as
Speaker 2: life is choosing us, we'll keep choosing it.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you so very much. Thank you for making
Speaker 1: the time for WOKF.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, Dear friends on WOKF.
Speaker 1: As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.