I had a great time talk­ing with Deb­bie Ram­sey about Dream Pro­tec­tors, her arti­cle in this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal. Even before we hit record we were chat­ting away like old friends, despite this being the first time we’ve nev­er talked. Even­tu­al­ly we had to stop our­selves just so I could hit record and start the inter­view. Deb­bie is a retired police detec­tive who works with youth in Bal­ti­more — it’s their career dreams she’s help­ing to pro­tect — but we talked about being open in all sorts of set­tings. One of her sto­ries in the arti­cle, which she retold in the inter­view, revolves around an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for min­istry that arose from a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger on a bench. She told me it felt like “the uni­verse want­ed me to be there” to have that talk. 

It felt very much in line with the mys­te­ri­ous prompt­ings I talked about last month so of course I had to explore that with her:

Mar­tin Kel­ley: I real­ly love the old Quak­er lin­go of oppor­tu­ni­ties. An oppor­tu­ni­ty is like this kind of worship-connection-love that hap­pened spon­ta­neous­ly when you run into some­one and real­ize there’s so much more that it’s going to hap­pen here. It’s just being open to these sorts of moments where we might find our­selves on a bench next to some­one and we’re sud­den­ly deep into con­nec­tion and min­istry. It’s hard to do this in our lives now. We’re always rush­ing about, but I do try to think that some­times I need to stop and have con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple right here and now.

Deb­o­rah B Ram­sey: Yes, yes. And then as we were depart­ing he said to me, “I want to take our con­ver­sa­tion back to my wife.” So on anoth­er dimen­sion, I was at his home. He lit­er­al­ly, on anoth­er lev­el, took me to his home. Phys­i­cal­ly, I was not there, but the spir­it, and the vibra­tion, and the rhythm, and the con­ver­sa­tion, and how we relat­ed to his wife what my words meant to him. Hope­ful­ly, they would give her some com­fort. So I feel like the non-tangibles: we don’t them enough cred­it. Often­times we invite 50 or 100 peo­ple, if there’s not a large crowd, then we’re feel like we’re not get­ting any­thing across. But who’s to say that she would not say some­thing about what her hus­band told her to some­one else — or either to her son! Is it the quan­ti­ty or the qual­i­ty? It’s easy to start a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one you’re in a rela­tion­ship with, but how about a stranger? As Quak­ers, can we be so curi­ous about one another’s con­di­tion that we would take — as you say an oppor­tu­ni­ty— to just take a look? As Quak­ers we have so much oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to con­di­tions, out of a gen­er­al con­cern and love. How can you go wrong with that?

Deb­o­rah B. Ram­sey: Guardians over Dreams. A Friends Jour­nal author chat.

Watch the full interview: