§Exploring Pockets of Love
Michelle Scheidt is a senior program officer at the Fetzer Institute and lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. Deepa Patel is a facilitator, teacher and guide in the Inayatiyya (a Sufi lineage) and an associate at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion. In the dialogue that follows, we explore some transformative experiences we have had together in our work over the past few years.
Michelle: I like the story of how we met.
Deepa: Yes, it was lovely. I thought about how everything that came up in that meeting has been threads we have been weaving ever since. We met because of a project I was working on called the Seekers Guide, where we wanted to create an inter-spiritual guide of Solace and Inspiration to add to hotel rooms. Technology, the future of spirituality, and developing the relational field between traditions were at the heart of the project. We were just discovering that we might be able to use AI to search the texts of different traditions. After our call, I felt that I had met a kindred spirit. I also became fascinated by John Fetzer because he believed in the power of love to transform humanity and was willing to experiment with how we get there.
Michelle: I’ll never forget when we first met in person, at the Spirit of Humanity (SOH) Forum gathering in Reykjavik, Iceland. Not knowing you would be there, I was surprised when I saw you across the room. But then it made perfect sense to me that you were part of this inspiring group of international leaders focused on inner wisdom and core human values like love to catalyze systems change. This unique mission explains why you and I connected deeply right away, knowing from the beginning that we had shared commitments at the intersection of love, spirit, and contemplative experience.
Deepa: That led us to do some fun and groundbreaking things together.
Michelle: While that original project has not yet come to be, we found a few other collaborations over the years. You invited me to join an interspiritual dialogue hosted by Charis Foundation for New Monasticism & Interspirituality, and we spent a week at a retreat center in Oklahoma with a wonderful group of spiritual leaders. I was moved by the whole experience and drawn to your gifts as a facilitator and the way you integrate your contemplative practice with everything you do. You came into deeper relationship with Fetzer over time, joining a convening on spiritual innovation, then helping us plan a new initiative on spiritual innovation as an emerging field. You were part of a cohort of BIPOC spiritual innovators, experimenting with a decolonized approach and cultivating spiritual intimacy as we gathered over 18 months to explore the spiritual infrastructure of the future. During the Covid pandemic, you worked with my colleague Xiaoan Li and me to facilitate fascinating online conversations about the power of virtual sacred spaces.
Deepa: You have highlighted some of the ways that the themes emerging during our collaboration are at the centre of decolonizing practice: how do we balance our need for structure and control with the skills needed to be present with what is emerging in our time but also in many in cases what is emerging in the moment. This can be a moment of tension and conflict when we don’t see it as a place of creativity. I have enjoyed the way we have grappled with this. We have also grappled with the notion of time. What do we do when it feels like the world is burning and there is an urgent need for answers and action? In the decolonised approach, we follow the wisdom of Bayo Akomolafe, who says that urgent times call for slowing down.
I remember us talking about the need and desire to stay rooted in the livingness of tradition but relevant to our time.
What also arose as we got to know each other better was our commitment to justice, care, and liberation in the different communities in which we were involved. You with the migrant community and me with the refugee community. This is where I resonate with Fezter’s Emertius President Rob Lehman’s concept of Our Common Work. It is also how we ended up in a refugee camp together.
Michelle: One day last year, you met my spouse over lunch at Fetzer. You and Barb connected right away, and before the meal was over you had invited us to accompany you in your work with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Barb and I both felt drawn to this opportunity, and in November 2024 we joined you and your colleagues Helen Storey and David Betteridge for two weeks with an arts collective at Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. This was a profound experience and time of deep learning for me.
Deepa: It was so wonderful to have Barb and you join us. I knew it was the right thing to do because I felt in our conversation, we were able to connect to our humanity and our humanness. Also, you were both ready to let go of job titles and tell the stories that make us who we are. There is something powerful about a group of people who can come together, listen deeply, laugh out loud and embrace each other’s vulnerability. As we got to know each other, it was clear that we all had each other’s backs and were in service to a cause bigger than ourselves.
Michelle: What are some of the things we learned? How does that affect our work?
Deepa: After nearly 9 years of working in refugee camps, where multiple languages are spoken, I have learned that one of the most important skills is listening to the language beyond words. This is the language of the body, feelings, and even the tone and pitch of someone’s voice. This requires the art and act of being present and fully attentive to what is emerging. As Simone Weil says, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”. This generosity allows for grace to appear at the most difficult times in the work we do in the camp. We are holding the reality of someone needing money to put food on the table while at the same time playing the long game of what will help them access their sense of agency in what is often an inhumane situation.
In these situations, the desire to fix or run away because it is so hard appears in the form of trying to bring things to a conclusion too quickly. This is where I have been learning the qualities of patience and humility. I need to sit in the discomfort and be humble enough to trust the relationships we have built to come up with what is required.
When we prioritise the relationships over the expectations, especially of outcomes, it is extraordinary to see how what is needed is not what we expect.
The place that we learn this every time we visit is in connection to money. Capitalism keeps us tangled in transactionality, not just in terms of outcomes but also in our relationships. The process of decolonisation is asking us to move to the field of reciprocity. This is not easy work, as we have to confront power dynamics and oppression, but it does allow for a truer sense of agency. We also learnt this from the BIPOC cohort where there was no pressure for outcomes. We had to make peace with being valued for ourselves and not what we do,
Michelle: I’ve learned so much with you and in Dzaleka. While I had previously experienced settings of deep poverty and human suffering, this was a new context for me. I was reminded of some key ideas that shape me and my approach to my work – including the challenges of showing up in a culture that is not your own, the centrality of building relationships, the inherent messiness of bureaucracy, the need for extended time to build trust, and the importance of not focusing on immediate outcomes. I could write pages on each of these, but they are all key lessons that I carry into my work at Fetzer.
Another thing that touched me deeply was the refugee experience of being stateless. This raises so many tough questions that I continue to hold. What does it mean to belong? Why are 50,000 people together in this place where they have no permanent home, no passport, no country that wants them? Why are more than 100 million people – 1 out of every 69 people in the world right now – refugees? Why do we think that is okay?
A third key impact on me was meeting Helen Storey. I never would have had the opportunity to be in relationship with a person like Helen, a prominent fashion designer who has spent her career in a field completely outside my experience. I was inspired by her and by the way she has pioneered cutting-edge ideas and used her skills and connections to foster awareness and change.
Deepa: We really saw hope in a lot of ways.
Michelle: I was struck by the way people in Dzaleka use their gifts and talents for the good of the community. The residents of the camp have built a society, complete with all that is needed for human beings to live together, despite the vast challenges and few material resources in a refugee camp. The people inspired hope, like Johnson running See Deep Media, studio and photography school; Black Ntaw with his fashion design business; the organization Mutu Dzaleka serving the community; and so many more amazing people bringing hope to others.
Deepa: Yes, another of these people is Mama Cecile, one of the prominent leaders and pastors in the camp. We were fortunate enough to go to her Sunday church service. As we sat listening to the musicians and heard a young pastor relate the stories in the Bible to their lives in the Camp, I felt like I was sitting in the source of the goodness and faith that forms the core of resilience and resistance that is present in all those we work with.
Michelle: We have since found it difficult to talk about the experience and what it feels like returning home. Most people in the developed world don’t understand where we have been or why we would want to go there. The answer to those questions is complex, which makes it really hard to talk about Dzaleka, especially in the short sound bites that most people seem to want.
Deepa: That is why images are a better way to convey it. This is the latest project from Dalzeka Arts Lab (DAL). It is called The Pockets of Love (the members of DAL came up with the name); it shows how the power of imagination and creativity can turn a scam into a beautiful artefact that we hope will touch everyone as much as it did us when it was first shared with us. Here’s a link to Dzaleka Arts Lab and Vital Signs, the project Helen and I have been working on.
Michelle: Thanks so much for all of it, Deepa. Your work makes a difference in the world. It is a privilege to be collaborating with you, and I hope the journey has just begun.
