Love as a Transgressive Power: A Conversation with Zae Illo and Lisa Graustein

How do we move beyond the "gatekeeping" of our institutions to practice a love that is truly transformative?

In this soul-stirring conversation, host Dwight Dunston is joined by Zae Illo and Lisa Graustein to explore the intersection of spiritual practice and radical justice. Together, they challenge us to look beyond "market logic" and historical comfort to find a faith that meets people exactly where they are—on the streets, in the struggle, and in the heart.

The episode grounds itself in the words of early Quakers Isaac Pennington, John Woolman, and Catherine Payton, using their 17th and 18th-century visions as a springboard to ask: What does it mean to "restore love to its right place" in a world of broken systems?

Zae Illo is a public theologian and street minister in San Francisco. His ministry focuses on the material and spiritual needs of the unhoused, bridging the gap between faith and the harsh realities of urban life. He is the author of Wild Deep Waters and a prophetic voice on the necessity of "transgressive" love—a love that flows outside the bounds of what society deems "normative."

Lisa Graustein is a lifelong Quaker, artist, and justice educator. Her work centers on healing, transformation, and dismantling white supremacy within spiritual and secular institutions. She brings a wealth of experience in mutual aid, peacebuilding, and "Afrofuturism," inviting us to imagine a future where resources are shared in common and every gate is opened.

They explore:

• Love as Transgression: Why following the spirit often requires us to break cultural norms and "market logic."
• The Myth of Private Property: A critical look at the "Diggers" vs. early Quakers and the radical call to hold all things in common.
• Institutional Gatekeeping: How our organizations (and meeting houses) inadvertently limit access to the "light" and how to dismantle those barriers.
• Tools for Connection: Lisa’s "Great-Great-Grandchild" framework for finding common ground in a polarized world.
• The Ministry of the Streets: Why material assistance is a vehicle for hearing the testimonies of those the state deems "disposable."

Politics does not determine someone’s character or someone’s essence... What if we were curious as to why?" -Zae Illo

Hear "radical curiosity" and a call to live into the Kingdom of God as a present, breaking reality.

NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.

The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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Transcript

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All these readings that we tend to ground ourselves in in our tradition are from a time and context that was not consistent with who Friends aspired to be. Yes, I want to give them due honor, but sometimes what they are writing about is reinterpreted as being much more utopian than what it actually was. eh You're listening to The Seed, Conversations for Radical Hope, a Pendle Hill podcast where Quakers and other seekers come together to explore visions of the world growing through the cracks of our broken systems. I'm your host, Dwight Dunston In Season 6, we are asking questions about love and power. What does love require of us in the face of injustice, violence, and despair? And where do we already see love and power at work? in seed form or full bloom. On today's show, I'm joined by Zae Illo and Lisa Graustein two thoughtful, grounded, and deeply engaged guests. Zae brings his experience as a public theologian and street minister tending to the spiritual and physical needs of the unhoused in San Francisco. Lisa is a lifelong Quaker, artist, and justice educator whose work centers on healing and transformation. Together, they help us reflect on what it means to live a life steeped in love and how that love shows up in the public square. This season, we ground each episode in a short reading. Today, because it's just gonna be such a rich conversation, we have three short readings, all from early Quakers, Isaac Pennington, John Woolman, and Catherine Payton. Here is our first reading from the writings of Isaac Pennington, volume one. in a section titled, The Sum and Substance of True Religion, read by one of our guests. whether the power of true religion and true love, if it were raised up and restored again, would make the world happier and set everything in its proper place, both inwardly and outwardly. How cruel, how blind, how selfish, how unrighteous is the man that follows the dictates of his own corrupt reason without knowing and becoming subject to that which should enlighten it and give him the right use of it. He experiences either the power of true religion and is thereby renewed and fitted for God, or he contents himself with a form of godliness without the power and in effect remains what he was. from John Wolman, Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. To live in ease and plenty by the toil of those who are kept in ignorance and oppression, and whom we seldom see, but to use them as our servants without regard to the end of their being, and the equal love of the creator to them as to us. What more is this than building up Babylon anew? In love, he created all, and in love, he seeks the good of all. Shall we then live in pleasure and forget the afflictions of the afflicted? The spirit of truth calls for tenderness and righteousness. The inspired prophet describes oppression in this manner. They lay heavy burdens on the people and with their fingers they bind burdens, but they themselves would not touch them. These are they who frame laws in favor of themselves and find means of outward justification while inwardly full of rabbany and greed. Our last passage comes from Catherine Peyton, later Phillips, a remarkable 18th century Quaker minister born in 1727. True freedom in communicating our sentiments with a design for each other's eternal well-being is a part of the love that should clothe the spirits of the followers of Jesus Christ. This love does not suppress plain dealing. It enlarges the heart to seek another's good, and it softens the manner in which truth is spoken. Catherine Payton, Letter from the Ship Alexander, 1753. Welcome Zae, welcome Lisa. Good day to you both. It's great to be here. So great to be here with y'all. I feel like I hopped in a time machine. Our readings today were from some earlier times and I feel like my tongue was getting twisted reading some of those, but I was back in time a little bit. I want to bring us to the present, to this moment. I just want to invite each of you in to just share a little bit about in your life right now, whether in your work or community or your spirit, where are you noticing love showing up with power? As soon as you asked the question, what came to mind to me was my recent experience at a church in San Francisco where I was speaking in the ministry on Sunday from the pulpit. So this was not a lecture or a talk or one of those formulations. This was the Sunday message at the worship hour. And as I start speaking, the audience is doing the call and response. So that's a very different thing. But then as I'm speaking, the musical director also starts like playing music to underscore what I'm saying. And first I had misunderstood that I had gone too long and they were telling me, it's time for you to wrap it up. But actually I looked up, there's a clock that you can see only from the stage, which counts down how much time you have. He was actually engaging in like underscoring what I was saying, underscoring. And if I think about it, like that kind of care where The message, whether in the meeting house, doesn't matter where, outside, at an immigration detention center, where people are doing ministry, when the world says that you're speaking to their condition, that's a profound sense of love and care and support in the ministry. Not as quiet as we've sort of come to expect where anything that moves throws off the message. That form of love was very helpful for me because it was somewhat frightening in real time. but it helped me to grow deeper in trusting that spirit truly does give you the words if you're not so concerned about the form. And so that was a very unexpected form of recent love, communal love, very unexpected. What comes to mind for me when I think about love moving with power is a conversation I had the other night with a young person who was staying at our house for a little while who's doing a lot of mutual aid work in our city and is doing a lot of harm reduction with folks who are living on the street and the way that they were talking about how often the police will circle around them, right? Because sometimes they're handing out things that the police don't want them to be handing out as a way of helping people make safer choices for themselves. Sometimes they get surrounded by the police and the way that as a group of mostly young folks working with mostly unhoused people, they have figured out how to keep doing what they're doing by being very fluid in how they're moving. And so they're not backing off from offering folks what they have to offer. They're not engaging in direct confrontation with the police, but they're also not letting that intimidation stop them. And so they're changing their routes. They're moving differently. They're getting folks like me who are older and look a little bit more normative to the police or can showing up and doing some things and just ways of being clear that they are going to offer care, they're going to offer resources, and they're going to support people in being as safe as they can be, even when agents of the state are going to interfere with that. And I just really appreciated the ways that they were moving with care, with directness, and with fluidity. necessary work and having its own moral crisis about safe injection sites. And we have for a while and we are losing, we've had a memorial inside the meeting house for persons that we were engaged in our form of material and also spiritual care who died of overdoses. Many communities are struggling with that. And what do you do to show up even when it transcends where the law currently is? How do you do that? It's the same for the move and I write about in Wild Deep Waters, which is the Occupy movement. Transgressive, but it's love, it's embodied, it flows fluid, exact words, beyond the bounds of what is the other word you use, normative. It flows outside of where you think it's supposed to be in. That is essentially what the ministry of Jesus was. Totally transgressive of the cultural bounds and norms. And we've unfortunately put all of his symbols on the rearview mirror of our car, but transgression itself, that fluidity, the movement, that is discipleship, that is the early church, that is what they were doing. How do we discern what spirit calls us to do in our time to likewise live in that same spirit? I'm thinking about that Isaac Pennington excerpt that we read and where he says, the power of true religion and true love, if it were restored again, make the world happier and set everything in its proper place. Sort of a rhetorical, but I also think he's under the weight of that in a real way. And there's something both profound and visionary about the question. And there's also maybe some part of me, maybe the person that's skeptical, or pessimistic. yeah, that's naive to think it would in this world. So with so many systems that are out of balance, that are set up to take you out, Isaac and others. Yeah, feels, some part of it feels naive, but also deeply prophetic. yeah, I just bring that quote into the space with us, especially after what you both shared. When I hear you talk about that Dwight, I think about that notion of restoring, I don't know if I the words wrong, but love to its right place. That's how we're born. If you approach them warmly and openly communicating trust and safety, all we long for is infants' connection. All we long for is care. Everything else doesn't matter. So all these other things that tear us down are things we've created with each other, but that's not our natural state. You know, when you're doing the soundcheck today, we were talking about summertime when recording this, talking about our gardens. I just think about the first story we're told, when we're told it twice, right, in the Bible, is that we're born into this lush creation and we're supposed to be in relationship in a way that is joyous for all of us. That's what early friends were seeking to do, is to strip away all the extra stuff that society had put on. And I know we still hold that up as friends as an ideal, but how much more encumbered we've become by that. And Zae, what I appreciated in reading some of your work before we got together today, was how much your ministry is about like, let me meet you right where you are and be with you and how much just in that direct meeting, I see you like seeking to restore love to its right place there. I've heard, I've been to talks and retreats and read the books about so-called primitive Christianity. Yes, it's very much so in vogue in the literature and we like to use that word when describing early friends. if I'm being honest, I've got to bring a little bit of what you raised Dwight, a critical eye to Brother John because actually, What I sense a lot in the writings of George Fox and John Woolman and others is actually not what the gospel is talking about as regards to the early church. To the point that was just raised by Lisa about Genesis, if you read Acts 4 verses 32 to 35, you will find that actually the earliest version of the church that's written about shared all things in common. To Lisa's point about living in a communal house, yes? shared all things in common. in fact, I'll just, read that. Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. There was not a needy person among them. I just want to situate that to say what George Fox and Isaac are doing is not that. So if we talk about what the early church was about, the actual first iteration of this experiment, The reformism, practicing, honest business. Yes, those are useful reforms, but in the time of George Fox, the diggers were actually much closer to that model than early friends because the diggers actually wanted to get rid of private property. Friends did not. There was never a movement among friends to do that. And this version, I think we wrestle now with the contradictions, especially here in San Francisco, you sit up in a million dollar house talking about simplicity. get. taught in these contradictions of what it means to live out the practices and to be situated in continuing revelation because my sense of it is continuing revelation is always inscribed inside of market logic. Unless you get out of that, you can't do what the early church was doing because what they were doing was not individual possessions. If there's no private property, slavery by definition does not exist. Flavor is private property. That's what that is. It's just a form of private property. So I wrestle with, yes, I want to give them due honor, but sometimes what they are writing about is sort of reinterpreted as being much more utopian than what it actually was because the Diggers works were published like 20 years before Barclay. Before our first theology, Barclay was published 20 years prior to Stanley. That was always racialized, always. to your point Dwight about being a bit naive or being more sort of critical or from my perspective as an African American, there was no way, no matter how much a black person would have done good business, that you were going to have the same outcome as somebody who was in the dominant skin color. It wasn't about your ethics being, it wasn't about your moral character. And so there was no way to actually do what I think Friends General's supposition was. Plain dealing, plain business, that applied if you were a certain skin color. Yes. Because I think the major gap in their thinking and their writing was that forgetting that their context was already shaped by their skin color. struck this morning as I was reading the quotations for this podcast in preparation, how much we have a tendency as friends to go back to the 1600s and 1700s. And I appreciate understanding our origins and our foundation, and I think there are friends that have guidance from that time to offer us. And as someone who's a big reader of Afrofuturism, I also think about what is it to incorporate readings into our spiritual growth, into our religious education that come from a future voice and how much we need that to your point, Zeh, of All these readings that we tend to ground ourselves in and our tradition in are from a time and context that was not consistent with who friends aspired to be, right? We're living in a time and context that is still not consistent with who friends aspire to be and where there's space for imagination, for world building, for naming that would give us the same spiritual nurture but in a more expansive and whole and just direction. I want to get to both of you more around really dreaming and visioning into these new worlds. Yeah, maybe having a interrogative eye, a skeptical eye on what some of the early friends were dreaming into and the ways that it was visionary and very hope-filled, but also limited by the very thinking and construct of the time folks were living in. So I'm holding that. Zae, your ministry lives in the streets, literally. Food, shelter, clean clothes, kind word, prophetic words. It feels like you are sowing seeds of love in very material soil, in a very tangible way that people feel. Curious what urban ministry has taught you about the relationship between love and power. It's important to begin with a grace for early friends in that they were in a practical sense, trying not to get killed. They were navigating. You can't say certain explicit things. The peace testimony is shaped by that. It is a doctrine that says we're not dangerous to you. We are not interested in storming the government. We are not a threat to the existed political power. Yes. The outcomes of Mary Dyer and others demonstrated how dangerous it was. It was illegal to be a Quaker. So, yeah, I have to also understand their context. It was illegal to gather in meeting for worship, right? And in our time when we're concerned about immigration and detention and officials, we can sort of understand some of that. Imagine people are going to storm into your meeting and drag you out because your practice is against the law, yes? First, grace for that, for their specific context. As regards San Francisco Monthly Meeting, near 9th and Market in San Francisco, our urban context matters. It is an urban context. If you, so much of the imagery about friends is pastoral and you got sheep and cows and you got lots of endless fields and et cetera. If that is your context, much of what I'm doing might not make a lick of sense because your context is very different. However, even if you are in a pastoral setting, meaning more rural agricultural setting, The material assistance to your question about love and power, charity without empowering someone to speak the light that is in them is not useful. That is just emotive catharsis. That's not actually helpful in them reaching their fullest spiritual potential. The baseline for the ministries, whether it's the Friday food sharing, the food pantry ministry, the laundry ministry, is that the material outward needs are just a mechanism to get to the spiritual testimony of people that we would otherwise never hear from. And if I believe there is that of God in everyone, whether you slept outside on the sidewalk, whether you're turning tricks on the corner, whether you are still in active addiction, does not diminish one iota that of God in you at all. And so the material ministries are just the vehicle to extend care so that I can hear the testimony. the spoken witness, the word of those people, because they have a ministry to give us. And if we amputate them, we amputate that ministry from God. We cut off some of the light. And so for me, it was a way of practically negotiating these wrestlings with things of spirit and frankly, what was beginning to sense like a class-based division as to who the light was actually for. And rather than just criticizing people and talking about it, in an intellectual fashion, God said, go meet and go hear what those people have to tell you. So that it was by experience, not intellect. Zae, I wanna get to Lisa, but Zae, I'm thinking about the person who just heard that what you shared, it sounds clear. There's so much love and power within it. Someone might be leaving this podcast. One of our listeners is like, okay, I'm ready to bring in a ministry from someone that I may have cut off to bring that into my heart, my space of worship to bring that in with this person who's, yeah. who's unhoused or experiencing trials and tribulations, their life just looks differently from mine because of whatever circumstance I'm ready to welcome them in. And they're like, I can do that with that person, but with the person I vote differently from, no, their ministry, I don't want anywhere near my heart. Because what I really hear you inviting us into or provoking us into is considering who we have closed our hearts off to, who we have opened our hearts open to. What do you tell the person as they try to open their heart up to people for whatever? from Lisa, invite him over to pesto, invite him over to pesto. Truly, one of my elders that I have a recurring dinner with is a staunch Republican. But we have meals, we have a site of communion that's about breaking bread and catching up about family or et cetera. Politics does not determine someone's character or someone's essence. And I think that we have too much conflated political identity with human identity. And the way that you, whatever prompted you to vote any particular way, our needs, concerns, stories, anxieties, worries, doubts, et cetera. If you really are interested in the why, why, it is your responsibility to go find out why. And so that's not just a matter of let me indulge you, you person who doesn't really understand, because let me tell you all the ways that my position is right. That's true theologically, it's true economically, it's true socially, it's true politically. If you start the conversation, that's just bad apologetics. My position is right and let me tolerate you in the conversation. Apologetics, whether theological or anything else, must start from, what do we share in common? Odds are you slept in a bed somewhere. Odds are you have family and friends. Odds are you ate a meal earlier today. What do we share in common? How can we start there and get to know something about one another rather than starting? way later, like you started at the last chapter in the book, all those concerns that led you to form this political identity, you have skipped chapters one through 39 and gone straight to the last chapter. And I think we're excising huge volumes of people's stories as to the why. And if you want to criticize it, if you disagree, then I think Spira might lead you to wrestle with exploring how your gifts might help you to ask the question of. why and be curious as to why because then it's not about defending your position. Your job is just to find out and ask why. Tell me about that. That's just good pastoral care. at a time where we need like so many tools in our toolbox for how to do that. And so just want to share the two that are my go-tos. Is one, I can ask anybody, what is the world you want your great-great grandchild to live in? Whether or not they're of our own biology, but a descendant that we'll never meet, almost all of us want that young person to have a clean environment to live in. Almost all of us want that young person to be loved and cared for, to have rich community. And that's a place where we can build to a future together that doesn't have to get about the immediate politics now. And when I ask someone, what do you want for your great-great grandchildren? Almost always there's a softening, right? When we think about that young person in our line, chosen, genetic, whatever it is, that we're never gonna meet, there's a softening and there's a place where we can connect. And the other ways that I try to bridge when there's intense difference is if people are open to it, like, how do want me to pray for you? Because when I pray for someone, it's not about me and it's not even necessarily about the you that I'm getting right in this moment. It's about my spirit connecting to divine to connect to your spirit. And I think of moments when I've been working as a peacekeeper at protests and I've had homophobes screaming in my face, white supremacists yelling all their crap. They're not gonna tell me how they want me to pray for them because they just wanna talk over me and silence me. And in that moment, I can still pray for them. and I can pray for an easing of what is so upset in their systems that they're yelling at me as a peacekeeper. And that doesn't mean I have a connection with them. It doesn't mean like we're going out to lunch later, but it shifts my orientation that invites the truest, most human part of myself to connect with the truest, most human part of themselves. Even if what anybody's witnessing, there's no connection. And I think about that as a orientation and a way of moving. I want to make the connection between the streets and the institutions. The streets exist the way they do because the institutions have decided a certain group or certain groups of people are disposable and the streets are where they are left. And so to me, it's a continuation from the streets to the institutions. I was running a food distribution during the first six months of the pandemic, right? When we all had to be six feet apart and everybody was locked down. And I... was able to use a storefront right at a subway station right near my house. It's a major transportation hub. And people would come up and people who were new would say, okay, what do you need from me? What do I have to show you? And I said, nothing, please take a bag. And I would say, do you know somebody else? Can you take two? You don't have to tell me you know somebody. I'm asking, I'm trusting you know somebody else who's gonna need the food and trusting you can take two bags and do with them whatever you're gonna do. And so how much are institutions at every level set up gatekeeping for resources and that anyone I've ever met who is in a situation where they're living on the street, it's because institutions that are supposed to provide safety nets for all of us have failed them. Whether it's mental health, whether it's safe housing, whether it's community support and wellbeing, documentation, whatever it is. And so the work we're doing in institutions is about bringing that truth of the gatekeeping role they play and to try to get them to open their gates. And the work Dwight that you and I have done among friends around racial justice is how do we stop the white supremacist gatekeeping among friends from impacting every level of the society of friends? How do we open the gates of who we are as a people that acknowledges the oppressive reality we live in, but says it's not going to continue to be a gatekeeper for us? And I think about our time together, Dwight, with our cohort of how many friends of color shared how their memberships had been denied or delayed to be members of friends for what we know are completely racist and bullshit reasons. Like we gatekeep ourselves in the meeting houses. And then Tze's story of people living right outside the meeting house. I remember a number of years ago at our yearly meeting, we had some surplus funds that we like, we're gonna save and hold onto. And a friend who was visiting from Cuba said, we don't think the work of the church is done until the church coffers are empty. Right? And so, you we were talking earlier about this notion of private property and holding on to. To me, what Jay was talking about, the early church, there was no private property because our job was to serve that of God and each other, which meant we had to share every resource. Not because I own it and I'm sharing it with you, but because creation and God has given it to us in common and our job is to steward it for each other. Particularly at this time when there's so much fear, our job is to end all the gatekeeping. It's to release all the resources. It's to move to be in full co-unity, community. Wait a minute. Right, right. To your point that was just raised, if you don't believe as Jesus did that the Kingdom of God is literally breaking into reality right now, if you don't believe that, nothing that follows makes any sense. You are not going to live in some harmony of trusting in the abundance of God. If you are tied to, again, if you're inscribed into this perpetual logic of accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, preserve, hoard, accumulate, accumulate. That is the cultural discipline, full stop. And so we've got to get off the train that you can have that at the same time that you talk about plainness and simplicity. You can't. You either serve mammon or you serve God, full stop. You cannot do both at the same time. There is no light blue generative eco care way to do that. There is not. You will fail. As some of the elders say in different traditions, even if you fail succeeding what God has called you to do, Even if you fail, but you were doing what God called you to do, you have succeeded. If you succeed, but you weren't doing what God called you to do, you have failed. So I think the material part of it really can serve as a confusion. And to Lisa's point, the Friday Food Sharing Ministry, which the San Francisco meeting has carried on since 2014, sharing food, especially in sharing resources and the institutional logic is also reflective of that. culture of transactionalism. Because in an urban context, all food that you get is a transaction of some sort. Everything is a transaction, is a barcode, is scanned. Everything. A bottle of water is a barcode. Everything. And it used to surprise me when people, we would offer people food to Lisa's point. And the first question we would get from many people is, how much does it cost? How much does it cost? What do I have to pay? I don't have to pay anything for this? The logic that everything that you access, healthcare. housing, faith to some degree, because you got to have the money to afford a shower and a place to do everything is inscribed inside of that logic. It is hegemonic. And to some degree, public theology rustles with that because if the kingdom of God is truly breaking into reality, and like Mary says in the Magnificat, this means that the last shall be first, that rulers will be torn down from their thrones. If that's real, that cannot mean to go back to what I said about George Fox and Pennington, that cannot mean you stay inside of that logic and you just make it a little bit nicer. You make it a little less bad. That's not what Jesus was not, Jesus was not lynched on a cross because he was trying to reform things to make it slightly less bad for people. That's not what he was doing. And so I public the analogy, my call is to Lisa's point, wrestling with the boundaries that institutions have set. But to some degree, if I'm being honest about me, disciplines that I have absorbed and accepted as normative that also limit how I can hear spirit, because everything that spirit tells me is first tested, against whether it's from God, but how it coheres with that market logic, everything. And I really have to wrestle with that if I'm being honest about how I think early friends understood the light. My ministry is about me wrestling with my own implication in that cultural discipline. Hmm. um I really appreciate you, Zayden, naming the internal part of it. Because Zayden, when you and I were talking the other night, just to get to know each other before this, we got into a conversation and one of the questions coming out of it was like, what does urban ministry require of us? So much of it for me requires unlearning and relearning how to be with my own power. But I wasn't there to try to have power over them. My goal was how can I create more safety in this moment for you? and I can only create safety for you or increase safety if I actually see you as a person. And any other way of me walking out there in the way I'd been trained with my identity with their identities would have been a power over move, which does not increase safety for anybody. And so how do I show up in a way that is honest, that is true, that sees you as your full possible self and invites space for all of us to move into that space, no matter what's going on. you Ze and Lisa are forces, individually, let alone together. We had to make space for Amens and Hallelujas as they spoke candidly, prophetically, practically, and compassionately about love and power. I'm sitting with two things that came up particularly. The first, I'm thinking about the world my great-great grandchildren will inhabit, the one I want them to be in. The second, is about this radical curiosity that Ze invited us to move into as we look to embody heaven on earth. Early Quakers were very much a model for how today's Quakers can speak truth to power in the face of political injustice, especially here in the US. Lisa and Ze both brought into focus the ways that early Christians can provide a blueprint on how we embody love and openheartedness with Jesus as a model. and whatever your belief system. I have to say that I agree with Zae in suggesting before you take on the big work of facing injustice in the world, please get yourself an elder. Someone who you are accountable to, you can learn from who's tracking you, paying attention to your physical and emotional state, who can be alongside you in the myriad of feelings that are sure to come up as you look to combat injustice in the world. someone who can support you in staying grounded and connected. Eldership is so important in doing this justice work. Just as spending time in the world that your great-great grandchildren will inhabit, really thinking about how you want to contribute to that world, to bringing that world into fruition. As we close, I am thinking about you folks listening to my voice right now, the listener, and the world you're moving through. Isaac Pennington asked whether the power of true religion And true love could restore what's broken and set things right, both within us and around us. That's not just a question for theologians or mystics. It's for anyone trying to live with integrity in a complicated world. John Wolman warned us about the love of ease and the ways it can dull our senses to suffering. And Catherine Payton reminded us that love doesn't avoid truth, it delivers it with care. So here's an imitation. Choose one relationship. One setting, one space in your life where power and love feel out of balance and commit to doing something different this week. This might mean speaking up when you've been quiet, listening more deeply when you've rushed to respond, or returning to a practice. Prayer, community, rest that reconnects you to what matters. Let it be specific, let it be real, and trust that even one act offered in love can ripple outwards. The seed is brought to you by Pendle Hill, where Quaker Center for Spirit-Led Learning, Retreat and Community. Pendle Hill is located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania on the ancestral lands of the Lenni Lenape people. Many of our guests are part of the vibrant teaching and learning community here. We host retreats, workshops and lectures all year long. You can explore what's coming up at pendlehill.org slash learn. This episode was produced and edited by Peterson Toscano. Our theme music comes from The I Rise Project by Reverend Reda Morgan and Bennett Kuhn with thanks to Astronautical Records. Additional music is from epidemicsound.com and you also heard a little music from me. I really want us to stay connected and you can find us on social media at Pendle Hill or send us a note podcast at pendlehill.org. For full transcripts, show notes and past episodes, visit Pendlehill.org slash podcasts. If you're looking for a space to pause and center, I invite you to worship online with me in the Pendlehill community. We gather on Zoom the last Friday of every month at 8.30 a.m. Eastern. Worship lasts about 40 minutes. Details are at Pendlehill.org slash worship. If this conversation moved you, helped you think or feel something new, please consider supporting this work, either with a donation at Pendlehill.org slash donate, or simply by sharing this podcast with a friend. Rating and reviewing us on your podcast app also helps others find their way here. Because these seeds of radical hope grow best when they're shared.