Claudio Carvalhaes: Finding the Sound of the Genuine in Relationships

This week, Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes takes us from his childhood in São Paulo, Brazil, to his early days in ministry in small communities outside the city. He talks about the support of his family and ancestors, clearing out the noises of life to listen to what matters, and finding the sound of the genuine in our relationship to the earth.

Cláudio is an associate professor of worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. A much sought-after speaker, writer, and performer, he has given academic presentations and performances and delivered sermons at over 50 conferences and academic societies. His most recent books are Ritual at World’s End: Essay on Eco-Liturgical Liberation Theology and Praying with Every Heart - Orienting our Lives to the Wholeness of the World. 

Website: www.claudiocarvalhaes.com
Twitter: @ccarvalhaes
Instagram: @ccarvalhaes

Vector Illustration by: ReAl_wpap
Music by: @siryalibeats

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Transcript

Patrick: Now for this week's episode of the Sound of the Genuine, I am excited because it's one of my dear friends and colleagues, Reverend Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes who is one of the most inspiring hopeful joy-filled and liberative human I have ever met. He is associate professor of worship at Union Theological Seminary who will walk us through not just how he has gone from small rural communities in Brazil pastoring, and thinking about how to find liberation, to the streets of New York City, where Union is. But he'll also walk us through some of his work that has turned towards ecological care. How are we going to save this planet? I'm so glad you get to hear Cláudio's story. 

Claudio it’s good to see you and have you here live and in person, this is, you know, just so you know, this is the first live episode we've done in the flesh. 

Cláudio: Oh really?

Patrick: Yes. So thank you so much. 

Cláudio: It's so good, always so good to see you. You’re so close to my heart. Good to 

Patrick: Same. And I know the things you do. I mean, full professor now you're preaching, teaching, writing books all over the globe. Now tell me when you were just a little Cláudio, that's what you wanted to do? You said, I want to work at Union. I want to be a worship designer, and author. Take me back to the beginning. 

Cláudio: It's so good to be with you my brother, it's so good. Before we start, let me say that when you invited me I had to go back to Howard Thurman's text where the title of the podcast comes from. And I remember vividly how this text was so powerful to me. And I just want to read a piece of it. It says, “The sound of the genuine is flowing through you. Don't be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams and your ambitions, that you don't hear the sound of the genuine in you. Because that is the only true guide that you will ever have and if you don't have that you won't have a thing.” 

As I listened to the podcast, to be able to speak the sound of genuine is necessary to be able to listen. And listening is what creates the possibility of us to know origin. And you do that. I think the sound of the genuine, it takes so long - I'm 53 now - It feels that just now I am getting close to it. Because there's so much noise and so much conditioning that it takes a long time to a figure something out about ourselves, you know, who we are and where we have been. 

You mentioned the full professorship. When I received it, there was a sense of receiving that that has very little to do with me and so much to do with like this host of people, the cloud of witnesses, or your ancestors and they're all here and so many people who made me. So if I start to count my great-grandparents coming from so many places and my parents, and then the little church who gave me almost everything. The little church that I grew up was a Presbyterian church in San Paulo. They gave me the food, the first toy and they gave me a space, a place to be. They told me stories. They taught me to sing. And it's this village, right? It's this full sense of a village that makes us. And one of the things of this conditioning that is hard to listen to our genuine is because the ways that we are framed and shaped to live, it's all about us, the individual, the notion, this discreet sense of self. 

There's no such a thing. I can only hear myself in the sounds of the many voices in plurality of of, all of those people who still speak with me. And so I come from this place where my father got ill and had to retire soon. And my mother was pregnant at that time. So it was a very rough time. I had three siblings that were much older than me. I came after 10 years. One of my sisters is 17 years older than me. And my mom used to do laundry, would take me to clean houses and offices and I would sit there and she would clean everything and then we'll go home. And she would sell perfumes on the streets, so I remember that vividly. And so I grew up in that part of town that was mixed and varied as well. I was always passionate about things. So, you know, the mission of the church, it gave me something to hold on to change the world, to think in terms of more a broad sense. 

What happened then is that this very conservative, fundamentalist movement from United States coming to Brazil. And then all of this passion turned to be like an evangelist. And my dream when I heard about Billy Graham, I don't know if I should make this confession, but I wanted to be the Billy Graham. That's what I wanted to be. And I dreamed of stadiums full with people and I'm preaching and people accepting Jesus. And to the point that when I was 17, I started a group of 40 young people and we would rent a bus and we would go to the countryside and we would collect all of the churches of a small town and they would give us the place to stay. And we would arrive on the Friday. We had all the streets mapped out and we will go two by two to give folders and materials. And then in the evening we would have the event. 

Usually it was movies. And I remember like using the cars of somebody from the church and speaking out loud, then sometimes with the (mega) phones sometimes without that come tonight to see the movie! Come and it will be free. And so then people would come and, and so I did that for a while.

So I also, gave myself to this, organization who works with the salvation of indigenous people. I gave myself because I wanted to be a missionary, to save the indigenous people as well. Because I have a background of my great-grandmother, who was a shaman. But colonization steals everything from us so all I have now is my mother saying that my grandmother was a nurse cause she dealt with stuff to help people heal. So I don't know what people she belonged [to] or anything. And if I ask my mom when she's not paying attention, she would say that she was indigenous, when she's paying attention, oh no, she's not. But I think there was this connection there too. 

And then in Brazil, when you finish the high school, you go, uh, you can go straight to seminary. You don't need to go to college first, because theology is your college. Uh, so I went 18 years old and then, and at that time I was already working. I started working when I was 13 years old…I had to move, I used to study in the morning and in the afternoon I had to move to the evening. And go to seventh grade, I would work from 8 to 6 and then study from 7 to 11. And that's when my, uh dream of being a soccer player didn't work because I had to work full time.

But anyways when I was 18 and went to the seminary five years, but then I went to the very liberal seminary, right? The one that my church didn't want me to go. My pastor at that time wanted me to go to another seminary because that seminary was about liberation theology. And that would, it would distort my faith. But I couldn't move to another state. I remember going, I was so afraid. There was a teacher there, Odair Pedroso Mateus who's now uh, the head of the faith and order at the World Council of Churches. He was one of the teachers there. And I remember looking at him and it almost seemed like, I don’t know, sort to a devil that would steal away my faith. And in some ways the seminary did! The passion for the evangelism became the passion for the wellbeing of the people which was the fullness of the gospel but also the fullness of the possibility of life. And that liberation theology transformed me me and gave me a much expansive, complex, difficult, framework from which my passion could go. And that was also in synch, when I was 13, 14 I would get people on the streets and I will bring them to the church, but they were like stinking and they would sit in the very last pew, and I would sit with them there. Yeah, I never understood why the church would never have them there. So actually later I started to understand the church is about class as well. Right? Some like denominational cup holders for certain forms of identity, class, race. And I had no clue. For me everything should be for everyone.

But anyways, finished that, was ordained when I was 24 in the Presbyterian Church, independent Presbyterian Church. And then I work in this small community in the outskirts of Sao Paulo. I had gone to the World Council of Churches for six months, I got a scholarship. And when I came back, I though oh now I'm going to get a church, right? A big church. And because I went to world council of churches, I have something in mind. And some churches approached me, but there was this one church that no pastor had accepted to go cause it was too far away, and very poor. 

A friend of mine who, finished, theology with me, he was, he was a pastor of one church that was kind of overseeing this other church. [He said] don't you want to go there and teach Bible school one day? I said, sure. So I went and he said, well, they're looking for a pastor for I dunno how many years. And so I went already with the response ready - I'm sorry, I cannot - because I was sure they're going to invite me because they've been inviting so many pastors. And I remember standing there and waiting for them to ask me to be their pastor and nobody came. And so I went back home like what, what happened? And so I call my friend, what, what happened? Well they have been doing, but they know that you would never accept it. You came from World Council of Churches from Geneva. They know, they know. 

That changed me. That transformed me. a couple days later, I called my friend and said can I go back and teach Sunday School again? He set it up for me. I went there and after Sunday school, I was still waiting for them to say something, they didn't say anything. So I asked the elders of the church and said can I have a conversation with you? I wanted to ask if you would consider me as your pastor? Cause that's how I felt the spirit. And they didn't say like right away, “oh sure, yeah.” He had just said, “well, let's see.” I went home and said, my goodness. And I kept praying and praying to see what was it. And some time later they asked me again and I said, yeah. And so that was five years of my life. I learned so much there and it was very simple people, but there, I felt a little bit of what, Ruben Alves says this aperitif, kind of a taste of heaven, of what church should and could be. 

Second month I'm there the treasurer comes to me and says….how are you doing? I’m doing good. Um, how's our soccer teams? They are fine. [I said] And what do you want to say? Uh, we don't have money to pay you. Are you going to stay? I said well, yes. But, have figure out something! From that Sunday on, because it was very far away, I would come in the morning, have Sunday school in the morning with 30 kids from very poor neighborhood - so we would have the kids there, and I would spend the day visiting people and then preaching in the evening. They would they would give me bags food that would feed like, 5 people. And this treasurer, put always $5 in my pocket to pay for the buses and the train. And that church taught me about a gospel that, that I could pair, I could read, act and I could see it happening. 

We were trying to buy a piece of land because the church was renting a garage. It was about $5,000…$8,000 would do everything -  buy the land, put four walls and a roof - $8,000. For a year, we did all kinds of, of programs you can imagine – pizza, cake, yardsale, whatever. And after one year of intense, almost every weekend, we raised $300 with intense work. And then one Sunday I was telling the church, we have $300 and we will keep on going. After the service, this member came to me and said, pastor my…the roof of my house fell. And that was a man married with eight kids. The next day we went to look for what it would cost to put that shack back and it was $300. and and the whole church didn't…I didn't even need to ask the church. The elders and no we need to do right now because he's under the weather. So we do the same day. 

So next Sunday I tell the church and everybody clap because now he has his house back, his home back. So the sense of the village - there was a place where your kids could come to my house and show up at any time and there will be a meal for them there. So that sense of belonging, of holding each other. I think that made me…a sense of church that was…it would be hard to find after that.  

And I remember one time, people were losing their jobs and then one of the members came and said, pastor, I want to give my tithe, my offering, but I don't have anything. What can I do? And then I said well, bring your envelope, everybody had an envelope, and give it empty. That's what you have. But at least you go and tell God, God, this is what I have and this is what I give. And so he did that. And then after a month, the treasurer comes to me and said, pastor look at this, we have 10 envelopes empty here. You know why it is? I said, I do. So he kept telling other people who were unemployed and people start to give! And it was the most beautiful thing. I would raise the envelope and say God, this is the offering of your people but they need a little more, and it was powerful. 

Then I come to United States and I do the reverse - the first missionary of the Presbyterian Church went to Brazil in 1859. And now I'm doing the reverse coming to United States as a missionary from Brazil to United States with the Presbyterian Church, the PCUSA. So I go to Fall River, Massachusetts to work with the community, mostly Portuguese speaking but there was nobody there.

I thought there was a community and there was nobody. So to start again, the sense of going back to my evangelism, my Billy Graham sense, it wasn't in me anymore. And so I remember that we started to do video of the worship, half-hour, because they could use the public TV. I remember going to church, but it was only me. So I would plug the camera and run away to the front of the church and say “welcome everybody! I'm so glad you're here” and I would just zoom in on me so you wouldn't see the empty yet. So I'll do the whole worship. I would preach. I would sing, I would pray. And I did that for, I don't know, two years, but nothing worked. Nothing worked so we're about to leave. And it was the most hard place for me in my life. And I was married then with Esther and we had a very hard time, but then when we decided to leave, one of the people here said, well, just wait for the summer and you go back. 

During that time I received a phone call, it's this immigrant, this person said, Cláudio I'm here. And I was told you were going to help me. Excuse me, why? This is your phone number. You're going to help us to get heat in our house and help us to get our driver's license. And I'm not understanding. So come home, let's have a meal and I don't know what you’re talking about. And so I discovered because I put my ads everywhere for people to come, that some organization who like steal money from people, you pay like $10,000 to come to the United States and they promise you a ticket and a house and somebody who'll take care of you here. And I was the person! I never knew that I was a part of this gang or this group, but then people started to call me and those people who started to call me thinking that I was going to get them jobs and that was the beginning of the church. I got in touch with several companies and people like to get jobs for the women, to get jobs for the men and, you know, jobs that nobody wants to work only the immigrants and so that's how we started. And so our church was created and in 3 years was a beautiful church, about 60 adults, about 30 kids, all undocumented. I was the only one documented there. This is my place, with those who were out of the system. So the undocumented for me is my people here because that's where I feel that I belonged, because I was their pastor. 

Another story. I'm in the post office and there's a line of cars. So there's a parking spot that opens, I am the next one but it's behind me. So when I tried to turn somebody just comes in. So here we go - a story that we all know right, about parking spaces and no people can die because of that. And so I was so furious. I went to the person and said, excuse me, didn't you see me? I was in front of you. And this person didn't answer. I said, excuse me. I'm talking to you. Can't you just wait? As soon as she heard me, when I was pushing her to talk, she said, well the place is here for US Citizens you wait for spot when there is one available. I remembered that I was so livid. And it was almost like white cloud took me. The anger was such that I lost sense of time and when I came back, the car was not there anymore. So I don't even know how long I was there. So I went to the car and I spent about three hours in the car wrestling, what am I going to do with next service, the next service in church? And so we would always record the service for other people who couldn't come because they were working. So I said, close the doors, shut down the video, I'm going to tell you what happened to me this week. And it was so powerful that I was crying cause it was so visceral in my body. So people starting to cry. I said now I want you to tell your story. Oh Patrick! I think we had almost like almost three hours service that day. Because people came to the pulpit and told their stories one after the other. And the stories of having their humanity taken away. 

And we cried and praised and sang and it was one of the most beautiful worship services but there's something else, there's people here who also love. The story is never one sided. There's never one side of any story. There's always blurrings and infection, so to speak, or mixing ups and crossings. And so we are here because somebody loved us. This church is giving us this space. Somebody is giving us a space for us so that you have somebody to help you to find jobs, to go to the doctor, to put your kids through school. The whole service was a way of giving space to that frustration, anger, but also to mix it all with gratitude. In order to survive this world, we always have to compose the weight of the world with the lightness of gratitude. 

But anyways, finishing that I did my PhD at Union, taught in Louisville, in Philadelphia, in Chicago and now I'm back at Union. When I finished my PhD, my mother was there. I wish my father could be there but he had died, just in January. And so when we go into graduation, I tell my advisor I'll need to say something today. Janet Walton said, “No, you cannot say anything. This is a graduation, there's protocols here!” I said I know, I know, but I need to say something. They say, no you cannot, Janet, unless you do not allow me to go inside - and I won't if you tell me - I'll have to do something. “I don't want to hear anything,” she said. We go in. So when I'm called and I received my diploma, and it’s a beautiful ceremony, then she hoods me and then I received the diploma and I said friends, just a minute please, just a minute. I didn't even look at her. I just want to say something. You know, for me, this is…it's a miracle. So many people that I need to say thank you after the six years. Cause during that time I lost my marriage, my father died, but I finished! And I said, there's so much gratitude in the midst of, you know, but I cannot name everybody. So I'm just going to name my father who always wanted to understand what a “doctor” meant. He always asked me, so doc like the white, you’re going to wear the white jacket? I said no Dad, that’s not that. That's not that doctor. I'm going to teach. But why doctor? So it was always this conversation. And he studied up to the fourth grade, but he cannot be here, but I have here my mother. At that time she was 78 and she is now 91. I said, well, but I have my mother here and my mother did everything she could to raise 4 kids. She did laundry, she cooked, she cleaned houses and offices, she sold perfumes and she studied up to the second grade. I think she deserves this more than I do. 

So I go down where she is and I have her stand. And I turned her around and I hood her. When I hood her this whole place gives this almost illiterate woman a standing ovation. Ah, that for me, that for me, there was the fullness of life. And the funny thing is that afterwards I needed to take a picture. I said, mom, can I use that? Cause she kept the hood. So I said mom, can I have the hood just for the pictures? She said, “are you bringing it back?” I said, yes I am. So we go back to Brazil and she's on the phone with a friend because she had a prayer chain for 40 years. It's going on up to now. And she's trying to explain to her sister what happened at Union. And she says, you know, Cláudio’s graduation there was this thing there. They uh…ah! They made me the woman of the year there. So she's with me all the time.

And so another thing that changes my life is when I get married. I’m 45, I met Katie and the kids. And Katie was a widow her husband was the head of the worship of the Evangelical Lutheran church, And he came to study with me when I was in Philadelphia at Lutheran seminary there. So he wanted to finish his degree. So we had this wonderful time and then he's almost done when he comes to me and said, Cláudio, I have to stop, he was 35 then the cancer came back - I had cancer five years ago, but it came back. And we cried and we prayed and never saw him again. We met four times, perhaps?

He dies very soon after that. And after a while, the seminary decides to give to the family, the diploma in memoria. And they asked me what you think, oh, wait, he was almost done. He had the whole thing! He wrote beautifully, he has it! And so then the seminary invited the family and I had never seen Katie or the kids, I just heard from Peter and because he writes also about them. So I contact Katie and said, “Katie can we publish this for Peter?” She said, sure. Let's talk about it. And it's a while after he dies. So when they come and I was there standing and when they call Katie to receive the diploma for Peter Perella, when she and the kids walk in the aisle, I don't know what happened.

My whole body felt this energy, this spirit. And I said, God I give this to you, I don't know what it is. I know it was not love at first sight because I had no idea why I was feeling that way. And when we finished, I don't even go outside to shake the hands of the students. I go straight to the reception to find the kids. I needed to play with the kids! All I knew is that I needed to play with the kids. So I start playing with them with Libby, with CC, and Ike he was three year old boy that I just played with him and, and that was it. 

It was nothing in me that said, oh, it's going to be my family, nothing. I just, I just needed to be with them. So when I invited her to come to Philadelphia, I said, can you also bring the kids? And she comes and we went to children's museum in Philadelphia and we spend a day together. The marriage was about dying and living together again, right? Because you die to one form of life and you begin another form. And for me to be a father of three kids, I had to just like jump into the train running hundred miles per hour. 

So when we talk about the sound of the genuine, my brother, all of this are parts of clearing out the noise. And to listen to my kids, I had to listen to myself and that's the hardest part. So to be a father, I had to listen to me and to all the messed up stuff inside of me. All of the things that I never dealt [with] before that I just kept pushing. And I kept running everywhere, running everywhere. My current dream is always that I'm lost somewhere because I've traveled so much trying to find the place that I'm still lost finding something. And then they are this port that I have to stay! That I arrive and I have to stay with Katie and the kids. And being with them with…Libby is now 16, CC is 14, Ike is 10 and we've been married for six years and they have completely changed my life, the four of them. And now we have Amore, a little dog who is also changing me in many ways. 

And the last thing, is that five years ago, I think because of two things, because of hearing about the ways in which world is going in terms of the climate change and having three kids, that started to give me a lot of anxiety and fear. What kind of world we're going to give to our kids. And then I start to hear not like something like, oh, in a hundred years in 2,100, the ice will melt or our species are going to be extinct. The pace that we are going right now is such that we are all going to see [it] ourselves. They are talking about the melting of the ice in 10 years, and then what? So for me, I started to just what to do, and then we go to the indigenous knowledge and they say that our task is to care for seven generations, at least. So it is the Ancestors that came and the Ancestors who are coming - so three generations before us, ours, and three ahead of us. And I don't know if you're going to be able to give this to the next generation. That sense of anxiety and the sense of what am I doing hit me so hard. That I remember reading Robin Kimmerer book, Braiding Sweetgrass and how, again, this passion, this fire was on me. And she came to talk at Union and at the end - very end when she's talking with folks present, she says you know we need new rituals for this time. And we don't have rituals for this time. We need to create something because a lot of the indigenous knowledge is through rituals, right? And that for me was a coming to the earth moment. 

I remember I was watching it. I kind of stood up and said I accept the challenge and I gave myself to it. Patrick, after that I literally got all of my courses, went to the first garbage bin and tossed it. It doesn't work anymore. None of this is going to help me or the next generations to live. 

It's too much inward - everything of my liberation theology is if doesn't take the notion of the land, it won't take us anywhere. And dealing with, you know, as you also do decolonization and decolonization, what I've been seeing is that anything that is called decolonization that doesn't take the earth, fundamental, because what is colonization, if not the ripping apart of people from the earth? That's colonization! Ripping people apart from the connection of the earth. So any sense of decolonization that does not take into account the earth, we are still not being able to listen to the sound of the genuine and I'm realizing that the sound of the genuine is in our relation with the earth.

And that for me is so new, because, you know, I grew up in Sao Paulo. I know well about concrete. Throw me into any town anywhere and I'll find my way around, even if I don't have the language. But if you take me to, uh, half mile into it and I do not know how to come back because I'm completely lost. But to learn about the earth it is to recompose the entire sense of the self, of the senses. Why do we always say "to make sense?" The world that we live in doesn't make sense because our sense is not in regards to our inner selves that I have to listen, or I will bring my full self or my full voice or my own…But when we are dealing with the self as a discreet phenomenon, as something that lives somewhere inside of us, we are lost. 

We are in the place where the sound travels, but it doesn't get anywhere. It doesn't reverberate. So for me to start listen, for instance to the birds, ah, then I first said wow there's birds! First of all, there's birds first, paying attention! And then we remembered Rachel Carlson when she wrote about the Silent Spring, that we might go into it soon where all of the birds are dying because of, a poison. That's why our bees dying. So just to discover that there are birds. Second, to be able to pause and listen to the birds.

I remember with my kids, when I start to this discovery, I get my kids into uh, walking with them and I said, "Stop! Can you hear it?" And they said, "what dad?" Can't you hear it? Hear what? Oh listen. Hear what? The birds. And then some of them, say, rolled their eyes. Yeah, okay, okay. But then I remember like after a while, I'm taking Ike to the bus stop and he stopped in our tracks and said, Dad, can you hear it? And I completely forgot that I said, hear what? Can you hear it? Ikey, you're going to get late. What is it? Can you hear it? What is it? The birds! Oh! So there's this learning together until the last part, which is when we hear the sounds of the birds, not as the sound of the birds, but the sounds of ourselves. That bird singing right there in that tree Patrick, it's your sound. That tree standing right there is another part of you standing. You're just looking at yourself in a different form and shape. And when I start to do that, then everything changes. 

So to go into that is to find the sound of the genuine in the relationality, it's never in me, but it's always in relation with you but also in relation with the rivers. There's no way that I can have baptism if the river next to my church is polluted. We shouldn't have it. Or we shouldn't have communion if the soil where it comes from is poisoned. 

It doesn't come from farmers workers because you, you know, who takes care of your grapes, of your Eucharist, of wine or your juice? Undocumented immigrants who harvest it all for you. So what makes the most sacred thing for you is tainted by injustice.

I'm trying to learn and to listen to the sound of the genuine by paying attention to the land, to the systems, to the patterns, to the processes. And I'm far away from it, but I can, I can hear it coming. I hope I'll be able to fully hear it.

Patrick: Claudio, thank you. Primo, that's amazing. Thank you so much. 

Cláudio: I spoke too much.

Patrick: No, you did not at all. Thank you. That was a true gift. Thank you for being our first live guest. Thank you. 

Cláudio: Thank you for your listening, so attentive. We pour it, our selves because you are there, Patrick it makes total difference! You're fully there - the sound of the genuine is possible because there's a genuine listening to that sound.

Patrick: Aw, I’m grateful.

Hey, I want to thank you for listening to Claudio's story. And as always, please leave us a review. Tell us what you think about this show. And I want to thank my team. The executive producer, Elsie Barnhart, Heather Wallace, and Diva Morgan Hicks, who all helped put this show into the world. And @siryalibeats for putting the music and soundtrack to these wonderful stories. 

And I want to express my gratitude for you listening to this story. We hope that it is helping you find the sound of the genuine in you.