Alchemy of Love: Truth, Tenderness, and Transformation with Inaara Neal-Shiraz and ,O

How do we speak truth in love—and stay grounded in care, courage, and connection while doing so?

In this powerful, heart-centered conversation, host Dwight Dunston is joined by two guests whose lives embody the practice of love as a healing force for justice: Inaara Neal-Shiraz and ,O. Together they explore what it means to balance bold truth-telling with tenderness, to hold anger and compassion in the same breath, and to become “alchemists” of our own emotions.

The episode begins with a passage from the Pendle Hill pamphlet Nonviolence on Trial by Robert W. Hillgas, which asks how we might name evil without losing sight of our shared humanity. From there, Dwight, Inaara, and ,O invite listeners into a living meditation on love—as practice, discipline, and transformation.

About Our Guests

,O is a longtime healer, educator, and community organizer working at the intersection of social and environmental justice. For more than 25 years, they have led workshops and healing circles that support individuals and groups in addressing the legacies of racism, sexism, homophobia, and class privilege. ,O serves as Healing Justice Coordinator at Philly Thrive, is a founding member of Alternatives to Gun Violence, and leads the Quaker ministry Love and Respect Transform, which explores the transformative power of love.

Inaara Neal-Shiraz (she/her) served as the Inclusion and Belonging Coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, supporting 10,000 Friends across four states and nurturing communities of belonging among young adult Friends. She brings her background in education, the arts, and nonprofit work to her ministry of connection—helping Quaker spaces become more inclusive and life-giving for people of all identities and experiences. 

Elder Wisdom

Throughout the episode, Inaara and ,O speak from different generations yet a shared spiritual lineage. They remind us that love is not sentimental—it is an ancient rhythm, an elder wisdom that lives in the heart. Love can be fierce, restorative, and revolutionary.

Dwight reflects:

“What if we weren’t afraid of love—to be seen, to be powerful, to let go of the king’s language and speak from the heart instead?”

NEW Video Version available at Pendle Hill's YouTube page.

The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/
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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

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Transcript

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Hey This fear is telling me lies, but I am accepting them because they're so persuasive or they're dressed up real nice. We've been hurt so many times when we have attempted to lead with the heart and then have been smacked down. Hey, You You're listening to The Seed, Conversations for Radical Hope, a Pendle Hill podcast where Quakers and other seekers come together to explore visions of the world growing through the cracks of our broken systems. I'm your host, Dwight Dunstan. On today's show, we're diving into what it means to speak truth in love and do so while staying grounded in care, courage, and connection. My guests are two people whose work and witness challenge us to step beyond comfort and into right relationship with each other and with all of creation. And I'm so excited for the conversation that we will have together. For you, our listener, whether you are joining us for the 40th time or the first time or somewhere in between, I just want to say welcome, friend. And I just want to say I see you, friend. This season's theme is inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his book, Where Do We Go From Here? chaos or community. He wrote, power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. This season, we ground each episode in a short reading. Today's reading is from a Pendle Hill pamphlet entitled Nonviolence on Trial by Robert W. Hillgas. One of our guests will read the excerpt now. Speaking the truth in love while inspired advice does little more than define the problem. It presents us with a conflict, if not an outright contradiction. One that all prophetic witness groups have to grapple with. On the one hand, we want to name the evil, to say to the weapons makers, stop, what you are doing is wrong and contrary to God's will. On the other, we labor to separate the deed from the doer. who is my sister or brother and at least as open to divine influence as I am. Even more specifically, the witnessing community, again following the prophets, wishes to confront the society's managers with the truth so searing and shocking that it will be able to penetrate the layers of indifference and denial that so often afflict those with royal power and consciousness. At the same time, as inheritors of the ideals of Christian fellowship, and democracy, we feel impelled to dialogue with our adversaries, to try to win them over by love and reason, to be reconciled. This strain of witness leads to what might be called peace evangelism, an effort to move forward together toward a world without weapons. Today I'm joined by two conversation partners. The first is named O. That's the letter O with a comma in front of it.,O is a longtime healer, educator, and community organizer. For over 25 years, they've worked at the intersection of social and environmental justice with a deep focus on trauma healing and collective care. O is the Healing Justice Coordinator at Philly Thrive and a founding member of Alternatives to Gun Violence in Philadelphia.,O leads a ministry called Love and Respect Transform, which explores how we can move beyond violence and toward deep healing, both personally and collectively. Also with us is Inaara Neal-Shiraz Inaara has a background in education, the arts, and nonprofit work, and brings her full heart to the work to make Quaker spaces more inclusive and welcoming across identities and experiences. you oh Welcome friends, welcome to you both. Help? Thank you for having us. This is very, very exciting. long time long time come It's a long time coming. Wow. Well, I'm so blessed and grateful to be with you both. We have so many things to explore. I know that we are on a different time, a spiritual time, a connected time, and I'm excited for what we'll want to come through by being in conversation all together. There's the quote that this season of the podcast continues to return to. Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. I think about this quote when I'm in space where hard truths need to be spoken and also where there needs to be love and care present in the room. Sometimes for me, it's easy to tip in one direction of deliver the hard truth kind of detached or robotically or really tend to the caring softness nurturing that's needed in the space. I struggle to find a balance. How do you stay in the tension between bold truth telling? and tenderness, what helps you to choose or not choose one over the other to really bring those two together in your work. It's extremely important to remember how vulnerable we all are. We have been trained to present as strong and powerful and competent and invincible in order to not be hurt, in order to not be harmed. And though some of those characteristics are true, maybe many of them are true, often what we don't allow others to see is the truth of our vulnerability. the truth of how tender, how tender our nervous system actually is. And so one of the things that I remember whenever I'm attempting to deliver a complicated, hard truth is that we're actually communicating nervous system to nervous system, and that I'm always in conversation with someone's nervous system that has known many different layers of trauma. So it's a call to tenderness. being on my college campus and someone saying, where are the people of color at? I had never heard the phrase people of color up until I was 18. And so it was a really important and steep learning curve of all this information that I was filling in because I hadn't gotten this education. I hadn't acquired this knowledge and I hadn't been in touch with my body. So I felt very divorced from the knowledge that was sitting inside of me. And so when I was learning of all the ways that injustice works, when I was in spaces of truth telling, oftentimes the way I delivered it was really harsh and not harsh with a sense of care and openness and curiosity toward someone or the people there, but in a lot of anger, in a lot of rage and in a lot of judgment. Anger and rage have places within the process of learning, truth telling and understanding truth and delivering truth. Truth is something that ultimately binds. So when I'm delivering truth and I am operating with the idea that it's okay for me to sever my connection to the people there, to break down the relationships and the trust that is there, that I find is harmful. And I have had to practice over many years. trying to be tender and gentle. Sometimes I have had to deal with the stuckness that being gentle is, like O said, synonymous with being weak rather than being actually fiercely loving and profoundly human when it is so difficult to stay grounded in our humanness. And there are moments when the truth does come out in a very clear, direct way. But what I think distinguishes that truth-telling from The harshness and the, I'm gonna use this word, the emotional, lashing out the emotional brutality that I was moving with, with the intention to sometimes hurt people so they could feel my hurt, that is not in the service of truth. Speaking clearly, speaking honestly, speaking directly, and speaking in a commitment to our togetherness, even when it might initially be felt as harsh, that is much more different. and much more aligned with love and truth than that initial harshness that I was operating with. So it's definitely a practice. It makes sense to me that we carry so much rage. Even Jesus turned over the tables and challenged the people and said, you have turned my father's home into a den of thieves. Anger and rage are powerful and profound messengers. They carry a deep wisdom from our ancestors, as though our ancestors are actually wanting to speak through us and say, you have done this in the past, you're doing it in the present. and I really want to interrupt you doing it in the future. And so this velocity comes forward with power and strength to rectify. And so it makes sense, totally makes sense. A part of the invitation in our evolution is to learn how to be in relationship with that much power and to become alchemists of the power, to become transformational agents of that power. to learn how to work with that power in such a way that we refine it. We don't get rid of it because you need it because the messages are in there. But we learn how to refine it in such a way that allows for us to maintain connection while holding it. Accountability on both sides. It's accountability for the messenger to learn how to work that power. And it's accountability to the person who has facilitated the hurt. So it's an art, it's a dance, it's a reclaiming the fullness of who we are, but mostly it's an invitation to become an alchemist. I'm not sure if our listeners signed up for this episode being like, I'm an alchemy class. And here we are. The invitation is to become alchemists is what I really hear you bringing forth for someone just starting out on that journey who's wanting to bring that awareness, that accountability to become a more skillful dancer, artist, alchemist with big feelings like rage, anger, even grief. I think about joy and elation, all of these big feelings. curious if there's a tip or yeah something a technique that you would just invite folks into to begin to alchemize those feelings and those moments where they're looking to embody love and justice. My go-to is breathing. Probably one of the most powerful and profound tools that have supported my liberation is to have a breathing practice. When I find myself in the presence of really big, complicated emotions, the first thing I will do is identify that I'm there to notice that something has taken over my nervous system and has possessed me, that I become the Hulk in a split second. to honor that and then to breathe. And there's something about the breathing into that power that acknowledges the power. I don't pretend like it's not there. The biggest hurdle for me in approaching this alchemy that has shared with us is when I am in a state of fear and when that fear is all-consuming, ever-present, and really believable. Like this fear is telling me lies, but I am accepting them because they're so persuasive or they're dressed up real nice. was a facilitator and speaker for young adult friends last year. I'm just coming off of a few days after attending a conference at Pendle Hill that O facilitated on faith-based reparative justice. A while back when I was still stumbling around Quakerism, I remember watching a video of O share that they are in a state of worship and that the meeting for worship, that connection to the divine. to all those who are gathered. Because I think that is also an alchemy of worship. Worshipping on my own has a different DNA than the worship I do when I'm in community with other gathered individuals, other friends. I have had to do a lot of unlearning and relearning. And so sometimes I have no clue about who I am and what I feel or what I think. But when I try and ground myself in worship in my day-to-day life, even when I'm not at meetings for worship. I find that I'm better attuned to listening to a call that's coming. And sometimes the call is just to be quiet and stay still and just relax because nothing is wrong. Your anxiety is off the charts and you just need to calm down. And sometimes the calling is to speak or to act. But I have had to have a relationship with what it means to discern that knowledge, that information that might be helpful for those listening to know that. we can access that sense of worshipfulness, faithfulness when we're waiting for the train, when we're in the grocery store, stuck in traffic, when our family member is going through a hard time, that that is available to us. And I want to commend Oh for sharing that learning with me, with all of us. Thank you. It's like, can we even love our fear? oh Where I go in my head is like, I don't want to love my fear. I don't wanna. And I hear you. I really do. All emotions are sacred. All emotions are necessary. All emotions are important because they carry ancient wisdom. There is a wisdom in there that when we remember how to decode the frequencies and the vibrations of the emotional structures, when we remember how to decode them and glean the wisdom that's in them, my belief is that's how you see God. That's our entry into God. God to me is the vibratory feel of all that is possible. Something that I want to share with the audience when I purify my heart is that the heart in development, in embryonic development, is the first functioning organ of the embryo. It's the heart, it's not the brain. And the heart is a receiver. It is both a receiver and a giver. It is the receiver of the signals of life and it is the giver of the signals of life. When we have the ability to be in the presence of anger and rage and frustration, joy, we're given the opportunity, even in the word opportune, right? There's a tune in there, an opportunity. We're given the opportunity to connect with the very fields that created the whole universe, organized the whole universe. When a universe was being created, there was a lot of destructive energy. Things had to blow up, stuff had to move around. There was a lot of aggression, but it knew how to work with that aggression, that volatility in a way that then organized life. My belief is we all have that within us. We all know how to do it and it's been educated out of us. We became more of intellect. rather than disciples of the heart. When we become disciples of the heart, ambassadors of the heart, which is the elder organ in the body, the elder is the heart, that when we become ambassadors of the heart, we become ambassadors of the rhythm, the heart's rhythm of life. If you're the ambassador of the intellect, you're going to create all manner of chaos. I had to say it again, slower. When we become ambassadors of the heart, we locate a rhythm, the rhythm of the universe, the rhythm of life. When we become ambassadors of the heart, it is the elder, it is the eldest organ. When we become ambassadors of the intellect, it's chaotic, the brain is chaotic. And so we become ambassadors of chaos. When we put the heart first and invite the brain to become an ally. We don't want to get rid of the brain. need the brain. It's an invitation for the brain to become an ally of the heart. It's elder. I'm just thinking about the person that's listening and is just indignant. I'm not doing what O just told me to do. I don't know if that's coming from a rolling family or, you know, Holy Child or something with authority or something, but there, you know, just says, I'm not listening to the heart, you know, but just comes with that energy. What would you tell that person or say to that person? How would you invite them into maybe a different relationship with our elder organ? Yes. Yes. Unfortunately, we are often taught to focus on the negative of almost anything. And so everything has been misrepresented. Women have been misrepresented. Men have been misrepresented. Children have been misrepresented. We have been trained to see the negative of everything. And so that's true of the heart. We have also been taught not to trust the heart. Just like we don't trust men, we don't trust women, we don't trust. So you don't trust the heart. And we've been hurt. So many times when we have attempted to lead with the heart and then have been smacked down, treated like trash, all of the audience has had that as an experience where you led with the heart and you ended up heartbroken. The reason why we end up heartbroken is because we've not been taught how to care for the heart. And when you don't know how to care for a powerful instrument, the heart very much is an instrument, when you don't know how to give care, to a powerful instrument that is both a sender and a receiver of life, and you don't know how to care for that instrument, then you're going to do a lot of damage. But it's not the heart's fault. That's what I want you to know. It's not the heart's fault. It's that we didn't know how to care for them. It's not the heart's fault because the heart is truly there to serve, support, assist connection for healing, health, and homes. you What I find so moving about what has shared is how even destruction, when aligned with the heart, when in attunement with love, is in the service of life-affirming action. That goes beyond this binary that I've held on for a while. There is good and bad. Good is creation, bad is destruction. And that power is suspect. That I want to... not be affiliated with power at all because of the harm and destruction I've witnessed. What I find transformative in what Oh has said is that caretaking of the heart, commitment to the heart, allows all things to be in unison with each other. Destruction too has its role to play in the honoring of life and in the honoring of wholeness and holiness that I believe is within each person and the living world and the unknowable worlds. It asks us to shift our paradigm. With this framework that has offered to us, I can no longer ask myself, am I on the right side? Because that is actually misunderstanding the entire overarching value system. Am I caretaking of my heart? Am I understanding and curious about other people's hearts? How am I healing from the wounds I've given to my own heart and how am I being accountable, genuinely accountable, not performatively accountable, but genuinely accountable for the ways I've wounded the hearts of other people? Those are much more difficult questions to house within my own heart and to answer than am I on the right side? Am I a good person? Am I doing the right thing? Now, asking those questions will align us with work that is very justice-oriented, very love-oriented. It also asks us, like mentioned in the beginning, to be open to the alchemy that sometimes is a mystery, but is necessary for us to be a part of a wider network of love within ourselves and interconnected with our communities and strangers who are also part of our community and people we might never ever meet. I am most moved by that, the life-affirming nature of this paradigm that has given to us. you folks, some of our episodes are going to be with pairs and some will be one-to-one interviews. It just was laid on my heart that you two be in conversation with one another, not knowing all of the ways you have been in orbit with one another already. You two are from different generations yourselves. I'm just curious if anything just wants to come through or be spoken about it and how you think about y'all's relationship being intergenerational. Something that came up for me was I didn't grow up visiting my grandparents often. The adults in my life were my parents and my teachers and then older members of the faith community I grew up in. I was constantly yearning for a kind of relationship with individuals who were older than me, older than my parents, maybe in a quest to want to learn and gain knowledge, have access to wisdom. and be seen and understood. Perhaps this is becoming obvious, but in my journey, part of me has been so angry, fearful, and alone. I would be very distrusting of people who were called elders. And I think that is because I never truly got to experience the joy of having an elder, being elder, eldership as a presence in my life when I was younger. and if I couldn't have it and I didn't understand it, then maybe it was easier to deal with the hurt by thinking ill of it. That has changed. I have constantly benefited from those who have been older, those who call themselves or are called by others as elders. I've also realized when I think about my queerness, I think about how there are so many elders that I lost because of the ways in which the AIDS epidemic took so many people's lives and our society did not respond. Or I think about how government and policy demonizing immigrants was a barrier to me having a full relationship with my grandparents. Now when I am in spaces with friends and when I am in a space with, oh, I feel tremendously blessed. There are a lot of things that confuse me and most of the time I think I have it. wrong. I think about all the ways that I could make a decision and what I did decide to do. A lot of coulda, woulda, shoulda examples. Sometimes out of a lack of love, a lovelessness toward myself, there's a lot of punishment and criticism and badgering. What I feel toward O is a lot of gratitude. I have learned and I continue to learn so much from O. I continue to learn what it means to grow. I learned the beauty and power of love and commitment. Something that I've had to release is that personal lesson. Looking like I'm doing good is not the same thing as doing good. And so I've learned from all what it means to do good. The term good is quite limited, but the way that one lives, out their life and the magnificence and magnetism that they have to help people. and be in relationship with people that I get from Ohl. We had breakfast on Sunday morning and I have learned so many things that have totally shifted the way I think about my own life and the trajectory of how I would like to live, my relationship to systems of power and also people and communities. I am so deeply blessed and lucky and grateful to be in a community with Ohl and to be in relationship with Ohl. That's how I feel. Part of the king's language is superior to inferior. And the codification of superior to inferior in so many different ways. It has the illusion that time is these little incremental seconds and minutes and days and weeks and months and years. And so there's this thing called elder. And then there's this thing called young. A part of collapsing that illusion of distortion Inaara is, are also my elder. You are my elder. And I think that's what Jesus was pointing to, too, that Jesus was identifying that unless you be childlike, you can't even enter the kingdom of the heavens. Unless you be childlike, you can't even understand the governing systems of life. So Inaara, what you bring to our relationship as an elder is your life's journey. all of what you have experienced that I've not experienced, many things that you have gone through that more than likely I would not have known how to go through, that you bring forward in the body called Anara, you bring forward the wisdom of your ancestors. And that information can be spoken and exchanged definitely in conversation like what we're doing right now. We share information. but it's also in vibration. The vibration of love that your ancestors lived into to the best of their ability, even in the presence of racism and classism and sexism. But the love that your family, your ancestors, utilized lives in your body. And so when we come together, I'm in the presence of your ancestors. So you are my elder. And again, in the King's language, the King's language does not allow for that. The King's language says, am the King and I am the elder and I will treat you with domination and superiority and power over you because you are young and it creates a world of confusion. You have been a wonderful teacher for me. And that to me is love. That's what love does. It crosses the King's language, the King's patterns, the King's behaviors, the King's illusions, the King's distortions. And it says, I see you, I see you, and I reach for you, and you reach back. And in the reaching back, there is elation and joy and alchemy. the alchemy of love. Thanks, Sinara. And thank you both for this incredible conversation. This has just been such a gift. I feel the caregiving here on so many levels. I see you, I see both of you and feel seen by you in your words and your spirit and the ways that you're being faithful to what you're called to do in this life. I feel seen by your love and all the ways that it manifests. Thank you so much for being on this journey with me, planting these seeds, tending them through all the seasons that we've been tending them together and for continuing to say yes to love. Thank you so much, Thank you for welcoming us to your playground. Thank you, Joy. Friends, welcome back to Alchemy Academy. We've become more committed alchemists after that conversation. I'm struck by so many parts. And it reminded me of an experience a few years ago I had at Pendle Hill in an art class with Jesse White, who asked the Pendle Hill, the spring term students, what does a loving, benevolent God see when they look at you? And that question immediately my brain. thought so many negative things about myself, so many negative things. And I took a few breaths and I allowed the question to really sit with me, root down deeper in my body so it started in the brain and it went down to my heart and my gut and down to my toes. And I let that question just wash over me. And immediately three words came up, worthy, joyful artist. That's what a loving, benevolent God sees when they look at me. There's some fear in believing when love isn't present and someone is speaking into you through love, a truth. And it leaves me with this question, friends. What if we weren't afraid of love, to be loved, to be really seen by one another, reflected back to us, have reflected back to us our goodness, our gifts, our power? What if we weren't afraid of being powerful together, powerful in our own gifts? What are we weren't afraid of being in our eldership? And also we weren't afraid to of the elders that have been called into our lives to nurture us, support us, care for us, give care. What if we weren't afraid to let go of the king's language and try on new language? Maybe you, like me, found myself going through all of the words that I use and thinking like, whoa, what are the ways these words I'm using keep me in a particular kind of reality, have taken hold of my imagination and made some things impossible simply for the ways that I think about them? What if we weren't afraid to let go? of the King's language. What I wanna leave you all with and all brought this in is as you're moving through some of the content here, maybe new ways of thinking that might not fully integrate today with how you want to see the world, how you will see the world, an invitation to go back to your breath. And so I invite you to take a breath in and out. I wanna say at the end of our time, as I did in the beginning, I see you, imagine me there and I spiritual meeting for worship. This is the rise of meeting and I just see you across the room our eyes lock. There's a nod. There's an acknowledgement that you are here. I am here. We are here and love is here. you The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center open to all for spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We're located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania on the traditional territory of the Lena Lenape people. Many of our guests are teachers, leaders, and speakers at Pendle Hill. We host retreats, workshops, and lectures all year round. For a full list, visit PendleHill.org slash learn. This episode was produced and edited by the wonderful Peterson Toscano. Our theme music is the I Rise Project by Reverend Reda Morgan and Bennett Kuhn, produced by Astronautical Records. Other music comes from EpidemicSound.com. You also heard some of my music. You can stay in touch by following us at Pendle Hill on all social media platforms or by emailing podcast at PendleHill.org. That's podcast at PendleHill.org. For full episode transcript, links and show notes, visit PendleHill.org slash podcast. You can also worship with me online through Pendle Hill once a month. I attend this virtual Quaker meeting on the last Friday of the month. The worship begins at 830 AM Eastern time and lasts about 40 minutes. To access the virtual worship space via Zoom, visit PendleHill.org slash worship. If you're finding these conversations meaningful, consider supporting our work financially. Simply head over to PendleHill.org slash donate. You can also support us by letting people in your life know about our podcast. We want to connect with other folks like you, so please subscribe, rate, and review us on your podcast platform. These seeds could not be planted without you.