Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 288 Liz Walker - How Community Helps Us Heal
Look, we've all got pain. We've all got stories we're afraid to tell. But what if there was a space where you could actually share those stories without judgment, without fear, and find healing in the process? Today, I'm sitting down with Liz Walker - a former news anchor turned pastor who discovered something powerful: when we create safe spaces for people to truly be heard, something miraculous happens. In the heart of Roxbury, she started a movement called "Can We Talk" that's transforming how communities process trauma, grief, and healing. This isn't just another feel-good story. This is about real people - mothers who've lost children, young men caught in cycles of violence, entire communities learning to heal together. Liz's journey will challenge how you think about pain, community, and the incredible resilience of the human spirit. Here’s the hope: healing is possible, and it starts with being brave enough to tell your story. So join us, so no one is left alone.
Liz Walker is a minister, journalist, activist, and sought-after speaker. She leads the Cory Johnson Program for Post-Traumatic Healing. As Boston's first Black evening television news anchor, Walker received two Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in her field. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Walker served as pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church. She helped found the Jane Doe Safety Fund, has done humanitarian work in South Sudan, and has served on the boards of Boston Medical Center and Andover Newton Theological Seminary. The mother of three and grandmother of two, Walker now lives in Sarasota, Florida.
Liz's Book:
No One Left Alone
Liz's Recommendation:
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If I died today, that would probably be one of the most amazing, breathtaking moments I've had in my life. And I've done a lot of things, but it was just to see people say, You know what? I my kid died 10 years ago, and I have never talked about it, or I got a drug problem. And it was just that kind of unfolding, like people had been waiting for an opportunity to be heard.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson, look, we've all got pain. We've all got stories we're afraid to tell. But what if there was a space where you could actually share those stories without judgment, without fear, and find healing in the process. Today I'm sitting down with Liz Walker, a former news anchor turned pastor, who discovered something powerful when we create safe spaces for people to be truly heard. Something miraculous happens in the heart of the Roxbury neighborhood in Boston. She started a movement called Can we talk that's transforming how communities process trauma, Grief and Healing. This isn't just another feel good story. This is about real people, mothers who've lost children, young men caught in the cycles of violence, entire communities learning to heal together. Liz's journey will challenge how you think about pain, community and the incredible resilience of the human spirit. Here's the Hope Healing is possible, and it starts with being brave enough to tell your story. So join us, so no one is left alone. Here is my conversation with Liz Walker. Liz Walker, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on thank you so much for joining me.
Liz Walker:Thank you for having me. This is exciting. Well, I want you to look
Joshua Johnson:back on your life, and the tapestry that you have woven with your life has coalesced in community, healing these groups that you have the Can we talk groups? How did you get there? What was the trajectory of your life that got you to a place of we need to do something different for our communities to help us heal. You
Liz Walker:know, that's a wonderful question, and I think that's a question I've been asking myself for the last 3040, years. How did I get here? I was raised a family. My father was a minister, so I think there's always been that community kind of outreach. My father died when I was at 12, so but I think that's kind of in my spiritual DNA, my my my stepmom was very much in the community in Little Rock Arkansas, that's where I grew up. And so my role models were people who who, you know, kind of depended on and led the community in that time when my parents died, my father died when I was 12, my mother died when I was born. It was the community who kind of stepped in. And I never thought about that, Josh, until recently, but it was the church community. It was the folks next door. It was, you know, we always say, Oh, back in the day when everybody knew everybody. But that's true in Little Rock in our in our neighborhood, people knew each other and took care of each other. So I was kind of raised by a group, a community, and my father remarried my stepmother, but they still so I think that was embedded in me always. And then as a journalist, I was probably more focused on those kinds of stories and certainly going into ministry. So it's kind of like you're led, you know, I won't preach a sermon, but it is the feeling that your life has been led in a direction, and you follow it. Well,
Joshua Johnson:you can preach a sermon on it. And I think it'll it'll preach, because I think that's what happens, is you, you lead, you grow, you get into a place where you're discovering, really, your core identity, who God has created you to be, and what your contribution to the world can can be. And that's, that's actually the journey of a lifetime to be able to do that. How did you move so you started out your professional career as a a journalist, your news anchor in Boston. How did the the shift into into ministry and to becoming becoming a pastor, happen? And why do you think that you shifted and went that route.
Liz Walker:I think I shifted again because of this kind of directional thing. But I loved journalism. I that was absolutely the most exciting part to that point of my life. And in 2001 i. Went. Now, I don't think God calls us in just, you know, I can give you a specific time, but I can tell you the drama of my life. Now I think what was always calling me, but in 2001 I went with a group of ministers and humanitarians, actually from Boston to South Sudan, and I wanted to do a documentary on their trip. At the time, the issue was slavery, whether and they wanted to investigate for themselves what we had heard about the slavery that was a part of that civil war. And we went, and I had never been in a war zone. I had never seen people who had been mistreated and marginalized and and living like that. And unfortunately, that's still the situation in Sudan. And my ministers who went with me, two ministers out of Boston, interpreted what was going on with me as a call. I didn't interpret it that way. It was just that I had never seen anything like this. And of course, you were shook and it throws you. I then came back listening to them, and really inspired by them, thinking there was I had to be able to do something more than just take pictures of bad situations, because they they wanted to change the situation in South Sudan. Who thinks they can do that right? Who who does that? So, so impressed with their lives and with their actions that I went into a seminary at Harvard, and, you know, took four or four more years to figure it out, but felt felt compelled that this was something that will allow me to do more in the world than tell the story. And so I think that was part of my change over we went at a time when nobody was going to South Sudan, because 2001 was the time when Osama bin Laden had, you know, started his mission and was building the al Qaeda in Sudan. I didn't know this until retrospect, but at the time, it just seemed like an incredible adventure. We ended up going back and forth from Boston to South Sudan for 10 years, and we built a girls school there. And I think that was a part of just seeing there was so much more to the world than the view that I had to that point, I'll finish school, worked on the ministerial staff of the Church of these two people who inspired me, Ray and Gloria white Hammond in Boston. They're incredible people. And this new this new direction, I don't know if it was a new direction, but this new way of traveling in this direction, I think, was set off then. So I think
Joshua Johnson:for anybody, I want to before we dive into then Roxbury and your pastorship there, and what you've seen in that community, I don't know, how do people then see a journalistic viewpoint of telling the story about marginalized people and communities that are are suffering, you know, crime that's being happening in community into a place of knowing about something to actually being involved in the creation of something better in community. You
Liz Walker:know, I don't know if that happens to everybody, but it certainly happened to me, when you feel that you can do something more, not you may not have the power to change the situation, but what you're doing is inadequate. Now, I believe in journalism, at least the journalism that that I knew back in the day when we only had three networks and you were all you had to change the channel right with your own hands back in the day, but, but I think that something happens on the inside of us, and we just feel more engaged. You always say we always said that as reporters, we were objective and our job was to remain removed. How realistic is that really, I mean, we're human, so can you be objective? So when you are kind of changed on the inside and you want to do more, you realize that you're not objective, that everything is subjective, and you take a stand and you say, This is what I want to do. Let me give you an example. Remember, well, you may be too young, but when Katrina hit the New Orleans area, and you watched television, you watched all these reporters and helicopters, and saw people on rooftops with white flags, and people were begging for help, and the reporters mainly just reported. And I remember seeing two or three reporters, national reporters, who crossed the line and who went into the waters and to help some people out. Anderson Cooper, I'll never forget that moment that I saw him on national TV doing that, that kind of thing. Now, Anderson Cooper is still a reporter, but something touched him deeply, that he felt he had a greater responsibility. Exactly. So I think it's that kind of thing that happened to me. I can't speak for everyone, but I think you just felt like you wanted to be a part of something, as opposed to taking this contrived, removed stance for me.
Joshua Johnson:So take me into the beginning of when you you started in Roxbury as a pastor at your church, what was happening in that that moment, and what was the community? What was the community like, and what was the pain that the community was processing when you first started Joshua,
Liz Walker:it fits just into your last point, or your last question about that changeover, I had covered stories in Roxbury from the time I got to Boston. And Roxbury is an urban community. It's now kind of in transition, but it was a community of poor people, community where there are lots of challenges, wonderful people there, but there are still many challenges there. So I had always thought I knew Roxbury because I covered it as a reporter, but when I became a minister and was asked to come to this church and take over again, you see it from a different perspective, and what I found was people, just people who were in pain. I mean, my church is on a very busy street in the middle of Roxbury on Warren Street. So a lot of the issues out in the world, the issues of challenge, walk right past the church. So drug abuse past the church, so bad that we had to learn how to get those I can't think of the name of them now, but those things that help people who've had an overdose, we actually taught our deacons and our ushers how to do that, just in case. So the point is that when I became a pastor of this church and started having closer relationships with people, I'd have to park my car the first time I parked my car to go into the church, my car was vandalized, then my car was broken into. So you know, the first thing you do is panic. Let me out of here. I don't want to be here. But once you get deeper into the neighborhood, you get to know people, and you understand a little more what's going on. So in doing that, what I think I began to realize was the rage and the numbness that you saw, and the people who maybe were having alcohol issues, and the people there's something beneath that. And I would suggest to you that it's pain, that people are living with a lot of pain. So it was realizing that on the streets. Now, on top of that, Josh, there had been all of these gang wars on the streets around my church and and young men were being killed weekly. This was a really rough time in Boston. This is back I started in 2011 the year before, I think there had been 75 young black men killed in the neighborhood in that year. Now that may not be Chicago numbers, but for his town like Boston, those were huge numbers. And so you see all of that, and one of the members of my church was killed. It was a young man who was killed the year before I got there. So you're hit with all of this violence, all of this rage around the church, and you want to do something the marathon. I'm telling you a lot, so I'm covering a lot of theories, but it's all kind of fitting together in 2013 I was asked to officiate at the Marathon Bombing prayer service. Governor Deval Patrick had a big prayer service after the marathon bombing. They hadn't found the bombers yet. The whole city was in an uproar that it had been obviously attacked like this. Was traumatized, and I was asked to do the to officiate this huge service in a Catholic church, with 1000s of people there and millions more watching. And after leaving that service, which was a very moving service, the President was there, the governor was there, all these people were speaking of Boston Strong and how we'd overcome. It dawned on me, Josh, that from the from that service to back to my little church in Roxbury, I saw some of the same things. People were, you know, kind of like they'd been terrorized, but there was no response like this prayer service. So I think it was a little bit of all of that that helped me think about, what can we do that's more than the funeral, that's more than the marches? What can we do to help people's emotional and psychological damage that's done by things like this, the Boston Marathon bombing event? Was a one time horrible event in this neighborhood. There are horrible events all the time. What can we do to support people? And I think that's how this all began to unfold, and how we came I didn't do it by myself. There were many people I talked to, many people who helped us and trying to support families, including the family of the young man who'd been killed in our own church a few years ago, because trauma and grief, there's no expiration date, even though this young man had been killed a few years earlier, his people were still, still very much traumatized, still very much grieving. So all of this kind of came into an idea that we should allow people an opportunity to grieve in community. I
Joshua Johnson:think that's a such a key piece is grieving in community, so that people could tell their story to heal from the inside out. And a lot of times when, when you see systemic issues that are happening in Roxbury, right outside your church, on the streets of you know, you have murder, you have drugs, gang violence, there's a lot of things that are happening in that community that is tearing the community apart. We we like to try to heal or fix from the outside in. What were, what are some of the things that you have seen people with good intentions trying to find fixes for communities that come from the outside, even if you're an insider, like living there, but they come from the outside in that don't always make the biggest difference that we want to, even if we're well intentioned. I
Liz Walker:think part of that, and I love the way you phrase that question, because it could be people who live in the community trying to do the same thing, but the I think part of the problem is the idea that we can fix people when we went to Sudan, and this was years ago. We were, we were kind of led by this spirit that we can build a school and we can change the and you know what? The name, the place where we built the school is still in conflict. They're still fighting. So what did we really do. So the point is not to fix problems, but to build real relationships with people. I think that's the difference. I think when you go in with that good old America, know how, and we can end this, and we can stop this, and we can change this. I think there's naivete that you really do need to kind of reflect on, and that's what I've been doing in working with this program and learning about what trauma really is. I can't fix you, Josh, and you can't fix me, but I can stand with you. I can't be with you, and I can tell you that I'm going to hang in there with you. I think that's sometimes that's the best we can do. But that's not a little thing. That's kind of a big thing, in a way, you know,
Joshua Johnson:it's a really big thing. Yeah, because
Liz Walker:we all have stuff, I got stuff too. And by admitting that and then standing together, I think we can become stronger. I don't want to just sound like it's so simple, because it's not just that easy thing, but it is admitting that I can't fix you.
Joshua Johnson:So then what was this shift in your community of saying, Hey, maybe I was trying to fix something into a place of, let's connect, share our stories and share grief suffering together and walk with each other through this. I
Liz Walker:think the thing that changed everything for me was meeting the family of this young man who was killed. His name was Corey Johnson, and his his whole family went to my church. They they said, I'll never forget. They sat on the right side. And if they all showed up, four generations from Trinidad Tobago, if they all showed up, it would fill the whole side of the church. But in in kind of getting to know his mom and his sister and his brother and other members of his family, and listening to them, and that's what I did. I what at the time, it wasn't so intentional that I, you know, about healing. It was just, you know, the former pastor there said, if you really want to be a good, effective pastor here, you need to listen to people. And so I, I started listening to them, and I listened to the mom talk about the idea that, you know, she was numb from the time, but she got the first call. Until then, she hadn't that hadn't changed, and she believed in God. So it was this kind of interesting thing, because sometimes you think if you have faith, or if you're a Christian or if you're a Buddhist, or whoever you are, as I try to make this broad that you can kind of miss the struggle, or you can heal quickly, and that's not necessary. Really true. What it really to me, my interpretation is you don't have to do it alone. So in listening to this family and getting to know them, her the young man's sister, who's a wonderful young woman, these are very quiet, beautiful people told me that she hadn't slept in in years. Had not had a good night's sleep. So then you have to go study. Well, what the heck is happening? And how do you try to work with that? Well, first thing do you do? Don't try to fix it. Learn what it is, name the pain, figure it out. You know, work with her. And so that's slowly developed. We talked to mental health experts. We talked to other, you know, religious experts. So we just kind of pulled a lot of things together to figure out, how could we best support people going through what this family was going through now, their tragedy had happened by the time I got to the church in 2011 their tragedy had was a year old. When the time we got to the Marathon Bombing, their tragedy was several years old, but they were still going through We then realized Joshua, there were people in our community whose tragedy had happened 20 years ago, and they hadn't dealt with it. So it was all of that that combined to figure out a way about grieving, because the first thing we try to do in our culture is get over it, move on. That's not very fair, and that's not very real. So that's slowing down, listening, I think, is what kind of changed my focus in think about grief. And, you know, what else, Josh, there's so many people grieving, people grieving everywhere. We hide it, we mask it, but, you know, so it's, it's realizing all of that. Yeah, that
Joshua Johnson:was one of the things I really appreciated. I lived in the Middle East for five years, worked with Syrian refugees, war refugees, and when they were grieving, you know, women who lost their husbands, they would, they would wear black for, you know, a good almost two years, a year and a half during, you know, during funerals, like there's wailing, there's there is literal, like bodily wailing of things that trying to actually get out the grief. And then women together, wailing together. And it wasn't just one woman doing this, but it was a collective grief that the whole family and extended family and the tribe all came together to do this and have these grief rituals, which we don't really have in America, and we've lost some of this way of grieving. So what you have done and set up is really, I think, essential and important for us to have these spaces to tell our stories, to suffer with people, to walk with people in the midst of their pain and their grief, how did you move into corey's family and saying, Hey, maybe we need to figure out this is a good thing for for us to help them into a place of going and setting up a community space, of saying, I'm gonna open up my my church basement. We're going to have some chairs in the circle, and we're going to tell our story. Well,
Liz Walker:you know, corey's family, and I, you've seen this, so I'm glad I'm talking to someone who understands that, that what we're doing is not new. This is not rocket science. It's done for generations and generations, but we lost it in our culture. Corey's family, after I, you know, got to know them better, and we talked a lot more. They there. The fact that they would talk about it, just moved me, and still moves me, almost takes my breath away. And now Deborah will say that it helped her, and she had not been offered that opportunity before, but they had done some grief counseling. They had gone to grief counselors. As a matter of fact, the former pastor brought mental health counselors into the church that's unheard of in black churches. So I guess these things were already kind of taking their seeds. Were planted, and I went back to the grief counselors who originally had worked with corey's family. Now, the thing about their working with corey's family was they were on a limited time, so they they will work for six weeks. And in talking to the grief counselors, we came up with the idea, along with corey's family, that we would open up the doors and see who would come. And we would, as you know, part of our faith mission. We just keep the doors open. We try to do it once a month. We try to, you know, do what we were going to do, but the point was, we would be there for people. Anybody. Didn't matter whether you Christian, we didn't care who anybody in the neighborhood could come looking back on it. It was really risky, but I think it was the courage of Corey spin. Family, his mom to say, yeah, that that that that sounds like something, and it was really hard for them. She didn't want to talk at all. She would, the first night we did this, she came to me, she said, because we had planned it, that the Corey family would tell their story, so that will give people an idea, because this is a peer to peer program. This was not about me getting up and saying you should talk. This was about people who had been through pain, saying I'm going to be vulnerable. And I hope that you will do that too. And right before we were going to open up and start this event, at this gathering, after we had dinner, Deborah said, I don't think I can do it. And I was like, oh, okay, well, if you don't do but she it was a lot for her to open. That takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable about the your worst day of your life. I'll just share that with you. People don't just open up to that kind of stuff. So it was the courage of this family, I think, that inspired us that this was something we put a sign on the church. No, we had talked about it for this wasn't something instantaneous. It took us maybe a year to come up with the form, the model that we ended up and we've been working on it ever since. But we put a sign on the on the side of the church, we're on a very busy street, and it said, if you are going through anything, if you are grieving, if you've been traumatized, if you're have had a loss, come have dinner with us. Can we talk? And the first night that we did it, we had almost, I'm going to say, somewhere between 75 and 100 people who just showed up from the neighborhood, which was amazing considering our neighborhood. Now, let me give you a little backdrop on our neighborhood. We it was a very silent neighborhood. You know, when you have a shooting, sadly, in lots of urban neighborhoods, the police say, well, nobody, we can't get witnesses. And the witness say, well, we don't trust the police. So, and all of that is true. So what you have is these neighborhoods where nobody talks about anything, just keep it to themselves. So to have these people step out was just, I don't know, I call it an act of God, because it wasn't anything I had thought through. And listening to Deborah, she found the strength to just tell a little bit. She didn't tell a lot other people got up. And if I, if I died today, that would probably be one of the most amazing, breathtaking moments I've had in my life, and I've done a lot of things, but it was just to see people say, You know what, I my kid died 10 years ago, and I have never talked about it, or I got a drug problem. And it was just that kind of unfolding, like people had been waiting for an opportunity to be heard. So that's how it all started. We called it can we talk, which was very simple, and I was basing that on, you're too young, but Joan Rivers. Do you remember Joan Rivers? She's the whole act around, can we talk? And it was based on that, and it just kind of took off in the neighborhood.
Joshua Johnson:Then what? What did you see is, as people started to come around these groups and openly share and be be vulnerable, and you're creating a space where this can happen, and I'm sure there's some parameters around it, so that would be helpful to to talk about some of these parameters, but when People started to share their story. What did you see happen within the community when stories were shared back and forth that people didn't talk about before?
Liz Walker:Well, one of the first things that the perimeters that we set up with guidelines, we call them, was that whatever happens in here stays in here. So this is anonymous, and there's no you know, you don't have to sign a form, and we're not putting police at the door. This is just an issue of trust. We're asking you not to share. And I promise you that I've never heard of anything being betrayed in that sense. So the thing I noticed in the neighborhood around the church, more people heard about it. So we started with once a month. That's all we thought we could do. We didn't have any money. So, you know, we we were volunteering the food and all of that that. We were bringing that from home. But I think what I began to see is the reputation of the program. Graham got ahead of us. We weren't, you know, we didn't know. We had no master plan. We were thinking, this will help this neighborhood. So the change that I began to see is that people kept coming, and people heard about it through other people. And so what we started as a kind of a conversation about. Violence, because it really did start on the idea that the neighborhood was out of control and violence, let's talk about it. It kind of expanded, and people began to show up who had other issues, and we accepted that. We didn't say, Oh, you can only come in if you know someone who's been murdered. We just said, if you got stuff that hurts you, that helped us change our definition of trauma. Trauma is not some set standard affliction. Trauma is what trauma is to you. You define it. If this keeps you up at night, if this gives you nightmares, if this, you know, makes you have all kinds of other conditions. So those were the subtle things that I began to notice as the more people who came in now was the neighborhood. Did the neighborhood suddenly change and there was no more violence? No, I wish I could tell you that that did not happen, but, but I'll tell you one thing that did happen, what, what we really wanted to to, what one of my deep wishes was, or deep prayers that I didn't share with anybody was that some young people would start coming in. Most of the people who came to our our events or our gatherings were mothers who had lost their children, a few fathers, brothers and sisters. But the young men, I would say, are targeted, people who young men who are at risk, the young men who are out there with the violence, corey's age. You know, I thought I was hoping they would come in. One night, a young man came in that actually, now we have a few more men, because we have a program for young men. But at the time, he was the only young man, most of the older people in the room, and he sat in the back, and people got up and shared and sat down, got up and shared. And finally he got up and he said, I've done a lot of things in my life that I'm really wish I hadn't done. I just needed to say that to somebody. And maybe he said a couple of other things. He never gave his name, and he was one of the he had that look about him, you know, I hate to do that because, as it's kind of like, you know, stereotyping, but he did have the look of the street, and he had a tough look, a no nonsense look, you know, that kind of, but he got up and shared just that little bit. And I thought that might have been the most difficult thing he's ever done in his life, that might have been the most emotional thing he's ever done in his life, and then he left, but it gave me hope that maybe we could somehow, one day reach more young men. We've since started a program just for young men to talk among themselves, and we've started a program for kids to talk among themselves. But those were the changes that you began to see in the neighborhood. Mainly, people told us they liked the program because more people showed up. That's all the marketing we've ever done. Now we're trying to change it a little bit. But back in those days, that was it.
Joshua Johnson:How did how did this change you? How did my work? How did it help excavate your own trauma in your life? That's
Liz Walker:the whole point. This is the whole thing. Who knew it's just like going to Sudan think I'm gonna change your life? No, no. It doesn't work that way. Now this will quit. So the you sit there and you hear these stories. Now, I'm a TV news producer in my mind, because I've been in television longer. So at first I'm thinking, Okay, we got to get exactly these 12 people to get up. What are we going to do if nobody gets up? How are we going to but eventually I just calmed my little self down and started really listening to what people had to say. And I tell you, if you listen enough with your heart, not just with your head, it touches you to the point you start thinking about your own stuff. And I didn't know I was trauma. I would never have if you had asked me, I would have told you I was a type personality. I would have told you lots of different answers for who I am. But through this program, it took years. It wasn't something immediately that happened, but over the years, I began to realize my own issues. And my brother, who lives in another he's passed now, but at the time he lived in another state, I called him, and we started talking about growing up, and both realized that we had we were children of trauma, and we just had never called it, that we were children of racial trauma. We were children of intergenerational trauma. And so I think what happens when you go to these with with your heart open, you begin to realize again, your own wounds and your own pain. So this program has been more just sitting there, listening to others has been more healing for me than anything, and that's the truth. And I'm still working. I'm now see a counselor. But you know, I never knew that. I. Ever knew. I knew I had some issues. I knew I had a little bit too much alcohol, but everybody I knew get too much alcohol. I knew, you know, I knew I had some things, but to start connecting the dots of your own wounds is what you want to do. And so I think it has been very healing for me, which I talk about in the in the book that I've written on it, that's, that's, that's the part that's the key that you begin to see yourself a little bit more clearly, and
Joshua Johnson:when we could start to see that, hey, we have these issues. Everybody else has these issues. That connects us together, that we're all human, and we all are going through pain and trauma and our traumas in our life. So what was the the black church tradition that helped inform some of this? I know. So if you look at the the history of the black church in America there, there are people of of pain and trauma and suffering. What was helpful within the black church tradition that you brought into some of this that helped people in the midst of ongoing trauma, that wasn't a post traumatic event, it was just an ongoing, dramatic life. What was helpful in that tradition that help people just be with each other in the midst of of pain and suffering. I
Liz Walker:think, I think you see things that you don't even understand are are helpful until you get some perspective on them. So I grew up in the black church, as I've told you, my father's church, and my father was kind of preaching that he wanted his two children to go to we went to church all day long on Sunday, when our church was out at noon, and he'd send us to somebody else's church if just going to church. Could get you to heaven. I'm in okay, but it don't work that way. But what I did get, and maybe this is heaven, I got to see how black worship can be. There's such a variety of black worship, but one of the caretakers, my main care, caregiver, who took care of me from the time my my birth mother died, Mother Riley. Mother Riley's church was Baptist, but it was her whole belief was that, you know, she had a very personal relationship with God. She iron clothes. That was her main job. And then she kept children, and I just remember going to church with her, and she was very physical in her worship, so she would get happy, is the word we called it. And you know, you see it in movies now with black movies, you'll see the dance that we all do at weddings, and you'll see the church scene, where we're all good, but that's real. And in studying more about Black worship, I realized that the contemplative practices of black worship come straight out of Africa, the practices of dance, the practices of moaning aloud, the practices that you talked about, that you saw when you were in where you sit on Syria Libya,
Joshua Johnson:where were you? Well, I yeah, I was living in Jordan, but working with Syrians, Syrians,
Liz Walker:all of that comes out of ancient practices of how we mourn and grieve, and how closely connected grieving and joy are. So I saw in my own experience as a child that this physicality of worship was a way to relieve the stress of life that was very you know, that was bringing your burdens to God and and now we know science has caught up with spirituality, that movement is huge in relieving stress and relieving trauma. So those were the kinds of things that I think the black church brought us. Now the black church also would have quiet periods way back in the day. That's kind of changed. But I believe the contemplative practice of meditation and prayer, all of that is healing, and all of that is in our in our heritage is in our, you know, that's the legacy that was passed down. So we are, we are grasping that back. We have a artistic expression, uh, that's a very fancy name for that part of our program now, where we bring artists in they're not performers, but they are called to to, you know, kind of gather the mood or the atmosphere of any particular evening and dance, sing or play an instrument, and people are really moved by that. So again, it's kind of doing, codifying things that were innate and bringing it back to say it's all right, because what happened with those kinds of experiences? Josh, I think we we kind of decided we had become educated and we're above that. We're enlightened, and we can't do that now. But you. It turns out that that's the kind of stuff we need. We need to move our bodies. We need to moan and wail. We need to understand the physicality of pain, emotional pain, and knowing that healing comes the same way. So all of that is what I've learned out of the black church. The black church is a, just, a just, just, just a treasure as an institution. And too often we say all the black church is dead, or we say religion is dead, but these are the things that have kept us strong for generations and generations. Yeah.
Joshua Johnson:Well, I just Yeah. Well, if you know the there's aspects of the people in the White evangelical church that are starting to say what we need to learn a lot from the black church, like, there's a lot that we need to learn and to move into a new space, in a different space, and we have to actually sit at the feet of the black church and learn the things that we have. That's a
Liz Walker:good gotten, right? So, you know, I used to, I used to take offense at that. I said, Well, y'all got to learn from us. But you know what? It's true, because you, the people who have been closest to the pain, usually can, can tell you about healing and what healing, you know, what resiliency, what all of those things are. So we've got to do this together. Josh, we, you know this, you we, we've been too much this us against them thing, and that ain't working for us, I'm telling you, it we've got to figure out another way.
Joshua Johnson:So So arts, the body, telling our story, creating these soft spaces to be able to be vulnerable and open, to be able to receive, to listen. Well, these are really going to be important as we connect and heal within community, that we can go into, into a community in a neighborhood where we say we have to do it together, we can't have this us and them anymore, that when we do this, we could see each other for who we are, which are humans. And that's beautiful. And we need these spaces. So if you said, now you're starting to codify some of these things, and say these are the things that we have learned over a decade of doing the these groups, and you're helping people in other cities do these groups. If people want to set up and know that there is community healing space to have these Can we talk groups? What? What have you found helpful as it's jumped to different communities other than your own? In Roxbury,
Liz Walker:well, that's where we are right now, and this is how grassroots we are. We're now working on curriculum so that we can pass this out. This is not a franchise. We are not trying to make $1 out of this. We are. We are just trying to tell people how we've done it and put that down. And so codify is exactly what we're trying to do in the me, and that's going to take a little bit, because we're Mom and Pop, I'm telling you, you know, I'd like to act like, Oh no, we've got this major thing, but this is. So, mom and pop, that's, that's another thing, you know, God is amazing. Because if you think about just, you know, what's that? There's a text that says, Do not despise small beginnings, because we are definitely that. So we're trying to get to a capacity, or increase our capacity, so that anybody who wants to do this, like, Hey, anybody wants to do this? This is this is what we did, and here's how you do it. We're not quite there yet. What we're doing now is just visiting churches. We have about 18 churches now who are around the country, who are, that was just word of mouth, who are trying to do our program and do it well, and we're trying to watch and monitor that, because we want to make sure that what we're telling you you can do easily. So we're in that kind of phase right now. And I think by the time we get the curriculum out, by the time the book gets out, people will Yeah, but anybody who wants to do it, we are trying to go to anyone. And when it gets to the point, and I pray that will get to the point that people will just be doing their own interpretation of it. I think that's fine. We're checking that out now, because this is for everybody, and it's not just for poor black neighborhoods. That's the other thing we all got stuff. And I, you know, ultimately, I hope or pray that this would be something that would deal with reconciliation across cultures and all of that, but it starts with you. So that's where we are now.
Joshua Johnson:So I want to know, I know that at the end of last year, you went to to Palestine, and so you sat with some Palestinian Christians that have gone through a lot of trauma and grief, and they're continually like being oppressed, and it's a lot of pain. I had mother Isaac on, who's part of Bethlehem Bible College. I and I was able to talk to him about that Palestinian experience. What did you see and what did you learn from that space that your your program and the things that you have done? Your community, what transfers because trauma, pain, grief, it's a universal experience. What is transferred absolutely, I
Liz Walker:think that I was unprepared for the kind of trauma that we actually witnessed to a certain extent. But certainly, we're told we made it over there pretty easily. There was no stops. We went all the way. We went through Canada because no American flights were going in to Jordan and then into Bethlehem. But we made it with no stops. But when we met this group of Christian Palestinian Christians, even coming to this conference that we participated in of the women were telling us that their bus was stopped at a checkpoint, a bus was in front of theirs, a young man was dragged off the bus in front of theirs and beaten in front of them. Nobody got an explanation. Nobody knows why, and they were saying this happens to us all the time. So the thing that I think touched me most there is that there's no post traumatic stress. It's ongoing, and it's also anticipatory of trauma and stress, because you know, know what's going to happen the next day. We got a little afraid to be honest with you about our trip, because it's such a political hot button thing, but people are hurting and and need relief. Does this in the war? No? Does this make peace happen? I that's this beyond me, but the idea that we were willing to listen to to women and and women were willing to listen to each other. The thing, the second thing that touched me deeply was the fact that we were told that these these people would not speak. We were invited by churches for Middle East peace, which is a group that you probably are aware of, and we kind of went in blind, because just another opportunity to tell them about our program. But once we got there and we're debriefed on the on the situation there, we said, well, it's probably risky to even think that women will get up, because they just don't in this culture, because it's fear. Fear rules here, right? There's always, you know, whatever, the Boogeyman. And so what we said, Well, if that happens and we'll just tell our stories and sit down and, you know, and that we'll leave it alone, there's nothing we can do. When we, you know, got up, kind of explained the program to them, told them about our neighborhood, told them about the violence and the things that that people were trying to deal with in our neighborhood. It was just like that. People got up, we then were flooded with with pain, and women were telling us that they had never spoken about this ever. Now that threw me, because never. And then the question was, had we? Had we done something even more dangerous by kind of opening up this Pandora's box of pain. But we, you know, afterwards, after that, we had two sessions there in a three day conference. And afterwards each session, we did more movement. We had prayer points that, you know, so we hastily put things together so that women could, you know, kind of come down from this emotional, you know, moments that they were going through. And I think that helped, but it was a lesson for us to to understand that this should not be a one off thing. You shouldn't just go in and say, one day we're going to let you come and talk about your pain, because it doesn't work that way. So we're actually in not negotiations, but in conversations about helping these women kind of set up their own sessions. It hasn't been firmed yet, but Josh, the point is that you're right. It's the same. It's universal. This is universal pain. You don't have to say this guy's the bad guy, that guy's it's past that we are all her. Everybody's hurting, even the perpetrators, in some way, are hurting. So it just confirmed for me what the Bible says. We got a world in pain. We got a world that's suffering and and there are things, small things that we can do to just alleviate a little bit.
Joshua Johnson:I think something that you said there is that because they're fearful, that fear rules. Fear rules in the United States as well, like, it's just everybody is afraid all the time. And I think the women said, you know, we haven't talked about this because they're like, when this is all over, we could probably talk about it. And I think oftentimes in all of these situations in your community in Roxbury, when this is over, let's talk about it, but we have to deal. Deal with these things and talk about these things while they're happening, and that this is the thing that then reveals the common humanity between us, so that we can maybe even get over what is ailing our community, because we could see each other for who we are. Now, instead of saying, I'm so afraid, let's talk about it when it's all over, we're just going to fight against each other, and then we'll, we'll figure it out later. So it's a beautiful thing that you're doing, and it's helping communities. And I thank you for seeing the need and just stepping into it and walking with people as they share their own stories, because it's a beautiful healing process. And your book is fantastic. No one left alone. I love, I love your book. It is something where I'm like, Oh, this is it. I've got to pass this out. This is a beautiful story. It's a beautiful process. If people would pick up, no one left alone and read it, what do you hope your readers would get from your book?
Liz Walker:Oh, that's such a great question. I hope that they will have a little bit better understanding about themselves and their own pain, and I hope they'll get over a little of the fear about being vulnerable. So maybe you don't start your own church program, but maybe you'll talk to your brother or your sister or your friend and listen a little bit more from your heart. Sometimes, Joshua, I wake up and I think, God, you are the hokiest person. You are Pollyanna. What the heck you know that? Then I realized this is exactly what we need to be doing, and I don't have to be ashamed of that. It's the Hokey stuff that we really need to do, because somewhere along the line we lost that. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:yeah, it's beautiful. I have a couple of quick questions at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give stop
Liz Walker:drinking so much, girl and and you know what I also would do, because my brother and I really struggle with a lot of things that, God bless him. He died of alcoholism and just had a rough way to go. At some point, I would say to myself, You are enough, whatever you think you're not, and you think you know you have to put this mask on or whatever you're enough. And I think that that's what I've learned from this is that we're as I can't point to anybody in Joshua and say, Oh my God, you're because I got my own stuff and it's still all right. So I think that's what I tell I always want to jump into a sermon. You asked me a question. I see myself going, so pull back stuff. We're enough, and if we only just hold on to each other. That's
Joshua Johnson:beautiful. That's good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.
Liz Walker:Boy, that's a great question. What have I been I know I've been on a no. Haven't been doing good, but I have. I did. You could just get this wonderful book. I'm glad you brought that up. The name of the book is, I just got it this morning. Moon rising. Moon rise over new Jessup. And the author is Jamila Minix, M, I N, N? I C, K, s, and it's just a beautiful story about rowing up, kind of post slavery, Jim Crow. But it's got a lot of beauty in it. You know, we know the struggle too, but there's a lot of beauty in that. And anything, anything that Julia Cameron writes, I love, and, yeah, those are the books I'm reading right now.
Joshua Johnson:That's great. Good. How could people go out, get no one left alone? And then where else would you like to point people to? Is there a website to connect with what you're doing? Absolutely
Liz Walker:there's the Can we talk network.org tells you all about our programs and what we're trying to do as we grow. Can we talk network.org? Liz Walker, books, A, B, O, O, k, s, because God knows. I'm gonna try to write another one. That's an aspirational website. I only have one, Liz Walker books. L i z Walker books.com and I think those are the main things the book is going to be, I don't know when this airs, but the book will be launched April 8. You can order it, pre order it now on Amazon. And all of the the proceeds you don't make any money from books, that's another discovery I just made. But any money that we do make goes to the Can we talk network, because we want to keep this going.
Joshua Johnson:The only way to get money for the Can we talk network is to buy boxes of books. So go out and buy boxes of books. So if you get boxes and boxes, then make it a New York Times best seller go. So there's be some money for this. Can we talk network? Because this is what is needed in this world, that we could process our pain and our grief and our suffering. And together in community, vulnerably, in a place where we can heal and we can see each other for who we are, that we are humans made in the image of God, that we all have pain that we have to walk through and and we serve a God that has suffered with us and has demonstrated that for us. And so if we're going to do anything to embody the ways of Jesus, one of the things we need to do is to to suffer with people and walk with people in their pain, to hear their stories, to listen well, to be curious about other people, and that may just well heal yourself as well. So Liz, thank you. This was a fantastic conversation. I loved I loved
Liz Walker:it. Joshua, I'm your biggest fan now, so I'll be listening to you. Thank you very much for having me. God bless you. God bless you. All you.
