THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

To help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts, here are our show notes.

These show notes come via the Otter.ai service. The transcription is imperfect. But hopefully, it’s close enough – even with the errors – to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to participate.

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  00:00

The training I received at Yale Divinity School, really think about what I’m saying and then say it in a way that communicates that other people get what I’m saying and not just sort of using me to do their own fantasy. I do it all the time, and start listening to somebody, maybe just you, Akim, and then suddenly I’m writing my own story, and I’ve lost track of what you’re saying, right? And this is probably the greatest challenge in preaching sermons, keeping the attention of your audience.

Achim Nowak  00:39

Welcome to the my fourth act podcast. I’m your host, Achim Nova, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am absolutely delighted to welcome the Reverend, Dr Russell Meyer to the my fourth act podcast. Russell is the pastor at St John’s Lutheran Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He graduated from Yale Divinity School and was ordained in 1984 Russell has served congregations in Florida, South Carolina, Maryland and New York, and he received a Doctorate of ministry in 2013 from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He also holds a certificate in Christian Muslim relations from the Washington theological Consortium. I wanted to speak with Russell because I think of him as a social justice pastor. He serves as Executive Director for the Florida Council of Churches. He is also the current president of the European descent Lutheran association for racial justice. Welcome Russell. I am so glad you’re here.

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  02:15

Thank you. It’s good to be with you.

Achim Nowak  02:16

It’s a really good to meet you and speak with you. I am always curious. When you were a young boy or teenager growing up and you thought about your future and your life, what were you envisioning for yourself?

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  02:33

I wanted to be. I was a poet, short story writer. That was my big dream. I do a lot of writing. I have occasion to use poetic flair, but the circle of people around me kept whispering in my ear and saying directly to my face that I should pursue the ministry. I listened to them last I kept listening to myself.

Achim Nowak  03:00

I applaud you for that, because I have not been called to the ministry. I always wonder. And you went to Yale, you know, that’s a big school. So what in the end tipped you in that direction?

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  03:14

Well? Or, I guess you could describe that in two ways, right? The negative vector and the positive vector. The negative vector was the I work Writers Workshop failed to accept my application.

Achim Nowak  03:26

Well, that’s just rude.

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  03:29

But I ended up particularly at Yale Divinity School, because as I was going through college, in particular, I had several mentors and professors at the little prairie college that I graduated from who steered me in that direction. They themselves. There were two of them in particular, the chaplain and the Dean of Students, who actually didn’t see eye to eye on things, yet they were both pushing me, pointing me in the same direction. But the win over that got me to divinity school was Yale has a very renowned religion and literature and arts program. Now they said, Look, if you don’t think the ministry is for you, you can still become a literature professor, teach English, etc, etc. So it was a kind of a hat your bet type of thing at the moment of going into it. But ever since I was an early teen, I had had adults saying I was gifted for the ministry, particularly in my tradition, not just internal call, but external call is really important. What do people see in you, as well as what do you see in yourself? It’s a happy life when those two cohere

Achim Nowak  04:53

beautiful. What is something or some things that you absorbed or learned at Yale? Liberty school, ego that has guided me through my life as somebody who is serving through a ministry.

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  05:08

Well, there are a handful of things I could say, some more sort of practical, some pretty theological. That may be too much in the weeds, but one of the things that really stands out to me is that even though I was an English and French literature student in college, so you just have to imagine how many papers that was right, I am a joke that I wrote more in my first semester at Yale Divinity School than I wrote in four years of college. Now what that represents is the arduous work of taking your emotions, your sentiments, your feelings, your intuition, your insight, your knowledge, and putting them into some kind of structured thought that other people can access and have some grasp and understanding of what you’re trying to communicate. That exercise alone, I think, sharpens your senses, both your communication senses, but also your internal senses of have a feeling. But what does it mean? How do I put it into words? What is that really about? Where does it track in my own life? How do I follow the trail? Because no thought or intuition, just like suddenly blurs up in our life. It comes from a deep and wide source of experience and knowledge and context, enculturation, all that sort of stuff. The training I received at Yale Divinity School to really think about what I’m saying and then say it in a way that communicates that other people get what I’m saying and not just sort of using me to do their own fantasy. And I think a lot of times, I mean, I do it all the time, and start listening to somebody, maybe just you, Akim, and then suddenly I’m writing my own story, and I’ve lost track of what you’re saying, right? And this is probably the greatest challenge in preaching sermons, keeping the attention of your audience. That piece right there, to me, is invaluable. I mean, has served me very well. And then I can go on and talk about some ways of thinking about God and thinking about the world, thinking about how we lean into life. That as I listen to my peers in ministry who’ve gone to what I affectionately call trade schools, I don’t hear the same attention to detail in how we think and how we communicate.

Achim Nowak  08:09

You’re speaking to a fellow writer. I’m connecting some dots as I’m listening to you feel so obvious, but your ability to craft clear messages that are both personal and connect in the deepest possible way and meaningful is like a well, of course, I can see how beautiful your layered past is. You open this wonderful door to already talking about the substance of what you do. But I have one more question before we go there, which is, I know you’ve served multiple congregations. I’m a spiritual person. I know my sense of that a lot of what you do was to build, help build and grow communities of faith that’s wrong. Please correct me, but I’m wondering, how do you build, attract, grow a community that’s wrong to a certain place and a certain group of people and wants to grow together and support each other.

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  09:03

Well, that really in many ways, the question of our times is not just about belonging to a house of worship or religious organization. The question of belonging in the world today is probably one of our most profound questions that we all have to face, what is the nature of belonging? Who will we admit into our community of well being? What communities of well being do we find ourselves in? Are they really communities well being, etc? Whole set of questions around there with, you know, social media, globalization, all that we think. We select friends on on social media of people we’ve never met and really don’t know if we would actually like to go out with them on Friday evening and see a movie together, bubble gum friends, right? So we’ve bent language over and against experience. Experience, hoping that somehow we might improve the experience that we know is incomplete, just we’re finally seeing one another virtually. We haven’t yet ever met in person, except through the presence of a third person. Suzanne Daigle, right? And would we enjoy going to a movie together and spending the night in pleasure and etc. I’d like to believe that we would that work kind of spirits and all that, but people live highly isolated lives today. So I say all that because in the work that I do and the work that I’ve done over my 45 years of ministry, roughly speaking, is really been about healing congregations that have become broken for any number of reasons. My perspective on this task may be different from somebody who’s been lucky enough to fall into a place that was just naturally growing, and it didn’t matter really what they were doing. More and more numbers were coming in, and the pews were being filled in, etc. There are really sort of multiple stories in that regard. Here’s what I really want to say. It is being attentive to the relational needs that people have to get through their suffering, to find meaning in their lives and to find a group of other people who will hold them up and encourage them along life’s way. That’s at the heart, what communities of faith do, what houses of worship do, and then you begin to layer the narrative, the story, the doctrines and the teachings over the top of that. But if people are not feeling like they’re gathering with others who wish well for them, they’re not going to hang around very long.

Achim Nowak  12:05

I appreciate you keeping it that simple and clear. I appreciate your use of the word healing congregations that are broken. And just want to test this so what you just explained, in a way that’s the healing journey. Is that correct? Yeah,

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  12:22

I really think the healing journey is where the world is today in more profound ways than perhaps previously, all majors that we see right now, no matter what country you’re living in, because I know you’re international, right? Most places, what surveys we have show a very high level of trauma in most people’s lives. So we’re all on some kind of healing journey, because traumas we experience of various kinds early on in life, unless we enter into the healing space, those traumas own us and restrict our personal agency.

Achim Nowak  13:05

You use the beautiful phrase leaning into God that really spoke to me. I have my own personal understanding of what that looks like in my own life, but if you would elaborate on that a little bit about what are some ways in which you lean into God, and other people who you know and love lean into God.

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  13:27

Well, it’s probably more common when people start using whatever religious names people have for God, and then reciting whatever things they learned about God in Sunday school and that sort of thing. And then people are in a position of take it or leave it, whether or not they connect with that. I’m not really talking about that sort of protein language. When I talk about leaning into God, there’s probably two or three things that are most important for me. One is how I am I to understand my relationship with everything that there is. I have this awareness. I have this blighted consciousness. Sometimes we’re more awake than others, right? Sometimes my dreams seem more real than my wakeful life. Sometimes I want my dreams to be more real than my wakeful life, right? And so just, how do I explain my consciousness? How do I explain my coexistence in the world, my relationship with all things, what connects me to, everything that I experience, and even the things that are there, but I’m not tat you know, they’re tacit that I’m not focally aware of. How do I account for my consciousness? Everything? That is included in it. That question is sort of the beginning of my leaning into God. Then the other piece of that, once I take seriously or sincerely this gift of consciousness, because I didn’t created it myself, then what am I going to do with it? What’s my meaning, what’s my purpose in my religious life, we’d say, What am I being called to? What’s my vocation, what’s my work? And I don’t mean, what am I getting paid for? I mean, what is it that I’m supposed to do with my consciousness and my awareness in the world. And then a sort of a third thing, or a corollary to that, is the more I become aware of, the more I feel responsible to, not responsible for right, but responsible to out of my deep faith tradition. What I like to say is that consciousness is irrevocable. That’s how I understand the promise of the resurrection and other things. So I have this gift. What am I going to do with it? How’s it going to enrich my life? How’s it going to enrich other people’s lives? How does it continue to expand within me? How does it help me navigate and interact with the world that seems to be constantly changing? All of that, just to go back to our previous conversation, is integral to the healing journey.

Achim Nowak  16:40

I mentioned your involvement with the Florida Council of Churches, based on what I know of you, I think you as somebody committed to putting different faiths religions in conversation with each other, rather than being separate. So I think of you as a bridge builder, certainly in a time where we need bridge builders, would you describe to us, like, maybe from your deepest place, like, What draws you to being in conversation with other faiths, and why does that matter to you so much?

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  17:11

Well, from my earliest days, the question or the pursuit of unity has been sort of my core personal journey, and even as a early teenager, the stuff I was reading, my exposure in the world, my experiences, the relationships I had with people, finding that place and coming to understand what it means. What does it mean to live in unity with other people, because with that, living in unity with other people is the outcome of a living peace and a just world. If we want a world in which Love is the principle that defines human relationships, then that leads us to seeking unity where we can and my understanding of that unity is there’s a oneness that transcends our understanding of what the oneness is, And it’s at that level that when we become aware of that, the possibility of unity that allows me to have my faith traditions and allows you to have your faith traditions, in which we can affirm the journey that we’re each on, without having to say, you must be On my journey, or I must be on your journey. And to me, this is really what the manifestation is of love is a parent says to the child, grow up and live your own life. I don’t want you to live my life and I don’t want to live your life, right? Yet the parent and the child remain united in being family, and that, I think, applies across the board for humanity and for humanity’s relationship to all other species in on this blue.in this envelope of air floating, suspended in a space that is far beyond Our imagination.

Achim Nowak  19:21

So what I heard as you were talking this is like me translating into my consciousness is that faith is a or the practices of faith are a vehicle towards a deeper consciousness, knowing awareness of oneness and all the different faiths can go there, but they’re just one way of getting to something that transcends all of that in a way. Did I hear that correctly?

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  19:46

That’s good enough.

Achim Nowak  19:49

Thank you. How. Because in my own life, I’ve had irrefutable moments, and many when I feel like on all. Because I experienced the oneness with where I am with people, whatever. But it required certain doors opening over time for me to get there as a spiritual leader, how do you help open those doors to that level of that lived experience?

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  20:20

That’s a good question. It is so I mean, in a sense, that’s what I’m trying to do every week in liturgy, ritual and sermon. But you know, there’s this wonderful story of Franz Kafka, of the man who summoned to the castle, and there’s one door set aside for him, and there’s a guard there, and the man comes and he says, I’ve been summoned to the castle. And the guard says, Well, you need to wait here until you’re admitted. And time goes by and he’s still standing there, and he asks the guard, when am I going to be admitted? And this goes on for days, for months, for years, the man has set up a temporary lodging, and he’s he’s laying on a cot outside of the guard. His last breaths of life are there. And he says to the guard, I’ve waited here my whole life to be admitted, and nobody has come to admit me. What I don’t understand. Why was I called? And the guard says to him, this door was meant only for you, and all you had to do was walk through it. And when you close your eyes for the last time, this door will be shut and no one will enter it. When I talk about the healing journey and the trauma that we all, in one way or another, have experienced throughout our life, that trauma sort of acts as that guard this is standing at the door, and we confuse the guard with the door that we need to enter into the fullness of life, at helping people to see the resources of your faith tradition, whatever the faith tradition is, or To be a doorway into a deeper, greater sense of the oneness of all reality, and sometimes we confuse the guard for the door.

Achim Nowak  22:30

Now we live in a time of great disruption, external chaos, basic systems that we take for granted are being dismantled in front of our eyes, values that we thought we shared with others are being challenged and questioned through public action. Where are the doors in this kind of very challenging external environment that my sense is deeply traumatizing a lot of people. Well,

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  23:03

yeah, I think you’ve asked a couple of things there. I probably did one at some implied, some direct. So where are the doors? I’m going to get to that in a moment. But let me start really first with a lot of things are being thrown at us right now. So in the archetypes of literature, there is the character of the trickster, or, if you’re in the Eastern world, that’s the concept of Maya, the illusion we’re the trickster. Or Maya is like fully energized right now, the quest for enlightenment, and whatever tradition that one is at is not to be fooled by the trickster, or not to assume that the Maya, the illusion is the reality. The quest for enlightenment is really to pursue that which is not a trick of the eye or slide of a hand or a rhetorical device, and to really look deeper, and to look deeper, my way of sort of keeping it together in the face of the onslaught that you’ve described that We’re all receiving right now is to stay centered in core values. Human well being always has priority for me over profitability. We have a lot of people everywhere now thinking that if we don’t seek profitability, we won’t have well being. And that’s the trickster. That’s the illusion When we center well being, the profit that the being able to give to do well and to live a quality life, that happens, that happens. But when we’re led to believe that the only way we’re going to have quality of life is by you. Are putting profit at the center of what we’re doing. We fooled ourselves, and we’ve been deeply fooled. So a lot of what I see in terms of the Trickster and the Maya that’s happening in the world has really substituted a well being and and has has elevated money. I mean, that’s the discourse, right? Efficiency, efficiency, we’re going to save dollar. Well, okay, we’re going to save that dollar. What are we going to use that dollar for? Are we going to use it to increase well being or? Because the argument that I would make is, if we need to do an efficiency audit, that’s because there’s too much being misspent that’s taken away from well being, right? But I don’t hear it being said is we’re going through the efficiency audit so that we can increase well being that’s not, well, no, we got to pay down the debt. We got to do this. We got to do that. And, oh, by the way, there are tax cuts coming down the line and etcetera, etcetera, if we’re looking, if we keep our eye open for the conversations that are about well being the conversations that are about finding quality relationships with all people, not just the ones that I prefer. I walk my dog almost every day with a neighbor his dog. The dogs are great pals. He voted very differently from me. Every now and then we’ll make a joke and then have to back away, you know, because it triggers all the talking points. But my lived experience is that if we center well being and quality relationships with people, doesn’t matter how people voted, something greater begins to come up. And what I’ve learned in this walk in the neighborhood is people are not as widely read as I am. I have to laugh at myself as I say that, right, yes, right. We have to remain humble about these things. But I’m always astounded. I’ll just make a casual mark and I’ll go, Where did you hear that? And you know, so then I tried to find a non alarming way, non triggering way, to talk about the frame that I’m seeing the world through any sort of nods. I think that one of the things has happened, and we know this from COVID studies, is we became very isolated from one another, even from the people who live next door. It’s like we have to date humanity again, come to love one another again. And the Trickster is trying to tell us, you don’t need to do that. Just put me in charge, and I’ll fix it for you. Nothing fixes a broken relationship, except healing.

Achim Nowak  28:05

I just really enjoyed listening to your description of the walk with a neighbor, because in my mind, those are healing walks. You know, that’s beautiful, related to what we just talked about. So labeled you as a social justice minister or pastor, and I know you’re passionate about social justice and equity and core values. When did those become important to you? Or how did you know that those values really matter and that they are connected to the oneness that we just spoke about

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  28:40

that’s really sort of deep in my life history, yeah, because all the way back to my early teen years, I was a group of young people that were pulled together by a freelance youth minister, uh, Chaplain, and he opened up his house. This was in northern Nebraska, and there were 2030, of us, and we just, we all felt, in one way or another, that we weren’t part of the cool kids. You remember High School, right? Yeah, yeah. You either had to be part of the cool kids or you weren’t cool, right? I came to learn that the cool kids weren’t so cool. They were oftentimes mean bullies. They weren’t really cool kids, but you’re standing on the outside, you want to be, wanted, you want to belong, and etcetera. We found us ourselves in this sort of independent youth group, and we all were members of different churches and etc and whatever, but we were present for one another in the journey of growing up. Some of us had really hard times. One of my dear friends back then ended up pregnant. Back in those days, they sent her to live with her aunt and have. Baby there, give it up for adoption. And when she finally came back, she couldn’t go back to high school. She couldn’t be in the high school with her peers, because I would send the wrong message and all that sort of stuff. She had to get her GED. And I stayed close to her. I went to visit her when she was there, and I just, you know, I walked with her in their journey, and along the way, the work that we do, the work that I do in advocacy, I just came back from the state legislature as it gets ready for its opening session in a couple of weeks, and talking with lawmakers and leaders in our communities of faith, houses of worship, besides the religious thing we do, we almost all are involved some kind of community ministry. We’re all in one way or another, dealing with the daily suffering humanity is undergoing, giving food to people who are food insecure, giving a shelter for those who have no shelter, providing clothing. My church hosts the largest Narcotics Anonymous group in the region, 50 to 60 of people a day, continuing the journey of recovery. And to me, the church or the synagogue or the mosque or the ashram of whatever the right religious organization, whatever the religion, we’re all daily in contact with human suffering and human need. And the work that I do, the work that I promote, is to take those real stories and share them with lawmakers, yeah, because when a lawmaker can take a true story, first person narrative, as it were, then talk about the evidence, the data, the statistics, and say, let’s Try this policy. Then working on a quality society. So the stories that we have of our pain, our suffering and our healing, journey of our transformation, that’s the raw material of good public policy, and my role is to help get those stories from the street into the chambers of the lawmakers.

Achim Nowak  32:28

I was going back to the fact that you started also as a writer, because writers are storytellers and good we know how to tell a story in a way that people care about it, right? And that’s part of your gift. Last question you mentioned that you have been serving so formally for 45 years or so. That’s the number you mentioned. What is something you know now that you could not have known 45 years ago because you just didn’t have all of the life experience that you’ve accumulated? You There

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  33:00

are any number of ways that could answer that question, and I might answer it differently tomorrow than I do today, but let me say this, the language, the stories and narratives that we have for talking about God or reality pale in in comparison with experiencing it. Yeah, but then we need those stories and all that so that we can then begin to talk about what the experience is. The challenge that I find as a pastor of a faith community is to help people find the words to speak authentically about that experience, because in my purse, it is the human experience, and when we can find authentic ways of of talking about how we have it, we become bound together in profound ways that transcend any of our prejudices. That’s the deep ecological meaning of the word religion. Thank

Achim Nowak  34:17

you for that. As I say goodbye. Are there any specific organizations you would like to direct people to, any resources people go, Gosh, I want to learn more about the work that Russell, or Reverend Russell’s involved with. Are there any places where you would like people to look

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  34:35

well, I wish I had a publicist who could, you know, like, do my websites and things like that. You know what this is like, right? Akeem, there are a couple of resources that I use pointing to myself, but other resources that I use a regular basis. One is the Center for action and contemplation. Richard Rohr established, and so there’s some. Daily reflections there that often are quite helpful. There’s a whole library of new learnings we have around brain science, the way our emotional life is trifigured between our own personal story, what other people tells us, and then what our body is sensing along the way, and that sort of thing, the Heart Math and mind site and and that beginning to understand more and more about the physiology of our awareness. And there are some theologians that I’ve really appreciated. They’re very challenging. So I even hate to

Achim Nowak  35:49

give us one name. It’s okay, the listeners can decide

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  35:53

I’m very appreciative of a lot of the work that David Hart Bentley has done. He’s kind of an orthodox theologian. But as soon as I say that the image you have of Orthodox is not the image of David, but he’s done a lot of work, not only in Christian theology, but in world religions, and particularly has a book on God, the experience of God, consciousness and being and bliss, those three things seem to to show up across the religious landscape, whether it’s theist or non theistic consciousness experience lists belonging. There’s been a lot of reasons to distrust religious organizations, and I deal with that distrust all all the time. Too many have have sought either power or profitability rather than human well being. True Religion is never coercive. It’s never coercive. We all know what coercive we feel. It. Our body tells us when we’re being forced into something, and across the religious landscape, both theistic and non theistic, that insight is found in every major religion that you cannot coerce love, but love occurs as a response to being loving, or to being loved. I really like this phrase, the field of love. And the more we can live in the field, like a electromagnetic field, a quantum field, the more we can center ourself and live in a field of love, whatever perspective our tree is planted in, we will experience well being and healthy consciousness with others.

Achim Nowak  37:50

Thank you, Reverend Russell, thank you for the field of love and just thank you for the work you do and the ways in which you serve. I really appreciate you. So thank you.

Reverend Russell L. Meyer  38:01

Thank you. I appreciate you, Akim, and I’ve followed you for your newsletter for several years now, because Suzanne introduced me to you, and so I appreciate what you’re trying to do in the world, and thank you for letting me be part of it. Goodbye for now.

Achim Nowak  38:22

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my fourth act podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind [email protected] it’s where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors see you there and bye for now you.