I mean-

It sounds like a really bad idea. If I would have been around you at the time, I'd have been like, this is probably, maybe something else would be a better idea. Yeah. Like, there's limits

to love. Like, you don't call your uncle's murderer and try to make things better like that. Right? So, and in the beginning he said, well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He was kind of flailing. He's like, I'm sorry for what happened to your uncle, but I'm also sorry for the thousands who were killed on 9-11, refusing to take a response. But I'm feeling rage rise in me, like fire in a cage. And maybe because I was holding that rage, it gave Rana the space to wonder about Frank, to listen and to hear what I could not hear. Rana says, Frank, this is the first time I have heard you say you were sorry. And Frank says, yes, I am sorry for what I did to your brother. And when I go to heaven to be judged by God, I will ask to see your brother and I will ask for his forgiveness. And Rana says, we've already forgiven you. That moment, I realized forgiveness is not forgetting. No. Forgiveness is freedom from hate. And sometimes forgiveness comes at the end of a long healing journey it did for us. Sometimes it comes at the very beginning, like it used to make me cringe to see people look into the eyes of murderers and say, I forgive you. But now I understand they were saying, you cannot make me hate you. You don't have that power over me.

Sometimes

forgiveness comes in the messy middle. Sometimes forgiveness does not come at all. The survivor withholds her forgiveness because it is her only act of agency. And that is okay. That is up to the survivor to decide. What I do know is that once you do forgive, it frees you. Yeah. It frees you. Like knocks that poison out of your hand. Like you. And because of that, I began to meet with Frank. I began to talk with him and hear his story and see his wound. And I learned so much. Craig, I learned so much. I learned that so much of white nationalist rage in this country is a symptom of unresolved grief. Like, they're grieving the notion that this country ever belonged just to them in the first place. I might not agree with that grief. I might not think it's right, but, and I might not be, it might not be my role to tend to that grief, but someone's got to. Like someone's got to. Like when I think, like, I think about people, like if you...

Who do you think should, if something like that, who should tend to it?

Is it your uncle sitting at that kitchen table spewing that hate? Is it your neighbor down the street? Is it your child's classmate? Is it the teenager who is caught in the algorithm? Like you said, because our algorithms don't give us a shared sense of reality anymore. We're in our own. If you're not, Hannah Arendt said, isolation breeds radicalization. If you're not puncturing that bubble, who is?

Right. So it's very interesting. So how does one puncture that bubble then? How do you go about it?

Yeah. Our thinking is like, I'm going to go and just tell them what's what. I'm going to go tell them what's right. But you know, like, ever try to lecture your children into obedience?

Yeah, I know. I

know. Like, I can't, I have to like show my children that the insight lives inside of them. And how do I do that? I ask, I have to ask questions. Like, human beings, we mirror each other. If you come out with daggers out, they're going to out with daggers out. But if you come out and you're like, you really want to know why, if you wonder, goes back to wonder, why? Like, why do you like that video? Why do you like what that guy says? Why do you like that policy? Why do you like that candidate? Why? You get, and then you unearth the story and you unearth the story and you unearth the, like, oh, I care about my kids' future too. Oh, you know, you affirm whatever you see that is deeply human inside. And then, because we mirror each other, they might just start wondering about you too. They might want to hear your story. And when that happens, Craig, it's like, like, like a magical portal opens up of deep listening, right? Like, deep, deep listening is, is an act of surrender, you risk being changed by what you hear. It's a process, a relationship. And it might lead to transformation. It might not, but that's okay, because you've gained information for what to do next when you're out in the world. And you're standing for your positions, can you hold up a vision of the future that doesn't leave anyone behind, not even them. How

does that manifest itself in like you're going on the books just come out and you're going on a tour and you use the word movement yourself which is interesting to me how does it manifest itself in an event when you go to sell it like there are people say we are angry at you valerie but we don't believe what you believe. How do you deal with that in the moment i mean do you say i hear you what about the people that are there to hear you? What, I mean, the, the, the division, how do you cope with it? Yeah. Because, because really, oftentimes, I think people who, who radically disagree with the stands, sometimes I think it's just about, it's just about the disruption. That might not even be your message there again. It's just about making a lot of noise cuz they want to do that i think that i sometimes wonder in an act of terrorism if it. The means is the end of the you know that someone is just enjoying the terror of it yeah you know that the polemic may not be as identifiable as yours. You know, they're just agents of chaos.

If one has to enjoy the terror of it in order to be seen and heard, imagine the pain that is lying beneath that. Sure,

I can, but what do you do?

Yeah, well, right, sage and warrior. Right, right, right. There's a protection, like is there security? We have security at all of our events. Like is there a way to make sure that they're not hurting us, that they're not hurting themselves? Like that's

the key, right? Right, I get it. I understand that, right.

And then I turned to the audience and I say, let's slow it down, notice what's happening in your body. Notice that tension. We are so accustomed to taking that oh, that tightness, that small hard parts of ourselves that feel threatened, and then responding to there from there. What if we created some space and moved into the part of ourselves that can see them always hurt brothers and sisters and decided, well, we're going to respond from our deepest wisdom. We're going to respond from a place of love. Just that shift of responding instead of from trauma, responding from a place of wisdom, whatever that looks like for you is the shift I'm inviting people into.

I hate to be kind of, it seems almost vulgar to ask it, but is there an end game for it? Is the result when you, is there a mission accomplished sign at any point? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Is there, what does success look like in an environment like this? What's the achievement?

vision is a beloved community. The vision is a healthy, caring, multiracial democracy where you see my child as yours and I see yours as mine. The vision is a planet where human beings have learned how to live sustainably with each other and with the Earth. The vision is a world of love and liberation and safety. And Craig, I may not live, you may not live, we may not live to see that. And I understand that. ancestors labored and sacrificed for freedoms that they could not have imagined that I get to live into now. And so as much as I want to see that world, as much as I want to see it, I know that my sacred task is to show up to do my part in the labor. And if I can do it,

yeah, I understand. It's like there's a lovely phrase I'm probably messing up. It is the mark of civilization that a person would plant a tree knowing that they would never stand in the shade of it.

That's it. That's it. And can the planting be joyful? Would I have discovered like, well for me, 20 years as an activist, I only knew how to push. I only knew how to ground my bones to the earth. I was always comparing my suffering to the people I was serving. So I was never worth worthy enough to care for. Like I had, by the time my babies were born, it was a 2016 election season. I had it. I had it and hate violence was skyrocketing. And I'm like, what am I doing? They're growing up in a country more dangerous for them than it was for me. I had an all out crisis. I only knew to use your metaphor, had a out of desperation, how to plant miserably. And because I didn't know how to love, I didn't know how to operate with love for myself. So that's when I spent a year in the rainforest. That was another pivotal moment in my life. And in many indigenous cultures believe that the rainforest is like the womb of the earth, like it's warm and wet and safe and generative. And I was able to breathe for the first time. The midwife says, breathe and push, and then breathe again. There's like a cadence, a rhythm to sustain one's energy in any long labor. And I finally learned how to breathe. And in other i finally learn how to how to love my own body my own heart my own mind as much as i was putting out into the world and that's where i developed i wrote my first book and i developed this compass the revolutionary love compass as a tool a practical tool. does

it do the practical tool? I'm interested in this. So how would I use this? If I found myself in a jeopardized by my own resentment, how would I use the the revolutionally love compass?

I want to put it in your hand right now. All

right.

So imagine that you're holding it. Okay. Legendary artist, Shepard Fairey has actually created a new rendition of it. It's so beautiful. People can find it online, revolutionarylove.org. So it's a compass. Revolutionary love is the choice to labor for others, opponents, and ourselves. And at any point, you can point it to the person you're practicing loving. So let's say you have an other in front of you. Craig, you're my other. I'm your other. That practice is called see no stranger. And it begins with wonder. And it's like you said, right? How quickly are to judge? We all carry implicit bias within a split second before conscious thought, our minds decide whether the person in front of us belongs to them or us. And, and who we see is one of us shapes, whose stories we hear, what grief we let in, what policies we support and what leaders we elect. Demagogues get elected because they succeed in shutting down the ability to wonder about people that they are dehumanizing. And so wonder...

It's a real challenge. I mean, because if I take the example of, look, it's seven o'clock in the morning, you're in an airport, and you're next to someone. In my case, it's usually a really annoying gentleman in cargo shorts and flip-flops who's drinking alcohol at 7am. But God bless him, it's up to him. But I like get the hell away from me. And I, I can't help but judge an individual like that. And I don't, you know, it's interesting though, even as I talk about it though, I start to go, oh, lying up. And what's the big deal?

Oh, there's another voice video.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. The dialogue's going all the time. The, you know, you mean duality, Reno. I mean, it is, it is going all the time, but the thing is, it comes in equal measure. And what I'm fascinated by the idea of, for me it comes in equal measure. I don't know if it comes in equal measure for everyone, but my snap decisions about people are my... Look, I'm not as angry as I was when I was a young man. I'm just not, but I've had a lot of therapy and I've been sober for a long time. But I still, I can make snap decisions about people which it's almost like I'm not in control of the situation. Is that what you talk about when you're talking about the, yeah, it's like, it's like someone else suddenly took the controls and made me a chair.

Yeah. And that's okay. That's okay. Right. Because it's not. Yeah, response that we are responsible for. It's the second response. We're all breathing in the stereotypes. We're all being wired by the us and thems in this culture. So we can either go with what has been done to us, or we can flow it down and say, why did I respond that way? It's like what you just said, oh, lighten up. I wonder if that guy is going through a hard time in his life. I wonder if he's really tired. I wonder if he's on his way to see his kid. I wonder. I wonder. Really simple.

very useful. I have used it myself. This is a thing that I do. Again, it's on airplanes usually. If I'm sat next to someone, first of all, if I'm sitting in the seat first, then the seat next to me actually really kind of belongs to me. And I don't really like the fact that someone else is sitting in that seat. Because I was here and now you turn up.

Sometimes I just put my tea on that center. I'm like, let me get comfortable.