WEBVTT 00:17.210 --> 00:19.510 - Welcome back shipmates chaplain Carey Cash here 00:19.510 --> 00:22.250 with my dear friend, chaplain Mo Buford, 00:22.250 --> 00:25.090 and back to our journey 00:25.090 --> 00:26.570 through these courageous conversations. 00:26.570 --> 00:28.100 I hope it's been helpful for you. 00:28.100 --> 00:32.140 Hope it's been challenging, ultimately life-changing. 00:32.140 --> 00:35.090 Today we're gonna talk about what chaplain Buford calls 00:35.090 --> 00:38.900 rightness and it's natural that it should follow our last 00:38.900 --> 00:40.260 discussion reflection. 00:40.260 --> 00:41.890 When we reflect, we look deep within, 00:41.890 --> 00:44.760 we look at our moral maps, if you will, 00:44.760 --> 00:47.550 and look for those assumptions fault lines 00:47.550 --> 00:52.550 that could give rise to misperception, 00:52.750 --> 00:54.883 of other people and unfair judgements. 00:56.680 --> 00:58.240 Rightness is what comes next. 00:58.240 --> 01:00.870 Rightness is more than just reflecting, 01:00.870 --> 01:03.660 in fact, I'm gonna let Mo talk a little bit about this term 01:03.660 --> 01:07.020 which I think is so appropriate for the Navy these days. 01:07.020 --> 01:08.120 Mo what do you mean by rightness? 01:08.120 --> 01:10.040 - Well yeah thank you, Carey. 01:10.040 --> 01:15.040 So rightness, if you would is undergird by the term 01:16.070 --> 01:17.623 or the philosophy love. 01:18.600 --> 01:22.260 And love is doing the right thing, at the right time, 01:22.260 --> 01:23.560 and with the right motive. 01:24.480 --> 01:27.260 Rightness is about what's fair, 01:27.260 --> 01:30.120 rightness is about what's just, 01:30.120 --> 01:33.310 rightness is really a moral imperative. 01:33.310 --> 01:34.730 In the sentiments of Abraham Lincoln, 01:34.730 --> 01:35.563 he said, 01:35.563 --> 01:39.760 "Let us have the faith that right makes might; 01:39.760 --> 01:42.400 and in that faith let us to the end 01:42.400 --> 01:46.470 dare to do our duty as we understand it." 01:46.470 --> 01:49.840 So I wanna return our attention to the picture 01:49.840 --> 01:54.840 of this officer, having his knee on the neck of Mr. Floyd. 01:56.040 --> 01:58.400 But what I wanna point out this time Carey is 01:59.350 --> 02:01.983 the officer who's just watching. 02:03.970 --> 02:08.153 Was he experiencing a case of organizational laryngitis? 02:09.000 --> 02:12.070 And what about those of us who wear the uniform, 02:12.070 --> 02:17.070 who witness injustice, that witness racism and 02:19.560 --> 02:23.290 say absolutely nothing? 02:23.290 --> 02:27.180 I wonder about the policies and the procedures 02:27.180 --> 02:30.770 and yes even the people in the sea service. 02:30.770 --> 02:32.560 Well, there's a term, there's a construct, 02:32.560 --> 02:36.360 I will call it the barrel theory. 02:36.360 --> 02:41.260 And I think our propensity is to really focus on 02:41.260 --> 02:42.950 if you would bad apples, right? 02:42.950 --> 02:46.480 And we're quick to discipline the bad apples 02:46.480 --> 02:48.800 and I think that's the right thing to do. 02:48.800 --> 02:50.810 But I think we gotta go further, right? 02:50.810 --> 02:54.130 Not only discipline and take a hard look at the bad apple, 02:54.130 --> 02:56.032 we need to examine the barrel. 02:56.032 --> 02:56.865 - [Carey] Mmh 02:56.865 --> 02:59.070 - [Mo] Sometimes the barrel or the culture 02:59.070 --> 03:00.730 may be a contributing factor 03:00.730 --> 03:01.940 to the bad apples. 03:01.940 --> 03:05.610 But we gotta go beyond that and take a hard look at the 03:05.610 --> 03:07.510 barrel makers right. 03:07.510 --> 03:11.400 And do the barrel makers have an implicit bias, 03:11.400 --> 03:14.790 or a blind spot that's a contributing factor? 03:14.790 --> 03:19.790 'Coz you know sometimes you have low ratio intelligence 03:19.950 --> 03:21.424 and you have the power of the pen, 03:21.424 --> 03:22.410 - [Carey] Mmh 03:22.410 --> 03:23.530 - that can harm. 03:23.530 --> 03:26.350 - Yeah so you're talking about really systems, processes, 03:26.350 --> 03:31.350 procedures that themselves are broken, 03:31.360 --> 03:34.758 or have real problems, 03:34.758 --> 03:35.591 - [Mo] Yes 03:37.170 --> 03:40.630 - And taking a hard look as a Navy, taking a hard look 03:40.630 --> 03:44.310 as an institution at things like how we recruit, 03:44.310 --> 03:48.910 how we promote, do our numbers reflect the society 03:48.910 --> 03:50.250 that we protect? 03:50.250 --> 03:51.083 - [Mo] Exactly 03:52.540 --> 03:54.550 - You remind me actually of my wife, 03:54.550 --> 03:58.940 'coz I'm a guy that likes to think and I like to contemplate 03:58.940 --> 04:00.120 and I like to read, 04:00.120 --> 04:02.180 and I don't know how many times she says to me throughout 04:02.180 --> 04:04.680 the week, Carey, "It's great that you like to think, 04:04.680 --> 04:05.940 but it's time to do stuff." 04:05.940 --> 04:07.324 - You are a (indistinct) - Yeah 04:07.324 --> 04:08.157 - That's exaggerating (both laugh) 04:08.157 --> 04:09.630 - She says, it's time to do stuff, 04:09.630 --> 04:12.830 actually put legs to your thoughts, 04:12.830 --> 04:14.239 and make a difference, 04:14.239 --> 04:15.406 - [Mo] Exactly 04:16.670 --> 04:20.310 - Change where things are broken. 04:20.310 --> 04:21.943 And, - Yes 04:21.943 --> 04:25.170 - I think this is a golden opportunity for our Navy 04:25.170 --> 04:30.140 to not react, but to develop a new habit of looking into 04:32.423 --> 04:33.533 the structure of our barrels. 04:33.533 --> 04:34.370 - Yes 04:34.370 --> 04:36.380 - And how we make these barrels, 04:36.380 --> 04:39.120 do we do it justly? Do I do it fairly? 04:39.120 --> 04:44.100 Do we do it in a way that gives an equal measure of dignity 04:44.100 --> 04:46.720 and opportunity to everybody who comes in our ranks? 04:46.720 --> 04:48.910 I'll give you one idea as I'm thinking about this, 04:48.910 --> 04:51.050 and this one's kind of an easy one but I mean, 04:51.050 --> 04:53.540 think about our sea service reading list. 04:53.540 --> 04:56.600 We're encouraged and rightly so to read about, 04:56.600 --> 04:59.590 the battles that we have fought on foreign shores 04:59.590 --> 05:01.480 in foreign waters, great military leaders, 05:01.480 --> 05:02.313 - [Mo] Mmh 05:02.313 --> 05:05.740 - leadership philosophy, the nature of war, 05:05.740 --> 05:08.940 all of these important topics. 05:08.940 --> 05:13.265 What about adding some of the Seminole writers 05:13.265 --> 05:15.067 that spoke to civil rights, 05:15.067 --> 05:15.900 - Oh I love it 05:15.900 --> 05:17.200 - To our sea service reading lists? 05:17.200 --> 05:18.033 - Yes, 05:18.033 --> 05:18.866 Right - Absolutely 05:18.866 --> 05:20.140 - What if in in our reading lists, we were reading 05:20.140 --> 05:23.760 Dr. King and Howard Thurman and W. E. B. Du Bois 05:23.760 --> 05:25.910 and Langston Hughes, 05:25.910 --> 05:27.732 - Who were all strategic thinkers 05:27.732 --> 05:29.640 - And they were fighting a war, right. 05:29.640 --> 05:30.528 They were fighting on the home front. 05:30.528 --> 05:31.465 - Mmh. 05:31.465 --> 05:33.770 - I mean, after all do we not swear to 05:33.770 --> 05:35.720 uphold the constitution against our enemies 05:35.720 --> 05:38.470 foreign and domestic? - Absolutely 05:38.470 --> 05:41.700 - So that could be a way that, 05:41.700 --> 05:44.270 and maybe we add some incentives to that, 05:44.270 --> 05:47.250 those kinds of thinkers who challenged us, 05:47.250 --> 05:49.910 who provoked us on deeper levels. 05:49.910 --> 05:51.410 I will warn the audience though, 05:51.410 --> 05:53.250 if you're gonna read people like Dr. King, 05:53.250 --> 05:56.250 just understand he comes from a spiritual and a religious 05:56.250 --> 05:58.150 perspective that has in many ways been lost 05:58.150 --> 05:59.490 in our society. 05:59.490 --> 06:01.590 To read Dr. King and to read 06:01.590 --> 06:04.140 many of those champions of civil rights, 06:04.140 --> 06:07.110 is to read men and women who had a spiritual vision. 06:07.110 --> 06:10.960 In fact, I think it's not off the mark to say you can't even 06:10.960 --> 06:14.260 understand much of the civil rights movement 06:14.260 --> 06:17.930 without the biblical images and the theological images 06:17.930 --> 06:21.290 that inform so much of what they believed 06:21.290 --> 06:23.440 and how they viewed the world. 06:23.440 --> 06:25.540 I was going through Dr. King's a letter 06:25.540 --> 06:27.560 from a Birmingham jail that he wrote in 19, 06:27.560 --> 06:30.190 I think about 63, April of 63. 06:30.190 --> 06:32.500 In that beautiful letter, 06:32.500 --> 06:35.430 which should be required reading, I think for all of us, 06:35.430 --> 06:39.510 49 times, Mo, 49 times, he makes an explicit, 06:39.510 --> 06:42.250 biblical or theological reference 06:42.250 --> 06:44.130 to add freight to his argument. 06:44.130 --> 06:45.230 - Yes 06:45.230 --> 06:49.070 - And if we didn't understand or have any background with 06:49.070 --> 06:52.080 respect to these images we wouldn't understand his letter. 06:52.080 --> 06:55.010 He says things like answering the Macedonian call, 06:55.010 --> 06:57.460 not being a lukewarm believer, 06:57.460 --> 07:00.490 he refers to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. 07:00.490 --> 07:02.420 What a great story. The fiery furnace, 07:02.420 --> 07:05.150 he talked about being leaven and salt and light. 07:05.150 --> 07:08.820 These are terms that are brimming with meaning 07:08.820 --> 07:13.550 and are such a treasure for us in those writings. 07:13.550 --> 07:17.450 So there's a simple process improvement 07:17.450 --> 07:19.850 I think that, that I would suggest, 07:19.850 --> 07:21.760 but there's a lot more work to do 07:21.760 --> 07:25.160 and rightness is about doing stuff 07:25.160 --> 07:28.240 and really getting at the roots of the organization 07:28.240 --> 07:31.100 to make sure that we're fair, 07:31.100 --> 07:35.660 we're just that we've wrapped our arms around our whole 07:35.660 --> 07:38.830 community in the way that we should have from the beginning. 07:38.830 --> 07:42.746 So I hope that you guys have some good discussion on this 07:42.746 --> 07:43.820 fellowship meet. 07:43.820 --> 07:45.190 I bet there's some great ideas 07:45.190 --> 07:46.200 out there - Oh yeah. 07:46.200 --> 07:48.330 - when it comes to procedures, policies, 07:48.330 --> 07:49.560 - Send it up, set it up, 07:49.560 --> 07:50.393 - Set it up. 07:50.393 --> 07:51.226 - Yeah. 07:51.226 --> 07:52.280 - We'd love to hear back from you. 07:52.280 --> 07:54.980 So over to you for some good discussion on 07:54.980 --> 07:56.300 rightness in our Navy. 07:56.300 --> 07:57.200 See you next time.