Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Hi, everyone. I’m Carmen Acevedo Butcher and welcome to Learning How to See. Because my gentle mother has always modeled loving all people, deeply listening to who each person uniquely is. Because of my painful experiences of being treated at school and other places sometimes as less than because of my brown skin. Because my father was that conundrum of a brown-skinned Cuban-American racist US citizen. And because growing up I saw how joyful and kind my mother is as opposed to the unassuagable anger that possessed my father to his grave, I wanted my mother’s gentle path for me. And I’ve always tried to pause when I notice within me when I might be seeing someone less openly and less lovingly than they deserve. As a teacher too, I want every student to feel heard, seen and respected. And this, regardless of whether they’re a great student that semester or not, I want them to feel I have faith in them, want them to honor their voice, want them to succeed, and that I’ll work with them.

When I began teaching again a decade plus after I’d left the University of Georgia, I’d been a stay-at-home mom for years. To say I felt out of step with society was an understatement. The last time I’d taught as a teaching assistant for composition courses at UGA, I’d been single and not juggling a family too. So while excited, I was deeply questioning as I began to teach again, can I really do this? Imposter syndrome haunted me then, every step. Not long after I began again to teach, I was surprised by an experience with my own limited vision. A quiet young man in a world-lit class simply had long blonde hair that he pulled back into a ponytail. And I was surprised, because I’d found myself looking at this student slightly sideways within myself, simply because he had a ponytail and I’d never met a man with a ponytail.

However, because as a teacher, I practiced getting to know all of my students, I paused within myself to interrogate my hesitation. And when I paused, I realized then I’d inherited without my it, my father’s frequent criticism of anyone whose hair wasn’t as short as his. He was a Korean War Navy veteran and he rigidly preferred people to resemble his notions of what was correct. I realize now fear was the foundation of my father’s disdain. I had expressly never wanted to follow in those footsteps. So I’ve long embraced teaching as a practice of giving up certain preferences I might have for, say, particular personality types or whatever it might be. Where a student’s self-expression might differ from mine is one reason I gained a curiosity about tattoos when all others my age were thoughtlessly dissing them. And I opted instead to make it a practice to open to these self-expressions and make room for new things.

That time over 20 years ago now, when I paused and looked again with respect at this shy student with the ponytail, I learned he was working at a local car repair shop, repairing cars to pay for his college tuition. Over time and many classes with me, he turned out to be one of my two best students ever. He wrote a comp-lit dissertation years later on the Via negativa that included works from four different linguistic backgrounds, including the middle English Cloud of Unknowing. And if he had not turned out to be an unforgettable student and my very valued decades-long friend, he still would have deserved for me to see him not with my blinkered eyes, but through the eyes of love and openness. What I’m saying is what joy in his friendship I would’ve missed if I had not paused that day to open my eyes and really see him.

And the same is true for hundreds of students who’ve enriched my life by being different from me. What joy. In Dancing in the Darkness, the Rev Dr. Otis Moss III quotes, the Rev Dr. Howard Thurman, who called fear one of the persistent hounds of hell. And Otis shares a story of a time when he says, “I could feel what he meant. Fear was a hellhound. If we cannot learn to confront it can destroy anything we are trying to build.” May we practice the pause that turns binary vision into a third way or a third eye, so we can experience seeing what Thurman called the Glad Surprise, which brings great joy and healthy community.

Brian McLaren:

Welcome everyone to this episode of Learning How to See. This season we’re talking about what it means to see with eyes of love. There are so many different ways we can look at the world and the ways we see affects what we see. So our theme is looking with eyes of love, seeing with eyes of love. And we’re so happy, well, first I’m always happy to have Carmen Acevedo Butcher, my colleague and friend and co-host here. And we’re so happy to have our guest, Reverend Dr. Otis Moss III. And Otis, we have been friends for a number of years. Now, every chance I get to see you just brings some joy to my heart. How do you like to be introduced? How would you want folks to know about you?

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

However you want to introduce me, Brian, will be fine.

Brian McLaren:

Well, let me say you’re a pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in the Chicago area, and I would say… I was a pastor for many years. If I need a pastor, Otis, I’m calling you. Because I just have so much respect for your wisdom, your depth, and your skill, and just your good heart. So I’m so grateful for you. You have written a number of books. How many are we up to now?

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

I’m not as far as you. I think it’s about five now. Yeah.

Brian McLaren:

That’s great. I actually wanted to start our conversation today by evoking the title of your book, Blue Note Preaching. And in that book you say America is living in a stormy Monday, but the pulpit is preaching a happy Sunday. And you speak of struggle, the struggle of being… And of course, this is not color radio, so folks will have to take our word for it here. But for you as a Black man in America, you say, “It is a strange affair to be Black and live in America, and even stranger to be Black and a person of faith in these yet to be United States.” And I wonder if you could just talk about the struggle and maybe the struggle in 2025 as we’re having this conversation, what it feels like for you these days, Otis?

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

Well, I just appreciate you bringing that up. The peculiarity, the strangeness of being Black. A person of African descent in America really is spoken of by W.E.B. Du Bois in Souls of Black Folk. He says, “What is it like to be a problem, and at the same time a product along with an inherent creativity and genius that is wrapped in within your community and your culture?” Where you’re seen as a problem, a product in one hand, and then there’s a gifting on the other. So there is this two-edged sword that functions, and America has always had difficulty with Black people expressing the fullness of who they are, that we have to be something else to make other people comfortable, that we have to tamp down who we are to make other people comfortable. And that is a peculiar place to be.

James Baldwin goes into this in The Fire Next Time talking to his nephew and saying in a letter sharing with him about the importance of being fully who you are. And that’s the only way that you can shake your dungeon, is to allow God and to speak through the uniqueness of who you are and not attempt to be an emulation, a copy of anyone else. Because copies are always inferior to the original, so the authenticity of you being who you are is a way to escape the dungeon of colonization, of racism, of white supremacy, however you want to frame it, is being authentically who you are and the fullness of who you are is one of the steps to break free of the dungeon.

Brian McLaren:

That word dungeon is a powerful word. It makes me think also, in Blue Note Preaching, you talked about having the blues tattooed on your heart, which to me was a powerful way to say that. Carmen, I’m thinking about you growing up as a brown-skinned girl of Cuban descent in north Georgia as a child, and you felt that in your context.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Exactly. I was thinking, Reverend Otis, when you said you have to tamp down. There’s that, “A woman shouldn’t speak up.” And especially a brown woman. I think of also how you’ve written about Reverend Dr. Howard Thurman who says the gospel is for those whose backs are against the wall. And how in the foreword to that book of 1996, we read that this is more and more people. It’s applying to more and more. And I really appreciate your work for calling out that the Stormy Monday and Sunday are not separate, we need to have both together. We need to have the gospel in the Stormy Monday.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. The song, They Call It Stormy Monday. It’s borrowed from, for those who may not be familiar, “They called it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad. Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s also sad. Friday the eagle flies and Saturday I go out to play, but on Sunday you will find me on my knees in church to pray.” It’s a holistic blues song that says the Monday through Sunday are interconnected. And that’s one of the challenges of Americanized faith traditions is that there is a separation, a siloing, a dichotomy that does not want a Sunday and Monday to intersect.

Brian McLaren:

Here in the United States since last November and since January, we’ve watched this assault on DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. And it feels like these are, among other things, these are attempts to tamp down the part of us that wants to tell the truth about our history. Tell the truth about our present. Tell the truth about where, unless we have a change of heart, that’s going to lead in the future. How is that feeling for you as a minister and for the people in your congregation in Chicago week by week in this time of struggle.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

It is a feeling of the echoes of Confederate ghosts and antebellum felon boys have taken over the people’s house once again. It is a return to a moment that our community is very familiar with, and that was post-Reconstruction period, where those who were plantation owners wanted to take back the south. And that was part of their slogan, “How do we take our country back?” They kept saying this, that, “We want to make the south great again?” These are the words they’re using.

Brian McLaren:

Same words.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

These are the words they were using and they had a war against DEI. So here you have in the 1800s, you have the fastest… This never happened in western society where you had a group, 4 million people who were considered to be property. All of a sudden they move into the wider society at a speed that had never been seen before. People who were three-fifths of a human being become senators, congresspersons, business owners. They begin to build schools. You have Tulsa, you have Rosewood, you have Auburn Avenue. You have all of these amazing communities that are built, it seemed like almost overnight.

And then in 1877, this compromise that happens where plantation owners, the insurrectionists were pardoned by the US government and they were allowed to take positions of power. Because as a confederate, you were not to take any positions of power. You were considered to be a traitor insurrectionist. And they started a campaign to say that the Hiram Revels, who’s senator. And the Robert Smalls, Congressperson. They had movies that came out called Birth of a Nation to say that, “These people are dangerous. They’re taking your jobs. They want to hurt your children, they want to rape your women.”

And so there was a concerted effort media-wise, and there was an effort by plantation owners to take back over. We’re witnessing that exact same playbook that is happening once again, and it is important for those who have mics. Nas says, “One mic can change the world.” Those who have mics. To be able to tell the truth of this story and that the words the yet-to-be United States of America, we are making America. And that that is the project, the democratic project, the spiritual project, the civic project. And we are in a moment that Frederick Douglass saw, he was very clear that the people of faith who… Or I should say he said the people who claim to have a faith really are connected to a form of idolatry and not Christianity, and that will be part of the downfall of the nation. Unless people of faith who are deeply connected to love, they are required to speak up in these moments.

Brian McLaren:

As you’re speaking Otis, I can’t help but think a lot of people when they think of being loving, they think of being nice and being nice means we don’t talk about anything difficult or unpleasant. Let me say it bluntly. I think some people think to be loving, we have to pretend we’re stupid or act stupid, that we don’t know what we know about our history and about our laws and about our society. And I think something that you as a preacher and a prophet have written about and spoken about, and that your life just manifests, is that to be loving means speaking the truth. It doesn’t mean hiding the truth. I’d love to hear you reflect on that.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

I’m glad you said that, because love is connected to truth. Love is connected. I like the way Maya Angelou says it, it says, “Courage activates love.” That it’s not possible to love unless you are courageous and you have the courage to love. And then wrapped in love is truth telling and justice action and affirming. That justice is nothing but love in public. That’s all that justice is. And that is the requirement that the love that Jesus puts forth is a truth-telling love.

A love that sets captives free. A love that goes into spaces that no one else goes. A love that is so radical that the way in which He is executed is a state execution process. And we have to begin to reclaim this radical, revolutionary, transformative, liberating love that speaks truth, that is courageous, that is transforming, that is willing to engage for, not us, but for a generation that’s not yet born. That’s what this is about. This has nothing to do with us on this podcast. This is about people we will never meet. What are we doing to put one brick in the cathedral of a democracy that is unfinished?

Brian McLaren:

Otis, I’m thinking part of when you write about that struggle of being a Black human being, a Black Christian in America, the history of white America meant that whenever you and your ancestors, and of course this continues to today, are in public, you’re under the gaze of eyes that see you as less than and as a problem, and as all the things we’ve talked about. And of course this is being celebrated and intensified, and justified, in ways that I think we all find nauseating and disgusting, and enraging, and all the rest. But the Black church, it seemed to me, represented this holy space. Where people said, “We’re going to shut that dehumanizing gaze out of our social space and spiritual space.

And we’re going to subject ourselves to the gaze of a God who sees our full humanity and dignity. And we’re going to embody that gaze to each other.” And suddenly those revolutionary words from the New Testament, “In Christ, there’s no male or female, bond or free, Jew or Gentile.” This sense that there is a gaze of love that humanizes us all and welcomes our diversity, declares our equity, and embraces us with full inclusion. I wonder if you might have a story to share about how you have experienced that sense of a gaze that humanizes and elevates with that divine love.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

I appreciate that. There is the Black church tradition and then there are churches that have Black people. I always make the distinction. The Black church tradition is a tradition that seeks to be faithful to the gospel that’s rooted in West African motifs and is global in its outreach. It’s particular in its framing, but it’s global in its touch in terms of all people can participate. I wanted to share two things that my father, I remember he said this about the power of the church that he was a part of in rural Georgia. Segregated Georgia. Lynching, rural Georgia. Troupe County, actually. He always clarified, “It’s not LaGrange, it’s Troupe County.” He said, “LaGrange was the city.”

He said, “Imagine a place. All over America we are considered to be less than. But imagine a place where I was schooled and I went to church. Where instead of being boy, you become deacon, mister, mother, reverend. Where you had to wear overalls, where you worked and you were a share cropper. But I had a suit when I came into the space known as the church. A place that was owned and operated by people of African descent that was free space.” So Sunday was worship, in the afternoon secretly the NAACP met. On Monday, school was opened. Later that week, the Masons had a gathering in that same place. He was just going on and on, and on, and on in terms of how this one little space ended up becoming this freedom space for so many other people.

One of the moments that I vividly remember when I started pastoring, that was a moment of really being seen and seeing what the power of what happens when you’re in a community that is a part of this particular tradition. There was a member of ours, he was HIV positive. They had moved into hospice. He was a member of our church, sang in our choir, was a part of many of our committees and boards, and I was asked to go visit him in hospice. He had joined our church, he left his home church. And for those in the south and smaller places… I was in Augusta, Georgia at the time. Understand that’s a huge deal when you leave the church you grew up in. And for those who may not be clear, that’s like a huge, huge, huge deal.

So he joins our church because he felt it was a space where he could fully be who he was. And I’m 27, I’m just starting out and I’m going to visit this person in hospice who, my wife and I, we really love. Just a wonderful, wonderful brother. And full of humor, filled with life. I come into his hospital room and his father is there, who, the church he left, was the deacon. And his father was sitting at his son’s side trying to get his son to quote-unquote, “repent” from who he was. The father looked at me and said, “Tell him. Tell him Reverend, what will happen if he doesn’t repent.” I was like, “I’m here to pray for my friend and member.” So the father continued and then left. The mother was there too, she was crying. And then I came over to our member and I prayed with him, but then he did something I will never forget. He had lost 60 to 70 pounds. He was skin and bone. He was already a thin person in general. And a whisper, he said, “I want to pray for you.”

And he began to pray for me, and I just couldn’t hold it. He passed away about two days after the visited. He prayed for me, but then he did this, after the prayer began to sing a song called Total Praise by Richard Smallwood. And the song Total Praise is about all of God’s people around God’s throne. It’s borrowed from Revelation, singing Total Praise all day long. And even though he only had a whisper like this, it was the most beautiful solo I have ever heard in my life. And that moment changed me. He ministered to me. And I knew in that moment that I wanted to be the kind of pastor that saw everyone as being a part of that celestial choir. That didn’t say that, “Oh, only some of you can. The rest of y’all going to hell.” No, no. I wanted to be the Total Praise person. Where all have the opportunity to be in that choir and not attempt to harm someone as they’re making a transition about repentance, but remind them about God’s love.

Brian McLaren:

Oh, my. Thanks so much for sharing that, Otis. I can’t resist just saying isn’t it sad that the dad who walked out of the room, what a beautiful thing it would’ve been if he would’ve been able to experience the repentance to learn from his son at that moment. Yeah.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

Yeah. His son was singing. His son was singing before he died, blessing other people.

Brian McLaren:

Learning How to See will be back in a moment.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

You are invited now into a gentle space of five minutes, pause to practice self-compassion and others compassion. All of us together. We’ll take time to remember we’re all connected to each other in myriad mysterious ways. Just like trees are through mycelium, the tiny threads that interweave with tree roots to create mycorrhizal networks that share water, nitrogen, carbon, other minerals. As we do so, we also remember and are grateful for the life and teaching of Dr. Barbara Holmes, because this meditation is adapted from one of Dr. B’s. And it reminds us as we practice it together of her central teachings of cultivating joy in community and with our wise ancestors. Gently close your eyes or lower your gaze, or if you’re driving, let your gaze soften somewhat. Feel your breath as it rises and as it falls like the ocean waves, like the rising in the setting of the sun.

Where is your pain? Hold your pain. Where is the pain of another? Hold their pain. Where are we two connected? Hold our pain. Notice any anxiety around your heart and let it melt. Let your attention keep returning to your breath as it rises and as it falls, like the ocean waves. Where is your joy? Cherish your joy. Where is the joy of another? Cherish their joy. Where are we two connected? Cherish our joy. May we remember our shared experience? May we choose awareness of our deep connections. May this show as we see through the eyes of love and care for each other. May we all say together, “I am my neighbor, and my neighbor is me.” May you be blessed.

One of the parts of your teachings that I really appreciate is that you reference your father often, and his leadership in the South. And since I’ve spent a lot of my growing up years in Georgia, I really appreciate his courage, and your mother’s, and their wisdom. And you talk about his rural background and how there is love and struggle, and they both go together. And one of the images that he uses, that you pass on to everyone and share, is the chrysalis and how the butterfly has to struggle to get out. So I was wondering if you would, Reverend Otis, talk with us a little bit about how you have a story, or how you have struggled to see with the eyes of love on some occasion.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

For me, one of the moments that helped me to see in a unique way, in a new way is really through the relationship with my sister, who is no longer living. My sister struggled, struggled, struggled, struggled with mental health issues specifically. She was a paranoid schizophrenic and she was nine years my senior. I thought the sun rose and set upon her. She was brilliant. The reason that I know anything about James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois, all this, these are the people she read to me when I was a kid. She’s like, “I’m not going to read. I’ll read to you if you…” She was my babysitter, so, “I’ll read to you if you go to bed, but I’m going to read to you what I want to read.” So she’s reading James Baldwin, I didn’t know what it was. But when I ended up going to college, I’m like, “That sounds really familiar.” I didn’t know that she was just pouring all this literature and poetry into me. And it took a while to understand this.

Her suicide crushed me. I mean crushed me. And I leaned into my trauma thinking and viewing my sister through the lens of the trauma. It took me some time to be able to see the gift that she had given me. My love of poetry. The love of literature. She took me to the movies every Friday night, and the reason that I liked Baskin-Robbins chocolate chip ice cream was because of her. But I had to reassess my relationship. I viewed her through the eyes of trauma and that did not allow me to see her beauty. But once I step back and say that the trauma was not all she was… She graduated from Spelman College, then from Kent State University, and specialized in teaching children who were differently abled. Was a magnificent poet and writer. And the moment that I stepped back and no longer looked at her life through the pain of my trauma, I was able to see the beauty of my sister.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Oh, that’s so powerful. And I really love your sharing about how she introduced you to Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, all the best of the best. That’s beautiful. Thank you so much, Reverend Otis.

Brian McLaren:

I feel that so powerfully. That is what we’re all about this season, is what brings the change in us so that we see what we couldn’t see before? And in some ways it’s mysterious, isn’t it? We don’t know exactly how it happens, but it happens.

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III:

Yeah. It’s a strange road. Mary Oliver talks about this wonderful little short poem. She said, “Things take the time they take. How many roads did St. Augustine have to walk before he became St. Augustine?” It’s like, “Things take the time they take.” And Howard Thurman puts it this way, he says that, “Sometimes it will take a year, others it will be 30 to 40 years before you realize what you thought was a burden, was actually a blessing. And you’re given new eyes to see an old situation, but it’s a path that we take.” It goes on to say that, “God places a crown above our heads we will spend the rest of our lives growing tall enough to wear.” And it’s a journey that we take. And every day we hope that we can stretch a little bit taller. And if we stretch enough, every time you grow a little bit taller, it changes your sight.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher:

Thank you for listening and for your beautiful presence here. What a joy for Brian and me to be in conversation with the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss III. Thank you Otis for sharing your wisdom with us. Cultivating mindfulness helps us pause whenever we feel fear so we can reorient ourselves to the joy of abundant life described by Jesus and available every moment. Richard Rohr reminds us how we do anything is how we do everything. And Thich Nhat Hanh tells us the degree to which we enjoy, say, a tangerine will depend on our mindfulness. If you’re free of worries and anxiety, you’ll enjoy it more. If you’re possessed by anger or fear, the tangerine may not be very real to you. He tells the story of one day, offering a number of children a basket filled with tangerines, and it was passed around and each child took one tangerine and put it in their palm.

And Thich Nhat Hanh says, “We each looked at our tangerine and the children were invited to meditate on its origins. They saw not only their tangerine, but also its mother, the tangerine tree. With some guidance, they began to visualize the blossoms in the sunshine and in the rain. Then they saw petals falling down and the tiny green fruit appear. The sunshine and the rain continued and the tiny tangerine grew. Now someone has picked it and the tangerine is here. After seeing this, each child was invited to peel the tangerine slowly, noticing the mist and the fragrance of the tangerine, and then bring it up to their mouth and have a mindful bite, and full awareness of the texture and taste of the fruit and the juice coming out. We ate slowly like that. Each time you look at a tangerine, you can see deeply into it. You can see everything in the universe in one tangerine. When you peel it and smell it, it’s wonderful. You can take your time eating a tangerine and be very happy.”

So our general homework is for each of us to write down Richard’s wisdom. How we do anything is how we do everything. And then to set aside a time to eat a piece of fruit or something else and eat it mindfully, seeing it through the eyes of love, the way Thich Nhat Hanh guided those children and us. Then write down a few words of what you noticed as you took the time to do this. And we close with a meditation from Dancing in the Darkness, its Blue Note Preaching wisdom encourages us as the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss III reminds us to keep returning to love and to sing with the eyes of love.

Otis writes, “From the pulpit that Sunday, I told the congregation Night comes in all of our lives, but night is temporary. We must learn to dance in the darkness until morning.” And he adds this commentary, “Even when we must fight, we must keep our connection to love. This was no simple feel-good message to focus on the positive. Nor was I saying that when threatened, you need only bring love and understanding into your heart and every problem will be solved. That will not cut it. But there is a difference between responding to fear and letting it think, feel, and act for you. Life’s challenges require us to fight, but if all we can see are threats and how to fight them, we lose ourselves.

That Sunday I told the congregation that we must meet the threats in our lives. We must fight for justice, for our safety, and for the right to live in a world where we can thrive. But even in the darkness of midnight, we can maintain a connection to the light. Until dawn comes, we need more than the determination to fight for justice. We need love to keep us from getting lost in distraction. Love to keep us from falling into despair, love to help us restore ourselves, get back into harmony with ourselves so we can last through that dark night. Dance, I urge them. Dance in the dark.”

Brian McLaren:

Big thanks to Corey Wayne, Dorothy Abrams and Vanessa Yee, who produce Learning How to See. Thanks to April Stace for her musical support. This episode was edited and mixed by the team at Sound On//Sound Off. To learn more about their work, visit soundonsoundoff.com. Thanks to the Center for Action and Contemplation for making Learning How to See possible. And special thanks to you for your investment of time. And thanks for sharing Learning How to See with others, if you find it meaningful.