 started because people are always telling us at the end of this conversation night they could have used even more time to talk, right? So we want to give you as much time as possible to have really some good conversations. So we're still waiting for one person in the center circle, but we have some other things to talk about. So I'm going to talk a little slower to give him a little more time. Most people here want to know where the bathrooms are. So I'm going to tell you that first. But if you go out this door, turn to the right, and then turn to the immediate left, there's men and women right over there in that far hall. So that's an important one. My name is Anne Helmke, and I'm with the Peace Center here in San Antonio. And the Compassionate San Antonio is an effort of that, and that's kind of what's brought this all together. How can we be a more compassionate people and a compassionate, yes, Omar could sit here. Yes, Omar, please join us. A little bit about how this process is going to work. It's not rocket science. There is a booklet on your chair, was there when you got there, and in there there's a little description about living room conversations. Basically, what we host here are conversations about what we think are some important questions that you could be having anywhere and in any room, and it would bring that room to life. It would end up being a living room. So you could have that conversation in your living room at home, or in a congregation or a community center or with some friends at Starbucks or whatever it might be, right? Just to, again, it's just having a good conversation. We had one of these conversations, we've had them on several different topics, but we did have one on election eve, the night before the election, on how we're going to talk with each other the day after the election, right? And that was a really good one. And Nowcast was here that night, and it's being broadcast live, so there are people who are also watching this tonight, and you'll be recorded at times. But then you can also see it later, all the conversations we've had are archived there at Nowcast, San Antonio. Inside that same booklet, you'll see a bright green sheet, I invite you, those who are kind of in these outer circles, I invite you to pull that out. These are the main partners that I've brought tonight together. And the folks who are in our center circle, some of them represent these organizations. So when we kind of get to that part, you'll be able to look at that and go, oh yeah, Rossiella's with Esperanza, and it's listed there, okay? And that'll kind of be your check sheet. Okay, so this is how it works. This middle circle here is kind of our jump starter. I'm going to be asking them a question. They don't even know what the question is exactly, but they know they've been invited to a conversation on We the People, a conversation of the heart. Anyway, I'm going to ask them a question, and they're just going to talk about it. They're going to have a conversation, and we're all going to get to listen in. And they're going to model to us how you can have a conversation and be interested in other folks. I'm hoping all of you that when you come to speak, that you just say your name, you know, like I'm Dawn with the Soul Center, and that way you'll also kind of get connected with the organizations as well. Over in this corner, there he is. So we've got your seat warmed up, Jonathan, and you came just in time because I was just giving instructions. Jonathan is with Rises, and you can find that on your bright green sheet. And we've been waiting for you. So again, this is how the process works. It's pretty simple, Jonathan. I'm going to be asking the center circle a question in a second, and you're all just going to converse with each other, and the rest of us are going to listen in. You're going to model good conversation. You're going to have about 20 minutes to talk about this question. The rest of us are going to be watching and listening, and then we're going to break apart. So the same question will be discussed in these smaller circles. So you'll have an opportunity to discuss that same question. After about 20 minutes, I'll call everybody back together, and I'm going to ask another question. And then another 20 minutes later, I'll ask a third question. And then we have a process at the end where we're going to hear some of those things that have been talked about tonight. I'm going to guide you through the whole thing. It's really easy. All right, so center circle or jump starters, are you good? You're getting ready? OK, so. That's the question? No, it's not. It's not. That's not the question. And I'll ask it. And none of the questions, by the way, are rocket science either. We just think that the questions are important questions for who we are as human beings in this world. Again, the last conversation we had was on election eve on about how are we going to continue to relate with people the day after, which could be family members, as well as people that we worship with, or whatever that might be, how we do that. So here we are, though, at the turn of the year, looking into a future. And there's so much going on in our world today. We have a group of people here in the center circle who give a lot of energy in their lives to we the people. They spend their lives working every day to make it a better world for our community at large. So the question I have for this group of people with so much energy and how they invest their life towards the common good and the greater good, my question to you is this. How did you discern where you were going to invest your life because you're all investing your life with a lot of energy and you're all like investing your lives in very different ways? How did you decide where to invest your energy? Your life, your very life, because I see that in all of you. And then when one of you is ready to speak, you can start. With God's name, the merciful benefactor, the merciful redeemer, my name is Omar Shakir and I'm resident e-ma'am of Masjid Bilalib and Rabbar here in San Antonio, Texas. So I'm representing the Islamic tradition. And my response to your question, Ann, is not going to be rocket science. For me, I think God put me in an environment because I was raised in the Baptist tradition. So I was put in a religious environment, a God-conscious environment. And I grew up in the late 60s, 70s. So I'll just say it like this. The path that I have embarked on was actually chosen for me. I was attracted to learning. I was attracted to serving. And without even knowing it, just going after the thirst, the hunger that I had to learn and to know my religion better and to grow in my religion, it prepared me for leadership and for service in my faith, which teaches me to not only serve my faith, but to serve all humanity. So that's kind of how it got started for me. It wasn't a conscious thing. It was just an appetite, a desire that God put in my heart and my soul. I pursued it. I guess I was obedient. And this is where it landed me. I'm Rudy Harst, spiritual director of the Celebration Circle, a multi-faith community here in San Antonio. And I come from a long tradition of angry young men who have all the right answers. I was an angry young man who knew exactly how the world should be, also growing up in the 60s and 70s. I was very angry at the establishment, very angry about the way we're marching headlong toward nuclear war. And I had the perfect answer to every single question you might ask me. And then at the age of 28, I went to New York City to go share my anger and my self-righteousness with my words and music as a musician. And an odd thing happened. I ended up there in June 21st of 1982 with the big nuclear disarmament rally in Central Park. There were a million of us. And I noticed that 950,000 of us were very angry. And just being in the middle of almost a million angry people made me realize I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to live from that place anymore. And I spent another six months living in it. We only lasted. My wife and I lasted six months. It was just too fast and too hard for us. But living there in the six months after that rally helped me solidify the fact that I wasn't going to out-anger anyone to make the world a better place. That my place would have to come from a place of finding what I wanted to say yes to and helping others, just facilitating a movement toward yes, rather than no against yes for. And that's been my impulse ever since. I forget on a regular basis and revert to being an angry young man who knows it all. But I do my best to come from a place of yes. That's my story I'm sticking to. I would echo some of what Omar was sharing with regard to it being sort of a God thing. But a God thing in the sense that it was definitely a winding and stumbling path. I was very empowered by my family and my faith community to not be afraid to make mistakes. And that was probably one of the greatest gifts that I have been given by those who have surrounded me is an openness to trying something and if it doesn't work to try something else, to persevere. I would say that I've learned from those closest to me who I admire the gift of resilience. We get knocked down. I have spent times where I felt devastated because I had a vision of what I thought my life was supposed to be and things would turn in a certain manner and it would become very apparent that that wasn't it and yet inevitably in my experience there was some small open, sometimes only a crack but a door, some sort of light that would manifest or reveal itself. And I think for myself, contemplation, prayer being drawn by the strengths of my tradition to patience. I think patience is a lost gift also. We're so ready, because of our passions, each of us, I'm sure are very passionate people in this place or we wouldn't be here because we care and we've been given a heart of compassion and respect and trying to create fullness of life for all of livingness that is in the world. Sometimes we have to let what is divine in the world unfold. And I think that we humans aren't always the best at that. We wanna fix something and fix it now. But as I said, I would say it's been a winding, stumbling, sometimes I was dragged into a particular path that it's always been glorious and it's been one filled with love and laughter, a lot of laughter. I did not. Sorry, thank you. My name is Dawn Martin and I am the director of the Soul Center at University Presbyterian Church. Thank you, Omar, for inviting me. I'm Bill Mitchell. I'm with the Texas Public Radio Dare to Listen. And nice to be with you tonight. Kind of ironic that I find myself with Texas Public Radio Dare to Listen because I have never developed over the years very much of a listening technique. I'm a retired college professor so all of my experience isn't talking. And rarely did I listen. And so I find it fascinating to get into an organizational setting where I'm really promoting the idea of listening and meeting people who share that goal and finding so many organizations in this area that are intent on developing conversations and sharing ideas with one another. I didn't realize there were that many organizations in the community and kind of in a sub-rosa fashion. I just didn't know about them but I'm learning more about them. My experience has been that our lives are not fully equipped with conversational opportunities. We text, we use social media. Meetings and organizations are quick and to the point with bullet points there isn't a lot of conversation. And meetings together very often feel like we're not doing anything productive. We have to get back to work so we can begin to get more productive. So I have become much more sensitive and aware of the importance of conversation between people if we're ever gonna develop a community and an opportunity to talk about the issues that are important to us. And I think this event this evening is a tremendous opportunity and a one I'd like to see develop on a more regular basis community-wide. Hi, my name is Graciela Sanchez and I'm one of the Buena Gente of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center who this year will be turning 30. Yay. And I was born and raised in the historic West Side and my family on both sides of my mom and my dad's side have lived in this two-block radius for over 100 years. And if we know San Antonio's history, the near West Side and the near East Side have been where the African American and the Mexican American and Mexican have were segregated neighborhoods and pushed into those neighborhoods and our city leaders were not interested in investing in those neighborhoods. So those communities did for themselves and continue to survive regardless of the support that they have gotten from the city and the county leadership and state and federal for that matter. This is a neighborhood when Turbroak Yolosis was the number one killer. You know, it killed a lot of the people in this neighborhood. A hundred years ago, someone named Emma Tenayuka was born at age 17 and 18. She was organizing people in pecan shellers and women and men that worked at the cigar think company because again they weren't getting paid more than five cents for a pound of pecans and what they were breathing was actually adding to their early deaths. But I had my mother and my grandmother and my great, my abuelitas and the stories that my mother has since day one shared with her children and those abuelas taught and their stories are, I learned about the values of love and cariño and compassion and doing for others always first and foremost because of those stories that my mom at 93 continues to share with anybody that's willing to listen to her story and the stories and also in her actions and who at age again 93 continues to raise money for the children of the West side and hasn't stopped and nor has my father. So it's those values that have been grounded and very rooted in me including honesty and truthfulness which is really important because I was also at age 20 something I learned that I was a lesbian and I had to be honest and truthful and came back home instead of staying in New York or going to California where life would be easier came back home because that's also something they shared with us, come home. A lot of young kids of color were going to getting educated in the East Coast or the West Coast and staying there because it was easier to thrive as a person of color, as women of color, as queer people of color outside of San Antonio then in a city with five military bases was super homophobic with five military bases was also in favor of, and still as we know the city loves to be named as military city USA and some of us are not in favor of war and the violence that it perpetuates. So being honest I had to be out and queer 30 plus years ago in a moment when it wasn't safe but that was because my mom taught me to be honest and truthful. And so, and being honest means that we, for us at the Esperanza we talk about not just being out about being queer but out about living in a racist city. It's about being out about being in a sexist and homophobic and misogynist and xenophobic society and that doesn't, sometimes people don't wanna listen to that truth that this is San Antonio is an apartheid city where the majority is still has no power and has very little and struggles every day. So, but because I understand racism and sexism and homophobia and I understand that we get divided all the time part of the vision that I've learned from my mother who is a dark skinned woman who never taught me hate, who never, who taught me about bridging and loving and loving the people who hurt her the most. And sometimes it was dark skinned people or light skinned Latinos, right? But I've learned we have to work with each other because together we are strong and the society is about dividing us up so we are working against each other most of the time. So, es un poquito de quién soy yo. Okay, well you've handed me the mic so I'm gonna take it, that's all right. Good evening, my name is Jonathan Ryan. I'm an immigration attorney and I'm the executive director of Riasis and I just find if you show up late you usually get a great seat and so that's pretty much how it's all worked. But seriously though, when I was 16 years old, I spent the summer in my home country of Ireland. I grew up here in Texas, so I either say I didn't get the cool accent or I did get the cool accent depending on which side you're on. But I took a sailing course because there was not much else to do in my grandmother's kitchen most of the summer. And I took a sailboat racing class which was not really something I'd ever done before and I learned a lot working on a small sailing boat with four or five people. And one thing I learned is that the fastest way that you can move on the water in a sailor is by throwing open your sails and pointing your back to the wind and just moving in a straight line with the wind carrying you. That's the single fastest speed you can go which is great if you need to move very quickly, especially quickly away from a storm or wind. But the problem is that you're gonna be tossed in the waves no matter which way they're going and you're gonna go in whatever direction the wind chooses for you to go. The second fastest way to move on the water in a sailor is actually to point the nose of your boat as close into the wind as possible. Just about 45 degrees, you reach what's called a close haul. And a close haul is where you're moving your boat to where the keel in the water has got all the force of the ocean and the sail has all the force of the air perfectly put up against each other, the two greatest forces at bayre in that situation. And by doing what they call attack, you go 45 degrees in this direction and then you turn and you'll go 45 degrees in that direction and then you turn. And you're gonna zigzag, but you're gonna go the second fastest you can move and you're gonna go in whatever direction you choose. And I just think of that memory when you talk about how did we discern I think what we were going to do or how we were going to invest. And I think that that's a really, I hone in on that word because it's not to decide or to choose or even to discover but to discern. And to me, that means making choices to discern among things or between things. And I think just like a sailor trying to move around the ocean, you become the sum of those little tax that you make on your decision in those moments to get to where you eventually go. You're never really pointed in that direction. You're always pointed some actual direction away but you choose, you make the right turns, the right moments to get to that and you become the sum of those decisions. And so when I think about those moments of discernment for me, they start perhaps kind of childishly because they started my childhood. I remember my father, Irish immigrant grew up in a depressed, oppressed, repressive, terrorist, laden society and got out and succeeded in the United States. But he told me with all of his success, I was able to help one person at a time. I was able to get myself into a position in life where I could help one person at a time. He's a doctor. He said, my greatest accomplishment is if I can get you, me, into a place to where you can help many more people than that. And that blew my mind. I remember getting an Amnesty International insert in the concert envelope at a U2 concert when I was 11. And that opened my eyes. I think it's these little decisions. I was surreptitiously, and you can actually go to Google and you can just ask Google, what is Jonathan Ryan doing here? You can actually ask Google that question, and TPR will tell you from my recording at the Dare to Listen event titled that. But I was, when I began law school, which to me was a decision to point myself into the wind. I was a theater major and a literature major and I decided to go to law school because I actually saw what was out there were a lot of, to be candid, white male American lawyers wrecking havoc on the earth. And I'm an immigrant. I'm not the manliest man. I'm only recently a US citizen, but I realized I checked off a few of those boxes and lawyer was another one that would potentially put me on a track to being, if this is what I saw as a potential bad force in the world, something that could enable me to potentially become a good force in the world, point myself into that wind. And so that was a moment of discernment. And along the way then I had an experience where I became detained when I was on a trip to Mexico as a tourist for kind of silly reasons of not getting the right piece of paper and the bus on the way over. But that resulted in me becoming in a very serious situation of being detained and alone and in a foreign country, unable to speak the language. I've since learned Spanish. And in those moments I was helped by strangers, people who, well, one person in particular who didn't necessarily even help me in any way, but who reached out to me, spoke my language and tried to help me. And having never been a person who really needed or to receive help in my life before, from a stranger, certainly. That moment of grace, of meeting help and someone coming out of the darkness and offering that help was singularly life changing for me and gave a lot of meaning to the decision I had previously made to go to law school which provided another opportunity to tack in this direction. Within 24 hours of that detention I was signed up for the Immigration Clinic at UT Law and began this journey that I'm on now. And so I think it's the sum of the parts, it's critical moments and it's the decisions that we make in moments where the forces of the earth are literally kind of in opposite direction all around us and how we choose along the way. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Eleanor Vitas. I work as the Community Relations Council Director and the Holocaust Memorial Museum Director, both subsidiaries of the Jewish Federation of San Antonio. And in thinking about this question, I think about having come from a really broken place where the adults in my family were not, they're one whole. And yet I think I was graced with joy because I always found what was good. And that worked for a really long time until it didn't work. And what I came to find was that I was better when I let people in. I was better when I reached out to people to get help or answers or guidance. And if you were to ask that I would be sitting here tonight with you all, I wouldn't in a million years have guessed it. I wouldn't in line with the things that you were saying. I couldn't chart the path that I've been on, but something has guided me through the decision making and allowed me opportunities to meet extraordinary people, learn incredibly random things, creative endeavors that if I look back, I would think they might not even have served a purpose and yet they come full circle and then I get to use that too. I get to use that moment or that period of my life to expand my thinking or connect with another person because I know a little bit about landscaping. I worked in public education and I always started my school year, I taught middle school. I always started my school year with a film strip that I would make a little video and it always incorporated my friends and my family and all of the wonderful people in my life. And in the film I would say this is my dad, this is my mom, this is my sister, this is my best friend. And then there was a frame in the film that said I am great. And I let that linger in the air and that's a really interesting thing to say around young people. And the next frame said because these people helped me to be great, I didn't do it by myself. And the message in my classroom and the message that I think is part of what I do now is that we're great when we're together and we can solve problems and we can see light and we can find joy and we can find commonalities. So if you were to ask if there was something that pointed me in this direction, I would say people. Is this on? It certainly is. I'm Monty Marshall, I'm the senior pastor at Travis Park United Methodist Church. I was born and raised about 90-some-odd miles south of here in Beak County in Beavill, Texas. And in a very middle-class 1950s sort of family, my dad managed a clothing store and my mother was a bookkeeper. And it's really strange because when I reflect back on it now, I think I was very much aware of some of the disparities that existed within that small county seat town. For example, we had, this still amazes me that we could even afford to do this, we had a maid and her name was Esther. And I guess my mother or dad would pick her up and bring her to her house and then most often I would ride to take her back home. And Esther was Hispanic and I couldn't help but notice that we were on paved streets and then when we got to the neighborhood where Esther lived, we were on dirt streets. And that Esther lived in what I never went into the house but I could see through the door as we pulled up in front of her house, look through it. And it looked like one big room with maybe a kitchen or something on the back and Esther had, I'm thinking eight kids or something like that, but the whole family in that one little place that looked like it was about ready to fall down. And that made an impression on me and I pondered the disparity between my existence and what I saw as Esther's existence. And then I saw that in a lot of other ways with regards to issues of race, black and white in Beeville. There was these, there were these divisions in the town, these places of segregation. And I also came to see pretty early on that at least in my teenage years that there seemed to be a connection between the policies that were made by the city council for example or the commissioner's court and those conditions that I described about there not being paved streets in that certain part of town. And I also noticed that when the political environment changed and the people from that part of the town actually were elected to the city council, all of a sudden the streets got paved. And that made an impression on me and I began to really ponder how this system worked. So by the time I got ready to go off to college at Texas Tech, I started out as a music major but spent a couple of years doing that and did decide I didn't really want to be a band director for the rest of my life. So history was my other life and so I changed my major with the intent of going to work in government because I wanted to be involved as a public servant trying to make an impact at that systemic level that I had seen operating in my own hometown. And so from Texas Tech in 1975 and went back home to Beeville and put in applications with one government agency or another at the federal or state level and got plugged back in the church born and raised in the Methodist tradition. Is that better? I knew there was something strange about that. Born and raised in the Methodist tradition and had spent all my life in First United Methodist Church in Beeville, Texas. And I got plugged back in working with the youth group and I kind of left the church in my college years as maybe happens to a lot of folks. And I directed a youth musical that we ended up in the fall of 1975 taking on the road. And so we were in the United Methodist Church in Palacios, Texas. The youth were up in the front doing their thing and I was directing from the first pew. And during the middle of that performance to use a famous United Methodist phrase I felt my heart strangely warmed. And when that was over, I walked out of the sanctuary back to the foyer of the church and the two senior high youth sponsors were standing back there. And I walked up to them and I said, this is what God wants me to do in my life. So at the end of 75 I was offered a job with Child Protective Services. At the same time I was offered a job that they created for me on the staff of my home church. And so that's the choice I made was to take that job with my home church. And from there it was on to seminary in Washington D.C. where I continued to pursue that connection between my faith and public policy really struggled with whether I should stay in D.C. and work for an organization like Bread for the World or for the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. And then I discerned that really where the struggle was was back down with the folks that I knew so well from my hometown of Beeville and that if it was gonna be from the bottom up and that hearts and minds at that level needed to begin to change to really make the systemic transformation possible. And so that's why I opted to come back and to continue the passion for social justice. By this point in my life too I was wrestling with all the issues related to human sexuality and sexual orientation, gender identity. And I could see how all of those influences the racism and the homophobia that I grew up in both in my home and in my church was also in me. And I needed to deal with that too. So I came back and have tried in some very interesting places that I've served over the years to maintain that passion for justice and for peace and for inclusion. And I have been incredibly blessed since 2012 to be at a place like Travis Park United Methodist Church that has given me more freedom to pursue those passions than any other places that I've served. Thank you all. That was incredible, right? So what I wanna do now is open it up to everyone who's gathered here and hopefully you're more or less still sitting in small groups of about four people. I'd encourage you not to get much bigger than that because you wanna have enough time to talk, right? And so I'm gonna repeat the question to everyone and the conversation's going to expand. How did you discern where to invest your life? How did you discern where to invest your life? Where to put your energy? So we're gonna have about 20 minutes for that. So do we get to go? I'm gonna go to the restroom. That's what I'm gonna do. I'll be back. Nope, nope, let's talk here. I'm gonna go to the restroom first. Got a full bladder. I'm talking like I'm not holding the microphone, okay? I just, in very broad strokes, I decided that my philosophy, my post retirement philosophy would be to stay informed, involved, and inspired. I mean, mostly inspired. You know, when you're working, your sense of your value comes from what you're doing, right? And it's very hard to make that transition and to find your sense of your value and your worth from inside of yourself. And I think that's the work that you have to do first, right? And so, you know, I joined the Peace Center, I guess about a year ago, and I've been on the board of the Esperanza probably for about 20 years, but I'm just trying to fill myself up from the inside out and, you know, trying to find that continuous inspiration. Sometimes it takes a long time to, oh, this is bogus. She just wanted us to look like we're, I guess, I'm not sure what this was about, but I don't think it's, I don't know. I don't think, I don't know, but it's recording. How's your talking? You just hold on. Oh, it's recording? Oh, okay. Right now, why? Okay, all right. Sometimes I think it takes a long time to find what you want to do. And I think growing, I spent a lot of time in Mexico when I grew up and I had an aunt that I now call the mother Teresa, Guadalajara, and she would go out and feed the hungry and take clothes and I saw that. And then went into nursing, and my first job actually when I graduated was doing public health on the west side of San Antonio. And I really need to go speak to Graciela after this. And then over the years having children and being in different venues of nursing, I ultimately ended up before I retired working for a very rich county in Southern California doing nursing and case management. And it was for the indigent people that lived on the street and making sure they got to their doctor's appointments, got their medications. So that I think has been my life work and hopefully I'll find that again now in my retirement to be able to continue that. I'm currently still working but I've always worked in libraries. So education has always been the path that I saw to really enrich people, to help people. And I work in a community college now and I have for 20 something years. And I think it's a good match because I was never a strong student. It was 10 years between getting my bachelor's before I went and got my master's to be a librarian although it was a librarian that I wanted to be all the since high school. So I can really help the students and it's just great being able to see the students discover themselves in college and develop their passion. And so it's that path I feel like as others have mentioned was already laid out for me. That's the way I went to go with it. But as I'm approaching retirement, I'm looking more to how can I continue to contribute to society and where do I fit into that? So I just, I don't know that I've discerned my path but I'm on the journey. That last phrase is a good one to pick up with. Transition, transition, transition. When I walked in the room, I heard Lonnie talking about discerning between a more public ministry or a more kind of a ministerial sense of public service. Which way to go. And I, as a teenager and an undergraduate, I had felt a strong calling to social ministry, social services causes. We all kind of grew up at a time when that was, I know, I remember watching the Watch Art in Washington and my early teens with tears rolling down my eyes and growing up in the midst of profound injustice in Texas. I'm wondering how too. And that was the days of Head Start and war on poverty in the spotlight. And I had felt a strong fire and comfort in studying theology and so on too. So I was a religion major with a sociology minor and moved here 40 years ago, or more than that now, a day after graduation. And several iterations of full-time work with physically disabled individuals, casework, this kind of thing, while at the same time being very involved through the church in social causes. And some of those he spoke about in terms of human rights. I guess the 80s, not mine, but the 1980s were kind of the apex for me in terms of working full-time for a university in their office. But my vocation really pulling me out into Esperanza, into sojourners, into other, that's where my time and my heart were. Then by the, and I spent some time in Nicaragua and Guatemala and wanted to be spending more time there. And when I married for a short time, but didn't have family. And that's where I'm kind of a profound stuck place now, not because, well, because I'm sensing not so much being freed up by not having family as I'm sensing the loss of it in my 60s. And in my 60s, yeah. And starting about 20 years ago, I became more and more physically disabled. And so what had began to be moonlighting for me became what I did kind of combining vocation and some income, so on. Teaching immigrants from, which used to be bilingual here, but it hasn't been for some time in San Antonio. And last year was my 30th year to do that. Budgets are being cut drastically. People, education, including that, is being switched to send them to a computer, not classes. And I find myself very much grieving about that and still kind of demonstrate about what happened in November and came to the surface in November and politically. And where do I slash we go from there in terms of not being flattened by that, but collaborating and not feeling like my life of contributing is over. And that's, ugh. Thank you so much. In the talk you shared, but it was more of an audience type format, but I hadn't been to anything where you talked to strangers. We were just meeting and converging. And like I said, the first time I interacted was with the young man on my job. And so I had no idea this was like this. And for the first time I decided I told my husband, think when I got it last week, I want to go to this. I left my job early, took vacation time to be here because I get off too late that I wouldn't have made it in time. So all praises be to Allah. God, there was something that brought us all together. And I'm very grateful to that. And I feel real good. I get a good vibe here. And I just say I'm glad to meet each and every one of you all. And I think it's, we're on some kind of road of a journey together. We may, hey, I'm going left. I'm going right, you know, what have you, but right now we're right here. I'm impressed because you're young. Yeah. You know, a lot of young people just, they're out there and having a good time and have a blast at you. It's encouraging to see that, you know, you have these thoughts and that you want to learn more and that you want to get engaged in giving back. I think that's always encouraging because you just hear someone, she's our future generation. And you don't, you know, people confine all the time all these young kids. But you know, you guys will be what, you know, probably have a lot of solutions that we have with you all. And yeah, I think it's really good to hear from you. Did you have anybody that you met? About two more minutes. Maybe invited as well, that didn't come. I just, I saw it online and I don't really know any people. Oh. Oh. Yeah, I didn't know any people in the city so it's like, I just saw it on Facebook and decided to come here. I didn't want to invite people for, it's odd at work because I work on a base, right? So, I never really know what's okay to talk about. What, oh, no, because I get that. Even when you're in a government, like I went for the VA and then they're like a year and a half and they actually have a policy like before the election that they send out to everybody that you can't, you're not allowed to talk about it at work. And you can only just know like, you know, the day after the election, like in our department, really, it's just me and their social life in class. And she just looked at me, I looked at her and we know. She was like, yep, we're screwed. We don't say anything because we're not allowed to, but you know, we know, like we just look at each other like, I just want it, you know. But I think, yeah. It's very encouraging for me to see young people taking interest. I'm retired. One of the things that a lot of my staff said when I was getting ready to leave, that the one thing they learned from me is don't be judgmental. You never know where that patient has been, you know, what road they've traveled, what issues are going on with them. And I'm retired, I'm older. And I was thinking the same thing as you. You know, I'm gonna be dead before the road gets crazy. But then it also makes me angry that I don't want to leave a world behind like that. I hope things get better. Yeah. Well, on my job, we are able to talk in the break room. Well, me, it's me probably. I have that personality, it's me. Great. Everybody else probably whispers not me. I sit at the table with a gavel, when I talk about this, no, not really. But we do talk, I do. I bring up the subjects and talk. And this young man engaged in the conversation with me and then as a young lady, also traveled to Africa and different places on a missionary and came and we talked. So, and then, you know, so we do have open, and they're young people like yourself. And they love it when, you tell me, being younger, you have older people asking you, share something with me. Tell me something and they get, they're so enthused about it. I, well, there's this one older, older. So just hold on to your thoughts. We'll keep using it. And I want to talk about stuff too. Take it right into that. And I talk about my, it's good. Yeah. It's so great. One of the things that I just, a little sidebar here, one of the things I failed to mention with now cast here tonight, they may be coming by your small conversation circle and they may be passing a microphone to you to be recorded and what you're thinking. If you're not comfortable with that, all you have to say is that I'm not comfortable with that. Okay, but I didn't want you to be surprised and I should have announced that earlier. So that might be happening. At the Peace Center, we've been studying a book. Some of you might be familiar with it, but it's called Healing the Heart of Democracy. It's by Parker Palmer. I know there's some folks here who are familiar with his work, but the next line is the courage, it's subtitled, the courage to create a politics worthy of the human spirit. And I was also really taken and you might have read this in one of your invitations, but a quote from Parker. The politics of our time is the politics of the brokenhearted, an expression that will not be found in the analytical vocabulary of political science or in the strategic rhetoric of political organizing. Instead, it is an expression for the language of human wholeness. There are some human experiences that only the heart can comprehend and only heart talk can convey. The word courage, the root word of that is core and it literally is the word for heart. We might think about courage as, you know, some physical bravado or whatever it is, but it literally means actions of the heart, which leads us to the next question. Given the current context of our time and all the things that need and could be done, what actions of the heart is it going to take to move forward? And that's both on an individual, what action of your heart might it take, but what action of the heart might it take as a collective to move us forward as we the people in the context of this time? What actions of the heart will it take? So we're gonna spend another about 20 minutes having that conversation. Everybody wants to have a talk? Sure, I'll have a talk. Come on, David. Come on, David. It's for medicinal purposes. This is the power behind it, the soul, you know, to make you very powerful. I can't, but I have one. Want me to tell them just to pass it on? Yeah. Hi, I'm sorry to interrupt you. If you don't mind, that way we can grab the conversation if you can just pass it on to whoever wants to speak. Okay, thank you. Okay. So I just, I feel strongly that we have to help. However, in whatever way we can, large and small, and I am angry, baffled, confused by our elected officials, especially Tetsas. You know, we don't win any prizes for our open-hearted bigness in this big state. We don't, we're not, no, we're not, we don't win anything. We don't get any gold stars for our efforts in Austin. But Washington appears to me to be even worse. And as one of you said, the people he's surrounding himself with are frightening. But it's not gonna help me or you or any of us to dwell on that, I don't think. So how to move it forward. And all I can say is help the people God brings into your path. I was asked by a friend at the gym where I work out in the morning about Trump as a moral example. No one has accused him of being a good moral example for America's youth. I've heard a lot of things accusing him, but that one has not come up yet. What could be done about it? And I said, I can only control my own behavior. I know what's going on in Washington, but what I have to do is make sure that in my behavior I do not show intolerance to Muslims and Jews and immigrants and women and all the groups who have been bashed, the people with physical handicaps and whatnot. And so I think that's what we have to do is make sure our own, we start with ourselves that our own behavior is such that we're changing it starting with us because we can't control what goes on with other people. And be our own moral examples if we have to be. I think that's like a belief that everyone has is to, I think they're good or to do good, but I don't think anything's really gonna start to change until regular white people start to suffer from the policies that are being implemented. I mean once, yeah, I mean I think once, you know, white women in America really starts to suffer from the law. Isn't that why we have the election results we had because the white American vote is what got Donald in? Isn't that correct? Is that right or not? Yeah, it is. I mean like as far as like social change, just the prison industry now, I mean, I'm starting to look at it now because it's much of, you know, like it's a little bit of a kill because we're like, you know what I'm saying? Like until, I mean. Do you have a passion in, I mean, do you look at society in any way and think I wanna help, I would like to work in the prisons or I would like to work with the homeless or I would like to work with the immigrants? Is there anything in you, are you pulled to one direction or another? Not particularly, I mean, I've never seen anything like that before. Before my focus. It would be. I really just started paying attention to anything that I've ever done in my life, this past year, so. It is scary. It is scary, but I'm happy we're here. So, what action of the heart? So, I'm gonna slightly repeat something that I shared the election eve conversation and that question was, what are you gonna do if your person wins and what are you gonna do if the other person wins? And so, for the answer of, what are you gonna do when the other person wins? My answer was that I would have the intention of empathy for people around me that are in pain because a lot of the people around me in pain didn't vote for the person who won. And so, being available for people, being present with people, listening to them actively, giving them empathy is what is the action that I think is the easiest and the cheapest and is the most direct that. And so, when I get with people and they're expressing pain, just being there for them, just hearing their frustration or their sadness or what have you. That is not a small gift that you are offering. No, you were saying? Well, as I was saying, I plan to continue working with cops and Metro Alliance because I feel that really works at a local level. And we do ask those questions of who makes the decisions, who benefits, who pays. So, that's where I put my energy. This is to record us. Cops is certainly worth working with. I don't think it's sufficient. It's necessary, but not sufficient. It's modeled as putting pressure on decision makers, policy makers, and getting them to respond. But I think it's also necessary to get into the ranks of those decision makers. And in reality, those are politicians. So, I divide my energies between cops and my own ministry if you want to call that with a high flute and a word of publicizing insights or viewpoints, but also being involved in politics, actual party organization and things like that because it's probably necessary to move decision makers' hearts from within their ranks, as it is, to present them with needs from the outside. There's no object without subject, no subject without object, the two go together. And so, the putting pressure and being part of where the pressure is felt is part of the same process. One observation I would make in this very divisive time that we live in, and particularly looking at who's in power, especially at the national level, I think it's, for me personally, it's important to work in a nonpartisan fashion because the people that I would probably most ally with aren't currently in power. And so, what I really want to be able to do is to work across the divide, basically, and try to find common ground where we can work on issues that we have agreement on across that divide. I'm not sure there is any common ground. I think it depends on the issue. And some issues there are, some there are. I was saying the workers are very important. I said also that these men, this president don't like the people more important for this country because I was thinking when he win, I was in Miami, knocking doors, walking all day for 10 days in Miami trying to take the boat, you know? When he win, I said, I know he going to win, don't matter the boat because he's very rich. He's very powerful. But I thought don't matter because we have conviction. The more important thing in the world, move everything is the conviction because if you are con conviction, you can fight against anything. He said he don't like the poor people, he don't like the black people, he don't like the gay, the people, different people. But he don't know these people is who, who is their, his people because it's his country, he's the president, he's his people. So he is an idiot, yeah? Because these people is very important for him because he is the president from these people. If these people work, these people do different things in the country. He said, okay, he going to change the things, he going to send back everybody, good. It's good to send back everybody. But who going to do everything in this country? You know? Because I said my friends, okay, good, good. Tell them, tell them, the poor everybody, he's good. But who going to clean, to cook, to build everything. So he is not smart. He said he said he's very good businessmen. He's not, he's not because the people who do the business, the workers, the people, the community, the poor people buy and work. So he's wrong. And he did not get a majority of the voters. Now something like that happened in California not too long ago. They had some propositions that did get a majority that discriminated against undocumented people and so forth. That did not last long. It was turned around. That was California at the state level. And it's quite different today. And I see that this elite is so dependent on the working people that if it had its way, the food would not be harvested. It would not be delivered. The houses would not be built. We would be a much poorer nation. It's the working people who built America. I think what we're seeing that are soon to be president is a person who divides people into two classes that he defines. Winners and losers. And he sees himself as the president of the winners. Look at who he's appointing to his cabinet. He says he wants to drain the swamp, but he's appointing the alligators. Okay. And when you speak of conviction, what convinces us and what moves us and what shapes our lives is an ocean of truth that we're convicted by, convinced by truth. Now, the truth never goes away. The lie has to be reinvented over and over. Okay. So when we look at our political system and it fails and they lie, and they keep on doing the same thing, and it fails and they lie. They have to reinvent that over and over again. Now, one reason Trump got elected was people are afraid and they thought we can trust this rich man. Instead of saying, wait, we can trust ourselves. When we've got the truth, when we've got conviction, when we willing to live what we believe, then that's our power, that's our strength. Two more minutes. I'd like to hear more, though, about what we are going to do in 2017 moving forward. I mean, we can do all kinds of analysis, but I think we need to, so I'd like to hear more about. Sister Jean and I had both gotten emails today. I brought this guide, it's from a group called Indivisible and they're on the web. It's a guide for resisting the really racist agenda and the hurtful agenda that we're all concerned about. And so Indivisible is organizing groups locally. It's all politics is local and we're gonna talk to people locally about banding together and standing up for justice and for fairness. Okay. And that's what this group has been talking about. Keep holding on to those thoughts. They're not gonna go away. We're gonna keep using them and working them. But we're to the part of where the rubber hits the road. So, you know, the time is now, right? We can spend a lot of time talking and conversing and trying to decide everything, but our times also call us to act, right? So this last, we're gonna spend 10 minutes. So that's what's gonna like help frame the urgency. So you're not gonna have as long a time this time. You have 10 minutes in your group to discern what was the most significant thing that you heard in your conversation. Wisdom is so critically important to movement. Collective wisdom. So what was the most significant thing that your group felt that you talked about that could have been about discernment. It could be about actions of the heart and courage. It can be whatever it is, but it needs to be put into one sentence on one of these blue cards that I left in your circle. It's laying on the floor, one piece. All right? You also then need to decide who in your group is going to speak for you because you will have less than 60 seconds say what's on this card. Now there's one more thing. And this one's really important. There's one more thing. So after you discern what that one most significant thing that you discussed in your group, that piece of wisdom to pass on to everyone, what might you have to let go of to make that happen? What might you have to let go of to make that happen? Whatever that is that you've discerned is that piece of wisdom. I'll repeat it again. 10 minutes to discern among yourselves what the most significant thing you heard in your conversation tonight, whether it be about discernment or courage, some piece of something that's so important the rest of us need to hear it. Need to write that on the card and then discuss what might have to be let go of, let go of to make that piece of wisdom work. And then we're gonna come back and hear all of those and you'll have less than a minute to share it. So you have 10 minutes to do this discernment because the time is now. So. So what I heard in our group tonight that I found to be the most profound was that what we have to do now is to shower love on everyone and not decide who we're gonna shower it on, but on everyone. That's okay. Well, we're pretty much done. Yeah, we gotta get it written down. Right. Oh my. Yeah. Right, what are the obstacles we need to overcome to shower love on everyone? And I think we said judgment of others, the fear that it won't be reciprocated or that will look silly, maybe. And so I, oh God, this is stressful. I think that we came to this idea of showering people in love by saying that you have to confront the sort of hatred that we see in the division and the anger with the opposite just as strongly. And so the opposite of all of that hatred is very radical love. I think the thing that I always think about using the word love is that like, sometimes you think of it as this like passive thing, but that if you think about when you're in love or when you love someone, it's very active. Love drives people to do crazy things. Love, when you love your child, you stay up all night. I mean, love is a call to action. It's not something that is gentle. And so I think that that's what sometimes, I hear love described as this very like, oh, it's just an open heart acceptance thing and I think that's part of it. But I think it's also calling you to do something more. Like, if you love someone, how do you care for them? We don't abandon what we love. You need to be three minutes, no other. You know, I think the third point is that there is no other that we are all one. We are all human. And that anytime we see a division and call someone else other, we're defeating loving neighbor because all people should be our neighbor, especially if you watch the Christmas Carol. Humankind is your, what's the line that he says to George C. Scott? Humankind is your business. Humankind is your business. Yeah, it's not exactly right, but whatever. It's very close. Two minutes. We didn't watch it this year. That's why I don't have it. You need to. All right. Okay, who's speaking for us? Our group said that we want to love everyone, us ourselves. And this could be challenging because because of the fear that it won't be reciprocated, fear of judgment, fear of, just fear of what others will say about us and fear of just being afraid of what others will say and think. And we just have to be courageous and love one another with compassion and understanding. Awesome. Oh, you're proud. All the good things have been said. What more is there? And the introvert shuts the microphone off. I mean, the other thing that was profound from my mind was the introvert microphone. Do, do, do. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Do, do, do, do. Can you hear me okay? All right. We basically have about 30 seconds per each group. Wow, right? We have two microphones set up here, one here and one over here. Whoever is the speaker from your group, if you could please come to the microphones, line up. And we're all gonna want to hear these things. So I'm gonna give just a second for lining up. And then we're basically gonna go from one side to the other. There's also on your little booklet that was on your chair. There is a place for note-taking if you haven't discovered it. So this might be the part where you're gonna write things down, okay? All right. So from the east wing. Okay. And talk straight into the end of the microphone, please. Yerasema Cavassos. And in our group, we had Becky, we had Mary and Pat, teachers and in the heart, soul, religious aspects. And me, I'm an organizer. And so anyway, expand the circle in communication, this communication. To be exposed to other points of view, getting out of our bubble, our comfort zone, leading to understanding, comprehension, compassion towards one another. Moving forward, knowing that the past has a lot of baggage, seeing the present and how we can improve the life of our neighbor. Seeing the present. Woo! Thank you. I'm Catherine and this is our group right here. We want to let go of fear, self-doubt and the national news. We wanna show up with our genuine and authentic self accepting the gifts we were given and use them. Thank you. Group right here, I'm Sister Martha Ann Kirk. We want to really experience, get close to the other. We wanna draw energy from the goodness of people and this may cause us to give up and step out of our comfort zones. Thank you. This microphone. I'm Anna, this is our group here. Be open to receive knowledge and compassion and let go of personal bias and complacency. Nice, thank you. Andy. I'm Andy and our group is over there and I want to focus on what I can do now in the present moment with gentle compassion. In order to accomplish this, I must let go of anger, judgment, resentment and fear. Tough things to let go of. Hi, I'm Gianna and my group is over here behind me. We want people to get out of their comfort zones and gather in community to sit and listen to each other's experiences and understand that we are all family. Thank you. I'm Judy and my group is over here in the corner. We need to individually be willing to reach across to those who aren't like us and recognize our, I'm sorry, to those who aren't like us and recognize our shared humanity. The only way to do that is to let go of our fear. Thank you. I'm Betty Dabney. Our group was against the wall there in the middle. We need to make actions to start with actions based on kindness, patience, authenticity, compassion, understanding and values. And we will be giving up our past preconceptions of what the future should be in order to open ourselves to new possibilities. Wow. Thank you. I'm Brian and I was with the group in the middle here against the wall. Befriending your diverse neighbors releases you from fear. So we're letting go of fear. Thank you. My name is Michael and our group is the one in the corner over here. We realized that all of us come from places where we feel that we don't belong and have to deal with different struggles and that's made us stronger, allowed us to move forward and has made us more compassionate. But the first step we all need to do is to let go of our fears and our biases and just meet people as people. Thank you. Hi, I'm Cynthia and this is my group over here. And the most significant thing that was in our group that we heard over and over was radical acceptance. And we realized that we would need to let go of fear and accept people as they are and where they are to be able to have that radical acceptance. Thank you. My name is Jill and my group is against the, by the doors over there. And the most inspiring thing that we had, that we heard and discussed was to keep doing what we've been doing to be positive, whatever we've been doing, but with a greater sense of urgency and be proactive rather than reactive. We need to work out of our comfort zone and meet people that we might not agree 100% with but create value from collaboration and be proactive in our personal lives, our professional lives and our political lives and let go of anger that is destructive and divisive and just keep that feeling of hopeful. My name is Marcia and my group is right over here, Batima and Sister Jean and Elliot. All politics is local and we want to be effective in standing up for justice and truth, fighting lies, people of faith standing together and being active, importance of a free press and access to information and truth. We need to give up fear, talk to one another, get outside of our comfort zone and we both, well, two of us had gotten information from Indivisible.org, which is standing for many of these things, Indivisible. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name's Jenny and my group was right over here. We had maybe a bit simpler idea that it sounds like but ours was that we have to meet all of the radical anger and the radical judgment and the bad things that we're hearing right now about people in our community with radical love, both personally and in our work, that it has to reflect the radical concept that loving people is the best thing that we can do and that we have to let go of our judgment of others to do that and fear that it will not be reciprocated. That's it. Thank you. Hi, I'm Beth and I was in a group with Frida, Rachel and Tom. Our discussion went around a lot and really what we decided was that we've all been through evolution. We started in different places and that the main way to change the world has to do with what we do with changing us. And so we wrote this, at this time in our lives, we are no longer content to deny who we are. We will be open about who we are and we'll explore our hearts. In order to achieve this, we are willing to give up the comfort, a big word tonight, of our personal walls and preconceived notions about others. Thank you. My name is Abdul Raheem, our group right over there. And we kept coming back to certain repetitive ideas and what we learned was to have respect for the genius of children. And what we were willing to let go of is our own absolute certitude. Thank you. My name is Araceli. Here is our group. And we are the power of our country. Workers like us build this country. Here is where we eat, love, write, work and put our roots down. Out of this conviction comes out power. That is because we hear a history about a young woman in Austin. She was with Bernie, but the Democrats don't like her because she's with Bernie, not with Hillary, but her conviction helped her to win. Now she's winning Austin because she has conviction because she was poor without money, but we fight because she believed and she's going to win. She is on the side of the reason. Thank you. Hi, my name is Jonathan. I was part of the group in the middle, previously introduced. And as we spoke, I think collectively we recognized a general yearning to be part of, to participate, to help create some meaningful exchange or intersection that crossed generations and groups through that allowed us to kind of from each one's the best and worst of each one to help use that as the stuff from which we can make a more meaningful, workable, better future. And that in order to achieve that, something we need to give up is disappointment. And disappointment as something that prevents us from clearly seeing what is before us and that we can use in that effort. Thank you. My name is Greg and I was with the group here back in the corner. So one of the things we came to after a lot of discussion was is that we're not alone in what we feel, what we think and what we dream. That this unity is part of that path to healing. And sometimes what we need to look at letting go is some of our expectations. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Patrick and our group decided that our acts of courage of the heart would lead us to organize compassionate action for community development in our significant group, whatever group that may be, to organize compassionate community development. And that we also can support our compassionate political leaders and church leaders with our time and our wealth. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name's Betty and I was with that group of lovely gentlemen right over there. We decided that one thing that we all agreed on is that human beings have the capacity to do good. So we want to encourage that as much as we can. And the other thing that we all agreed that we thought was pretty simple that we could do every day all of us could do is simply smile at each other. Thank you. Wow. All right. That was exciting and quite a humble honor to be here among all of you and to hear those words and to see such conversation. Before and we are very committed to ending on time, even though the clock is an hour off in some minutes, but we are going to, before our last kind of act together tonight, I just have a couple announcements. One, if you did not receive your free pocket addition of the Constitution, we have exactly 100 copies and there were exactly 100 people in this room. So if you didn't get one there, they're outside the door, I hope you do. The next act that kind of is following this, if you look in the back of the booklet, I want to invite you to a silent vigil that's happening on the day of the inaugural address. And so you might take note of that on January 21st on my father's birthday. And the inside that same program, you'll find this beautiful card. The next thing that the Peace Center will be doing in this room, we've been doing now for 11 years and it's the blessing of the peacemakers and if you're making peace in San Antonio, that's who comes. If you think you're making peace, you come and you'll receive that blessing but we will also be announcing the 2017 San Antonio Peace Laureate on that day. So I invite you to those things. Now for the last act, I invite you to take a moment and physically look around the room at the faces. And if you have to move your head and your body to take a look because we are the people. Right? And now I want to invite you to stand strong as we the people. And as we were invited to do, I invite you to turn around the room and smile at everyone in this room. Thank you for being we the people in San Antonio and thank you for being here this evening.