Elizabeth Garlow offers a compelling vision of how reverence can reshape our understanding of economics. She describes the economy not as a machine but as a garden, one that thrives when we approach it with care, interdependence, and a deep respect for humanity and nature.

Elizabeth challenges us to question inherited economic logics and to rethink risk and return in ways that prioritize human flourishing. Her episode underscores the potential of reverence to guide us in transitioning wealth toward solidarity economies and fostering values that center quality of life over extraction and profit.

Link to the episode

Transcript

Elizabeth

We have to go back to this kind of original understanding of tending to the great household of our earth, of what Pope Francis, what he would call our common home. You know, how are we tending to our common home?

Ayushi

Hey Ceasar!

Ceasar

Hey, Ayushi.

Ayushi

This morning, over coffee, we were talking about well-being and wellness.

Ceasar

Yes.

Ayushi

Do you remember that other conversation we had about well-being and wellness with Elizabeth?

Ceasar

I do. You know, so interesting that you bring that up is not only was it about wellbeing, but it also touched on issues around the economy and wellbeing. And we were just,

Ayushi

That’s right.

Ayushi

That was in our conversation. That’s right.

Ayushi

And I don’t know that before that conversation, I’d ever heard economics and wellness used in the same sentence to mean anything other than something maybe horrific. Exactly.

Ceasar

Exactly, exactly.

Ayushi

I am so thrilled to bring back this conversation to our audience that we had with Elizabeth Garlow. Elizabeth is currently a fellow at New America, and she works on building an economy that serves our shared flourishing. She has quite a wealth of experience working with the Lumina Foundation, working under the Obama Administration’s Community Solutions Task Force. She helped co-found and lead a Michigan Corps and originally hails from Detroit, and continues today to do quite incredible research, as we’ll hear very shortly, around wellness and well-being and how that could be actually not at odds with the way some of our economic systems operate today.

Ceasar

Yeah, I remember. And let’s give it to our guest.

Ayushi

Elizabeth, welcome to the show. We are so happy to have you. Thank you for being here with us.

Elizabeth

It’s my pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Ayushi

Us as well. We have so many things that we’d love to hear from you. Given the theme of the season, has there been a moment recently, and you can define recently as you will, a moment recently where you have felt reverence? And what was that? What was that moment like? Where were you?

Elizabeth

Absolutely. Oh, what a beautiful question. Well, I behold reverence in my two year old every day, I’ll be honest. The world is unfolding before her in pure novelty and discovery and mystery. And so she really continuously calls me back into this space of beholding what’s around us, like the ordinary that’s around us. This weekend, as we often do, we took a long walk and just admired whatever we found on our path. And then I realized when we got home that she had stuffed like five acorns in her pocket. And I was like, “Oh, this is a little squirrel in my midst here.” But you know, she’s in touch with this ground level reality that I so often pass by. So anyways, I just, I’m called back into reverence by my daughter. I guess one other thing I’ll share that’s more of a macro perspective is I’ve been really deepening in relationship here in Detroit with the BOG Center for Community Leadership, which continues to carry forth the work of visionary organizers, Jimmy and Grace Lee Bogs. And one of my neighbors is organizing tours here in Detroit called From Growing our Economy to Growing Our Souls. The opportunity I’ve had to bring others and accompany them as they’ve been joining these tours, that’s a reverence for me too. I just have so much reverence for the kind of longing and deepening so many people are experiencing right now to bring a soul dimension to our lives and to our work.

Ayushi

Wow.

Ceasar

It’s amazing. Yeah, only out of the Gracie Boggs Center, because that’s a thing happening. But anyway. All right. Thank you.

Elizabeth

Amen, yeah.

Ceasar

Yeah, tell me a little bit about this connection between the economy and soul and spirit. What is that? Because this is, in some sense, at the heart of what we’re talking about. How do we bring these really deeply felt beliefs and understanding that we each carry into the way in which we see and understand the things we have to deal with on a day-to-day, the systems we built?

Elizabeth

Well, it’s so interesting because often when I reflect on the sort of soul or the sacred dimension of economy, I go back to the etymology of economy, which is oikonomia, which in the Greek means kind of tending to our household. And if you trace that back even further, it’s tending to our ecology. And we’ve sort of forgotten that we are all a part of a broader ecology, right? And in our kind of interdependence within our communities and with one another, we are building an ecology of belonging to one another. And so how are we tending to that? And at its most fundamental level, an economy is about provisioning for our needs, providing for ourselves and the needs of our brothers and sisters. And the question of our time is how to do that in a way that is in relationship with all of created reality, right? And in sort of deep respect for all of created reality because we’ve built ourselves a system, an economic system that is extracting from reality, especially from the broader sort of ecology and ways that sort of provide luxury or benefit for a few at the expense of many and in particular at the expense of our earth. And so we have to go back to this kind of original understanding of tending to the great household of our earth, of what Pope Francis, someone I work with and admire so much, what he would call our common home, you know, how are we tending to our common home?

Ayushi

Wow. You’re making the economy sound like a garden, and I don’t know that I’ve ever, ever drawn that connection. Like, use the word tending to. And what’s interesting is you also, you know, describe the extraction, the extractive nature that we are more familiar with, maybe in the modern conception of the word, and how it’s practiced. And there’s a relationship you begin to develop with something that you see as extractive versus a relationship that you might develop with something that you see as needing tending. Right.

Elizabeth

Right, several thousand years ago, this fallacy entered the picture that we are somehow other than nature, that we are separate and superior. And we have to remember, we have to recall that we are one and interdependent with nature. And if we can reclaim that, then I think our economic lives, the systems we build and construct will change quite a bit.

Ayushi

There’s this beautiful piece in what you just said, Elizabeth, about remembering, remembrance and reverence being, it sounds like, connected here, which maybe is just a pin that we can come back to later, but I really like that. That seems to be a bit of a recurring theme we’ve heard actually this season, right?

Ceasar

Yeah, absolutely and you understand these connections and you’re working them and you’re trying to move in that direction. But what do you do? How do you handle when you are sitting in the room with nine other people who, the economy for them is all about extraction.

Ayushi

They don’t get it.

Ceasar

They don’t get it. How do you sit with that? And then what do you do? How do you try to nudge people to kind of think there’s another way of at least listening.

Elizabeth

So, I mean, even just to take a step back, I’m working on this sort of remembering, repairing, renewing economic structures on a couple of levels. One is a policy level. So working with policymakers to think about what it looks like to steward an approach to policy that is holistic, that is interdisciplinary, and that centers values like our quality of life or thriving, as opposed to our kind of typical centerpieces in the US of job growth or, you know, GDP growth. So there’s a policy dimension to this work. Another dimension, if we want to talk about economy as a hardware, finance is sort of the software, right? So where finance is flowing, where energy is flowing really does have such an impact on the structures and shape of our economy. And so I have spent the last 15 years working in different manifestations with stewards of capital, be that financial or even in some cases, buildings or land, and asking them how we can move those resources in a prophetic direction that really sort of feed a solidarity economy. So, of course, in both of those realms, be it policy circles or finance circles, there is a tremendous amount of resistance. There is such a resistance to kind of embracing this vision. And part of that is because our inherited logic is so ingrained in us, we can’t even see it anymore. We have been swimming in the waters of neoliberal capitalism that has fed us so many stories about what a good life is, what it looks like and what it means. It’s almost hard for us to pull back and see that logic kind of expose the assumptions underlying it and ask ourselves if it’s really in keeping with what we want for ourselves, for our children, for their children, for many generations to come. And so I guess when I’m sitting in rooms with folks where I encounter a tremendous amount of resistance, I often find that I need to just continue to ask them to reflect on their inherited stories. What is the logic that you’ve inherited, especially around money? We all have money stories and a lot of those stories have trauma woven into them. And so what are the ways that we have been fed sort of a narrative or a logic of scarcity that we’re holding on to that continues to feed fear. And fear is often the driver to a resistance to change. And so by sitting with folks and examining those stories and those narratives, I find it just brings a kind of a sense of like, this isn’t all on my shoulders. I’m actually a part of a long lineage here that we’re trying to undo. And I’m also not alone in this. There are so many around me who are grappling with similar types of questions. And I’ll also say, there are many times when, especially when I’m working with those who have built up their entire career in kind of more traditional or conventional finance, we’re not going to get there. We’re just not going to get to this point where we can have these kinds of open conversations. But I’m a big believer in sort of Meg Wheatley, sort of systems theorists, her analysis, which was very much taken up by Grace Lee Boggs, that to change a system, we need critical nodes, we need critical connections, we don’t need critical mass. So how do I invest in the critical connections, the people who have found this kind of inner conviction that we need to shed some of our inherited logic and start to lean into or remember and reclaim old indigenous wisdom that pointed the way forward to human flourishing on a healthy planet? So that’s what I would say to that, Ceasar.

Ceasar

I love that. Now, I’m going to try to move you in a different direction. We’re sitting here, we’re talking about soul and spirit and being grounded. So I’m going to ask you to move us out of that head of yours and into your heart and tell us a story where you actually were sitting in a room with someone and actually tried to move them through that process.

Elizabeth

Since I told you about these two worlds of policy and finance, I’ll try to use a story from each world. So in our US policy system, so much of our analysis around progress has to do with quantitative measurement and what we can measure. And so I’ve spent a lot of time working with folks in our statistical reporting agencies at the US federal level and recognizing that there is such a resistance to what can’t be measured or where we don’t have good quality data. There’s kind of a need in a way to also do what you just did with me, to take someone out of their head and put them into their heart. Talking with a gentleman in the Census Bureau, and we had a really good heart to heart about what the concept of thriving even means and how it is so context specific and how it means different things to different people and how some of the ways that we’ve reduced people’s lives to kind of easy measurements on paper are doing a disservice to people’s deepest aspirations and longings. And we ended up going really deep on the American Time Use Survey. How people are using their time, what does that say about us and about our values as a people or the constraints we have in our lives that are pushing us in one direction or another? What if I wanted to invest more in caring for my children, my aging parents, my neighbors, other community members? And because of the way our system is currently constructed around income security and other supports and social systems, I just can’t do it. So my time isn’t being invested. So I think we got into this place where we were able by just reflecting on what matters in our own lives, our deepest aspirations, our deeper longings that we so rarely have a space to air with each other. We were able to get to this more profound place that wasn’t just about the technocratic fix of what data do we have and how do we measure something. It was more about this qualitative and more holistic approach. And I think that’s helping him show up in a different way in this 45 agency and department-wide network that he’s involved with now that’s trying to steward this whole of government view around. It started during the pandemic and it was focused on resilience. And now they’re recognizing we can’t just be about adapting to difficult conditions. We need to be also about shifting the conditions. So we’re not just resilient, but we’re thriving. And I think that’s been an interesting arc. On the finance side, I’ve had some fascinating encounters recently with folks who are immersed in the investment advisor space. And I’m thinking of one gentleman in particular who does, he’s got probably the most creative role in his firm and that he’s in charge of direct investments and alternatives for his clients. But when I was exposing him to some of the more ways of challenging our conventional notions of risk and return, there was a tremendous amount of resistance. I’m starting to offer things like, okay, should we think about risk just through a monetary lens? Or might we be thinking about the risk that our children’s children can’t live on this planet? That is also a systemic risk that we should be grappling with as we think about decision-making in our finances. And when we think about returns, why do we benchmark to something where the inputs to a market benchmark return, where the inputs are things like a tree being worth more dead than a life? How can we reconceptualize risk and return along a spectrum that’s more about what people need, how they can show up, this question of what is enough, this principle of sufficiency? So as we were interrogating some of these underlying assumptions, it was just so clear that the entire incentive structure of his industry and his firm could not allow for that. And that he had to keep moving his clients and delivering for his clients in a way that didn’t allow for more complexity and thinking about risk and return. And so I’ll be honest that the heart to heart was like, You know what, on a personal level, I hear you, and on a job level or an industry level or system level, I can’t do that. And so then the question becomes, well, what do we do then, right? Do we try to play the game on the edge of the inside, shifting dominant practice within that system? Do we need to jump out and create an alternative alongside it, right? So these are just really important strategic questions, and I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. I think each person has a unique set of giftings that they could apply in any number of ways. But the important thing is getting clear on, you know, what am I trying to shift, right? Do I feel compelled to try and shift something? So these are always very heartfelt conversations in my experience.

Ayushi

Wow. Why is a tree worth more dead than alive? I love how simply put that is. I’m just so curious, Elizabeth, if you have either an example from something maybe you’ve heard or maybe your own personal lived experience doing this work for so long, about how people’s sense of spirituality or faith or religiosity shows up in that scarcity mindset that you’re describing shows up in those money stories that maybe they’ve lived through or have passed on or been on the receiving end of being passed on, right? Is there a relationship there between sort of religion and money stories?

Elizabeth

Ooh, Ayushi, I’m sure someone could write 50,000 books on that topic alone. I’m sure. I mean, I think there are a lot of different ways to, I guess, on-ramp with that question. So one is to, I’ll probably take more of a sort of positive side to the question, which is rather than deconstructing the sort of colonizing effects of religion on money and wealth, which is a huge topic and something that would be fascinating to dig in with you on. And I think there are some great folks that I’m really apprenticing to and learning from on this theme of decolonizing wealth and decolonizing economics. So folks like Taj James with Full Spectrum Labs, Formerly Movement Strategy Center, one of your neighbors, he and I are sort of really working together through some of these questions. And no doubt, religion has been used as a colonizing force in the world. And so there’s a lot we could unpack there. Something that I might focus on that’s just been really present for me recently is sort of working with and accompanying women religious elders, in particular nuns, who for centuries have kind of practiced collective stewardship of resources and are at this kind of critical juncture in their lives right now, because the average age of a Catholic sister in the US is 82. They have amassed a significant amount of resources because they started healthcare clinics, they started schools, they built financial endowments, and they are aging and they are transitioning those resources. And so these questions around to whom does this wealth belong? To whom are we accountable? How do we take care of ourselves? What is enough? These questions are all very alive in this context. So I think what I’m noticing is that when you have a sort of emphasis on relationship, like in their communities, one of their kind of transcendental horizons is their relationship to each other. That means that they’re not just hoarding wealth for themselves. They have been practiced in thinking about wealth as a collective resource or an asset. And so it’s opening their minds to imagining different ways of stewarding that legacy, transitioning those resources to BIPOC communities, indigenous communities that they’re in relationship with, et cetera, in ways that just feel much more easeful than a lot of other communities I’ve worked with. And so it’s made me think about, okay, how does sort of spirituality or religiosity give us a reference point beyond ourselves, right? But if you think about the philosophy of liberalism, it’s often pointing back to ourselves, right? So like we become our transcendental horizon and that’s just kind of dangerous.

Ayushi

a little dangerous.

Elizabeth

It’s a little dangerous, but what is the bigger thing that we’re looking toward or aspiring toward or trying to live up to, and how are our resources, our money, what have you, at the service of that? I think for some folks, that’s humanism, and there’s some really incredible work being done on reflecting on Christian humanism and its role and its influence in thinking about solidarity-based work, solidarity economics, and what we owe to each other. Why are we in relationship with each other, and what do I owe you? The ethics of all that are really hard and important to work through, and I think we can look to faith traditions and other wisdom traditions, broadly speaking, to offer us some framework, some values, and some centuries of practice in doing it. So this is why I think it’s actually so important today for the well-being movement, the post-capitalism movement, whatever you want to name it, to bring those folks to the table. They’ve so often been sidelined, actually, but to bring those faith partners in to really do this deeper kind of philosophical work around values and these transcendental horizons.

Ayushi

That’s incredible because, you know, it was one of the things that got this entire season started was how Ceasar and I noticed over the last two seasons, people hold these deep-seated beliefs around their religion, around their idea of the transcendental, their idea of the spirit or the soul, and are often unable to bring that wisdom, like you said, into conversations that pertain to the civic body. And that’s how we got started.

Ceasar

You said they can’t bring it with them, and I think they bring it with them, but they can’t express it.

Ayushi

They can’t name it.

Ceasar

They can’t name it, so it has to stay hidden, and it’s such a fundamental part of them. How do you then be authentic, but a significant part of yourself has to stay hidden away?

Ayushi

Right, or has to be cloaked or veiled in some way. And I think what’s so powerful about what you’re saying is I think this is actually the first conversation we’ve had where what you’re naming is this kind of cool phenomenon in which people have not just value systems, but practices that they’re bringing with them that are actually, hopefully, it sounds like being explicitly invited into the conversation in order to inform an alternative model of how we might tend to money, tend to economy, tend to each other, to the ecosystem, to the ecology, right? And I think that’s just such a cool, more than cool, it’s a powerful example of the flip, right? Of a place where that faith background is actually welcome and informative for the larger conversation. I think this is also, I’ll say, the first time that we’ve had this conversation about reverence or the transcendental and relationships, right? This idea of solidarity, like you’re saying, economics or amassing wealth for a community, as was the individual, out of this idea of greater than oneself. And I think that’s just also really powerful, and I’m sitting with that. I’m having an aha moment by reflecting back to you.

Elizabeth

Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because I run workshops with capital stewards of various faith entities, organizations, and reflect a lot on the concept of solidarity and the need to invest in a solidarity economy. And we often talk about solidarity as a structured commitment to love of neighbor, love of one another. And I think what that continues to reveal to me is that when you start from that premise of mutual love and investing in our mutual flourishing, you need structures and systems of support and accountability to make that a reality. There’s a lot of experimentation needed in that realm. And so why not look to groups that have been experimenting in all sorts of ways, putting in faith communities. I think what’s tough and in our sort of post-religious society, we have so often seen religious spaces as spaces of exclusion rather than inclusion. And so there’s a sort of tendency to want to sideline them. There’s a lot of harm that’s been perpetrated in that regard. And I’m a believer that to build a sort of a future of mutual flourishing, we do need to repair the past. And that also includes being in relationship with those parts of the past, be that religion or other things that need to be a part of the healing process or journey or need to evolve themselves. And that there’s a lot of goodness in those communities of practice and a lot of vision. It’s pretty profound. And so I’ve been reflecting also, I’ve been reading a book called The System’s View of Life, which is just blowing me away. And it’s sort of reflecting on this ongoing dialogue between Eastern faith traditions and science. And you talk about kind of ecological economics and some of these things that are more recently being named emerging as a phenomenon. There’s been this long history of folks like scientists who are looking at the material world, the external world, and then folks who are looking at the inner world and recognizing they have to be in dialogue with each other. And I think the same goes for our civic life. Right? Absolutely. What kind of civic structures are we building and creating? What is their purpose? What are they fostering? What are they for? And how is that in relationship with the deep inner work that we’re all doing? And we all need tools. We all need technologies to do that in our work. So I think that’s where these kinds of faith, spiritual wisdom traditions can be quite helpful to us. Wow.

Ceasar

I’m liking it.

Ayushi

Plus one, plus 100. Yeah,

Ceasar

Plus one, plus 100.

Ayushi

My mind is now going to need to chew on the feedback loop that you just drew there for the rest of the afternoon. That’s so profound. That’s exactly right. There’s this constant interplay. And what does it mean to a low space for that, to kind of heal by bringing that back into conversation, rather than continuing to sideline or exclude for the harm that’s done in the past? And how can we kind of come to the table with those shared stories, even if they have different sensibilities, right? But still a sort of shared set of history that we’re carrying for better or worse. I love this.

Ceasar

At some point in the world, we are doing an event. But I don’t want to talk about the event. I want to talk about the title of the event because it’s connected to this. But the title is Belief and Disbelief and the role of faith, spirituality, and religion in public engagement. The reason we put the belief and disbelief there is because early on when we were going back and forth in this issue is, what do we do with those who don’t believe? Those who are atheists, those who say, I don’t have a place. Our notion is to say that one is an atheist, to say that one does not believe does not mean that they don’t have a core set of things that they do believe. They’re still there and we still have to find a way to bring those forward and make space for those. I’m just wondering how you think about this issue. You’ve been talking a lot about religious traditions and faith-based traditions, but there’s a space where people say, no, I’m over here. That doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

Elizabeth

a couple of things that’s bringing up for me. So one is just how much our culture and society has fed into this binary worldview. You believe or you don’t believe. You’re male or you’re female. You’re rich or you’re poor. And how much we’re recognizing that reality is infinitely more complex than that. And every binary is a spectrum. And so who are we to say to someone what they are when it comes to these fundamental core things about belief and value and conviction and like just the essence of ourselves, our souls. So often those who might be sort of quickly labeled as a non-believer or something are those who have the greatest capacity to behold the mystery, to behold all that’s reverent. And so I mean, that’s my lived experience. And so when I do hold these spaces for faith assets stewards to reflect together on solitary economy work, I never close the door on anyone who wants to opt to this space in this community of practice. I’ve had people come in who would sort of be self-described atheist. Here they are jamming with like Catholic social justice funders. Fascinating when everyone can draw from this like wellspring of a tradition that is brought to them through this lens of like vulnerability, like coaching folks on how to show up with the posture of realness. And I think you said it’s either authenticity, like your full selves, right? That is so precious because in so many of our spaces and how we show up in our lives, we have this like, this is your professional world and this is how you show up. This is your home life and this is how you show up. This is your church life. And this is like, no, no, no, no, no. Like we are complex, beautiful human beings who have such a capacity to show up with so many different faculties and ways of thinking and being in the world. And we need to show up in vulnerability with each other so we can figure this thing called life out because it’s really complicated. And so I’m really excited that you all are leaning into this idea of creating a space that just points to a dimension of our lives that is so often disregarded or siphoned off that just, I think nods to people like you can show up here with all your big questions in wrestling. Like you can be a full messy human being as you’re thinking about, you know, civic life and civic infrastructure and all that. We’ve had phenomenal experiences of folks who had no spiritual religious background opting in because they wanted that kind of space. They wanted the space of vulnerability and kinship culture. Yeah, I’m really excited about more spaces like that.

Ceasar

It was wonderful. Wow. It’s been great having you with us.

Ayushi

Such a treat. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. This is really, I feel so energized. Thank you for your incredible work.

Ayushi

Yeah, this is great.

Elizabeth

It’s been a joy for me too. This is great. Thank you both for the work you’re doing and the conversations you’re hosting. I had a good, long listening session to the two of you in preparation for this. And I love the mosaic of your guests, like it’s just a really awesome, unique compilation of people. So yeah, I’m just really grateful for what you’re doing too.

Ayushi

People who are engaged, who are trying to do better things, trying to create some good, like yourself. Thank you for sharing your stories and for your work with us. Thank you.

Ayushi

Thank you all so much for listening to that episode of season three of We Who Engage. This conversation would not have been possible without sound production and editing by Dave Leschansky and Jeff DeWine. A huge thank you also to our team who supported us throughout COVID. Eli Epperson, Ana Perez, Nick Sprague, Mo Bradford, and Patricia Uregas.

Ceasar

Yes, and we also have to send a big thank you to the Silverberg family for their support for our launch event, which we’ve never done before. A belief in disbelief that was held at the MIT Museum, who really stood out for us to give us that space under short notice. And we also have to give a really big shout out to the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, who’s been a supporter of this work from the very beginning and will continue to do so.

Ayushi

Thank you all for listening.

Ceasar

Thank you.