Dear friends,

As we enter a new year, I want to share a simple but healing practice with you for our relationships. It comes from Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature. Wiesel said,

Dear friends,

I recently met a beautiful man who achieved great success and ruined his life in New York City.

He was working in finance with some of the richest power brokers in the American system. His performance was great, and he was promoted.

He quickly found himself working 110-hour weeks. His “team” was locked in vicious competition: the top performer got a 120% bonus on their annual salary; the fifth-place performer was simply fired. Unsurprisingly, the competition became so ferocious that colleagues — people that hung out with each other and considered each other as friends — would sometimes sabotage each other’s work to get an advantage and come out on top, or at least avoid being fired.

To sustain this level of performance, he started using drugs — what he called “synthetic performance.” All of his teammates did as well. Going to bed became the most stressful moment of his day: he only had a 4-hour window to sleep, and if he missed that, he would drag at work... Read More

Dear friends,

I have so much to learn from Black and Brown women and their extraordinary experience, wisdom, and leadership.

Earlier this year, Thasia Awad, Dichele Parker, and Heather Nie generously invited me to join their MelaNation Healing Project Podcast to talk with them about race and social justice. Thasia asks refreshingly honest, hard-hitting questions, and I hope you enjoy this frank conversation. You can listen at this link.

Sincere thanks to these insightful, powerful women for their healing work and for trusting me to be part of it. May God energize us to seek deeper understanding, healing relationships, and justice in our society.

Yours with gratitude,

Andrew

PS: Here are the questions we discuss:

1. How did I get started in the work of healing and reconciliation?
2. Why is understanding our history so important for race and social justice?
3. Why is it so difficult to learn from the past?
4. Has religion played a role in shaping injustices and become “an anchor around our necks”?

Dear friends,

What is the role of compassion in conflict?

I’m excited to share my podcast interview on this topic with my courageous friend Emnet Gilbert.

Today many people condemn voices calling for compassion. For example, the popular Ethiopian singer Dishta Gina recently cried out for peace at a concert in Addis Ababa. His courageous message was immediately ridiculed, and he was pressured into giving a tearful apology on television. His sin was simply calling for reconciliation in a time of war.

This week I received yet another death threat for my advocacy for compassion and reconciliation. The man who threatened to “dismember” me has the following banner on his Facebook page: “I’m REDEEMED to be a VICTOR not a VICTIM in any circumstance. Praise the Lord, Jesus Christ!” This is a saddening example of how “Christian” faith can be weaponized to defend violence and death.

In this hyper-polarized time, I deeply admire Emnet’s courage to explore these three challenging questions with me:

1. What does compassion with practical consequences look like in the midst of war?