Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station, gets, staff, management,
or ownership. Good morning, you'll find me out with Pete
and the Poe Cold. I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the
Poet Gold and we're on the air this morning with
Reverend Susan Fortune I don't know of the christ Episcopal
Church and Poughkeepsie. This is part two. Anybody who miss
(00:23):
part one, you want to go back and get it absolutely.
Before we get to a part two of Reverend Susan,
We're going to go right to Poet Gold for a
weekly poem, prayer, incantation. Gold, please let it roll.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay, I'm going to give the audience another sneak peak
of maybe what's coming and to be included in my
upcoming book, be the poem living Beyond Our Fears. Sometimes
we say things our tongue cuts, hearts bleed. Sometimes we
say things without care. Sometimes we say things makes me
(00:57):
wonder who do we wish to be in the world?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And we all want to be the best version of ourselves? Right,
beat a poem? Okay, I want to sure people like
everything else in the on this show is not rehearsed.
That was too good to be true. And Reverend Susan
for JOHNA thank you for coming back to be with
(01:23):
us on this week's broadcast. And you know when we left,
well last week we were talking. We don't have to
have the exact same conversation, but I'd like to have
you beat us into this week's discussion by talking about
the local perspective that you bring to you a moral,
(01:43):
spiritual and uh social.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Work and can I add to that and also geographically
being born in the South and you know, and how
that shaped you.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Sure, thank you the you know, I just I would
be remiss without telling you that Matt Hyde, who's the bishop,
the episcopal Bishop of New York, likes to say the
Holy Spirit moves at ground level. And I just think
that that is genius because it's so easy to kind
(02:20):
of get dazzled and think about larger structures and problems
that we can't solve. It's so easy to get sucked
into those. And the longer I've been a priest, the
more I think that what we can do is we
can really focus on the people and the issues right
(02:41):
around us in our own communities. And so every day
I walk around the block of the church at Christ's
Episcopal Church, and if I every time I walk around,
I see school children going to Clinton Elementary School, I
see homeless people, I see addicts, I see men and
(03:01):
women getting up and going to work. And it makes
me remember why I'm a priest and why my church
matters some of those To go back to my to
my upbringing, which I think is genius for you to
ask me about. I actually was born in Texas and
moved to Georgia when I was eight years old. And
(03:24):
living in a little town in Georgia, I can tell
you that, you know, I learned simple lessons right. One
of the things that I learned is that you don't
have to agree with everybody to like them. I lived
with a lot of people whose perspectives didn't make sense
to me. But you know, when you live in a
(03:46):
town with twenty five hundred people, you say good morning,
you figure out ways to help each other, and you
try and do everything you can to get along. But also,
I think it was an advantaged to grow up in
Georgia because the place and the time that I grew up,
(04:10):
segregation was just happened a few years before my class.
I graduated from high school in nineteen eighty five. My
class was the first class in Madison, Georgia to be
integrated from kindergarten on, and so everybody in town watched us.
(04:36):
People were very nervous about us. I grew up because
they had combined the black school and the white school
into one. So I grew up with fifty percent of
my teachers being black and fifty being white. I grew
up where each school, the middle school had a black principal,
(04:57):
the high school had a white principal. And because of that,
I feel like I sort of was raised with some
intentionality about integration, and also some intentionality it was impossible
for any of us to ignore the fact that racism
was present and something that we needed to make a
(05:20):
conscious effort to work on.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I'm sorry I mean to, but that was pretty progressive
because when you say fifty percent of the educators were
black and fifty percent of the educations were white, you know, normally,
when schools were integrated, you still had black students with
ninety percent, if not more, of of Anglo teachers, you know,
than than than black teachers. Welcoming into the institutions.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, I didn't know that. I mean, I didn't know that,
but I but I can say that again. You know,
I grew up in a town where we had fifty
one percent of the people were white and forty nine
percent of the people were black, or some years fifty
one percent of it down was black and forty nine
(06:06):
percent was white. But I think that again, the intentionality
of the integration that I experienced was really helpful for
me and modeling some principles that have guided me my
whole life. Like it's important for everyone to have a
(06:27):
voice at the table. It's important to be respectful of
everybody's experience. The system is never perfect. It's just never perfect.
It's always corrupt, but we can all as individuals recognize
the limitations of those structures and try and make improvements
(06:49):
and do better each generation.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And when you say intentionality, it's a word. It means
doing it on purpose, right, right, So you growing up
because the racial attention was so conspicuous, you had on purpose,
You had to work on it. You get along with
the other kids in your class.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, for instance, you know, when I was in the
fourth grade, I had a birthday party, and again I
had only lived in this town for probably a year
when I had my fourth grade my tenth birthday party,
and I wanted to invite the girls in my class.
And one of the girls in my class was Pam Benford,
(07:33):
who was a young woman of color. And we actually
wound up getting phone calls from other parents saying that
this would be a horrible thing to include Pam. Now,
now I'm telling you, Pam Benford was one of the
nicest people I've ever known in my entire life. And
(07:55):
I was so confused by that. And my parents had
to sit down and explained to me racism, and they
had to explain to me how fearful people were of
the changes that we were trying to make. And so
sure enough, Pam came to my birthday party. It was
a great party, She had a great time. She wound
(08:17):
up being the first African American homecoming queen for the
class of nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And I.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
When I saw that, I was so proud of my
class and also of my parents for being brave enough
to say, you know, you had an impulse to invite
your friend to the party, and we want you to
be colorblind. We want you to practice that, but don't
(08:50):
do it naively. Understand there's going to be backlash.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Oh if you're just switting and you're listening to finding
out with Pete and the poet Gold and I'm the
poet goal here with Reverend Susan Fortunado, pastor of Christ's
Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie, I had a similar experience as
as you're just like wooh, took me right back as
as a child, I went to prep school predominantly white,
but you can count the number of people of color
on one hand when I was coming up during that time.
(09:17):
And and my first Slummer party actually that I attended,
all my friends were white there. But one of the
parents after the party got a call and you know,
and and saying, you know, she's rude, this, that and
the other thing, and you know, and and the parents
then got involved in and the students got involved and said,
(09:38):
you know, this is like not true, and but it's
connected to the other ism, the fear, the unfamiliarity, that's right.
I had to be like nine years old, ten I
was ten. Actually I got into tapment and when I was
ten years old, so I was I was about ten
years old ten or eleven years old, and you know,
(09:59):
and and it taught me me it again. No, it
didn't scare me because I know it was not true,
so it didn't scare me. It just you know, it's
one of those things that you look at and go,
why are people like this? Let me pay attention, you know,
And that was my perspective as a child, you know
why people like this?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And and it made me realize to how frightened people are,
how much fear people walk in.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I think that that's true. I think that a lot
of racism, right comes from a fear, absolutely a fear
of the other. And and I think that, you know,
it's it's something that we need to be conscious of
as human beings that you know, we do have a
(10:45):
reptilian brain, right that sends us very primitive messages. And
and there was a moment right in all of our histories,
like you know, millions of years ago, there's a moment
we fear of someone who looks different than you or
acts different than you was protective. You needed to be
(11:08):
with your tribe, and someone on the outside who didn't
look or sounds like you did should cause you nervousness.
And we all have that kind of animal instinct, right,
that reptilian instinct of saying, oh, this is a person
who doesn't look or sound like me. But we also
(11:29):
are spiritual beings, and we're capable of reflection and growth.
And if we reflect and let ourselves grow through that discomfort,
we find ourselves realizing that whether it's racial differences or
sexual orientation, or differences of where we come from, that
(11:52):
ultimately we're all human beings and that there are there
is so much more that we have in common, and
so much more to sell celebrate them.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We have to fear right and and it's and it's
the response to that what's going on constantly in us, unconsciously,
deeply from that part of the brain that that people
don't realize. This is what you're constantly.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
That's right, you're getting those signals and and you know,
to answer a question you haven't asked, Peter, you know,
I think that that religion for me, right gives me
a space and a vocabulary to step outside of those
(12:38):
impulses right and to reflect and connect with our best
and truest selves. And for me, that's poetry, and it's
also art right. Religion, art music, poetry, all of those
things are languages, right, are languages that help us rise
(13:01):
above sort of our most base impulses.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Right. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And well, as we're talking about you know, fear, I
do want to go back to your you know your poem.
So it comes from your new collection, coming out, your
new program, coming out about living beyond our fears. So
when I asked you a question about were you afraid
at ten years old? When you when your adults started saying,
hey man, not a black kid. I mean, so you
(13:30):
might have been gifted early and not being afraid and
being curious about fears. You want to connect that a bit.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Absolutely, I've always been. I'm glad you said curious because
as you were speaking, uh, you know, I was thinking curious. Absolutely,
I've always been, for whatever reason, h curious about why
we react the way we do to things. I've always
been curious about the relationship. I used to watch a
lot of Animal National Geography. It was one of my
favorite shows, and the similarity between what I would see
(14:01):
animals do on TV and people do, and so in
my drama classes as a child, I was always acting
regarding observations of people's behaviors in relationship to each other.
The person on the bus that moves over, and how
uncomfortable they are because someone has invaded their space. And
(14:24):
so we give these little We used to have these
acting exercises in school, and so those are the things
that I would would observe and it and it made
me recognize how uncomfortable we were in our own skins
as human beings, and how it stood in contradiction to
(14:45):
our beliefs in God, in the higher voices that we
say we want to practice, but the sheer movement and
the and the what I want to say, the constriction
in our body, and the anger and the GrimAge you
could see in someone's face. As a child would say
(15:09):
to me, something's not right.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Okay, something's not right, and I want to find out.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right right and know what was not right. But I
knew something was not right, and it always for me said,
this person is very afraid. So at seven I didn't
know what the word empathy meant. But to you know,
be kind, be have empathy for that person so they
can feel more comfortable in their space and maybe then
(15:35):
just you know, relax in their body language.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
And when you have you know, a figure like Christ
who all embracing it sets up an ideal that I
will live to experience contradicts, right, but the ideal is
something that we can strive for in the various organizations,
with various churches throughout Western culture. I have said that,
(16:04):
although very often also promoted exactly what the opposite of
the ideal that just happened.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
If you're just suiting in, you're listening to finding out
with Pete and the poet Gold, I'm Peter and I'm
the poet Gold. We're here at Reverend Susan Fortunado and
Pastor Christ Episcopal Church. I'm giggling because because Peter, we've
been very good about being going time today with with
with the announcement.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, I appreciate the I have the best view of
the clock together, but I'm not that dutiful, so very
often we mess it up.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I'm very impressed. It's very professional, very professional, well done.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Just going back to the you know, I appreciate that,
uh glance and see your childhood. But coming you know,
into Poughkeepsie and taking the mission of the church to
the local level. You know, the bishop was saying the
spirit action the ground level. That's a profound statement. And
(17:15):
how does that get implemented not only in Poughkeepsie, but
in your church itself, Like what programs would reflect that?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Sure? Well, the one that's closest to my heart actually
is I've been lucky enough to work with Hudson River
Housing almost since I came here. I came in twenty fifteen.
I joined the board of Hudson River Housing in twenty sixteen.
One of the things that Christ Church has done that's
(17:44):
been so meaningful to me has been to partner with
Hudson River Housing to offer a Code Blue shelter or
a Code Blue warming center for the unhoused in the
basement of our church. So from November to the end
of March each year, we have a shelter in our
(18:06):
basement for the unhoused, and that gives us a couple things.
So we have about thirty men and women who are
at the church from seven at night to seven in
the morning, and it gives us a chance to connect
with them on a personal level. Because back to what
(18:27):
poet Gold was saying about about how people can be
so fearful when someone looks or acts differently than they do.
The unhoused are a population that I think a lot
of people just see somebody struggling on the street or
wrapped up in blankets, and they just sort of recoil.
(18:49):
There's something about the just the poverty, the need of
that person that really brings up a lot of feelings.
One of the great things that we have is the
opportunity to actually get to know these folks, get to
invite them to worship with us. And we've had several
(19:12):
homeless people who have joined the church and who we've
actually been able to walk with as they have transitioned
into permanent housing. But that has been just a remarkable gift.
And I would be remiss without saying that Christ has
actually started the first homeless shelter in Poughkeepsie back in
(19:34):
the nineteen eighties in the house that I live now.
It was only six beds, and now, of course the
homeless population in Poughkeepsie is into the hundreds. But it's
an example of a way that we sort of connect
with people in a very direct way. The other is
(19:56):
we through our collaboration with Stephen ha who's an English
teacher at Poughkeepsie Day School.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
UH.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Steven has started a program called Still Waters, which teaches
English to recent migrants. So every Saturday morning. We have
migrants from Africa and Asia and South and Central America
who come in and and receive English lessons, and those
(20:24):
people work with volunteers from the community who come and
help them learn English and also learn to negotiate, how
to rent an apartment and how how to how to
read the newspaper, and those sort of direct encounters with people,
right help us to not think of people in categories
(20:48):
but instead to really get to know the individual.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And you know, I shultly don't want to buypass the
bishop who had but uh, the central sentence of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
For me, uh it you know, the the central the
central idea of Christianity, uh is to love God with
your whole heart and to love your neighbor as yourself.
So uh, which which is exactly right. I didn't make
(21:24):
it up, right, just not for nothing. That was actually
what he said. That's right. You're right to call me
out on that, Peter, that was a quotation. But but
in order to love your neighbor as yourself, you have
to know your neighbor, right, Because as long as people,
(21:45):
as long as we think of people in terms of categories,
and I see people doing this all the time people
will talk about trans people or not understanding pronouns, or
getting upset about migrants, or you know, all of those
things on a meta issue may be problematic, but the
truth is, as soon as you sit down with another
(22:08):
human being and talk to them and realize what's in
their heart, what motivates them, what their dreams are, they're
your neighbor, and it's easy to love somebody once you
know those things about them. And that's really I think
why you know, when Jesus came remember the Roman Empire
(22:33):
controlled the place that Jesus was born. When Jesus came
into the world, he did not go to Rome, He
did not go knock on the emperor's door. He actually
walked around with a few people, and one at a
time healed people, listen to people, talk to people, eight
with people, and I think showed us how we're supposed
(22:57):
to get along with each other. That's one person at
a time.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Now, this is this is fascinating for me because you
just gave me something and I so appreciate it and
and so love God. Repeat the quote for me and
your whole heart, love your neighbor as yourself. That's right, Okay,
So So here's here's my thought. If you are having
(23:24):
a challenge with loving yourself, it's hard for you to
love your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
So I think it's equally as important to love yourself
in order to love your neighbor, holy and organically.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
And and part of that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I think that that is that's right.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
No, that's exactly right. I think that that's that's that's
a very astute thing to notice. And I'm reminded as
you say that we uh in the Episcopal Church we
had in the early two thousands there was a lot
of conflict in the church about whether or not we
could ordain openly gay and lesbian people. And you might
(24:16):
remember the Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson, who
is an openly gay priest, as a bishop, and it
caused a lot of a lot of upset in the church.
The people that were the most upset by that were
closeted gay and lesbian people. Yes, because and again it
(24:38):
comes out of that own the sense of brokenness, and
and that's really what religion is meant to heal.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Right, I fear that I'm correcting Jesus. But on that,
but when you gave the quote about love your neighbor
as yourself, you could say, love your neighbor because he's yourself.
In other words, the we are there are no singular pronouns.
In other words, everybody is a pooral. And so that
(25:08):
if you are your neighbor, love your neighbor as yourself becomes.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Healed through me.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, I guess I can finish the sentence, yes, but
I can close the show as we can.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So thank you, Reverend Susan for being with us today
the last two sundays. Actually, we've enjoyed the conversation with you.
Thank you to our listeners for listening to finding out
with peeing the Poe cold. We appreciate you
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station, gets, staff, management,
or ownership. Good morning, you'll find me out with Pete
and the Poe Cold. I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the
Poet Gold and we're on the air this morning with
Reverend Susan Fortune I don't know of the christ Episcopal
Church and Poughkeepsie. This is part two. Anybody who miss
(00:23):
part one, you want to go back and get it absolutely.
Before we get to a part two of Reverend Susan,
We're going to go right to Poet Gold for a
weekly poem, prayer, incantation. Gold, please let it roll.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay, I'm going to give the audience another sneak peak
of maybe what's coming and to be included in my
upcoming book, be the poem living Beyond Our Fears. Sometimes
we say things our tongue cuts, hearts bleed. Sometimes we
say things without care. Sometimes we say things makes me
(00:57):
wonder who do we wish to be in the world?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And we all want to be the best version of ourselves? Right,
beat a poem? Okay, I want to sure people like
everything else in the on this show is not rehearsed.
That was too good to be true. And Reverend Susan
for JOHNA thank you for coming back to be with
(01:23):
us on this week's broadcast. And you know when we left,
well last week we were talking. We don't have to
have the exact same conversation, but I'd like to have
you beat us into this week's discussion by talking about
the local perspective that you bring to you a moral,
(01:43):
spiritual and uh social.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Work and can I add to that and also geographically
being born in the South and you know, and how
that shaped you.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Sure, thank you the you know, I just I would
be remiss without telling you that Matt Hyde, who's the bishop,
the episcopal Bishop of New York, likes to say the
Holy Spirit moves at ground level. And I just think
that that is genius because it's so easy to kind
(02:20):
of get dazzled and think about larger structures and problems
that we can't solve. It's so easy to get sucked
into those. And the longer I've been a priest, the
more I think that what we can do is we
can really focus on the people and the issues right
(02:41):
around us in our own communities. And so every day
I walk around the block of the church at Christ's
Episcopal Church, and if I every time I walk around,
I see school children going to Clinton Elementary School, I
see homeless people, I see addicts, I see men and
(03:01):
women getting up and going to work. And it makes
me remember why I'm a priest and why my church
matters some of those To go back to my to
my upbringing, which I think is genius for you to
ask me about. I actually was born in Texas and
moved to Georgia when I was eight years old. And
(03:24):
living in a little town in Georgia, I can tell
you that, you know, I learned simple lessons right. One
of the things that I learned is that you don't
have to agree with everybody to like them. I lived
with a lot of people whose perspectives didn't make sense
to me. But you know, when you live in a
(03:46):
town with twenty five hundred people, you say good morning,
you figure out ways to help each other, and you
try and do everything you can to get along. But also,
I think it was an advantaged to grow up in
Georgia because the place and the time that I grew up,
(04:10):
segregation was just happened a few years before my class.
I graduated from high school in nineteen eighty five. My
class was the first class in Madison, Georgia to be
integrated from kindergarten on, and so everybody in town watched us.
(04:36):
People were very nervous about us. I grew up because
they had combined the black school and the white school
into one. So I grew up with fifty percent of
my teachers being black and fifty being white. I grew
up where each school, the middle school had a black principal,
(04:57):
the high school had a white principal. And because of that,
I feel like I sort of was raised with some
intentionality about integration, and also some intentionality it was impossible
for any of us to ignore the fact that racism
was present and something that we needed to make a
(05:20):
conscious effort to work on.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I'm sorry I mean to, but that was pretty progressive
because when you say fifty percent of the educators were
black and fifty percent of the educations were white, you know, normally,
when schools were integrated, you still had black students with
ninety percent, if not more, of of Anglo teachers, you know,
than than than black teachers. Welcoming into the institutions.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, I didn't know that. I mean, I didn't know that,
but I but I can say that again. You know,
I grew up in a town where we had fifty
one percent of the people were white and forty nine
percent of the people were black, or some years fifty
one percent of it down was black and forty nine
(06:06):
percent was white. But I think that again, the intentionality
of the integration that I experienced was really helpful for
me and modeling some principles that have guided me my
whole life. Like it's important for everyone to have a
(06:27):
voice at the table. It's important to be respectful of
everybody's experience. The system is never perfect. It's just never perfect.
It's always corrupt, but we can all as individuals recognize
the limitations of those structures and try and make improvements
(06:49):
and do better each generation.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And when you say intentionality, it's a word. It means
doing it on purpose, right, right, So you growing up
because the racial attention was so conspicuous, you had on purpose,
You had to work on it. You get along with
the other kids in your class.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, for instance, you know, when I was in the
fourth grade, I had a birthday party, and again I
had only lived in this town for probably a year
when I had my fourth grade my tenth birthday party,
and I wanted to invite the girls in my class.
And one of the girls in my class was Pam Benford,
(07:33):
who was a young woman of color. And we actually
wound up getting phone calls from other parents saying that
this would be a horrible thing to include Pam. Now,
now I'm telling you, Pam Benford was one of the
nicest people I've ever known in my entire life. And
(07:55):
I was so confused by that. And my parents had
to sit down and explained to me racism, and they
had to explain to me how fearful people were of
the changes that we were trying to make. And so
sure enough, Pam came to my birthday party. It was
a great party, She had a great time. She wound
(08:17):
up being the first African American homecoming queen for the
class of nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And I.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
When I saw that, I was so proud of my
class and also of my parents for being brave enough
to say, you know, you had an impulse to invite
your friend to the party, and we want you to
be colorblind. We want you to practice that, but don't
(08:50):
do it naively. Understand there's going to be backlash.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Oh if you're just switting and you're listening to finding
out with Pete and the poet Gold and I'm the
poet goal here with Reverend Susan Fortunado, pastor of Christ's
Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie, I had a similar experience as
as you're just like wooh, took me right back as
as a child, I went to prep school predominantly white,
but you can count the number of people of color
on one hand when I was coming up during that time.
(09:17):
And and my first Slummer party actually that I attended,
all my friends were white there. But one of the
parents after the party got a call and you know,
and and saying, you know, she's rude, this, that and
the other thing, and you know, and and the parents
then got involved in and the students got involved and said,
(09:38):
you know, this is like not true, and but it's
connected to the other ism, the fear, the unfamiliarity, that's right.
I had to be like nine years old, ten I
was ten. Actually I got into tapment and when I was
ten years old, so I was I was about ten
years old ten or eleven years old, and you know,
(09:59):
and and it taught me me it again. No, it
didn't scare me because I know it was not true,
so it didn't scare me. It just you know, it's
one of those things that you look at and go,
why are people like this? Let me pay attention, you know,
And that was my perspective as a child, you know
why people like this?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And and it made me realize to how frightened people are,
how much fear people walk in.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I think that that's true. I think that a lot
of racism, right comes from a fear, absolutely a fear
of the other. And and I think that, you know,
it's it's something that we need to be conscious of
as human beings that you know, we do have a
(10:45):
reptilian brain, right that sends us very primitive messages. And
and there was a moment right in all of our histories,
like you know, millions of years ago, there's a moment
we fear of someone who looks different than you or
acts different than you was protective. You needed to be
(11:08):
with your tribe, and someone on the outside who didn't
look or sounds like you did should cause you nervousness.
And we all have that kind of animal instinct, right,
that reptilian instinct of saying, oh, this is a person
who doesn't look or sound like me. But we also
(11:29):
are spiritual beings, and we're capable of reflection and growth.
And if we reflect and let ourselves grow through that discomfort,
we find ourselves realizing that whether it's racial differences or
sexual orientation, or differences of where we come from, that
(11:52):
ultimately we're all human beings and that there are there
is so much more that we have in common, and
so much more to sell celebrate them.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
We have to fear right and and it's and it's
the response to that what's going on constantly in us, unconsciously,
deeply from that part of the brain that that people
don't realize. This is what you're constantly.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
That's right, you're getting those signals and and you know,
to answer a question you haven't asked, Peter, you know,
I think that that religion for me, right gives me
a space and a vocabulary to step outside of those
(12:38):
impulses right and to reflect and connect with our best
and truest selves. And for me, that's poetry, and it's
also art right. Religion, art music, poetry, all of those
things are languages, right, are languages that help us rise
(13:01):
above sort of our most base impulses.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Right. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And well, as we're talking about you know, fear, I
do want to go back to your you know your poem.
So it comes from your new collection, coming out, your
new program, coming out about living beyond our fears. So
when I asked you a question about were you afraid
at ten years old? When you when your adults started saying,
hey man, not a black kid. I mean, so you
(13:30):
might have been gifted early and not being afraid and
being curious about fears. You want to connect that a bit.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Absolutely, I've always been. I'm glad you said curious because
as you were speaking, uh, you know, I was thinking curious. Absolutely,
I've always been, for whatever reason, h curious about why
we react the way we do to things. I've always
been curious about the relationship. I used to watch a
lot of Animal National Geography. It was one of my
favorite shows, and the similarity between what I would see
(14:01):
animals do on TV and people do, and so in
my drama classes as a child, I was always acting
regarding observations of people's behaviors in relationship to each other.
The person on the bus that moves over, and how
uncomfortable they are because someone has invaded their space. And
(14:24):
so we give these little We used to have these
acting exercises in school, and so those are the things
that I would would observe and it and it made
me recognize how uncomfortable we were in our own skins
as human beings, and how it stood in contradiction to
(14:45):
our beliefs in God, in the higher voices that we
say we want to practice, but the sheer movement and
the and the what I want to say, the constriction
in our body, and the anger and the GrimAge you
could see in someone's face. As a child would say
(15:09):
to me, something's not right.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Okay, something's not right, and I want to find out.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right right and know what was not right. But I
knew something was not right, and it always for me said,
this person is very afraid. So at seven I didn't
know what the word empathy meant. But to you know,
be kind, be have empathy for that person so they
can feel more comfortable in their space and maybe then
(15:35):
just you know, relax in their body language.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
And when you have you know, a figure like Christ
who all embracing it sets up an ideal that I
will live to experience contradicts, right, but the ideal is
something that we can strive for in the various organizations,
with various churches throughout Western culture. I have said that,
(16:04):
although very often also promoted exactly what the opposite of
the ideal that just happened.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
If you're just suiting in, you're listening to finding out
with Pete and the poet Gold, I'm Peter and I'm
the poet Gold. We're here at Reverend Susan Fortunado and
Pastor Christ Episcopal Church. I'm giggling because because Peter, we've
been very good about being going time today with with
with the announcement.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, I appreciate the I have the best view of
the clock together, but I'm not that dutiful, so very
often we mess it up.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I'm very impressed. It's very professional, very professional, well done.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Just going back to the you know, I appreciate that,
uh glance and see your childhood. But coming you know,
into Poughkeepsie and taking the mission of the church to
the local level. You know, the bishop was saying the
spirit action the ground level. That's a profound statement. And
(17:15):
how does that get implemented not only in Poughkeepsie, but
in your church itself, Like what programs would reflect that?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Sure? Well, the one that's closest to my heart actually
is I've been lucky enough to work with Hudson River
Housing almost since I came here. I came in twenty fifteen.
I joined the board of Hudson River Housing in twenty sixteen.
One of the things that Christ Church has done that's
(17:44):
been so meaningful to me has been to partner with
Hudson River Housing to offer a Code Blue shelter or
a Code Blue warming center for the unhoused in the
basement of our church. So from November to the end
of March each year, we have a shelter in our
(18:06):
basement for the unhoused, and that gives us a couple things.
So we have about thirty men and women who are
at the church from seven at night to seven in
the morning, and it gives us a chance to connect
with them on a personal level. Because back to what
(18:27):
poet Gold was saying about about how people can be
so fearful when someone looks or acts differently than they do.
The unhoused are a population that I think a lot
of people just see somebody struggling on the street or
wrapped up in blankets, and they just sort of recoil.
(18:49):
There's something about the just the poverty, the need of
that person that really brings up a lot of feelings.
One of the great things that we have is the
opportunity to actually get to know these folks, get to
invite them to worship with us. And we've had several
(19:12):
homeless people who have joined the church and who we've
actually been able to walk with as they have transitioned
into permanent housing. But that has been just a remarkable gift.
And I would be remiss without saying that Christ has
actually started the first homeless shelter in Poughkeepsie back in
(19:34):
the nineteen eighties in the house that I live now.
It was only six beds, and now, of course the
homeless population in Poughkeepsie is into the hundreds. But it's
an example of a way that we sort of connect
with people in a very direct way. The other is
(19:56):
we through our collaboration with Stephen ha who's an English
teacher at Poughkeepsie Day School.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
UH.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Steven has started a program called Still Waters, which teaches
English to recent migrants. So every Saturday morning. We have
migrants from Africa and Asia and South and Central America
who come in and and receive English lessons, and those
(20:24):
people work with volunteers from the community who come and
help them learn English and also learn to negotiate, how
to rent an apartment and how how to how to
read the newspaper, and those sort of direct encounters with people,
right help us to not think of people in categories
(20:48):
but instead to really get to know the individual.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And you know, I shultly don't want to buypass the
bishop who had but uh, the central sentence of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
For me, uh it you know, the the central the
central idea of Christianity, uh is to love God with
your whole heart and to love your neighbor as yourself.
So uh, which which is exactly right. I didn't make
(21:24):
it up, right, just not for nothing. That was actually
what he said. That's right. You're right to call me
out on that, Peter, that was a quotation. But but
in order to love your neighbor as yourself, you have
to know your neighbor, right, Because as long as people,
(21:45):
as long as we think of people in terms of categories,
and I see people doing this all the time people
will talk about trans people or not understanding pronouns, or
getting upset about migrants, or you know, all of those
things on a meta issue may be problematic, but the
truth is, as soon as you sit down with another
(22:08):
human being and talk to them and realize what's in
their heart, what motivates them, what their dreams are, they're
your neighbor, and it's easy to love somebody once you
know those things about them. And that's really I think
why you know, when Jesus came remember the Roman Empire
(22:33):
controlled the place that Jesus was born. When Jesus came
into the world, he did not go to Rome, He
did not go knock on the emperor's door. He actually
walked around with a few people, and one at a
time healed people, listen to people, talk to people, eight
with people, and I think showed us how we're supposed
(22:57):
to get along with each other. That's one person at
a time.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Now, this is this is fascinating for me because you
just gave me something and I so appreciate it and
and so love God. Repeat the quote for me and
your whole heart, love your neighbor as yourself. That's right, Okay,
So So here's here's my thought. If you are having
(23:24):
a challenge with loving yourself, it's hard for you to
love your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
So I think it's equally as important to love yourself
in order to love your neighbor, holy and organically.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
And and part of that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I think that that is that's right.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
No, that's exactly right. I think that that's that's that's
a very astute thing to notice. And I'm reminded as
you say that we uh in the Episcopal Church we
had in the early two thousands there was a lot
of conflict in the church about whether or not we
could ordain openly gay and lesbian people. And you might
(24:16):
remember the Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson, who
is an openly gay priest, as a bishop, and it
caused a lot of a lot of upset in the church.
The people that were the most upset by that were
closeted gay and lesbian people. Yes, because and again it
(24:38):
comes out of that own the sense of brokenness, and
and that's really what religion is meant to heal.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Right, I fear that I'm correcting Jesus. But on that,
but when you gave the quote about love your neighbor
as yourself, you could say, love your neighbor because he's yourself.
In other words, the we are there are no singular pronouns.
In other words, everybody is a pooral. And so that
(25:08):
if you are your neighbor, love your neighbor as yourself becomes.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Healed through me.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, I guess I can finish the sentence, yes, but
I can close the show as we can.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So thank you, Reverend Susan for being with us today
the last two sundays. Actually, we've enjoyed the conversation with you.
Thank you to our listeners for listening to finding out
with peeing the Poe cold. We appreciate you
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