Speak out or work it out: What’s yours to do right now?
- Jun 5
- 61 min read
Updated: Jun 5
With political tensions at a new peak, the pressure to take a stand — or keep the peace — can be intense. But how do you know the difference between the move that feels right and the one that is right?
In our first episode after a long break, Mónica, a liberal, talks with her conservative friend and fellow bridge builder April Lawson about what it takes to know what’s truly yours to do at this moment. Drawing on ideas from people who’ve seen the best and worst of humanity, along with their own struggles to navigate what feels like an increasingly scary world, Moni and April explore how to step out of the heat long enough to ask:
• How do I avoid using “peacemaking” as a cover for a lack of courage?
• What’s the line between humanizing someone … and enabling them?
• When it comes to division in my community, my family, and my country: What will I wish I had done when my grandchildren ask what I did?
Credits
Host & Executive Producer: Mónica Guzmán
Senior Producer: Tracy Egbas
Producer: Jessica Jones
Associate Producer & Graphic Designer: Fredo Viola
Contributors: April Lawson & Travis Tripodi
Artist in Residence: Gangstagrass
A production of Reclaim Curiosity
Distribution Partners: KUOW, Braver Angels, and Deseret News
Financial Supporter: M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust
Key Topics & Quotes
1. The question that won’t leave us alone
Mónica and April open by naming the question they keep hearing from listeners, students, professors, and church members across every political stripe: how do I know that what I’m doing right now is the right thing? April admits she has been “a little bit tortured” by the question the whole time she’s worked in this field — and they agree that discomfort with the question may itself be part of the answer.
April: “I have been a little bit tortured by this question the whole time. Like, the whole time I’ve worked in this field… I have never been comfortable with that question, at peace with my answer to that question.”
Mónica: “I’m realizing as you said that never being comfortable with that question might be part of the answer to that question — that you should keep asking it.”
2. Peacemaking and the wait-and-see trap
They bring two anchor texts to the question. Mónica reads the fifth of the Buddhist Five Remembrances — “my actions are the ground on which I stand” — to zoom the conversation in on what each of them is actually doing. April pairs it with the passage from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail on the white moderate, and confesses she is haunted by the suspicion that she, a peacemaker by disposition, would have been a “wait-and-see” person during slavery or Nazi Germany. Together they name the trap: peacemaking can become cover for a lack of courage.
Mónica: “I don’t stand on the world. I don’t stand on somebody else’s perception of the world. I stand on my own actions in the world. So what will those actions be?”
April: “There’s a little voice in me that says, during the era of slavery you would’ve been a slow-change person. Like you would’ve been a ‘let’s wait, and in a couple generations maybe this will be better’ person.”
Mónica: “The lazy way of looking at peacemaking is that you’re always calming things down — and it does just give that peacemaker cover for a lack of courage… for what’s actually necessary sometimes.”
3. Where is your power?
Mónica brings in Angela Davis’s line — “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept” — as a deliberate rejoinder to the Serenity Prayer. April widens it: everyone, from CEOs to senators to presidents, tells themselves they’re powerless. They land on a reframe: instead of asking “do I have power?”, ask the scavenger-hunt question — where is my power, and how am I using it?
April: “We all have a story about why we have no power, right? We all think we’re powerless… And the truth is we do have power.”
Mónica: “I love that question, April, because then it becomes a scavenger hunt. It’s a detective story. Where is your power?”
4. Humanizing or enabling?
They reach the moral knot of the episode: where is the line between humanizing someone and enabling them? Mónica offers a mentor’s rule — wait to correct most things, but interrupt immediately when someone dehumanizes a group — because losing the channel of influence forfeits any chance to change anyone. April presses with a tougher version of the question: it’s not just one-on-one; it’s which stories of which humans we choose to tell in public, and where selective humanization quietly does the work of dehumanization.
April: “If you walk out thinking there’s an easy answer, you’ve done it wrong, basically… you have to tell the entire ugliness, you have to speak the entire story of trauma, the entire sin. And you have to humanize the other person.”
Mónica: “If you don’t keep open a channel and take that risk of humanizing versus enabling, then how do you influence when someone is doing something that is wrong? You lose the chance to influence.”
5. The cost of staying in the room
The conversation widens to what it actually costs to stay engaged with people whose views feel sinful to you. Mónica recalls a recent trip to South Africa and the Tommy Sands lyric she can’t shake — “peace is the prize for those who are daring” — alongside sobbing at the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah over its two-sentence treatment of the Holocaust. April picks up the same thread with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian of grace who eventually joined a plot to assassinate Hitler: when does loving someone require overpowering them? Their shared answer is that you have to be willing to see all the sorrows — and to accept that the sin you hate lives, right now, in the person you’re trying to love.
Mónica: “Somehow the cycle of vengeance keeps turning till each other’s sorrows and songs we start learning. Peace is the prize for those who are daring. Sing me the music of healing.”
April: “If you love someone and you see them driving towards a cliff, eventually you have to go in and wrest the wheel away from that person… So when does loving someone require overpowering them?”
Mónica: “You have to accept that what you think is the sin lives in that person right now… because if you hate that sin in that moment, you won’t stomach being in its presence.”
6. Don’t live the lie
April brings in Václav Havel’s essay about the Czech greengrocer who refuses to put the regime’s sign in his window — Havel’s claim that the most powerful political act is to “live as though the truth is true,” to refuse to live a lie. From there both get personal about their lines. Mónica names free speech as hers; April points to the U.S. military, eroding norms of decency and humility, and what she sees as a quiet form of regime change. Both land on the same instruction: don’t be changed by the way the culture is changing.
April: “The most political thing you can do, and the most powerful thing you can do, is to live as though the truth is true. To refuse to live a lie.”
Mónica: “I do not want to live in a society where people cannot say what they mean… And therefore I will put my life on the line for it.”
April: “I think that the most important thing is to not be changed by the way our culture is changing.”
7. What is yours to do?
They close with practical instruments. Mónica offers the grandmother test — could you explain this to your grandmother, and would she approve? — and admits hers would probably tell her to take care of her family and not try to save the world. April flips it forward to the grandchild test, and adds the Ignatian daily examen of consolation and desolation. Mónica finishes with a framework from Braver Angels co-founder Bill Doherty: every cause needs people who resist, people who replace, and people who repair. Both end on the same invitation: know your strengths, know your capacity, and do what is yours to do.
April: “If you’re having to tell your grandchildren 20, 30, 40 years from now, what did you do when — can you say it? And will you be ashamed?”
April: “At the end of every day… can you feel when you’re doing what is right and when you’re not? You’ll build this like a muscle.”
Mónica (paraphrasing Bill Doherty): “Resist — name and fight against the social problems you see. Replace — work on coming up with new policies, the relationships you’d need, the conversations you’d need… Repair — because in the fights and the ugliness and the frustrations, people will get hurt.”
Mónica (closing): “Onward — figuring out what we’re here to do, what is ours to do.”
Links & References
• The Five Remembrances — Buddhist meditation referenced in the opening (Plum Village)
• Letter from a Birmingham Jail — Martin Luther King Jr. (Stanford King Institute)
• Angela Davis — “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change…” (NMAAHC)
• The Serenity Prayer — Reinhold Niebuhr (Yale Alumni Magazine on authorship)
• The Yasser Arafat Museum — Ramallah, West Bank (official museum site)
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer — Biography from the International Bonhoeffer Society
• “The Power of the Powerless” — Václav Havel
• The Barmen Declaration — 1934, Confessing Church (full text)
• The Benedict Option — Rod Dreher (publisher page)
• Raj Vinnakota — Institute for Citizens & Scholars
• Bill Doherty — Resist, Replace, Repair — Braver Angels (framework explained)
• Pirkei Avot 2:16 — “You are not obligated to complete the work…” (Sefaria)
• I Never Thought of It That Way — by Mónica Guzmán (BenBella Books)
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Transcript
[00:00:00]
April Lawson:
Hmm.
Mónica Guzmán:
Well, April, hi by the way, how are —
April:
Hi, it's so nice to see you. Hello.
Mónica:
It's nice to be behind the mic with you again.
April:
It really is. Yes. I've missed it.
Mónica:
A lot has happened. A lot has gone on. And I'm really excited because we're here to talk about a question that you and I landed on as being something that felt really urgent for a lot of people all across politics. Right. And ourselves. Well, do you wanna say just a bit about how you remember us landing on this question?
April:
I think we were just talking about what are things we would wanna discuss. And I have been running into this question like everywhere I go, the question being, how do you know that what you're doing is the right thing? And particularly, so I work with a lot of universities. I have groups of professors tell me, I don't know if bridge building is the thing right now.
Like I had one person say, my heart is just not in this. I know this is my job, but — and I've run into that with students and at my church. And I also just have to tell you, I have been a little bit tortured by this question the whole time. Like, the whole time I've worked in this field. And we get this question pretty aggressively from listeners.
Mónica:
Right. Like it seems like, how do I know I'm doing the right thing in this moment can also be, why should I do this thing when this other thing is going on? How is that the right thing when this background — when I'm feeling like this, when my friends are feeling like that, when the world seems to be in this place.
April:
How can you — also, there's an accusatory piece of it too, which is like, how can you do this right now? Do you see what they're doing? And I have never been comfortable with that question, like, at peace with my answer to that question.
Mónica:
That's interesting. I'm realizing as you said that — never being comfortable with that question might be part of the answer to that question, that you should keep asking it. But let's see where we go.
April:
I love answers that are like, your suffering is what you should keep doing. Thanks.
Mónica:
Well, I guess that is one way to think about it. Never be at peace. That's —
April:
That's right. Do not relax. Anyway, keep going.
Mónica:
What we have got today is — and this is a note to listeners — April and I have looked around our world for things that speak to this question and inform this question one way or the other.
And we've kind of set a bit of a map for ourselves, like going to various of these nodes we think, we hope, can help us unpack it, not just as observers of the world, but also as individual people in it who are also wrecked by this question. 'Cause just like April, so am I. This has been intense at times. So do you think we're ready to get started, April? Any other thoughts before we follow this brick road wherever it goes?
April:
Yeah. One more thing, which is that different people who have different views ask this question at different times. So here are three different versions of this question. The one I hear on university campuses, because they tend to be more left, is: how can you build bridges right now when the Trump administration is destroying our democracy?
[00:05:00]
I also have heard from my friends on the right forever: how can you build bridges when the number of children who die to abortion every year is on the rise? Another version would be, how can you build bridges when this group of people, whoever it is, is finding their lives meaningfully at risk? How can you build bridges when we are facilitating a genocide in the Middle East? How can you build bridges when the left is making our country no longer a Christian nation? Anyway, I just think that anybody who is super passionate about a cause that they feel is somewhat existential for our nation or for a particular group of people, this can be a really potent question.
So I just wanna say that, as we go through this, I think it's a pretty universal question. It's not just for one side or another.
Mónica:
Yeah, yeah. And it's a question that speaks to, we all try to be good people. We all try to do the right thing. I mean, it just folds right back up to that. And we look around and we try to make our choices. So I wanted to start with something that's hit me really profoundly in my life, and it comes from Buddhist philosophy.
It is a meditative set of statements that's part of, in Buddhism, the five remembrances. The five remembrances are these statements that are meant to help a person remember really, really important things to help them live good lives. And they include things like, I am of the nature to die. Someday I will die. Reflect on your own mortality. You can't escape death.
The last one of the five remembrances is about action and it goes like this. I am of the nature to inherit the fruit of my actions. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
So I think this hit me because I don't always get reminders of how the things that I do count so much more in the world than the things that I think. Or the things that I believe — it's what we do with our thoughts. It's what we do with our beliefs. It's what we do that matters. That makes us agents in the world.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions, but my favorite part really is, my actions are the ground on which I stand. It's as if to say — it's not a fun kind of counter that I think of, is it? I don't stand on the world. I don't stand on somebody else's perception of the world. I stand on my own actions in the world.
So what will those actions be? It speaks to me of the importance of the question that we're grappling with here. How do I know I'm doing the right thing right now? It's zooming in on the doing and how critical that is. How does this land with you? How do you think of the importance of actions ultimately in the human experience?
April:
I mean, it is complicated. It makes me think of the salvation by grace and salvation by works thing in Christianity, where is it that you are saved because of what you do or because of what you believe? And I think — to be honest with you — I find this first little cluster of things we're looking at really convicting.
[00:10:00]
And the word convicted, I love it because it means both, you're guilty and it means a deeply held view. One of my big fears is, people ask sometimes, if you were to go back into the Civil War era, who would you be? And everybody wants to say, oh, I'd be an abolitionist. But like, no, most of us wouldn't.
Mónica:
And what makes you so sure of that?
April:
That most of us wouldn't, or that I wouldn't? Well, the fact that very few people were, right — like in the same way that in Nazi Germany, not many people hid Jews, only a few. And in any of the tragedies you can think of, there are a few people who take radical action that is in retrospect obviously morally right, but not most of them.
And I have to tell you, I by disposition am a peacemaker. I'm a let's-help-people-understand-each-other, let's —
Mónica:
So am I. That's why.
April:
Yeah, I also like slow change. And so every day that I wake up and do this work, there's a little voice in me that says, you know, during the era of slavery you would've been a slow change person. You would've been a, let's wait, and in a couple generations maybe this will be better.
Mónica:
Let's try to understand everyone, slow it down, have the conversations. Oh —
April:
Yeah. And it reminds me of the Martin Luther King quote that I'm not gonna say exactly right. It's something like — actually, I might even have it here. The biggest obstacle — the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white citizens councilor or the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is in the presence of justice.
And I feel incredibly convicted by that. Convicted because it means both, you're guilty, and a deeply held view. I frankly am kind of haunted by that, which leads me to resist the wisdom in that Buddhist statement that it's all about your actions. 'Cause I'm like, but what about my intentions anyway?
Mónica:
I see what you mean, because in your story I'm seeing so much of the importance of actions. You are right. There is this tension between — you know, peacemaking can sometimes rest too much on the lack of bold, disruptive actions that others may see as stirring things up instead of calming things down.
The easy way to take cover under peacemaking is, I'm making a room more calm, therefore I am working toward peace. Right. And on the surface, well, sure. I believe that peacemaking is often very disruptive, is often stirring things up. We just tend not to think of it that way. The lazy way of looking at peacemaking is that you're always calming things down, and it does just give that peacemaker cover for a lack of courage — what's actually necessary sometimes.
April:
Right. Totally. Yeah. And that's one of the things I really wanna get into — what, I'm so happy we're doing this episode because this question really is one of the hardest ones for me. And I think there is a way to understand all this. 'Cause I also feel like there is an imperative towards peacebuilding, right? Like, you can't just not do that.
Mónica:
Yeah.
April:
So —
Mónica:
The people who want war want war because they ultimately want peace. We all want peace.
April:
Well, some of them yes, I think some people also want power and money and stuff, but —
[00:15:00]
Mónica:
Fair. But okay, anyway, I'm thinking — because they think that if they're in power there would ultimately be peace for them. Everybody chases peace in one way or the other, is my belief. That's my conviction.
April:
Okay. I — we might have to agree to disagree on that one. I think —
Mónica:
No. And hey, that's —
April:
Yeah, right. It is.
Mónica:
So from this platform of our actions and how we stand on them, one way or another, toward one end or another. Yeah, there's an activist named Angela Davis who was really active in the seventies, and there's a quote that also hit me and I think strikes at some of these tensions.
And she said, I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. So some folks may recognize a rejoinder to what's often called the Serenity Prayer, which whether you are religious or not, I think a lot of folks have heard of it. I've heard of it from a lot of secular circles. Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.
And there's something about peace that can be found when you know the difference between the actions that will bear fruit, that will be worth it, that will make a change, and the actions that won't, because there's things you can't control. Something is too big for you. The productivity sort of isn't there. You're going to bury yourself if you take actions on things you can't control. You may end up in a very angsty place that will make you almost sick, then incapacitated to do anything else. There's a lot of wisdom in that.
But Angela Davis, you know, was a member of the Black Panther Party, the Communist Party at one point. She was an activist and she's saying, wait a minute, how do we know what we can and can't control? Says who?
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
Who's putting up these boundaries? I am no longer accepting things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. And yeah, so that quote has echoed down for lots of activists on lots of sides and lots of places, but it speaks to me of the limits of any kind of bounds that we put on our actions because of the stories we tell ourselves of what is ultimately effective and not.
And so that haunts me too, because whatever story I'm telling myself about what I can and can't control, if I'm not testing the limits of what I can control, how do I know?
April:
Hmm. Testing the limits is the key idea there. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. I was walking on the beach right before this. I live right by the beach, as you know. And I was thinking about power, right? And I had dinner with my priest a couple of weeks ago, I think, and asked him this set of questions, because after doing all the research for this episode, I was like, how do we do this?
And I said, how do you look at someone who is really, really doing something wrong for themselves even, and not try to change them? And he said, well, you can't change them. Just accept what you cannot do, basically. And I both think there's great wisdom in that — only God can change things, people can only change themselves, all of those things. But I also really resonate with what you're saying and with what Angela Davis is getting at, because one of the things that I think a lot of people do wrong around this question is, we all have a story about why we have no power, right? We all think we're powerless.
And by the way, that goes to every level of government. You talk to CEOs, they think they have no power. You talk to presidents, they think they have no power. You talk to senators, and the reason is, well, because I have all these constraints and this party won't do this, blah blah blah. But we all have that story.
And the truth is we do have power. So —
Mónica:
Right.
April:
So I —
Mónica:
We have to find it where we think we don't. We have to find it, and we probably have to find it by taking risks.
April:
Yes, I agree. And I also, as someone like you who probably scores really high on the conscientiousness scale on that psych test, there is a way to be — you can be pretty hard on yourself after a certain point in this. And so I think there is some balance.
[00:20:00]
Mónica:
Yeah. Right. It's almost like it's coming back to this idea of wisdom for me — how you have to kind of go action by action, possibility by possibility, and say, okay, where do I think I can push something here? What are the risks? Is it potentially gonna incapacitate me? Where do I have control?
When you said there are people at all levels of government who will tell themselves, I don't have power — I'm reminded of, I think it might have been when I was in Minnesota, and a former governor and I were doing an event together, and I think it was there in the conversation that it really dawned on me how many times I've talked to folks who are members of the US Congress who have one way or the other told me, I just don't have the power to change the culture here. I'm trapped by the culture. And me as a citizen at a lower level of power going, well, if not you, who?
April:
Right.
Mónica:
If not you who. And so we have to keep that in mind — how would those with less power than us look at our own power and the stories we tell ourselves of how little we have.
April:
Yes, definitely, definitely. And I also just wanna add one more nuance to this, which is those senators or members of Congress are not — they're picking up on something real. I wanna not be harsh to them. They do have constraints. All of us have constraints. It's just that I think you got to the answer in some ways with, where is your power? What is your power? So not just do you have power or not, because your constraints are real. And if you focus on how they make you feel, you will feel powerless. And that's awful. And that's not false, that way. But the question is, where is your power and how do you use it?
Mónica:
I love that question, April, because then it becomes a scavenger hunt. It's a detective story. Where is your power? Not, you know, take these fears about your powerlessness and hopelessness and let them kind of bleed all over all possibilities and keep you from even asking the question. You then gain certainty that you have no power, and so why ask?
The question, where is your power, assumes that you probably have some somewhere. You probably have some. Oh, what a beautiful — well, do you wanna take us to the next —
April:
I do. Yeah. So assuming that we do have power, right? And I think you and I do, I think everybody does, but just to focus on us — you and I actually have quite a lot of power in the sense that here we are on a podcast, right? And we both are people who have talked to members of Congress before, and there are a bunch of things, right?
And so then we get to the question of what do you do with your power? Both of us have made major life choices around bridge building and humanizing other people. And another way to phrase — one of the most potent ways I've heard of phrasing the "how do you know if you're doing the right thing if you're bridge building" question — is, where is the line between humanizing and enabling?
And this again brings up every tragic, horrible circumstance in history. The more I humanize — and I, God, I hope I would be better than this — but the more I humanize, just to stay with the idea, those white southern slaveholders, right, the more I empathize with them and understand them, that seems to make it more likely that I will just let them do what they're doing.
Mónica:
Right, right, right. Because I understand why they're doing it, and so therefore, I mean, even if it's wrong, I mean I can't change them, and so maybe I just need to sit back and let them change themselves. It can lead to inaction for the sake of compassion, I suppose. Is that right?
April:
Right. Which gets us to the question of what does compassion actually look like — that I think we'll get to in a couple minutes. But I'm curious — do you have a way of — we go. Would you like to be on the spot? How do you distinguish between humanizing and enabling? Do you draw that distinction?
Mónica:
I remember having a conversation with a good friend and mentor, and he was telling me that there is one situation where he corrects people immediately — that usually, if he hears something that he thinks is just factually incorrect and wrong, he'll wait until the end of the phrase or the conversation, or he'll find delicate ways to offer a different take. For the sake of humanizing, of trying to hear somebody out.
But he was telling me that the one place that he will issue a correction immediately is when he sees somebody dehumanizing another group of people — like speaking about another group of people in derogatory terms that hurt their dignity.
And he told me a story about this that really kind of landed with me, and I realized, wow, sometimes you just need to interrupt and get right in there. So, because his correction was when someone else is dehumanizing — I feel like that would do a lot of work. Because if, when you think of the slaveholder, a conversation with a slaveholder about slavery is bound to come into places where that person sees that other person as not being worthy of the same freedoms that they enjoy. And to me, that would be instantly dehumanizing. And so, again it's super speculative, but I feel like I would go straight into that and feel very comfortable going straight into that — asking questions there, challenging there, but challenging and asking questions in a way that I would hope they could follow me.
Because it feels to me like if they can't follow, then what will the questions, in the context of a conversation, what will the questions accomplish? And a lot of times they accomplish the person just going away. You've lost that channel of influence, of any kind. They'll just, well, bye. You don't — hmm.
So then you lose them anyway. And then if they feel attacked, they're going to say, well, people like Mónica, I don't wanna be around them anymore because they think I'm a monster. So that's the thing — if you don't keep open a channel and take that risk of humanizing versus enabling, then how do you influence when someone is doing something that is wrong? You lose the chance to influence, which then leads you to the alternatives, which are, well, let's just try to destroy those people. Then —
April:
Right, right, right. I think this is a very good argument, but I wanna press you on — okay, but so how do you keep from enabling?
Mónica:
Right, right. Well, I think you keep from enabling by never — I think if you never correct or challenge, that's one way the peacemaker is tempted, to hear somebody out all the way, all the time, and not challenge because it stirs people up. And you will enable, you will enable, if you don't challenge. That's one thing. But I'm only talking in the context of a conversation.
April:
I'm thinking about the public stories. So a thing that drove me nuts — maybe five or ten years ago, when there was a lot of hue and cry about the fact that the Obama administration had changed the standard of proof required on college campuses for sexual assault claims.
[00:25:00]
And there were all these articles about these poor young men who were experiencing kangaroo courts, who were potentially being wrongly accused. And I think some of that happened, and was that fine? Absolutely not. Did it ruin their lives? I'm sure it did. And I think that was real.
However, the person who was in the public mind consistently was the guy — the man, the young man who most of the time, just statistically speaking, was probably guilty. The person who was not in the public mind was the woman or man who was a victim. And I happen to think that that's because of pervasive sexism and society's desire not to look at the worst things that we do to each other.
So I'm all for humanizing. I really am. But I think this is — one of the biggest reasons our work is hard is that you have to tell the entire ugliness, you have to speak the entire story of trauma, the entire sin. And you have to humanize the other person. And if you walk out thinking there's an easy answer, you've done it wrong.
So I'm thinking you're right. I agree with you about a one-on-one conversation. And I think that's a great place to look at it, 'cause that's one of the places we confront this. But I also think that who we humanize in our minds, and which stories of humanized humans we choose to tell — gotta think about that too.
Mónica:
Yeah. What do you mean by that? Which stories?
April:
I mean, if we only tell the stories of the young men who —
Mónica:
I see, I see. It's about not being selective. It's about making sure that you're not carrying this bias about who's worth humanizing. Right?
April:
Well, yeah. And that your stories — to your point about actions, harsh standard — that your stories don't accomplish that, whether you wanted them to or not. Right. So if I tell a story about race in America and I humanize and talk about the pain of African Americans, but I don't ever talk about why poor whites felt like they were disempowered, or if I only talk about and humanize the unpopular side, but I never talk about the pain —
Mónica:
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It's a selective humanization which ends up ignoring and dehumanizing someone else. But you think that you're just putting your humanization where it belongs, but you may not be looking wide enough. I think that makes so much sense. And I think that takes a lot of courage to do.
I'm thinking back in the context of conversations, but in many spaces I've been in, there's a dominant narrative, and that dominant narrative says, this group is more guilty or more worthy of condemnation than this other group. You might then step into a different room when it's flipped. And to be the person that can demand and push for completion — let's look at all the sorrows —
April:
Right, right.
Mónica:
That takes a lot. But maybe that — I think that is part of the answer, the line between humanizing and enabling.
April:
Yeah. And can you be brave enough to make sure that we're actually looking at everyone and everyone's truth? I am gonna say something pretty — I don't know that maybe I shouldn't say in public — real quick —
Mónica:
Yes. I'm so excited. And then we should — yes.
April:
In cases of sexual violence, it can be true that the perpetrator is not a horrible human being and had a complex truth and didn't entirely mean that, and is in some sense fairly innocent, and that the victim or survivor is profoundly traumatized for the rest of their life and has experienced one of the most disabling forms of predation that exist.
The hard thing about a situation like that is that people — gosh, there is so much pain — people don't want to, they can't do the complexity. They just wanna look at what happened and condemn. And I think they should. I think that condemnation is appropriate. However, I actually think that you could have two truths that you can't quite reconcile, but yet are both real.
Mónica:
Yeah. And it's so annoying to hold that irreconciliation. We want one or the —
April:
Right. Yeah.
Mónica:
Yeah. Feel free to offer others, but yeah.
April:
Right. Yeah. And so —
Mónica:
It's horrible.
April:
I think if we're gonna be serious about this work, we have to learn to listen to all the different —
Mónica:
Yeah.
April:
All the different truths. And that leads us to one of the musical things you brought up. Would you share that?
[00:30:00]
Mónica:
I would. So I recently went to South Africa with a group of high school students that every year go to South Africa, and then another group goes to Northern Ireland. It's part of this high school program that is phenomenal, and I'm thrilled to be part of it enough to learn about it. And I really wanted to accompany them for various reasons. But I wanted to go to South Africa because they have experienced a relatively recent extraordinary conflict with dehumanization at its core, which was apartheid. And it was horribly violent and just all the things.
And there were songs that were part of the experience these high school students have. There's a partnership with a high school in an all-black township in Cape Town and another one in an Afrikaans-speaking, mostly white school. So you get to see them all climb these barriers to see each other as people, and it's beautiful.
[00:35:00]
And one of the songs is a song called "The Music of Healing" by an Irish folk artist. And I heard it for the first time, I think, on this trip. And there was one particular verse that really struck me. And by the way, Northern Ireland — this artist Tommy Sands recorded the song in 1997. This was the next-to-last year of what is called the Troubles, the sectarian conflict that tore apart folks in Northern Ireland.
And there's so much to learn from these places, from their wounds. I think that South Africa and Northern Ireland have a lot of lessons for the world. This song, written by someone who was growing up in the Troubles who saw them — the verse goes, somehow the cycle of vengeance keeps turning, till each other's sorrows and songs we start learning. Peace is the prize for those who are daring. Sing me the music of healing.
I go back to what we were saying about the lazy peacemaker just wanting to calm things down. Peace in the moment is all we really can work on. No — peace is the prize for those who are daring. What's daring? To look at all the sorrows and songs, to look at all the sorrows.
This brought me back to last year. I went to the West Bank, and you've been there as well. And I went in Ramallah, which is kind of considered the capital of the West Bank, of the Palestinian side of it. I went to the Yasser Arafat Museum, and I was so curious how Palestinians tell the story of the rupture and rift between Jews and Palestinians in this part of the world. And I was ready for anything. And as I went through, I found myself impressed with the care that was taken to be just descriptive of facts. Not overly editorializing and all this.
But I remember that I got to this panel — they're telling the whole story of these conflicts that go back so long — and I get to this panel that's about World War II and I get to the mention of the Holocaust.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
And it's like two sentences. That's it. Something like two sentences.
There was no denial of the horrors of it. There was no denial of the awful wound for the Jewish people caused by it. I actually started sobbing right there in the middle of the museum. And it wasn't because I thought anybody had lied. Nobody had lied, nobody had twisted the truth. But what I saw was too little time with the sorrows of another group of people.
And one thing I took away from my time there was just, sorrows beget sorrows. When we don't see each other's pain, we don't see it. And boy did I learn about Palestinian sorrow. Oh boy.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
So I'm not here to say who's up, who's down, or any of that. But I am here to say that the cycle of vengeance will keep turning if till each other's sorrows and songs we start learning. It's really true. It's really true. And I remember a conversation you and I had, where you talked about that in a really beautiful way. That there's something about peacemakers — the really effective ones — that they somehow get us to see each other's grief.
April:
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. No, it reminds me of one of the most inspiring people I met when I was in Israel and the West Bank. And I think I've talked about him here before, but just a little recap. He's a Palestinian man. His mother was in Yasser Arafat's party and was a leader, and he saw her beaten and thrown in jail when he was, I dunno, 12 or something. And so then he started acting out, as of course a teenage boy would do in that context, or really anybody I guess. And so then he was thrown in jail, and he proceeded to act out and to use different violent methods to try to get — he was lobbying to see his mother.
And it wasn't until he was, I think, 27 that he read "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and other Martin Luther King and Gandhi work, and tried a hunger strike, and it only took 17 days. And then he got to see his mother. And so what he took from that was, I achieved more with my little stomach than all of my violence had managed.
So he then became a devotee of nonviolent work. He still hated Israelis. Hated them. Hated them. Hated them. And again, with all the reason in the world, right? And then he got out of jail and another tragedy struck — his brother was killed at a checkpoint for no particularly obvious reason.
And he joined a grief group for people who had lost immediate family members to the conflict. And the catch was — I don't think he knew this going in — was that both Israelis and Palestinians were in the group. People who had lost immediate family members to the conflict. And at first he was resistant to this, but eventually, after weeks and then months of hearing them tell their stories, he realized that it is the same pain, and that the conflict was the enemy, not these other people, because their grief was no different from his.
And I really, really believe that, that if you can — I actually love just the particular verse you named, sorrows and songs. Why those two things?
Mónica:
Songs.
April:
Yeah. Songs are about meaning — what's the story of our people? Who are we? How do we explain all this? How do we make art out of it?
Mónica:
And it's about joy — where we can also see each other's joy and see each other in each other that way.
April:
Right, right, right. And so I, yeah, I think that the courage that this takes — it's often pretty unpopular to bring up the sorrows of another group. And there is risk in both sides and false equivalencies and all that stuff, but I really do — I'm starting to think what you said a few minutes ago is really sitting with me, that it's about seeing, are you willing to see all of it.
Mónica:
Right. Right. And it's not to say — because I can hear the objection — seeing all of it doesn't mean that you always decide that each side's grievances are equivalent, that they're both equally right. That's not what we're talking about. What you said is, the grief, the feeling of the grief, can sometimes be the same. The pain is the same. And somehow there's the seeing of each other's pain that starts to open something up in all kinds of different hearts.
[00:40:00]
And I believe that over time — and I saw this in the story of South Africa — people will start to see the way they hardened their hearts and kept themselves from seeing something good and right. You know, there's just not that many people left in South Africa who think that apartheid was a great idea. It was not. It's not a good idea.
April:
Hmm. I wanna add something here, which is, I think there's this sort of implicit frame here where we have peacemakers, and then people who fight for justice, activists. And again, that can be activism against apartheid, on behalf of the unborn, any number of different things. Right.
And I think that we've been talking about how peacebuilders and peacemakers need to see the grief in order to, and see all the songs and sorrows in order to do the right thing. I actually think the people who are fighting for justice need to do that too. Because you will not get to the correct justice — not, I mean, there's a strategic piece, but you will not get to the right justice if you want a just world. You have to see all of it. Because the whole thing has to be healed, not just the —
Mónica:
Replace one, you know, bias with another.
April:
Right. Yes.
Mónica:
Keep doing that.
April:
If I can be a bit political for a second, I think that is part of how we got where we are. And you can totally disagree with me.
Mónica:
I always feel free to disagree.
April:
Okay.
Mónica:
I'm —
April:
I feel like.
Mónica:
It.
April:
Some of how we got to where we are, which I would say is a really ugly form of politics that actually threatens our democracy and our republic in several ways, is that people who are fighting for justice on the left — and again, feel free to disagree — went too far.
They dehumanized the people. They said, if you have this wrong belief, I'm gonna shun you. I will not be in relationship with you — which to me is a fairly dehumanizing, bad thing to do. And then the right said, all right, you're gonna do that to us, we'll do it to you.
Mónica:
Right back to you. Yeah.
April:
Yeah. And I just think that it is as important for people who crave justice to do the very, very hard work of seeing not just the trauma of the marginalized group, but the trauma of the dominant group, and all of that stuff. And I'm not saying it's for the sake of enabling. I don't think it has to be enabling. I think that we have to have hearts that are big enough to actually see all of it and then try to —
Mónica:
That is extremely hard to do. And I think it is extremely okay for some people to have a lot more attention and bigger hearts in a moment for people like them or the people they wanna fight for. I think that that's natural and normal. And where I deeply disagree with you is just something I don't think you even intended to get across, which is the idea that it kind of started with the left and then the right had to respond. Because the left, what the left was doing — you know, what is considered very excessive these days and woke and all of that — was a response to a lot of dehumanization of a lot of groups of people. Right? So, cycles, cycles. And I think it's really important also not to get lost in the question of who started this.
April:
I agree.
Mónica:
Really important. But I absolutely agree with you in the principles of what you're saying. And not to mention — I think it takes a lot — but let's go back to that clear-cut example of the slaveholder. You know, in 1800s America in the South, I think the full heart would see that the person who is committing such an awful act is hurting themselves with that act.
[00:45:00]
And so it doesn't just have to be hate and disgust that motivates us to try to change people who we really are convicted are doing the wrong thing. It can be love. I care for you and I humanize you, which is why I need you to see what you're doing.
April:
Right. Well, and that takes us — sorry, I didn't mean —
Mónica:
Yeah. Please.
April:
All the passion there.
Mónica:
We should absolutely —
April:
I know. But that brings us directly to the next thing, which is a phrase common in religious circles: can you love the sinner and hate the sin?
And for secular groups, I would say, can you love the person and hate the thing they're doing wrong? Right. My priest the other night, when I asked him about this, said, well, I think you also need to love the sin, because you can't love the sinner unless you love the sin. And I think there's something there. I know, but I —
Mónica:
Love the sin.
April:
Right. That's very — my priest, he's very deep and provocative. But so, before I try to make sense of that, I'm just gonna say that this notion of loving the sinner and hating the sin sounds so clean, right? I love you, but I hate your alcoholism. I love you, but I hate your racism. I love you, but I hate the fact that you work all the time and therefore I don't actually see you and don't feel like I'm in real relationship with you — whatever that is.
But I think there's a real danger in it. Actually, there are multiple dangers. How do we know? There's a lot of arrogance that I'm afraid of in saying, you are wrong about this. I see you doing this in our politics and I love you, but I hate your sin. Right? And I think that's really dangerous, on the one hand. And then I also think that it is very complicated to love someone while also trying to change a big piece of them. And so —
Mónica:
Yes it is.
April:
I'm gonna give a sort of extreme example here to prompt a question, and then I'd just love to hear your reactions.
So there's a guy named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a theologian about Grace, actually, in the Weimar Republic. And he did all of this writing and preaching on Grace, and you would think he would be a peacemaker — and he believed deeply in peace. But then eventually he participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. And his statement about that was — this is not verbatim, but it was — if you love someone and you see them driving towards a cliff, eventually you have to go in and wrest the wheel away from that person, right? The wheel of the car.
And boy, I get nervous about that. So the question is, when does loving someone require overpowering them?
Mónica:
Right, right. Yeah. Oh boy. And I know a lot of folks are asking this level of question these days and going, wow, how did we get here? I think the short answer is you need a lot of confidence. You need a lot of confidence that you've got the right prescription, you've got the right analysis of what's going on.
And you just named something extremely violent in Bonhoeffer's act. Kill a person. It's an extreme example. I think we can think of far milder examples that would be interventionist but not necessarily violent. Right? But there's a ladder of this, and it goes up and up and up in the level to which you remove someone else's freedom. And I think that's kind of where it starts to feel a certain kind of way. What gives you the right? How can you do that to somebody else that you wouldn't want someone doing to you — overpowering them?
April:
Right. And yet I want to wrestle with that question because — so in America right now, again, whichever cause you're thinking of, what does it mean to lovingly dismantle someone else's political identity, or to lovingly show someone that they've done something terrible and fought for something that can lead to grievous harm to other people?
So, irreversible things. What does it mean to lovingly — right?
Mónica:
Exactly. And I think it means, in every way you possibly can that is not coercive, show, show, show, show. But what Bonhoeffer, for example, shows is that sometimes the showing doesn't work and the person doesn't wanna change and the damage is still being done. And then what?
[00:50:00]
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
But I do think that that is the glittering ideal — try to take away as little of the other person's freedom as possible, because there is something wrong in that. I think even you might just think that it's a little wrong to prevent a much bigger wrong, but I think there's something wrong in that. And so try to avoid it as much as you can.
April:
And this leads to — I also wanna pull in one more thing from a totalitarian regime. And by the way, I'm not talking about totalitarian regimes to try to say that America is — there are people these days talking about how America is sliding towards that, and that's not what I'm trying to invoke. These are just provocative — in extreme circumstances, sometimes principles become clearer.
And so this is Václav Havel, who was fighting a totalitarian regime in what is now the Czech Republic. And he wrote this beautiful essay in which he argues that the most political thing you can do, and the most powerful thing you can do, is to live as though the truth is true. To refuse to live a lie.
He talks about a greengrocer who — the state required that you put certain signs in windows and things like that. And he talks about how the greengrocer who refuses to put the sign in the window thereby refuses to live the lie. That's the most powerful thing you can do.
And so this is important to me. Because as we were researching this, this is really close to my heart and I want there to be some kind of answer, some kind of way that we can live right in times that seem to pull us in multiple directions.
And so to me there's something about — and it's also a bit of an answer to the powerlessness question. If the way that you live carefully insists that the truth is true, refuses to live lies, and then you live as though you deeply love other people, and you live as though alcoholism is not fine, murder is not fine, racism is not fine — whatever these things are for you — then maybe you can go to sleep with peace.
Mónica:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really appreciate this assertion that not living the lie is the most powerful thing you can do, because it keeps us from thinking that we have to topple the evil ourselves and that we have to go out of our way to do that — which is not to say that we shouldn't try, obviously. But what normalizes evil, what allows these things to happen? So much of it is people going along to get along, people kind of slightly changing, rationalizing things that are not who they are, but we're just gonna do it for now.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
And this is where I feel sometimes the personal implication, because part of the tension between political bridge building and kind of this idea that we need to just act is that, to make room for all these very different perspectives, including some of the extremes, you have to kind of sit in the room as if it's okay that this other person believes this thing.
April:
Right, right, right.
Mónica:
You have to sit in the room accepting. And this is where I get back to loving the sin —
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
I do think that there's something weird about that — weirdly true about it — that I need to accept you as you are to have any chance of being in the room with you, to have any chance of having your story influence mine or mine influence yours, which is always two-way.
You know, a lot of us wanna jump into a room and say, well, I'm only interested in me influencing them. It's like, guess what, that doesn't work one way. You have to open yourself up to them too. So you have to do it. And so in that way, you do have to love the sin, in that you have to accept that what you think is the sin lives in that person right now. And you still have to not hate that person. And you have to not hate that sin in that moment, because if you hate that sin in that moment, you won't stomach being in its presence.
April:
Interesting. So yes — Paul Romberg, my priest — when he said this at the dinner, I was really frustrated because I was like, come on, that's an easy — what does that even mean? And yet I think there is deep wisdom in it, because as you say, if you have your love be conditional, right? If you're like, I love you except not this, I love you pretending that you are not this other thing — that is not love on some level.
And yet another thing we've talked about on this podcast is, can you send your anger at the right place? Right? Because I can't ask people not to have moral pain —
Mónica:
We need it. It's important.
April:
Right, at things that real human beings are enmeshed in. And by the way, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart, as Solzhenitsyn said. We're it too, right?
Mónica:
Yeah.
April:
Yeah. And I think one more thing I'd like to throw out that I think can help us get into our personal struggles with this is — so, don't live the lie. And the question is, when do you, what does that look like, and when do you take some sort of stand?
[00:55:00]
Our culture is all about taking stands these days. I get a little tired of it, but there is a point where you should do that. And so there's something called the Barmen Declaration, which again, totalitarian regime — this is where I believe in Nazi Germany, the church was asked to go along with certain things, and the Barmen Declaration essentially was where they said, no, we are a church. We exist to serve Christ and to serve God, not to serve the Führer.
And the fundamental point of this is that the line that should not be crossed is when you're asked to be something different than what you are. And so, gosh, I'm curious, Mónica — does that, do you feel like you can perceive what you are and make choices based on that?
Mónica:
Yeah. I think that's where a lot of disagreements in our politics come up. With some realms of identity, people go, I am this, and somebody goes, no, you're not. That thing doesn't exist. And I wish I could tell you that you're not that thing, you know?
So who gets to decide what you are is kind of one aspect of it. But can you determine who you are? America's a very individualistic society, so I think we do stand in this philosophy where who I am, what I am, is entirely up to me. And I don't know that I have a hundred percent subscribed to that, because I go to other societies that are more communal, where it is not so bad for people to try to create a family identity, for people to try to create a community identity — like to be something in a group and to be something on your own.
[01:00:00]
So there's always this healthy tension between that, because these norms will start to come up and kind of fight with your idea of who you are as a person. My initial answer to that question, the line is when you are asked to do something that is different from what you are — okay, so then what are you? The initial answer is, know what you are. The job, number one, the first action you should take is to know what you are, to do the kind of self-inquiry and introspection that that requires. Okay. But I also have to keep in mind the context we are in. There's a loneliness epidemic. People can drown online.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
And I think that if you only do the exploration of who you are by yourself, I'm just not sure that you're gonna get the full answer. I think that relationships are a part of what we are. So I'll say that. But I do think it's important to know who you are, so that you know what line gets crossed and that you don't just borrow somebody else's idea of where the red line ought to be. That takes a lot out of a person.
So I sense that I went a different direction than you might have anticipated.
April:
No, I love —
Mónica:
Okay. And we should get — I'm very curious how all —
April:
What I wanna ask is, where's your line? And have we crossed it in society today? I hear a lot from the left, from the blue side, about pretty existential stuff. How has this question showed up in your life?
Mónica:
There was a moment in a bus in South Africa, one of those quiet, long rides when we were going from one place to another. We started talking about some political things, and this thought dawned on me, and I had never tasted it before. It was new. We were talking about some free speech things. I care deeply about free speech, as a person, for as long as I can remember. Something being unsaid in a room that I know is being felt is like such an uncomfortable feeling. And I will do whatever I can to try to give voice to that thing that others feel they can't say. It's important to me.
And I realized while we were talking, in the context of where we were and all these awful things that can happen in a society — I do not want to live in a society where people cannot say what they mean.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
The next thought was, and therefore I will put my life on the line for it.
April:
Ooh. Ooh.
Mónica:
So when you're talking about red lines, it was that I had that thought. It doesn't mean that I'm fully convicted that I will put my life on the line, but in that moment I was. And so since that moment — and that was only a few weeks ago — I've been thinking, oh my God, I think that's my line. Or at least that's the nature of my line. And now what I'm doing is I'm looking around and I'm going, okay, where would what I see as encroachment — and now I'm speaking of my own opinion about what's going on in our society — what I see as creep into the freedoms of people to say what they mean, and the places where I see that creep and the places where I see coercive power getting in the way. Where would be my line? Like, what would be too far? And I have so many reasons to push that line further and further and further out. Right? We all do, because at some point you have to put skin in the game, and that's dangerous and that's hard. But that's where the speculation of this has come up for me a lot.
And I like to talk about — my number one, I am, number one, an activist for a world that can see itself, the context and the conditions and the skills and the heart, and the eye that can see what needs to be seen, for us to get the society we deserve. I will always be an activist, number one, for that.
So that's part of the tension for me — if I have something like free speech that actually translates into policy and there's a red line crossed, would my being an activist for that undermine, in some contexts, my being an activist for this number one thing that I do? These are the places where I find a lot of tension. But I have to tell you, it was just this year that I really thought for the first time, I do not want to live in that world, and so therefore I will put my skin in the game for that world.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
And that's a privilege, right? I've been to war-torn places where people don't have the privilege to have sat in sort of relative security about these things for as long as I have.
Mónica:
So that's a place —
April:
So you're learning where your line is? Yeah.
Mónica:
Where my — I'm asking these questions. This is an urgent question for me. How do I know I'm doing the right thing in this moment?
April:
Hmm. And have you seen anything in the US yet that makes you say, I need to speak up when I'm not supposed to — or are we not there yet?
Mónica:
It does feel like the boil would need to get bigger. As you were asking your question, I was thinking you would ask a different one, which is sort of, have you seen things that you feel are worth resisting? Yes.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
Like, worth resisting very strongly? Absolutely. Hell yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.
April:
Line.
Mónica:
Yep. And it can range from small to large. I saw a relatively small one today, about how our government is really pushing back on a news site for having a box on its webpage — this is the Washington Post — that's saying, please send us your tips about the military, like journalists requesting information through encrypted channels so that the anonymous tipster can be protected. I read today about how the government's feeling like that's not okay. And I'm like, what?
[01:05:00]
So yeah, no, I don't want any coercive power to get in the way of us communicating with each other about the things that matter. So I'll put the box around that — that is my personal political opinion and I'm always open to conversations about it. But that was how I reacted. And I would say that was a relatively small one. I've reacted far larger to some things I've seen out there.
April:
Interesting. Thank you for sharing.
Mónica:
Yeah. How about you? I mean, this question is so alive for so many people. I'm asking you a question kind of in that way where like, I already know your answer a little bit, but I want to hear you pull out what's biggest for you right now.
April:
Yeah. Well, when I say this question has tortured me, that is true. My stomach is in a knot right now because I'm gonna try to talk to you about this. Again, I think I would've been — I don't think I would've been one of the courageous abolitionists in the Civil War era. I don't think I would've been one of the people who resisted Nazi Germany in any particularly courageous way — and maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit, but I love nuance and I love the complexity of people's stories and trying to help them listen to each other. I'm not someone who historically does a great job of saying, this principle cannot be violated. I will stand on this line and I will die on this hill.
And so that then means, knowing that I have this weakness or this place where I'm not sure I'll be strong enough, makes me pay a lot of attention to, alright, your strength is in bridge building. Do that. But be careful.
And so historically, the thing I've been the most radical about is sexual violence — which you've already heard me talk about. And what does it mean to know that truth about what happens in our country to women, that we could prevent, that we don't, because we straight up don't care enough. I think our society is arranged to prevent certain kinds of violence, not that one.
Mónica:
Mm.
April:
So there's that — how do you live under this kind of regime? But I also wanna address what's happening now, because I'm a person who people have asked my whole life, are you sure you're a conservative? Are you sure you're not a liberal? And all I can tell you is that I care about the same things I've always cared about, which are character and community and the things that people know without being able to explain why they know them.
[01:10:00]
And the fact that there's a lot of wisdom in the past that we can't — it's ridiculous to think that we're gonna invent something new and better when hundreds or thousands of years of people just as smart as we are have come to a different conclusion. And I care a lot about humility and reverence and a bunch of things that, in my opinion, this administration is not showing and never has.
And the coarsening of our culture — I'm someone who thinks that the culture war is real and America is sliding away from being a Christian nation. And that's a problem. And I'm not even sure that things like the Benedict Option — which is an idea in Christian circles that we should just retreat essentially to enclaves and live the good life in defiance of society — I'm not always sure that's wrong, because I do think that the thing to do is live right and then try to make that ripple outwards.
But basically I think that what's happening right now is that because of excesses — yes, okay, I understand that. We shouldn't talk about who started it. Okay, that the left showed and now the right is showing, that's what I'll say. I think that is leading to a very quiet form of regime change, where we shift from being the republic that we're supposed to be, with the Constitution that we have, with the balance of powers it implies, with the norms that have always — the norms frankly about humility and reverence and decency that made that Constitution possible — just being shattered left and right.
I think we're becoming not the republic that we have been. And so to me the question is, all right, people have lived under regimes that are sliding towards something they should not be before. We're hardly the first to do that. What's the right thing to do? What's the right thing to be?
And I guess where I land at the moment is, I wanna do what Václav Havel said. I wanna live as though the truth is true. And to your point about free speech — one of my most — my breath caught in my throat when I learned that Jeff Bezos had told the Washington Post editorial page that they could not publish certain opinions. Gallup, which has been reporting presidential approval ratings for 95 years or something, just said it will stop because the current person in power doesn't like them.
We now have — anyway. I think our culture: republics only survive if we retain character and culture, and I think we're losing those. So to me, the thing to do is — in the same way that the greengrocer not putting up the sign was courageous and radical and in some ways the most important thing — I think that continuing to live as though character matters, decency matters, humility is important, the things that are sacred are sacred — I think people will do that in all sorts of spheres. Political resistance is a whole other thing we can talk about, but to me, the most important thing is to not be changed by the way our culture is changing.
Mónica:
Hmm. Yes. Quick break. Tracy, if it's okay with you, I would love to keep going. Do we have another — April, how much time do you have from here?
April:
I'm good.
Mónica:
Okay. I believe I have another 20 minutes. Jessica, correct me if I'm wrong in the audience chat. I believe I have another 20 minutes and I think we should take it.
Hearing no objection, I think we keep going. Yeah. Tracy says good. Okay. Well —
April:
Sorry. Hang on. Just while we're out — no, go ahead. Sorry. I can try to do it —
Mónica:
No, no, no. You're absolutely fine. You're absolutely fine. Yeah. I think that there's so many people, especially on the left but not exclusively on the left, who are feeling a lot of the angst that you're referring to.
April:
Yeah. It's unpopular to be on my side and say this, but —
Mónica:
Yeah.
April:
Oh, well.
Mónica:
But maybe not as much as we'd think. You know, you're drawing a distinction between virtues and character and what the republic is made of, and policies, and I think that's important for having both those conversations.
Well, I think it's often helpful. But a lot came up for me as you were talking, and I think what I would bring up is how much I agree with you and how much hope I see in this conclusion — that somehow the right action comes from a confidence that continuing to live in the right world, no matter how the world appears to have changed from the signals you're receiving, is paramount.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
I was talking about free speech. I often think about rights. In South Africa, a deep sin of apartheid was limiting the freedom of movement for Black people. You had to carry passes at all times.
April:
Yeah.
Mónica:
And there was some beautiful resistance to that — and it became violent resistance. One of the first things that really started to bring up the violence that happened in South Africa was when people decided, you know what? We are going to all march up to a police station without our passes, so that they're gonna have to arrest us, and it's gonna be too many of us. And the state's gonna have to see what they do about that.
And what happened that day was that they were mowed down by gunfire. They died.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
The limits. The limits. You put your skin in the game and sometimes you lose that skin.
April:
Yep.
Mónica:
I feel like it's true for me that the best way to defend our rights is to exercise them. Don't live the lie. I'm gonna keep believing that I have the right to say what I mean. And if laws come down, or more restrictions or fears come down about me saying what I mean in certain contexts where they need to be said, I just hope that I can find the courage to say it anyway.
[01:15:00]
When it gets really scary, how do you see what your actions could be to live the truth — how far would you go to not live the lie?
April:
Hmm. I really appreciate that question and I've put a lot of thought into it. The part of what's hard is that what I wanna fight for is not stuff that is primarily in law. It's primarily in culture. And it doesn't feel like much activism to treat other people with decency. Right.
I am trying to figure out something. Someone I work closely with — his name is Raj Venkataramanan. He runs something called the Institute for Citizens and Scholars — said that the way that he has navigated this is that he believes no institution can do both civic renewal work and political resistance well. And so he does civic renewal in his public work life and political resistance in his private life.
And so what I'm currently planning and doing is, I'm trying to somewhat separate them. And I'm also trying to identify where I think the most important breaking points in America are.
So I'm paying a lot of attention to the military, because I think — I believe in our institutions, and I believe in the military, partly because it still has a really strong inculcation-of-character process. And I'm sure it's flawed, whatever, but I think that's the reason people still trust it on those surveys compared to Congress or the media or whatever. It still retains its code of ethics. And I hope to God, and believe, that if we get to a point where a rogue administration — be it this one or another one — says to the military, shoot those protesters —
Mónica:
My God.
April:
I think, I think they'll say no.
Mónica:
Oh —
April:
They'll say no. And so I'm paying a lot of attention to that, and I'm trying to begin doing work to support that community as it tries to figure out how to navigate this new world where the norms that we've all been taught may or may not be followed.
But in terms of a more direct action, I try to just in personal contexts say things that I think are not comfortable. And I try to do it in a compassionate way, but I try to go ahead and do it. And I try to love people who are hard to love, and to challenge other people to do that.
Mónica:
That's beautiful.
April:
Yeah.
Mónica:
That's beautiful. And yeah, you're giving me a kind of validation 'cause I've come to a lot of the same conclusions.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
I'm constantly wrestling with this idea of courage and fear. It's been very definitive for me in the last couple of years. And all these trips I've taken to other parts of the world where I've seen the higher stakes and their impacts really make me go, you're scared to bring something up in conversation?
April:
Yep.
Mónica:
Really, honey.
April:
Yes.
Mónica:
That's really adorable.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
I feel like that's part of what it's doing — this kind of perspective, this knowledge. I think for a lot of folks, perspective and knowledge about how bad things can get can do the opposite. It can make them more scared, it can make them more hopeless.
[01:20:00]
But I'm trying to encourage myself and everyone I can to do — to look at it the opposite way, that they should give you more courage. Because if you start to think that we could end up in that horrible place that you're imagining, well then now's the time, now's the time to take bigger risks in the things that we are already doing, in the ways that we are already interacting. Take bigger risks.
I still feel like I've got a lot of work to do on that, and I'm not pushing hard enough.
April:
Well, and that, maybe this is where you're going, but I think there are ways to assess, like, am I doing — would I be proud of this in the future? Am I doing things that are big enough? Do you wanna share some of those tests with us?
Mónica:
Yeah. The one — it's simple and it's often brought up in other contexts. The grandmother test. And the grandmother test is basically, can you explain what you wanna do to your grandmother? Could you explain it to your grandmother? And then would your grandmother approve?
So in this case — and I'm thinking Abuela and Aita Carolina, and they're in another country, one of them has passed away, but I still have her spirit — what would they think? How could I possibly explain these things to them? What bridges would I have to cross? But how could I do it concisely and clearly without a lot of jargon? And then what would they approve?
And actually I think at least one of them would say, take care of yourself. Take care of your family. Don't try to save the world. We love you. Take care of you. Please be safe. Don't get into these things.
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
You can still have joy without them.
So it seems like a lot of the things that I'm thinking of would fail the grandmother test. How about you?
April:
Interesting. That's interesting. I never knew my grandparents, so I don't have those specifically. I'm gonna use a different version of it that I've heard, which is your grandchildren. Like, if you're having to tell your grandchildren 20, 30, 40 years from now, what did you do when —
Mónica:
Mm, oof.
April:
Can you say it? And will you be ashamed?
And I think that right now I'm kind of 60-40 — 60% proud, 40% ashamed. Because I don't feel like I've found — again, with the conscientiousness thing — I feel like I have more power than most people in my society by virtue of the fact that I have education and access to media and all kinds of stuff. And so I feel pretty personally responsible for fixing this and for changing this and for making it better and for saving us from whatever — again from the things that I think we are in danger of losing in the short term.
[01:25:00]
And I don't feel like I'm doing enough. However, I do feel like I am taking it very seriously and in a thoughtful way, beginning to conform my actions to what I see. So I see my role as supporting our society and our social fabric and our norms, hence the desire to work with the military, hence the desire to support people in — I also do a lot of work with my church and think religion has a really important role in this. So I think I'm doing very good things. However, I don't at all feel like it's enough.
Mónica:
Yeah. And the grandchild test — it's a high bar.
April:
Does that do something different to you?
Mónica:
Oh, absolutely. Because you get the freedom to speculate about the future. We haven't been there yet. We don't really know. But because you get the freedom, you are invited into, you know — what would be your worst case scenario? What you're doing now, and that is again a high bar, it is based on things we can't know and we can be uncertain about, but it can lead us to a place of peace in action. Actions are the ground we stand on. Okay. Then what would that mean?
I'll tell you what gives me a lot of joy these days is when I come across people who I get to know well enough to know some of their strengths and their passions, and then I learn what they're doing and it fits.
April:
Ah —
Mónica:
I love that. I've run into folks who are activists on things that I care about, but that I don't see myself being an activist on. Even folks who are activists on the other side of things — I've met, for example, pro-life abortion activists who I have come to admire so deeply. Even though they're working for something I don't necessarily want, I can tell that their heart, their actions are put into place. And they all happen to be the humanizing type of activist that I try to elevate. And boy, I actually — it's weird, but I may not root for the policy change the way they prescribe it, but I root for them. And I root for them spurring the conversation, because they're carrying something really beautiful and wise.
So I want myself to meet that same metric. I wanna know my strengths well, and I wanna make sure I'm deploying them, deploying myself well into this world. So that later — I guess the other test is what would be my regret? Would I have felt like I didn't do enough, as someone who knows myself best of all?
So it's like the past, present, and future test. The grandmother test is from folks in your past who care about you and just want you to be okay. Then there's the grandchild test — think about the future. But there's also the test about your present, which is, what are you good at? Everyone who's listening — what are you good at? Where's your strength? Where could you apply yourself, given where you see the ills of the world needing help?
April:
Totally. Yeah. I feel like that leads to one of the other things that we had thought about, which is doing what is yours to do. Do you wanna speak a little bit to that? And then I have one other test I want to give people before we go.
Mónica:
Yes. So I was very inspired by this newsletter that Braver Angels — a big cross-partisan organization that partners on this podcast. We both love it. Woo-hoo. They have been on the bridge-building mission wholeheartedly for a long time, a decade. And inevitably at different points in time, and definitely recently, they've been receiving notes from folks going, how can you stand what's going on? Notes mostly from the left. How can you stand, given what we see, you know, horrible things happening — you guys have to stand for something, you have to change, you have to resist.
So Bill Doherty, whom we both know and is a co-founder of Braver Angels, comes as a therapist and all these things, he's a very, very wise person in my opinion on a lot of fronts. He had this framework that I thought was really useful, and he calls it resist, replace, repair.
[01:30:00]
So, resist — name and fight against the social problems you see, and have courage in doing that. Resist. Replace — work on coming up with, in the case of politics, new policies, figure out the relationships you would need to make, have the conversations you would need to have, replace the things that aren't working with the things that would work better.
And then repair. Because in the fights and the ugliness and the frustrations and the urgency and the passions, people will get hurt. Boy have people gotten hurt. So work on repairing so that we can live into these future visions, so that people don't feel left behind, and so that we get the relationships that we deserve and all of these things.
And what he basically said was, okay, I see these three lanes. Depending on where you are, left, right, wherever, you can put whatever prescriptions you want on any of these three buckets. And he said, Braver Angels, we're really good at repair. We're really good at repair. And if Braver Angels were to figure out what it wanted to say on resist, it would be one small voice. And there are already so many big voices — is that really where we would be strongest? And also if we were to do that, it would compromise our ability to repair. Because repair — we were talking, it takes seeing all the sorrows and songs.
People will have a lot of trepidation being welcomed into that process unless you set the table for them, and they will have a hard time feeling welcome at your table if you are working against them in all these other ways.
April:
Yep.
Mónica:
Right. So he's saying, we're gonna do repair. I thought it was really strong and it gave me that framework too — like, where am I strongest?
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
Yeah. How did all that land with you, the ultimate lesson of, do what —
April:
Do what is yours to —
Mónica:
Do what is yours to do. You have to know what is yours to do.
April:
I love it, except I also have beef with one piece of it, which is just — there's a sentence in the Talmud that I have on my fridge. I wonder if I can see it. Well, it's basically, you don't have to fix the world, but neither are you free to stop doing the work that will get us there.
Mónica:
Hmm. Oh, wow. That's —
April:
I feel like my work — I feel more than one of those: resist, replace, repair. I don't feel like the kind of repair I believe in requires — it requires some resistance to some things that are changing in a —
Mónica:
Mm. Yes.
April:
And frankly, some of the repair I want requires some resistance to some of those changes.
So I feel called in more than one of those directions. And so I would offer one other — I think our thought here was to try to directly answer the question, how do I know if I'm doing the right thing? And so one way is the grandmother or grandchild test. One is, do what is yours to do, what is yours to do. And a third that I find sort of blends those in a nice way is — it actually comes from Saint Ignatius. It's an Ignatian process.
I love the Ignatians because they're some of the most contemplative, mystical folks in the Christian tradition. And there's something called consolation and desolation. Those words have various meanings in regular English, but it's basically the idea that at the end of each day, you take a moment and think about, when during the day did you feel like your real self, and did you feel aligned and connected to God, and like something was right in the circumstance, in the blend between those things, in all of that?
And then also to think about the desolation side — when did you feel not aligned? When did you feel like there was something? So for me, I tell a lot of white lies. I've tried to give them up for Lent, but I'm not succeeding completely. I'm doing better, but it's so hard for me anyway. And I can feel it in me — when I say, oh, I'm not free because of this, and it's not true. That's a stupid small example, right? But there's a little desolation in there. There's a little fracture. I feel not aligned with myself, not aligned with God.
[01:35:00]
That's not who I wanna be. And so at the end of every day with this work too, at the end of the day, when did you feel — just start cultivating the ability to sense when you feel like there is rightness happening and when you feel like there isn't. And so for me, that's gonna be some kind of blend of resist and repair that feed into one another. I'm not too into replace myself. But yeah, so that's the other test — at the end of every day, and you'll build this like a muscle, can you feel when you're doing what is right?
Mónica:
Yeah, exactly.
April:
When you are?
Mónica:
I love that. I think that that would be the appendix that I would put on that framework of resist, replace, repair — what is your capacity? Build your capacity. Build your capacity. Know your capacity. And I think the way you know your capacity begins with exactly what you're saying.
Know how to sense what alignment feels like. Know how to sense where you feel like all the points are pointing in one direction, where somehow it's all kind of going, and there's a penetration into the world, like, whoa, okay.
April:
Mm.
Mónica:
What caused that lift? What was that fuel? And how can you channel it?
And so it takes a degree of trust, right? It takes a degree of trust in what I have seen in this world and what I have walked in this world, that it has shown me something important. And it takes a kind of entitlement — I am entitled to share what I see, and the prescription that I see about what's right and wrong with my world. I am entitled to do that. I do have the right to do that. Because sometimes the peacemaker in me says, no, no, no, you're just here to document and have other people do their thing. It's like —
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
No, I wanna do my thing too. I wanna do my thing too. And I don't want anyone to tell me that I'm not here for that.
Even my beautiful, wonderful mother. We've been having some conversations, and there was one when the Minneapolis things were getting really hard for me — what was going on in Minneapolis with immigration and ICE and everything. And I could sense the care in her voice. I could sense the point where she heard me crying and heard me so consumed, and she was so alert that her care for me came out as the prescription to Mónica, like, you're so bent out of shape about this. Can you focus on your family? Can you focus on your kids? Like, are you sure you need to read all the news that you're reading?
And the truth was, no, I'm not sure that I need to read all the news. I was — I'm reading — one of the places I get stuck is, is learning action, is gaining information action? Or is it sometimes just weighing you down?
April:
Hmm.
Mónica:
So yeah.
April:
I hear that it is hard. And I think that all the questions we tackle on this podcast are deep ones and hard ones — that's the reason we take them up. And in a way, this is asking, are you being who you need to be right now, knowing that you have some power but not all the power, and you need to leave some things in the hands of the divine? I'll speak from my own language. But also, do what is yours to do.
Mónica:
What is yours to do.
April:
And I just have to say, I really appreciate getting to do some surgery on this and get into the nitty-gritty. And it's not that I have an answer, but I actually do feel more peace.
Mónica:
[01:36:00]
Me too. And I think it came from surprising places. Thank you so much, April. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being so just honest and open. As always. This is, ugh. I'm so glad to be back with you.
April:
Oh —
Mónica:
We're back. Yes.
April:
We —
Mónica:
Oh, there's hope for us yet. Thank you. Thank you for all the strength you give me.
All right, well, onward, onward. Figuring out what we're here to do, what is ours to —
April:
And trying to do it as —
Mónica:
Trying to do it as best we can. All right. Bye, April.