A framed painting at Parables. Four fish are swimming in a river. The red fish is moving in the opposite direction of the orange, green, and white fish. There is a bridge above the fish that reads, “Love is the bridge between you and everything” — Rumi. On the bridge, there are three flags that read, “Understanding,” “Belonging, and “Friendship.” The painting is signed, “J Herman, 2019.”
Once a month, I have the privilege of leading a Sunday morning service at a local church among a community called Parables. This community centers the needs of disabled and neurodivergent community members. I have loved building friendships with this community.
Recently, as I began my time to speak, I read Matthew 7:3-5, where Jesus asks pointed questions about judging others: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’ while the log is in your own eye?'”
After reading that, I asked the gathered community, “As you heard that parable, was there anything that you noticed? What did you hear? Did anything stand out to you?”
Someone spoke up, “L is my best friend. I know that even if life gets hard, L is always going to be one of my best friends.”
That wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but it was the right one. L was there too, and she smiled when she was affirmed.
We never know what someone will bring to a passage, how they’ll hear it, or how they’ll apply it. But isn’t this response just as valid as a comment about what’s in the text itself — i.e. what it literally says? Somewhere within it, this is what it meant to A, the person who answered. And love was lifted up.
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the annual November gathering of the Interfaith Round Table of Washtenaw County which was titled this year, “Together We Heal: Interfaith Gathering for Peace and Unity.” It moved me deeply.
The gathering was hosted by the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, and we heard music and moving speeches by members of Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Christian, Baha’i, and Unitarian faiths. Front and center, was concern over what is happening in Gaza and Israel. I found the event to be comforting and challenging, both in the best ways, as people were moved to act, speak authentically of convictions and collective shortcomings, and care deeply for one another. It was real; it was transformative.
I kept thinking… If we want peace and transformation, we have to create those kinds of moments at every step of the process, not only as an end goal. If we want to see justice, freedom, and end to violence, that takes also confession, reflection, and action right here.
Interfaith dialogue provides community spaces and conversational frameworks to do meaningful, life-changing work.
Four people stand side by side, wearing signs that say 8-0-0-0, and they are holding their hands above their heads as if they are zeros. Public domain image.
Do you ever find yourself wondering, “These things I’m doing. . . Do they really matter? Do they make any difference?”
The answer is a resounding yes.
On average, each person on the planet consistently affects 8,000 people every day.
I learned this from a tremendous book. It’s called, Connected: The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How they Shape Our Livesby Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. In the book, Christakis and Fowler conduct intriguing scientific research on social networks to discover how they connect us and affect us. I find their conclusion to be stunning: Daily, our actions, thoughts, and emotions impact others. That’s where this number comes from: On average, we affect approximately 8,000 people every day.
How did they calculate this number?
Christakis and Fowler have discovered that on average, each person knows twenty people well enough to invite them to a dinner party. If those friends then know twenty people to the same degree, and then those friends know twenty people to the same degree, we are talking about 20 x 20 x 20 = 8,000 people.
We are relationally connected and deeply embedded in these relationships. Their research revealed that we affect and are affected by our friends’ friends’ friends in social and emotional contagions. Even if we don’t directly know these people three degrees away, we are consistently impacting each other every single day of our lives. That’s astonishing.
Christakis and Fowler discuss the ways that our actions, thoughts, and emotions impact others. When we feel joy, calm, stress, or anxiety, we often pass our emotions to one another in contagion. Sometimes, this happens as quickly and simply as seeing someone’s facial expression. The mirror neurons in our brains fire to make a similar facial expression, and then we feel a similar emotion too. This can happen with fear. It can also happen with a smile. These are truly contagious.
So, if we have the ability to impact a social network as large as 8,000 people pretty unconsciously, what is possible if we consider this consciously? How can we positively affect our social network with acts of compassion, advocacy, and solidarity?
This raises impactful questions as well:
–How can we positively affect our social network through our own self-care and personal, spiritual practices? These enrich us, but they can also add wellbeing to the whole. We are deeply connected to others. We can truly have an impact upon 8,000 people.
— And, of course, what is possible when we combine our efforts? What is possible if we show up in person and express solidarity, care, and support? What contagions of change can we build when we are working together?
All of these actions launch social contagions of connectedness and change.
If you doubt your ability to affect things, please know that these matter. Everything you’re doing definitely matters.
A tattered American flag behind barbed wire. Public domain.
I recently returned from the Public Health Institute of the national Epilepsy Foundation.
For this conference, we explored social determinants of health around public safety. Over the course of 2024, PHI participants will lead Seizure Recognition and First Aid Training for Law Enforcement as an intentional focus, and we will advocate for people who have been arrested during or after a after a seizure. At times, symptoms of seizures and the recovery period that follows them (the post-ictal state) are mistaken for intoxication, drug use, or drug withdrawal. As we can imagine, there are cascading effects physically, psychologically, financially, and socially for people who are arrested under these circumstances.
In 2024, we will also explore the systems and conditions that impact people with disabilities who are living in prisons and jails. Are their civil rights upheld? Are they able to access their medications? As we can imagine, there are also physical, psychological, financial, and social concerns here as well.
Today, I’d like to lift up some aspects of the financial cost:
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a local meeting for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The Rev. Dr. William Barber II and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis are Co-Chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, a renewed, second chapter of the campaign that the Rev. Martin Luther King initiated just before he was assassinated. This campaign seeks to challenge “systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation” through conversation and direct action.
Each meeting of the Poor People’s Campaign seeks to center the voices, stories, and experiences of people who are directly impacted by these systemic forces. When I attended a local meeting, one of our speakers was a person who was formally incarcerated. He said that he speaks openly about his experience as often as possible because he wants to uplift the challenges that incarcerated people and their families carry while reducing the stigma that so many experience. He mentioned the deep, economic costs to incarcerated people and their families. An experience of poverty increases the odds of incarceration, and undoubtedly, incarceration can solidify poverty in the life of individuals and their families.
When a person is arrested, the first hurdle is cash bail. A judge sets a dollar amount for that bail. Those who can pay are permitted to return home and await trial, but those who are poor languish in jail. In addition to not being able to pay, people are not able to return to their workplaces. This can compound the challenge for an individual or a family.
Once incarcerated, phone calls with loved ones — including children who need parental contact — cost money per phone call. The family ends up paying that. Companies make money off of this.
Many jails and prisons, including where I live in Washtenaw County, Michigan, are moving away from in-person visitation. Instead, they only permit “visitation” via video, and families also have to pay for each usage of that video service.
Incarcerated individuals and families have to pay for attorneys, of course, and these services can cost thousands of dollars. The speaker on Saturday mentioned that he had to pay $10,000 for his attorney.
Prison food is notoriously bad. Because of this, incarcerated individuals often need funds to buy things at the commissary. They can earn small amounts of money through work (a whole other, necessary conversation can be had around financial incentives to make arrests) or their families can send money along.
Until recently, when it was struck down by the Michigan Supreme Court, some incarcerated people in Michigan had to pay a rate per day to stay in prison. Can you imagine? There is no choice to leave, but there is also a fee to stay. “They are charging us for the privilege to stay in prison,” our speaker said.
And then, of course, when people leave an experience of incarceration, stigma makes it virtually impossible to find employment. The speaker mentioned above has a Master’s Degree, but he couldn’t even find a job waiting tables. “And we wonder why recidivism is high?” he asked.
We need to think about the enormous economic costs to individuals, families, and entire communities. . . Our incarcerated neighbors are our neighbors, but sadly, they are often out of view. Certainly, some have made mistakes they deeply regret, and some, like the people I’ve mentioned above, are completely innocent. In the midst of this, doesn’t the financial cost, and possible financial incentives to put people in jail, also also do harm?
A drop of water falls into a body of water, making ripples. Public domain image.
This is my personal phrase lately: “Receive from everything, share from everything.”
There are times of upheaval when we rightfully ask ourselves, “What should I do? How should I act? How are my neighbors and my community calling to me? What do I need? What do my loved ones need? What do my neighbors need? What do people on the other side of the world need?”
We might ask these questions out of urgency. We might ask these questions out of anxiety. We might find ourselves zooming out of the moment, getting perspective, yes, but also distance, asking these questions hypothetically within the big picture rather than dealing with the reality of the day-to-day picture.
Within it all, a good thought is, “Receive from everything, share from everything.”
The truth of the matter is… change happens in the day to day, mundane aspects of life, and above all, change happens through a web of relationships. There are times, absolutely, when our daily, mundane lives need to be disrupted with cries for large-scale change. We are experiencing this now.
We activate change, however, in the daily mundane aspects of life and above all, through our relationships. We need to build change, not hypothetically in some conceptual big picture, but in the communities we are already in, allowing those very communities to expand, transform, and transform us.
Receive from everything, right where we are — receive care, receive messages, receive love, receive challenge, receive questions, receive resources, receive conflict, receive imagination, receive lament, receive hope, receive connection, receive relationship.
Share from everything, right where we are– participate in being a catalyzer, share care, share messages, share love, share challenge, share questions, share resources, share conflict, share imagination, share lament, share hope, share connection, share relationship.
We can participate in building change when we act, when we share, in our daily, mundane lives through the web of our relationships.
Let life catalyze us. Participate in catalyzing change.
Various dishes on a table for a potluck. Public domain image.
Over coffee, I had a meaningful conversation with a person who works with our local chapter of NAMI — the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“Churches and extended community groups know how to provide care for people with cancer. We should be able to do the same thing for people experiencing mental health challenges,” she shared.
When someone is depressed, who brings over the casserole?
When someone is traumatized, who makes phone calls to check on them?
When someone is easily overstimulated or triggered, who accompanies them to the grocery, aiding them in the slew options, colors, and florescent lights?
Good questions. I am grateful that she is bringing these questions to congregations and our wider county.
Later that same evening, I had a phone call with Project UPLIFT. In my staff role with the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan, we host an eight week program over the phone for people with epilepsy and depression. I do this with alongside an incredible psychologist who teaches, facilitates, and provides people with tools to manage depression.
I find myself curious about our unquestioned, cultural beliefs… Why is it that we treat certain health conditions with community care but treat people with a mental illness as though their condition is some kind of character flaw? (It’s not). I also find myself curious…Why do we tend to make this big internal dichotomy between physical illness and mental illness, as if mental illness is not also physical? (Of course it is).
Smuggling Grace 