Sally Evans: 0:07

Welcome to the launch of holy echoes, a new podcast from the Center for interfaith relations, where I revisit prophets of past festival of faiths with a spiritual leader of today to listen for echoes of revelation, enduring guidance and visionary hope. Together, we listen for the wisdom that persists. In this first episode, we listen back to physician and former United States Surgeon General, Dr Vivek Murthy, who spoke at the Festival of Faiths in April of 2019,

Dr. Vivek Murthy: 0:45

I think one thing that's important to know is that loneliness is not a new phenomenon. People have struggled with loneliness for centuries, but it does feel like it has a different flavor today, because there are different factors that we're struggling with. So one of the factors is actually there is a structural issue, which is that we've actually become far more mobile than we ever were before, which is amazing. I came here to Louisville, and it took me two hours on a flight. Wow, that's extraordinary, but it also means that we have moved away from the communities that we have known we grew up with. Sometimes we move many times over the life course, and that does something, it fractures relationships, and then we end up having to try to rebuild those relationships. The second thing that has happened has been the advent of new forms of technology that have enabled us to communicate in new ways. Now, on the face of it, this should be an outright benefit, but it's been mixed. Sometimes we use technologies in ways that profoundly connect us. I couldn't, for example, talk to my grandmother very much when I was growing up, because she was in India. And we didn't have FaceTime because it didn't exist. We didn't have email because that didn't exist. Either. We would write these letters on called aerograms, on these blue pieces of paper that some of you may remember that would take two weeks to be delivered to India, and you'd buy them from the post office. And was very exciting, but it was certainly not very immediate. And so technology, though, it has a potential to be great, but what has also happened, what matters is not. It's not really a question of, is tech good or bad? It's a question of, how do we use technology? Are we using it to optimize connection or not? And if you look at the data around this, and you look at the reality of how we're using technology, you see that we're often using it in ways that diminish our connection. We are often distracted, in fact, in talking to people over dinner or just face to face by the phones that are vibrating in our pocket or often vibrating face up on a table, we sometimes substitute our in person, face to face interactions for instead online interactions, thinking that, well, if I've got a bunch of friends online and I'm posting on their Facebook wall or DMing them on Twitter, then that's I'm still connecting with them, but it's a very different sort of level and quality of connection than engaging with people face to face. So technology is important, but I think the last one that I'll mention, I think, is the most vexing and challenging of all, which is is culture and how our culture has evolved and shifted over time. And I worry that we have become a culture that has increasingly focused on individualism and that has also increasingly focused on work, and we have not actively said relationships and people are not important, but we've allowed those factors, relationships and people, to slide out of negligence, in a sense. But what that tells us, really is that we've built a society that's centered around work and accomplishment and reputation, as opposed to society centered around people. And what we've done is fit people in where it's convenient, but that has taken it a toll over time, as we've become busier and busier and busier, all of these forces together, I think, have combined to make to create one of the great ironies of the modern age, which is that we are more connected than ever by technology, but more lonely and disconnected than any of us thought we would be.

Sally Evans: 4:02

And with us today as our first guest to respond to Dr Murthy is Reverend Dr Lauren Jones Mayfield, the executive director of the Center for interfaith relations. Hey, Lauren,

Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield: 4:15

Hi, Sally. It's so good to be with you today.

Sally Evans: 4:18

Lauren, what do you hear today that echoes what Dr Murthy is saying.

Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield: 4:23

Here, I hear several echoes of what Dr Murthy is saying in our everyday experiences, of how we are living life, how we are so connected and arguably addicted now to our technology, and what that says about our interpersonal communications, and that challenge that I hear from him to put people and put our relationships back at the center of not just our lives, but also the ways that we are using and depending on our technology. How do we wake up? How do we practice presence? How do we say to our friend across the lunch table or to our kids at the dinner table, I'm going to turn my phone off and not even just turn it over on the table. I'm going to put it in another room so that I can be fully present to you during the course of this meal.

Sally Evans: 5:16

You know, when we think of interfaith work, we're often talking about the value of interconnectedness. I'm curious how you see this value reflected in your faith, and why is this important to your work with the Center for interfaith relations,

Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield: 5:32

Interconnectedness is everything. Actually, when I hear that word, I think about the invitation to be present to one another. I think about the opportunity to respond to one another in ways that are reflective of the African proverb Ubuntu, that says I am because we are. It is this belief in the universal, and it is a belief in that sharing ourselves is what connects us all. It's a direct response and diversification and leaning away from the individualism of our culture today and leaning into the community and the embodiment of who we are together. I also am thinking about at the end of my yoga classes, when I put my hands at heart center and I bow to the instructor, and the instructor bows to the class and says namaste. I bow to you. My soul in me sees your soul in you, and we are more complete because of that togetherness, because of that, seeing because of our interconnectedness. Interconnectedness in interfaith work is so important because so often when we are visiting houses of worship or sacred sites that are not from our own tradition, it can be quite intimidating. What if I say the wrong word at the wrong time. What if I speak when it's not my turn to speak? What if I am unsure of when I sit or when I stand, or when I have an individual voice, or when I am part of the community? And this is intrinsic, I think, to all the world religions, is this notion of grace, in this notion of forgiveness, in this notion of joy and laughter, so that when there are mistakes made, they're not in isolation, and they're not opportunities to accuse one another of getting it wrong or not having it all figured out. But rather, it is an opportunity to lean in and to laugh if it's appropriate, to laugh and to weep when it is appropriate to weep and to share space together and to continue learning from one another through wonder and curiosity.

Sally Evans: 7:50

Now let's go back and listen to another excerpt from Dr Murthy.

Dr. Vivek Murthy: 7:55

And so we when this doctor came by, we were just thanking him profusely. We said, Thank you so much for being there and for helping us get our little girl cared for in the way that she needed. And after my thing, I just, I was completely inarticulate. I was just couldn't say anything. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I was like, had tears. I was like, blubbering. I was just a mess. And he finally just stopped me and put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, Vivek. He said, there's no need to thank me. He said, Vivek, you're one of us. And when he said that, you know, it made me feel like I belonged. It made me feel like they were people who cared for us, and they were looking out for us. And it didn't escape me that there are so many times in all of our lives where we walk through the dark, dark hallways of life feeling that we're alone, that there isn't someone to take care of us. The extraordinary thing about this is that he, what he did in that moment, is he, he allowed himself to express his love for us through the service that he provided. And what we have realized like in our own lives, ever since we found out that we were pregnant with our first son, is we realize that there is that the most fundamental question, the most fundamental issue, like of our time, that's going to determine whether or not our children have a safe environment to grow up in, is the question of what happens in this deep struggle that's happening in our country, in our world, between love and fear. Because that is the truth is that we are locked in this deep struggle between love and fear, and this love is fear manifests in lots of different ways. It's showing up as insecurity, as anger, as jealousy as rage, but the love shows up as well as kindness as compassion as empathy as generosity, and we realize. That as much as our instincts and who we are is to be beings of love, that many people in our country are living in a place of fear, and many of us, if not all of us, are having many moments where we are living in that fear as well. It's affecting our lives, it's affecting our communities, and it's affecting our country and the world. And so the question, I think, is the most important for us to ask ourselves is, what are we going to do to tip the scales away from fear and towards love?

Sally Evans: 10:33

Wow, what a powerful moment when Dr Murthy shares that you're one of us. You're one of us. Can you tell us about a time when you experienced that?

Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield: 10:49

What strikes me as you asked me that question, Sally, is the vulnerability that is intrinsic to belonging, that loneliness isn't new, and yet to talk about loneliness feels incredibly raw at times, many people know and many people don't know that for the majority of my life I have struggled with an eating disorder, and that now I articulate it as a way of living in recovery from anorexia, and the anorexia was a coping strategy that my brain, all of our brilliant brains, originate, to cope with pain and trauma and feelings of loneliness. And so when I encountered my anorexia at a time when I lost control of it. And the irony of that is that in anorexia, you think that you have control, that I had to leave my job and my children and my husband and move to residential treatment in another state. And intrinsic to eating disorders, not for everybody, but for almost everybody who has in struggles and has conquered an eating disorder. It is this age old, deep perfectionism. And we know from Brene Brown right that underneath perfectionism is shame. And so as you are one who is battling this quest to be perfect in all of your relationships and how you show up in the world, in the ways that you practice your faith, when that is blanketed with shame, there is a deep embarrassment in a sense that I have done something wrong, which is guilt, and even beyond that, that I am wrong. And so I left for residential treatment, and I was in my perfectionism, convinced that I was not sick enough to be there, that it could always be worse, that it could always include an alternative treatment or alternative interventions. And when I was early in my time at residential treatment for my anorexia, one of the group therapists asked a question, and I don't remember what that question was, but my answer was, I don't feel sick enough to be here. I don't feel worth the resources that it's going to take to help me get better. I don't feel worthy of this distance from my family and this spending of time and energy and money to go toward me and my treatment, I felt utterly alone in that moment and in that space, and without saying a word, this young adult teenager who I did not know came up to me and she hugged me. She didn't say anything. She really looked at me, and she saw me as she hugged me, and that physical touch was enough to know that I belong. Lauren, you're one of us.

Sally Evans: 14:15

As Dr Murthy referenced the doctor that helped his child. He explained that this doctor expressed his love through his service. I wonder what practices we can engage in to counter the the factors that we named of technology and culture around us that lead to these experiences of loneliness.

Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield: 14:41

bell hooks says that belonging is a place where the soul can rest. In other words, it is a homecoming. It is a returning to that front porch where we are known and where we know one another. And so I'm wondering in your. Question, and as we process and are dialoguing here about what Dr Murthy says, What are the things that can counter our technological divisions and the mobility and and the culture around us? And I find myself thinking as I'm getting ready to say this word. I can't believe I'm getting ready to say this word, because I'm so I'm not going to say I'm poor at it. I'm going to say, there's so much opportunity for me to continue to grow into this meditation, mindfulness presence with a capital P, and with that, when we are able to be intentional with our thoughts and our words and our actions, often, there are other balms for this division and this loneliness that is in our culture, I think we can more readily tap into joy and laughter. I think we are motivated in new ways to be advocates and activists for those who are experiencing loneliness and a cessation from belonging and can't find their home, or who have been outcast from their homes, but when we're showing up, living out of our values, and when we're showing up mindfully and when we're showing up with this inspiration to respond with joy and purpose and grief, there's no stopping what we can do, even if we continue to feel lonely and look for belonging ourselves.

Sally Evans: 16:49

Finally, Dr Murthy closes by naming the deep struggle between love and fear, what can we do to tip the scales away from fear and towards love?

Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield: 17:01

At first, I wanted to push back on Dr Murthy for this. I wanted to say that fear and love are not mutually exclusive. I wanted to say that I can be both loving and fearful at the same time. And I believe that, and I believe that that harkens to one of my personal values, which is courage. But when I paused and when I listened again to his idea of fear and love, it came across more as an orientation. We can orient ourselves toward fear, or we can orient ourselves toward love, if we're living in an orientation of love, even when the dark night of the soul still happens, because it will, even when Dr Murthy refers to those dark hallways that we all have to walk, even in the orientation to love, there is still fear, but we are positioning ourselves toward curiosity and wonder and courage. Valerie core is one of the prophets of our day and age that is speaking truth in so many ways through courage and action and love. And she says when we are discussing issues with those who feel like opponents or with those who have vastly differing viewpoints and approaches to responding to our disagreements. In listening, we don't grant their argument as legitimate. In listening to someone, we're not saying you are right and I'm wrong in truly listening to someone, which I believe is the orientation to the house of love. We're granting their humanity and our own. We're preserving dignity. We're not agreeing, we're not even agreeing to disagree. We're saying I am because we are even in the midst of conflict and war and hate and an orientation that gets us stuck in the house of fear.

Sally Evans: 19:17

I love how you helped us ask such important questions that I think we'll walk away with today. How do we accept the invitation to be fully present to one another today. I want to thank our guest, Rev. Dr. Lauren Jones Mayfield, for sitting down and sharing her reflections and wisdom with us. Thanks also to Rip Reinhardt and his audio engineering skills and to the team at the Center for Interfaith Relations for their multiple levels of support in this project. I'm Sally Evans, and I hope you'll join us for the Festival of Faiths, November 12 through 15th, with the theme of Sacred Belonging. Author and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project Valarie Kaur, referenced in this episode, is a keynote speaker. Visit festivaloffaiths.org to check out the festival schedule and get your tickets.