Friendship as Spiritual Practice: Compassion, Justice, and Oneness with Drs. Seth Schoen & Christopher Carter

What if friendship itself could be a spiritual practice? In this deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habīb is joined by Dr. Seth Schoen and Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter—co-creators of Racial Resilience—to explore how compassion, contemplation, and community sustain the work of racial and social justice. Together, they reflect on moral injury and healing, the role of the Compassion Practice, and the unitive experiences that remind us we are all part of one sacred whole. A conversation about courage, connection, and what it means to live the project of being pulled toward Love.

Transcript

Beyond Names: Spirituality for Anyone and Everyone

YouTube Channel: Beyond Names with Dr. Habib Boerger

YouTube handle: @BeyondNamesPodcast

Episode: 18

Host: Dr. Habib Boerger

Conversation Partners: Dr. Seth Schoen & Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter

Title: Friendship as Spiritual Practice: Compassion, Justice, and Oneness with Drs. Seth Schoen & Christopher Carter

Description: 

What if friendship itself could be a spiritual practice? In this deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habīb is joined by Dr. Seth Schoen and Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter—co-creators of Racial Resilience—to explore how compassion, contemplation, and community sustain the work of racial and social justice. Together, they reflect on moral injury and healing, the role of the Compassion Practice, and the unitive experiences that remind us we are all part of one sacred whole. A conversation about courage, connection, and what it means to live the project of being pulled toward Love.

Transcript:

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Welcome to Beyond Names, I'm Dr. Habib. This is a space for spiritual seekers and soulful misfits, for the curious and the committed, for those grounded in a tradition, and for those who are not sure what they believe.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Whether you call the Divine God, Yahweh, Allah, Elohim, Brahman, Great Spirit, Higher Power, or you're still searching for language that fits, you are welcome here.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Together, we'll explore the intersection of spirituality and daily life, the wisdom of many traditions, and the ways we return to our true selves, to our source, to the light that each of us carry within.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm so glad you're here. Let's begin with introduction of our conversation partners for this episode, Dr. Seth Schoen and Reverend Dr. Christopher Carter.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Dr. Seth Schoen is co-director of the Lilly Pathways Grant for Revitalizing Theological Education at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. His research and teaching interests are in contemplative and spiritual practices, especially the cultivation of compassion.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Reverend Dr. Christopher Carter's research, training, and activist interests are in Black, womanist, and environmental ethics, with a particular focus on race, food, and non-human animals.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Currently, he is an associate professor of Theology, Ecology, and Race at Methodist Theological School in Ohio.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: He is the lead pastor of The Loft at Westwood United Methodist Church and the co-creator of Racial Resilience with Dr. Seth Schoen, an anti-racism and anti-oppression training program.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Reverend Dr. Christopher Carter is married to Dr. Gabrielle Carter, a small animal veterinary oncologist.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And while their son Isaiah is not a doctor of any sort, he definitely believes he is smarter than his parents. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Dr. Schoen and Reverend Dr. Carter, as I mentioned, are the co-creators of Racial Resilience. It's a pleasure to have you both here. I will say that to learn more about their work, please visit racialresilience.com.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Dr. Schoen and Reverend Dr. Carter, thank you for being here. Welcome. Would you please start us off by telling a little bit about your spiritual story as a way of introducing yourself? And I understand that, Seth, you'd like to go first.

Seth Schoen: Yeah, so…My spiritual story. Okay, so I grew up Methodist, and my extended family was Methodist, and that was a really warm part of my childhood. But I ran into trouble in late junior high, high school.

Seth Schoen: I play the saxophone, and I wanted to be a musician, and some of my friends at school were starting a band, and asked me if I wanted to join. And so I said, yes, I would like to join, because I want to play music, and this was a way for me to gig in high school. It was super cool.

Seth Schoen: But they were conservative evangelical Christians, and we were in a ska band. They were putting a ska band together. So that… that puts me in a really, really tight window, of my high school years, so, late 90s.

Seth Schoen: And, I had… Fun doing that, and…I was deeply wounded by it, but I didn't understand the deeply wounded part at the time.

Seth Schoen: I just knew that playing the ska band was fun, I wanted to be a musician and play gigs, and then one summer we were the band at their church camp.

Seth Schoen: And, they start with, like, kindergarten age groups, and each week go through a different age up through high school. And the theme for the camp was accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior as soon as possible, because you don't know when you're going to die. Right.

Seth Schoen: And so, that felt wrong to me when we were the band at the end of the week playing for early elementary school kids. I was like, these kids don't understand all of this, or this is… it just didn't feel right. And I didn't have the language to explain it at the time, because I was in high school, and I just wanted to play music. And so, I kind of justified that by saying, like, well, I'm not singing, I'm playing music. So, I'm not fully contributing to what's happening here. And so that was, like, the…cognitive gymnastics I was doing to justify why it was okay.

Seth Schoen: And then, you know, flash forward 20…20, almost 30 years, and I… that's when…I started reading more about trauma in the work that I do with Christopher, and…then began reflecting on, you know, past experiences in my life, and that's when I began to name what happened to me as trauma, where I was around particularly moral injury, because I was perpetuating something that was against my own moral compass.

Seth Schoen: And so, once I was able to put that together, this feeling I had since high school of, like, I hate… I hated that time. It was a terrible time for me. And then I'd push it away, and then it would come back periodically. And until I started reading about trauma, I couldn't put together that this was because of what I was doing there. I was preaching a message that I didn't believe in, and that I thought was wrong, morally and spiritually wrong. Like, I took part in committing moral and spiritual violence against children.

Seth Schoen: And until I could name that for myself, I wasn't able to really begin healing around that.

Seth Schoen: And that was hard, so there was a lot I learned in the interim period, to be able to handle all of the stuff that came up.

Seth Schoen: And so- - I guess back to high school, then I dropped out of college… I started college as a musician, dropped out of college, was… went into AmeriCorps, and had some experiences there that really kind of woke me up to a larger world, woke me up to justice issues, and our first project, we were at an inner-city school in Baltimore, and I was just helping out in the classroom with second graders.

Seth Schoen: And, we were all lining up to go out to recess. This was kind of my wake-up moment. We were all lining up to go out to recess. Kids at this age instantly love you by default, almost. Like, you show them any kind of, like, interest and kindness, and they take right to you, and so, I mean, I'm a nice guy, and so…they were taken right to me, and I was like, whoa, this is super cool, like, I get to be a rock star when I go to work. So, I like that. 

Seth Schoen: But we're lining up to go out to recess, and one of the kids looks up at me. And he's got… he's, like, he's really thinking about something, and he says, Mr. Schoen, Are you white?

Seth Schoen: And he goes, and then another kid comes in before I had a chance to respond. And he says, no, no, no, no, he ain't white. He's light-skinned.

Seth Schoen: And so, and then… and then time to go out to recess, and then we went. I didn't have a time to respond or think about it, and I was like, whoa, what just happened there? I can't make sense of that. Like, obviously, I'm as white as you get. Like, there's no light-skinnedness about me.

Seth Schoen: So once I got into race, I could think, like, put all this together, and talking with Chris about it, came to realize, like, this second grader had a deep awareness about the way race works in this country, far beyond what I had as an adult.

Seth Schoen: Because he understood…that there's something off about white people. They're not always safe to be around. Like the kid that jumped in and was trying to protect me...

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Seth Schoen: ...understood that… Like, there's something about white people that's not safe to be around.

Seth Schoen: And Mr. Schoen, I like him, so he can't be white, because white people aren't safe.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm…

Seth Schoen: And so, light skin is the way he made sense of that. That I'm still, like, no, no, he's still black. He's safe. He's one of us.

Seth Schoen: And it took me a long time to make sense of that experience. It was… for a lot of my life, it was just a funny experience.

Seth Schoen: And then when I got into race, I began to understand more of the depth of what was actually going on there.

Seth Schoen: And… That's become a really foundational story in my… racial awareness, of, of knowing… how race functions, how people are hurt by it, and positioning myself within that.

Seth Schoen: And that sort of laid dormant until I got to graduate school.

Seth Schoen: And I met Chris.

Seth Schoen: We started seminary at the same time, and our second semester, we knew each other before that, but we weren't really friends before that, but we were colleagues, I guess you might say. And then we both sat at the front of the class, New Testament Studies 101, and, we both have ADHD, and so we wanted to, you know, sit at the front, pay attention, filter out distractions.

Seth Schoen: Great idea in principle, but we sat next to each other, and ended up becoming a distraction for each other more than anything else.

Seth Schoen: We did well, we both did well in New Testament studies, but that started a long friendship.

Seth Schoen: And I didn't… again, not understanding at the time what's happening, I was just being me, listening to Chris.

Seth Schoen: And he has a very different explanation that I'm sure he's going to offer here in a minute about his experience of that. But I was just listening, because Chris was talking about race and kind of his experiences with that, and I was like, oh, okay, I need to… to listen here, because he's talking about something serious. 

Seth Schoen: And…just being present, and, and…trying to make sense of that, because it was…so much of it was outside of my own life experience, and another opening to, like, wow, people…in the United States have very different life experiences. I grew up in the Midwest, it was, you know, very white, and the kind of life experiences Chris was sharing were just outside of my own entirely, sometimes. And then there was a lot of overlap and similarity as well.

Seth Schoen: And… I got into spirituality proper, as an area of study, and as a really deep interest in becoming more committed to it, more critical about it, when I switched majors in graduate school. So I started as… out in New Testament studies because I really enjoy history and… and learning how people think, and so this was an opportunity to begin to learn how ancient people thought as best as you can get at that.

Seth Schoen: And I thought that was the way to deepen my sense of who I am as a Christian.

Seth Schoen: And I found out pretty quickly, It wasn't.

Seth Schoen: But it took me 2 years to admit that to myself, and so I went through most of a master's degree hating graduate school, and thinking, like, this is how it's supposed to be. 

Seth Schoen: And…then it was my last… last semester there. I had one elective left.

Seth Schoen: And I was like, you know what? However I'm picking classes is not working. Like, I pick a class I think I would like, and then I get in it, and I'm like, I hate it, I don't like it, this is not for me, I'm not interested in it. And so I said, okay, so what I think I like is not working, so I'm going to look through the class roster and pick a class I would never choose to take.

Seth Schoen: So, what class would I never choose to take? Okay, Spiritual Formation for the Contemplative Way, yeah, that's a class that I would hate. So, I'm going to take that class.

Seth Schoen: And then Chris was looking for an easy A, and so he decided to take it with me. And so we took that class together.

Seth Schoen: And each class began with a meditation, and then it went into lecture, and it was joint taught by the professors that would end up being my main mentors and on my dissertation committee. 

Seth Schoen: But…At the time, the meditation, okay, that was pretty cool. Second class, we get there, have a meditation, and then I'm like, oh man, I just… I feel a little bit better.

Seth Schoen: And so at the time, I was dating my now-wife, and we were kind of at the bottom… we were bottoming out, because I was a good graduate student. So that means I understood how to construct an argument, I understood how to break down an argument, I didn't understand how to turn those things off.

Seth Schoen: And so, when we would talk, she would tell me about her day, and I would say, well, you know, I'd start picking it apart, and telling her where she went wrong, and building intimacy through really, you know, kind of attacking her. So, we were in a rough spot.

Seth Schoen: So then after this second class, I call her and say, you know, I don't know what it is about this class, but I feel like…I don't know, I feel a little lighter, I don't know what it is. And she said, yeah, I know what you mean. I feel like I have you back again.

Seth Schoen: And for me, that was, like, Paul and Damascus, on the road to Damascus, scales falling from his face, like, new life in me. I really felt like, okay, I don't know what this is, I don't know where it's going, but I need to pursue it.

Seth Schoen: Because after 2 meditations, my… my girl, my fiancé, is…feeling different about our relationship. Like, I honestly don't know that we would have survived graduate school if I had not taken that class. I think our relationship may have fallen apart.

Seth Schoen: We were pretty close, and so… Yeah. To me, spirituality is life.

Seth Schoen: That's what spirituality brings. I think it's a fundamental part of what it means to be human.

Seth Schoen: I think it goes beyond what it means to be human. I think there are animals that demonstrate some of the same capacities as humans for spirituality. But I haven't pursued that in depth.

Seth Schoen: So, I can't go deeply there. I think Christopher could do a better job than I can.

Seth Schoen: And spirituality brought my life back to me.

Seth Schoen: And it's helped me to flourish. And every time… I am in touch with…those parts of myself that I feel most connected to my sense of spirituality, to how I understand God, is when I make the best decisions in my life.

Seth Schoen: Not the easiest. They're not always easy decisions, but they're the best decisions. That's when I'm living into myself most fully.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Christopher Carter (he/him): No, I think Seth's story, as he said, our stories overlap in so many ways.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And, you know, I'll pull back the curtain for the production meeting. I wanted Seth to go first, because I knew his story would be a little bit longer than mine, but also just more funny and interesting, because there's all these ups and downs.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And, you know, I grew up, like, in a… I grew up in a black church that was, eventually ended up being in a Black Methodist church, and it was a traditional black church. Like, I had great church experience. Like, I loved going to church. Like, great music, good preaching, you know? Like, I didn't have any kind of… we had, we had, I went to church that was…about as inclusive of LGBTQ people as you could be. Like, basically, it was like, don't ask, don't tell. Like, no one just… we knew, but no one just talked, didn't… but it's the 90s, you know, so I was like, that's pretty progressive for the Midwest.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And, you know, I didn't… I didn't have any kind of real negative experiences with church per se. You know, it wasn't great, obviously, you know, patriarchy and all that other kind of stuff, but broadly speaking, I loved church. I thought I caught a ministry.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it really was about this commitment to understanding.

Christopher Carter (he/him): I really love what Thurman would call the religion of Jesus.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it always confused me why people could be in church on Sunday and read and say these things and then get out in the week and do something totally different.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Like, I just didn't understand that. It didn't connect with me. I always wondered why people do what they do, and I felt this call to be among the people to help translate, to help people…to translate, like, the sacred text and this way of Jesus to others in a way that could move us towards love and justice, and now what I would say is compassion.

Christopher Carter (he/him): So when I go to seminary, you know, I'm very committed to being in some kind of ministry. I wasn't sure if it would be church ministry or not. I have not the best, internship at a pretty big church. It was predominantly white and Filipino. I was the only black person there, and that was done intentionally, because I wanted to be in a multiracial context. That didn't end well. It ended fine, it wasn't, like, terrible, but, I have a very charismatic personality, and so that caused some challenges between me and the senior pastor.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Ultimately, it led me to become the senior pastor of a church that Seth actually attended in Compton, California.

Christopher Carter (he/him): I was 29 years old.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I become the senior pastor of this church where, you know, the average age is probably 55. Lots of people, and there are, like, between, I would say, 50 to 90, you know, black people, and Tongan, Asian Pacific Islander.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And at this point, I'm in a PhD program, I'm sure I'm going to teach religion, but I'm not sure I'm going to work in a church anymore, because I honestly have fallen out of love with church. I still love God. I loved God. But I was not in love with church, and…

Christopher Carter (he/him): And for me, being in Compton helped me fall back in love with church. It helped me realize the vitalization of what true spirituality is, and how these things aren't disconnected. And… I was fortunate enough to be able to bring Seth there, and I know this was a part of his healing experience, because honestly, Seth, this was when we first started… that's when I first started learning about your ska band experience.

Seth Schoen: Umm hmm.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And Seth played saxophone at our church in Compton, right? So you got this black church with Seth, as again, white, not light-skinned, actually white, right?

Christopher Carter (he/him): It's like him and his wife. And so there's, like, two, three, four white people start coming in, you know, and my wife is white, and you start… and it was over the course of two years you start seeing this church take shape and grow. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And some of that is because, like, they…when I started there, I remember Dr. Jones, one of the members there, told me, he said, I have shoes older than you. And… and he wasn't lying, like, he had shoes older than me. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): But…They needed someone who was, like, invested in them, who would love them, and I needed someone to actually love me.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I didn't know that we needed each other. Like, I had… I had no… it was… and they… and they told… like, I had been there for a year, and someone basically articulated that, like, like, you came to Compton at a time when we needed… when we needed you, but you also needed us. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it was that…nourishment. It was like being in a community of grandparents that genuinely love you, and that got on fire for service, and love, and nurturing. And they nurtured me, they nurtured Seth, they nurtured our wives, and…it started to transform our community. Like, it was amazing. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I would say my spirit… spiritual life, like, I don't know that I'll ever be in a place where I feel as connected to community and to God in community than I had when I was a pastor at this small black church in the hood in Compton, California. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it's, it's, it was profoundly, has shaped what I think ministry ought to be. Like, I know when it feels right to be in a space where your theology and your spirituality and your practice are in alignment. And so, I know what that feels like, so it's, like, constantly seeking it. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And… and I think…the way we were able to create a burgeoning interracial, justice-oriented…you know, church of older black people with, you know, with some white folks around there, that's… that was a testament to the way the Sacred works within and through us. And so, that's… that's informed so much of the work that Seth and I do.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Wonderful. I can't help but notice the connections between our stories, in that I still teach, as a guest in that contemplative practices class that is offered that Seth brought up, that.... Yeah, Dr. Frank Rogers always asks me to, to, to guest once a semester in that class to lead a contemplative practice.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I can't help but think, because we all went to Claremont School of Theology, you know, my experience, not to get into my whole story, but just to point out, sort of, how the divine works in mysterious ways and wonderful ways, was I had been suffering, or expe… I had some chronic health challenges that were really… it was a real low point in my life, as far as health-wise. I had multiple doctors saying, you know, basically, buddy, you're on the way out, so… 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so that had been very motivational for me spiritually, so I did things that I had not done, like I did a 40-day retreat. I went on the pilgrimage, and… and was…basically, after doing these things that I had…had previously sort of stopped myself from doing… I went ahead and did them, because it was kind of like, okay, if I'm going out, I'm going to go out with a bang, right? You know? I want to be as ready as I can be, spiritually. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so then at the end, I was like, well, I'm still here. You know…I'm still twitching, you know? 

Christopher Carter (he/him): Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, what's next? And so, in my tradition, there's a specific process that you do when you're asking for guidance about, like, big life questions. What's next? It's called istakhara. And you do a… you say a particular prayer, you do a, you know, a couple rounds of the…the traditional Islamic prayer, two rakats they are called, you know. So, anyway, you do this process.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so I did that right before going to bed, and I went to bed, had a dream, and in the dream, it could not have been more specific. I went to school, I got a PhD, even the topic of the dissertation was in the dream.

Seth Schoen: Hmm…

Christopher Carter (he/him): Wow, man, I could use some clarity like that. When I was in mine, it'd just be like, hey, right on this, that saved me some stress.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so then, you know, like, trying to figure out where to go, and then I… and I came across Bayan Islamic Graduate School.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so I went there, and the president of Bayan, Jihad Turk, met me and, like, reserved his afternoon to take me around campus, and so while he's taking me around campus, and introducing me, and showing me, like, pamphlets for the different programs or whatever, I look down, and I see a description of Andrew Dreitcer and his research interests. And I'm like… That's the topic of my dissertation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I forgot to say that when I met Jihad, and we were talking, he related that he had met the sheikh that I came to Sufism through when he was 18 years old.

Seth Schoen: Wow. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And he remembered meeting the sheikh at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and this sheikh giving him a blessing.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I was like, okay, I guess this is what I'm supposed to be. Right. There wasn't a lot of questions, there's not a lot that's up for debate at that point. It's like, okay, yeah, here I am. So anyway, that's how I came to be at Claremont School of Theology, taking the class that you're talking about...

Seth Schoen: That's funny.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...as part of your story.

Christopher Carter (he/him): There should be some kind of anthropological, like, paper on it, like, because that class, I mean, saved my marriage, like, later, but much, much later. But, like, learning the practices and whatnot, that saved my marriage. It saved Seth's marriage, I mean, I don't know what, maybe, but it brought you there for whatever reason, so, you know, I think it speaks to the power of…those kinds of courses that really allow us to do an integrative process, right? Of really to bring our whole selves, our academic selves, and our spiritual selves to a space, because there aren't a lot of those spaces in graduate school, you know, where you really can, like, like, I mean, I'm serious with the academic stuff, like, you're reading, you know, literature that is challenging, but you're also integrating it into your practice, and that is, like…That's…Powerful.

Christopher Carter (he/him): That's so powerful in terms of allowing us to connect with our deepest sense, or I guess, as Thurman would say, the sound of the genuine within us.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, yeah. So I'm especially interested in what that looks like for…y'all, I'm going to say y'all. I grew up in Texas, so… 

Seth Schoen: That's fine. Go right ahead.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Despite my German-Jewish last name, and my Arab Muslim first name. I'm going to say y'all, because I grew up in Magnolia, Texas, so…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Okay, so I'm especially interested in how that looks for you today, in this integration of spirituality, this integration of contemplation, with social justice, with racial justice, with just… every, environmental justice, like, how does that… what does that look like for you in your… you've had several years, so you've had some practice, you've had some movement since these moments of awakening that you… that you talked about. So, who wants to take that?

Christopher Carter (he/him): I mean, I'll go first, and I think for me, it's how it's… it's…it's sustainability. For me, it is the only way I could continue to pursue the work that I feel that I'm called to do is through this integrative process. I think by, you know, as Seth mentioned, you know, we both have ADHD. I think we both are intersectional thinkers. That's just how we kind of make sense of the world. We like to tie multiple ideas together. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And to do that requires a lot of energy, mental energy, and I think…it can easily burn people out. I mean, it's easy to get burnt out doing racial justice work, especially because, for the most part, you're asking people to do something they don't want to do, if you're talking to white people, right? I mean, to be honest with you, like, most white folks, you know, whiteness gives you the option to…to not see what is there. To deny the reality because it doesn't fit your own experience. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And…what we are inviting you to do is to actually view the world as it is, and that is… and that disrupts. It's disruptive. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it's exhausting. It's exhausting work in some ways. And for people of color, we're inviting them to go on a… to heal.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it's a healing that we all want and long for, but it's a healing that comes with, perhaps, this perceived sense of reticence, because you're like, well, if I do this and I let my guard down, what's going to happen to me, right? Are they going to take advantage of me?

Christopher Carter (he/him): And…the way that Seth and I, for me, have been able to do our work of racial justice, and the work I do in the church right… I'm at right now, it has to be, first of all, to be grounded in the truth of who I am, so doing what we, you know, the Compassion Practice that we learned from Frank [Dr. Frank Rogers, Jr.] and Andy [Dr. Andrew Dreitcer], to tend to ourselves, so that I can be compassionate towards these other folks and whatever forms of resistance that they have, so I can invite them towards…Love.

Christopher Carter (he/him): You know? And…I think that because that invitation is genuine, because I genuinely do love them, I think it allows people to be a little bit more receptive to do something that they otherwise may not do.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I think, personally, it reminds me of the importance of taking as best as I can, taking care of myself. And that's hard. I mean, I'm not going to sit here on your podcast and pretend like I'm super great at self-care. That's not the case.

Christopher Carter (he/him): But I would be much worse without the practice, you know what I'm saying? I got to tell you that right now. Like, I'd be… I'd be much worse. And I think that, for me, spirituality and spiritual practices is kind of like the universal language that people can, that we speak, because there is something in all of us that think longs for that kind of connection to something that we know to be real and true.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And if you can tap… Get people to tap into that, and to name it.

Christopher Carter (he/him): But I think people are excited by it. And I think this is a current… in our current social and political moment, people want to believe that there is a way for us to overcome the divisiveness that we're experiencing. And so I think that we're… that's where…I see the Spirit most at work right now.

Seth Schoen: Yeah, I think, for me, what keeps, some strange things are what keep me going, I'm realizing right now. So, growing up in the Midwest, hard work is not something to run from, right? And then, once you start a job, you finish the job.

Seth Schoen: And so… those things are kind of… were foundational to me in a lot of ways.

Seth Schoen: And then I got into… so my, you know, the work now is anti-racism, okay? Well, so…that's hard work, but I… so we don't turn away from that, because, you know, we do hard work. And then, I need to finish a job. And then, you know, well, this job never really ends, right? Transforming a racist society is a lifelong effort. Okay, so I need a different set of tools to help me through this, because this isn't…the job… this is the job I'm going to be doing for life.

Seth Schoen: And so I needed to run a marathon and not a sprint, and that's when we realized the Compassion Practice was really important, in helping us sustain…this work, because I definitely hit a point where I was ready to burn out and walk away.

Seth Schoen: And then it became a situation of, okay, well, I could burn out and walk away, but then I know what I'm leaving, I know what I'm walking back into.

Seth Schoen: And… and choosing to willfully turn towards ignorance was not an acceptable decision for me. I couldn't… I couldn't do that. I couldn't turn my back on Chris and my church family in Compton, and so that's not an option. But then, you know, to keep going, I didn't know how to go forward and keep doing things the way I was doing them.

Seth Schoen: Because I was going to burn out.

Seth Schoen: And so compassion became the way to do this that I'm… I'm not…called… so a lot of white people getting into this think that, like, our role, if we go into this, is to be the punching bag, and to always be made fun of, and that kind of thing, and that's… I was like, that's not going to work for me. Like, this is… this can't possibly be what is expected of me in this work.

Seth Schoen: And, you know, it's not, spoiler. So what I needed was compassion, and I needed Chris, and so our friendships and talking, and being committed to each other, as soulmates in a lot of ways, is what has fueled me to keep going when times get rough. I call Chris.

Seth Schoen: Not just about race stuff, but about life in general. So, relationships are key to me around this.

Seth Schoen: And really prioritizing those relationships, even in the midst of differences when they come up.

Seth Schoen: Like, I'm committed to this relationship.

Seth Schoen: Even if we hit a rough patch, even if there's something difficult that comes along. The most important thing is that our relationship survives, and that we both thrive and flourish.

Seth Schoen: And so, with close relationships, I think that's important.

Seth Schoen: I think…That is a big part of the foundation for how we practice anti-racism and how we teach it.

Seth Schoen: Yep, I'll stop there. That's good enough.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So just to re… to recap, I hear the importance of nurturing through relationship, not only for you two as friends, but, Christopher, you specifically mentioned your church community in Compton, and how much you experience nurturing, and for you, and your wife, and just, you know, the whole community there. So, that's a key part, and then I also hear another key part being the Compassion Practice. Is that…? Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, would either of you like to tell us a little bit more? Because the three of us know what you mean by the Compassion Practice, but I'm sure there's a lot of listeners who do not.

Seth Schoen: Yeah.

Seth Schoen: So, yeah, the Compassion Practice was, developed by Frank Rogers, Andy Dreitcer, and, Mark Yaconelli, who's… he's kind of the silent partner. I've actually never met him, I've only heard great things about him, and from what I've heard, I'm sad that I haven't met him. So…

Seth Schoen: But Andy and Frank were on my dissertation committee, and…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Mine too.

Seth Schoen: So, right. So, the Compassion Practice is… comes out of, Frank's own life experience and the trauma he encountered and whatnot, and I think one of the really cool stories is when Andy saw what Frank was doing, and that was sort of one of the early genesis… genesis of the Compassion Practice is he said, Frank, what are you doing? We need to…like, walk through this. Walk me through what you're doing. And so Andy then used his experience and everything that he knows to try and, like, systematize it, basically.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Right. 

Seth Schoen: And to understand it, and to put it into a form that other people could use, because Frank was doing it all kind of intuitively for himself at that time.

Seth Schoen: And… So I think that's a really cool part of it. So the Compassion Practice is basically, a way to cultivate compassion for yourself that…involves… it's deceptively complex, I think is the best way to put it, because compassion begins with self-compassion, and then we move out to others, and then out to the world more broadly. And the steps for cultivating compassion are actually the same for yourself as it is for others.

Seth Schoen: And we begin by cultivating compassion for ourselves, because basically, our vision is clouded if we're feeling reactive towards people. We can't see them clearly, and we've all had experiences like this. We like to explain it in terms of hulking out, so, like, you know, the Incredible Hulk.

Seth Schoen: So, when Banner is, you know, himself, he's…a scientist, and then he gets reactive, and he turns into this giant green monster. And so, that is, I think, a really great way to talk about, kind of, reactivity, which is…I think one of the things that the Compassion Practice deals with really well, in its early stages and grounding, is how we can be taken over by emotions, passions, however you want to name them, reactivities, the things that take us out of ourself, where we feel like we do things that aren't who we are.

Seth Schoen: And then we come back to ourselves, and we say, why did I do that? That's not me. That's not who I am.

Seth Schoen: And so…that's the grounding aspect of compassion, and then the self-compassion is beginning to understand the multiplicity that lives within us.

Seth Schoen: And that is really, I think, one of the… in the context of race, that multiplicity is vital. It's absolutely essential to understand that we are not a monolithic entity, we are a multiplicity.

Seth Schoen: So parts of ourselves drive us to do things that we don't want to do.

Seth Schoen: They are not the totality of who we are, right? We have that self at our core. I'm not explaining this very well, I'm explaining it to people that know it. I'm sorry.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes, I hear IFS language.

Seth Schoen: Right, right. And that's really important around this, is to know that, so, so...

Seth Schoen: Sorry, I slipped into teaching and not explaining the basics.

Seth Schoen: But… The reason that's important in the context of race, for me, as a white person, in a monolithic view, I'm either racist or I'm not racist. There's no room for any other way for me to be. Within a multiplicity view, there are parts of me that are racist or act out racistly, but that's not the totality of who I am.

Seth Schoen: And so that gives me space to begin to see myself as more than racist, as more than just perpetuating whiteness, and to see those parts of myself, and to understand what they're yearning for.

Seth Schoen: Because that's the second part that's important, is that at the core of all these different parts of ourselves, within this multiplicity, they're all trying to help us in some way.

Seth Schoen: They may not… know how to do it well, or cause us to act out in ways that look like anything but help, but they're all doing the best they can to try and help us in the best way they know how to do.

Seth Schoen: And so taking time to understand that really transforms our relationship to ourselves.

Seth Schoen: And, in the context of anti-racism helps us see people as more than racist or not racist.

Christopher Carter (he/him): No, I think that, I mean, the only thing I would add to that, with respect to the Compassion Practices, where I think it's critical for the work that we do, is that it… if it… moves you to… not dehumanize...

Seth Schoen: Yeah.

Christopher Carter (he/him): ...the other. And I think that's so critical. I think it's easy to slip into a language and logics of dehumanization without even knowing it, right? The way our systems are set up with these false binaries with respect to racial hierarchy, or I would say the human-animal binary, like, all these different kinds of…ways of viewing each other that are ultimately, I would argue, products of capitalism that are designed to make us see ourselves as commodities. And what the Compassion Practice does, it opens you up to see the other person for the totality of who they are, right? By recognizing their wounds are just the same as your wounds, right? It creates some distance, gives you some distance from their reactivity, so that you can see them as a human being, rather than the… or I guess as what, you know, Seth and I would always use the… one of the sayings of Jesus, you know, to look… tend to the log in your own eye, not the speck in their eye, right? Like, to do some inner work first before you start being reactive. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it's not to say that other person hasn't done something or said something racist or acted racistly, but it's to recognize that's not the totality of who they are, to see them through a compassionate lens and to invite them to their better selves, I think that is so critical, right? Because we live in a… I mean, that's not the language you hear right now within our political system. It's not the language you hear right now in our… 

Christopher Carter (he/him): I mean…I am in the midst, in Los Angeles, of a precipitous rise of violence towards immigrants, right? And that's not the language you… that's not the language that I hear, and I see with the… some of the members of my community who work in the law enforcement. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And they are going through what Seth described earlier, a kind of moral injury, because it is…being rewarded, what is… Dehumanization is being rewarded right now in ways that it hasn't been.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it's causing people who I… it's causing harm. It's really causing harm. And so this is where… this is how we resist, right? Like, this is how you dis… this is how you dismantle these…

Christopher Carter (he/him): I'm just going to be honest, how you dismantle these fascist systems is we… when you are in solidarity with each other, and you don't see…the other as an enemy. Rather, you see them as a real human being. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): I don't know if any of you, maybe some of your listeners are familiar with, like, the police force in Milan. They were, rather than standing up and resisting a protest that had arisen, or that's been rising against the, the government there, and some economic injustice happening there, the police marched with the protesters, in solidarity with them. There was no conflict. They're like, no, I see you, I agree with you, I'm here to make sure that there's no violence, but I don't need to carry a baton or the shield or anything, I'll just march right with you. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): That is power! Right? And that's the… that's what I mean when I'm talking about the compassion and spiritual connectedness, is we're able to see our common…you're able to break through the veil that makes us believe that we are different from each other. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I think that is…that's what, like, I mean, I have all these books, for those of you watching on YouTube, and, like, Howard Thurman, for me, is like, you know, it's my… like, he is the guiding sage of showing people the importance of hearing each other's sign of the genuine, so that we can work through racial and religious difference to, to resist empire. Like, I'm teaching a class on Thurman right now, and I'm telling you, what he was writing in 1920s and 30s, you read it, and you think he's talking about 2024 America.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Because he was writing against the rise of fascism, right? He's writing during the beginning of World War II, and it's the same thing.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it's, like, we're reading using [Howard Thurman’s] Jesus and the Disinherited in my church right now, because of it, because it's just as relevant now as it was when he wrote it in the 1940s. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And… and so, yeah, I'm sorry, I know I get…preachy, but I… but for me, I just… I know when it… when… I've seen it come alive. Like, I've seen it come alive in these movements, and so I know it's how we can win, and we're in a moment where I pray… I pray we win. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): We can't let…We can't let those who believe themselves to be like God win.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Because that's fundamentally what I think they believe themselves to be like.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Seth Schoen: So I think, Chris, what's interesting about what you're saying is, I think, I'm thinking of all the mystics across traditions that I've encountered are…the antidote to this moment. Their wisdom is the resistance we need to enact, is that unitive of experience, as Gerald May might put it, that we have with however we understand the Divine, is also what helps us see other people as not distinct and separate from us.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Seth Schoen: And… and that knowledge, that wisdom, is the resistance to this moment.

Seth Schoen: Learning that. Like, it's not… it's not a head thing. Like, getting that intellectually is not difficult, right? That's pretty easy to get.

Seth Schoen: Understanding it takes practice. Takes effort. Right?

Christopher Carter (he/him): Now, I always tell, you know, the people in my church community, we have this sign up at my church that says, we must learn to love our enemies, or we can become what we hate.

Christopher Carter (he/him): You know? Like, that's it. You have to learn to love them, or you can be… or you become… you begin to perpetuate the violence that you believe you're trying to dismantle. And we know, and we believe in the myth of redemptive violence. Like, violence is not redemptive. Violence just begets more violence. The only way through this is… is peace.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And for us, you know, compassion is basically how we would define peace.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, I hear… thank you, Seth, for…espousing the value of that unitive love, and that unitive vision of… whether you call it…like, in Buddhism, I think the term would be interbeing, you know, in other paths, it's interconnectedness. In Sufism, it's the unity. It's that we're all from -- the idea is that we're all from one soul, that we're all brothers and sisters in humanity, and that we really aren't separate. We're really actually all parts of one being.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, thank you for giving voice to that. That's one of the reasons that I love the mysticism of all the different paths, because it's… it really just brings it down into the Oneness.

Seth Schoen: Yeah.

Christopher Carter (he/him): That's actually what Thurman calls it, I was going to say, Thurman calls it Oneness. Thurman's like… he's like the Oneness, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Seth Schoen: So Habīb, I have a question. This is something Chris and I have talked a little bit about.

Seth Schoen: In our experience, I think this is true for a lot of people that are doing this, you get glimpses of that. Right?

Seth Schoen: You have… you have glimpses or shorter experiences of that Oneness.

Seth Schoen: And it's not a resting place in which you dwell day-to-day.

Seth Schoen: Is that true for you? Do you think it is a place you can… you can live out of daily?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Okay, that is a big question, Seth.

Seth Schoen: It really is.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm not really sure.... Okay. I'm going to try and answer it truthfully, and not take up 30 minutes to do so.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: In Sufism, there is this idea of spiritual stations.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So the Quran talks about these… the different stations of the self, and the self being the whole being, so mind, body, heart, soul...

Seth Schoen: Okay, interesting.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...intellect, the whole, And… So, you start out with the part… the self that is easily swayed, it doesn't have a lot of self-control, and it basically just goes with whatever impulse there is.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And then there's, you know, one step above that is, like, where there's guilt. You know, like, you start to have… you might have done something, but you're like, oh, I feel bad, I shouldn't have done that. You know, so there's this progression from, like, the lowest station to the highest station. And then there's also this belief in the....

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, I just… the material world, but then the first unseen world, being, you know, the worlds of the angels, and then there's this progression into the world of Oneness.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, the world of… so there's this progression from the material world that we're in through into divine actions and divine attributes to Oneness. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, the idea is that there are some people who do have that spiritual progression and spiritual station to live in the station, the spiritual station of the unity.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And that that's very rare. You know, we're talking, like, one or two people per, like, millions, you know, or maybe even....

Dr. Habīb Boerger: it's… I'll just say...

Christopher Carter (he/him): It’s rare.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Most of us, most of us tend to be in those first couple spiritual stations. Very few of us get to the point that's to that point of actually living in the station of unity.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: But… We are often…depending on the individual and their spiritual path or whatever, I would say that many people do have tastes of it, which is, I think, what you were referring to, where we have these moments. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I remember, most bizarrely, there was one time where I was in the gym, of all places. And I was on my way to the water fountain, and I just sort of stopped, because I had this moment of seeing every human being in the gym around me as light.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And light connecting from solar plexus to solar plexus to solar plex.

Seth Schoen: Ahhh, yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So it was just this web of light. There was no individuation, there was just this light that's connected to this light, that's connected to this light, that's connected to this light. I mean, it was just, like, the whole universe of life was this web of light, you know? So for me, that was a moment that I had a taste of unity...

Seth Schoen: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: ...on my way to the water fountain in the gym, you know? And then as soon as I remembered, okay, I just stopped in the middle of the gym, you know, like, with no awareness of what's happening around me, and as soon as, like, my mind went like, you're standing still, then bam, it was gone, right? Gone. But whether it's that kind of experience, where you see something, or whether it's experience… another experience that I've had was, I can't even talk about it, but was going to the mosque in Hebron, and being at the tomb of Abraham, peace be upon him.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And… Yeah.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Yeah.

Seth Schoen: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: But it was just, like… There is nothing but love.

Seth Schoen: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: A unitive love.

Seth Schoen: Hmm.

Christopher Carter (he/him): No, and when you feel that, like, it… it…it's almost hard to describe, and that's why I love when, you know, as both you and Seth are talking about, you see this divine web of connectedness, or this taste, or this glimpse, because…I think it, for me, it's like those things where you're like, oh no, this is…real. Like, this is, like, the really real, you know? 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And, and…I know for me, you know, it was my ordination, was that, I mean, it's happened multiple times, but my ordination…It was one of the moments where… It was…not… I wasn't expecting it to be significant, it felt very much like something I had to just get done. I was like, I got to go do this, blah blah blah blah. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And then…that day…I stood up on stage, and they called our names, and like, this is the class of such and such. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I look out, and I see…the pastor of my childhood church, the one who first named and noticed my call and encouraged me to go into ministry, who has since died many years ago of pancreatic cancer.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I look out, and I…see him.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I… and I see him, and I… freeze. I'm just like…

Christopher Carter (he/him): And they called my name, and I step forward, and I just stand there.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I just start crying. And I just can't stop crying, and it's like, just kind of little tears, little tears.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And then we have to go sit down, and then they call us back to come back on stage where they pray over us.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And… I cannot describe…what it felt like to have the laying on hands, and feeling like…he was there.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And my wife was there, and the bishop was there, and you're just like, it's profound. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And then afterwards, after having that experience and feeling that kind of connectedness, and one of the, people who was on the executive committee for our ordination, she works for the bishop in our conference. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): She found me, and she was like, you know, she was like, I just want to tell you, like, I go through this, she's like, I do this every year, I've done this for 10 years, and she was like, there was something different when we were praying for you. She's like, I… she's like, I don't know what it was. She's like, but I know something was different. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): And it was… You know, because sometimes, at least for me, that was happening, and I was just like… not… it wasn't… I knew it was real, but I was having this, like, awareness, awareness, I was like, I'm experiencing this thing, this seems… this seems beyond me, and then I have someone affirm it. It's like, no, that is… what I know to… what I know I experienced was actually what I experienced.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Yeah, it was…I think it's those glimpses, ... those tastes, those moments where you're just like, if we can just… this is what gives us… continues to sustain us, to give us energy to do what we do, and to move people towards a greater sense of connectedness. Because, like, if people can just get those glimpses, right? Just more and more, just those little tastes... 

Seth Schoen: Yeah. 

Christopher Carter (he/him): ...Like, that'll solve so… I mean, it'll… it'll help us in so many ways.

Seth Schoen: And that's… that's where I was going with this, is that…there are these big moments, like, you know, you weren't expecting it, but ordination is a big time. Yeah. Like, being at the tomb of Abraham is a big time, right? Those are…spaces where…you could see things like that happening, right? They become more possible because it's sort of extraordinary. But I think these kind of unit of experiences, like you had at the gym...

Christopher Carter (he/him): Yep. 

Seth Schoen: ...the practice there is being open to when they occur.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Yep.

Seth Schoen: Because you could very easily just ignore it, and would go on with your life.

Seth Schoen: But I think being open to when you're experiencing those moments when they happen, I think, is…the practice right now.

Seth Schoen: It's something I'm trying to do more of, but I think… I think it's needed also right now, because of the moment we're in.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And to… I think, if I'm accurately understanding your point is that part of working in the field of anti-racism is to carry those unitive moments in your heart, so that when you're in the face of another human being, you don't automatically engage in this othering that is happening in the world. That instead, you engage in compassion for yourself, and then you engage in compassion for the other person first by seeing them as a whole human being with a multiplicity of realities, not just the behavior that you might find offensive, or the behavior that you might disagree with. Yeah.

Seth Schoen: Right. Yeah. And that's where the… the way that's…In the Compassion Practice, the way that… that is…put together, or the way it's said, is… is that, were we exposed to their life experiences, we'd be making the same decisions and doing… and doing the same things. And that… that, for me, is what's really helpful.

Seth Schoen: It's sort of a pithy way of getting at it.

Seth Schoen: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, thank you both so much for taking the time to be part of this conversation. Any parting words? Any final words of wisdom? Any takeaways you want to offer?

Seth Schoen: I've just… I've enjoyed this conversation. I really enjoy getting to talk about, these kind of unit… unitive experiences, and… and the kind of the deeper…processes of spiritual formation and the things that go on.

Seth Schoen: So, thank you so much for this opportunity.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you.

Christopher Carter (he/him): Yeah, no, Habib, I think my parting word is just to encourage people to, you know, as best as you can, you know, do… find community. You know, find yourself in places where you can continue to remain connected to people who are different from you but who also remind you of, you know, help you remember that they are, too, a part of the sacred.

Christopher Carter (he/him): And I think that is how we can, you know, continue this… this…project of being pulled towards love. And… and that's, I think, more than anything, is what Seth and I have learned, is the power and importance of relationship and community.

Christopher Carter (he/him): It's like, friendship as spiritual practice, I'll just say that. Friendship as spiritual practice.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Friendship as spiritual practice. Alright, beautiful.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you for joining us on Beyond Names. Before we go briefly, if you would please take one breath and pause for a moment and reflect on what stays with you from this conversation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: That phrase of the project of being pulled toward love sticks with me, and I think that's a great question for us to go forward with, is, you know, on a daily basis, or even on an hourly basis, how can I help, what's my part, in the project of being pulled toward Love, so… thank you for that.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: May something you heard today help you reconnect with the light in your own heart. May you grow in compassion, clarity, and courage. May you find your way home again and again, back home to yourself, back home to the divine, however you name it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: If today's conversation spoke to you, please like, share, and comment on this episode, and please follow Beyond Names. To make an appointment with me, please visit https://www.habibboerger.com/. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Until next time, may you be light, may you consciously participate in growing your light and in the project of love, and may you share your light.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Peace be with you.