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Just One Question | Rev angel Kyodo williams: How Do We Find Joy In the Heart of Our Suffering?

    —
August 6, 2026
Personal Growth

Just One Question | Rev angel Kyodo williams: How Do We Find Joy In the Heart of Our Suffering?

Rev. angel Kyodo Williams — August 6, 2026

Reverend angel Kyodo williams has spent decades bridging Zen practice and social change, and she doesn’t offer the version of spirituality where relief is waiting somewhere down the road. She told Tami Simon that our joy lives at the center of our suffering, and Tami, to her credit, pushed back. Really? Right in the middle of my deep suffering and the world’s deep suffering?

Reverend angel’s answer is why this segment felt so powerful and transformative to us. She argues we’ve been handed a spiritual life that lives in a box: well-maintained, kept in good order, scheduled for Tuesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30. Real practice, she says, pulls the lens all the way back to take in a whole life: the trauma, the history, the parts we’ve been trained to walk around. And when we refuse to touch our own suffering, we don’t contain it. We leave it behind us like roadkill, in how we treat each other and in what we let stand: patriarchy, racism, xenophobia.

In this episode:

  • Why “radical” means whole rather than extreme, and what a complete dharma asks of us
  • The cold-water method—entering your suffering ankle-deep, then further
  • What joy actually is, and why it isn’t an ice cream cone in the middle of the mess
  • The question Reverend angel keeps returning to in her own practice: where have I not yet looked?
  • Why fearlessness isn’t something you choose, but something that surfaces once the path is clear

Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Reverend angel Kyodo williams. Find the complete interview here: Reverend angel Kyodo williams: Warrior Spirit.

Rev. angel Kyodo williams, the "change angel," is a Zen priest, author, and founder of the organization Transformative Change. Her work centers on the essential link between inner work, wholeness, and social transformation and how we leverage love on behalf of justice for people and the planet at scale.
 
A social visionary and leading voice for transformative social change, she is the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, and coauthor, with Lama Rod Owens and Jasmine Syedullah, of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation.
 
Her work engages at the root, field, and resource levels of social transformation. She is also a queer feminist, who understands how to use suffering as a path to liberation.

Rev. angel speaks, consults, and coaches as an interventionist of old paradigms, and designs programs and training that disrupt the patterns that hinder love and justice. She has served on boards, and has both taught and lectured widely across lines of faith and action including at the Omega Women's Leadership Center, the historic Rankin Chapel at Howard University, Authentic Leadership, and Mind and Life Institutes.
 
Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the On Being podcast, the Washington Post, Ms., and Essence.
 
Rev. angel notes, "Love and Justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters." She was made for these times.
 
Learn more at angelkyodowilliams.com.

Author photo © Christine Alicino

Posted August 6, 2026
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Each week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon interviews leading voices in the Mind/Body/Spirit space about a vast spectrum of fascinating ideas. Since 2009, Tami and her guests have been exploring the edge of understanding, nearly 1,000 episodes on the honest work of change, including spiritual discovery, awakening, intuition, purpose, trauma, and grief.

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Reverend angel Kyodo williams has spent decades bridging Zen practice and social change, and she doesn’t offer the version of spirituality where relief is waiting somewhere down the road. She told Tami Simon that our joy lives at the center of our suffering, and Tami, to her credit, pushed back. Really? Right in the middle of my deep suffering and the world’s deep suffering?

Reverend angel’s answer is why this segment felt so powerful and transformative to us. She argues we’ve been handed a spiritual life that lives in a box: well-maintained, kept in good order, scheduled for Tuesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30. Real practice, she says, pulls the lens all the way back to take in a whole life: the trauma, the history, the parts we’ve been trained to walk around. And when we refuse to touch our own suffering, we don’t contain it. We leave it behind us like roadkill, in how we treat each other and in what we let stand: patriarchy, racism, xenophobia.

In this episode:

  • Why “radical” means whole rather than extreme, and what a complete dharma asks of us
  • The cold-water method—entering your suffering ankle-deep, then further
  • What joy actually is, and why it isn’t an ice cream cone in the middle of the mess
  • The question Reverend angel keeps returning to in her own practice: where have I not yet looked?
  • Why fearlessness isn’t something you choose, but something that surfaces once the path is clear

Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Reverend angel Kyodo williams. Find the complete interview here: Reverend angel Kyodo williams: Warrior Spirit.

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Reverend angel Kyodo williams is an activist, master trainer, founder of the Center for Transformative Change, and the acclaimed author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace and Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. Rev. angel will be a featured presenter on Sounds True’s upcoming A Year of Mindfulness program—a unique yearlong series of monthly talks given by a group of meditation teachers from a diverse background of traditions. In this episode of Insights at the Edge—adapted from an earlier presentation given by Rev. angel during Sounds True’s online Meditation Summit—she and Tami Simon speak on the sense of retreat that attracts many to mindfulness, even when it is an engagement with our inner fullness that is meditation’s most valuable gift. Rev. angel discusses the cultivation of a “warrior spirit” that enriches and empowers our interactions with the world. Finally, Rev. angel offers a meditation practice on these themes called “Effort and Release.” (47 minutes)

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Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company founded in 1985 by Tami Simon, with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. The company is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

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