Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emmanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine.

In each issue, we feature in-depth interviews, narrated essays, and stories, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams is a sensei in the Japanese Zen tradition

and founder of the Center for Transformative Change.

She is the author of Being Black, Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace,

and Co-author of Radical Dharma, talking race, love, and liberation.

In November, we sat down with Angel at her home in Oakland, California, to talk about her

philosophy of radical Dharma, which she describes as a path to individual and collective liberation.

She also spoke about the widespread crisis of story

and how mainstream institutional religions are largely failing to offer us a new way forward.

Angel believes the role of faith leaders now

is to help people know themselves within the tribe of our collective humanity

and to challenge

us to reach beyond singular narratives and examine our complex histories.

One of the things we've been exploring here at Emergence Magazine is the notion that at the

heart of our current ecological, social, and political crisis potentially lies a deeper spiritual

crisis. This seems to be something that over the last few years, folks from faith-based

traditions and some spiritual teachers, including yourself, are recognizing and beginning to talk

about. As a teacher within the Zen tradition, I'm curious to hear your perspective on what you think

the role of faith-based and spiritual traditions is in responding to this underlying spiritual crisis.

I think the role is to partition.

I think that's the thing that comes to mind, first and foremost.

...