2.3 Kim Landeen and Carolina Allen discuss the biodiversity of faith with Melissa Inouye

Currents: the Big Ocean Women Podcast

In this third episode, Kim Landeen and Carolina Allen discuss the biodiversity of faith with Melissa Inouye.

“If people have described religion as trying to keep lighting in a bottle, charisma is the lightning and organization is the bottle. Kind of a balance between the two: if you have too much bottle, you can’t see the lightning, and if you have too much lightning you break the bottle.” – Melissa Inouye

“I believe that God created the world, and I believe that … we can draw from the natural world, created by God, some principles, and just looking at the world it seems pretty significant that we have biodiversity that seems to be the key to making a lot of things work.” – Melissa Inouye

“I believe that God has also created us with spiritual biodiversity.” – Melissa Inouye

“One of the ways we start becoming better as people is … developing our understanding of our fellow beings and becoming a little more mature in being able to understand goodness in other people and faith and to see that goodness and to learn from other people. I think that God has … nudged us toward that trajectory through creating a world with incredible spiritual and physical biodiversity.” – Melissa Inouye

“Everyone has a lot to learn, and we can learn so much from people who teach us in different ways.” – Melissa Inouye

“Lean in to the ways that religion holds together the fabric of societies.” – Melissa Inouye

“Religion is a motive source in many ways for a lot of social change and social cohesion.” – Melissa Inouye

The Way of Openness: https://civicfriendship.org/the-way-of-oppenness/

The Ten Conventions for Dialogue:

1. Be Honest
2. Be Kind
3. Listen Well
4. Share the Floor
5. Presume Goodwill
6. Acknowledge Differences
7. Answer the Tough Questions
8. Give Credit Where Credit is Due
9. Speak Only For Yourself
10. Keep Private Things Private

“My faith has literally saved my life. I had a really scary diagnosis… I think one of the reasons why I’ve been able to beat really bad odds for such a long time is because even when I myself didn’t have faith or hope in myself, there were other people that I could rely on who did and I think that the body responds to that.” – Melissa Inouye

BioDiversity Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QsPERjmBH0

Every needful Thing; Book preorder: https://deseretbook.com/p/every-needful-thing?variant_id=200906-paperback

Melissa Inouye works as a historian at the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is also an honorary Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Auckland. She is currently researching the life of Chieko Okazaki, a Japanese American Latter-day Saint who was the first person of color to hold a prominent general-level position in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Carolina Allen is the founder and leader of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Carolina holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Utah with an emphasis in cultural religions and philosophy of science. Her inspirational and philosophical work has been presented at various international U.N. conferences. She is a native of Brazil, and a fluent trilingual. She and her husband Kawika are parents to 7 children. She is an avid soccer fan and had a brief career as a semi-professional player.

Kim Landeen is a founding member and a Global Team Director of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Kim has a deep love for the natural world. She lives in Alaska with her family where she enjoys spending the slower paced life with her children combing the beach for treasures, gardening, picking wild berries, and spending rainy lazy days making bread, reading books, and watching movies. She is an ecotour captain in Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site where she helps educate her clients on the relationship between humanity and the larger eco-environment. In addition to her love of nature, she also enjoys studying theology and the inner workings of the soul as well as tracking global political and social movements. Her love for God, people, and this world drives her to continually seek to improve her own circumstances and the circumstances of all those with whom she comes in contact.