S1 Ep002 Belonging and Absence in Public Space with Reverend Peaches Gillette, Pt2
This is part 2 of our 2 part conversation with Reverend Peaches Gillette - a poet, prison chaplain, diversity consultant, school board member, and educator. She shares her thoughts about inclusivity in public space:
The impact of pushing past perceived differences and instead looking for commonalities
Why it’s crucial to help each other feel belonging
How to interrupt racism and indifference with one of the 4 kinds of love
What a variation of the game of tag can teach us about strengthening our communities
“I can have an active role in creating a different kind of world. If you look at the world starting from the little space that you exist in, the relationship you have with the person you're sitting next to on the train, your family, all of those are worlds. And if you look at yourself as making a difference in some world, then the practice of doing that will take you much farther. ”
Transcript
Season 1, Episode 2 (Part 2) : Belonging and Absence in Public Space
[Sounds of children playing in park]
Reverend Peaches Gillette, Guest:
I can have an active role in creating a different kind of world. If you look at the world starting from the little space that you exist in, the relationship you have with the person you're sitting next to on the train, your family, all of those are worlds. And if you look at yourself as making a difference in some world, then the practice of doing that will take you much farther. But we have to constantly stay in the practice of doing that. We have to exercise our virtues, we have to exercise the things that we want, we have to exercise love, and keep them fit. And the fitter they are, the better they work.
[Sounds of train station fade in to background]
[Rhythmic sounds of train passing]
[Subway chimes arpeggio played on mandolin]
[Silence in background]
Cevan Castle, Host:
Welcome to ‘Towards a Kinderpublic’, a podcast exploring issues in public space, and ways to design kinder space that better meets our interconnected needs. I’m Cevan Castle, and along with Annie Chen, we are Kinderpublic.
Today’s episode is “Belonging and Absence in Public Space: Part 2,” and the second half of our conversation with Reverend Peaches Gillette.
[Sounds of birds outdoors fade in and out]
Reverend Gillette is a published poet, a prison chaplain, a diversity and race relations consultant, a school board member, and an educator. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
If you have not listened to Episode 1, and the first half of our interview, we invite you to visit last week’s episode, where you can find it.
A few notes about today’s portion of the conversation:
I first met our guest in the context of preschool and elementary education in New York City, where she was the head of an afterschool program for young children called The Clubhouse- we’ll refer to that program in our conversation today.
I vividly remember being introduced to Reverend Gillette in the Clubhouse space- it was afterschool at the time and the room was busy. She paused, smiled warmly and expressed friendly curiosity, while simultaneously supervising a hot glue gun operation on the counter next to her, and pulling a tray of fresh cookies, made by the children, out of the oven. Listeners who work in education or spend time around young children will understand the difficulty of everything I just described.
The children around her - ranging from kindergarten to 5th grade or so- were calm and composed. They confidently engaged with other kids and adults in the room, including myself, the newcomer, with a sense of ownership of the space.
They were all busy with projects of their own devising. No one was looking at the clock.
And this was not the typical after school environment of hard surfaces and art carts. It was a dedicated space with walls painted soft green and an array of projects and investigations permanently on display. The room had a few key amenities, like the oven, which opened up incredible possibilities- creative detailing of an otherwise typical room. But it was also in the way the space was activated. This room had a poet in residence. And people in this room liked to think about things together.
For our listeners working in the design of educational space, you might be interested to know that the multi-disciplinary Clubhouse room no longer exists. The kitchenette was removed, it was repainted, and converted into a standard classroom.
We return to our conversation with Reverend Gillette to talk about her ideas of public space, race, inclusivity, and what we can learn to do better to build and maintain our communities.
[Sounds of birds outdoors fade in and out]
Cevan, opening interview:
In finding light within the darkness, you said, ”I am not somebody who came from a world that was easy, and I'm still telling you that I believe in you and I believe in love, and I believe in our human connection, and I believe we can light up the world for each other.”
Reverend Gillette:
Oh yeah.
Cevan:
Can you talk about going beyond the minimum in our relationships with strangers? How should we think about anticipating needs for people we may not know personally?
Reverend Gillette:
Yeah. I don't want to use words that become overused in our society, but there's a certain kind of openness, like a letting go of fear. That part of it is really fear. And as you ask that question, it immediately makes me think about the poetry workshop I recently did in the county jail.
Now, I've done chaplaincy work in prisons, you know, for a very long time. When you go into prison, to do chaplaincy work, it's a one-on-one situation. And so you were set up with a very particular person; you were set at a very particular table; you know that there are guards standing over your shoulder and watching every move that everybody makes. And so if you're willing to do that kind of work, there's almost like this instant kind of, okay, maybe fail-safe to it that if something goes wrong, you know, that you're being really closely watched. And so the development of the compassion that you have to do that work is a little different, I’ve found, than going into a county jail.
Now, you go into a county jail, and certainly the one up here in Ithaca, which I did. And you are in a room, in a classroom, with however many- in this particular case- there were nine men. The nine men are the ones who signed up for the poetry workshop. So I was in a room with all men, there are nine of them, and there's no guard in the room. They're outside. They're kind of watching, hopefully, if they didn't run to the bathroom, right? And so in the back of my mind, and I'm sure other people, I mean, I know people that are terrified and wouldn't even do this kind of work. I think, you know, my first thought was like, okay, what if something did happen? What if one of these guys, you know, kind of… I said something and triggered something and they freaked out.
And so, I sat there and we were talking the whole time as all these thoughts were going on. The first talk was like, “what do you like about poetry? What do you like about writing?” Just something very simple. And as I was speaking, and smiling or not smiling or trying at some point, one of the things I remember saying to them is like, “you know, it's very interesting,” I said to them, “you don't know me and I don't know you, but I'm gonna tell you the one thing that we all have in common. And that is that we live in this world, and each one of us have had our hearts broken somewhere in our lives. And that makes us the same in a lot of ways. The capacity to have your heart broken because you do love, because you do care, because you do want to belong, is something that instantly makes us have something in common. So we are not different in that way.”
And when I realized that, as I was sitting there, like everything else, every other feeling I had melted away. And I actually felt I was sitting in the room with my family. There were no thoughts about like, “what did you do? Or what kind of person are you?” We were there for the same reason they wanted to be in there, even if it was just to get out of their cells, but to write, and to do something, and to talk about their feelings.
And I'm telling you, the most beautiful writing came out of that, and sharing. And there were all levels of educational skills. But I also said like,”if you can't write, then speak to me, and I'll write it for you.” And we just made it all work.
And so part of how we can eliminate this stuff is to step in, and I'm sorry, to carry some of the weight for other people, you know? Instead of having this, this radically individualist system that says, “well, if you can't pull yourself up by the bootstraps, clearly you're not working hard enough, and that's not my responsibility, and so you just have to deal with that element of suffering.” We need to step in and go, you know what? If you can't stand up on your own, I'm gonna help lift you up right now. However, whatever, that takes. And if I can't do that alone, I'm gonna find people to help me do that.
And if we can just constantly think like that, no matter who the person is, we may not have people who are committing the kind of crimes they commit. These people have been lost and abandoned and left out and put into the area of being absent most of their lives, losing their sense of belonging, struggling most of their existence. And what we do is put them in a situation where they're now even more intensely in a situation where they don't belong to society. They don't even know how to get back into society.
Okay, those are the guys who are sitting in prison. Well, people in the world are operating like that! They don't know how to belong. They think that they're alone with everything because we tell them, the messages in our society is like, well, if you can't fix that for yourself, there's something wrong with you. And we need to stop sending those messages.
And that is not to say that we pretend that people don't do wrong things, or they don't say wrong things, and they're not racist. All of that's still real. But I know- or I feel, and I have done- I can see past that into greater areas of how we are really connected. And sometimes if you can just reach out and touch somebody's heart, you can soften them.
And here's another example of that. We took a trip out to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon. And I knew that I would come across a lot of different kinds of racist nonsense. And I remember going into like, a store, it was really like this tiny little makeshift store. And the guy in the store- it was in Colorado, I believe- a white guy, really big white guy with a real scowl on his face, was carrying a gun- in a holster!
His manner was so horrible to me that it was almost as if I felt like I shouldn't even be in the store. But I was there, and my friend was there, white guy. There's music on the radio and I happen to like country music. I said to him, “that's a really beautiful song. I know that song.” And he goes, “oh yeah, it really is.” And I said, “yeah,” and I mentioned the artist who sings it. I mentioned another song that he sings, and all of a sudden he softened. That's amazing to me! That tells me something about who we are as people. That sometimes if you could just find a little opening into somebody's heart, or into the things that mean something to them, that you can, you can break open the hard shell just a little bit.
It doesn't necessarily change right then and there, but if you could just start breaking that shell open… and my being willing to even give it a try… In other words, I could have leaned on fear and just left, or leaned on hate, even in some cases, and left. But we have to step past those things, otherwise we're never going to get anywhere in terms of bringing people into our love, bringing people into the community, making people feel like they belong and that, and by the way, we can have differences and still be exactly the same. And that's the message that we need to send out, you know?
Cevan:
Mm-hmm. I love the idea of being aware that it's easier to lean into fear, and it's easier to lean into hate. And love is a job, it's not passive, it's something that you work at. And those ideas together, that the way we anticipate our opportunities to bring people into space, into our space, and to dignify their presence with belonging…
Reverend Gillette:
Yes.
Cevan:
…And we anticipate an opportunity to, to lean into love or lean into connection. It's such a beautiful invitation. It requires so much presence of mind.
Reverend Gillette:
And it takes courage! And to me it's worth it. It's worth it. When I go home or anybody goes home and we sit and talk about how terrible the world is and how divided we are and how polarized everything is, well the question becomes, well, what are you doing to change it? You have to actively do things to change it. And it's not just about reading books, it's about stepping out into the world and opening your arms and saying, “yeah, I can see our differences, but that does not mean that we have nothing that's in common or nothing that's the same.”
And I think it's very hard for people to do that, you know?
Cevan:
Mmm-hmm.
Also in your writing, Finding Light Within the Darkness, you encourage people to be consistent to the best of our ability across all relationships. There are so many reasons that we might fail to be consistent across all relationships, but one in particular relates to your idea of the destructive nature of indifference. How do we become more aware of the consistency of our interactions across the different people we encounter? How do we hold space for people that may be absent, but may reappear? How do we help individuals we have never met and who may have circumstances very different from our own?
Reverend Gillette:
Yeah.
Centuries ago, someone came up with this concept of these four different types of love, right? And one is Eros and one is, Philos, and one is Agape, and I can't remember the other.
I think that people feel like, “if I don't love you the way, like I, Reverend Gillette, love Cevan,” then I have no room to love you. And we are so capable of using different kinds of love to cover everybody. And I love that idea that it was like somebody goes, “hey, if you can't use that kind of love, you can use this kind of love!” That love that's related to almost a god love or spiritual love. And that's the love that's supposed to cover everybody!
It means, like, I know people that are just a royal pain in the neck, that's just a human reality. But I still don't have to hate them. I could go, “okay, I need that other kind of love for them.” It's like those statements that go, “well, only a mother could love that person.” Because what they're really saying is like, “there's a particular kind of love that that person needs to be covered with,” kind of thing.
And so we have so many options in how we could love somebody. There are people we love, but we have to love them at a distance because they are destructive people. And that's just the reality. I love the idea of recognizing these realities about people who might be, who might not be as healthy for you in a lot of ways, but love never has to be taken out of the picture. And the opportunity to kind of go back in, it's like a boxer in a ring. Like, you know, you get knocked down, you know, and your love becomes a little crumpled and hurt, but you get back up and you get back in the ring and you go, “I'm still gonna use that love again. This time I'm gonna maybe look at it a little differently or you know, bob and weave around it in a different kind of way, but I'm still gonna go back to that love.”
It's a commitment we have to make to ourselves. You know, it's not something you just say, well, I'm gonna do this. And it happens. Nothing happens like that. It's a commitment we have to do for ourselves and for humanity, if we care about humanity, by saying, look, “I'm gonna find the love that I can cover you with.” And it's still love.
I felt like, when I was sitting in that county jail, that I loved every one of those men that was sitting with me. Is it the same kind of love that I have for my grandchildren? It is not. It's not the same kind of love I have for my son. It is not. But it is still love. And we are clever beings that have these big brains, let's make use of them.
We can go in and say, “what love will cover you right now?” And it is a love of saying, ”I want to hear you. I see what you've done and I'm gonna walk with you anyway. I'm gonna make sure that you never feel outside because your feeling outside is what put you here.” And let's stop this cycle. Because this cycle is about the whole world. It's not just about the individual behavior, it's about the behavior of the whole world that has this kind of crime and punishment mentality, and this way of being indifferent to people because they're just not like us enough.
Well, if we can look at ourselves as just like a human family, right? It's cliche, but as a human family, it's like having those relatives that are just like, okay, they're a little wonky, but they're still your family. And if something happened to them, you'd be there, or you'd try to be there, or you'd be there for the person who is closest to them, but there would be a chain of being there and belonging. And we have to start doing that for people everywhere, no matter who they are, or what they look like, or what their economic levels are, what their race is. We have to start being there for other people.
There was a game we used to play when we were kids. Actually it was a tag game. It was a variation of a tag game where if you touched base, right, where you can't be tagged, and you reached out your hand and let somebody else touch you, they were also protected because you were touching base. So there was electrical current that went through, in terms of staying safe from being tagged. I look at life that way! Even if I am not the one next to you, if I could hold the hand of the person closest to you, and they hold your hand, we're all gonna cover one another that way. And I love that concept. And we can do that. We really can. That's how we bring people into belonging, into feeling like they're not left out alone. Nobody, nobody! I don't know anybody who wants to feel that way.
There it is again- that's another thing we have in common. Nobody wants to feel like people don't care about them. That's another thing we have in common, you know? So let's find those beautiful human things that we have in common and actively work on keeping that in our focus. That's what we have to do. We can't just leave it sit by itself.
Cevan:
Mm-hmm. Can you describe some of the qualities of a place or community or business that you love that is special to you? What does that place feel like?
Reverend Gillette:
There's no such place like that doesn't have rules that have to cover everybody's wellbeing, right? But the first word that comes to my mind is actually this sense of freedom, which is one of the senses in the middle of the kind of community that I grew up in. And even my mother, a single mother who raised eight of us, and, and my mother was very moral and very religious and very distant, and there was structure around what we did. She allowed us so much freedom as children. It was really amazing to me. I mean, she, there was no question about that: for her, our lives were about playing. She just accepted that that's what children do, they play, they're nutty, let them do it. And she allowed and provided so much space for us to just be free in who we were, that it, it mitigated a lot of the impact of the ugliness that we grew up around.
And so when I think of a space, I think of a place that like, just lets people be free with their bodies and their selves, and just dancing, and playing, and that being really okay, as long as they are consciously being- that's part of it- that there has to be this kind of like collective consciousness about the wellbeing of anybody who's around. That's the first layer of that.
And then, in that, because we can only truly be free within a structure- if we don't have the structure, then we're just engaged in chaos. So we have to have a structure and then we can truly exercise the sense of being free. And that's the way I feel a space like that would be be like, oh, if you wanna do art, and you wanna lie on the floor and eat chocolate chip cookies, and you wanna do that part, that everybody can do what they feel like doing, keeping in mind the wellbeing of other people, that would magnify the most freeing space that I could imagine.
And that's part of how we really ran Clubhouse, the afterschool program that I used to run. This is the structure of this program: that we don't hurt people, we don't do certain kind of things, we don't speak certain kinds of way to people. We always maintain consciousness of the wellbeing of the people around us. And so once we get that in place, then you just do whatever you wanna do. You go and play, you do art, you wanna draw on the wall, you wanna do that, that's okay. That's where we are. That's what we're doing. And I love that, that energy and that respect for the freedom that we can have in those special kinds of ways, you know? So that's what I see as a place like that. That's the kind of space I imagine. Yeah. <laughing>
Cevan:
I’m thinking of the word tolerance in listening to what you're saying, too. You know, we have limits. We're concerned with the wellbeing of those around us…
Reverend Gillette:
Mm-hmm.
Cevan:
… but we are not telling them how to be in the space.
Reverend Gillette:
Yeah. Yeah. And even though we love to see ourselves as so different from children, we're really not to a large degree. The human animal has a tendency, has a great capacity for being irrational. That's just a reality. And to think that, well, if I'm okay, then it doesn't really matter if the rest of the world is okay, as long as I'm okay. Right? And so we have to keep that in mind and we have to help people practice the idea of, sometimes what we feel is not necessarily rational, and if we dig into it deeply enough, it is not covering the wellbeing of everybody. It's only covering your wellbeing and there's a difference. So there has to be a collaboration- an emotional collaboration- that we're consciously covering other people.
I remember in a classroom, where a child is one of those kids who loves singing, right? So they're singing at the desk and the other child can't stand singing- somehow! <laughing> And I remember a kid saying to me, ”oh, I can't stand that singing.” And so you think like, okay, so what am I gonna do? I'm not gonna tell the child to stop singing, right? And I'm not gonna tell you that you have to love singing. But what I am going to tell you is that you have to emotionally figure out a way to exist in a space where people do something other than you and find some rational space inside yourself to say, you know what? I could deal with this for the next 15 minutes. I could deal with this for 10 minutes. Or, I can move my own body and take it someplace else. You know?
And those are the kind of very important things we have to not just teach children, but we have to teach adults that, as well. And to be conscious that it's not always about controlling the person who's doing that thing, it's about controlling yourself and taking agency and saying, “okay, let me go sit a little farther away because, even if I hear it, I hear it at a lower level.” You know? Or maybe even if you wanted to say, look, you can go step in and go, “hey, why don't I join them in singing? Maybe I'll get something out of that.” You know? So, there's a lot of alternatives as opposed to saying like, I can't stand that and I have to make that person stop, which is really what we're teaching our children right now.
And adults just function the same way, unfortunately. It's like, “if I don't like something, I'm gonna make somebody stop doing that,” as opposed to “how can I emotionally negotiate this that something works out for both of us or all of us?” So we have to help to teach people this kind of how to collaborate emotionally.
Reverend Gillette:
We know how to collaborate on a physical, material level, but how do we collaborate emotionally, allowing people to at least get the most out of what feels right to them?
Cevan:
Mmm-hmmm.
Reverend Gillette:
No, you can't have 100% and the other person have nothing. You have to figure out where everybody gets a percentage of the joy and the feeling of being free. And so, there is always work to be done, you know?
Cevan:
That's so important because sometimes, like you're saying, the needs of people and that are sharing one space can be in conflict.
Reverend Gillette:
Yes.
Cevan:
And so I think often we disregard many of those needs and we say, your needs don't count because they don't represent the average, or they don't represent my needs…
Reverend Gillette:
That’s right.
Cevan:
…and I'm really more in control of this space.
Reverend Gillette:
That’s right.
Cevan:
Right. And so, how do we, um, become aware and negotiate so that the space is useful?
Reverend Gillette:
Yeah.
Cevan:
More useful.
Reverend Gillette:
So I think about space and I'm imagining even a classroom where there are areas for certain things, right? So there's a reading area and there's an area where somebody can build with blocks, which is a very noisy thing to do, and there's a quiet area, and we set up all sorts of spaces that way. And it doesn't mean that the energy and the sounds are not going to interact. But what it does mean, I think, which is very important, is that I do, in fact, have a space. And if I have a space to be what I want to be, to do my artwork, to do whatever, then it's much easier for me to say, all right, I get that somebody else could have a space as well.
It's much easier. As opposed to having one person control the entire environment and say, well this is the kind of space I want it to be in. It can only be that kind of space. Well, nothing is only just one thing. We have to understand that just on a human level. And life makes noise, right? That's the way it is. And we must rationally be used to that noise. And you figure out how to navigate it inside of your own head and, you know, put it in a certain place inside of your own head and understand that it's not gonna last forever. You also don't have to necessarily be there. But what you can't do is control the entire environment for one person, based on your needs, or your wants. And that's part of the structure. The rule is that. And I'm sorry, you can figure out how to work with that, work together, even, with that. You could say to somebody, “hey, why don't we do that for 10 minutes and let's do this for 10 minutes, right? So we're both being satisfied. You wanna build a block and knock them over and make noise for, for a little while, let's do that and then come over with me and sit and read for a little while.”
So we just have to figure out how to negotiate and we're capable of negotiating. We just forget that it's important to negotiate. You know, we've been taught so much that it's about me, me, me, me, me. And we've forgotten the importance of negotiating. And in fact,we've forgotten that it's really what we want! When we're complaining about how the world is so separated, the other side of what we're saying is, I wish it weren't! And so let's work on making it not that way.
And part of that is about being patient and kind and making sacrifices for other people. We don't like to use that word and we don't like to think that way, but that's really what we do. We make sacrifices for our family constantly- for our children constantly, for our work environments, for that matter! We sacrifice time, we sacrifice all sorts of things. And if we can bring that into the consciousness, of really that that's what we have to do, it's part of what we have to do to survive as a collection of people! There's no way to do it any other way. There's always sacrifice and patience and selflessness at times. And all of those beautiful things have to come into the picture. And if we could operate that way, and, aside of that, just constantly to the degree we can, be uplifting to other people.
And being uplifting is not about not correcting somebody, because you can correct somebody and also be uplifting, because you give them room to grow into something that they probably want to be. But we have to constantly- to me- be like, “you know what? No matter what you do, I'm going to find that love that covers you.” That's the light, to me, that you give to other people.
That statement there is like, “no matter what you do or what you are, I am going to find the love that covers you.” That's the feeling I had when I was out in Colorado. That's a feeling I have when I deal with racism, I will find the kind of love that covers you and you will never be left out of that love. And then we can work from there, you know? And, and that's the light that we shine and we give to other people in this world.
Cevan:
What are steps we can take away from this conversation that might help us to maintain a greater awareness of each other?
Reverend Gillette:
Very good. Very good.
Cevan:
And, I'll add, an awareness that that's what we want.
Reverend Gillette:
Yeah. And I think we do want that togetherness. I think that it is that- when we are broken enough in this world, then we think that that's not what we want. But it is only the brokenness that makes us feel that way. And if we weren’t so broken, we would feel like, “oh, I love being with other people.” Even though we want moments by ourselves. Nobody says, ”I wanna be alone and I wish there was no nobody else in the world,” right? That you wanna be alone for moments and that's perfectly fine, but you’re still feeling the energy of what's going on outside in the world and you know that there are people doing things and working and operating. So I think we do really want togetherness.
And I think that the first thing is to really look at it, look at these steps towards being more together, which comes with being able to kind of love one another, be patient with one another, and be willing to sacrifice for one another. We have to realize that it is not something that we put down and go back to! It has to be a tool that we carry everywhere that we go, the same way we carry our cell phones. It has to be something we consciously carry everywhere we go. And you're feeling a little drained, you go in your pocket and you go, oh my God, I remember that I do love people and I do want to be together. And you can't forget that, because it's easy to forget. It's easy to be buried under the negativity in this world, under the fact that so many things are going wrong. It is very easy to be buried in that and to feel hopelessness. And to feel despair. And hopelessness and despair creates a void. And it also separates us.
And so we have to remember that, I can, in fact, no matter what the world is like, I can have an active role in creating a different kind of world. And we're not talking about like, oh, I can magically change the world. But if you look at the world starting from the little space that you exist in, the relationship you have with the person you're sitting next to on the train, your family, that really is a world. All of those are worlds. And if you look at yourself as being, as making a difference in some world, that intimate world, then the practice of doing that will take you much farther. But we have to constantly stay in practice of doing that. We can never… it's like exercise, right? You don't stop exercising and think that you're gonna be up to the same level that you were six months ago when you stopped. We have to exercise our virtues. We have to exercise the things that we want. We have to exercise love, and keep them fit. And the fitter they are, the better they work. You know?
Cevan:
I love the idea that you shared earlier about the game of tag, where you were reaching the hand that you could, and that person may support someone else who may support someone else…
Reverend Gillette:
Yes.
Cevan:
…and ultimately closes some of that distance. I wanted to ask you, if you're not sure how to engage, how do you find the opportunity to put your umbrella out? <laugh> But I feel like that game of tag is exactly the advice that I'm looking for. You have to touch the hands you can touch.
Reverend Gillette:
Yeah. Because it doesn't have to be me. That's not the point. Because literally, if I think that it has to be me closing that gap, that's really a selfish way to think. It's kind of an ego way to think. It doesn't have to be me. All I have to do is like, touch the hand of the next person and say, oh, by the way, would you pass that on and touch the next person, and link them onto this line so that we all feel covered by somebody, you know? And ultimately realize wow, how many people are actually covering me? You know, you think that it's the person next to you, but then when you realize you're like, oh my god, no, it's a whole line of people who are covering me because they're all holding hands so I can be a part of this link or this chain. You know? And I think that's the most important thing to stop thinking like, oh, if I can't do that, then how can it be done? By thinking like, hey, if I'm carrying a torch– runners, right? In ancient times. They carry the torch and you know what they do, they pass the torch on to somebody else.
Cevan:
Mmm-hmm.
Reverend Gillette:
Because they can't do it the whole way, but they're giving it to somebody else and they're saying, okay, now you do it. And that's really the symbolism of holding one hand to the other and saying, by the way, I'm holding onto love. I'm holding onto the base, so I can't be tagged and I'm gonna connect you to that, one way or the other, I'm gonna connect you to that. I always loved that part as a child, and I was like, “wait a minute, this could mean something!” You know? <laughing> I really love that.
And like I said before, like the light that we are for one another really is just, in some ways, like if you hold up the umbrella, I don't have to say anything. People will see it there. If I hold up the light of love, I don't have to say a word. People will see it there. If they're in the darkness, they'll be like, oh my God, I see a light. Let me go toward it and see what it is. And then once they come toward it, you can say, yes, of course you're welcome here. You know, and that's what we have to do for one another. You're welcome here, you know, and we'll work it out. It may not be perfect, but trust me, we are gonna work this out, you know? And that's the way I feel. <laughing>
I'm so happy to have been here with you, and, you know, what we're doing here through this conversation, I'm hoping, that what we're doing is, we're holding a torch up and saying, come! That there are people out here who still believe, who are still gonna cover you. Because I think people have lost hope and faith that there's anybody out there that's gonna cover them. Well, I want them to know that I'm gonna cover you! And I think that this conversation we're having, and the broadcast of it, I hope it sends that message out, that, you know, don't lose faith. Even if you can't reach the base, I'll reach out to you.
[Sound of birds in a city park fade in to background and play with no other sounds for a few seconds]
Cevan:
Thank you so much. This was a really uplifting and meaningful conversation. <laughing>
Reverend Gillette:
You're very welcome. Thank you very much for having me. And we'll talk again soon. <laughing>
[Sound of birds only for a few seconds, then fade into background]
Cevan Castle:
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Links to the guests and topics mentioned, as well as a full transcript of the conversation, are available on the podcast section of our website, kinderpublic.com. You can also visit our website to learn more about our work.
I’m Cevan Castle, our guest has been Reverend Peaches Gillette. Thanks for listening. I wish you a good week!
[Sounds of birds linger and then fade out]