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An Episcopal, co-educational 100% boarding school in Middletown, Delaware for grades 9 – 12

“Apply Our Hearts to Wisdom”: A Trustee Weekend Chapel Talk
Kellie Doucette ’88 P’18,’18,‘21

Kellie Doucette ’88 P’18,’18,’21 delivered this chapel talk at the Trustee Weekend chapel service on Friday, Jan. 17.

Good afternoon. Thank you for sharing this time out of your busy day. This chapel service is one of my favorite rituals of Trustee Weekend. I love how it centers our meetings in this foundational space—a space I found so much peace in as a student and I hope you do too—gathered in faith and community with all of you.   

I want to take a minute to lift up your commitment on campus to the democracy and discourse initiative. It is such a natural place for the St. Andrew’s community to lean in, but still, it is not easy in the current climate. And I hope you know how much it matters. 

I recently received a note from a constituent that hits home on this point: 

While I [am] not a member of your political party,” he said, “I truly believe you always keep the citizens of our county regardless of party, as uppermost in your work.” 

Not a sentimental statement—and maybe I was feeling emotional because I was getting ready to leave my position—but it is so simply on point for what we need as a country, it made me tear up when I read it. This acknowledgement gave me hope—that when we reach out to build bridges, the effort is recognized and valued. It not only matters, it matters to people you may not even realize are watching.   

As we recited Psalm 90 together a few minutes ago, I was drawn to the final call to “apply our hearts to wisdom.” This phrase provides beautiful framing for the work of democracy and discourse. Work that should be done with open hearts, open minds and humility; what is referred to in the book of James as “the meekness of wisdom.”           

So, I have been thinking about wisdom a lot lately—who we look to for wisdom and how we define it. I am an avid listener to the podcast Wiser Than Me where Julia Louis Dreyfus interviews women in their 80s and 90s. As I listen to each new episode, I am filled with gratitude that she chooses to lift these voices up. Voices of older women who society hasn’t traditionally valued for their wisdom, but who have it in spades. 

Similarly, I love how author David Brooks, in his book How To Know A Person, grounds his definition of wisdom in interactions with people:   

“Wisdom is knowing about people. Wisdom is the ability to see deeply into who people are and how they should move in the complex situations of life… Understanding and wisdom come from surviving the pitfalls of life, thriving in life, having wide and deep contact with other people.”

Putting our heads back into Psalm 90, what would it look like to apply our hearts to this kind of more humble wisdom, wisdom that “see[s] deeply into who people are”? 

As a trustee and alumnae of St. Andrew’s, one of my greatest hopes for every student is that you feel seen on this campus; that you learn to see others deeply, not only because of how it makes them feel, but because you recognize the power it has to enrich your own life experience.  

We intentionally create spaces for these moments to unfold here a million times a day. We just experienced one of my favorites, the tradition of sit-down meals. It is the unique nature of this small, diverse, all-residential, Episcopal school that enables our community to come to know and value each other deeply.     

All wonderful while you are tucked away here, in our St. Andrew’s bubble, but the age-old question for us as St. Andreans is how we extend these experiences into the outside world. A world in which we have hit such a crisis in our ability to see each other, that Merriam Webster’s 2024 Word of the Year was “polarization.” 

Clearly the type of wisdom we are talking about today—wisdom that compels us toward a curiosity about how and why other people see the world differently—desperately needs to be lifted up.

In 2016 I started on a journey that enabled me to apply my heart to this kind of wisdom in ways I did not expect. Unhappy with the trajectory of our national politics, I took the leap to volunteer on campaigns for local government office: town council and the like. One thing led to another, and in May 2018, at the age of 48, I was hired into my first paid political job, on the senior staff of a Democratic congressional campaign in New Jersey. 

To say this was an unexpected twist in my life is a huge understatement! I went from a career as an actuary—universally considered one of the most predictable and introverted jobs—to a polar opposite role. Suddenly the only predictable thing about my day was its unpredictability. My job now hinged on, to paraphrase Brooks, understanding how people were feeling and how they moved through the complex situations of life.    

And talk about bringing the St. Andrew’s bubble into the real world—I was floating it smack into the middle of the rough and tumble of New Jersey politics. My twitter handle, “@kindlykel”, caused my campaign colleagues to snicker. I was suddenly living in a world that felt like an unlikely mix of Parks & Recreation and the Sopranos.  

But I was supremely lucky. At a time when I could have lost myself down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of negativity, I had the opportunity to work toward something positive, with people I admired. I was working for a serious candidate: Mikie Sherrill. A navy veteran, former federal prosecutor and mom who took her commitment to public service to heart. We won with the biggest congressional flip from red to blue in the country that year. 

Given those results, it would have been easy to transition into governing with arrogance. But this was not the Congresswoman’s leadership style. And our team understood that we had a lot to learn—most of us were just finding our feet as public servants. 

As I took on the role of District Director, I assumed primary responsibility for some of the reddest parts of our congressional district. Almost 80% of my towns had a Republican mayor. And keep in mind, for 26 years they had been served by the same Republican congressman, so they were experiencing a ground shift. 

We knew we needed to build bridges to do our job effectively. That it would require patience while we proved that we were genuine in our intention to serve the entire district, not just the blue parts. We started showing up everywhere we could, respecting that no one knew us yet, and that it would take time to build trust. 

The Congresswoman urged us to be “ruthlessly competent” (I love that term!); to earn trust by simply doing the work: putting our heads down and serving constituents. We did our best to approach community leaders with an open mind, responsiveness, respect, and graciousness. People felt seen in a way they weren’t always used to from government, and it resonated.

It wasn’t easy—this was an exceptionally divisive and challenging time. We opened the congressional office in the midst of the longest government shutdown in history, served through covid, two presidential impeachments, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, just to name a few defining events. It was the hardest, most intense work I had ever done, but I now felt supremely lucky that in such a polarized time I was in a position to help bring people together. 

I can now appreciate that through our outreach we were creating a roadmap for bipartisanship that worked because it was grounded in that “wide and deep contact with other people.” Over time we found partners to tackle a variety of local issues like flooding, public safety, and mental health; so many issues that shouldn’t be partisan but too often get caught up in divisive rhetoric. Issues that make a real difference in people’s lives.

This journey wasn’t a one way street—I am grateful to those who reached back across the aisle. In an atmosphere where even showing up in a picture with an elected official from a different party can inflame the base, you come to appreciate how even the smallest acts of political courage can move the needle. 

Experts tell us that often the biggest roadblock to working with people with whom we disagree is the fear of being forced to compromise our principles. And it is scary. Making yourself vulnerable in this way requires a leap of faith. I love these verses from Colossians as a reminder that we are not the first to struggle with these interactions: 

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Having taken this leap to engage with “outsiders,” I will tell you, it actually helped me better understand my own political beliefs. In identifying areas for common ground, I also had to determine where I could not bend, my lines in the sand. For me these include issues around women’s rights, the rights of my LGBTQ+ family and friends, educational access, and my heartbreak over January 6, 2021. 

Building trust and bipartisan muscle memory with others meant that I could have more open conversations about why these issues were important to me. I was challenged to think more deeply about the intersection of advocacy and governing, and how to create real lasting change in a world where elections have consequences. 

 In her brilliant book I Never Thought of It That Way, Mónica Guzmán tells us:

“…when we stop colliding with people who disagree, even in casual ways, we miss opportunities to see a different angle on something,” or to “get a complex picture of a complex problem…” 

It is OK to hold your core beliefs tight—they make you who you are—you just can’t let them get in the way of opening yourself up to graceful conversation.

When I started this journey in 2016, driven largely by my own partisanship, I didn’t expect to end up here. I never could have imagined the joy a text on flood mitigation would bring me. But that was exactly my reaction earlier this week when I was sent a picture of one of my favorite Republican mayors standing next to a big excavator, excited to be kicking off a project we had worked on together. That is the work and it is clear to me now that genuine broad interaction in politics is mission critical for good governance.   

So, I don’t want to sugar coat things too much. Not every curious conversation or bipartisan working relationship you embark on will be successful. You have to balance your optimism with pragmatism, and keep your eyes wide open. Especially in Jersey politics! But rest assured, if you put yourself out there, you will find your fellow bridge builders.   

I love Guzmán’s imagery of finding opportunities to “...collid[e] with people who disagree...” It makes me think of a giant pinball machine. Lights flashing, points accumulating as we bump around out there learning more about and from each other. That image captures the vibrancy and energy I feel on this campus when we collectively apply our hearts to wisdom and truly see each other. That energy, YOUR energy, is the reason I am able to look to the hopefulness in a single phrase of a somewhat desolate psalm. I hope it inspires you to continue to apply your hearts to wisdom as God calls us to do—never discounting the power you have to make a difference through the simple act of connecting with another person.

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