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At My Altar with Dr. Trenda Lee is a podcast that explores the ways everyday people practice their spirituality. Join Trenda and her guests for honest conversations about their pathways to the divine and discover what that might look like for you. Someone else’s story might be your next spiritual practice.
Do you want to feel more connected to the divine, however you define that maybe your old practices don't fit anymore, or maybe you've always felt spiritual, but never built a practice around it. I'm Trenda Lee, and I'm talking with everyday people about their spiritual practices. I invite you to join me as we explore pathways to the divine.
At my altar,
welcome back to at my Altar. I'm Trenda Lee. I am so happy you're here. I'm sharing with you my conversation with a Jen Zer and I am really excited for you to hear what he has on offer for us. I wanna set up his interview with a story. I am fourth generation Norwegian American and Christmases in my childhood.
Were steeped in Norwegian tradition, so picture wintertime in Minnesota in the 1970s. I'm in elementary school, it's winter break. My family is on a seven hour, 250 mile car ride in our station wagon heading north towards the Canadian border. We're off to my grandparents' home. In Crookston, Minnesota for Christmas.
My dad's driving. My mom's in the passenger seat. I'm in the back. I've got my two brothers, Trent and Tate, our German Shepherd, Brutus. There's luggage for a family of five. All the winter gear to play outside. I skates my younger brother's hockey equipment. We've got Christmas presents in the back, emergency blankets in case the car stalls.
You get it? We are loaded to the top and it's freezing outside and as I said, it's the seventies, so my parents are opening the car windows every 15 minutes so they can chain smoke along the way. Now we take this trip every year of my childhood. Every year my brother Trent and I start rehearsing our big Christmas variety show we're going to put on for the relatives.
Trent loved to conduct and direct a good show, and I was always his leading lady. There's probably going to be about 40 relatives jammed into my grandparents' modest home, so we always considered it a sold out show. When we arrive, the place is bursting with laughter and storytelling and kids running around.
There's new babies and new partners, and all the elders are speaking in Norwegian. My great grandma and great aunties would be in their 1950s like kitchen dresses with those white aprons and fussing over the luta. Fisk Luta. Fisk is a traditional dried cod that gets rehydrated. By boiling it in a lie solution and then baking it.
Yes, it is disgusting and it smells even worse, but you can't stop fixating on the joy bubble that is around these beautiful, chubby old ladies. And they'd also show up with piles of fresh made lasa, which is like a traditional potato flatbread, and it is so good. Rolled up with butter and sugar. So while all the fun was being had and everyone was eating all the goods, Trent and I would start pestering my mother about when we could put on our show.
Until finally she'd gather the crowd and announce us. And just then Trent would get stage fright because later in life we learned he was never meant to be an actor. He was meant to be a director, but I was all about the show. So we would start arguing quietly, hoping our audience wouldn't see us. He'd say, I can't do it.
You just do it yourself. Trenda, you know, all the songs. And I'd shout back. I'm not going on by myself. The show must go on and just before I was about to blow my sweet 9-year-old stack, he'd compromise and say he'd do it. Only if we would shorten the show to just a couple of songs. Eh, good enough for me, the show would go on.
Much to the delight of my elders. Immediately after our show, the great aunties would gather the crowd in a circle. We all knew the tradition, and we began holding each other's hands and singing a Norwegian song circling around the Christmas tree. Mind you, there was no Christmas tree in the center of the room.
No, but we didn't care. We circled around our pretend tree singing in Norwegian, most of us not knowing what any of the words meant. Myself included. Then the song ended. So glad vie, so glad vie, and we would all curtsy or bow to that pretend tree. Or maybe it was to each other, or maybe it was to the gladness.
I'm not sure. But it was such a beautiful tradition and somehow when I had my own children, I lost that tradition. I also picked up new ones because when I was 22 years old, I married an Iranian immigrant. Through the years, I became deeply emerged in the beautiful Iranian culture, and I understood deeply the juxtaposition between a cold culture like stoic, Norwegians, and a warm culture like Persians.
It taught me so much. Persians are a straightforward people. Norwegians are well stoic Iranians. Just say what needs to be said, compliments, criticisms, whatever. And even if it ends up in an argument, at some point somebody comes out with hot tea, passes around the sugar cubes and signals that it's time for some laughter and joy.
But the most beautiful tradition of all is celebrating no rus. No Rus is the Persian New Year that begins on the first day of spring. You clean your house, you bring out your finest clothes and dishes. You visit family and friends. Always visiting your elders first, and for 13 days, you celebrate all the possibilities that come with the advent of spring.
While one tradition that I love during this time is preparing a heft scene. Heft is the number seven, and scene is the letter S in Persian. The heft scene is a beautiful display of seven items that start with the letter S and symbolize the welcoming of spring and the seven angelic heralds of life. They are renewal, beauty and love, health, patience, prosperity, and joy.
No RU ends on the 13th day with a national picnic where everyone ascends on local parks for the entire day. Just being in community for the celebration of the year to come. It's always hopeful and joyful. I admire the Iranians so much. Their turmoil over millennia has developed into a culture that no matter what.
Can find joy and love even in the face of darkness. It's the no RU celebration that I brought to my children, and even after their father and I parted ways and I moved back to Minnesota, I brought those warm celebratory traditions to my Norwegian family. Everyone fell in love with no ruse. My guest today has a similar experience finding his way between two cultures.
Ultimately developing his own spiritual pathway and rituals. His name is Kendrick Walton. He's 28 years old and he's calmer and wiser than his years. I can't wait for you to meet him. Here's the interview.
I am so excited about my guest today, Kendrick Walton. He's a restorative justice practitioner and proud member of the Twin Cities community. He blends sharp strategy with cultural fluency, like someone who knows the game he's playing and why it matters. Welcome to my alter Kendrick.
Word. Word. Thank you for having me.
This is so nice to be here with you. I love the idea that you're playing the game and why it matters. Why does it matter to you?
It matters to me because there's so much at stake that we take into consideration everything that's going on in community right now and around us, our Twin Cities community, across the nation, across the globe.
The moment matters and I try to carry that with care and intention in the spaces that I'm showing up and the people I'm showing up for. And yeah, that thought isn't lost on me.
I hear you. More importantly, I feel you. Thank you for the work you do. Tell me a little bit about your spiritualities. Let's start with how do you define the divine God, universe?
Spirit?
That's a really good question. I'm really into this concept of the universe as a larger being. I'm really into like carmic energy. The energy that you put in as energy that you get out. I've been really fortunate to be around a lot of different religions in my life, and so I feel like I take a piece of.
Each of those religions and practices and kind of shape how I walk my own pathway. My mom is Lao and my dad is black. And from rural Alabama, very different cultures colliding. Many folks on my mom's side of the family are Buddhist and practice Buddhism, and on my dad's side, primarily Christian. Seeing those cultures mixing in my household growing up influence my own belief system and how I view the universe and how I view my energy.
I like to think that I pull. From each of those, I think helps to find the way that I walk. Does that make sense?
Of course it does. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I am thinking to myself, okay, I think I need four hours with you. So tell me about a time or maybe the earliest time when you felt spiritual.
I've always thought.
Of myself as being connected to the earth and to nature. That started really young, especially growing up Asian, and that part of my family is really deeply connected to the spirit. When someone in the loud tradition like passes away. If there's a week long ritual of being amongst the Buddhist monks that come into the home and help transition that person to the afterlife, and when I was in sixth grade, I lost my great-grandmother, and that was my first time really experiencing what it meant to go through that ritualistic practice.
The men in the family participate in that practice of being a monk. So for the week, you're shaving your head. You're shaving your eyebrows and any facial hair that you might have, and you put on the robes and participate in the incantations at the funeral itself. That was my first time feeling connected to something spiritual.
As I grew older, I began to be in the black church a bit more, and I started to get a little more language to what it meant to be spiritual. It all culminated just a few years ago. Actually. I was fortunate enough to visit South Africa for two weeks in Cape Town, and one of the practices that is so important to the philosophy and the culture in South Africa is this concept of umuntu, which means I am because we are.
Right, and I, that just gave me the perfect language to speak about my own spirituality. I feel so connected to the earth and to nature and to like individuals, communities. One of my mentors, Dr. Squires, but she talks about. Our faith being interconnected, like my faith depends on yours and she calls it a radical interdependence.
This idea that I am because you are or I won't get there unless you get there, to really aligns with my own spirituality and defines the work I do truly.
So powerful. Two things are coming up for me. One is that I came of age in the eighties. During apartheid in South Africa and became very close friends with a black South African man who happened to end up at the college I was attending and we became fast friends.
He taught me all these lessons. At such a very young age, it has always been on my bucket list to go to South Africa, Cape Town, Soweto. So the fact that you've been to a place that has been on my heart for decades. I feel a little kindred spirit with you right now, so I'm just giving a little shout out to Donald Xaba.
Shout out Donald.
Shout out. Donald,
I'm really struck by your story about being in sixth grade and learning these rituals and that you felt connected to the earth, and that is part of your spirituality as your great-grandmother. Was transitioning to her afterlife for some reason, I hold those two things so differently, earth and afterlife for you.
Those two things seem connected.
That's beautiful. I appreciate that. There's a lot of good things in what you just said. One thing I do believe personally is that I walk with my ancestors. I never feel alone, whether it's my grandparents or uncles that I've lost, or friends that I've lost, I truly believe they walk with me.
I never really feel alone because I feel like I can always just talk to my granddad or I can always just talk to my uncle. I feel. Connected to the spirit and to the earth. I don't know that they've actually ever left. They just are in a different space, but they're always with me. It's so beautiful.
So powerful.
Did you bring one of those rituals or a couple of those rituals that you witnessed in your childhood to your practice today?
The short answer is yes, in terms of rituals that I practice, a couple come to mind. The first is, I believe performance. Is a form of ritual. You feel me? I think of black performance, for example, as a form of ritual, like a Negro spiritual or when you're singing in church in the choir, and I grew up in the Minnesota Spoken Word circuit and slam circuit and love to write poetry.
I'm a writer. And I write all the time. So that translates to performance. Whether it's just, yo, I'm spitting this piece for myself in front of the mirror, whether we're at an open mic or I like at a poetry reading. That's where I think it shows up. This idea of performance as ritual, almost as offering to the universe.
This is my offering of vulnerability, my offering of empathy to the community or to the universe. Secondly, as a restorative practitioner at the core of restorative practices is this idea of community. And one tool that we borrow from indigenous cultures and indigenous peoples is called restorative circles.
Or community building circles, and it's this idea that we can all sit in a circle. We can all see each other. There's no sense of hierarchy or ego. It's a place where you can go and be vulnerable and share as little or as much as you'd want the opportunity to listen without. Responding, but with the intention of understanding and empathizing.
That's a practice that I've done for many years now. It's been so critical to my development as an individual because asks you to empathize with the people that you're in circle with, right? There's no way you can sit in circle without empathizing with the people that. Are sitting in community with you.
And so that's a practice that I sit in regularly with not only my coworkers, but with young folks here in community, with the homies in community, and even sometimes the family, right? Even being around the dinner table. And how everybody says their piece, and no one's really talking over the other. We all do it whether consciously or subconsciously.
I seek out being able to sit in circle with folks that are wiser than me with folks that are younger than me. I love these intergenerational spaces that we've been able to cultivate. But yeah, I think that's how it shows up in my personal practice.
I love the word offering. You talked about your spiritual practice as an offering.
To others, to the divine, however you define that. I'm gonna ponder that a little bit more about what it means to have my practice actually be on offer. That's really beautiful. So tell me about other practices you have.
Yeah, I'm a big firm believer in the affirmation. I think that the more good you can speak on yourself, I think the better you're gonna feel.
So I'm a daily affirmation guy. Anybody who's like ever sat in circle with me, I always lead with y'all. Say something nice about yourself. Just because so many of us will go through life, go through weeks, days, months, without saying a good thing about ourselves, right? And so that daily affirmation is really important to me.
So good. You've mentioned you are a writer.
Oh yeah. I grew up writing, one of the first books I remember getting when I was a kid was Tupac, so Rose. I grew from Concrete and that just bloomed my love for writing and literature, particularly in poetry. Always wanted to be like Pac when I was a kid. I remember when I got that book, my folks took me to a half price bookstore and I was like.
Yo, what is this? Just like a young kid. And my dad was like, oh yeah, I'm about to put you on to Tupac. And from there I knew I wanted to be a writer. And not just for commodity or for anyone else, but for myself. I could tell from PAC's writing there was not. Always going to be structure. A poem could be four words at the top, and the rest of the page could be blank.
And I saw so much beauty in that. Or it could take up every line. It really could be whatever you wanted, as long as it was an expression of who you are. So I take that into my own writing now. I think that's why I love it so much is that it could just be whatever you want. So now it's a daily practice for me.
Do you publish your poetry or.
Yeah, when I was in my freshman year of college, I had a book of poetry published. Now I just write for myself or write for the homies. We'll do art share nights and the folks who bring whatever they've been working on and folks can share. And I think that brings me in more joy than having works out there.
But thank you for that question.
One thing that is coming to mind when you're sharing that is when you say I am, because you are, that whole circle is. At play, and you've said it in so many different ways today from your writing to how you've been inspired by your parents and how they taught you their spiritual beliefs and practices, and especially that component of self affirmations that as we become.
We are helping others become, and we are all moving each other closer to what I would call the love grid. And for me that is our collective divinity.
That's beautiful. Thank you for all your kind words. I think you've really captured how I feel about all of that.
I have one last question for you. We are.
Spring and spring is this time of renewal and regeneration, but also acknowledging and celebrating the darkness and what it means to be still and. Even let go. As we begin to look towards the sun and the light for Rebirth, is there anything that the Spring has on offer for you and how that relates to your spiritual practices?
That's a really good question, and I'm gonna bring it back to PAC for just a brief second.
Let's go. Let's go.
One of his poems, off the top of my head, I can't remember, it's been so long, but he talks about the flower. In the springtime and the beauty that it holds, and he asked, the flower is so beautiful.
Do you just allow it to be or do you pick it for yourself? And so when I think about spring, I often think about. This idea of letting it be or letting things go. And so I think it's an opportunity for myself personally, especially 'cause my birthday's in the spring.
Mine too. Yes. Yeah, we're spring babies.
We're spring babies. Yes. And for me, I think it's an easy opportunity to think about renewal or rebirth. I keep these journals of all the poems that I write, and every year around my birthday, I write a poem with a similar title. But the numbers change, and this year the poem will read. 28 felt like a rehearsal for resurrection.
I love to be able to reflect on what it means to be new, so that's why I love that question so much. I think it's an easy opportunity personally to reflect on the year.
What a beautiful ritual. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you.
I'm so appreciative of the conversation and where it's gone. I will say too, like you are just such a calming and kind spirit.
I'm so appreciative of the conversation and where it's gone. I appreciate the conversation. For sure.
Thank you so much. Thank you for being at my altar.
Like I said, this was dope. You've really made this space feel warm and welcoming, and I'm really honored to be in the space.
Did I not tell you he was calmer and wiser than his years? My heart and mind are swirling. It's going to take me a while to process all the insights he shared, and I bet my daughter Savannah is going to have some really thoughtful things to say about it. Let's give her a shout.
Savannah. Hi mama.
Hello, mom.
How are you?
I'm doing well. How are you?
So good. Good. So good. Did you hear that interview?
Oh my gosh. I can't wait to talk about it. I love so many pieces of it. It's gonna be hard for me to reign in my thoughts.
I, I get it. Me too. I was seriously, as an interviewer. There were so many moments of that interview where I was just so zoned in Yeah.
Sometimes I forgot I was even interviewing him. Yeah. Tell me what you thought or learned.
Yeah, I think so. First off, I really admire and appreciated his dialogue about being biracial and bicultural and. How he's embraced that as being half Norwegian and half Iranian. I very much could relate with how it's really beautiful and it's also really hard to be a mixed person in America.
It's often felt like we need to fit in one culture when that just isn't possible. So that piece was just really refreshing to hear someone of more than one culture talk about their integration. Since that is very much something I've experienced myself. I think what Kendrick said though about walking with his ancestors is something I really can understand.
There are many times that we are displaced and then we have to figure out our own ways to manifest ancestral practices within ourselves. The way in which I have felt that it's like the choices I make in life are always rooted in, would this make my ancestors proud, and would they feel. That I am moving through life and their legacy in a way that would honor them.
I believe that my choices are tied to that walking with my ancestors concept. I do what I do because it is connected to my culture, my family, my lineage, you know?
I do. I think grandma walks with me and she's walking with you as well, and I know she's dancing a really beautiful dance with her. One short leg.
Mm-hmm. To all of your accomplishments and is so happy about who you have become.
I just have another thought that you might enjoy. When Kendrick was talking about Tupac, how I interpreted his Tupac quote. Is in connection to how Tupac symbolizes for him, how he walks with his ancestors. I lost my grandma ine when I was 18, shortly thereafter when I was 21 and I started dating my now husband.
His grandmother was, you know, was a little white lady, but she was identical to Grandma Nai. I felt like they were like lost sisters and for. Gosh, over a decade she stepped in as my grandmother and I felt like I got to walk alongside. I'm getting emotional, but I got to me too, walk alongside my grandma on this side of the earth with her and all the pieces of.
What Kendrick was saying about how we find things that are symbolic, that are meaningful and that connect us back to our ancestry is so important because it can be hard when there isn't this physical presence anymore because I lost her at such a young age, and because I wasn't there to say goodbye to her, I just feel really lucky that another cute little elderly woman got to be in my life for a little bit longer because.
It reminded me of who I am and the choices that I make. Like I tell Alex, my husband all the time, I wanna be his grandmother when I grow up because she is Fatima. She, they are, they felt like one and the same, and it felt like I had my grandmother reincarnated again for just a little bit longer to like seep into me for the rest of my life.
And I just. Really appreciated that I could reflect on that from this interview.
Hmm. Too feisty, cute old ladies.
Yes, that's exactly right. Yes. Yeah. Super feisty. Super diva. Like just show up, show out all day, every day. Say what's on their mind. Like just to me, honestly, my ancestors are like just fucking fearless.
Excuse my French, but they're just absolutely fearless and I wanna live a life that's fearless. For them, you know?
Amen. And how beautiful that you just brought this full circle, this idea of growing up with two different identities and then all of a sudden these two strong, feisty, beautiful, under five foot little women, you know, come into your life as one.
Yeah. I love that so much.
Yeah. I have goosebumps and I'm so grateful.
Yeah. I'm glad I. Shared that with you.
Me too.
Yeah. I love you, mommy.
I love you too, mama. To growing old as badass fierce women.
Yeah. Hell yeah. You're one of them, by the way, you didn't already know in your hot pink shirt. I feel like every time we Here we go, I see you.
You're like, just like living out loud with your colorful attire and I love it so much.
Live in the Fuscia. Yeah, live in the Fuscia. I love you, mama.
Okay. I love you too. I'll talk to soon.
Talk to you soon. Bye
Bye.
Thank you for listening to At My Altar with Trenda Lee. So much gratitude to my guest, Kendrick Walton. I'm going to lay the word Ubuntu on my altar, and then I'm gonna sit with this South African philosophy of I am, because we are, I know it has more to teach me, so I'm going to hold it sacred as I open up to it.
I also really resonated with performance as spiritual ritual. Heck yeah. And a spiritual practice of daily self affirmations, especially if we believe we are divine. You can go to my website at my alter dot, love to find all my episodes, more spiritual practices, and a downloadable free spiritual practice guide at my altar is hosted by me Trenda Lee.
With producers Cecilia, Stanton Adams, Charlie Mitchell, and me Trenda Lee. Original music by Charlie Mitchell and original website Photos and logo Design by Iena Ponti at Ponti Studios. A special thanks to my beautiful daughter, Savannah. If you've always felt spiritual and want to find more pathways to the divine, join me for another episode of At My Altar with Trenda Lee.
Until then, I'll see you on the Love Grid.