Andrea Smith and Audrey Galex

00:03 My name is Audrey gailyx. I am 52 years old today's date is May 19th, 2011 and where in the studios of WABE and my relationship to my interviewee and Ricky Smith is a friend spiritual a buddy. And actually I've gone to you for some wise counsel over the years.

00:31 My name is Andrea K Smith. I'm 63 years old today is May 19th, 2011. We're in the WABE studios in my relationship to Audrey gailyx is through her storytelling for roots and wings in her video ography that she's done for so many people and she's been a longtime personal friend that I've admired immensely Andrea. Thank you so much for being willing to talk about your soul stories your spiritual Journeys for both the storycorps as well as social stories at peace for aib Atlanta interface broadcasters. I can't thank you enough for being willing to open yourself in that way and I'm grateful to be here. I look forward to every opportunity to interact with you. Thank you. Same same thing as a lot of times. I know people don't really talk about their soul stories. And in fact, I feel like I have known you for a long long time.

01:31 Haven't really hadn't had a chance to ask you about your spiritual journey how you became such a spiritual person and involved as you are in a organization called Partnerships for peace, and I'm really curious about the journey that you took to get you there. Why would you say that Journey began Audrey? I was really blessed with parents from the Midwest who built their whole lives around community and their church and their neighborhood. So every neighborhood we ever lived in we always went to church faithfully and that Encompass participating in the church at a very high level to choir teaching Sunday School going on mission trips. I doing neighborhood community outreach helping wherever help was needed and I always felt such peace and enjoy that I had that kind of community. I thought everybody did.

02:31 And even with that strong Foundation when I turn 17 or 18, I left the church. I just felt like God wasn't serving me anymore. And was there something that happened there was like a straw that broke the camel's back. It's really interesting because I've tried to remember what it was and thankfully God is merciful and I have forgot that but I do remember that when I had my son my face was like exponentially restored and I saw the miracle of his birth and I saw the miracle of this precious little soul and I'm in Detroit, Michigan during the race riots and I'm thinking oh my gosh, I'm being called to participate in finding a solution for these social problems and I was pulled right back into my faith and right back into my

03:31 Belief that there was a higher power. That was a guiding me and I let that power guide me through a divorce through living all over the United States through moving here to Atlanta sight unseen. I didn't know anybody. I had no money. I had a little five year old boy and I was a single parent and I started having my faith tested in and that's really was the foundation of my claiming my spiritual path, but I want to go back to this about that moment. I love you to break through the car. Sometimes people sneeze on the truth. Maybe you were coughing on the street and I'm curious about your concept of God as a child. Did you have a vision of what God was absolutely we were raised to believe that God was loved and that it was a forgiving

04:25 Comforting God that was there for us under any circumstances. So I always felt very close to God. I always felt that there was support for me through my face. So I don't feel like I rebelled against it because some people I know are brought up with the fear of God, and thankfully I didn't have that. Did you have any kind of visual image of God? Yes, I did. Actually that's that's very interesting. I saw God in nature. I saw God all around me cuz my parents were both Farmers from Iowa and we always had Gardens and my mother raised flowers and I would see these magnificent things happen every year year after year after year and it just felt like God is good. This was like the representation of God. What were those things that were so

05:25 Irises peonies grapes vegetables. We tapped our trees in Michigan and had homemade maple syrup corn on the cob with stand in the line and rip the shuck the corn and the corn would be dripping down our hands and we be eating it before it was cooked. I mean, there's just such a close connection with God when you're allowing yourself to be in nature. So I didn't see God is out there. I saw God is in here, you know, I felt like I was a spark of God spark of God was in me and that when I saw these vegetables that was the spark of God in those vegetables.

06:07 Very tangible and was there a particular prayer that impacted you or that you like to say when you were a child? Right? We always said the Lord's Prayer. We always said Grace we always showed our appreciation for the food. We always had different table Graces that we had and then at night before we went to bed. My mother taught us a prayer. That was so meaningful the beginning of it. I won't say the whole thing was let me do my bit each day. Let me work in love and play. Let me go to bed each night knowing I have done. What's right.

06:44 And that was like a foundational Thing by any chance. Is that a prayer that you still might recite to yourself? I don't I don't I have other prayers. I have some Buddhist prayers. I really like I have a summah scene prayers. I really believe in the power of prayer we in our neighborhood which is a

07:08 Rehab neighborhood. We have a 911 prayer circle that's been going on since the year 2001 and we meet out in the middle of the street at 7 in the morning. Whoever's of the neighborhood. So we have an ongoing prayer experience. And as you know, this is the 10th anniversary coming up with 911. I know I know it's very meaningful for everybody. I want to go back to your teenage years. If I'm not mistaken. You said that not that you had a crisis of faith. Maybe I'm hearing Sidious was it really was? I mean, I really consciously said I'm finished. This is why don't I just didn't get it was like I think it was an adolescent rebellious must I had been so obedient and such a compliant child to my whole life and I think that that rebellious nature just needed to come out and the way it came out that was the least destructive was just personally I mean, I never even said it to my parents. Nobody knew that I was

08:08 Giving God the brush-off but since then I've had so many God experiences that I feel like it's good. I had that experience when I was 17 18 because now I have a higher level of appreciation for God when I get the call. I've had three calls in my life where I felt God has called me to do my next whatever and I've listened to that call and it's been very very fulfilling and satisfying and I felt like I really served Humanity. I want to hear about those calls, but I'm curious now looking back at that time of your crisis. If you have a sense that God never left you even attract. Yes, right. God never left me. Can't leave me if I believe that there's a spark of God in that spark is always there. So I guess it was an identity crisis more than a god crisis.

09:03 And when God are you agnostic this godliness in the spark and return to your life? Perhaps was that when you got one of your calls that was the first call exactly and it was just it was 1968 when Martin Luther King was killed when Bobby Kennedy was killed 1967 it started to appear during the race riots, but it came in full force in 68 and then my next call was in 73 when I was called to come to Atlanta sight unseen. So that was a big one and then in 1996 the year of the Olympics. I was called to my neighborhood so that I want to hear about the early seventies. When how did you know that it was Atlanta? It wasn't a typo or something. I have a very methodical mind. So I knew I was living up in New York living and working on Connecticut the Grand Ledge area Darien Connecticut. I worked in Manhattan.

10:03 I really liked that part of the United States, but I I was a single parent. I had a child I had to raise him by myself. So I started looking at cities around the United States. I looked at Houston Jacksonville. I knew I wanted to be South I knew that I need to get away from the cold weather and I had really suffered immensely in Michigan because I have a disability and that Winter's really really bothered me. So that was sort of helpful. So I'll emanated the North and started looking at the South and as I looked at each City, I found pros and cons Audrey, but when I saw it landed back in 1973, I just got an intuition. I just got a feeling that being newly divorced single parent with a child. I was in sales. I felt that I would be successful because I didn't think there would be the discrimination against a woman number one in sales, which was unusual that time then being a single pair.

11:02 My son was a latchkey kid so that he was the first generation of kids, you know that we're by themselves and I just prayed about it fervently day after day after day and one day it just came through really strong and that I was to go to Atlanta. Did you pray for clarity? Yes, I only place I didn't I didn't ask for the wet City or anything, right? I just prayed for the insight to choose the right City and the good thing about making these major catastrophic decisions when you're young is that you have no fear you have lots of courage and you just jump off into the abyss and the reason I was able to do that is because I knew that if it didn't work out I would just make another decision. I didn't feel like I was going to be locked into it because when you're in sales you can live.

12:02 Mini City and so I knew that I would always be able to find a job but I was thinking more about my son and what would be a good Community for him to be raised in and where could I find Community? Where can I find that Village to raise him? And I just asked everybody that you can imagine and somebody said well if you're going to find good schools live in DeKalb County so, you know, I just got a little tips along the way and I and it was that that really helped me make the final decision. Yes. Absolutely. I believe in

12:39 I don't know if I believe in extraterrestrials, but you know, I like Angels definitely. Yeah, I really do my grandmother. I see my grandmother a lot as an angel and I have a guardian angel and I've had a lot of things happen to me where I don't I cannot explain what guided me to just turn one one hundredth of a degree out of the way of an oncoming semi truck that I didn't see, but it was just something into it. If I don't know how to explain it. Sometimes people don't like the word intuitive. So I use the word Guardian Angel and then my guardian angel. I have a parking angel that finds cuz I have a disability and so I need parking spots, and since people are now taking up all of the handicapped places. I have a parking Angel it finds me parking spots. I have all kinds of ain't really that was quick question. Thank you.

13:39 And also, do you have a concept of Heaven and Hell?

13:45 I believe Heaven Is Right Here Right Now, I believe that we live in heaven right now and that I believe in heaven we all create our own hell, we all create our own challenges and disabilities. That was just a parallel universe. I don't see it is up there or down here over there. I don't have any I wasn't raised a Catholic so I don't see Purgatory or I don't see it in a different place. I just

14:13 I see it as one whole fully functioning in the universe that I have a choice of choosing at any time whether I want to struggle and suffer and be in pain, which I consider hell or if I wanted to just wake up like I did this morning and walk in my garden and just see the beauty of Nature and give thanks for all of the abundance and happiness. It's in my life. I'm I feel so blessed which does not mean I don't have challenges.

14:43 It's interesting that you walk in the garden now and I'm and sensing a connection to the the child connection that you had to the concept of spiritual spirituality through nature. Right? Right. Definitely. I I really think my parents because even at 90 years old there still gardening and when I go to visit them, it's just so much fun because we go out in the garden, you know at a point in their lives where they're going through lots of changes as well. It's nice that we can have the Garden in common having your parents in their 90's. Is that giving you pause to think about immortality a reality the concept of an afterlife. Yes, I really has

15:26 Again, I believe that.

15:30 There is an immortality and that one of the ways we have in mortality is to do what we're doing today videos and movies and books. I mean those take people I just read something by Mark Twain and he made a comment that he didn't want it published until a hundred years after he died. But here he is. He's still out here hit his words are still affecting us. So to me, that's the definition of immortality where you can make a valuable contribution to humanity and what that contribution is continues on long after you and in the case of my mother and dad I've written both of their life histories for them and done the videography thing that you do and we talked about death and we talked about how the people who have passed before us are still with us and we still feel them and we still think about them and we still know that their Spirits live on so perhaps the question is

16:30 How do we accept people dying is it at do we view it as an end or do we view it as something that continues on and on and I'm from the school that you know death is just another reality. I mean, I thankfully I've had two. Near-death experiences. So I know that death is not to be feared or it's not something that I'm afraid of, you know, it's like I'll be ready when my time comes because I know and it will come do you feel comfortable talking about this? I mean actually because I wanted people to be more calm and relaxed. I've been at the deathbed of quite a few people and if I had a choice of being with people when they die, I would hope that it could be easy and smooth and painless and calm and I've been with some people that are so afraid of death that they just fight to The Bitter End and their death is

17:30 Not a pleasant happy calm experience and it's at that point in their life is not something you can just switch on so I don't judge them in anyway, it's just that I realized you have some choices again. We're back to that. Have you have had you had a personal experience of a near-death experience? That's what I thought you were right? Yes. I had to both of them are on the operating table at had a lot of surgery on my legs and I was back in the day when they used ether asked me if I can remember the smell of ether who baby you never forget that Aroma me to tell you but anyway both times I completely left my body and it was very eerie because I could hear everything that was going on around me, but I knew I wasn't in my body and I could look at my body and see my body and I knew that

18:25 That was death.

18:28 And they brought me back into my body I continued on and it wasn't a terrible experience. Actually, it was quite Pleasant. I was out of paid.

18:38 And I was in a place that you know, I didn't have attachments to anything that we have is really free. It's a very freeing feeling. Did you feel any connection with a Divine Spirit or anything like that? I didn't I mean I do philosophically I do but back then it was more just

19:00 Like somebody pinching your finger and then I'm pinching your finger. I mean it was very quick but I did see my body and I did know I wasn't in my body but no I did I wouldn't say I had a Divine connection but I did have the light experience where there was lots and lots of light is clear clear clear clear. Lots of open space, you know, it's just like impregnated in my mind that expression that we are actually Spirits having a bodily experience by which way do you fall in that you're talking about? I'm a human having a human experience or I'm having a spirit of a spiritual being having a human experience or human beings having a spiritual experience spiritual being having a human experience because I see the dense physical form and how it holds this down and have lots of my pain is associated with my inability sometimes to see this

20:00 Virtual I am a mere human and I do forgive myself for not always being in that spiritual place and part of letting go of my human groundedness is to be more spiritual. So that is one of my intentions as you're speaking about you your physical limitations and challenges. I'm thinking about that experience a rather that expression. I made a mistake. I guess I'm saying and I've heard it from others that you know, God doesn't give you anything. God doesn't think you can handle have you heard that I believe that when I really don't resent that I just know I I really do because just yesterday I met somebody that was so much I'll bet worse off than me cuz I ride the bus a lot. I really believe in the mass transit and I was hobbling along and this woman had a load a wheelchair. I mean it was just like everything and I thought to myself

21:00 You know, but for the grace of God go I so to the degree that someone might look at my life and say Andrea. How did you do it and my answer is always

21:12 With the help of the Lord with the help of the grace of God and with the help of millions of people I'm ice and ingratitude of all the people who have helped me. You just can't do it alone. But in the end, it's been okay. I'd have felt no resentment whatsoever. Actually, I feel more loved the older I get the more more love I feel so I don't know if that's a reflection of more love within me or that I see you and I see the love in you more and I think that is happening is kind of a dual saying of the more love you share the more love you receive and then you start this reciprocal thing that that elevates you I mean, it really does I understand where Martin Luther King was coming when he said he'd been to the mountain and he you know knew that he wasn't going to be here to see then do you know it's like there was some part of him that identified with the spirituality of his journey.

22:12 And he wasn't going to be held back by it in the same way with me. I'm just not going to be held back by my limitations. They they are many and I work with them and one of the ways that you have worked with them. As you said you've moved into a transitional neighborhood and you have started as Partnerships for peace group in what way has your spirituality informed those initiatives or Partnerships and peas has been creating Partnerships with groups and organizations all over the world and in my neighborhood on a micro-level, we've been doing things that show people how they can work better together. So we've been doing it through the gardening through ice cream socials through recycling through music. And so you never want I don't feel like my goal. I'm not a prostitute iser.

23:12 In the sense that they know that I'm very spiritual.

23:16 And I just live my path I walk my path and then they can join me. They see it. They enjoy it and they have their past. So to the extent that there are moments when we do things together and they're very heightened experiences. Like the time you came for Earth Day and you did your storytelling that it profoundly affected those children. They never had anybody just sit down with them and tell them a meaningful story in a way that improved their life and days later they came back and I said, well does this mean did Miss Audrey mean this did Miss Audrey mean that and so, you know, we don't always know our impact. We don't always know how we're helping but my intention, you know, however many years ago. It's been when I moved there in 1996 was to

24:11 Raise up and to help these people in a way that they had never been held before have you ever felt that you're God's hands an action. That sounds a little egotistical dihybrid. This that for just a minute when you said it. I feel like I'm loving action and if if you believe that God is love then I can agree to that but I'm very humble about really accepting any accolades for anything I do because I'm doing it from a place of selflessness.

24:47 You mentioned Also earlier that in your prayer practice. Now, you have adopted perhaps some prayers from other traditions and other spiritual paths anyone of that happened. Well, I'm really again blessed because I live in a great neighborhood is very Diversified is called Eastlake and El lingote who's a very very good friend of mine started a mindfulness Practice Center based on the teachings of tick not Han. So that's a Buddhist based religious experience and they have Tsongas they have walking meditations. They have Sitting meditations and it's less than a mile from my house. So I have the advantage of taking advantage of that then 2 blocks from my house. I have a Masjid and Imam play mon is one of my dearest friends and over the course of all.

25:47 These years he's been an active part and the Masjid has been an active part of the Rejuvenation of my neighborhood. I think that we have to start looking at Multicultural and interrelationships my next door neighbor not my next door neighbor, but next neighbor Regina Kay is a part of an Interfaith group that she takes me to where I have seen you many times recording Multicultural multi-race religious experiences. And I think we're really blessed here in Atlanta to have a more openness about being inclusive and I had the pleasure of going to the event where you were given the bridging award for bringing Jewish people together with Islamic people and that was a very uplifting experience for me. It was up in Roswell you took me to

26:47 Little dinner where you are honored as the most wonderful person in the world thing. I right. All right one little people one little Andrea one little Audrey can make a difference in the world. And that's what we're doing and sometimes we're not really clear on that path. But like you were a bold moves and you know, how do you find the strength to do that? I meditate I learn to take naps I can take I haven't learned a technique called the one that minute rejuvenator where I say to myself sleep programming tape number 410 and I let myself go for one minute and then I will I come back and I'm totally rejuvenated. So I think my guess is that

27:43 When God takes something from you you get something else just like I think of Stevie Wonder a lot, you know, he can tell colors even though he's blind because he can feel the vibration of the color and so because I have a disability. I think that what I got was a high energy level and I believe that energy is inexhaustible. And so I treat my body is a temple and I eat I'm an organic raw food eater. So that helps a lot and my sleeping is important and my meditation and then I have right human relations very very careful not to bring a lot of stress in my life or docudramas. I learned that if you have high docudramas you have low trust and I like hitrust. So that means I have to have low docudramas melodramas. So yeah, there's lots a little tips that I teach a lot of my

28:36 Students about how they can have high energy and how they can achieve a lot more but and also I'm into my biorhythm another words because I don't work for somebody else I get to work when I'm the best and I'm like a night person. I I just know telephone interruptions. No people at my neighbor's love to make sure I'm happy and they come over and hit her up me it which I appreciate it. And so I'm a high producing person because I work when I'm the best and then when I'm not the best I'm sleeping or napping. So are these rituals in a sense that helped? Keep you grounded? Yes, I would say definitely thank you for picking up on that ritual. That's a very good word. Do you happen to have any energy use prayer beads? I did use word amulets. It's not really what I mean. Did I use crystals? I love amethyst amethyst are for protection so that you can repel energy.

29:36 It's not working for you. I believe in having a lot of green around me because green plants help clean up my energy. I believe in candles. I do use aromatherapy a lot. I like a oils and that kind of modality. I've use tuning Forks. I've used for tuning Forks. Yeah, you know tuning Forks like musical. Yeah to get the vibration. I you find out what note of the scale resonates for you and then your whole body can resonate and you can create a Vortex of energy that calms you savaria it sort of on the other side of you know, you had to be careful sharing some of these techniques not everybody resonates with that but I love music music is is very important to me.

30:29 As a form of Rejuvenation revitalization calming. When was the last time you were actually in a traditional worship space to worship pretty recently. Yes. I had a very euphoric Hallelujah experience up in Berea Kentucky. I went up to visit my family for Easter and in the Christian tradition Easter is a very high holiday of he is a risen and that church little church in Berea had a choir that with my brother Evan who is a musician and they played music that just got into me and I was praising God at such a high level and then they ended it by singing the Hallelujah Chorus and everybody's saying it with him in the church and these little kids were singing it and I'm telling you my emotions just poured forth because I was so filled with the spirit of

31:29 Lord and it was wonderful beyond words. It's something that you can't buy you just have to be at the right place at the right time. I really like your use of the expression Hallelujah moment. I have to use that moving forward. Thank you for inspiring me. Have you ever been in a spiritual space where you have more of a moment maybe through the flip side to that Hallelujah high-energy, but right right. My home church is Glenn Memorial Methodist Church on the Emory campus and I get A-ha moments. They are quite often because

32:08 I have the continuity of having gone raise my son in that church, and I know all the people and so there's a sense of community that like bills the opportunity for A-Ha moments and they're very Progressive and they have incredible sermons and incredible songs and I will just see how they built into their service a quiet moment where the whole you know, how big that congregation is and they build this moment of silence end of the service in a variably I'll get a message or I'll get something that comes through and I'm real good about having my pencil and paper right there. And I I've learned through the hard knocks of life to just write those keywords down and then just let it flow not try to capture it and then move on and sing to him or do the greeting they pass the peas.

33:08 Very enlightening and very enriching.

33:13 If there was is one thought about your spiritual journey and one either word or phrase that would capture the path that you've been on this far. How would you refer to that?

33:32 May peace Prevail on Earth.

33:37 So I got a sense that a spiritual journey is a

33:41 I know is that an entity is it that they're peaceful and that I'm one. It's like the hundredth monkey principle where you can just all of the sudden have a Quantum shift in Consciousness and when I was guided and Detroit

33:59 On my path. I was told that I would work for Global Peace and it was like the furthest thing from my mind and here I was putting an ex-husband through college a brand new baby working full-time. It was like, how could that possibly be something I could possibly do and yeah because my core prayer has been may peace Prevail on Earth that has guided me along every little step and now there's a huge Consciousness out there over 200,000 peace poles around the world that say may peace Prevail on Earth. I'd planned it. All these peace poles in Atlanta. So we're planting these prayers in the earth and now I'm starting to see that yes, this is happening and it's not happening on the political level or it's not happening maybe on the social level, but there's a Grassroots swelling of people who believe that pieces pause.

34:59 And that peace begins within each one of us and that we will not have peace for the whole world until each one of us has peace within so that we can peacefully coexist so that I can accept you for who you are. You can accept me for who I am and will be totally different. So the prayer and my path is pretty intertwined in what way do you see that evolving As you move forward through your life and you mean like with other people or we with myself of the both? Yeah. Well, I would say based on the emails I get based on the hits on my website based on the attitudes of my neighbors based on everyone who comes into my circle of friends. I've been able to be blessed with seeing it is happening right before our very eyes and it's very uplifting and very encouraging. Do you see your spiritual journey in the sense is a turning inward.

35:59 At this time. Yes. Absolutely. Yes, I've been doing you know, I did the cultural exchange with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and that was so out there and then as I've been doing all these out there projects with my neighborhood I've seen that you have to have the balance of thinking locally and also thinking globally and then working locally and working globally. And so I am seeing that it's time at my age and I and I think I'm still very young. I feel young I look young I act young. I feel like to preserve the Integrity of my health and where I am with my disability that I need to go within so I have been doing a lot of withdrawing from everything that I've been apart of with the contingency that I can be a consultant or I can help in any way that's needed.

37:00 And I have to really focus on taking care of myself. So yes, I'm going much more and I feel like I meditate a lot more. I feel like my prayers are much closer together and I could go maybe a day and have a prayer now. I might have 10 prayers in a day. So that's a good question. Thank you for reminding me and you mentioned that your prayers. Definitely we can we fight each other cultures. Is there at a mantra perhaps that you have from one of them or just a mantra and Generals aside some of this is a Buddhist Mantra om that I say with every meal.

37:42 This food is the gift of the whole universe the Earth the sky and much hard work. May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it. May we trainer unskilled states of mind and only eat in moderation. We accept this food as the path to understanding and love and so it is

38:09 Now that's a mantra. The only have a couple of minutes left and I was I would like to ask your permission for apps for us to hold hands and maybe event. I don't know close our eyes or say a prayer together and I was wondering if there's anything that swelling up and you now that you'd like to say out loud because this is right. Thank you so much. I'd like to say a prayer that would be considered a universal prayer that would meet all people's ears.

38:48 God got us all that is

38:51 Thank you for bringing us together in this special day of beauty.

38:57 And flowers and Gardens. Thank you for guiding us through the path of obstacles and suffering and challenges to the point of acceptance and love guide us with the spirit of Oneness as we all agree that we can work together and love together and be human family fed and sheltered around the world.

39:28 In peace and harmony

39:31 In your name we pray amen.

39:36 And what about you? Why don't you go to one of my guys are doing Jewish overwhelmed? Well, I guess for me. I want to share the called the shehecheyanu prayer and it's the Jewish prayer of Thanksgiving. You know, I often say we have Kodak moments and Hallmark holidays and this for me is I should have Tiana moment and the prayer is Baruch attah, Adonai elohenu.

39:59 When is high tide shehecheyanu to keep Manu, but he Keanu.

40:06 Blessed are you Source of Life creator of us all was brought us to this moment.

40:13 Who has sustained us and who gives us I know I didn't say shalom but I will say that there is a sense of great peace and tranquility and sharing this time with you. Thank you so much, Andrea, shalom shalom.

40:28 Things before we leave Andrea you mention to your parents.

40:33 Take their full names for the record. Yes, Bob and June Smith is Andrew Jason.

40:43 Thank you. Thank you.