-What is happiness?

-What becomes more important for people is not whether they're happy, but whether their life has meaning.

And so perhaps what we're asking ourselves is not how we can find happiness, but how we can live a meaningful life.

That question pulls us out of ourselves toward others.

-We're all seekers, searching for answers to life's biggest questions.

There are people who have made it their life's work to explore and uncover the wisdom we all seek.

In this episode, I speak with Episcopal priest and theologian the Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas, about the search for meaning and the journey to finding our best selves.

This is "Wisdom Keepers."

-Kelly Brown Douglas, it's great to see you.

-It's good to be here.

It's good to see you.

-You're a teacher, and you're a theologian.

What does your religion teach about why humanity is here?

Why am I here?

-We're here because God loved us into life.

We are created in the image of a loving God, and it is our part of the covenant, if you will, to live into that relationship, which means and to live into that image and to show forth that God that is love.

And my faith tradition, the synonym for God is love.

And we are to show forth that love in the world, 'cause it is out of love that becomes the foundation for who we are.

The other way to put it is that we are all children of God.

And as I often would hear Archbishop Tutu say, "That we are children of God is a fact.

That we act like it is not a fact."

So we are called to live into what it means to be a child of God.

-The writer and professor Elizabeth Drescher is a scholar of "the nones"... -Yeah.

-Not the N-U-N-S... -Right.

-...but the N-O-N-E-S... -That's right.

-...the large number of especially young Americans who have no religious affiliation.

And she says, "But if you scratch a none..." -That's right.

-"...they're actually more of a some, that there are in a lot of Americans habits of heart that incline them to at least listen, among all the other things that they listen to, to religious ways of looking at our current problems, looking at our challenges, trying to understand where they're at, trying to understand what matters.

Do you agree with that?

And does it help in 21st-Century America to know that there is... a willingness to hear from that perspective in this country?

-Here's the thing.

I think when we're talking about nones that we are talking about people for the most part, who are resistant to institutionalized forms of religion.

That doesn't mean they have not asked themselves and are not answering what I call the religious question-and-answer.

And that religious question is simply, is there more to life than this?

However that question emerges, is there more to life than this sort of capricious reality -- this sort of mortal, finite, capricious reality?

Is there more to life than this kind of form of justice, right?

That's the question you ask when someone is killed in a car accident or something, and a person will say, "Why did that happen?"

And you can give them an answer and say, "Well, they ran through a stop sign."

"But why did that happen?"

And they keep asking the "why" that keeps pushing out.

And that "why" is the religious question -- is there more to life than this?

I think we as human beings ask that question.

The answer that we get depends on a number of things.

Some people say no, there's no more to life than this.

But others say yes.

And as they answer that question, that doesn't necessarily lead them into institutionalized forms of religion, especially when those institutions aren't responding to the questions that they're asking, aren't responding to the contradictions of life.

And so if you scratch the surface, what they're resisting is not that sort of religious, spiritual kind of question, because there is that yearning, there is that hunger.

There is that hunger for more, to be better.

My particular branch of the Christian faith tradition, which is Episcopalian, says that all are welcome and that no one is excluded -- no one.

No matter where you are on the journey, no one is excluded from the love that is God's -- No one.

There's room for independent thinking as things happen in one's life -- crises, contradictions, and other questions of life.

Those are questions we bring to our faith, and we try to understand the meaning of our faith in light of those.

And so that means you cannot have any hard, fast "No, you can't believe this.

No, you have to believe that."

To do that is to stop seeking understanding.

And the moment you stop seeking understanding and asking those questions of faith -- well, then, that's the moment that you're no longer seeking after God.

You know, faith -- Doubt is not the opposite of faith.

Doubt and faith go hand in hand.

So there's room to doubt.

There's room to ask questions.

There's room to not know.

And I've certainly been in moments of deep doubt and wondered, you know, "If God is so just, why are so many Black people still being killed?"

And so I've had those moments of deep -- recently -- existential despair and doubt.

But that's what faith is all about.

And my tradition, the best, to me, of any tradition, is a tradition that allows you to grow, to ask questions, and to keep seeking and doesn't say, "Nope.

Got to believe this."

Because when it -- if that were what my tradition demanded, then I promise you I would no longer not only be Episcopalian, I wouldn't be Christian.

-Those people are still absorbing messages.

-That's right.

-All kinds of messages, mediated messages, social media, television, movies.

They see every range of human suffering, human depravity.

And they have those deep questions that you're asking about.

And one of them is, are we good?

Are we good?

-We are created to be good.

And, so, I do think we're good.

So what we have to begin to ask ourselves, what are the conditions that we have created that allow for evil to flourish and to be nurtured, not only within societies, but within individuals.

Because we know that we didn't come into this world as evil beings.

I just don't believe that.

I believe that we are fundamentally good and we are called into our goodness.

But we have constructed a world and a society that fosters evil.

-Well, all the great faiths teach, in one way or another, that we have, by virtue of our humanity, certain obligations to each other.

-Mm-hmm.

-And yet, our lives, the lives we live away from mosque or temple or gurdwara or church or anywhere else, is that got to look out for yourself.

You've got to make a very careful circle of what's yours and who is yours.

Look out for them.

And then, you know, looking out for other people becomes kind of optional.

We lose the thread somewhere, don't we?

How come we don't connect Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to the other days of the week?

-Yeah.

Well, the first thing I would say is, how have we lost that thread of our common bond to one another and caring for one another?

And you're right.

Every major religion has some form of the Golden Rule.

Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you.

How have we lost that?

[ Sighs ] In the kind of society that we've constructed, we've made a choice, we've made a decision.

Certain people, by virtue of who they are, are privileged.

And certain people are not by virtue of who they are not.

And that what we have done is created an incentive for people to try to gain that privilege.

We are more concerned of what we can get immediately out of life, how we can indeed enjoy certain privileges and rule and have power.

We've made that decision.

That has created this kind of world where we've got to protect our own, because inasmuch as you are in a world of haves and have nots, that's not a safe world.

An unjust world is not a safe world.

You wouldn't have to put these barriers around you.

You wouldn't have to have a society full of guns and all of these other measures, if indeed everybody was given equal access and opportunity to live into the fullness of whomever they were created and born to be.

But inasmuch as you have others that don't have, and you have, on the backs of them, well then.

Then you have to create this kind of militarized world that we find ourselves living in, and we are trapped in that culture of sin where it is I over you and not us and them.

So I don't know how we've gotten here, but this is where we are.

-In the opening chapters of the Bible... -Mm-hmm.

-...Cain has killed Abel.

God comes around.

Where's Abel?

And Cain says... he gives a reply that has rung down the millennia.

Am I my brother's keeper?

He wasn't so sure.

But do we have to step back even from that and say, "Wait a minute, who's my brother?"

-My brother or my sister or my sibling?

Uh, um...

Yes.

Because we've made a decision -- and maybe it's what it means to be trapped in a culture of sin -- we have made a decision that certain human beings are not our siblings.

We've constructed a nation that makes clear that people who are not White are not our siblings.

That's a human decision.

And, so, you are right.

[ Laughs ] We do have to ask the fundamental question again.

"Who is my sibling?"

Right?

That's what it means to be called.

In a culture of sin, Cain and Abel had already been victimized by original sin, where a decision was made that certain people aren't sacred.

In the process of doing that, we have really forgotten who we are in terms of our core common humanity.

It just amazes me that we are competing with one another, not in an effort to produce the best, the most good that we can for all, for the common good.

We are competing with one another to get more than the other, so that we have this sense of being better than somebody else and forgotten that really at the base of it, we're all the same.

And that, in fact, we all live and die.

So the question becomes, Ray, how do we get out of this cycle of sin that we are trapped in?

How do we get out of this cycle of believing that there's not enough?

Right?

You know, that there's not enough food to go around, that, you know, that we turn our backs on people who are really just trying to come to this country not to take what we've got, but so that they can get a little bit to live.

When we know that the people who are withholding it from them have more than they will ever need to live.

The question becomes, how do we get out of that kind of cycle where you have decided that certain human beings are not essential human beings?

And in fact, that's what we've done.

And I simply don't know how we began to change the moral imaginary of a people, of a nation.

-Would it mean, would it require both defining and redefining happiness?

You know, the idea of happiness is pretty -- I mean, it's in our founding documents, our sacred secular scripture, "the pursuit of happiness," the idea that each yeoman heads out there and does for himself and his own to his own benefit and takes away from that satisfaction that they're living into their best selves.

I mean, it's deeply embedded in our ideas about who we are.

At the same time, as we also have a tradition of caring about whether other people have enough.

And sometimes that's kind of at war with each other.

The pursuit of my highest and best good isn't necessarily defined by whether everybody else is okay, too.

-Right.

-So the pursuit of happiness ends up not being some lovely throwaway phrase, but sort of a something we need to deeply interrogate.

What is happiness?

-Yeah.

You know, there is -- There was a sociologist, Peter Berger... ...who said, "What becomes more important for people is not whether they're happy, but whether their life has meaning."

And, so, perhaps what we're asking ourselves is not... ...how we can find happiness... ...but how we can live a meaningful life.

That question pulls us out of ourselves toward others.

We should really try to create the kind of narratives, the kind of reality in which people can pursue a meaningful life.

You say, well, you know, we've got these founding documents that say pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

Well, we know that our founding documents aren't always right.

[ Laughs ] And, so, I would change -- I would change that.

And perhaps that's where we got off on the wrong foot.

People have these individual pursuits.

And maybe where we went wrong is this belief in rugged individualism.

Uh, no.

You know, we are -- What it means to be a people, what it means to be a society, what it means to be a nation is that, somehow, even if we call it happiness, those pursuits have to, in some way, always be connected to the common good.

And inasmuch as it's not, we find ourselves in this sort of self-protection kind of mode, even self-protecting our happiness.

What?

What?

Right?

Whatever that is.

And then, we find ourselves in this situation where we are always on guard.

We're always afraid that someone's going to do something that pricks our sense of happiness.

Look what we have set up here.

And somehow we need to perhaps just rethink this whole notion of -- first of all, we know rugged individualism takes us down this path that is not a good a good path -- that we rethink our notion of happiness.

And again, I say we define that notion of happiness and what it means for us.

Happiness has to be defined in some way by what it means to live a meaningful life.

-So who has the convening power?

Because that's a -- that's deep work to say to 330 million people, "Let's redefine some of our original premises.

Let's talk about what it is we ought to be doing instead of what we are doing."

Who has convening power for that conversation?

Because that's big.

-Yeah.

That is -- That is a big conversation.

Look, first of all, I think the way in which we get to the conversation is let's look around and say, is this -- how did we get here?

Is this where we want to be?

How did we get here?

And to recognize we can't continue along this path.

And we know we can't.

Are we going to be the authors of our own destruction?

Right?

I would think -- I would hope that what calls us back is the recognition of that fact, that there's no good end to keep going down this road.

And the communities that can call us back, I do believe this is where, yes, faith leaders and religious leaders are relevant.

These are the people that typically have been, in some ways, been the buffers, right?

And, so, we've got to live into that.

Who can do the convening?

Faith leaders have to -- have to take the risk of claiming their voice and not feeling accountable to this and accountable to something greater and the risk that that may incur.

You know, I always say I'm a Christian, and I always say Jesus didn't end up on the cross because he prayed too much.

And, so, for those of us who claim to be Christian, we have to take seriously what it meant for us to -- what it means for us to have a crucified Savior at the center of that.

And that means we take the risk of a Martin Luther King Jr., who was the only voice out there telling the world that, you know what, this Vietnam War, that's not right.

We have to take the risk of those people who are Martin Luther King and others who have said to the world, you can't have all this poverty.

Because that leads to a society that will turn in and collapse on itself.

So this is what faith leaders and religious leaders are supposed to do.

So who are the people that can call the convenings?

Faith leaders.

Who are the people that ought to claim some kind of voice of authority?

Faith and religious leaders, not politicians.

You can't trust them because they're out trying to gain power.

We are out trying to make sure that a society, a people, a world doesn't self-destruct.

Our task is always to push us beyond where we are to who we could become.

We need to not bring people to a particular belief system, to particular doctrines.

What we're trying to do is help us to be better.

What we're trying to do is address those areas, those places where there are people who are just struggling to be respected as human beings, who are just struggling to live.

Now, that's our task.

So we're supposed to be out there speaking on the public square, acting on the public square, being proximate with those people who are on the underside of justice, also pushing this nation further, pushing systems further so that those people aren't trapped in these realities that indeed nurture death, not life.

-So is there a kind of wholeness or promise or return to... ...a pre-fallen state that's held out there as a promise?

Can we get back into that kind of person that we were meant to be?

Is that available to us?

-As long as there's a God, it's available to us.

As long as there's a God who has not, in my own faith belief, that God has never, ever, ever given up on us.

God hasn't given up on us yet.

God continues to try to love us into loving.

And for me, you know, we can talk about that in the abstract.

Or we can find these glimpses, these moments where we see these possibilities of a more loving future or these moments and these glimpses where people are striving toward that.

And from my vantage point, that's God loving us into loving.

And, so, for me, as long as there's a God, there is always hope that we will again regain what it means to be created in the image of one who was good and loving.

As long as there are people who have hope, as long as there are people who are fighting for us to be better, as long as there are protests, then we are never at the end of what is possible.

This is where I think -- and I'm an Episcopal priest and I'm a theologian -- and this is where I think the role of faith and religious leaders becomes very significant because we are not called to be accountable to the way things are.

We are called to be accountable to the way we know that they can be.

It is our task, our role, our call to open the moral imaginary, right, of a people and to help us to see the broader understandings, what is possible when we talk about justice, when we talk about freedom.

I think that we shouldn't think of that in terms of the sort of big national conversation that has to take place.

These are conversations, Ray, that have to take place within our communities, within our religious organizations and institutions and faith communities.

Churches, our temples, our mosques ought to be holding different kind of conversations.

I think one of the things, for instance, that we learned through COVID is that you don't have to come together on Sunday mornings to be church and to have an impact on people.

People became engaged remotely in religious conversations and spiritual pursuits.

More people became engaged in those pursuits than ever came to church on a Sunday morning.

Right?

That's the power of the convening.

That's where those conversations have to take place.

That's where religious and faith leaders and other moral leaders have to begin to change the narrative and have a different conversation and say, "How did we get here?"

-Is a belief that this is not all there is, that there's something eternal about a human being that survives this wrapper, a necessary part of your theology?

-No.

It's not.

What's a necessary part of my theology is that, when I say this isn't all there is, and that means that this sinful reality of which we're living in such divisiveness is not all that there is, and such injustice is not all that there is.

What is essential to my belief and my tradition is that... ...there is a more just future that God promises us all.

I believe in that, and I believe that this isn't the last word.

I believe in an eternal life that is justice.

Whatever we call Heaven looks like, whatever happens after death, I don't know.

But what's essential is that I know that there is a God.

And I know that this reality of injustice is not the last word.

I believe in the justice that is the justice of God.

Look, here's where I start.

That everybody that has breath... ...is sacred because that very breath is sacred.

And what we have to do is honor and respect that breath and do nothing, do nothing that will take that breath away.

And for me, there's nothing that takes my breath away more than seeing somebody else dehumanized, degraded, and defiled.

That takes my breath away.

I think if we can get people to step back... ...and somehow not feel under siege... Because we've got these messages that we're under siege.

Step back.

You aren't under siege.

What are the ways in which you, you... ...can change... ...your situation so that you don't feel under siege and help other people to do better.

We aren't asking people to change the world.

And I -- We can't.

We can't change the world, but we can take control of that which we can take control of -- how we live and how we treat somebody else.

You've got to believe that that matters, because I do think it matters.

My grandmother used to say to all of my siblings and myself, would say to me, "Kelly"... "If you can just help one person"... ..."just try to help one person"... ..."have a better life, give one person a hand up"... ..."then you can say your life has not been lived in vain."

So I just say to people, "Help one person that doesn't look like you, that doesn't have the advantages of you."

"Be better.

Help them do better."

I got to say that that makes a difference.

Now, that sounds simple.

And we're talking about world problems.

We're talking about these big social issues.

Get engaged.

Find a way to get engaged.

Find something to get engaged in that matters.

I don't know, Ray.

If we get people to commit to every day being better and doing better... ...that has to matter in the kind of people that we are.

-If I had run into eight-year-old Kelly or 13-year-old Kelly or 18-year-old Kelly, is there some point where you were already thinking, "Yeah, that's for me," in terms of your life in the world and what you do for a living and what you persuade others is the truth?

-I would have never said theol-- I didn't even know what theology was -- is for me.

But here's what I'll tell you if you had run into eight-year-old Kelly.

An incident that put me on this path.

I was about seven or eight years old and grew up in Dayton, Ohio, as you know.

Dayton was a very segregated city.

Still is.

If you were Black, you lived on the west side of Dayton.

It was also a very Black and White city growing up.

Every other part was, uh, non-Black was White people.

And, so, you had to, to get downtown, go through Dayton's quote-unquote "inner city."

And I remember one day driving downtown with my parents.

I was sitting in the back seat of the car, sitting by the window, and it was a cold, rainy evening.

And we're driving downtown and we stop at the stoplight in the, quote-unquote, "inner city" of Dayton.

And two kids are walking across the street.

In my eight-year-old mind, they're about my age.

It was a little girl and a little boy.

I can see them now in my mind's eye.

And they were clearly not dressed for the weather.

And they looked like they were poor and had a hard life.

And I remember crying.

And I made a vow to myself, sitting in the back seat of that car, and said that one day I was going to come back and get those children.

Now, as an eight-year-old, I thought that I would grow up, they'd stay young, and I'd literally come back and get them.

But as I got older, and even now...

...I held myself accountable to those children.

And I said, "Whatever I do"... ..."I'm going to go back and get those children," which meant to me to be accountable and to change conditions in some way.

That children don't have to grow up like that.

And, so, my whole sort of vocational path has been one in which I have held myself accountable to finding a way back to getting those children.

I never dreamt that it would be as a theologian.

And, so, that eight-year-old Kelly didn't see this particular vocational path.

But I saw myself doing this work in some way.

-Recently, I saw something written by Diana Butler Bass... -Mm-hmm.

-...who is also an Episcopalian and a theologian, a writer of religious books.

And she says, "Well, people keep asking me about numbers.

I don't care about numbers.

Numbers don't matter to me."

But there are many fewer people going to church.

Churches are closing.

The young generation coming up is widely unchurched, more widely than any generation in 200 years.

Do you worry about that?

Do you worry about giving your working life to a movement, an enterprise that is in decline?

-I'm not giving my working life to the institution that's called church.

I'm giving my working life to the God who calls us to a more just future.

And, no, I'm not worried about that, because that's never in decline.

My great grandmother, whom I knew, her name was Mama Mary, was born into slavery.

As I said before, when I think of her, I indeed think of the people who were born in slavery, who died in slavery, who never breathed a free breath, and never, ever, ever dreamt that they would breathe a free breath.

But they lived their life and gave their life fighting for freedom that they knew they would never see, but would be because they believed, as I said before, in the freedom that was the justice of God.

And because they believed that, Ray, I'm sitting here talking to you.

Not enslaved.

Further along on the road to freedom... ...than they ever dreamt they could be.

I'm not giving my working life to a religious institution.

I'm not accountable to that institution.

I'm accountable to the God who has created me and everybody else to be free.

And I'm accountable to my ancestors who were enslaved and fought for me to be here.

-Kelly Brown Douglas, thank you very much.

Great to talk to you.

-Good to talk to you.

Thank you.

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