The One You Feed - Sister Joan Chittister on Fruits of the Spirit

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you feed children beauty, they grow into a love of beauty, and you will find beauty yourself in the things and the people that you look at. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

Starting point is 00:00:45 But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor what's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly

Starting point is 00:01:29 love you we have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. On this episode, we interview Sister Joan Chidester, a Benedictine sister of Erie, Pennsylvania. She's the author of over 50 books and is the winner of 14 Catholic Press Association Awards. Sister Joan is an international speaker who inspires both her audiences and readers with her passion for justice, equality, and peace, especially for women in both society and the church. On this episode, Eric and Sister Joan discuss her book, Radical Spirit, 12 Ways to Live a Free and Authentic Life. Hi, Sister Joan. Welcome to the show.

Starting point is 00:02:21 Thanks, Eric. I'm happy to be here. It's a real honor to have you on. You've written over 50 books. We're going to be touching on highlights from some of them, but a lot of the time we're going to spend on your most recent book, which is called Radical Spirit, 12 Ways to Live a Free and Authentic Life. Yes, wonderful. But before we get into that, let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like

Starting point is 00:03:03 greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandmother. She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, in the first place, it happens to be one of my favorite parables, too. I've used it often in public because I consider it both productive

Starting point is 00:03:32 and cautionary. If we don't learn the lesson of this parable, we're going to extend where we are, and God help us if we do that. For instance, when you talk about the soul being developed by the part of it that you feed, if you feed it beauty, if you feed children beauty, then they grow into a love of beauty and you will find beauty yourself in the things and the people that you look at. If you feed those same people, if you feed yourself, for instance, with the kind of crude, rude, lewd language that we're being subjected to now in the name of freeing ourselves from political correctness, we will shape our souls into exactly the contorted, diminished attitude toward one another on which brink we now stand. This is the lived expression and experience of what we mean when we say words matter. Experiences matter. Our neurologists

Starting point is 00:04:48 tell us that experience actually shapes the brain and therefore the personality. What we're feeding into the airwaves today is going to affect this country, this generation, and our own perspective on life 10 years to come. I frankly don't think, Eric, that you could start this program with any more important piece of information. And if this was all you did, it would have such an impact, such a gift in this culture, that we might really save ourselves from our worst selves. That's beautiful. I love that. And we're going to do so much more than just that. So we've got that great answer. And we're going to go into a lot of other things that you've done. So,

Starting point is 00:05:35 but I want to start by saying, you know, sometimes different things come together at different times, which is interesting. So I knew I was interviewing you, but, and I knew a little bit about you, So I knew I was interviewing you, and I knew a little bit about you, but I didn't know a lot about you. So put that on one side. And I split my time between Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta, Georgia, and I decided I needed a couple day sort of personal retreat, which is a Benedictine monastery, of which is the same order that you are from. And sitting in the drawer of the little desk in my room was The Rule of St. Benedict, which is a lot of what your most recent book is about. It explores The Rule of St. Benedict. And I just was sort of, so come back from that. And I now start getting into your work to prepare for the interview. And I'm like, well, I'll be damned.

Starting point is 00:06:29 There it is. So really, really interesting confluence for me there. The new book really focuses on the idea of humility. You say that humility in the rule of Benedict is the spiritual hinge on which the rest of life depends. Could you expand on that for me? Yeah, I'd love to, actually. The book is built on Chapter 7 of this short rule, 72 small chapters, probably one of the smallest spiritual documents in history. But Chapter 7 is the longest of them all. This I take to indicate

Starting point is 00:07:09 that this is really Benedictine spirituality as Benedict understood it, meaning this is the portion of life that he wanted us as people to concentrate on to build our own impact on the world and the world's impact on us. This spirituality, interestingly enough, hardly uses a single theological term, if any. It's all built around who you become as a human being and how you can become the human being you want to be. Its simplicity is overwhelming. Having said all that, I have to also admit, Eric, that though I believe, I genuinely believe that this book and this topic will determine the nature of life, certainly in this country and maybe on this planet, for the next hundred years, certainly for the next several generations.

Starting point is 00:08:12 But I also know that it's a risky interview that you are bold enough to have because humility has not been an American thing. to have because humility has not been an American thing. This whole notion of humility has in our culture been confused with humiliations. There is no relationship whatsoever to the debasement of the spirit and the sanctification of the humble spirit. They are two unlikes, badly confused, and therefore, I think, resisted by the modern mind. And it's a shame because it's holding us back from our own best development. So you say that humility, ironically, is about coming to understand that spiritual simplicity is not about the debasement of the self, nor is it about the aggrandizement of the self. So what is it? So I'm going to ask you your own question back to you. So talk to me about what humility is, if it's not either of those extremes.

Starting point is 00:09:20 Well, it's the ability to understand my place in the universe, in our relationship, in my work, and to neither distort it for its greatness or overlook its import. humus or earth it's it's taking taking a genuine photograph of yourself knowing who you are and how you have become that and what you need to do if if you know that some part of you is how do you reclaim that how do you chart your own growth to fullness. Our culture has, remember, we were a pioneer nation. We've only had a government for 200 years. And when you compare that to the Egyptians in 5,000 years, that in itself is humbling. And yet, in order to do that, we have called ourselves to greatness. If you listen to the news today, you will hear your president say that he has done better than any other president. He is smarter than anybody he knows. He is more experienced and prepared for this than any president we've ever had in the past. Our tendency has been toward self superiority.

Starting point is 00:10:54 Humility says be who you are. Know who you are. Respect those around you who are also worthy of that and take your place in the human race so that we can all profit on not just others from me, but me from others. That makes us a strong community. When we are recognizing and developing everybody's talents in the group. We are a group then that simply can't be broken. It's a very powerful insight into human community and the human condition within it. I love that. A lot of my spiritual development happened within a 12-step program. And there's a fair amount of humility discussed in 12-step programs. One of the things that was said to me then that just always resonated with me was that,

Starting point is 00:11:52 you know, humility is not about, you know, how good you are or how bad you are. It's about having an accurate picture of who you are, of your strengths, of your weaknesses. That's it. Yes, that's the truth. I'm thrilled to hear you say that you have had some experience with the 12-step program. I have been talking about humility as a Benedictine, to Benedictines, as well as to other groups in spiritual exercises and conferences for literally years. Literally. I have really been convinced that this is the cornerstone of Benedictine spirituality. And Benedictine spirituality, remember, is the oldest institutionalized spirituality in the church. The only thing that's older in the church than victimism is the church itself.

Starting point is 00:12:45 This document is written in the 6th century, 580, and is still seen as a centerpiece of the spiritual life 1,500 years later. We can't minimize anything like that. So when you come along and say, I understand these steps, my heart rose because in conference after conference, I have been told over the years, people will come up to the microphone before I get a chance to leave it and say something like this. it and say something like this, do you know the 12-step program? And I didn't. And I was asked it so many times that I finally decided I had to know what that was myself. And when I compared the two programs, I began to wonder whether or not the founder of AA, Bill, might not himself have been a Benedictine, or certainly been trained by Benedictines to come so close to understand so completely this same attitude toward life. And then as I discovered, I studied and I researched, no, there isn't a sign in anything

Starting point is 00:14:01 I found that he knew this material. And so I sat down and I thought about it for a long time. And I said to myself, first, the question was, how can that be? And the answer was, because holiness is the same everywhere. the courage to look at themselves and every aspect of their attitudes and their behaviors in the world around them. That's the beginner's step to the fullness of spiritual development. And of course, he knows these steps because he was that holy. He was that honest. He was that real about himself. And he has brought thousands of us to the same consciousness. So it seems to me that it's a wedding of insights that the world badly needs. Terima kasih telah menonton! I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

Starting point is 00:15:52 our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

Starting point is 00:16:16 His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you two? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. God bless you all. Hello, Newman.

Starting point is 00:16:29 And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app,

Starting point is 00:16:47 on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let me pose a question to you that comes to me with 12-step programs, or AA in this case, with Bill. And I think some of this is probably just the distortion that happens when humans get a hold of anything. Because it's not, you know, thinking we're everything in the world, and it's also not thinking we're the worst thing in the world. And a lot of times, what can happen in 12-step programs, when they're interpreted incorrectly incorrectly is that people get all hung up on all the things that are bad about them. I'm, you know, I'm this, I'm that. And I think that you talk often about that narcissism is really a disease in our culture, right? And I couldn't

Starting point is 00:17:42 agree more. I think it's everywhere. But I also work with a lot of people individually, one-on-one, who have the sort of polar opposite of that, which is, I'm just a, you know, a piece of you-know-what. And so I'm kind of curious, how do people who look at the narcissism piece, and maybe that's not them, I'm not, you know, they're not saying I'm the best at this there ever was. Maybe they're saying I'm the worst at this there ever was. Talk to me about how humility helps someone who's sort of coming from that orientation. It seems to me, Eric, that they're the same thing. They're just a different approach. It's When you have debasement instead of aggrandizement, self-aggrandizement, you still have a false self at both ends of the schedule there.

Starting point is 00:18:36 And that's as equally unreal as self-aggrandizement is. It just, what it does is as long as I'm crawling along on my belly saying, well, but I'm, no, I'm not that. No, I couldn't do that. No, I wouldn't understand that. No, no, I couldn't be called. No, no, I couldn't even think of volunteering myself as chairman of the church committee. No, no, I'm not that bright or that smart. That's also an excuse for not being willing to face myself. It's as protective as the other is unreal. As long as I separate myself from my own talents, from my own insights, from the strength of my own experiences, then I really don't have to produce, do I? And as long as I exaggerate my talents and I assume that I have, that I own all the strength and all the intelligence, I am completely separating myself from the responsibility of recognizing my failures. So one way, I escape all responsibility by refusing it on the basis of the fact that I'm not capable of it. And the other way, I assume all responsibilities on the basis of the fact that I'm the brightest person here and therefore no one can question me.

Starting point is 00:20:19 There's terrible loss on both ends here. terrible loss on both ends here. The one may seem humble and is self-protective, and the other may seem to be nothing but narcissism, but is equally self-protective. Yeah, you say that humility is the virtue of liberation from the tyranny of the self. To your point, both those positions, the common theme is that I'm thinking about myself all the time. You know, it's all about how myself fits into all of this. And, you know, that's certainly been, you know, one of the things that, you know, my spiritual path has been a lot about is I recognized nothing like being a homeless heroin addict at 24 to sort of help wake you up. But I realized very early on that it was that burden of self,

Starting point is 00:21:11 whether it was thinking I'm great or thinking I'm terrible or all that. It's that burden of self that I've really worked to and continue to work to, to try and find some freedom from. Yeah, you've said it all. What we're looking for is freedom. That's what the book is about, how to live an authentic and free life, so that we aren't hiding from ourselves or rejecting others who have a great deal to teach us and the support we need, if we'll only admit it. Exactly. So I want to just change direction slightly here, and I want to talk about the role of obedience. And that's a term that comes up a fair amount in your book. It certainly

Starting point is 00:22:00 threads its way through the rule of Saint Benedict, is this idea of obedience. And yet, at the same time, you are a person who, although I'm sure huge parts of your life have been founded on obedience, you've certainly found times where obedience to the Church was not your highest calling. So talk to me about how you balance those two things, the one, the obedience that is, well, maybe first let's have you define obedience a little bit better, because I think a lot of us have a mis-framed notion of it, but maybe then just talk about that idea in general. Oh yeah, that's an important one, Eric, because I think we have distorted that word considerably.

Starting point is 00:22:47 Obedience comes from the Latin word obedere, meaning to listen. To listen. Now, we say to our children, you'll listen to me because I told you to. But that doesn't mean that the child listens. It just means you get to oppress somebody else. Each of us grows into the ability to listen. Listen to the will of God for the world. Listen to what nature is trying to tell us right now. Listen to the animals and their care for the earth. Listen to an older generation who has been through a depression or a breakdown of the economy. Listen to all of the information and insight and wisdom around you, then follow the best turn of your life in this moment at this time in history.

Starting point is 00:23:51 Listen, obedience does not mean that we simply submit our conscience and our brains and our souls and our responsibilities to an authority figure. That's a military obedience. It means when I say halt, that I'm keeping you six inches away from falling down into a thousand-foot gorge. That's a very different and, frankly, a false philosophical notion of obedience. It was never right. And it never applied to the upper classes. It applied only to the slaves. And we bring that with us into a modern world and say, this person is a dissenter.

Starting point is 00:24:39 No, this person is a thinker. This person has a question and is inviting you into the conversation to answer it. The very notion that you go online for how many times, 250 times you told me, you go online, you listen to people who come into your studio with different experiences in life, with different experiences in life, and you share that with a public that is also eager to listen so that they can make up their own minds about who they are and how they get there. To put obedience into the realm of some sort of slave-master relationship or of child-adult relationship is absolutely the worst thing we can do to the development of full human beings around us. Wow, that's powerful. I couldn't agree more. This notion that we use obedience to oppress the very people we should be developing. As

Starting point is 00:25:41 parents know instinctively that every year of a child's life, they let out more rope. They throw the chains away one at a time. Why? Because they want these children to be capable of making good decisions about their own lives and their relationships with others. So what are we saying? The old notion, the false notion of obedience then has got to be thrown away if we're going to bring our children to the fullness of their own lives and minds and souls. Yeah, that makes total sense and is a great example. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

Starting point is 00:27:06 our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

Starting point is 00:27:29 His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Starting point is 00:27:42 Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

Starting point is 00:27:52 And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's change direction just a little bit. And I want to talk about two other words that show up in your writing an awful lot. And I'm just going to put them next to each other. And maybe you're headed towards the same thing with both of them. Or maybe you want to talk about them slightly differently, but those words are endurance and stability. Yeah, I believe that most things are solved by endurance and by

Starting point is 00:28:33 perseverance and persistence. I doubt that much of anything, including great intellectual ability, great intellectual ability ever comes full from the kernel. All things, including great talent, need to be developed, practiced, maintained, or they'll never be what they're meant to be. Or they'll never be what they're meant to be. So endurance, perseverance, persistence is what I see as the basis of both a spiritual and intellectual and a social life. We learn how to relate to people. We don't get at anything in total at once. We don't get at anything in total at once. So the word means a lot to me because we are a fast food generation. We want everything now.

Starting point is 00:29:37 And we get a lot of now. But what you can't rush is your own cooking. You can't rush your own development. You can only face the need for various stages of it and find the help you're looking for to bring it to ripeness. Without this, the greatest of efforts will fail. We have to be prepared. We read stories constantly, especially coming out of science, scientists who worked on a minuscule problem and spent their lives working on it until they finally figured it out. We do the same thing with our marriages, our relationships, our intellectual development, we persist. We stay in the relationship. We stay at the question. We stay with the development it takes to bring our own abilities to their ripest level. Why? So that we can be of service to others. That's why we become.

Starting point is 00:30:49 And if we become for any lesser reason, they will never be the fullness of what they should be. One of the things that you speak so eloquently to in that exact same arena is, you know, what you just said is so spot on. Everything that's worthwhile, we need to stick with. You also talk about how, and I think this is really thought of best in spiritual condition, is that some of the things that we need to develop only come to us through the practice of endurance, almost for its own sake, for the ability to go through the fallow times, the low times, and going through that develops a capacity in us that is so important. Exactly. That's what I was trying to say earlier, that we simply have to understand that nothing of any value, intellectually, spiritually, or socially, comes overnight and whole at the same time.

Starting point is 00:31:53 Every single element of our lives are things that grow from small portions to full portions. And for instance, I knew at the age of 14, literally knew at the age of 14 that I was a writer and I would never be completely happy without it. That was so certain to me. Now, having said that, as you pointed out earlier, I've been writing and writing and writing, and I still consider every day of it new practice. I don't consider that it has come to wholeness. I don't think for a minute that I shouldn't be developing other parts of it, other elements of my writing, or even of my understanding other people's writings. So we have as much capacity as we have life. The important thing is not to quit in midair, to take what we love and give it what it deserves so that it can give back to us what we are.

Starting point is 00:33:08 Let's change directions one more time here to, well, it's not really a total change of direction, but you have a book that focuses a lot on the role of darkness in our lives. You say darkness deserves gratitude. It's the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight. And, you know, my own experience in life has confirmed this over and over and over again that, you know, the most difficult dark times for me have often been some of the most important times. some of the most important times. The question that I wonder about a lot, though, and I've asked multiple times of many people on this show, is that real suffering seems to do one of two things with people. For some people, they emerge stronger, better, more compassionate, strong, kind people from it. And other people seem to be broken by it. And I'm curious in your experience, what are the characteristics or what are the things that allow some people to be transformed by it and other people to be broken by it?

Starting point is 00:34:17 I have another book, Eric, probably one of my five favorite books myself called Scarred by Struggle, probably one of my five favorite books myself called Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope. And in that book, I lay out nine phases of what I call the freedom from struggle, the freedom from depression, the freedom from the sense of loss or failure. And those elements are kind of way stations on the way to fullness of life. I've just gone through, for instance, let's say my children were killed in an automobile crash. The effect of that is overwhelming on me. I really am losing my grip on life, nor do I want to live anymore. Now, what do I do there? How do I maintain myself? How do I survive?

Starting point is 00:35:20 Well, in the first place, we survive because we have no other option, because life goes on around us, and we must somehow or other fit ourselves into that. But that can take a long time unless someone sits with us and helps us figure out how life has become distorted at this moment. It isn't that some people can't make it. It is that they can't get the help or the insight that they need to make it. So what they're suffering, what they're dealing with is a pressure on the soul so severe that if they cannot find a helping hand or a way through this forest, if nobody puts up the stop signs that enables them to say, I got through that one, I can go through the next, then they're left, they're abandoned. It's one of the reasons that psychologists are so important in this society, because society moves so quickly here

Starting point is 00:36:26 that you can hardly grow into anything calmly or quietly or slowly. So if we find a good psychologist, a good spiritual director, a good wisdom figure, they can give us the time to examine each phase of this new world that we're facing. Some people have it. Some people have it because their own educations have prepared them for it or they are in a very tight-knit community that surrounds them at the time of great pain, doesn't allow the abandonment to eat at their soul, the time of great pain, doesn't allow the abandonment to eat at their soul, doesn't allow them to think that they might not continue breathing in the next moment. So it's not, it's neither great strength, excuse me, nor great weakness that we're talking

Starting point is 00:37:20 about. We're talking about community, support, understanding, care. All of those items are terribly important at the time of Great Breakdown. So every time you go to a funeral home, you know how that is. You don't want to go because you don't know what to say until you've been there yourself, until you know how important it was that somebody walked up to that coffin, put a hand on your shoulder, and said, We'll be calling you next week. I'm sorry about this. I know this pain must be terrible. We'll be getting together. we'll be getting together struggling with the connection here as listeners can probably hear and it sounds like we've got some weather moving in

Starting point is 00:38:11 that's causing some trouble so I think we're going to wrap up but thank you so much such beautiful work I've enjoyed learning about it and thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us oh you're more than welcome Eric I can and thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. Oh, you're more than welcome, Eric. I can only thank you for producing this kind of a quality program. I have no doubt that your listeners wait for your materials and I'm grateful to you for

Starting point is 00:38:37 the time and effort you put into that. Thank you very much. Thank you so much and we'll try this again another time. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like. Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor. What's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you?

Starting point is 00:39:30 We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

The One You Feed - Sister Joan Chittister on Fruits of the Spirit

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.