ALONG THE SEAM

Along The Seam, Season 2

Derrick McQueen

INTRO

Hey Everyone. Welcome back to Along The Seam. I’m Rachael Cerrotti.

Today I’m joined by Derrick McQueen. I met Derrick last year at an event in New York City and immediately knew I wanted him to join me on this show. Derrick is a pastor, a theologian, a singer, a gifted storyteller and someone whose life is full of intercultural and interfaith dialogue and relationship. Our first conversation hooked me when we started talking about ritual and the power of sharing tradition with one another.

Derrick has his phD in homiletics which is the art of preaching. (I had to look that one up). As well as in the New Testament. His work is very much rooted in the belief that preaching is persuasive speech and that the way we communicate our stories is just as important, if not more, than what the story is about.

I loved this conversation. Derrick shines light on the need for community. He tells me stories. And we talk about dreaming - not dreaming while you're asleep dreaming - but daydreaming. The hopes and desires we all have for what the world could be. And I have to acknowledge that both Derrick and I were wearing very similar brown cozy sweaters which felt very serendipitous in our matching.

This conversation with Derrick McQueen was recorded on February 15, 2024.

CONVERSATION

Derrick: Okay, let’s see -

Rachael: Can you hear me?

Derrick: Oh, beautiful. There we are.

Rachael: Oh, perfect. Wonderful. It's a real shame this isn’t video because you and I are really nice like outfits with each other, right now

Derrick: Exactly. exactly.

Rachael: This is like

Derrick: Exactly

Rachael: I feel like we should be in, like a band together in these outfits.

Derrick: I love it.

Rachael: Cozy winter attire.

Derrick: I love it, I know, it's like. I saw this and said, yeah. This is the one for today.

Rachael: Umm Derek, thanks for being with me today.

Derrick: Thanks for having me Rachael.

Rachael: So I'm going to give a little bit of your background and then I'm going to ask you to tell me all about yourself. So you are a reverend and you're currently the pastor of Saint James Presbyterian Church in Harlem.

Derrick: That’s correct.

Rachael: And then there are a few firsts that come with this title. So as an institution, your church is the oldest Presbyterian African-American church in New York City. Actually, I'm going to ask you what is Presbyterian?

Derrick: Presbyterian is one of the reformed theologies that sort of spawned out of Luther's theses on the door of the Catholic Church. And it was actually sort of instituted very much many people would say by Calvin when he went to Switzerland. He actually was asked to go to Switzerland to sort of calm people down because they were having so many festivals and they were losing sight of their religiosity and Presbyterianism became this way of understanding that God is still speaking. It's a priesthood of all believers, so that there's not a hierarchical structure of an episcopate, like a bishop or anything. And it really is theologically a matter of that there's nothing that we have to do to ask for grace. God already has given grace and mercy and forgiveness. We just have to claim our access to it and live our lives accordingly and move forward from there.

Rachael: Claim our access to it - I like that. So another first is that you personally are the first, and I'm taking this line from your website, the first out and open, same gender loving pastor of an African American church in the Presbyterian Church in New York, and the first senior pastor in the country.

Derrick: Yes, yes, yes, yes. yes.

Rachael: That's a mighty first.

Derrick: It's strange. It's a mighty first. And yet it's sort of a quiet first. It's just sort of one of those things where you step into it and you live it, and then history will tell what it is.

Rachael: I like that. In being the first there, you've really set a foundation of love and care for other people to follow. And so we're going to talk about your work as a community leader and as a teacher. But I first want to go to your foundation. And so who are the people who raised you? Where do you come from?

Derrick: Oh, I come from Morristown, New Jersey. And Morristown, New Jersey is a revolutionary capital in the state of New Jersey. George Washington had a headquarters there. And I actually lived in a small black community called Collinsville. It's strange; Morristown is this beautifully rich-it was one of the ten richest counties in the world at the time that I was there-and yet Collinsville is this black enclave of a community that goes through the center of this area of Morris County. And then you go down the hill where all the churches are and then you go underneath the railroad tracks and you come up and there are the projects in the hollow. And that's sort of where the grittier section is, but not too gritty for Morristown. So I come from that and I was raised by my mom, Priscilla McQueen, and my dad, Dorsey McQueen. And I have a younger brother, Aaron. But I was also raised by my mom's five sisters and one brother. So we have that going on, and the most important person outside of that realm in my life was my Aunt Dot, who was like the grandmother figure. My grandmother-I never met my grandmother-she passed away when my mom was in high school. But my aunt Dot was the one that held me close and I had some sort of a massive spiritual connection with her. All throughout my life and even spiritually, even dare I say, past the physical realm of living. So she's been a very important person in my life and even in having me understand, like, who my mom and dad are, who parents are, who adults are, and all of our pluses and minuses and all of our gifts and our learnings and wonderings. So, Aunt Dot was pretty powerful with me.

Rachael: Do you have any core memories with her that exemplify that spiritual connection?

Derrick: Oh umm, there was one time when I was a child. Wow. I rarely speak of this, but it always comes up to me in my mind. One time when I was a child at Calvary Baptist Church because I grew up Baptist. They have an altar call where they call people up at the end of the service for prayer. And I went up for prayer as a child on my own. All the other kids, we were laughing, we used to always laugh and joke at the very end, but for some reason something called me to go up. And as I'm standing there and I close my eyes, I opened my eyes and I saw these feet, and these feet had nail marks and there was a tattered white robe. And then it said, grab my hand. And I grabbed the hand. And then he said, look at me. And I said, I can't. I'm not - I'm not worthy to look up. I'm not ready to look up. And then I just started crying a little bit and I closed my eyes and the prayer ended, and I opened my eyes, the figure was gone that was next to me. And my Aunt Dot looked at me from across the other side of the church, and she mouthed to me, I saw it too.

Rachael: Whoa.

Derrick: [laughter]

Rachael: How old are you at this time?

Derrick: I think I was about maybe 7 or 8. Somewhere around there, yeah.

Rachael: You said that that memory comes up for you quite often. Are there times where it directs you in a way, or is it kind of a fleeting passing by memory?

Derrick: It visits as confirmation in many different aspects of my life. When I'm wondering about is this the step, like, do I go to seminary? That thought popped up into my head. And it gives me the openness to be open to how spirit engages with me or how the cosmos engages with me. However we want to put that. When it chooses to engage with me in a very deep way, that story reminds me that I have the permission to allow it and to be in that.

Rachael: From early on, it sounds like church was a very big, important part of your life.

Derrick: Yeppers Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Spent many, many Sundays - church. We would go to Sunday school maybe, like around 9 o’clock. And then we would have a devotional service before worship service around 10 o’clock. And then service would start at 11 and go to 1 or 2. And then you would get something to eat and you go to another 3 o’clock afternoon service or drive to visit another church in another area like Newark or East Orange, and get home around 7 o’clock and finish your homework. And then there was choir rehearsal and prayer meeting and youth school and all that stuff, so -

Rachael: It sounds like it was just as much community as religion.

Derrick: Oh, big time, big time, big time. I've come to understand that in the work that I do, that the community of black church and black churches, it gives you a place to be, a place to find yourself, a place to find yourself in a broken world, especially in a world of racism where you may be a custodian at a school on Monday through Friday, yet on Sunday, you are the most trusted trustee dealing with the money and dealing with all the business. You know, my aAunt Dot was a domestic for the judge, one of the major judges in Morristown. And yet she was a mother of the church in her finest wear, a guiding light in the neighborhood outside of that. And all of that gets recognized and poured into the community that is church. So you find yourself being able to identify yourself as, as a human being and as a human being of worth, of value. And, it really helps to instill a lot of identity in many people and in me.

Rachael: Aside for being a reverend, you also have your PhD in homiletics.

Derrick: Yes

Rachael: I had to look up what homiletics was. So for anyone who does not know what that is, homiletics is the art of preaching.

Derrick: Yes

Rachael: So you've studied the composition and the delivery of religious texts.

Derrick: Yes.

Rachael: Is my research correct? My Wikipedia did me right.

Derrick: Wikipedia did you alright.

Rachael: Okay.

Derrick: My PhD is actually in two spheres. I have one in homiletics and one in New Testament. So I did them in tandem with one another. But homiletics and the art of preaching - I have a bachelor's degree in theater arts from Drew university, so I went into theater and all that other stuff. But it's very much in keeping with embracing the idea that is not very popular in modern times that preaching is persuasive speech. People don't like to think that you have to persuade people to love God and, like, that's not what it's about. It's persuasive in the way that it allows you to bring and open up different avenues of text and spirituality into which people can enter. And giving them the permission to enter into that. And the art of doing that in the composition and studying how it's been done since the very beginning of time. It's very fascinating to me. Very fascinating.

Rachael: It's totally fascinating. I like, went down a little rabbit hole with it and one of the questions that came up for me was - if you're guiding a community, you need a deep curiosity, you need compassion. And I feel like a great attribute of a good leader is someone who really appreciates new questions, like figuring out what are the new questions we need to be asking. So tying in the performance aspect into preaching, there was this like tension coming up in my head of like, how do you balance the performance and the persuasion with truth and without floating into fiction or exaggeration, like, how do you make sure that we're staying within a - within, like a really honest sphere? And then furthermore, with biblical stories, which are stories that have been interpreted and reinterpreted over time so many times that they actually are different stories to different people depending on, you know, which scholar you're reading from or which text you're reading from. So like what is that balance there? Like how do you figure out what's too much and what's too little?

Derrick: In speaking about performance and preaching, it's more embracing performance theory and that performance theory is recognizing that when you are presenting something to people that the way in which you present it is an important way of being aware of what you're doing. You know, it's not just sort of willy-nilly talking about what it is that you think is right or what it is that you believe, but it is actually being in tune to say, let's open ourselves up to the possibility of what can shift and what can change here. And performance theory opens itself up to that, I believe. I believe that performance theory, especially in the realm of preaching, becomes less about me as the deliverer, but about how we can find ways into how to make the message in the words come alive and be real and be meaningful and meaning filled. That to me is more the performative when I think about performance. I'm very clear about that because I do see a lot of performance in a lot of preaching. I went to Cuba taking some young people with the Presbyterian Church down in southern Jersey, and we went to the First Presbyterian Church of Havana. And the gentleman preached like Castro. When you hear Castro speak, there's a definite style of stating the point and stating it over and over and over again and hitting things in a very sure, deliberate way. So that you don't even question because he's Castro. And I was amazed that the preacher had the same mannerisms and the same style of presentation. There are many people who do that. Like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. There are certain people that call that the Morehouse way of preaching and that there's a stylistic way of bringing that - that performance forward. But not everybody can do those things well and yet people aspire to do that. And yet I believe in performance theory that, you know, you practice and you learn these different stylisms and mannerisms, especially ones that are familiar from you growing up. But then you create your own. You know, I learned that a lot from jazz as well. I studied Ella Fitzgerald for years and years and years, and I got down one of her How High The Moon scat songs, syllable by syllable. Note by note.

Rachael: In singing?

Derrick: In singing. in order to familiarize myself with jazz and fluidity. And it was for a while there, for about seven months I was singing like Ella Fitzgerald. But after that, I graduated to a point where I was embracing this fullness of jazz. But it was Derek singing instead. So that's what I mean about this whole idea of moving past the performative to this whole idea of performance theory and embracing it because then you figure out how you best communicate what it is that you're speaking to people that are willing to sit and listen to you communicate.

Rachael: Learn the rules so you can break them.

Derrick: Exactly. Exactly.

Rachael: That's a lot of what you do with biblical storytelling as well, Right? Is like -

Derrick: Yes.

Rachael: You look at these old biblical stories and the way they're traditionally taught and told and then really seeking how they intersect with today.

Derrick: Yes.

Rachael: And today keeps changing.

Derrick: Exactly.

Rachael: Which means that you have to keep changing the story, which is this improvisation of its own.

Derrick: That's what's so beautiful about it, though. That's what's so great about it. It's like it's always changing. And I can read the same texts and there's always something that jumps out at me.

Rachael: When I was sharing with you about this podcast and asking you to come and join me on it, I emphasized that like I'm really interested in diving into is the why rather than the what. Like, I think in just society and in the news and media today. Like we're really get fixated on like what people think and don't try to understand like why they do the things they do. And what their family history is and what their personal experiences are and what books they've read and what has influenced them because that is, like so consequential to our identities and our sense of self and all of this. So I say to you like that's where I want to spend our time. And then I'm listening to your sermons and I get to a sermon that you gave in 2014, which I don't know how that's ten years ago, but we're talking about ten years ago now. [laughter] And you talk of the biblical story from the Old Testament of Sarah and Abraham, which is, you know, more from my tradition because I was raised Jewish. And you talk about the practice of welcoming the stranger into their home. And you start to explore this question of why and, like, offer different theories, like, would they welcome people because that's the safe thing to do? Make friends and befriend your potential enemies. And is it like to protect oneself, or does it come from a much more, like, curious, humanist space of like we just, like, we're here alone and we want the company and it's the right thing to do. And you sort of land this sermon in a space of maybe it doesn't matter why. The point is that they're doing it.

Derrick: Right.

Rachael: So I was like, ooh, fun tension. So I want to spend some time there. And if you could give us for anybody who's not familiar with that story, just a little overview of Sarah and Abraham and the welcoming of the stranger. And then, what's your hot take? Like, is it the what or is it the why? And how come?

Derrick: Well, you know, I love that story because so many communities boast or hold claim to being hospitable. And being radically hospitable. And very often I’ve encountered that it is not been claimed with looking at the idea of the hospitality of Abraham and Sarah. Which in the very beginning, you know, is just sort of like this. Here's this stranger, this guy who's sort of like a wandering Aramean, right? And he's in the middle of this area. And apparently so many people go back and forth and there’s the idea of this older man and his wife, you know, sitting in this compound of tents and him sitting outside just waiting for people to come by so that he can offer them hospitality. Come into my house and eat. You know, have something to eat. Rest here for a while and then get back going. And they're in this together. He and Sarah are in this together. And I always loved the idea that, what does that really, really look like? Why are they doing that? We always say, well, that's how God created them. That's why God chose them because they were that loving and this and that. But that's a little blanket - that's just like a little bit of a blanket statement. What about these human beings? What are the human elements of wanting to welcome people? You know, what does that actually mean? We're in a very dangerous mid-route of a lot of traveling caravans and a lot of thieves, and, you know, people are going to and fro, and we need our reputation to sort of be like, leave us alone. So what do we - how do we do that? We're nice to people. We offer them shelter. We have a lot. We've been blessed. So let's just share it. There's that aspect of it, but there's also the aspect of it of it's really lonely. Like you said, we’re two older people. We don't have children. We have all of this stuff and we just want to share it with people. And maybe, just maybe, they just want to be liked.

Rachael: We all just want to be liked.

Derrick: We all just want to be liked, right? And why can't we think about these two., as matriarch and patriarch, in light of their humanity. And then think about, you know, what is the end game of it? What do we remember? What are we taught by it? We're taught that it is good and right to open your homes and to be hospitable to people, and to provide for one another, and to see the world as your community. So does it really matter why? Why we do it? As long as we can figure out how we get to that point where our openness and when we open that it is open. That's the thing, is that they had to move from their own - whatever their intentions were in doing that, they had to move from that and still come to a point of enjoying having the company and the company being there. And that's how my family was. You know, that's another thing that speaks to me about that text. People come home after church on Sunday, that door is always open to anybody who's hungry. Is it because people are just being magnanimous? Well, it's also because people knew that they brought things together and that you would be able to take plates home. You would be able to figure out where to go in the middle of the week if there were leftovers and you, for example, didn't have enough food. It was a community building effort. It was good to sit around the table with a bunch of people and eat, yes. but it also spoke volumes as to where do you go when you need a helping hand? Whose door can you knock on when you're going through a hard time? That's the hospitality to me that comes up from the seed of Abraham and Sarah. So that's why I say, does it really matter? What matters is that the seed of hospitality is planted in our beings. And if we can let it grow, what kind of a world are we building with one another?

Rachael: So I want to complicate the question if that's okay.

Derrick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachael: So if we look at the opposite behavior - people who don't open their doors. Does the ‘why’ matter more? Is it more important to uncover what is the root of they're closed offness because, right, it you come from fear to come from past experience, threat, some teaching from their parent. So is it more important to get to understand the why then?

Derrick: That's why I present the question, is it important why. because I think it's not answerable. I think you have to contend with both and then figure it out from there with each situation. I preached that sermon for the United Church of Christ whose radical hospitality was and is their mode of Who they are and how they want the world to see them. But I always challenge churches. It's like - so it's wonderful for you to open your doors to diverse people, but how good is it when you just want them to become like you? You want people to come to your door from different denominations and different cultures and this and that. And you say, but this is how we do things. And now that you're here, now you do things like us. That's not diversity. That's not radical hospitality. And so you have to interrogate why even as a faith community, you want to say that you do that. And that makes for a complicated way of understanding hospitality, but it makes for a much more wholesome and inviting way for us to build community from hospitality. Hospitality is not automatically community. Hospitality opens the door.

Rachael: I want to go back to you telling the story of Sarah and Abraham in a church. Is it common to preach the stories of the Old Testament in a Christian church?

Derrick: Yeah,

Rachael: Are they as common as the New Testament? It is? okay. Because I know that a lot of your work has been, at least in recent years, in the interfaith, or I believe you use the word multifaith spaces.

Derrick: Mmhmm.

Rachael: Can you tell me a bit about that? Like what have you – first of all, what is that work you've been doing? But also what have you gained from looking at these biblical stories from multiple faith perspectives at the same time?

Derrick: Most notably my multifaith work has been - started with Auburn Seminary, where I'm at right now. Because that was its major focus with multifaith leadership and multifaith leadership in approaching the issues of the world with a commonality of faith values from all faiths and denominations and traditions and so on and so forth. And then it got really fine tuned over the past five years while I've been working with Lab Shul, which is a pop up Jewish community - pop up, God-optional Jewish community. And here I am, this Christian pastor that has been doing high holy day services with them. I do a lot of ritual work with them. We do a lot of work in the community of bringing together the different faith traditions to speak to these moments and to speak to the similarities and what our faith traditions bring to the wisdom of these certain issues and things that are going on in the world. And that has been really important to me. And I've - like, I find it profound, and I learned this from a Joseph Campbell video that I was watching maybe even more than 10 years ago. It was a rabbi, a black baptist woman preacher, an imam and a Catholic priest discussing the sacrifice of Isaac. And I know it's going to come off sounding like a joke, but it's not. You know –

Rachael: But it is a good start to a joke.

Derrick: Right. So the rabbi was like, well, you know, we have to deal with that every year. But you know we don't really like to deal with that. The Baptist woman was just sort of like, yeah, we sort of bring into a lot of the narrative of how we have to deal with in terms of being black, and we don't like to talk about it either. It's just a really messy moment. And the Catholic priest was just sort of like, yeah, it's a messy moment that we don't really deal with. We talk about it and talk around it in our classes, but we don't really preach around that a lot. And the imam just sort of said, well, It's important for us because when you read, you know, when you read our texts, you find out that Isaac says, Dad, what's wrong? And he says, well, you know, God wants me to do something, and I just don't know if I can do it. He said, Dad, what are you talking about? He said, well, God has called for me to sacrifice you. And Isaac says, Dad, if God has asked you to do this then this is what we must do. So let us go and prepare and God will - God will make the way. So it's different than just like taking this little boy up to a mountain, right? It's this conversation, and it's this conversation of faith between them both of saying, we are both going to figure out where this journey is going to take us. And that was profound for me in terms of how the text when engaged in other traditions, and the fullness of other traditions engagements, how it may speak differently and give you an opening into the whole idea of the faith narrative. And how the moment of that conversation between father and son, how powerful that was for the narrative and for it to left out in a way in so many other different ways of dealing with it because it's messy. But to delve into the relationship between the father and son and the trauma that is caused by this kind of conversation, this kind of relationship. That's just worth investigating and being in conversation about. Because there's so much. There's betrayal, there's faith, there is not wanting to do what God wants you to do. You know, there's doing what God wants you to do blindly without thinking about another person in that story. And those are themes that are so relevant in all society, in all history for us to talk about and engage and to be in conversation about because those points are laid out in a very real way, in that context, so that we can take these elements and say, where are they making themselves known now. And how do - How can we deal with this in conversation with that? I'm not taking somebody up to the mountain to raise a dagger on them, but the idea that these difficult conversations about God is asking me - I hear God asking me to do something and it's harmful to someone else. What does that mean? What does that mean in our relationship with one another?

Rachael: It's including them in the choice.

Derrick: Right? And so it's not the well it ended like this in the Bible, so we have to do it that way. It's like no where we have the opportunity to learn within. Nobody is asking us to sacrifice our children on the altar. And quite honestly, nobody is asking us to die on a cross. I wrote a paper about that, in terms of domestic violence with women. You know, so many faith leaders in many traditions say this is your burden to bear. This is your cross to bear. I'm like, I'm reading through the text and it's like, well, they did make Simon of Cyrene and carried the cross for Jesus, but he put it down and Jesus got up on it. So it's not a cross for people to be on. We get to put it down. So our goal is to find the moment where we tell people, put it down. We tell an abused woman, put the cross down and leave and save yourself. don't stay. You're not supposed to be crucified on this.

Rachael: I'm going to use that to bring us back to the question of the interfaith space. That idea of learning from each other, right, is so enriching.

Derrick: Yeah.

Rachael: And it seems like it's enriched you a lot in your professional and your personal life -

Derrick: Oh yeah.

Rachael: to have this relationship with the Jewish community at LabShul.

Derrick: And LabShul has, you know, they do STorah-telling.

Rachael: I saw that on their website and I was like, that's clever, I like it.

Derrick: It's actually a process that they've come up with in engaging the texts and engaging the Torah, which is really powerful. To be able to open up and explore the texts in a storytelling, theatrical kind of way and to allow me to be a part of that process. When I'm able to sort of write creatively about, human experiences and parallel them with the mythological and the Torah experiences that we're engaging, to bring these points across and to question these narratives about what are we being called to atone for has been really a powerful way to be in the world. Rabbi Amichai and I are very close friends, like brothers. And we always look at each other and call each other our teachers. We're rabbis to one another, you know. And the engaging of Muslim leadership and Buddhist leadership, and any faith tradition that comes into the realm. Even the African religions. We have a woman who works with us and what she brings to some of the experiences. Like we had a Simchat Torah opening of the scroll outside of my church in the streets of Harlem, right.

Rachael: So fun.

Derrick: And to see folks and kids from Harlem being able to pick out with the pointer words from the scroll was really beautiful and really powerful. A way to bring people in and to figure out how we can fuze some of our traditions because they really are all interrelated in a lot of different ways. And I really love Zen koans and Buddhism and like the whole idea of non-attachment. You know, we have a phrase in the black church, they always say, let go and let God. It's the same thing. You know, when you logically - when you intellectually like, really interrogate it. It's like, it’s the same thing. Just let go and don't hold on to it. When I was in seminary, I did a reading class and we were really studying this multifaith way of being in community because quite honestly, the easiest way that people that say that they're doing interfaith is to have a rabbi pray a prayer in Hebrew. A Zen Buddhist leads you in meditation, to have Christian pastor pray or read scripture. It's sampling, rather than integrating the power of the traditions in new ways and new rituals and new opportunities of being with one another. Creating new rituals and creating ways of bringing our - the power of our faith traditions into a new common ritual is a really powerful, powerful thing that I love to do and I will never depart from that.

Rachael: Tradition and ritual have been on my mind a lot in the past few years and I credit a bit of that to - one of the things that I got out of Covid was nesting. I was pretty much traveling almost full time before the pandemic. And then the pandemic came and I was like, well, this other thing that I always wanted to do in my life was to like, move to Maine and, like, live somewhere. So I bought a condo and got a dog and a bunch of house plants and just nested hard. And was like, this is where I'm going to live now. And I'll say this, it was one of the best choices I've made for myself. It didn't happen to me, I decided it. So now that that's been some years in the making and some routine has returned or has been created. It seems like suddenly there's space for tradition and ritual in my life in the way there wasn't before. so I’m hungry right now to learn more from different people and to figure out, okay, what is it that I want to bring into my own practice and what is everyone else doing? And so first can you break down for me the difference between tradition and ritual, because I'm not even sure in my own mind how I separate the two.

Derrick: Right.

Rachael: And then furthermore, I'm kind of curious what rituals you love for yourself personally.

Derrick: When you were talking. I was thinking about this: ritual keeps alive the intentionality of tradition. It stops tradition in a moment. It's traditional for me to have black eyed peas and rice on New Year's Eve. Or the first thing that I eat New Year's Day for good fortune, right? That's the tradition. But how I get to that tradition, the ritual by which I prepare that. And when I think back to my Aunt Dot’s kitchen, because I used to sit there a lot with her in the kitchen and just watch her cook and talk with her and stuff like that. I don't need a cookbook or a recipe. I pull out the chopping board and everything becomes a ritual in making that tradition occur. How we get there and how we move ourselves through those spaces is the ritual that we create. And ritual - the intentionality of ritual, I really love because it can be something as simple as doing a first planting in your garden. That's a ritual. But naming it as such and taking the space and the time and saying, this is what I'm doing right now. I am digging in the earth. I am planting seeds and this has been done since so early in the beginning of time, and I'm engaging in that right now. And I am feeling my hands in this dirt. And I am connected. So that means that I have engaged in a faithful process that what I have just done is going to grow. So I have gone through a ritual of hope and faith. And really defining it and clearly calling it for what it is and naming it. It starts to unlock the power. That's sort of how I look at it.

Rachael: That framing really removes any religion from it which is where I think a lot of us more secular folk get -

Derrick: Yeah

Rachael: get a little confused on, like, where tradition and ritual lands in our life because there's a real association with religion -

Derrick: Yeah.

Rachael: to it that can feel scary.

Derrick: Yeah. oh Yeah.

Rachael: I mean, myself included. But there is this deep craving for tradition and for ritual and for community and for practice and for reflection. And so much of that is what you get through a religious space.

Derrick: Right.

Rachael: And so figuring out how to, like, take certain elements of it and detach certain things, but also allow yourself to attach to certain things without being scared of that attachment.

Derrick: Right.

Rachael: Umm, I think it's a process that I know I'm going through, and I know many people in my life are going through as well.

Derrick: Yeah. And, I know so many people, and even as a pastor, I know that so many people are going through that. And that's why churches aren't filled. A lot of churches aren't filled. People are afraid. They feel that church is traditional and that the rituals don't speak to them because the rituals are too prescribed. Many people feel that it's too prescribed. And also I personally feel that the invitation to find oneself within the ritual as a part of the ritual experience for everyone else is very much not there. It's like I'm going to do this ritual for you. But your participation in the ritual, I lay out the parameters of it, but you have to be the ones that are engaging in it for it to mean something for all of us. That's the key. I do a thing with my - when I teach worship and I teach people about liturgy and the organized, you know, structure of a service or something. I very much rely on Aristotle. Aristotle's Dramatics has these five elements. You have the introduction, you have the rising action, the climax and all that stuff, and then the denouement, all that other good stuff. But these are all places within the arc through which you can become more deeply involved and where you can allow yourself to say, I'm ready for this catharsis. I think that the arts and church are one of the few places where people actually step into with a permission giving thing to the entity to create a catharsis within them, to create a change, and that that's an awesome responsibility that not many people hold on to. tThat I think if people are coming there and willing and vulnerable enough for that. So I use the arc of ritual worship. That's what I call it when I teach it, because many people will say, well, you do this, you do this, you do this, and then we do the ritual. The entire thing is the ritual, and it's pieced together. And I believe that the trick is, is to have an area into which all people can find a way to enter. Not everybody want to hear me preach. Some people want to hear the announcements, because it means that they're part of a community, and that they know what's going on in the world. Some people just want to hear the prayers for the people and hear the community and the world prayed for. But they'll go through this entire thing and it'll matter for them at that section. So you create that whole ritual experience and a place in which you can really hope that people can find a space to enter in for something to shift in them.

Rachael: I have one more topic that's a little bit big

Derrick: Sure.

Rachael: I want to end with the topic of dreams and dreaming. This curiosity and this desire to talk about this with you comes from another sermon that I watched of yours from 2012. And specifically, you highlight the story of Zachariah? Zachariah is the name?

Derrick: Zachariah, yeah.

Rachael: And Elizabeth, which I had not known about them until I listened to this sermon. You tell their story, and I'm going to let you tell it and you talk about the idea of dreaming and how we are all born with the right to dream and really encouraging our community, and you were encouraging the congregants to look to the person next to you, look to the person on the subway, look to the person you're watching on TV, and everybody is an ordinary person with dreams. And, the last little personal thing I'll share. And then I want to turn it to you to kind of tell us about that story and give us some thoughts on dreaming. So I was widowed when I was 27. It was a profound part of my identity.

Derrick: Oh I’m sorry

Rachael: I mean, it's been enough years now that it feels like part of my past, which means that I reflect on it really differently. But my husband's final words, he had sent an email to me and my father, and, you know, we had no money because we were in our 20s and artistically minded. And he sent an email to me and my dad with a link to a beautiful gentleman's farm in Maine, with the words, the subject of the email was, it's good to dream sometimes. And he died of a heart attack at age 28, an hour later. So we've always held on to it's good to dream sometimes, as like his words and his mother, who's since passed, that was her first tattoo was in his handwriting, that phrase. And so I just want to share that that is deeply personal to me. And I love it.

Derrick: Yeah.

Rachael: And it gives me a sense of warmth. And, so you know, that little personal bit about me, but I would love for you to share a bit about this story and, like, just tell us to dream. Tell me to dream. So I'm going to ask for us to kind of round our conversation –

Derrick: Oh yeah

Rachael: around that topic.

Derrick: I've always sort of looked deeper into these characters in these stories that sort of are lost. It's like Zechariah and Elizabeth are the older aunt and uncle of Mary. So Mary is told by the angel that she's going to have this baby. And Joseph is trying to figure out, well, what should I do? And Mary gets shipped off to her religious auntie and uncle at the temple.

Rachael: And this is religious Jewish?

Derrick: Religious Jewish. Right. Right. Right. Right Right. Yeah. I have to remind many of the people I preach to that Jesus was never a Christian. And this couple are an older couple, much like Abraham and Sarah, who have never had children. He's a priest in the temple in the High Holy Temple. She is this upright, righteous woman and they've lived their life together, you know. And some say that they may have stopped dreaming. But then Elizabeth is told that she's going to have a baby. And Zechariah is like, no way.

Rachael: How old are they in this story?

Derrick: They're like way old. Like upwards of, like 60-70 kinda-thing.

Rachael: That was Abraham and Sarah too, right?

Derrick: Yeah, they were at 90s

Rachael: Yeah

Derrick: And stuff like that, yeah.

Rachael: Right, right, right.

Derrick: so she gets pregnant and because he laughed - because he sort of didn't believe it. His voice is silenced. And as a priest, I was reading a lot of these texts, his biggest, biggest life goal career dream was to be able to go and light the incense once a year in the Holy of Holies, where it's his responsibility to take all of the sins of the people of Israel to God. And he comes out with a blessing for the people. And like, everybody gets a chance to do it, but it's finally his turn. And he doesn't have a voice. He doesn't have a voice. To dream of giving the salvation of forgiveness to God's people. And yet, he has this profound moment where they're naming the child. And they've been told to name it John. Everybody's like, no, it has to be named after you. You're Zachariah and your family, blah, blah, blah. It has been named to you. And because he can't speak, he's like, and he writes on this pad, name him John. And they name him John, and his voice comes back and he gives this beautiful speech about dreams and this whole idea of what it's like to now know that it's bigger than him. And that he learned how in his silence to recognize that this dream of what was about to happen, the promise about what was that what was going to happen, was something that he was allowed to dream and allowed to hold on to. Elizabeth was able to finally dream to have this child and this child became John the Baptist, this crazy guy who baptized people and made them go back to their Torah way of living their lives. They had an opportunity, even at that age, to dream. And it just speaks to the text in Joel where Joel says, your old men will dream dreams. And your young men will have visions, and it's usually the other way around. Old people don't need dreams. They need to be the ones that have the vision and have the visions for what is to come and what can happen. And the young people are supposed to dream about all the great things that can happen. But Joel says your old will dream dreams. So here we have this text that the dream is for everybody. We are all capable of dreams whether we know it or not, everybody has some sort of a dream in them. And we look at people and we take them for granted just because we don't know who they are or what they are. But even if you just look at someone across the crowded street and say, I wonder what their dreams are, it brings a smile to your face because you know that that person has dreams. Everybody has a dream and everybody has a right to have a dream. And to have this hope for this dream to come true. And we can dream for the world to be a better place. And part of the reason why having dreams is important is because it helps you not to get bogged down in the craziness and the shit of this world. Because that will zap the dream out of you and you can't let it do it. So dreaming to me is just - you know, Martin Luther King used the language of I have a dream. Joseph had so many dreams. I like to think that creation was God's dream. What did God do before creation? God said, wait a minute. I have this dream. I'm going to separate the stuff. This is good. [laughter] I'm going to - This is good. Look at this dream that I had. Look at it. Like we are God's dream. We are the divine dream of the cosmos. Of the universe. So it's innate for us to have this dream in us.

Rachael: Mmhm

Derrick: That's what excites me about dreams.

Rachael: I love your excitement. I feel, I feel it. I feel it through the screen right now. For me, dreams are - when I started dating again after I lost my husband, I said, I have to be with someone who can daydream with me because you're not guaranteed life, but you can absolutely be guaranteed to have a dream and to just go down into like, imaginationland with someone. There's so much partnership that can happen in dreaming and not just romantic, but friendship, family - like where you can imagine and the places that you can go - I would say like they're made up memories. Like they're memories we haven't gotten to experience yet. And maybe we won't. I just - I find them to be so grounding. And when I did, you know, find my - my person, who I like very happily live with now and have a life with. You know, so much of the base of all of our conversations is like what could be. But to approach that in a way where there's like this real curiosity and excitement and not with the weight of like, having to make it happen. There's something in there where I just find a real camaraderie with people you can daydream with.

Derrick: Oh, that is so key. It is the intimacy I think that so many of us seek because there's a vulnerability to not just dreaming, but to voicing dreams for the very reason that, like when we voice them, the world expects something from us. And that's sometimes not the purpose of the dreaming. And it's a very vulnerable place to be. And yet when we can find someone to daydream with. That's that vulnerability and that intimacy. It's a powerful intimacy Of joy and parallelism.

Rachael: Last thing I'm going to ask is, what are you dreaming of these days?

Derrick: Oh boy, what am I dreaming of these days? I am dreaming that I will personally find a voice, find my voice - a way of voicing my voice. That will help people and that people will listen and help move themselves to a higher plateau. And I dream that maybe I can live that way and make a living that way. But I'll do it no matter what. You know, I dream of the spaces in which I find myself being able to be fulfilling and fulfilled in its aspirations. I dream that we will give ourselves the forgiveness to recognize that we will always be able to strive towards our aspirations and to not beat ourselves up when we can't realize it. That the work of striving toward it is what we're here for together. Like democracy Is something that was put together by broken people. But the aspiration behind it was truly a once in a cosmic moment. And we don't have to try and perfect it and individualize it, but we have to live the aspiration. And try our best to keep trying to make that dream happen. And I dream that we can forgive ourselves, so that we can continue to do that work. And face the fact that we are broken and that we are human, but that in our humanity we have the ability to grow and keep growing.

OUTRO

You’ve been listening to Along The Seam. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend, rating the show and leaving a review. For more about our guest, please visit alongtheseam.com. And while there, don’t forget to sign up for the Along The Seam newsletter which is my place of creative writing where I dig deeper into the stories and themes you hear on these episodes. You can also find a link to that in the show notes.

This season is supported with help from The Witness Institute and New America. A big thank you to both organizations.

Our editor is Lene Bech Sillesen and the music is from Blue Dot Sessions.

I’m Rachael Cerrotti. Thanks for joining the conversation.