“To be hopeful Is to touch the pain of the world”

This week we hear part 2 of my conversation with Sr. Simone Campbell, one of the strongest voices, organizers, and leaders for social and economic justice in the United States.

Sister of Social Service, Sr. Simone is a religious leader, attorney, author and recipient of the 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

For 17 years she was executive director of NETWORK, the national Catholic Lobby for Social Justice and the leader of “Nuns on the Bus.”

Her healthcare policy work was critical in the passing of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Before that, she spent 18 years working at the Oakland Community Law Center which she founded.

I ask her about the section in her newest book, Hunger for Hope, where she writes about the importance of “prophetic imagination.” For Simone, community is the best way to nurture prophetic imagination.

She recites Walter Bruggemann’s five characteristics:

1. Long and available memory;
2. Touching the reality of the pain;
3. Living in hope;
4. 4. Effective discourse across generations and cultures;
5. The capacity to sustain long term tension with the dominant culture, and the potential for insight and imagination.

She shares with us about the connection between hope and community, and her daily Zen practice which she calls "deep listening":

"My practice begins every morning. I have a half hour of Zen sitting, being quiet and opening myself. I call it, ‘Deep listening to the divine.’ There, things can bubble up.

I follow this with a half hour of spiritual reading. I have to feel secure in myself to be willing to open myself to other peoples’ points of view.

If I'm riled up, I can't do this work, so I need my practice. If we're going to create change, it's required that we understand what’s going on inside us if we want to understand others.”

She gives us insights into her religious community that is dedicated to the Holy Spirit and what Pentecost means to her:

"I need to be able to listen well enough so that what I might say will touch the other. I love being on fire. It's so exciting.”

“Hope,” she concludes, “is critically connected to touching the pain of the world as real. It demands a response.”

Listen in and be inspired by this legendary voice of social and economic justice!

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