00:00:06.580 - 00:00:21.790

So friends. Um I'm honored to introduce to you this year's Robert F Jones, lecturer, Reverend Doctor Claudio Cavalia is Dr Cavalia, is, is a native Brazilian and is an earth thinker theologian, liturgist

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and artist. Doctor Cavalier is theological training took place across several continents including San Paulo, Brazil, Geneve , Switzerland and New York City in the United States . He received his phd in Liturgy and theology from

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Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York. And he's currently professor of worship there at his alma mater Union Theological Seminary called a school that formed him and changed his life and quote his numerous books and

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articles both in Portuguese and English um have made great impact on our theological discourse and practice. Among his recent books are rituals at world's end essays on equal liturgical liberation theology, published in 2021 and liturgies from

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below 462 acts of worship, which arose from a global project he led in four continents in conjunction with the Council Board mission. Personally, I benefited a lot from um his liturgies from below which he calls

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quote an alternative to both the traditional prayer books of Christian liturgies and Neo Pentecostal Pentecostal occultic prayers, end quote. And this book made me really want to pray, pray for and pray with the people pray

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for and with the earth being reconnected. Um to some kind of my Pentecost influenced Presbyterian tradition. I grew up with in South Korea. Um I really want to emphasize that not many books can really have

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the power actually to have power to lead people to pray, not just teaching about prayers. Doctor Cavalia is, is a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church USA. And he has preached and lectured actively at

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academic and ecclesial gatherings. And above all, he , he is a professional performer of theater arts. So his play, um What submits Pachamama, which is a story about Wrestling with the Future of Our

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Planet was part of the New Theater Festival last year and won the most creative play award. So for us today, for us today, Doctor Car um Cavalier's lecture is entitled Two Ways of Being in the

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World to Rise and to land friends, please join me in welcoming our 2024 Jones lecturer, Doctor Claudio Cavalia. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you , my brother Dong Yung. Thank you so much

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for your kindness. Beautiful introduction. I'm delighted to be here. So happy, so happy to be with you all here at Austin Seminary. And thank you for the gift of this invitation. I have

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wonderful friends in this house. Uh my precious sister now, Dean Doctor Margaret Aer. We share the same alma mater Union Seminary. My brother whom I love dearly, Professor Gregory Cuellar, uh Jennifer Lord

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, who has been uh a big influence on me , David Jensen Carolyn has so since R be Eric Wall and, and many others. And I just met my brother Angel yesterday and uh we spoke Portuguese

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. It was amazing. Yeah, he's been everywhere . Uh And I must confess my immense, immense joy when I heard that you were having your new president. Oh, you got one of our best

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in our, in our Latinx culture. I would say he's one of our best in you and you have them and, and him and, and uh it's such a joy and I, I believe he

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will lead you and us uh in a wonderful way to uh to the future that God is calling us to. So that's thanks be to God. And I also am delighted to uh have met one of

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the uh pastors that I admired the most from New York. Uh Pastor Donna Shaper uh who is here . I think at least she was, we had lunch. Um So she's here and she was the

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pastor for 15 years of the amazing uh hud uh Hudson Memorial church in New York City. And my biggest surprise was to see the Reverend Kitten King. Here we come uh from uh we were together in

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Louisville Seminary and it was a wonderful time and I follow her through Facebook. That's uh how we can be in connection. And so to know that she's now the uh the chair of the uh trust is

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who you are doing the best choices in this place . Fantastic. So good to see you. You're drinking so good. And I'm uh delighted to be also in the company of so amazing speakers that you

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have you as you have all heard from yesterday. And today, my sister Sherry Sheryl Bear, which is fantastic talk in the morning and her indigenous knowledge , the wonderful preaching of pastor uh Chris Curry and

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one of the most bright and wise black woman in this country. Professor Hely Towns, I'm so proud to have been Professor Town students. And when she was a teacher at Union Seminary, she took a

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bunch of us students to Brazil. My, my , my, the place I was born and I had there one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had. So in some ways, uh she showed

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me a part of myself that I didn't know until then. And so I have this uh deep, deep um admiration and love. So my professor downes my deepest gratitude, love and honor to you.

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Thank you. And for those of you, all of you who came. Thank you also for spending this time and, and being here with us. So if you see me limping, it's not because

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my name Claudio, it means to limp in Latin Claudi car. It's not that I'm not trying to go after my name on the, but it's because I pull my muscle during the rehearsals for the theater

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. And that's now I have to go a little slower and see this so interesting how, how our bodies sometimes follow what we say. Right? And so I've been talking about the Earth for so long

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and one part of the uh of the play is that Pachamama, the Earth goes so slow. It has a much different pace than our boom, boom . You have to do, we have to do

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, I have to be here, have to do that. You have to present results and results, but your mama goes so slowly, right? You plant a seed today and the flower will only come

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next year. And so now I think my body is telling me why don't you actually do it. And so limping is a way of going much lower than I used to. So I want to offer

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to you uh two gestures to ponder and to wrestle with to consider and to add to your spiritual practices , namely to rise and to land, to get up and to bow down, to stand up and

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lower to the ground, to gestures that summarize the vastness of our spiritual technologies and give us a way , ways of being in our world today. If we learn how to reach for the skies and how

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to touch the ground, we will get to the ways in which we can have the spiritual living in our hearts in our bodies. For Moza Mozambique, writer Paulina Ciani, the tree is a being who

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reach to the skies and touches the ground. Put those two rooms together. Perhaps these two lectures might be a way to learn how to become a tree , how to go deep into the ground and reach

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to the skies. And this is what we need , I believe for such as time as ours. But how to standing like a tree when we see this horrifying genocide in Palestine happening in front of our

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eyes, thousands of Children being killed mercilessly every day and with the approval of our country, how to rise up when this country has approved the largest military budget in history,$886 billion for the minion killing

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and destruction and how to talk about these very things without division and anger. How do we find a way as Professor Townes did this morning to listen to each other when there is much more space for hatred

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when hearing is not to be changed? But to gather yourself prepared for the answer. May this conference be a time of listening and speaking. We are living in anxious times with so many troubles, the

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growing political division that seems to go deeper into the bones of our social life and we're all feeling it right? The disconnection between politicians and the people. They represent the growth of poverty and the hoarding of

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money from 1% of the population, five people now have more money than half of the world. Capitalism is ravaging our ways of living, devouring the earth , sucking away our very soul and create climate disasters

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in scary global proportions that are putting our future and the future of our Children at risk. We also have the looming of other pandemics due to destruction of the earth biosphere which will keep on coming. The

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plague of drug addiction is spreading everywhere in our communities . The growth as mentioned the morning, the growth of depression panic attacks and new forms of being sick in this new liberal world in which we live.

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The assault, the assault on minority communities, hatred against the poor, the constant attack on women. The LGBT Q plus people, the growth of incarceration , the persistence of the walls between us and Mexico

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. So close to you, our fear of others , xenophobia and the growth of fascism. How difficult it is to live in this day. So that's why you feel so heavy, so hard to pay

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attention. That's why we need to rise and to land. We need to learn the art of elevation where God is our very breath. And we also need to learn the art of becoming like the soil

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where God is the very material of our bodies. Yes, there are two ways of being in the world to rise and to land and this and today , I'm gonna talk about rising and what is involved

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in elevating ourselves. We will focus on this first gestures of elevation, rising, lifting ourselves and each other up. And the biblical text that comes for us today comes from the gospel of Mark 541.

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When Jesus goes to visit a little girl who had just died, remember Jesus took her by the hand and said to her what Talita Kumi rise? Little girl, get up, little girl, get up

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. These were words of resurrection. And this is perhaps the most powerful gift of the Christian faith to the world. Not that we will not die, but that we can resurrect time and again, because

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we will experience death. So many times over we need Jesus speaking these words through each other. Get up Emily, get up, Margaret, get up Gregori Levante, Jose Levant. We must be Jesus

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words of resurrection to each other. Because if we have all once heard those words from Jesus, if we had heard those words, we can find a way to rise up from the dead, we can

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go sharing them to the world filled with so much death and tragedy. As Argentinian singer, Mer Mercedes Sosa sings Tanta Fe Me, Matar Tatas Fe memory sine embargos toy A su gracias. He said you

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can do so many times. They killed me so many times I died. Yes, I'm here resurrecting . I give thanks to misfortune and to the hand with the dagger because it didn't kill me. Well

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, and so then I keep on singing, this constant gesture of rising is so necessary because the world is a specialist in knocking us down. It is a capitalist society that breaks our back, rips us

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apart from the land and makes us forget about the very breath we must breathe in order to live in this world. Yes, capitalism, my friends, you're gonna hear a lot about talking about that.

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A system that organizes our social production, our job market, our salaries, our forms of exchange in our ways of relating to each other and the world is all based on money, value and profit.

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Yes, everything in the society has a price. The very feeling of the society are greed, competition and fear all of them leading to the exclusion of many and the inclusion of just very few. Capitalism

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detaches us from our communities and tells us that we are to live on our own because to live on our own is the easiest way to be knocked down . Capitalism tells us we must be the ceo of

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our lives and we are able, and if you are able to make it great, we have succeeded . But if we have not achieved the American dream , it's our personal fault. Capitalism raised the possibility

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of seeing and appreciating that a good society in one in which everybody lives well and is not one that is built on the glorious stories of a few but in the average way of living of many moreover,

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capitalism erodes collective memories that raise the social institution and sets apart systems of connectivity. We are left with our own individual memories as we lose the power of the collective memories of our ancestors of a whole people

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, capitalism and liberal economies say that we should not have common rights, right? Instead, housing, food access, health education must all be privatized for profit. Individuals are responsible to get them from the

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hands of the few who owns the sources of life . Do you see how this is all wrong in this individualistic society? We must care for our own selves independently of each other. And that's the golden

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rule of our times to each their own, asserting the rights of individual preferences. And I know I'm going at the heart of how this country has been built and how also capitalism has made us live because

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in this, in this way of being there is no social commitment or responsibility. If you fall, you are on your own. Where is my brother Gregory? God asks me and from the values of

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this society I must respond. And my brothers Gregory's keeper. I don't know. Did he lose his job? I'm so sorry. Is in daring financial situation. Oh, I didn't know that. I

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hate daughters going hungry. Ah, this is a tough time. Are they going to lose their house ? Wh what can I do? I'm very sorry . But to each of their own is what we

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have as our spiritual responsibility for each other. But the, what the Bible teaches us is very different from all of this. Yes, I am. My brother's Gregory's keeper. I must love him,

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his wife, his daughters, the same way that I love my wife and my kids, whatever success or failure they go through. I must care for them. This is the opposite demand of a liberal

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capitalistic society like ours. What is the heart? What is the heart of the gospel? Is that caring for each other? It means to be in reason by the power of a collective because this girl

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were back, not to live her full life of individual self, but to be the joy for her community. That's jesus' way. But it's very difficult for all of us to live under this form of

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capitalist society structure with so many things eroding around us . It becomes difficult to keep our bodily and mental health. And that's why one of the illnesses of our society, it has to be to depress us

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, to take away our anima, to take away our spirit. That's why depression is going so prevalent behavior, disorders, panic attacks, why one of the reasons, one of the reasons is that we

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are charged to do it all by ourselves. But who can do that? We are social collective beings . Look at our very, very bodies right now . There are billions of cells inside of you humans

00:20:03.760 - 00:20:21.110

and nonhumans that are working hard to make you have your life alive. Right now. The inner and the outer are just one way of being. Why we go from this collective form of being to an

00:20:21.120 - 00:20:41.790

individual, collective being, collection of being. Oh But we love our individual safety bubble. It is easier to see that we don't have patience to hold each other's hands for too long. We have other

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things to do. We don't have patience even with ourselves, much less with another person. We can stand people's mistakes because we live in a council uh council culture. If you made a mistake, you

00:20:52.560 - 00:21:10.020

are done. If you make a mistake, you're pushed to the abyss. And if you fall, it's because you deserve or something, no collective cushion or survival net for us. Nothing to hold you

00:21:10.030 - 00:21:26.440

to help you up. No proper mourning of our losses, no collective forms of healing. And we lost all of our forms of mourning during COVID. We lost it and we feel that it's just normal

00:21:26.780 - 00:21:45.500

because that's how it is. And we all are feeling that our social life, we are feeling that our money is shrinking. Our health care provider are not approving all the uh treatments. And there's this

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fear of imminent fall, social fall looming large because in our social political system, the logic is the same. The logic of the individual survival is translated politically as fascism. Fascism is the end of any

00:22:03.470 - 00:22:17.920

political collective. Hope any democratic society, any social life organized by the people. Fascism is the giving up of our agency to a savior who promises to fix the country high or he and is often a

00:22:17.930 - 00:22:36.370

he crushes us mercilessly fascism is a symptom of a society overtaken by hatred for an un other and fear that names the enemy as the immigrant, the indigenous , the poor, the woman, the queer while

00:22:36.380 - 00:22:52.790

crushing and abusing them. Fascism is the incapacity to imagine alternatives to our living together. It's precisely because of all those things that we need to speak those words to each other. Get up, my sister

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rise, my brother, you're not alone. You cannot stay dead there. But it's not so simple , isn't it? Because rising up is different from each group of people because the forms of knocking us

00:23:06.590 - 00:23:18.650

down is different for everyone. Depending on your story , your trajectory, your color, your accent, your class, your gender, your sexualities, your abilities, country, neighborhood school and so on.

00:23:19.380 - 00:23:30.460

You will have more or less chances to be knocked down. If you're black or brown or women or poor or queer or any other minority, you must be vigilant about where to walk, how to dress

00:23:30.470 - 00:23:42.860

, where it's time to run with whom you should speak and how to respond to the police. One single incorrect gesture and you'll be knocked down without mercy or have a gun over your head or will be

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rejected. In some places or not considered for a job or being accused of things that you never did . This is why to walk alone is the easiest way to be knocked down. Yes, there's another

00:24:00.210 - 00:24:12.720

complex layer of it all because we are also good at knocking ourselves down. And if you smile or laugh because you know that, right? Because it's for all of us, we all are good at

00:24:12.730 - 00:24:26.180

it. We know how to destroy our lives, how to not honor ourselves properly, how to create conditions of instability of and failure. So we need Jesus words again and again. Claud, you don't

00:24:26.190 - 00:24:40.630

do that. Claud, get away from that place . Rise up from the circumstances. Families and churches are also good at knocking us down. Families who abandon us when we become who we become and churches

00:24:40.640 - 00:24:56.830

who talk about the unconditional love of God but hardly practice it. Both families and churches are good at acting like neo liberal groups who praise the collective but only admire the individuals who can stand up. But

00:24:56.840 - 00:25:12.820

despite of all these dangers within and outside, we must be a community that keeps on telling each other Talita Kumi. Get up rise. There is enough in the Christian faith that teaches us to hold each

00:25:12.830 - 00:25:29.410

other, how to help each other, to rise , to rise up, how to help our families , our churches to stand up and not to knock us down. If you look at our, the

00:25:29.420 - 00:25:41.130

hymnology of some church as you will see that there are people that who know that we fall. There's always a prayer, a song, a litany that will help us stand, offering us a spiritual cushion

00:25:41.140 - 00:25:56.930

for when we crush, I went through the world collecting those prayers. And then my brother uh uh mentioned and in the most difficult situations, it was prayers who help people to rise up songs that kept

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them going everywhere, people rising each other up from the debris of death. So you all know the s the, the, the, the hymn Precious Lord, take my hand, huh? Precious Lord

00:26:18.610 - 00:26:57.620

lead me on, let me stand. I'm tired , I'm weak. Mm The stone warm through the night. Lead me on to where and then precious low. Lead me home. This song is like

00:26:57.630 - 00:27:14.180

a spiritual net that is spread out to catch us when we fall because we are each other's spiritual net and we weave together this net so that we can sing to each other. And we can have feel

00:27:14.190 - 00:27:27.260

God's hand, holding my hand when you are holding my hand. And this song comes from a people who know very well that they have to live in constant struggle to remain standing. Sometimes they don't have

00:27:27.270 - 00:27:44.710

anybody but God to reach out in a plea for help. That's why Doc Doctor Jones Town said, don't give up on God because it, the hope is not a choice. They know they have a

00:27:44.720 - 00:27:59.720

God who take their hands and help them stand. They know that's why they sing. But because when they doubt or forget, they remind each other. And why is that? We go to church to

00:27:59.730 - 00:28:11.570

be reminded of these things, to be reminded that God loves us. Just to be reminded, it was the black people who created the notion of elevation , a fundamental concept for their survival. And I

00:28:11.580 - 00:28:26.200

learned this uh when reading gay wrote uh S Wilmore , he said the concept of elevation appears by name in the black literature. Throughout the 19th century, black men and women, clergy lay envision a broad

00:28:26.210 - 00:28:41.750

horizon of racial uplift or advancement through religion. They were the ones who no dominated the free black communities of the north and led such causes as the boycotting of goods produced by slave labor, resistance to efforts

00:28:41.760 - 00:28:59.040

of the American colonization society to return them to Africa and conducting activities at a time when public meetings of blacks were forbidden in the South and even preaching was prohibited, prohibited except under white supervision. Some of

00:28:59.050 - 00:29:14.400

most ardent champions of the doctrine of racial elevation were black women concerned about the stability of the family, the education of the Children and the cultivation of Christian morality. They organized female societies and auxiliaries alongside of

00:29:14.410 - 00:29:30.820

churches and other male dominated institutions. The sermons and writings of Amanda Berry Smith, Ma ma ma Mariah Stewart Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fannie Barrier, Williams Lucy , Crafty, Laney and Nanny Burrows. Bear eloquent

00:29:30.830 - 00:29:48.800

testimony to the special emphasis, Black woman put upon lifting black folk, making the church more responsible for racial promotion and training young women for parenting and leadership roles in church and in community. This is the

00:29:48.810 - 00:30:03.210

work of collective rising up. We could say that the whole story of black people is a full fledged history of elevation, a constant creation of many forms of mutual uplifting, rising, sustaining, standing up

00:30:03.220 - 00:30:19.510

to the challenge of the day and when possible, staying alive, they knew and still know the need for elevation because their history is a long history against the endless attempts to knock them down. For.

00:30:19.520 - 00:30:32.940

There is only one way to survive my friends by rising up to what is in front of us. And we can only do that by holding each other's hands. Nobody wins, wins the war alone.

00:30:33.360 - 00:30:45.510

We must rise up to the challenges with a smile and a style as professor uh Cornel West keeps telling us that you when I call my mother who's been a warrior all her life. And I asked mom

00:30:45.520 - 00:31:00.960

, how you doing? She says I'm coming along with faith, faith, courage and style. Oh , we might go down but we will go down . We will not go down without ST without kicking

00:31:00.970 - 00:31:14.290

and swinging so that we may elevate elevate others as we go. We can see this act of elevation in the works of Harriet Tubman, the Black Moses of, of, of, of her people,

00:31:14.300 - 00:31:29.740

the conductor who elevated hundreds of black folks by taking them away from their slaved places such as cotton plantations and who show them the way to the north through the underground railroad. She used to sing. Wait

00:31:29.750 - 00:31:41.500

in the water in the water. Remember to tell slaves to get into the water to avoid being seen and help them make it through their escape. A clear example of a map song where directions were coded

00:31:41.510 - 00:32:01.340

in the lyrics. Wait in the water, way then way in the water. God's going to trouble the water. When time came, they had a song as a map of freedom. Following the drinking

00:32:01.350 - 00:32:17.800

board was a way of celebrating, creating the lines of escape and the new life that was about to happen. Follow the drinking gourd, follow the drinking for the old man who's waiting just to carry you

00:32:17.810 - 00:32:31.070

to freedom. Follow the drinking their songs in the fields, evaded them into resistance, defying death and rising up for freedom. Their songs create a way out of no way to help them deal with the

00:32:31.080 - 00:32:47.510

pain, fear and hopelessness and turn it all into something else because pain, fear and hopelessness has never been a way out. Instead, they res signified their lives and their pay through their songs to keep

00:32:47.520 - 00:33:04.680

going. That's why we have a Sound Black America today because the black people found their songs, their hallelujahs, even in the midst of death, they carry each other through the songs. And if it

00:33:04.690 - 00:33:15.900

was not for the black people, this country would never be what it is. The same thing that can be said about the Black Lives Matter Movement, a movement of elevation, a movement that holds the

00:33:15.910 - 00:33:30.660

arms of the Black community up in the struggle against white supremacy in the Latinx community. There are also several cases of rising and elevation, but I'm only mentioning two. I'm gonna mention first when many of

00:33:30.670 - 00:33:44.990

us received the uh the gospel, the devil was a fundamental presence to our faith. The figure of the devil and, and the demons surrounded my psyche growing up too. And I did learn how to

00:33:45.020 - 00:33:55.880

deal with the demons. I knew that the demon's desire was to knock me down all the time. The devil want to get in front of us and make a strip and fall. The devil wants to

00:33:55.890 - 00:34:07.850

mess up our walk with God, our ways of living well. And I remember I had this Latina student uh in my class once a very wise and powerful Latina grandmother, she told him our class one

00:34:07.860 - 00:34:19.520

time when she was giving her testimony to the church , talking about the ways the devil was trying to push her away from God and put her life in danger. And after she mentioned many of the pervasive

00:34:19.530 - 00:34:32.720

ways in which she had been lured by the devil and how, how close she had been to falling . She reminded the church that God had given her the power to face the devil. And the church

00:34:32.730 - 00:34:46.540

had given her gestures, sounds, calls, utterances , affirmations, positionality, songs, prayers that made it possible for her to keep standing all her life . On that day, she was wrestling with the

00:34:46.550 - 00:34:59.320

devil. And a time came when she had to turn to the devil and say diablo nome fund as a trust, I mean, bus devil don't confuse me, get behind me and leave me in peace

00:35:00.260 - 00:35:13.060

. It is so easy to get confused and fall into all sorts of traps. That's why we have to tap in our intuition. We have to feel the spirit in our belly in order to understand how

00:35:13.070 - 00:35:35.180

we've been moved here and there to perceive the many fights we go through because reason alone won't do much . Second thing which I love is the Mexican Corridos and Professor Gregory is an expert in those corridos.

00:35:35.190 - 00:35:55.340

Corridos are like ballads, poetic songs which began in the 18 hundreds in Mexico. Co corridos are forms of storytelling that run in specific metrics. Three minutes . Oh, I don't know what to do.

00:35:55.350 - 00:36:19.150

I think I misshaped my, I should have gone no much in my intuition. But my reason for this three minutes, the corridors are ways of engaging a life of individual in a community is to be

00:36:19.160 - 00:36:30.090

involved in the net, tell your story, bring life to you so that you know, you are not alone here trying to go from Dallas to Austin to, to, to work. But you are

00:36:30.100 - 00:36:49.950

part of a larger community that are singing your songs . I'm gonna tell you just uh a story to finish. My brother was unemployed for a long time and you start losing everything. He started to lose

00:36:49.960 - 00:37:00.180

his, her, her, their kids had to move schools and he was losing his house for a long time. She didn't, she, he has to start hosing his feet because he didn't even have

00:37:00.190 - 00:37:14.470

uh money to, to, to take a bus one day after a year and a half, he comes home and he comes through the gate and there's a long corridor between the gate and my mother's house

00:37:14.900 - 00:37:38.380

and he is down, my mother looks at him and says, raise your hand, raise your head , raise your head right now and he's walking my mom. This big says raise your head. And

00:37:38.390 - 00:37:55.340

he starts saying from her house to meet him. I lift my eyes to the hills for where my help come from. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth say it, he couldn't

00:37:57.220 - 00:38:13.630

. He gets close to him. She raises her , his head up and say, say it. And she keeps repeating, I lift my eyes to the hills from where my help come. My help

00:38:13.640 - 00:38:28.670

comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. And I said, I only let you go. If you say it, he's crying, he cannot speak. He has no anima. He is depressed

00:38:29.740 - 00:38:51.900

, has low energy. But he, she said this song time and again and time and again until he was able you do that. And then he was able to say, I lift up from,

00:38:51.910 - 00:39:12.420

where will my help come from? My help comes from you made in that, in that story, we have everything that we learn together. There's theology there because theology res signify the notion of worthiness of

00:39:12.430 - 00:39:36.900

who we are. There's biblical study there because she's taking the story of the Jews to bring to her own. There is preaching there because she was preaching to him, raise your hair. There's pastoral care

00:39:36.910 - 00:39:54.770

there, pastor Pastoral mother care, there's liturgy, there's rituals there when she learned that she had to do this. Oh Look up. I think the story of my mother reminds me of the ways in

00:39:54.780 - 00:40:12.920

which we do our communion. Remember what we do ? What was the first thing of the, remember the sursum court? They went through seminary. Remember that your teachers here? What is Su Cara lift

00:40:12.930 - 00:40:30.810

up your hearts? We lift them up. We are reminded every Sunday, we don't even know it . We are reminded every Sunday that we are to lift up our hearts to the sky. You know

00:40:30.820 - 00:40:50.080

what you should learn about from this, everything you go into your life. That's what you say. Are you sad? Are you happy? Are you afraid? Are you anxious? You just heard of

00:40:50.090 - 00:41:08.580

a bad news. You are in the midst of a situation that cannot be changed. Yes. You don't know what to do. You can't stand the world. You can't believe anymore. And you are

00:41:08.590 - 00:41:28.400

completely alone. Rise. My friends rise. We have to tell each other the su su K every day or we can use jesus' words. Turn to your, to the person next to you and say

00:41:29.200 - 00:41:59.270

get up and let's get up and let's sing. Precious Lord. No, lead me on or do you need to be lift up, hold your friend's hand and now feel that God is holding your hand

00:41:59.280 - 00:42:44.710

. Go ahead, everyone, two hands, two hands through the stone. You are not alone. Precious Lord. Leave me. Oh, amen. And thank you. Thank you. Sure that,

00:42:46.520 - 00:43:01.260

that inspires us to rise up together. That urges us to lift our hearts, our heads, our bodies together. So thank you again. And for now I'd like to open up for questions. We

00:43:01.270 - 00:43:17.360

have only 15 minutes. So let's keep our questions . 10 minutes, not 15. OK. Sorry . Yes. So for 10 minutes, let's keep our question concise and please use the mic. Um

00:43:19.300 - 00:44:04.630

OK. That one. Thank you. I think that I can speak here. Yes, good. Thank you so much. And I am from we got closer. Yes. Trying my best. Just

00:44:04.650 - 00:44:20.970

yeah, just don't pull it out. Yeah. Is on, is on her own. So many of the students know me, faculty know me. I'm So yeah, I am representing Pakistan because we

00:44:20.980 - 00:44:43.170

talk about um the history here with Latinas, Mexicans , black people. I am the face of Pakistan . We've been facing all these problems there um as a Christian minority women. So if you go against

00:44:43.720 - 00:45:00.350

try to bring something new people say, even your family says that you're going against values norms. You are not supposed to say that you're not supposed to do that. So after like eight years, this

00:45:00.360 - 00:45:13.020

seminary has given me the chance to come study. I had to pause my studies because of financial problems . So first of all, I'm grateful to all these people who, you know, listen to my

00:45:13.030 - 00:45:28.990

story and trusted me and given me the chance to talk because in my country, this is not something that you do and when you have male males around , you can't really do that. So coming from

00:45:29.000 - 00:45:43.900

that chair up to here, it took a lot of courage. This is my first for you. Yeah. So I, I am so moved by the your, you know, the it was so

00:45:43.910 - 00:46:01.620

powerful and I just wanna know if you're the only person who feels the change and wanna help and people , your your own family would not understand that you're not disobeying. You are not going against the norms

00:46:01.630 - 00:46:19.470

and values, but you're actually trying to change a positive change. How could you just do that? That's a simple one. That's easy. It's just two minutes of it. Um there's so many variables

00:46:19.480 - 00:46:35.300

to your question, right? It has to do with culture, has to do with timing. It has to do with your ability to stay or not your, where there's a lot of knowledge, that's

00:46:35.310 - 00:46:43.460

when knowledge is, is the fullness has to be the knowledge of the land, the knowledge of your body, the knowledge of your soul, the knowledge of your mind, the knowledge of your heart,

00:46:43.600 - 00:47:00.070

everything has to be placed together. But we have learned that how to do things as just to be with one form of rational way. That's why you always feel at loss. I think you need wise

00:47:00.080 - 00:47:15.570

people. And I think you need to go to your house and next to a tree and talk to the three and ask for knowledge, go to the river, tell your story and the river will respond

00:47:15.580 - 00:47:28.810

to you, talk to this guy, talk to God and ask, talk to the wise people around you that you can trust your life without fear. Only ask for people who you can trust your full

00:47:28.820 - 00:47:47.860

life. Then they will, they will guide you and see where the spirit of, of, of God will will, will lead you. Thank you . Thank you one more. Rise up one more

00:47:47.870 - 00:47:58.950

question. And I wanna say, Josh, my precious brother who was with me also in, in Louisville and we work together now he's a pastor. He know it so good to see you. My

00:47:58.960 - 00:48:13.810

brother so good. I admire you so much. One more person tell me about uh lets of pieces of paper. That's great. I'll, I'll, I'll let me ask you. Uh She's asking why

00:48:13.820 - 00:48:32.870

did I toss all the papers? Let me ask you back. Why do you think I do that ? Why it's free? The spirit was share it with us. That's my reason from now on.

00:48:35.830 - 00:48:47.620

Thank you. Thank you. I have that. Now when people ask me, that's it because I think every time people ask me to ask back and I receive these wonderful responses because for me preaching or

00:48:47.630 - 00:49:00.260

lecturing and, and giving a talk and perform is all one thing for me. Uh So I never know what exactly I'm doing. Uh uh And, and for me, it's like the word of God

00:49:00.270 - 00:49:12.430

is the seed. And so uh it's like what I believe the word of God does throw the seed and you pick up one of those and when you pick up one, that's when you and me have

00:49:13.010 - 00:49:24.970

truth as when you and me can actually understand each other, perhaps you don't want anything else. But that moment then we can sit and listen to each other. That's why. Thank you quickly. One

00:49:24.980 - 00:49:39.960

more, one more. Thank you. Um I really loved everything you said. Um I loved how you, you started speaking a lot about um kind of the socio-economic conditions of America and you finished with

00:49:39.970 - 00:50:05.000

spirituality. Can you kind of sum up as succinctly as possible. The connection between spiritual and economic freedom , who I love that. How much time you go? 25 minutes? Great. Ah, again

00:50:05.010 - 00:50:22.280

, one way of, of, of one way of learning is to, um, unlearn and one thing that we did to learn is to see our life as, as, as uh um uh pockets

00:50:22.320 - 00:50:31.590

. So I go here to do this, I go here to do this. Everything is intertwined, interrelated, interconnected. But because we lost their relation with the air because if you see indigenous people,

00:50:31.600 - 00:50:45.660

they, they know everything is one thing, your economy has to run according to the land, your exchange of symbols and things has to do according to the limits of the land. And so the spirituality

00:50:45.670 - 00:50:59.000

is the ways in which everything happen tomorrow. Um um Everybody is talking about tomorrow is gonna do something , right? And so tomorrow I'm gonna talk exactly about the spiritual part of the economic uh because it's

00:50:59.010 - 00:51:10.720

, it's so much embedded. We think that our problem is, is ecology. Our problem is economy . Why we have ecology? Because we do, we have an economy that is destroying everything if we

00:51:10.730 - 00:51:27.750

don't, if we are unable to hear the. So the the songs of the birds and the flowing of the river and then think about economy. There's no way out for us. That's our spirituality.

00:51:27.960 - 00:51:39.110

So the president come, you better sit. Well , thank you for joining me in thanking Claudio for this wonderful presentation. Looking forward to hear more, but now we are going into a break. Uh

00:51:39.120 - 00:51:45.520

There's fresh coffee and uh stay around. Don't go far because in 10 minutes we will come back for