Walking In Faith

In this precarious moment, we need to walk in faith rather than by sight.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to OKAP Daily with Meet
Your Girl Danielle Moody recording an emergency podcast following the
breaking news that President Joe Biden has stepped down from
re election. Folks, you all know how I has felt
about the calls for Joe Biden to step down. I

(00:34):
have said emphatically that I felt that it was a
mistake if the immediate decision following him stepping down was
not going to be the full throated endorsement of Kamala Harris,
his vice president, and in his statement of gratitude to

(00:54):
the country of putting the country before his own ambitions.
He has since endorsed fully his vice president, our Vice President,
Kamala Harris, to be the Democratic nominee. Since his announcement,

(01:14):
as I'm recording this in the evening on Sunday. Since
his announcement, we have had endorsements come in from Bill
and Hillary Clinton, from the Congressional Black Caucus, from Senator
Tim Kaine from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, from the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, and up soon will be that of the

(01:41):
Congressman Jim Clyburn out of South Carolina. If you all
remember Congressman Clyburn is the reason why Joe Biden became
the Democratic nominee, because he put his thumb on the
scale and got Joe Biden South Carolina, which then opened
up the floodgates for Biden to become the Democratic nominee. So,

(02:04):
as of right now, it seems that those in establishment
places are coming out and issuing their support and endorsement
for our vice president. What I will say is that
we are going to learn very quickly that America is

(02:28):
just as racist as it is misogynist, that the vitriol
that is going to come the Vice president's way is
going to be like nothing we have ever seen before. Now,
black women, however, like myself, can say buckle up and

(02:50):
get ready because we know all too well how very
racist and sexist this country is. Because as a person
that in bodies lives at the intersection of blackness and
womanness and queerness, I am going to say that it

(03:10):
is not going to be enough for establishment Democrats to
endorse her. They are going to need to circle the
wagons to build a barricade of protection, a dome of
protection around her that deflects whatever nasty white supremacist work
is underway in the Trump camp to get her over

(03:34):
the finish line, and that if the convention, which is
happening a month and one day away, is not about
the exhilaration and the excitement of the nomination of Vice
President Harris and whomever she chooses to be her vice

(03:54):
presidential pick, we're not going to make it. So. There
is no more room for the airing out of the
dirty laundry, there is no more room for the infighting
and the conjecture, there is no more room for the
white elitist democratic fuckery. It is time to get the
fuck in line. And if Joe Biden has said that

(04:17):
his vice president should be the Democratic nominee, then that
is what we rock with. Because fourteen million people, fourteen
million Americans voted in the primary for a Biden Harris ticket,
and if Biden is no longer going to serve in
that position, then we already chose Vice President Harris, and

(04:39):
that is how we need to be moving forward. We
are in uncharted territory. We are in a space in
this country where we have never been before. As I
am recording right now, the Vice president has issued her
statement following the President's statement, I'm going to read this.

(05:02):
As I am reading it to myself, I'm going to
read it to all of you, which by the time
you listen to this, you will have heard. Vice President
Kamala Harris says this on behalf of the American people.
I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President
of the United States and for his decades of service
to our country. His remarkable legacy of accomplishment is unmatched

(05:24):
in modern American history, surpassing the legacy of many presidents
who have served two terms in office. It is a
profound honor to serve as his vice president, and I
am deeply grateful to the President, doctor Biden, and the
entire Biden family. I first came to know President Biden
through his son BeO. We were friends from our days

(05:44):
working together as attorney generals of our home states. As
we work together, Bou would tell me stories about his dad,
the kind of father and the kind of man he was,
and the qualities Bo were veered in his father's are
the same qualities, the same values I have seen every
single day in Joe's leadership as president. His honesty and integrity,

(06:05):
his big heart and commitment to his faith, and his
family and his love of our country and the American people.
With this selfless and patriotic act, President Biden is doing
what he has done throughout his life of service, putting
the American people and our country above everything else. I
am honored to have the President's endorsement, and my intention

(06:26):
is to earn and win this nomination. Over the past year,
I have traveled across the country talking with Americans about
the clear choice in this momentous election, and that is
what I will continue to do in the days and
weeks ahead. I will do everything in my power to
unite the Democratic Party and unite our nation to defeat

(06:47):
Donald Trump and his extreme Project twenty twenty five agenda.
We have one hundred and seven days until election day.
Together we will fight, and together we will win. That
is it, folks. It is the moment. It is the
moment that I really did not want to come to pass.

(07:13):
But we are here, and we are here, and we
have got to unite. We have got to move through
our fear. And as I'm going to say in the
rest of this episode that I taped prior to the
Biden announcement, we are on a walk of faith. We

(07:35):
are on a walk of faith in this moment through
the fire, not knowing what lies on the other side.
But I believe that Americans in this moment can unite
in the face of fascism and say not in our land,
not on our watch. So this is our moment. This

(07:57):
is our moment to rise. This is our moment to
face down evil. This is our moment to do what
too many spineless and cowardice members of the Republican Party
refuse to do, which is put Donald Trump to fucking
bed for good. This is our moment. Coming up next,

(08:22):
my pre taped commentary on what it means to walk
in faith in this moment, folks. As many of you
know who have been listening to me for years now,
I vacillate between my faith and my rage on a

(08:47):
regular basis, and the reason being that I have faith
and faith is something that I have struggled with throughout
the years because I have never in my life attached
myself to organized religion. I think that organized religion is

(09:10):
not rooted in faith at all, but it is rooted
in a lot of ways in capitalism and control. And
from a very young age I had questions about organized
religion and churches and it didn't speak to me that
I should follow a whole list of rules that just

(09:34):
didn't make sense because I was a girl, because I
was queer. So I struggled, And for a long time
I would say that I was never an atheist, because
I do believe in a higher power. I do believe
in the universe. But through COVID and through my mother
being diagnosed with a brain tumor that was later, you know, benign,

(09:57):
and she's thank God one hundred percent, I really began
to develop a deeper faith practice, which happens to a
lot of people. You go through dark times, you suffer
through great loss, and that opens your eyes. Your eyes
are opened in a different way, your heart is opened

(10:18):
in a different way. And so my faith practice has
really been around, you know, connecting to spirit, to ancestors, praying, meditating.
And I offered this because a friend of mine, a
very good friend of mine, is in the midst as
we all are, and in different ways, are all really

(10:39):
dealing with a lot of instability right now. The country
is unstable, the world is unstable, our economic situations are unstable.
We're moving through a lot of turmoil. What she expressed
to me was that sometimes you really have to lean

(11:02):
on faith, and she goes in, I am moving right
now in a faith walk. In a faith walk, I
am moving through fire, I am moving through obstacles, and
I don't know what is on the other side. But
this is a walk of faith that I'm doing. I'm

(11:24):
leaning on what I have always known about my strength,
about my perseverance, about my ancestors that surround me, and
that the universe will make a way if I put
in the effort and continue to put in the effort,
and put in the effort though and believe right because

(11:48):
faith is about believing in what you cannot see, what
you may not be able to hear, what you may
not be able to touch. Christians move in a way,
and they say you know that they will move not
by sight but by faith. And different traditions all offer

(12:11):
this same thing. And why do I say this today,
Because I find the place that we are in in
this darkness, dear friends, the place that I find myself
and found myself in last week where I did not
go outside for two days, where I was just stuck

(12:35):
in a downward spiral, stuck in the darkness. That's hard
for somebody whose job it is to provide analysis and
thoughtfulness on where we are, because if I can't see
a way through, I can't offer a way through for others.
And that's what I believe that my gift and my

(12:56):
purpose is on this planet is to be a teacher,
a teacher that is continuing to learn, that is continuing
to expand her horizons as a way to be one
of the many lanterns that our lives offer us. Last week,
I nearly lost it because I was in such a

(13:22):
dark place that I felt as if I could not
breathe and I could not see. And thankfully for me,
I have an amazing family, I have amazing friends, an
amazing partner that were checking in on me, and to

(13:47):
the followers, to all of you, to the listeners that
DM me and said that they could hear my voice
cracking in some of my episodes and they were concerned.
Sending me a lot of love and light was so

(14:08):
needed and received with open arms. And I say it
just from a deep place of gratitude for all of
those that felt that something was not well with me
to check in, and I really hope that you are

(14:29):
checking in on all the people that you care about
in your lives right now, because there is not a
person that I come across who is not struggling in
some type of way. So in this moment, I believe,
as my friend Alicia offered to me, that we are

(14:51):
on a faith walk, that we are walking not by
sight but by faith, faith in humanity, faith in the
people around us, that folks, that regardless of what is
to come, that we must find strength and source and

(15:13):
light in our lives to be able to get through now.
While I want to believe that this dark episode in
America will have a Hollywood fairy tale ending, history tells

(15:34):
me otherwise. And so if I believe, as a student
of history that oftentimes patterns need to be repeated until
you learn, then what is it that we can do
to prepare ourselves in the best way possible for what

(15:54):
is coming and what is already here? Because in so
many ways our lives have been fundamentally changed over the
last eight years. We had been brought up to believe
that America was unbreakable, unshakable, that we could go about

(16:20):
our daily lives and not really give too much thought
to how government was operating and whether or not things
were going to be delivered to us, like healthcare or
quality public education, or clean water and clean air and

(16:41):
sanitation and workers' protections and all of these things that
much kind of like breathing at our heartbeat, which just
happens unconscious of us really connecting to it unless we
are in meditation, prayer or some type of practice that
we kind of just assume that it will all keep

(17:02):
working and we don't really have to pay attention to it, except,
of course, when your body falls ill and then all
of a sudden, all you can feel is the pain.
All you can concentrate on is the wound. And that
is where we find ourselves right now. Where we believed

(17:24):
that America would always keep churning, always, you know, vacillating
between just good enough, but that our day to day
lives would not be so adversely impacted by our government.
Because that has never been our experience. And I say

(17:44):
that knowing the Civil rights movement. I say that knowing
that black people used to hang from trees and still
in many places do I say that, knowing the ills
and the betrayal that this country has had against indigenous people,
black people. But we have been able to write a

(18:08):
history that has allowed us to be proud of how
far we have come over the last two hundred and
forty eight years. But over the last eight we have
been tested and tested to a place of breaking. What
I have said so many times is that sometimes you

(18:31):
need to have a breakdown in order to have a breakthrough.
But the breakthrough only comes when we believe and search
for the opportunities that exist inside of the obstacles, because
the obstacles are always going to be I will not
bullshit you into thinking that all things will turn out

(18:51):
well and all we need to do is vote, because
right now, folks, m m, that's not what the numbers
are telling us. So what does it mean to then
walk by faith and not by sight? It means too
know that you have everything inside of you to make
it through. That does not mean that it's going to

(19:13):
be easy, but it means that we must find a
way to shut out the noise that is pervasive, the
disinformation that we thought was going to come from a
foreign entity but is actually coming from inside the house.
This is a time for us to shut down the

(19:34):
outside noise and to go inside ourselves, to go deep
withinside ourselves and ask those real questions, who do I
want to be in this moment, How can I best
show up? Because the decisions that we are making in
our individual lives impact the collective, and so if each

(19:58):
of us decides right that we will make it through this.
We don't know what the other side holds, but we
will know that we will continue to walk in our truth,
in our integrity, be guided by our morals and our values.
Whether or not this country has ever lived up to

(20:20):
them is not my issue at hand. It is whether
or not we can live up to our truths. I
have been thinking so much lately that my allegiance is
not to a party. I am a Democrat, I am
a registered Democrat and have been. But my true allegiance

(20:45):
is to justice. My true allegiance is to equity. My
guiding light and moral is one that is wrapped in love.
Because I don't believe that we hate ourselves into a
better place. I believe that we have to love ourselves

(21:07):
to the next level, particularly when everything around us is
closing in that when the noise is too great outside,
you go inside and you find the power and the
will to conjure the faith and the strength and the
courage that is necessary to persevere. That's what this moment

(21:31):
is calling all of us to do. It isn't just
to shut down the news, don't pay attention, but it
is actually to pay attention to yourself. What do I
need in this moment? What does my family need in
this moment? What does my community need from me in
this moment? How can I take care of myself mentally, spiritually, emotionally,

(22:01):
and physically so that I can be of service? And
so when I find myself in these dark places, I
am so grateful for the people that come and find
me with a flashlight and offer me a hand, offer
me a hug, offer me levels of gratitude and appreciation

(22:26):
for what it means for me to show up in
their lives. So if we can do that with friend
and stranger alike, then we cease to be controlled by
the noise, because it's going to get worse. I promise
you that. So our roots have got to be thicker

(22:52):
and deeper than they have ever been because right now
we are being fed so much bullshit, so much misinformation,
so much conjecture, so much empty, vapid opinion. You have

(23:13):
white cis hetero men that are on the internet talking
about this political cycle like it is a game, like
they are in Vegas and they're placing bets. Real people
are going to die, Real people are going to lose
their livelihood, their dignity, their rights. This is not a

(23:38):
fucking game, as Nate Silver and other idiots would have
you believe. Aaron Sorkin puts up a fucking op ed
today as I'm taping this on Sunday puts up an
op ed talking about Democrats should choose Mitt Romney. Are
you stupid? Because I realize that the people that are
creating the most noise are the ones with the least

(24:00):
to lose, So this is a fucking game to them.
For the rest of us, however, this is in fact existential,
and so we need to be steadfast in what our
truths are moving us towards. Because I'm gonna say something

(24:21):
real provocative. Ain't no white cis wealthy straight man gonna
be leading you to freedom. They really truly are fucking not.
So pay attention to who you are following, who is
wooing you, and ask about their real intentions, Ask whether

(24:47):
or not they actually really do have skin in this game,
because it's those that are sitting in ivory towers in
the protected class that are the ones that are the
loudest and the only one that are being heard. So
now is the time where we need to support independent voices.

(25:10):
And I mean financially, I mean spiritually, I mean with
your follows and your likes and your subscriptions, because let
me tell you something, I'm also going to be very vulnerable.
You know, those economic pathways and windows for people like
myself are beginning to close because the powers that be

(25:32):
have already decided that Donald Trump is going to be presidents,
so they're not going to have use for a voice
like mine. So right now, while I'm also trying to
figure out the country, I'm also trying to figure out
my own paths forward. So think about the people who
you do respect and whose voices you do hold on

(25:56):
to you in this moment, and if you do have
the ability to those people in any which way that
you can do, because many of us in the coming
months are basically fighting for our lives and our livelihood
because that's what white supremacy does. It bigfoots over everyone

(26:19):
moving through a place of scarcity and fear, so opportunities
that once existed begin to dry up, forcing you into
their oppressive capitalist regime just so that you can survive.
I for one am not going out like that. So, friends,

(26:45):
as we vacillate, as humans do, between walking by faith
and stumbling through darkness, know that we have everything that
we need inside of us to make it through. And
that when you lose faith, reach out because there is

(27:09):
someone that will be there to reach back and to
lift you up when you can't lift yourself up. And
that that is what I have faith in, is us
as humanity, is us as compassionate, loving people who do

(27:32):
want more than what is being offered to us right now. So,
in this moment of deep fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, my
dear dear listeners, walk by faith and not by sight.

(27:57):
That is it for me today, Dear friends, on woke
a f as always Power to the people and to
all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.