without inner change……
Without inner change
, there will be no outer change,
without collective change
,
no change matters.
– rev angel Kyodo williams
Small town. East Germany. Thin walls. Closed faces. Everything echoed there – voices, footsteps, blows. Early on, assigned a classification: difficult to raise.
Body, experienced as a place where things inscribe themselves that were not invited.
The family. The "Baseballschlägerjahre" (the baseball bat years of 1990s East Germany). The neighbors. Who looked away when the Nazis struck.
Body, experienced as a place where things inscribe themselves that were not invited.
At 14, away. Punk. Rebellion. Squatting. First feelings of freedom around the campfire. Then Berlin. Demonstrations. Old squatted houses. The Nazi violence decreased. Police violence increased for a while.
By the time I was twenty, I had accumulated quite some baggage.
Only later would I understand: This wasn't a sequence where something gets left behind, but layer
upon layer. Layers
that my body stores and remembers, and shapes itself with them into the future,
Starting at fine art university at 30. With a lower secondary school certificate. White spaces where most seemed to move very confidently. They knew the words from academic art discourse. I quietly learned new words: class and shame. And practiced: permanently failing to belong.
Added to that, years of too much body tension, suppressed anger and hurt, and a grinding jaw.
Eventually, the time came. Breakdown piled upon breakdown. They nestled against old stories and traumas. Formed mass. That let me sink.
I became "chronically ill". With pain. Blocked. For a very long time.
I sought help. Orientation. People who understand.
In the political circles I moved in, there was much engagement. We fought against oppression, exploitation, discrimination. But there was so little room for questions:
How does this shape us? How does the violence mark us,
take up space between us? How do external conflicts become internal ones?
Instead: Pull yourself together, keep going. As if we had to shed our vulnerability to be strong.
And the therapeutic offer? They saw something to fix. Made me the problem. Individual case, disorder, swallow pills and function. Their interpretations of me - as negative symptom collages in their diagnostic reports - left me even more depressed.
I failed at everything. Thoughts took hold: Something's wrong with me. I think I'm broken.
Eventually, I came across other voices.
They said: You're not "broken". The conditions have inscribed themselves into you. They built bridges between the personal and the structural. They offered language for experiences for which I had no words. They seek new ways – from paralysis into movement.
Rev. angel Kyodo Williams is one of these voices. Zen priest, Black, Queer – and radical in the sense that she goes to the root.
Transformative Social Change is what Rev has been working on for over twenty years.
She says: We won't dismantle systems like capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy if we don't recognize our own entanglements and damages within them.
Deep liberation and transformation work requires that we look at our prejudices and inner rigidities. And recognize the patterns through which we perpetuate violence, even when we don't want to.
Without inner change, there will be no outer change. Mindfulness and empathy are revolutionary practices.
What binds us and what frees us live not only in our thoughts, but in our bodies, our everyday actions, our feelings. The wounds between us – personal, collective, intergenerational – require awareness and active healing work
This requires spaces where we can try other ways.
Spaces where we can begin without being perfect.
Where uncertainty and not-knowing are welcome. Where faltering is part of learning.
Rev. angel Kyodo Williams' work has become a guide for my own transformations and for how I want to move through the world.
When we face pain instead of suppressing it. When we become more mindful – toward ourselves and what happens around us. When we create spaces where we can learn together to be present with all that is.
In Rev's approach, it's not about the big battle or the great enlightenment. But about a path of small steps, of everyday practice. In moments when the magnitude of crises overwhelms me, her work reminds me: Change is possible. We can begin anew again and again. With every breath.
Taking up the movement of everyday small steps. That become a path through touch, taste, gentle search. Becoming more attentive. Becoming still. Listening. Awareness.
A path of trying.
Not comfortable.
But one that lets me become more alive.
That teaches me to examine, to recognize, to accept – with all my contradictions.
A path that enters deep contact: with I - with You - with We - With(in) these Worlds.
Change often begins with an exploration.
How have societal conditions inscribed themselves? Into our bodies. Into the way I think. How I react. How you think. How you react. What I dare to dream. What you dare to dream. What we dare to live.
And change
moves forward from there
With I. With You. With We.
Self-transformation and transformation of circumstances.
They go hand in hand. They were never separated.
-
Homepage Rev angel Kyodo williams
Books
Beeing black - Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace
Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation
Meditation Space / online
a simple practice of liberation.
a simple practice of liberation.
