Bob has been president of the Fetzer Institute since 2013. Under his leadership, its current mission statement is “helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world.” Prior to that, Bob spent his career working with nonprofit organizations on strategy development, advocacy, program development, governance, and legal compliance. While practicing law in Washington, DC, he represented a broad range of foundations and public charities. He has helped to design and lead major national advocacy campaigns involving environmental and health issues and the right of nonprofit organizations to participate in the legislative process.


Bob-Boisture.jpg

Bob Boisture

<h4>BOB BOISTURE speaks with JUDITH NELSON at
 the Spirit of Humanity Forum, held in Reykjavík, Iceland on the 1 June 2019. In part 1, he shared with us the vision
 of the Fetzer Institute, and the need for personal transformation and love to bring about the changes necessary
 today to address the most pressing issues of humanity and our planet Earth. In part 2, he continues by focusing on
 how this translates to practical activities in our day-to-day lives.</h4>
BB:&nbsp;We’re working with one of the biggest
 civil society umbrella groups in the US that’s had a longstanding commitment to support leadership development
 within civil society. With some encouragement and support from us, they’ve taken the bold stand that there’s a new
 dimension to leadership development, and it is this inner work. We’re working with them to firstly take that message
 into civil society, but then, necessarily, to begin to build the ecosystem of supports for that inner work.
 Hopefully that can support, at scale, a rapidly growing number of leaders at the community state, national level.

We’re also bringing together faith leaders across the faith spectrum, which in our
 country also means across the political spectrum, and inviting them to reflect on why is it that so often their
 communities have shown up in our public conversation as part of the polarizing dynamic, when surely their faith
 commitments compel all of them to be part of the reconciling solution. We’re working with all communities to change
 in the context of our next presidential election, with the hope that faith leaders across politics will stand
 together and say the most urgent priority all of us are compelled to have is reconciliation.
I’m optimistic actually, because I think anybody who is awake and has children or
 grandchildren, realizes that we can’t go on like this. We have to go to a deeper level and recover a shared moral
 vision of the society we’re trying to create. None of us have all the answers. We have to listen to each other; we
 have to come together.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Whether we’re thinking about global leaders 
 at the highest level or each of us as leaders in our daily lives, 
 I think committing to the discipline of 
 daily spiritual practices is actually 
 the most serious work we need to do. 
 That will transform the way 
 we are in all aspects of our life.</h5>
<hr>
Q: Is that how you came to be involved with the Spirit of Humanity
 Forum? How did that relationship evolve?
BB:&nbsp;Exactly, and that really goes back to the
 vision of a merging global movement. One of the most important things that needs to happen to accelerate that
 movement is that we need to find each other. Those of us who are committed to this vision need to find each other
 and support each other, because there’s tremendous empowerment in knowing that we’re not alone in this. Together we
 can support each other and make a difference.
Fetzer has been connected with the Forum since 2014, but this is my first time to be
 here. I’m taking away new relationships and new energy that are not going to be one-offs. I have committed to a
 number of people here that we’re going to get together and figure out how we can support each other in our work. So
 that’s one thing, the connection.
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But now, let’s go back to this “Shared Sacred Story” idea that we are creating here.
 We’re creating the language to take this vision out into the world, and I think that’s tremendously important. We’re
 creating very open, spacious language, and our vision of this Shared Sacred Story is that it’s not one story, it’s a
 meta-narrative, if you will, that has plenty of room for each tradition to tell their version of the sacred story.
 Also, people who are on this journey but don’t identify with one of the major traditions, are in that wonderful
 place where they can draw on the riches of all the traditions. You can feel it in the freedom of this gathering;
 we’re finding a language that is spacious enough to bring us all to a common ground without any of us having to
 abandon the depth of our particular story. I think that’s a wonderful, exciting thing to be part of.
Q: Humility is a quality that has come through at the Forum, in people
 like yourself and other speakers. What’s your view of that in terms of how we approach all these big problems that
 are out there in the world?
BB: I think humility is one of the virtues we most
 need, when you think about these angry fights we’re having with each other. What’s wonderful here, and I’ve sensed
 the same humility, is the discernment. Maybe it’s a collective discernment, that each of us has come to whatever
 wisdom we’ve come to through our life’s journey. In the grand scheme, it’s a very particular life journey. The
 exciting thing we’re called to is to open to the richness of everybody else’s journey, to realize that we’ve got to
 create this new world together, and that none of us has all the answers. There’s also humility in relation to the
 cosmos and the transcendent. We realize that there’s something at work here that’s so much larger than any of us. We
 have to stand in awe, reverence and humility in the face of this cosmic movement through love towards love. There’s
 no room for ego, I think there’s only room for gratitude.
Q: You spoke this morning about what world leaders could be doing to be
 different in their approach. Can you expand on that?
BB:&nbsp;I think it has to start inside of each of
 us as individuals, and for all world leaders in creating the culture. Our fundamental challenge is we’re stuck in a
 culture that encourages us to engage from a place of ego and separation and fear, and the real challenge for us
 individually and collectively is to shift to engaging each other and the world from a place of wholeness and
 all-centeredness and love. That’s hard. It’s not just waking up one morning and saying, “I’m going to be a more
 loving individual.” It’s in strengthening the muscle that really helps us when we face the tough choice of deciding
 to commit to the solution that’s in the interests of the whole, rather than a particular interest.
All of the great spiritual traditions confront that core human challenge, and they’ve
 developed spiritual practices and communities that can support us as individuals, whatever path we’re on. And for
 people who don’t live within one of the traditions, but are on a spiritual path, they also can draw on those
 resources to support their own spiritual journey. Whether we’re thinking about global leaders at the highest level
 or each of us as leaders in our daily lives, I think committing to the discipline of daily spiritual practices is
 actually the most serious work we need to do. That will transform the way we are in all aspects of our life.
Q: Are you happy to share a bit about what you do to interiorize and to
 keep yourself going?
BB:&nbsp;Yes. I grew up and lived in the Christian
 tradition where, as a very young child, I was taught that God is love, we’re all children of God, and we’re here to
 love. That all landed with me at a young age, so since adolescence I’ve approached life as a meditation on what it
 means to love in this moment, in this situation. I have a practice of prayer, I do a lot of meditation walking
 reflection, writing reflection, but I always joke that my most important spiritual practice is marriage! I think
 it’s in those intimate places where we’re most challenged to overcome our own ego and our self, and really commit to
 the flourishing of another. We have a wonderful opportunity in intimate relationships, whether it’s marriage or our
 work setting, to approach it as a continuing practice of love. How can I bring as much love into this situation as I
 can? I have found that a very life-giving way of approaching things.
Q: You’re describing something very practical and in touch with living
 in the real world, rather than perhaps an old-fashioned expectation that people have to go away somewhere else.
 Would you agree with that?
BB:&nbsp;Yes, but I’m also big on going away. Time
 out in the natural world is tremendously renewing, but I think it’s finding the way to link that inner cultivation
 with practical action. That is where we grow, because it’s that back and forth between meeting the tough situations
 that all of us face in our daily life. It is hard to always meet people with the commitment of love, so going off
 and reflecting on how we did and what we can do better is helpful. As a person of faith, connecting with that
 something greater empowers us all to love. I don’t think it’s either-or, I think it’s both. Finding the way to weave
 that into our busy lives is a challenge, but even if you can steal five minutes to find a quiet place, I find that
 tremendously life-giving.
Q: That balance between spiritual and practical daily life.
BB:&nbsp;Yes. We don’t love people in the abstract.
 We love them in how we treat them. We nurture our ability to love by going deep within ourselves, because we connect
 with something much deeper that calls us to love.
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Q: Young people are very much at the forefront of the world at the
 moment and world change. Do you have any advice or guidance that you want to share with them? Any words of hope?
BB:&nbsp;I am inspired by the global movement of
 young people that is really challenging us to care about the environment, to care about peace. I guess the one thing
 I’d say is that the most life-giving thing any of us can do is to commit to this greater call. From my own
 experience, having made that commitment, I’ve been blessed to find wonderful people to work with, experiencing the
 gratification of being part of positive change. It’s a gift to ourselves to make that commitment.
Q: How do you share this vision with your grandchildren?
BB:&nbsp;Given their young ages, just by loving
 them. Growing up being loved is the most precious thing that can happen to a child. Hopefully I’ve grown into some
 real wisdom in my later years that I didn’t have when I was parenting the first time around. So one of the things
 I’m excited about is finding the right way to share with them. Another exciting opportunity for me personally is
 that my oldest son, who grew up in the Christian tradition, has married a wonderful Indian-American woman whose
 tradition is Hinduism. So, how can their two little boys grow up in the richness of both traditions?
To answer your question, I haven’t figured it out yet, but that’s one of the wonderful
 challenges of this stage in my life as a grandparent.
Q: The quality of love has always been a mystery to me, because people’s
 interpretation and understanding of love can be very different. There can even be a rather selfish approach to love.
 So how do you define your version of love?
BB:&nbsp;In the relationship between the lover and
 the beloved, in its deepest form, what is it that we want? I think there are two things. We want the deepest
 possible communion with that person. The Irish have a beautiful expression “Anam cara,” meaning soul
 friend. We want to be soul friends. The second thing is that we want the beloved to flourish.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">We don’t love people in the abstract. 
 We love them in how we treat them. 
 We nurture our ability to love 
 by going deep within ourselves, 
 because we connect with something 
 much deeper that calls us to love.</h5>
<hr>
I used an example at a personal level, but it’s just as true at the societal level. In
 our country we don’t have nearly enough social commitment to early childhood development. I can’t personally be in
 loving communion with all the children in America, as with my grandchildren, but I can take that same sense of
 affection and ask, “How can I help create the social systems that can support the flourishing of all of those
 children?” It’s not soft and it’s not abstract. It’s something we can operationalize.
I wrote a paper a number of years ago, largely for myself, with the title “Love as the
 Organizing Principle for Life.” We can apply that working definition of a desire for the deepest communion and
 commitment to the flourishing of others across all the dimensions of life. That’s my take on love.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Interviewed by JUDITH NELSON</h4>
<hr>

Spirit is the foundation for everything - part 2

<h4>BOB BOISTURE speaks with JUDITH NELSON at
 the Spirit of Humanity Forum, held in Reykjavík, Iceland, on 1 June 2019. He shares with us the vision of the Fetzer
 Institute, and the need for personal transformation and love to bring about the changes necessary today to address
 the most pressing issues of humanity and our planet Earth.</h4>
Q: Welcome sir. One of the lovely
 things I read about the Fetzer Institute is its approach to life and the fact that it comes from a foundation of
 love. Can you tell us more about the Institute and this principle of love? How does it work?
BB: I’ll start with John Fetzer, the founder. He
 was born in 1901 and died in 1991, so he lived in every decade of the 20th century and his life had this amazing
 trajectory. He was born in a very small town in the American Midwest, into a fairly conservative, narrow, religious
 environment. The course of his life was an opening to a global spirituality, beginning fairly early in his life when
 he became a student of world religions and practiced within a number of traditions. He was always perhaps grounded
 in his Christian beginnings, but was very open to eastern traditions.
It was really extraordinary because in his public life he became a very successful
 businessman and entrepreneur in the early days of radio and television. He then bought one of the major league
 baseball teams and was a pioneer in putting broadcasting and sports together. He did all this in a culture where if
 you were a businessman you didn’t talk about spirituality and, if you did, you talked about it in the context of the
 Christian tradition. But his passion was this global spiritual vision.
As he got older and accumulated a significant amount of wealth, he became increasingly
 convinced that his calling was to set up an organization, a spiritually-grounded community, that could do its small
 part in helping humanity as a whole to take the next big step in the spiritual journey. The grounding for his vision
 was that the fundamental reality is not atoms and energy, it’s spirit – “Spirit” with a capital S. For him, Spirit
 and Love (with a capital L) were really synonymous.
His vision was this: Love is the core energy that holds everything together. If only we
 would profoundly open our hearts to love, we would be able to take that next big step together in humanity’s
 spiritual journey.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Love is the core energy that holds everything
 together. 
 If only we would profoundly open our hearts to love, 
 we would be able to take that next big step together in 
 humanity’s spiritual journey.</h5>
<hr>
He had this incredible generosity of spirit and saw this as a long term vision; he saw
 it in terms of several centuries for this evolution in our spiritual journey to take place. He knew that he couldn’t
 see the future that far, that only a community capable of continuing renewal could carry that vision forward over
 time.
Unlike a lot of donors who try to say in their wills, “This money has to be used exactly
 for such-and-such,” he said to the community, “Listen for the ring of truth and it will be calling you to create [he
 had this beautiful phrase] this community of freedom. There, you, the community, will discern what the work of the
 foundation will be. The only thing I’m sure of is that the summary will be unconditional love.”
So how about that as a gift to us? We’ve been trying to live by that vision, and be
 worthy of that vision, in the more than 25 years since his death. The fundamental insight we think we’ve come to in
 our life as a community is that Spirit has to be the foundation, the touchstone, the source of guidance and energy
 for everything we do.
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We’re a community of about sixty, which in the world today is enough to have a lot of
 diversity on a lot of dimensions, including spirituality. So the first question is: Can we find a place to stand
 together? And is there spiritual common ground across all our different paths? How do we find it and deepen it, but
 at the same time honor the fact that we get there in very different ways? So we bring our whole community together
 every Tuesday morning for three hours to really work on that challenge, and we do a lot of different things. Most
 importantly, we practice together. We have engaged with a broad range of spiritual practices from both the Abrahamic
 traditions and the Eastern traditions to understand a bit more about our diverse paths and to realize that love is
 all about relationship.
We’ve done something very unusual for an organization – very unique in my experience –
 we’ve taken the time to share our deep stories with each other and that’s been transformative. You can be together
 with people for a long time in an instrumental way and it remains at the surface, but once you know their life
 journey, your connection goes to a much deeper level. We feel like we’re working in a microcosm on what the global
 community needs to be working on, which is how to find that spiritual common ground across our differences, and
 deepen it. And also honor the fact that we reached that common ground on very different paths and make that
 something that’s mutually enriching not dividing.
Q: There are sixty of you in a microcosm, reflecting or hoping to
 reflect what could happen in the world. So how do you feel your influence can go from small to large?
BB: We have this theory of change. It starts with
 the optimistic proposition that the same forces that are pulling us towards the conviction that humanity desperately
 needs spiritually grounded individuals and societal transformation are pulling literally millions of people around
 the world in that direction. The result is that there is an emerging global movement.
I don’t think it’s yet aware of itself as a global movement, but when you really begin
 to connect the dots you find that there are people working on all of the big challenges – whether it’s climate
 change and environmental degradation, social justice or gender equality. They come from a deeply
 spiritually-grounded place, with this same conviction that inner transformation drives outer transformation. If we
 can find each other and realize that together we comprise a comprehensive global movement, it can unleash an energy
 that is powerful enough to enable us to meet all these big existential threats.
Our humble goal is to do what we can with our gifts and resources; to help inspire and
 support the continuing emergence of this global movement. We take that in multiple directions. First, we think that
 one of the things that can really empower this movement is a shared vision. We use the phrase “shared sacred story”:
 at the root of all this is this need and possibility of humanity reclaiming a sense of the sacred in everything.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">We feel that humanity can come together 
 in a shared affirmation of sacredness and love, 
 and build a world in which everyone and everything 
 can flourish.</h5>
<hr>
At the most fundamental level, we’ve had this love affair over the past few centuries
 with scientific and rational ways of trying to understand the world. It has produced huge benefits in terms of our
 greater understanding of physical reality, but in the process we have lost the confidence of our spiritual
 intuitions. We see the key is bringing that spiritual way of knowing back into a balanced relationship with science.

We feel that when we do that we open ourselves to the deep discernment of all the great
 traditions: The fundamental reality is not meaningless matter and energy, it’s the cosmic consciousness that holds
 us all in love. That should be the headline for the 21st century. Humanity has in fact spent millennia probing the
 ultimate mystery of existence, and none of the great traditions have come back from that probe and said it’s
 meaningless. They’ve all come back and said it’s sacred. They’ve come back and said the only appropriate human
 response to this sacredness is some mix of awe and gratitude and reverence and, most importantly, love.
We feel that humanity can come together in a shared affirmation of sacredness and love,
 and build a world in which everyone and everything can flourish. It’s a tremendously hopeful vision. It’s not our
 vision, we feel like it’s the vision that is being called forth around the world by the sense that we can’t go on as
 we have been.
We’ve played out the string of an egoistic approach to life because we’re realizing
 that, at rock bottom, it pulls us towards despair and separation and fear. We don’t have to live from that place; if
 we wake up into this knowledge of the sacredness of reality, we open our hearts to each other and to the natural
 world in a way that everything and everybody flourishes.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Our conviction is that the only thing powerful 
 enough to create that world of flourishing is love. 
 And love begins in each and every heart.</h5>
<hr>
One thing we’re doing is bringing together the voices that can help co-create that
 shared sacred story and then take it out into the world.
The second thing is: Our conviction is that the only thing powerful enough to create
 that world of flourishing is love. And love begins in each and every heart. So we focus on how to inspire and
 support as many people as possible in committing to that inner journey of opening our hearts. In the simplest terms,
 we feel that if we go deep enough inside, we encounter that transcendent reality that’s much deeper than ourselves –
 the sacred reality of love. And that encounter is transformative.
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One of the wonderful things about this present moment is that our technology can help us
 provide support for the spiritual journey to everybody around the world, whatever tradition they’re in. We want to
 do our little bit for that.
We also feel that something special happens when we come together, in person and with
 the natural world, so another of our initiatives is to support and strengthen the web of retreat centers around the
 world.
The last thing I’ll say is that individual transformation has to connect in powerful
 ways to societal transformation, because when you look at the world through this lens of love and hope, and you ask
 “What needs to change?” pretty much everything needs to change. Whether it’s our educational systems, our economy or
 our health care systems, how can we help make that happen?
We’re starting to put a tremendous amount of energy right now in trying to renew our
 ability to come together and engage in collective action. Certainly in the United States, and in too many countries
 around the world, our societies are pulling apart and our politics are breaking down into division. So we have a
 major initiative we’re calling “Healing the Heart of American Democracy.” We’re stepping into the public
 conversation and saying that the polarization and toxicity in our common life has reached such a point that it’s an
 existential threat to our free society and there’s no political solution. This is not going to be solved by one side
 or the other winning. This is a challenge that has to be addressed at the deeper heart level. We’ve become so good
 at de-humanizing and even demonizing the people we disagree with that we can’t come together and do anything. We
 can’t come together and address climate change; we can’t come together and address racism and inequality. So, the
 first challenge is to move from this place of de-humanization to re-humanization and that’s precisely about this
 inner work.
We’ve had some interesting conversations here at the Spirit of Humanity Forum about the
 bad things that happen when we try to work for a better world from a place of anger. That’s something I’ve certainly
 experienced in more than three decades of working on non-profit advocacy causes in Washington – the destruction of
 the angry advocate, however worthy their goals.
So we are inviting people to consider that the most important work for any of us who are
 inspired to help save the world is to commit to this inner work of transformation, because only when we can get
 ourselves to a place of sufficient wholeness, inner peace and love, do we have any chance of bridging these
 polarizing divides.
To be continued
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Interview by JUDITH NELSON</h4>
<hr>

Bob Boisture

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