Spirit is the Foundation for Everything

BOB BOISTURE speaks with JUDITH NELSON at the Spirit of Humanity Forum, held in Reykjavík, Iceland on the 1 June 2019. In part 1, he shared with us the vision of the Fetzer Institute, and the need for personal transformation and love to bring about the changes necessary today to address the most pressing issues of humanity and our planet Earth. In part 2, he continues by focusing on how this translates to practical activities in our day-to-day lives.

- By Judith Nelson

We’re working with one of the biggest civil society umbrella groups in the US that have had a longstanding commitment to supporting leadership development within civil society. With some encouragement and support from us, they’ve taken the bold stand that there’s a new dimension to leadership development, and it is this inner work. We’re working with them to first take that message into civil society, but then, necessarily, to begin to build the ecosystem of supports for that inner work. Hopefully, that can support, at scale, a rapidly growing number of leaders at the community state, national level.

We're also bringing together faith leaders across the faith spectrum, which in our country also means across the political spectrum, and inviting them to reflect on why is it that so often their communities have shown up in our public conversation as part of the polarizing dynamic, when surely their faith commitments compel all of them to be part of the reconciling solution. We’re working with all communities to change in the context of our next presidential election, with the hope that faith leaders across politics will stand together and say the most urgent priority all of us are compelled to have is reconciliation.

I’m optimistic actually because I think anybody who is awake and has children or grandchildren, realizes that we can't go on like this. We have to go to a deeper level and recover a shared moral vision of the society we’re trying to create. None of us has all the answers. We have to listen to each other; we have to come together.

Q: Is that how you came to be involved with the Spirit of Humanity Forum? How did that relationship evolve?