The Waging Peace Podcast
Introducing the Waging Peace Podcast, where Diana Oestreich dives headfirst into finding the unsung heroes of change, rebels against the status quo, and visionaries shaping a world that refuses to settle.
Discover your power, ignite your passion, and redefine what it means to wage peace and make a damn difference in this world.
Join the revolution as we learn how to transform our communities with justice, equality, and unwavering connection.
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The Waging Peace Podcast
Advocacy, Community and Love: A Journey Towards Justice with Shannon Martin
This episode is a call to action - to step out, make a difference, and weave a fabric of unity, equality, and justice in our communities.
Shannon Martin, an author and Neighboring evangelist nudges us to confront our privilege and channel it towards equity and justice in education through the power of Neighboring. How do we sit in tension? Be part of bridging the chasm between the privileged and the marginalized?
We explore the pivotal role of communal joy in fostering a sense of value within our neighborhoods.
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You are listening to Waging Peace, the podcast that hosts hopeful conversations with peacemakers and world changers about how we can take action to make our communities more just, equal and connected. I'm your host, diana Ostrich. I'm so glad you are here with me. Buckle up, because these episodes are going to change you in all the best ways. Shannon Martin, welcome to the Waging Peace podcast.
Speaker 1:I am super excited to get to talk to you, and one of the main things that I love that I get to see that you are putting out for people is a way that if we really go all in and we show up for our neighbors and our neighborhoods, we don't have to doom scroll. That's right. There really is places in our communities and ways that we can be part of it that activate justice, to say justice. I am totally just coming from Cornel West. Bless him that. He says justice is what love looks like in public, and I think if anybody reads what you write on the old Insta or your three books, they will see love out of the house and out of the faith space and into the neighborhood. So would you be willing to give the little who I am and give us a little bit of where you're at and what's really important to you.
Speaker 2:So yeah, just for a quick, bite-sized backstory. I live in Goshen Indiana so way up north near Michigan with my husband, corey. He's a jail chaplain a full-time chaplain at our county jail and then we have an adult son named Robert, who's out of the house, and we have three teenagers at home, 14, 16, and 18. One of them is getting ready to graduate, so we're getting ready to do that all of that here soon. Our family moved into this neighborhood in Goshen about 11 years ago and it's important to give just a little bit of this backstory because our lives changed when we moved in and not just moved into the neighborhood but really chose it and committed to it and fell in love with it and put roots down in it With the intention that we will stay here for as long as we are able. I know better now than to say we'll stay forever, but I sure hope we get to stay basically forever. When we moved into this neighborhood, we left a community where we lived out in the country and we lived in a community where everybody around us for the most part looked and lived and believed just as we did, and for sure that had its perks. We were never forced out of our own comfort zone. It was a fine place for us to begin our family and to live. But once we left what I would now say is kind of a bubble. We kind of left this bubble that we didn't know we were in. We moved into a lower income, very diverse in every sense of the word. Neighborhood and our neighbors just systematically changed our lives. They changed the ways we see the world, they changed the ways we see God, they changed the ways we see our place in the world. They changed our politics and particularly they changed our heart for justice. So for you to say, diana, what do you care about right now? I appreciate that you began by saying we can break out of this doom scroll situation that we're in and by no means am I saying that I never doom scroll, because I do it more than I would like to admit.
Speaker 2:But I have learned, and I continue to learn, that we can embody our feelings.
Speaker 2:We can embody our, even our, emotions that might be fear or anxiety, or we can kind of burrow into that and figure out what's happening and find ways to put our bodies against that work in ways that might seem kind of hidden or inconsequential or insignificant, when we can kind of break out of our brains and all the anxiety funneling through there and just say, ok, this is what's happening in the world, or this is what's happening in my neighborhood or happening in my family, and find ways to meaningfully take small steps. I think that's when we start to understand that we actually belong where we are and that there's work for us to do here. So I do care about education. Right now, I am engaged in the issues around gun reform and that's a you know that's just constantly in the news right now, and I'm somebody who is not an expert on this, and yet, you know, I'm constantly reminding my people on Instagram or just in my real life. We don't have to be experts to care about these things.
Speaker 1:No, and I think one of the really beautiful and simple and powerful things about your story that is, my story is we each, we each got put next to people who are culture, our families, our place, or our faith told us not to notice. And then, when, when you love people and they love you it totally, it totally transforms your life in this most lovely, delightful way where it does change change your politics because it's no longer about a party line and it changes your faith because no longer does your face segregate.
Speaker 2:And no longer does our faith dictate our politics, which is the world that I came out of and I'm standing like I am free to look out at the world around me and I'm free to change my mind, and I'm free to see things differently and I'm ultimately I'm not bound by one party. That was a big shift for me.
Speaker 1:And I think also.
Speaker 1:I think, when you have these transformative experience where you show up in the neighborhood mine was war in- Iraq, you know people that you're like have been told like this is not a place to love or to be loved and not to put value on these lives Right. When that changes all of a sudden, I feel like love has a requirement, because now everybody's in our jurisdiction to love. So in my, in my city, there's two schools and literally there is a street down the middle and and everybody knows that if you're in one zip code, that's where the wealthy people live, and the narrative is that where wealth is, value follows, and so my family chose to pull our kids out of out of that narrative, and the only way that we disrupt it is we have to actually place ourselves into the new story.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I feel like you have done that also with your kids. Your kids go to a lower, resourced other side of the tracks type of school like mine, and I don't think that story gets told, that there is value there and in fact our work is there and our love should be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, for us, when we moved into this particular neighborhood, my kids were babies. This was 11 years ago. So I had a preschooler, a kindergartner and a second grader and we understood enough. We've learned so much and we continue to learn, but we understood enough to know that it was going to be meaningful and important for us to send our kids to school where their neighbors were educated, which happens to be an elementary school at the end of our streets, just two blocks away. At the time that we arrived, it was considered a failing school and I hate to even say those words because I think it's such an unfair metric that we put over public schools. But you know it was. It was not a difficult decision for us, If I'm being honest. It was just practical. It was. We saw a lot of value.
Speaker 2:You know another thing you and I have in common my all four of our kids were adopted. All four of my kids are trans racially adopted. You know I'm a white mom with a white husband raising four non-white kids, and that's a really complex conversation to be had as well, and that has just rocked my world a hundred different ways, but it was. It was really beautiful for us to to see that our kids were going to be in a, in a place where they were not going to be. You know a handful of of non-white kids in the room and I and I want to I always want to be intentional in saying my, my kids all went through that elementary school. I've got a senior in high school, graduating from that school system. I've got a as soon to be junior in high school, but I do also have a. Our youngest goes to a Mennonite school.
Speaker 2:Now, that was a very complicated decision that we made a couple of years ago that I wrestle with still, you know. But I want to be transparent about that. You know, understanding that at some point things were not working for one particular child and we made a different choice for that child because we could. And it's complicated and it feels messy and I feel all different feelings about it and ultimately I'm grateful for it because it was really vital for my kiddo to be in a different environment at that point.
Speaker 2:And here we are, Like it's. You know, I just my. The thing that I am imploring people often, as often as possible, is try it. You have to be willing to try the thing. Like you know, I see tremendous value for Silas to have been in that public school for his first five years of education. That was important and that was not wasted and ultimately it's not where he stayed and I don't know that he'll stay where he is now forever. But you know, it's too easy to make this a binary decision sometimes, even when I've tried to do that and I just come back to we've got at least be willing to try the thing, Try it.
Speaker 1:And I think that's so good One, because that's what we tell our kids, and I think, as we win. One of the things that I am really like hammering home with my to myself as I'm parenting these teenage boys is this is about their life. Yeah, school is not their life. Yeah, their character is their life, and so, as a whole person, for their life, I want them to be able to try things that they haven't done. I want them to be able to be uncomfortable and show up and be the worst person at it, but they want to do it, so they're willing to do it.
Speaker 1:I am a high schooler who had never done a sport, and to show up as a high school and like not know how to do it, that is great. I was like so we had really developed that young where we're like you know what, you can try it why? Because for your whole life, this means the world is open to you, and if you only go in the streams where people, where you're already good at it, where people think the same as you, you will live the smallest, tiniest, suffocated life on the planet, of which we never age out of having to be a person. And so I want him to always say that. So you know, when you say like try something, I'm like yes, and something else that I think is worthwhile in the conversation.
Speaker 1:When it comes to schooling, yes, everybody wants the best for their, for their particular child. We know that. But when I talk about how can we instigate joy for our neighbors, yeah, so happiness is that. I'm really happy that my kids have food to eat and don't go to bed hungry. Yeah, happy about that. I can't have joy until I know all the kids in my city are getting to eat dinner and go into bed with a full belly. So I feel like joy is communal, because who's really happy when you know other kids don't have food? We're happy.
Speaker 1:I'm like I can't. I can't, like I will never. I will never be okay with that. So I continue to work for that in my city until the day I die. Don't take your kids out of the things that you see them love, but make sure that you are providing for the kid behind you. So if your kid goes to a private school, awesome, but you turn around and make sure that you are contributing to an open door for the next kid to do it, and I feel like that is how we have joy and is apparent. I'm like we can hide it. You know we're happy that our kids have what they have, but we know there's a kid next to them. That's it. I volunteer in a house for families that are experiencing being un-sheltered and I'm like if these kids knew how many kids in the seat next to them are currently homeless. I know parents.
Speaker 1:I know parents can do that, you know so it's not that either, or of either you put your kids in the twin school or you totally put them here, but it's about building that bridge and providing for the next person.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I see, just speaking personally about this, I see a lot of value in sitting in tension, you know so. I think you know, when we see things as like it's, you either choose this or you choose this, and then you make your choice and you go on happily with your life. That's not my experience. My experience is, you know, we make our choices and we have privileges, and we have privileges that other people don't, and I wrestle with that. You know, we are people who love and support public education and I need to be finding a way to. You know, even when I sent my last kiddo through school, I mean, those days I've got three. Essentially, next year I'll have a graduate and two high schoolers and my days as a public school mom are winding down, and yet I have to find ways to stay engaged. I have to find ways to support this community and to support these schools and, like you said, even when there are, I mean that was one of the things we wrestled with with Silas and making the choice we made for him. It was, you know, it's a personal story and I won't get into all of that, but I know that there are other kids in his situation who need other options and don't necessarily have them. And so what do I do with that?
Speaker 2:I think, if we can carry our tension, our impulse is to just cast it off and just own our choices and move forward, and maybe there's some value in that. I don't know. But I think the deeper value is just committing to holding that tension for as long as we need to, because that keeps us motivated in the way of justice, that keeps us motivated in the way of equity, that keeps us from pride. I mean, it keeps us from shame even. In some ways, it just continues to point us back towards our neighbors, back towards the people around us, and say, okay, this is this situation. Now, what are we going to do with this? And what are we going to do with what we have learned?
Speaker 1:I think that's so important and I also think that it is giving us resilience, because, yes, like there's so many people who kids, will age out, but we can't age out Right For the kids. And I go to this book club and most people are in their 70s which is fun to have people decades older because I'm like okay, you know, tell me everything. And one of the things is you know, they obviously don't have kids in school. My kid is on this other side, I have a transracial kid, so they are reading the books, but they also when I was like, guess what? They need someone to bring lunch because they do positive reinforcement. So, sure, hopefully every kid is having someone in their home acknowledge their work and then tell them good job, but maybe they're not, so the school takes it on themselves and so every month they have a lunch for them, they let them invite a friend, but they need someone to provide the meal. So they take this whole lifetime to tell kids we see you, your work matters, you're important, your future is yours and we want to celebrate you. And so one of the ladies in my book club is like, well, I can, because I was like man, I can't bring the meal. I signed up but I have this thing and she's like, well, I can do that.
Speaker 1:I was like, yes, Jean, there are people and women who want opportunities to continue to put, tell our kids they're important, because if they know they have power, they will not burn the house down. And if we don't give them value in our community, then why wouldn't they? Yeah, and maybe that's right. They say terrorism. One of the roots of it a high amount of terrorism and release is like 17 to 25 year olds and it's in the link is when people don't have purpose, yeah, and they don't feel valued, like they don't have a place. And so I'm like, man, if we can take one action to support a public school, to tell kids they matter, you have a place here, we are honored that you're in our community. And here's some pizza and a big cupcake today to just say we see you. Yeah, so I want to do that till I die. I know me too.
Speaker 2:I want to keep showing up Me too, you know, and anytime I just recently one of the one of the things we have tried to do personally and also pulling our church community, which is right across the street from the school, like I just keep being that person that's like, hey, this church is our neighbor, or the school, this school is our neighbor, this school is our neighbor, and watching our small and humble and wobbly congregation find ways to support the teachers and the staff. I mean being a public school teacher right now and right now our schools just got done doing like the standardized testing for the state and it's so stressful for everybody, you know. But we took breakfast into the teachers and it was a simple thing. We brought yogurt and fruit and I made granola and.
Speaker 2:I, of course it was a simple thing to do, and yet the minute I walked through the doors of that building, I mean it's, it's like you're. You're saying with your friend Jean, like sometimes we just have to, we've got to give ourselves that nudge. You know that this is a simple thing we can do. It feels small and hidden, but I just believe small things are the only things, like they're the only things. And so, walking through those doors, I just felt all the feelings of like just what you said, diana, like I want to do this for the for as long as I can move, as long as I'm breathing, I want to find ways to show up for these people, to honor the work that they're doing, to support them in in small but important ways. It matters so much.
Speaker 2:And so, being able to reach out into our community because I think a lot of times, you know we might know things that can be done that the people around us haven't thought of, aren't aware of, and finding ways to just pull somebody in, to disrupt that narrative, you know, finding a way to say hey, you know we've done this a hundred times, my husband and I.
Speaker 2:But so and so needs a ride. There are teenagers in our neighborhood that need to get 20 mile or 20 minutes away I mean, it's not walkable to get to recovery meetings for addiction or different things, and transportation is such an issue, and so that's something Corey and I do whenever we're able. But even passing the baton and saying, hey, can you've never done this before Can you give this kid a ride to this meeting, because we can't do it tonight? And you know, it's things that people outside of us sometimes don't, they're not aware of these needs. But the minute you can pass them that baton, then they're suddenly bought in and they're suddenly realizing like, oh, these small things, these small acts of justice, are available to all of us, and so sometimes it's just about being the one to let people know, to pull people in.
Speaker 1:Which I think is how we do put justice, which is love, on display. And then we're we're connecting each other to joy Because, like you said, when you walked in there and you got to like give the teachers breakfast, like the joy is shared and and I truly believe and I write about it in my book that we deserve better invitations. Yeah, because Diana of 2003 had no invitation to love across lines, to love across faiths, to love my enemy, and truly I just needed the invitation. So, whenever I look around, I'm like, oh, it's so me, like if I can change, anybody can change and I look at people and I'm like I don't really believe half of what you say or your bumper stickers, your shirts, but I believe that you deserve a better invitation. Yeah, I'm going to give it to you. Like you said, in a small way of like hey, come to the school or buy some yogurt, or buy some yogurt, or like I started making just a meal on Tuesdays and tacos, because I'm like not a real cook, I use a crock pot, but I invited my kids to do that. I was like we're just going to make a meal for families who are having unsheltered moment in their life and I think it's just an invitation, yeah, and I want to give. I want a better invitation because it's transformed my life and I think if we just keep giving each other better invitations and not assuming that somebody doesn't want to Because I remember we were doing the same group that I volunteer with.
Speaker 1:They were doing a Christmas party for all the like, unsheltered friends and family and, anyways, the teenagers never get good gifts because people only like to buy for the little kids. So these four teenagers are like getting like lame old gifts, and my friend told me about it. I was like you know what? I think I'm just going to put it on Facebook and say hey, everybody, hey moms, there's some teenagers, yeah, yeah, anybody like. You know, we've got like two days till the party. Anybody want to do this and I was shocked at how many people, locally and then across like the internet and nationally, we're like yeah, I want to make sure a kid who's experiencing a hard thing knows that we're forum.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, 100%, and then those people outside of your community can take that knowledge of contributing to something in a meaningful way. But they can then take that to their community Because it, you know, once we have our eyes opened to need. I'm so similar, you know, our stories are very similar in that I just I, I used to see the world so differently, in such a more narrow way, and, quite honestly, I just wasn't paying attention. So once we start to really pay attention, I mean that's something I write about and start with hello is like how do we move out of this idea of just preaching, you know, screaming on the internet or whatever, using our words, and turn it into actual, meaningful, embodied practice?
Speaker 2:We have to be paying attention to what's happening around us and in my, in my life, one of the ways that I've been able to narrow in because we can't, we, you know I have the personality that wants to like, do everything and be everywhere and, you know, be involved in everything, and that's not sustainable. So how do we find, like, our particular issues or a particular niche we start to pay attention to, when we are crying, when we are feeling our heartbreaking, when we are really noticing a neighbor. You know somebody in proximity wrestling through or suffering in a way we have not suffered, and and just paying attention to what's happening in our body and what's happening in the world around us, that's how we can begin to really connect ourselves to like, okay, this is. You know, we can care about a lot of different things, and I hope we do, but these are the, you know, the couple different specific areas that I am going to really put my weight behind, and so it can be about just recognizing that that's work we've got to do.
Speaker 2:Before I knew I had to do that work. I just wasn't doing it. And that's an invitation in itself is to say to people around us you know what is breaking your heart, what is keeping you up at night. Look around and find a way. Take what you're learning here, take it back to your communities, because there are unhoused people wherever you are. I promise you.
Speaker 1:And I also tell people once you recognize what that thing is for you, there is someone in your community who is already being an advocate and is already serving that community. So find that person, yeah, and then you just show up and you learn from them and what they. You know you be the right hand man and you know people start to really know that you're committed and you care when they call you to bring the tables To the event, or like the chairs, or like there's this we're doing a direct action at the courthouse to ask for homeless people to have a warming shelter, so they don't, so the cold doesn't kill them.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So we're doing this, this action on the courthouse, to like ask our city council to do this in November, when it gets cold where I live. Anyways, I get the call like, hey, you have a mini van, right, Diana, Can you bring the tables for us? And I'm like, yes, yes, I can. I know, and I think so, one of the one of them, one of that moment that I had where you just cry and you know that this is a thing was Tamir Rice. He was, he was my moment, and and I and I always tell people, don't feel bad when you have your wake up moment to something that's for you, Because John Lewis wasn't always John Lewis.
Speaker 1:He said he cared nothing about politics until Emmett Till. So I'm like, whatever your moment is, you just embody it and you feel it and you honor it. And so for me it was Tamir Rice, and when his mom asked us to say his name, I feel like I made a commitment to all the moms of black boys that I would always show up, whatever, whatever it was. So this Saturday we ran for Ahmed Arbery because his mom, Wanda, set up a foundation and she is. She is making sure that black boys have access to mental health care, which also will mean they'll get to have joy in this life. Yeah, you know. So that that was mine, and now I never have to question whether I'm in or I'm out or whether I will.
Speaker 1:Whatever it is when, when, when a mom loses a son, I'm like I will forever be there with you, and then I will ask other moms to to be the village and say these are all of our kids and we will never stop and we and we won't despair because we can't. Yeah, you know and I know that's something that you have waited into of why saying black lives matter is so easy, for moms especially. And then why is it so hard for some people? What you know and I love that you have, you have really invited people into them asking themselves why is it so hard for you and why is your faith seem to be like something that disconnects you? Yeah, what are you afraid of From murder?
Speaker 1:Because we can all say kids dying is something that we should be a national mourning over. You know, there's no if and or buts, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think I think these stories were sharing are important because I I was not always seeing the world through these lenses and I know enough to know that, you know, 10 years from now, I'll still be moving forward, I'll still be learning and growing and changing in certain ways, and that's good, that's not something to be afraid of, that's actually good. And so it reminds people who, who, for them, this might be their day one, and that's awesome, like we don't have to lament. I mean, I do lament sometimes, like why was I so late to do a lot of this? It's hard for me to reckon with that and, at the same time, the the real truth is I got to the point in many different areas, on many different issues, where it suddenly you know the past. Great majority of people Crew and that's what this is about over the years. That's what this first one is.
Speaker 2:This is about 중에 kids, the issue that we think of. I'm doing kind of air quotes for people who can't see me, but we start to realize that there are no issues. There are only people being affected, people suffering. Once we make that connection, it does make it easier to wade in. This isn't about issue, it's not about a political issue as much as it is about actual people fighting for survival, fighting for access, fighting for their humanity, their dignity, and so if somebody listening feels like they've missed the boat, the reality is this can be your day one. There's plenty of room and we can start small. You don't become an expert I'm far from an expert on many of the things that I care about but I'm committed to being in it and I'm committed to being a listener and a learner and, like you said, I am adjoining people who are already engaged in the work and getting involved in those spaces and just sticking around for the long haul.
Speaker 2:And I had my day one and you had your day one, and this is going to be day one for people, for people, other people in the world, and that is hopeful to me. You know to recognize that we can always be choosing a different way. That's hope.
Speaker 1:And something that I've noticed, when it's an issue or maybe this is the through line that I continue to see from my experience as a soldier in Iraq to laying down my weapon, to loving my enemies, to coming to the US where I'm like oh, I was trained for war. I see that our culture has started turning on each other and warring against each other because I was trained to do it. I'm like I see these culture, wars. The through line that I continue to see, that I think people are stuck in, is it's an issue of allegiance where they have to be. If you're for the troops, then you can't work for peace. If you're for Black lives, that means somehow that you don't care about other lives.
Speaker 1:So I feel like that is what chains us, is there's this binary and it's truly allegiance. And you know, if you go back to, like, the eighth grade lunch table where, like, there's the kids who are like, oh, if you go talk to that table, then you can't sit at our table anymore. So it's an issue where it turns into belonging of. If I choose people, if I choose people, then someone I value is going to tell me that I can't, I don't belong anymore, and that's terrifying for people and that is and that is the cost, but it is worth it. It is worth it and that's what I laid down was an allegiance.
Speaker 1:I was like I'm done with that because, because I am, I am for something bigger that all that cannot do, that cannot tell me where I can sit and then kick me out, because that is conditional stuff, friends, and if any place doesn't allow you to do that, you're just as chained as anybody else's If you can't show up for people without being ostracized. So I feel like that's the huge freedom is. I mean wilderness, lonely for sure, but it's. But that is what freedom is. And I look around and I'm like I don't see free people. I want to be free, I want them to be free, and so I want there to be this shaking up where you can choose people above everything else and you're willing to be OK and let the chips fall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, a lot of the decisions we made in my family threatened our belonging in a lot of different ways, and it was. It was a lonely time for us, and yet there is always belonging to be found. You know, like I love that you made that connection to belonging. You read my mind as you were talking, because that that's what I see. You know, I have these, these conversations and Instagram stories a lot of times where people can feel a little bit anonymous and share what they're really thinking and what's holding them back from engaging, and so often it is that very, very thing and I understand it because I came out of that myself. You know. So, when people, when they're not at risk of being, you know, publicly criticized or whatever, they can be really honest and say I mean, honestly, people are saying things to me like, yeah, I want to say Black Lives Matter and I want to mean it and I'm with you, and yet their belonging is severely threatened by that, and so it's being able to kind of hold people's hand as they walk across and not minimizing that or not simplifying that. I don't ever want to act like it's an easy thing or a simple thing, because the truth is. It's not. It wasn't. For me it was. It was devastating to us in many ways to lose belonging in certain areas of our lives, and yet the cost was worth it.
Speaker 2:You know that that's where our integrity comes into play, where we know that we're being called into something We've got to. We've got to get to the place of being able to, to take that risk, to understand that there is belonging on the other side, there just is. It might take some time and it might take some intention. I mean, that's what this book is all about, you know. It's about how do we, how do we make connection? How do we sustain connection? How do we build connection? It's always available to us. It's never too late. So, yeah, I just I want to encourage people that we can do scary things. We're not. You know, I don't ever want to say that it's not scary or it's not hard or it's not risky. We're building community in a way that's authentic and that holds our integrity. That implies that it's going to be some work, but we, we are fit for that and I think we want that.
Speaker 1:There was an article that said loneliness is equivalent to like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
Speaker 2:15 cigarettes a day. I worked on that this morning. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:And also I wanted to add so I think this is for us to, this is for our fully coming alive Like I have never. I never knew the life I could live when I actually burned it down and and got to the place where I was for everybody and I was going to do it. I feel like that's the first time I really felt that I had this like life that couldn't be bought a treasure, yeah, right, like joy, because it was connected to the welfare and the thriving of everybody else. So, but I also think doing it is for our benefit. There is a community there for us and we need it to keep going. And then I I've got some health stuff going on.
Speaker 1:So me and the Mayo Clinic have been hanging out quite a bit and one of their intake questions you know where they're just asking you about your basics is do you talk to someone on the phone once a week? Hmm, do you show up in person with another person once a week? These are called social determinants of health and they've actually done the science and figured out that if, if people have the same diagnosis, the same issue, if you have these things and do them, you do better. Yeah, so it matters, and so, if you compare the thing that makes your heart beat, that you want to be committed to and then commit to showing up once a week, once a month, this is how the community thrives, and so we don't need to sit on our issues and feel right or wrong, but we do need to connect with people. So I kind of want to end with asking you to give us just one or two actionable things that are not heroic, shannon. We are not heroic people here.
Speaker 1:We are just everyday people trying to make it work, get our kids through, kiss our husbands, whatever kiss whoever's in the house. I mean, what's something that you have seen?
Speaker 2:I work on staff at a community kitchen, so that's my day job and I get to make lunch for I don't know 120 people every Monday and every Thursday and I love it so much and it keeps me rooted meaningfully to people that make my life better in 100 different ways. But it's you know. I'm always aware that these types of operations, which you know they exist in most communities, even if you're not aware of it. The place I work is called the window. I lived in this community for I don't know seven or eight years. I knew it was there vaguely, but I had never walked through its doors, I had never gotten curious enough about it and the minute I did I was like I want to work here and before you know, before too many more months, that opportunity was available to me.
Speaker 2:So find one of those places in your community, make one phone call or email or comment on their Facebook page or whatever, and ask what is your biggest need right now. And I can tell you one of our biggest needs right now is deodorant. Often it might be cereal, often it might be you know this, that or the other and rally your friends. I mean, go out and buy some deodorant if that's what they need. But, more importantly, make that better invitation to the people around you and just say to your circle of people who all we all want to be generous and we all want to be connected to work that feels meaningful. We, because, as we've said in this conversation, that impacts our own belonging.
Speaker 1:This is just like a win win, win, win, win Making that one phone call means you're actually going to get to see someone who needs something.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to give you one more. You asked for two, so my second one is going to be you know we're heading into local election season. Always be paying attention to the local people on your ballot. Local elections have extremely low turnout. When it's not like, you know, we're voting for the president, we're voting for senators or governor or whatever.
Speaker 2:Local elections often get overlooked, and yet that is where the most grounded and rooted moment for action is happening for all of us in the places where we live.
Speaker 2:These are the decisions that impact our, our houseless communities. These are the decisions that impact access across our, our towns and our cities and our communities and, just you know, traffic flow, which is so boring in so many ways until you realize, like this, these things actually matter to people. You know, I live in a neighborhood that is overlooked and underloved in so many ways, and I see how our neighborhood we don't have the same access points into the bigger and more resource parts of the city, and so that's something that I'm starting to care about. More is that we've got to be able to, for our own, for our lives, you know, for our actual lives we've got to be able to move freely out of these communities. I won't get too on my soapbox about that, but I would encourage everybody to be paying attention to local elections. Who is running for city council? Who is running for mayor? Understand the candidates, understand who, who you want to throw your support behind, find ways to support them and get out and vote.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Find somewhere that needs something and then pay attention to the elections. Now the last question I'm going to ask you is who do you look to when you need hope or inspiration? Living or dead, rooted you and like put fire in your bones when you're kind of tired and weary and pretty sure the world is bad and nobody's going to do anything better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, that's. There are so many, boy, I just have to. I mean, I will say, I will say this there's a writer named Jonathan Brooks who comes to mind right now. He's in Chicago, he's a pastor and he's doing really scrappy work in his community and in his neighborhood. He wrote a book called Church Forsaken and it's amazing. And then another person on my radar right now in that sense is Drew Jackson.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and I'm not really a poetry person Like I've never.
Speaker 2:I've never really written poetry, I've never been good at reading poetry, and yet his, his poetry, is like captivating to me because he's writing it down at street level. You know he's living in I forget what neighborhood in New York City, but he is like looking around him and that's the kind of writing that that brings me hope is for people to look out at their particular place and and write from that. Well, it invites curiosity, which is so crucial to all these conversations, and it's just really accessible, it's really beautiful. I mean, I don't know that I have, like you know, particular go-tos. I am constantly reading, and those are two people that are at the top of my list right now and I would just say too honestly, it's my neighbors. It's, it's watching the people around me fight through, through battles that I've never had to fight, and and remain hopeful and remain resilient and remain joyful and remain generous. It's, it's keeping my eyes on on this place, in these people, that, ultimately, every single day, takes me closer to hope.
Speaker 1:I love that and that's accessible to all of us, like paying attention to our neighbors, that's it. Well, shannon, thank you so much for sharing a little bit about where you stand and where you are getting to put justice. And everybody Start with. Hello is her third book and I just I just got it from my local library but it was really fun because I was like, oh yes, I, I was like you got a friend's book, but, yes, this is start with.
Speaker 2:Hello is the field guide to how do we connect in our communities, wherever we happen to be planted, wherever we happen to be planted, how do we, how do we make our home here, how do we work for justice here, how do we work for hope here, and I made it as simple and as ordinary and as baby step-ish as I possibly could. This is the book I wish somebody would have put in my hands 10 years ago, and it's. It's filled with stories of my place and and really basic, tangible ideas that you can do today to to work towards justice and towards hope.
Speaker 1:Thank you for giving us one thing to do so everyone grab her book, and thank you for putting in the work to give us a field guide for that and put hope in our hands that, like we make our place home, we make our neighbors, our teachers and everything is going to get a whole lot better. And pretty fast, it is, it is.
Speaker 2:Pretty fast, I think yeah it really is.
Speaker 1:You've listened to the entire episode. Big High Five and a Hug Know someone who needs to be reminded that they matter. Share this episode and leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, because we need to find our people and our people need to find us. We're a community of courage activators shouting for you to pull up your seat at the peacemaking table, because you are exactly what our world needs. See you next time.
