Election Day Equanimity with Rev. Rhetta

Aurora: Reverend Rhetta, if you don’t mind sharing with our audience a mini introduction of who you are.

Rhetta: Sure. Happy to. Peace and blessings. I am Reverend Reetta Morgan. I am an interfaith minister. I would say an activist. I’m a singer. I like to call myself a healer. First and foremost.

Aurora: So as we were getting ready to have this conversation with you today, there were a couple of things that you mentioned about this moment in time that we’re living and that it’s a seminal moment in a series of moments. Talk to us about what that means for you as an offering of how we can contextualize what’s happening.

Rhetta: I’m very I’m fascinated by how important this election is becoming in terms of this country and the world, in terms of all eyes being on us. And this comes in the midst of racial uprising in the midst of a pandemic. There are all kinds of storms. There’s fires. There’s, you know, just the list goes on and on. So what is important, what is seminal may look different for for each of us, but we are all experiencing this onslaught, you know, and in the midst of all of these intense things that we’re having to navigate, we have this election that has incredible implications for who will be as we move forward. So, yes, just something just like noticing my body as I sit here. I think it’s important to notice sort of the implication, especially if we are prone to be extremely reactionary around who might win or who might not win. To put a little distance between that and just notice that whoever wins this is a big moment for us as a as a nation, possibly as a species.

Aurora: So, you know, when we talk about this moment. One of the questions that we wanted to ask is that the moment is contextualized by the right to vote and voting. And we were just curious, what does voting mean to you, Reverend Wright?

Rhetta: Mm hmm. Well, it’s certainly something my ancestors had to fight for. That’s what comes up first. This was not a given for my people always. So so not a given for women. Always right. Is a number of folks in this country who really had to had to fight to get the right to vote. What it means beyond that is an opportunity to be engaged as as a group consciousness. So my individual vote may not mean a whole lot. All right. But I join in the group effort to group consciousness, a group effort. And whether the person I’m voting for wins or not, I am saying on a vibrational level that I am engaged. I am connected to the group activity. I see it as a spiritual practice. I see most things as spiritual practice. But at this moment, I’m seeing particularly the opportunity to vote in a mindful way to vote with clear intentions about, you know, voting, being of service to the moment, regardless of who you’re voting for. If we are voting in service to the collective of our country, in service to holding an intention that we are holding each other accountable and sort of up leveling that we that we hold we hold a sort of the North Star and want to aim toward doing better than we’re doing now. You know that the vote can be a step along the way. It’s not the only step. Right. But a step along the way in terms of being connected to the larger community and supporting an intention to keep holding the politicians accountable, holding ourselves accountable. By by this one act. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly: Do you remember the first time you voted?

Rhetta: I don’t remember the details. I wish I was living still in Washington, I grew up in Washington, D.C. What I can remember is sort of the emotional space of I get to do this now. I get and remember, I may have received a call from my mother that day. I can – somebody lectured me on why this was an important moment. They didn’t have to lecture me about voting, but they wanted to remind me that my mom and my dad is somebody I remember hearing from, somebody, you know, people fought and died for you to be able to do this. And, you know. And so that’s what I remember about it. And it it what I remember also is each time I voted it. It feels important. Even though I’m one person, it still feels like an important part of what I can do. And I and I’m struck by who I’m being as I’m doing it also matter mattering, you know, like what I’m bringing with me, the intention that I bring. And I believe that also matters.

Aurora: oh, I’m going to have you untether that a little bit. Say more about that, who I’m being. Mm hmm.

Rhetta: Yeah. You know, my life’s work is around healing and kind of cultivating in body truth that who we are spirit first and then human. And to remember that we are you know, we are connected to something bigger than who we are. We’re connected to transcendence, to eternal, to the formless, you know, and the many names that we call that in our in our spiritual and religious traditions. There are many names that we call that. But I believe we are connected. And if we can remember and refer to that and embody that and live in that and let that live through us when we go to the polls, there is something bigger than me, joining me. My ancestors they join me. I bring all of that with me. And so when I click that button, there’s you know, there’s a community around me celebrating, joining in. And I think that that means something. I’ll give you one example how I think that means something when we believe that we are empowered and powerful. I believe it creates the space for us to see some things differently. Like if I vote and I believe I’m small and I don’t matter and why do it? Cause might not matter anyway. A certain kind of energy I’m bringing when I vote. And I know that there’s a community of beingness with me. I’m voting from a powerful place. It’s one person. But in fact it’s a huge vibrational energy I’m bringing with me. And I think that has impact. It has unseen and touchable impact, but impact nonetheless.

Kelly: Mm hmm. So when I seal up my envelopes, both envelopes, I’m going to imbue it with my intention as I send it on its way. I love that. I love that rev cause.

Aurora: And I think this is what’s, you know, similar to you, Reverend Rhetta. Voting was always something that was talked about in our household as something that was critical. And it was critical because of who died and who sacrificed before our arrival in order for us to get the vote, the opportunity to vote. And for most folks to recognize that for many, that actually didn’t happen into the 1960s. I mean, just think about that. You know, I think about my father who fought in two wars and he went out and fought for this country without actually having the right to vote his voice in the country. And that, quite frankly, the right to vote to women that look like me actually only came a few years before my birth. It’s a huge deal and it’s a huge deal, not only an understanding and recognizing the accountability of our singular voice. But, as you said, the voice of the community, the voice of the human community here in these United States. And are we voting with that reflection and are we voting with that sense of empowerment and mattering for the service to the whole.

Rhetta: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for it for sharing that about about your father. That’s something. It’s sobering, isn’t it? And to remember that he’s served this country. I’m imagining with honor and proudly and yet could not did not have this very basic right. Yeah. It’s sobering. And and so those of us who have that right. This is this is really it’s an inservice and an it’s an honoring of your father. And those folks who who participated in this country, worked for this country, helped to build and defend and protect this country and did not have that right. How dare we not vote? How dare we that vote. Mm hmm.

Aurora: Exactly.

Kelly: I grapple with this in a war and I talk about it a lot and especially as white women, why do we think we don’t matter. Why is it so hard for us to understand that we matter. Mm hmm.

Rhetta: Was it don’t you think we get an awful lot of messages in this culture about about roles like depending on how you identify yourself, depending on the identities you hold? There are almost it’s almost as if we have, like, written out contractures, something that you wrote this role. This is your job. And it depends also on what generation you were born in. Right. So my mom as a woman, she went to Howard University. She’s one of the first in her family. She could only major in a very limited number of of majors. Right. Her role was cut out. It was expected that she would be a mom, a housekeeper. And at her generation, you could add like maybe secretary or teacher. She. My mom was a teacher. And in the community that I grew up in black working class and I think this is true for many communities – not only did you have a sort of spelled out role, but you were expected to do it humbly and without sort of bringing attention to yourself. And so the more kind of martyred you were, the more you invested in everybody else’s livelihood. The more you were were held up as the model woman. Right. So if you’re a selfless, you were virtuous. And I think in each generation we might redefine those roles or tweak them a bit. But throughout our history, women’s roles in the patriarchal system are to support men, are to raise children are to make sure homes work well, like their roles that have some of those things have gone down through the generations. And I think if we if we do that work and we aren’t acknowledged through generations, we start to lose a sense of our own self significance, our own importance. We start to lose that, you know. And that’s just one fear. Right? I think there are many reasons why we we think we don’t matter. I think there’s some existential things about how we’re born. Like, you know, I have this memory of being somewhere warm and supported and I have very, very little bit of memory of actually coming to the birth canal and coming here. And I’m like as a as a – I’m sure I didn’t think these words – but I just remembered that this section is, what is going on here. You know, you’re warm and cared for and then you’re out here what you – So there’s so there’s separation. There’s the the first breath separation anxiety. Oh, my God, I’m out here. And I think many of us get a sense of whether we matter or not in the very first moments of being on this planet. So that’s for everybody. And then, you know, depending on who we are and how. Oh, we’re nurtured. That thing is either we get a contradiction of that or we get that affirmed that we are alone. And there’s lots of confirmation of that as we go through our lives. And so it it’s a particular it’s why I’m so excited about healing, because it’s a particularly strenuous and courageous line of work. To undo that is particularly courageous. Yes. It’s courageous to to stand up when when you’re expected to just go, you know, gently along doing your job to stand up and say, wait a minute, I matter here. What I want, what I think who I am matters.

Kelly: And like you, we’re looking at our planet and our beingness and our fat fellow traumatized human beings. How do you see us being called to a more communal, a more interconnected way? We’ve been talking a lot about community, and I’m so interested to hear your thoughts.

Rhetta: Well, isn’t it interesting? Do it because of the pandemic that we’ve had the space to where we’ve had to sort of separate ourselves? Isn’t it interesting? I live alone, sort of out in the country a bit. And so it has been, you know you know, what is sheltering in or, you know, isolation to some extent. You know, it has been quite a practice. And then think about, you know, being out in public and being six feet apart. And and all of those kinds of things. And I believe at a spiritual level were being reconfigured. I also believe that as we are out of our habitual, we get to appreciate what we had in a very particular way. But we get to be worked on and work on ourselves so that when we come back together. Oh, what a glorious idea. Right. The first time you could just walk up to folks and just give him a hug again. So that’s that’s one level of coming together. We can use this time to really begin to appreciate that. Very simple thing. Right. And I think the level. Of dismantling, reordering the ways in which many of the systems that we we’ve come up costs become accustomed to the systems working in a particular way. The ways that those things that we have dependent on are sort of coming apart, coming apart, falling apart, being driven apart. You know, call us to have to come together to create new systems.

Kelly: What do you see as our growing edge? What’s the spiritual invitation for us, Rev?

Rhetta: Yeah, I think I think every day, just waking up and at this, particularly now till the election and well into the next weeks and months, I think every day we’re invited to our growing edge. If, God forbid, the current occupant of the White House decides he doesn’t want to leave, then that’s gonna be a huge growing edge for all of us. We’ll have to think on an edge. We’ll have to find resources that we’ve never had to find before. Right. We have to dig deeper to sometimes to get up to be able to think about how will I manage this on top of all these other things? I think it’s a growing edge. I think to navigate that, to take a deep breath. Right. To be connected to a tradition or a philosophy, a community, something that’s bigger than the individual self so that you have something to lean on. And in two in those times. Right. We’ll support that growing edge. But we’re going to be sort of pushing into sort of pioneering territory in terms of our own abilities, our strengths, our capacities. Right. Then pushing into new territory. And and we’re going to need to be resourceful. We’ve got a need to know, you know, when to stop and take a breath. And we will be learning on our feet. We’ll be learning as we go. And I think that’s true of these times in general. Right. Each day we’re hopefully learning new things about our own inner resources, getting familiar, being being introduced to, if you will, ourselves in the midst of, you know, such an incredible time. But don’t you think this is an incredible time to be alive? I was just thinking today, this is probably the most amazing time to have been born on this planet. Of all the eras of human development. We are here together now. I think it’s extraordinary.

Aurora: I agree with you, Reverend Rhetta, because I wake up and I’m like, wow, like today. Like, I get to be here right now. And how am I using what I have been gifted with, what I have sort of crafted and cultivated after all of these years. And how can I use that to support Shepherd uplift this moment like this moment? And and it’s it literally makes me so emotional. Sometimes it’s like I get to be here. I get to be here. And I get to contribute. I get to hold Kelly’s hand and I get to hold your hand. And I get to share like we are here. We chose to be here.

Rhetta: I believe we are bearing witness to a kind of birthing of ourselves. Birthing of our species. All right. We’re bearing witness to the earth’s adjustment during this time. A kind of birthing, if you will. Yeah, we I believe we are midwives. Yes. The midwives. All right. We’re birthing in new possibilities for humanity.

Aurora: And it’s scary. It’s messy, but it’s also filled with wonder. And it filled with possibility and. Me. It’s like this, like we get to reimagine it. Yes. We get to reimagine it because now we all know it’s not really serving us the way it’s been crafted and built. And thank you to all those that contributed to the version that we now receive. But like, we get to re imagine it. And the creativity out and the curiosity and the possibility that it literally blows my mind and it blows my heart.

Rhetta: Yeah. We’ve outgrown the old. I don’t think there was anything wrong. But we’ve outgrown it. We we’re at this juncture where we get to grow up spiritually. We get to mature. The the growing edge is to realize there’s more of us. There’s more to us. There’s more capacity than we ever dreamt of. If we don’t get opportunities to stretch ourselves and time, sometimes stretching and reaching can be uncomfortable. Sometimes it even hurts. Yeah, right. But the stretching, we look around and then we’ve expanded in ways we didn’t even know. And I think 100 years from now, we’ll look back and say, boy, those were some painful times. But but look where they stretch to now. That’s the vision I’m holding, because what’s also true is that this could be the worst period of the history of mankind. Right. The choices that we’re sitting on right now like this could be an absolute catastrophe of the dimensions we’ve never seen before. It could take centuries to recover, if ever. Right. That is also true. Yes. Right. A I believe spiritual traditions are so important in this moment, because you’ve got we’ve got to cultivate choosing when we are hit with the reality that this could go very badly. Right. What are we going to do? Who we going to be in that moment if the occupant of the White House chooses not to go? Who are we going to be in that moment? What are we going to choose? What are we going to cultivate? Are we going to react and and give way to our fear? To give way to our anxiety. To allow ourselves to be overwhelmed? Or are we going to keep bringing our minds and our hearts, wrapping our minds and hearts around the possibility, the vision, the idea that this is midwifery, that we’re in a scary, messy place, but is gonna give it’s giving way to something greater than we can imagine. Right. We’re gonna have to cultivate the ability to return to that visionary thinking in the midst of whatever’s going on. That’s a muscle that takes courage. It takes courage to keep going there. It’s a holding the precious and the eternal right beside the. What is this? It’s holding them both seeing both as true and then choosing how you go move forward in the midst of that. And I believe that also as a growing as we get to practice, we get to notice the gift of the opportunity to choose that it’s a gift and an opportunity and a time when you could choose a spectrum of things to choose love, to choose connection, to choose to see the best in the one who can’t see the best in themselves. You know, rather than that ugly name calling and what this one did or didn’t do to choose compassion, to choose to connect to our humanity, to keep looking for the answers, holding folks accountable. Yes. But to do it from a place grounded in love, grounded in his vision of where we’re going. I think it makes a difference. I think it will make a difference.

Aurora: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly: Grounding in love. Grounding in love. Reverend Rita, do you have any tools? Do you have any tools for us in and in grounding in love?

Rhetta: Well, there are several that I use you using this morning. I talk a lot about the heartbreak and how we can be with what’s hard and the and the growing of our hearts. And a practice that I’ve learned to do is to let myself cry, to feel deeply, but to to actually set a timer and to set timers on to really fully let myself go into those dark places. We all try to avoid to go there. If if I’m thinking something. Oh, my God, what are we going to do? I’m so scared or just crying, like whatever it is to be in touch with that part of myself as well. And then when the time it goes off, I stop. I put a bookmark there and I try to do something that’s grounding like, you know, to go outside and sit on the earth or to listen to something that’s funny or to give someone a call. So it takes my mind back sort of up and out of the dark wells and brings me back to sort of my my resting place in terms of where my consciousness is and what that does. Is it cold sort of cultivates my ability to know that I can handle that space within myself. I hope all of us cry. But I’m talking to ugly crap. And, you know, you start to cry or you’re wailing so loud, the people about to call the cops. So when you count. Right. Right. Like. Like get down in there and really let yourself feel the angst. Like to feel that most of us won’t allow ourselves because we’re not sure we come out. There’s so many layers of hard things happening. Right. Yes. But if we practice it as we as if we use this as a practice to go in there and to feel deeply, to be in touch and not to make ourselves wrong about doing it, like to to be willing to be connected to that part of ourselves. Just as we’re connecting to Divisionary, I like to also be be connected to the part that small and scared. Oh, my God. What’s going to happen if we lose our job? How will we pay our mortgage? Like, that’s real, right? Too big to allow ourselves to feel that and to and to know that that’s part of our humanity. Right. If we’re going to be whole, we got to be willing to be with to bear witness to all the parts because quite frankly, you know, to be enjoy is dependent on our ability to go down in those depths if we don’t know the depths of the of what’s hard. How are we gonna really rise to the visionary and really believe that is possible? Right. We to and. I want to believe that with every fiber of my being that we can be a species that moves through this time and and looks back and say, well, that was hard. But now, you know, we’ve arrived somewhere where we know how to be in community. We know how to have a political system that works for people rather than against. We have learned how to not put people in prison and call ourselves, you know, restoring them. We have learned that there are other ways to be with people who are misaligned or having a harder time. We grew ourselves up spiritually. Right. So it’s important to be able to go to that depth in order to be able to hold that, in order to really be able to hold the embodied visionary aspects of ourself. So that’s one. Also, I call myself a singing healer. And that is because I believe so profoundly in sound. The Christian Bible says in the beginning that was the word. Right. And word is vibration. Right. So sound and singing is, you know, in this talk about seminal, this work that is influenced, you know, centuries of humanity starts with the idea that the word was the first thing. Vibration sound. Right. So singing something as simple as singing your own name, your own name to take a deep breath. If I put my hand on my heart. Read. And those who are listening will be able to see. But I’m also moving, I’m also moving. So the movement and vibration. It literally read Recalibrates who we are. Right. If we’re in anxiety, if we need a moment, we need to ground that repeated sound and movement literate, like scientifically realigns us. It sets us up to ground and to wherever we were in terms of anxiety. Sound can actually pull us out of of of that state. Right. Something as simply as as your name. Singing a word that has a meaning for you. Peace. Peace. Peace. And if you’re not a person who can make up a melody on the spot, just singing one note. And feeling the vibration move through your body. Just feeling that peace so it shifts just the intellectuals saying or thinking of the word. It becomes an experience that vibration moves through the body. Right. It’s a different kind of knowing. It’s using more muscles. So there is sound. There is grounding. There’s going to sit on the earth, which I think is number one grounding. This living being calibrates at a vibration of of grounded ness. That’s why we call it grounded right here. At least it’s connected to the ground for a reason. So tough to be in relationship with nature to find a place that speaks to you, speaks to you of peace. That’s. That inspires you because it’s beautiful. That allows you to access a restfulness within like being in relationship. Meditation continues to be one of the world’s best. And if you’ve been meditating even a little, if you close your eyes for five minutes and breathe deeply, then you you have a practice, right? Something as simple as that. Over time, if you extend that, if you have a practice 20 minutes, a half an hour of being able to sit quietly, if you have a particular meditation, a school of meditation that you work with, or if it’s just you quieting your mind and being with yourself, that practice over time is proven scientifically to have incredible benefits for your health and for your outlook. Just to do it, general well-being in a time like this could really pay off. You know, the cumulative effect of the quiet time that you have spent could support you in so many ways. If you are starting a practice during this time is still very, very powerful meds or meditation. And for those who like to move, there’s yoga, there’s Tai Chee, there’s running. So there are many, many ways, whether they’re the quiet going in practices, whether they’re the expression outwardly with singing or moaning or wailing like different kinds of sound where the movements of all sorts. Yeah. So it’s a question of just finding the things that speak to you.

Kelly: So helpful, Rev. You said you sent me over a poem.

Aurora: So will you share your pslam with us.

Rhetta: I would love to. I would love to. 

Woke up this morning with this. One of the things that is difficult about now is the intensity and speed with which the unconscious and habitual are becoming conscious. We are facing the collapse, dismantling and reordering of practically all our major systems. We are facing wounds that have been festering for centuries. We are facing the consequences of our mis alignment with this living being. We call home. We are navigating pestilence, managing our personal and communal lives, all while technology and science are pushing, blurring the line between what’s known and unknown at breakneck speeds. So much of this is happening to us.

We get to choose how we respond. Let’s choose love.

Let’s look at our world through the lens of love. Build our movements from love. Birth our babies and bury our dead with love. As midwife and witness cry, the ugly cry kind tears moan and wail connected to our hearts. Let’s stand on love as we vote. Roll up our sleeves and get to work no matter who wins the election. Post-election, let’s sing tunes about how our ancestors made it through hard times, about how we won’t let our babies and grand babies down by giving up. Now let’s choose one conversation at a time not to let this current paralyzing division win. Let’s look up from our devices and see that we can build bridges back to each other. Every step taken one step at a time. Rooted in love.

Let love in. Let love win.

Aurora: Mm hmm.Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us on this day. And may we be grounded and embraced by that prayer, by those words, by that vibration.

Rhetta: Thank you so much for having me. And blessings to you, to some amazing work you do. Blessings to this moment, to this incredible, incredible implication of now is blessings, blessings, blessings. 

Kelly: Thank you all so much for being here.

Aurora: We love you.

Kelly: Music for this episode is by Jordan McCree. And the Opt-In is produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Aurora: See you next week.

Kelly: Bye