Janet Wolf has worked as a poverty rights organizer, United Methodist pastor with urban and rural congregations; college and seminary professor; learner, teacher, animator with think tanks inside prisons. She works with the Children’s Defense Fund focusing on public theology, transformative justice and nonviolent direct action organizing to disrupt and dismantle the cradle to prison pipeline through leadership by and partnership with those who are now or have been caged.
Janet was one of the founding members of the CDF’s Proctor Institute’s Dale P. Andrews Freedom Seminary. She is a member of the Coordinating Committee with the National Council of Elders. She is also the author of Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship.
Instagram: @jlw48
Twitter: @wolfhaley
Vector Illustration by: ReAl_wpap
Music by: @siryalibeats
Rate, review, and subscribe to Sound of the Genuine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Janet Wolf has worked as a poverty rights organizer, United Methodist pastor with urban and rural congregations; college and seminary professor; learner, teacher, animator with think tanks inside prisons. She works with the Children’s Defense Fund focusing on public theology, transformative justice and nonviolent direct action organizing to disrupt and dismantle the cradle to prison pipeline through leadership by and partnership with those who are now or have been caged.
Janet was one of the founding members of the CDF’s Proctor Institute’s Dale P. Andrews Freedom Seminary. She is a member of the Coordinating Committee with the National Council of Elders. She is also the author of Practicing Resurrection: The Gospel of Mark and Radical Discipleship.
Instagram: @jlw48
Twitter: @wolfhaley
Vector Illustration by: ReAl_wpap
Music by: @siryalibeats
Rate, review, and subscribe to Sound of the Genuine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Patrick: Welcome back to the Sound of the Genuine and part two of our story with Reverend Dr. Janet Wolf. I'm Dr. Patrick Reyes and in this second part of this interview, we will hear how she redefines theological education from sites that have been previously left out - from those who are incarcerated to children. We hear how she collaborated with over 26 seminaries to help form and found the Dale Andrews Freedom Seminary, now under the leadership of Reverend Dr. Starsky Wilson at the Children's Defense Fund. And those seminar leaders are bringing together seminarians from across the country at the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy and Ministry to redefine how we think about the sacred worth of every child. I'm so grateful we get to hear Reverend Dr. Janet Wolf’s story.
All right, Janet. I am so glad that you're back for a part two, because I feel like, you know, we missed out on so much good storytelling and I want to jump off from one of your beginnings, one of the stories you did tell us about Christmas with the family outside of prison, and that defining your kind of new call, new sense of ministry.
I know a lot of stories go along with that, about what you've done since that moment, but if you could tell us a little bit about, like, how did you first get engaged in prison ministry? And what does that look like over the distinguished career that you've had?
Janet Wolf: Prison ministry is a really questionable term for me, because I think traditionally it's been defined by the good people coming from the outside to fix up the poor, sad, terrible people. So Ndume is a friend who was on Tennessee's death row for 20 years for a crime he did not commit. He's out now, got out in 2012, but he would say all those years, church folks coming in trying to save my soul. Hell I didn't need anybody saved my soul, I need somebody to save my ass! And so that the notion of prison ministry, I think, compounds the problem. We end up doing charitable works, thinking church folks have the answers and we prop up the system by doing that. We justify, theologically, the criminalizing and caging of human beings, including kids. And so for me, prison ministry would actually have the opposite definition, which is I go into the prison to be ministered to. Being inside prison circles I'm a part of is as close to raw church as I get. It is thick with folks who risk everything to embody love, to bet on community, in defiance of everything that surrounds them, all the voices they hear, all the stuff that is coming at them, all the systemic brutality. You know, on Tuesdays, I'm on death row in a circle. So people who have execution dates - and members of our circle have been executed, and yet in spite of all that, they embody this extraordinary love and hope.
I always say I go to the prison grumpy because there'll be a new correction officer, they won't find the memo, I won't get in, it'll take too long, there'll be some new rule, they'll be locked down. Whatever. It'll take me forever to get through and I might not even get through, and I might not even get to my class. and I have a lot to do, and this takes so long. I mean, not even the time with the guys, just getting in and getting back out. And I always come out laughing and hopeful. I always come out laughing and hopeful. Just the experience of being among folks for whom questions of liberation are not theoretical but life and death - redemption, salvation, forgiveness, community, calling, vocation. On death row, we train mediators. Our mediators take this same course as someone who is certified by the Tennessee Supreme Court as a certified mediator in the state of Tennessee. And on the wall of the office where officers go are the names of our certified mediators so that officers can call on them and not the goon squad when conflict erupts. Here in this place where part of their identity is I have been sentenced to death, I either have or will have an execution date - the state intends to kill me, they have a different identity, which is a mediator with SALT. It's called the Schools for Alternative Learning and Transformation. And this particular circle is community building and conflict transformation. So how amazing that folks, who are deemed the most violent, worthy of death, actually are the sources of conflict transformation? Transformative justice, looking at all the different form of harms that come and figuring out how healing might happen through community. So prison ministry for me is an invitation for the church to be baptized in the radical faith of folks inside who are not only surviving, but defying a system that has bet everything on violence and brutality and punishment and no form of redemption.
In the beginning, I just started visiting folks that I knew from the streets who had gotten in trouble, but I knew from my own experience. So it was just individual visits. And then in the late seventies, early eighties, we still had lots of latitude in prisons. I could take in recording artists and did. I could take in artists. In the pre-release prison I could pick up people in my van and bring them outside to some church event and then take them back in, at the end of the day. That changed dramatically as the drug war escalated and more and more people were caged. And so we started circles. I think our first class was in 2002. That's when we started SALT. And the notion was that people on the inside were doing a theology that was both challenging and invitational to anybody who had any version of faith community. And so what would happen if we had folks on the inside define what some version of prison ministry would mean, some version of a class would mean? And we got a partnership with Vanderbilt Divinity School and there were three of us who agreed to split one adjunct salary for teaching a Vanderbilt Divinity School course in which half the students would be from Vanderbilt and half the students would be from Riverbend maximum security institution, and all classes would take place inside the prison. And in the beginning, some of the Vanderbilt students, which included PhD students were like, oh my God, give me a break. I can't take my computer? I'm on a waiting list? I can't do what? I'm going to sit with convicts and criminals? It didn't take two weeks until they were really challenged to up their game because folks inside, whether they had high school diplomas or had ever gone to college, were so hungry for the conversation - so really deeply engaged with the writings and the work and the thinking. And what would this mean? What's it mean? What's it mean, what's it mean for the church to read this shit and not do anything? Hey, talk to me!
So that was the beginnings of SALT and our notion…let's see if I remember this, was three pieces. One is we always sit in a circle. We believe in the circle process. We believe everybody's a learner and everybody's a teacher, so there are no triangles. There's no one head person who thinks they know everything and can grade everybody else. Even if there's a professor, there are inside facilitators who take part in the planning, the processing, the grading, the decision-making. The inside always has the loudest voice. And that was the second part - it's always a partnership, a really authentic long-term partnership. We don't do anything that's for flash. We don't do sort of voyeurism stuff where people come stare at us and have one session and then walk away as if nothing has happened. It has to be some long-term engagement so that there's some learning going both ways. And the third one is the symbol of a cage. Everything we do is focused on systemic injustice and not an individual. And we want to really identify all the wires in that cage. What is the cradle to prison pipeline? What pushes, what forces, what theology justifies what has happened to so many folks? So those are our three hallmarks and then it's taken lots of different forms.
We have a number of seminaries that we've done trainings for, who have then gone on to start some version of this. We've worked in Pennsylvania and New York and New Jersey. New Jersey was our biggest one. We worked with a group that became New Jersey STEP, that offered for-credit college programs in seven prisons. I mean, I would hope at one point that every college student would have to take one class where half the students are inside and the course takes place inside. I actually started a DMin program in New Brunswick Theological Seminary. It only lasted for one cohort because of disagreements about how it might go, but it was a DMin in prisons, public policy and transformative justice. And so the notion was any version of ministry you want to look at can be redefined and grounded in the radicality of the gospel if you sit inside the prison and listen to and learn from folks who are caged day after day. Our courses, some of them had to take place on seminary campuses. They also took place in different prisons around the country, in the circles that we had started with - think tanks. And then the other thing I was going to say about that is the adjunct salary split three ways was the highest I've ever been paid for any work in the prison. Everything else is for free, which in some ways, is a gift because it means none of the systems own you or can define you, which is really, really important when you're trying to do work and hold on to credibility with folks inside the prison. Because they take a risk simply to be seen with you, to invest in a community that goes so deeply against the system. To trust outside folks to hear some of their stories and honor them and hold them close to the heart and not go out and splat around on social media. It's a lot, it's a big risk for folks inside to take. This honoring of that and some kind of building trust takes a while.
One of the things that has been interesting to me is in prisons all over the place including this one in New Jersey, where we had such a creative, courageous think tank; And it was mostly younger folks who can be quite intimidated by the formal world, you know the college folks, and our requirement is that any professor - seminary, college, university professor who wants to teach inside the prison has to be trained by the inside think tank, and then has to partner with them. And Cornell West missed the training and so he could not teach his class until he had come in. And so they did a solo session for him, so it's only Cornell West. And initially the guys were like, oh my God, Cornell West, we've already read the book. I don't know whether we can do this. And so we went back to the drawing board about who are we? Why do we do what we do? What's the importance of bringing people in no matter if it's Cornell West or anybody else? James Cone had made it to the training sessions. Three things happened, I think, that were extraordinary. One is I have never seen Cornell west so attentive. He was totally present. And two is the guys lost any sense of intimidation and they were their own incredible, amazing, strong, witty, wise selves. And the kind of spark that happened was so powerful. And three, Cornell West changed his syllabus and his teaching approach because of the collaboration that happened with the think tank. And so I think that no matter who you are or what your experience is, ministry can be redefined if you figure out a way to be in community with an ongoing partnership with folks who are caged.
Patrick: I mean here's my follow-up question, Janet to, what is four decades of working with caged and formerly caged folks now, you know, when they get out and, you know, folks, aren't always locked up - thinking about sitting with folks who do have a date, you know on death row, there's a date there.
And the challenge that all that comes with. I mean, for you as a minister, I mean, you said you did an adjunct salary. My imagination is no dean, no bishop, no warden said Janet Wolf, can you come in and run a program?
So as I think about, or I'm challenged by your stories here, I mean, tell me a little bit about what are those relationships like now that you have with folks? And for those who are really considering it, who are thinking about doing this for the long haul, for four decades or more hopefully, what do they need to be thinking about? What kept you in this, doing it on a TA's salary split three ways?
Janet Wolf: What keeps me in it is the people inside. Every single time I am surprised by the persistence and the power of folks inside, and then to watch folks come out, folks who do come out. I remember when Ndume first got out after 28 in a cage, 20 in solidary on death row for a crime, he didn't commit. I took him to a restaurant and he never chosen food. He had to become a vegetarian inside the prison because the meat was so awful and he decided spiritually that was going to be better. Took him to a vegetarian restaurant. He'd never heard of tofu, seitan, any of that stuff and it was like what?? We just ordered a whole bunch of little things. And it was like a little kid - he just delighted. But then not long after that, he called me from downtown and he said, Janet, the man on the traffic light, this thing that lights up, do you go when it's white or when it's orange? He was terrified of doing something wrong for fear that some cop would come over and find him.
The world outside is terrifying. It has no clue who they are. Imagine the only thing the world knows about you is the worst thing you've ever done. And maybe it's only the worst thing you were convicted of doing that you never actually did. The barriers are extraordinary. When Rahim got out after 26 years for an accidental shooting - went in at 17 - when Rahim got out he called Ndume, who had gotten out three years before and said, hey man, what's it like to be free? And Ndume, after three years, said I'm still learning, still learning, Because it's so difficult to make that transition.
There's a novel Denise Mina, I think is her name, that talks about the luxury of distance. And I think that many people like me have the luxury of distance. That's not my daily life. I have five boys. One of them has been jailed several times on junky stuff, but none of my five boys have been in prison. My youngest brother is 36 years clean from heroin and is exactly the kind of person who I see inside prison after 30-some years on a drug charge. But I'm white and middle income and my parents had good health insurance and he got help. So he's a granddaddy, he's doing great. But that luxury of distance I think, is something that church has and in fact, is why we end up as theological justifiers for the systems. Closing that distance, persistent proximity and partnership, focusing on justice and not charity, on that kind of proximate partnership instead of programs is everything. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, the gift of sitting with people who embody hope, who put flesh on hope for me.
So when I was on death row on Tuesday, I sit with Pervis Payne, who has had an execution date and they're pushing for another one. And there's national publicity to try to get him, off the death row list. I'm sitting with Abu has come within hours of execution only to pulled back at the last minute. And we're remembering, letters we wrote, we were working on the outside with high school kids who were in trouble with school, in trouble with the streets, messy family stuff going on, and trying to figure out how to provide community, emilie townes talks about listening people into life, how to listen them into life. So the guys on death row wrote letters to these young folks, ninth graders and ninth graders wrote letters back. And in one of the letters Pervis said, that's like my old man used to say, we may not be able to do much, but man, we blowing the trash off the water so we can take a drink. You know, just what it means to be with people who have to blow the trash off water so you can take a drink. And who keep doing that in defiance of all this stuff that comes at them, particularly church stuff. When you do an orientation to go into a prison, it'll probably be the chaplain who's hired by the state who will tell you, now you know folks inside are manipulative. They start saying anything like, man, you're the only person I can talk to, my heart's hurting today I’d like to spill some stuff to you, you better put up your radar because they're about to suck you in. Did you know that you could get stabbed with a pencil or a pen right in the throat? It could happen so fast. I mean, I have never once felt as threatened in prison other than perhaps by correctional officers as I have on the streets, you know, in some big city. So all that is to say for me that the church…Peter’s story has a great line. I wish I could remember it. The public square has become, has been taken over by greed, by systems that justify the violence. And it's the whole Howard Thurman thing, which I talked about before, about the backs against the wall. To me the church, since Constantine but even more recently in this country, from the beginnings of this country has been complicit, with the systems that criminalizing and cage, that lynch and consign through enslavement. And the redemption of the soul of the church requires, no kidding, long-term hanging out with, being proximate among, being held accountable by, communities who struggle every single day, because the systems have targeted them. I really believe that the institutional church is on the verge of death. I think that might be a good thing. I think the only thing that can save the soul of the church is to close the distance and to become accountable to communities that are struggling because of the systems that have targeted them. That's also where people will find hope. Every person I have helped walk into prison has been utterly transformed. You've met Eric Brown. Eric Brown was a student at American Baptist College, young black man. And I kept telling him, you know, I have this course every semester. I teach these courses inside the prison and half the students are American Baptist College and half the students are folks inside. He said, oh I don't know. No black man wants to volunteer to go into the prison, you're crazy! And then he finally decided he was going to try and for some reason, his application kept being denied, denied, denied. We had to write letters. He had to go for interviews. He was saying no black man has ever tried harder to get into a prison! But Eric would say that totally redefined his understanding of ministry and what it means to be a community of faith and what it needs to be a human being who depends on community with other human beings who really do have your back, who really do not only welcome you but light up when you walk in the room, because now the circle is going to be complete because there you are.
I want everybody to go inside, but not to save anybody. Jesus was a prisoner. But our notions of who Jesus was and is, of the gospels, of what it means to be church, have little if anything to do with the gospel, the biblical texts themselves. And in fact, defy everything that I understand discipleship to be about. And I think I'm convinced that the only way for those of us like me, who are in positions of privilege, who live comfortable lives, to actually hear the threat of the gospel - the threat of the gospel- is to be with folks for whom that hope is real. That hunger is so deep. You know, we tend to spiritualize the texts.
I remember being in a battered women's shelter. You know, I keep talking about how I do these participatory Bible studies cause I just think when you enter a story it's different and you can't be Jesus in every story, you have to be some of the other people. And so you know the guy in the ditch and who goes by. So I’m asking them, so here we are in a ditch, who's walking by? They say, aww man it’s a white man in a business suit. That sucker is never going to help us out of this shit. I never would have come up with that. Or doing the lowering the man through the roof, Mark 2, with a bunch of folks on the streets. So people who have no permanent place to live, and they’re the religious authority, some of them, and they’re saying, oh man, you just didn't take your meds. We don't know what you're talking about, all this stuff. And it's just the rawness of the gospel is hidden for most of us, because if you're like me, you were steeped in church lessons where one person interprets the Bible and can tell you how it's supposed to be. And then you just sort of keep that cute little Bible next to your bed and every now and then you might read a passage if you need comfort, but it doesn't actually have anything to do with your day to day life.
Patrick: I mean Janet, here's my question to all this. I mean, I want to overwhelm our listeners because as you say this. You do this work in pastoral ministry, you got doctorate, you're teaching, you have work inside prisons, you've been doing this stuff with battered women. I mean, this is a lot of ministry.
This is just a lot of work for any one person. And a lot of it is just you doing what the gospel calls you to do, not what your boss told you to do. I am really, really curious. How do you manage and maintain this sense of gospel, which I know you're giving us a sliver of what you do in the world, but also like family. You have kids, you have a life, you have a community, how do you balance all this stuff? And is there synergy between all these things or is it like you have firm dividers, ok now it's Tuesday is prison ministry day and Wednesday is Bible study?
Janet Wolf: Two things - the first is I remember from my time as a single mom, with two boys and three part-time jobs, I remember what it is to feel like I have no power, no voice, no vocation, no purpose, no value. And I remember the community that gave me life. I remember what it is like to have people feel connected, willing to see and hear me and help accompany me on the journey. And in order to maintain that sense for me, it is a requirement to keep myself in that place where community fuels my hope and my strength, my purpose, my power, that comes from community. And some of the community is family, and some of the community is behind bars, and some of the community has been behind bars, and some of the community is on the streets. All of that community though, is what fuels me.
So at one point I was asked to, put my name in for a very large, big name, famous church, as pastor. And when they sent me, I think it was a 34-page, description of what they're hoping for in this pastor, I was like, whoa, no! I told the search committee I wasn't going to do it. And they had the search committee call me back, “So how could you, I mean, this is such a great opportunity!” And I said, because if I did all these things, I couldn't do the things that helped me be me, that helped me remember who I am, that helped me listen to the sound of the genuine.
I mean I'm in the prison, not because it's work to do, but because I need that as a source of life and hope and accountability. It’s where I find joy. And the spillover lines. I mean, the kids and my husband have always been involved in everything. For a while we were part of the underground sanctuary movement that folks from Central America were coming through the United States, going up to Canada for safe haven. And you would get a call and it would say, oh, your aunt's down here at the church. And, you know, your three cousins are with her and so you'll need to bring your car down cause they're waiting. You must've forgotten to come pick them up. And so you'd go pick up a family who would normally speak no English and have been terrorized by the country they came from, death squads, and you wouldn't know how long they were going to stay. And then you would get a call saying, you know, I'm wondering if you could bring your aunt down to the church.
So you never knew who was coming. You never knew, sometimes, real names. You never knew the next place they were going. And you always had back up call for legal help, should the law intervene. And then we talked about it as a family and in the beginning, the kids were like, you what my bed? You want me to share my bed? They're gonna mess up my toys! And it was the first family from Guatemala who, as I remember, had four children. It took one time. It took one time to break everything open. And you know, that time when the family was leaving the house, the kids were offering them, oh, take this. Oh, take that. Oh wow, come back! And they have remained, there never has been a line.
Patrick: And fast forward us a little bit. So you've been doing this work in prisons. You've been in pastoral ministry, you've been teaching. And for the last, better half of the 2010s, working with CDF and non-violence training, organizing, local stuff in Nashville, the director of the Alex Haley farm in Clinton, Tennessee. Tell us a little about what that work has looked like. Where's the faith component in all of that as a minister, as someone who cares about people, tell us a little bit about all this work you been up to.
Janet Wolf: I think if you look at the gospel, ministry/discipleship is organizing, it's community organizing. It's the best of community organizing. Even Jesus needs a community, right, to get things moving. And it's movement building. Unfortunately in some ways, all pastors are organizers, only some of them aren't community organizers, they're organizers for the institution. For me, the lens for ministry has always been community organizing, whatever it is I'm doing. Gary Gunderson says, where can I go to see what you believe? And I believe that we're called to be the alternative. Gospel says, they're gonna look at you and the love is going to be so radical. Whoa, they're going to say, you know those are Jesus people cause they're just breaking all the boundaries. It just doesn't make any sense. What's going on over there defies all our status quo, and theology and polity and practices. Community organizing then is the lens. So for me, that's been a constant thread, community organizing.
I see non-violence as heart of the gospel. And nonviolence being the most powerful tool for systemic change. When you look across the world, persistently consistently, that's been the channel for long-term systemic change. You can make quick changes in other ways, but if you really wanted to do something that lasts, you nurture a community that will hold folks accountable, not just take down the system, not just create something new, but sustain that, which is part of the struggle that we're seeing politically right now in this country.
March of 2012, Marian Wright Edelman - Extraordinary woman, first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar, a young lawyer with Dr. King, one of the architects of the Poor People's Campaign, resurrection city - I had been one of the preachers for a Proctor conference, the Childrens Defense Fund Proctor Conference, I think in 2011. So Marianne knew that I did some work with Jim Lawson, architect of the nonviolent movement in this country, and she was hosting a session with Gene Sharp, who some might argue is the architect of nonviolence globally, has been used all over the world as a model for what nonviolent campaigns look like. She was holding a session with Gene Sharp and wanted Jim and I to come and wanted me to facilitate. She was asking some of the CDF staff, some of the CDF board members to really remember what this kind of movement building looks like. And so I did that and it was just kind of a one-time thing.
But then after that, she kept saying, and you could come and do non-violence. So we created the Lawson Baker Institute for nonviolence. Short and long-term is it didn't get funded. We did some extraordinary work with very few funds. Transitions happen in leadership and whatever. I think it will be resurrected and pieces of it will be resurrected, but the idea that Ella Baker and James Lawson can frame for us again, what not only movement building looks like, but what faith-based movement looks like?
When you're rooted, and Lawson would say over and over again, to be alive is to be invited to love. To not only throw your arms out in awe and wonder at all the gifts of the universe and the love coming towards you, but then to spill that love back out over and over again. It is to be alive! And for me that is the whole non-violence and church thing. And so I think that my work with the Children's Defense Fund has primarily focused on non-violent organizing to disrupt and dismantle the cradle to prison pipeline. I know there's the school to prison pipeline, but we believe it starts way before that. On the day kids are born, folks are targeting some of those children to end up inside a cage. And that's been really, really exciting work.
From that, we started a number of things. The Children's Defense Fund, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for child advocacy ministry, is about 27/28 years old. It's always been aimed at seminaries, theological education to redefine that in ways that put children in the very center. It's one of Marian's absolute declarations, keep the baby in the middle and everything else evolves from that. And there was kind of an informal engagement with seminarians. I mean, it's a week-long conference and lots of thick stuff happens. But Victor Anderson from Vanderbilt Divinity School - a friend and colleague - and I taught the first for-credit seminary course during Proctor in 2013. And from that, with the collaboration of Dale P. Andrews, another Vanderbilt Divinity School seminary professor whose sense of humor, wild wit, incredible laugh, and just creative genius, prophetic power, had always been a gift to me and to Victor, used some of the resources that he had to bring together a small group of people to help thicken this seminary collaborative that we had started. When Dale pulled us in to that meeting, we had probably five seminaries. He had 12 people who came to that meeting and we began to put down on paper more concretely what we were hoping for. We said that the seminary consortium, which now includes over 20 seminaries intended to redefine theological education and religious leadership through the lens of the sacrality of every child.
If you believe every child is imprinted with the divine, how would that change your church? How would it change your notion of ministry? How would it change your notion of theological education, children's ministry, prison ministry, evangelism? And what would it do for policies in our community for legislation at the state and national level? Really, every child imprinted with the mark of the divine. And so we created a focus in the seminary courses that require connection, proximity with children and youth who are way far on the edge, pushed there by systems, by white supremacy, by poverty, by school systems that dumped them out early by the criminal legal system.
And it has changed some of the seminaries, which has been fascinating to watch. So some of the seminaries started Children's Defense Fund Freedom School, coming out of 1964, Freedom Summer - incredible model for community organizing. Wisdom is already in the community, we don't need to import smart folks with college educations. Wisdom stories, culture, language, resistance, movements, all those things are there. In fact, my friend, who's now dead, Latin American theologian who said, if you are ordained, the church has accepted you in some way, you ask yourself two questions: The first is how have I compromised, because the institution would not have let me in unless I had. And the second is, what are the songs, the stories, the language among the people with whom you work that lead to revolution because they're always there. So the notion is that student seminarians will be immersed in this Proctor Institute, but they will also be immersed and challenged by communities of young folks that they listen to and learn from, are transformed by, and those immersions have to be in a way where they have no power. So it can't be their leading a study, they’re in charge of a program, inviting people in. They actually have to go and sit, be present with but not in charge of, or have any power over the people that they are listening to. Every year you've heard the stories of seminarians, are shocked, discomforted, angered, scandalized, and then transformed – they say, oh wow, if only I had known, and then they do. So our hope is to really redefine theological education and that work continues.
Patrick: One of the things that I love about that experience, just to say that the redefining of theological education, through the lens of the sacrality of every child, is that what you're doing is a lot of living out and teaching all of the various ministries. I would just say the way you live and work in life, that again, it is redefining everything. But there’s nothing that's off the table either. Because if you're thinking about children, all of these things affect at this systemic, at the personal level. It is transformative because it's saying, for kids they're learning the world, the world is them and everything you can think of, everything that we've tried to compartmentalize affects children.
Janet Wolf: On Thursday nights, I'm in the, we call it the low side - It's a maximum security prison, but it's not death row. And Joseph has been a part of our classes since 2011, I think. The other night we were talking, we were remembering. So we have an opening circle, in the opening circle everybody offers their name, the name you want to be called because while many of us are called whatever we want to be called folks inside and on the streets and on the edges are often named by other entities. And so in this circle, everybody gets to name themselves, what do you want to be called? When they offer their names, everybody offers some gratitude for the gifts they'll bring into the circle. And then there's one question and everybody responds to that one question. And on this night, it was a college student who asked the question and it was, what did you dream of becoming when you were little? And Joseph passed, he didn't answer. And then he wrote to me later and said, I never dreamed of becoming anything. I didn't know there was any possibility of being anywhere else or in the middle of anything else. What would have happened to me? Who would I be if anyone had invited me to dream? You know, I see people in churches doing all these programs, and it's not alone the systems, it is how we see and encounter and engage children from an early age.
I remember asking my oldest son when he was three, I think, who do you want to be when you grow up? He said, why me! Why would I want to be anybody else? I'm like, damn, that's a great answer. It took me a long time to get there, but glad you're doing it at age three. And what would it mean if our communities engaged kids where they are, to not only dream, but to just dance with delight at who they already are and who they are becoming? I remember going to South Africa, after the liberation and, one of the things that is such a simple thing, but had never occurred to me that happens often, was that schools were creating books by taking photographs in people's neighborhoods. So in what some people would call squatter camps, where thousands of children lived, there were books made. Here's a grandmother on the corner, baking bread and offering it to the kids on their way. And here's the old man who's carving wood and here's the little store where they pick up things. And it is the same notion, Paulo Friere that popular education conscientisation, that we learn in the community in dialogue with things that impact our lives directly. That our lived experience is a text. It's a source of wisdom. We don't have to look for outside things. So we can picture the way the world is and then we rename that world given our lived experience and our location and then imagine what it is, where we went to go. What if every child, you know, the books, they were reading were a reflection of where they live.
It's a constant reminder. I just say, I will always get it wrong if it is not my direct experience, I will always get it wrong. And even if it's my direct experience in the past, and I'm no longer there, I'll get it wrong. You know, Walter Bruggerman - we're seduced, we have amnesia, we use the language of the empire so that we can't even imagine a different world. Or Walter Wink - we've become chaplains of an unjust order.
Patrick: Janet, I just have one last question for you. I ask this to all of our guests but I feel like you've reframed what that question should be just a bit here because you have spoken so much about community. I want to start with the way that you have invited us to think about closing - closing a circle with naming ourselves.
So I would love for you to name yourself into this very small circle that we have in this little recording meeting here. And the question I want you to answer is, or some play on it because these questions are sometimes limited by our language, the ideas are limited. And I've asked all the guests, you know, how much of your own sense of call or how much of your sense of call has come from God, divine, your walks in the woods, time in solitary, to listening to the sound of the genuine in you, you know, Thurman is clear - it's in you, it's not in everybody else, it’s in you, and how much is it in community? Which to me is the sound genuine is for me, at least, in community. So, you know, how much of this sense of call is some divine beauty, whatever magic, what you want to call it with yourself and how much is it in community? But I'm inviting you first to name yourself and then answer that question.
Janet Wolf: Depending on the day my name is Janet, mom, grandma, hey you, JW. Today I'll be Janet. My call is grounded in community. Without community I lose the sense of who I am. I think I told you I'm doing Howard Thurman meditations and there's the one about, there's an angel on the alter inside of the flaming sword and nothing can come there that's not you, that's not like divinely created you. And I'm thinking this such a great thing. And then I read it again and it says without your consent, and I think, oh my gosh, well that's a whole different deal. I was depending on the angel with the flaming sword to like draw the boundaries, you know? And I realized how much I consent to, that has nothing to do with who I really am or who I'm called to be, and a lot to do with all the other voices and pushes that come at me. And I said this before, but say it again, being held by and being held accountable by community with its backs against the wall, is life-giving and it both helps me figure out what I need to consent to and not consent to, that really is the sound of the genuine, and walks with me, accompanies me, strengthens me, encourages me, pushes me often, to be; Just to be. So, yeah, lots with trees and walks and all those things. Dorothee Soelle German theologian, has this great book, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance and in it, she argues every day you need to practice awe because get seduced again, we just forget, we get numb. So I do practice awe. I saw a spider web that caught raindrops and held each individual drop, this morning. It was quite lovely. And every day we need to resist, every day we need to unlearn and let go, there’s stuff we have learned. And I have to do it every day, cause I might've done it yesterday, but then I might've picked it back up again, so I'm gonna unlearn it and really let it go or at least let it go today and maybe I'll let it go again tomorrow? And the third one is we resist the powers of death in order to heal. And we heal in order to resist, and we do that as individuals and communities. And so for me, because there is a community in which I practice awe, in which I am confronted with the things I need to unlearn and help to let go of them, in which I am accompanied and given courage and strength and power to resist the systems and theologies of death, in order to heal as an individual and community, and to heal, to heal, in that circle so that we can resist. Community fuels that for me.
Patrick: I know you say you get everything wrong, but that's near perfection for me, at least, so thank you. Thank you. And I just appreciate and love you so much and grateful that you shared, the many stories. I know there's so many more that are off record, but just my deep appreciation and gratitude and love for everything that you do in the world.
And for the love you pour out into the world. That is you, you emanate it and it's a love that doesn't let bullshit ride either. So I just want to say thank you for that as well.
Janet Wolf: Thank you for being part of the community that keeps me going, Thank you for the challenges and the invitations. Thank you for the ways you prop me up when I'm not doing so great. And the ways you invite my soul to dance, with all the possibilities of what might yet be. I’m so grateful for your wisdom and wit. And for your kids and spouse! I really like your family. Thanks.
Patrick: Thank you. I want to thank you for listening to the Sound of the Genuine. As always help us out and subscribe to this podcast so you can hear more inspiring stories from leaders across this country. I want to thank my team, our executive producer, Elsie Barnhart and the rest of the FTE crew, Heather Wallace, Diva Morgan Hicks, and as always, @siryalibeats for his music.
If you're looking for more resources or opportunities to engage with FTE, head on over to www.fteleaders.org. And thank you again for listening to the Sound of the Genuine.