Mini-Episode: Can We Even Love Our Fear? A Conversation with Inaara Neal-Shiraz and ,O

In this mini-episode of The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, we return to a Season Six conversation with Inaara Neal-Shiraz and ,O—two people whose lives and work embody love as a healing force for justice.

Inaara Neal-Shiraz served as the Inclusion and Belonging Coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, supporting Friends across four states and nurturing communities of care, discernment, and connection—especially among young adult Friends.

,O is a longtime healer, educator, and community organizer who has spent more than twenty-five years working at the intersection of social and environmental justice, supporting individuals and communities in healing legacies of harm.

In this excerpt, Inaara and ,O reflect on fear not as something to conquer or eliminate, but as something to listen to. They explore breath, nervous systems, worship, and what it means to practice alchemy with our emotions. Fear, they suggest, may carry distorted messages—but also wisdom—inviting us to slow down, breathe, and remain present long enough to hear what is asking for our attention.

As Dwight reflects, this conversation points toward a form of love that is not sentimental or passive, but embodied, intentional, and deeply attentive—a love practiced in grocery stores, on train platforms, and in moments when nothing appears to be “wrong,” yet everything is asking for care.

To hear the full conversation this excerpt comes from, visit pendlehill.org/podcast or listen on Spotify. 

What did you notice in your body as you listened?
What did fear reveal to you?

You can share reflections by emailing podcast@pendlehill.org or connecting with @PendleHill on social media.

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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Transcript

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This fear is telling me lies, but I am accepting them because they're so persuasive or they're dressed up real nice. There's a currency that our dominant leaders tend to be proliferating all over the place in order to maintain separation. Mmm You're listening to a mini episode of The Seed, Conversations for Radical Hope, a Pendle Hill podcast. I'm your host, Dwight Dunstan. In this mini episode, we return to a conversation from season six with Inaara Neal-Shiraz and ,O two people whose lives and work embody love as a healing force for justice. Inaara served as the inclusion and belonging coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. supporting friends across four states and nurturing communities of belonging, especially among young adult friends. She brings a deep commitment to care, connection, and spiritual discernment in everyday life.,O is a longtime healer, educator, and community organizer. For more than 25 years, they have worked at the intersection of social and environmental justice, supporting individuals and communities in healing legacies of harm. In this excerpt, Inaara and ,O reflect on fear not as something to conquer or eliminate, but as something to listen to. They explore breath, nervous systems, worship, and what it means to practice alchemy with our emotions. Here is an excerpt from that conversation. 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. And to honor that and then to breathe. There's something about the breathing into that power that acknowledges the power. I don't pretend like it's not there. The breath acknowledges it, and it's an invitation for my alchemist to step forward. 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. And so when I am in fear and I make a move from that place or I speak from that place or I make a decision from that place, that very rarely is aligned with alchemy. When I'm in a state of fear, much like what has shared, if you can in any moment accept your body as it is, the stiffness, the rigidity, and just soften a little bit, a little bit, you you put the butter in the microwave, it's not fully melted, but you just warmed it up. a second, it's a little bit softer. That helps me feel like I can approach the situation with a little more openness without having to sort of try and overcome my entire body and its response. Something else I'll share. I'm very lucky to be in this space with all of you, especially, oh, because I've had the chance to work with ,O as a facilitator and speaker for young adult friends. Last year, I'm just coming off of a few days after attending a little 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. The meaning 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 and worship, 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. And I think 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, when we're stuck in traffic, when our family member is going through a hard time, that that is available to us. And I want to commend, ,O for sharing that learning with me, with all of us. One of the things that I've learned about fear, fear is a currency that our dominant leaders tend to be proliferating all over the place in order to maintain separation. So if I'm afraid of you, more than likely, I'm not gonna wanna get close to you, because I'm afraid of you. And so if you're taught to be afraid of large swaths of people, men afraid of women. Women afraid of men. That's a large swath. That's a large group. White people afraid of black people, black people afraid of white people. Large swath of fear just kind of gets washed over the nervous system where eventually you have a planet where everybody's afraid of everybody because that's the currency, currency that is used in order to facilitate domination. What's interesting about the nervous system is we've been taught that when we are afraid, we need to get dominant. Like we have to enter into a dominant posturing. Like I've got to dominate you because I'm afraid. So one of the things that I've learned about fear, again, is to breathe into the fear, to give the breath of life to fear. Because fear in that moment is devoid of life. Life itself has been threatened. And so if I breathe into it, then I'm giving it life. Inaara, I heard you speak of how the fear can bring you to lies. And there's a part of me that's like, you know, I wonder, I don't know that it's a lie. My belief is it might be a distortion because fear is a messenger. It's saying something's out of balance. Something's amiss. Something's off. That fear at least knows something. It knows the truth about something. Then the challenge or the invitation Along with breathing, my next tool that I use is slowing down. Slow down, which is a contradiction to fear, right? Fear usually has you speed up. But what I've learned is when I'm afraid, again, to honor the fear, because I know there are messages there that have been distorted and twisted. And then again, as an alchemist, I choose to breathe into the fear, slow down, and really listen. Listen to the wisdom that is packed in that fear. So I want to honor your journey, Inaara. I want to honor you for when you are experiencing fear, that there are so many ancient messages and wisdom in there, that information is reaching for you because it needs your brilliance. And it needs your brilliance so that it can be delivered in a way that facilitates healing. and transformation for yourself and those who you're in relationship. Thank you.,O Where I go in my head is like, don't wanna love my fear. It's just I don't wanna. And I hear you, I really do. you you you You just heard an excerpt from my conversation with Inaara Neel Sharaz and ,O What stays with me from this conversation, this exchange, is the invitation to slow down, to notice fear without letting it take over, and to remember that fear often carries some sort of wisdom, even though it might be distorted, rather than some set of lies. Both Inaara and ,O remind us that breath is not an escape from fear. but a way of staying present long enough to hear what fear is trying to tell us. There is so much gentleness in this conversation and also so much courage, an invitation, a willingness, a willingness to soften just a little, breathe, to trust that worship is not confined to meeting houses, but available with us while we're waiting for the train, standing in the grocery store, or sitting with someone we love. This is the kind of love this season keeps pointing us towards. Not sentimental, not passive, but embodied, active, intentional, and profoundly attentive. To hear the full conversation this excerpt comes from, visit the link in our show notes at Pendlehill.org slash podcast. Thank you for listening to this mini episode of The Seed, Conversations for Radical Hope. What did you notice in your body as you listened? What did fear reveal to you? You can share your reflections by emailing podcast at Pendlehill.org or by connecting with us on social media at Pendlehill. I also want to invite you to join me for Pendlehill's online meeting for worship, which I joined the last Friday of each month at 830 a.m. Eastern. You can find details at Pendlehill.org slash worship. At Pendle Hill, we offer retreats, workshops, and lectures throughout the year. Learn more at Pendlehill.org slash LERG. This episode was produced by the wonderful Peterson Toscano, and our theme music is the I Rise Project by Reverend Reda Morgan and Bennett Kuhn, produced by Astronautical Records. If these conversations matter to you, consider supporting our work at Pendlehill.org slash donate. Let us keep breathing. Let us keep listening. Let us keep practicing love. you