The Core of Belonging

September 14, 2021

Rev. angel Kyodo williams is an author, activist, Zen priest, and founder of the organization Transformative Change, which centers on the link between inner work, wholeness, and social transformation at scale. With Sounds True, Rev. angel has created a new six-part audio series called Belonging: From Fear to Freedom on the Path to True Community. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Rev. angel about how society shapes our sense of belonging, and what it means to take back our power to belong. They discuss how embodied belonging transcends that which our entire sense of self and reality is based upon, and offers us a deep awareness of our essential truth. Tami and Rev. angel also touch on: forgiveness as a healing self-practice, the meaning of true community, and how growing comfortable in our own skin gives us the capacity to heal, enact conscious change, and belong in any environment.

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

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Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.

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The Core of Belonging

Rev. angel Kyodo williams is an author, activist, Zen priest, and founder of the organization Transformative Change, which centers on the link between inner work, wholeness, and social transformation at scale. With Sounds True, Rev. angel has created a new six-part audio series called Belonging: From Fear to Freedom on the Path to True Community. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Rev. angel about how society shapes our sense of belonging, and what it means to take back our power to belong. They discuss how embodied belonging transcends that which our entire sense of self and reality is based upon, and offers us a deep awareness of our essential truth. Tami and Rev. angel also touch on: forgiveness as a healing self-practice, the meaning of true community, and how growing comfortable in our own skin gives us the capacity to heal, enact conscious change, and belong in any environment.

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