Hope Podcast: Featuring Ahmaad Edmund, MDiv '24

In this episode of the Hope Podcast, we hear from Ahmaad Edmund, a third-year MDiv student at HDS. He discusses his long-time commitment to the Baptist tradition, starting a basement church as a youngster, and finding hope in transit.

RILEY BROWN: Welcome to the Hope Podcast, a show about Harvard Divinity School students and how they find hope in difficult times. My name is Riley Brown, and I am a second-year Masters of Divinity candidate, a chaplain intern in the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, and I will be the host of today's conversation. I am joined by Ahmaad Edmund a third-year Masters of Divinity candidate who will be graduating in May. So a busy time, and he made time in his schedule to be here with me, so I'm very appreciative. Welcome to the show, Ahmaad. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Riley, it's great to be with you. Thanks for having me. 

RILEY BROWN: Yes. The pleasure is mine. I wanted to begin with having you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience, by way of just talking about where you're from and whether or not you belong to a spiritual or religious tradition. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Well, Riley, I am a Native of Louisville, Kentucky. I have been in ministry about 95% of my life. I was recently ordained in the Baptist tradition in December of 2023 at my home church, in which I serve as an associate minister Southern Star Baptist Church, where our current pastor is Dr. Barry C. Johnson senior. And I love that community, I love sharing the good news near and far, and it has been a great sense of hope for me, even in my own journey as a young adult navigating this life in grad school. 

RILEY BROWN: Awesome. Thank you for sharing. That's so cool. I didn't know you were ordained. I got the pleasure of being in your preaching class with you and hearing you preach, which was one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the podcast, because you're such a good speaker. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: It was definitely the other way around. Let me tell you, your preaching is phenomenal, man. 

RILEY BROWN: I appreciate it. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: And I have appreciated you. 

RILEY BROWN: I appreciate that, but that's so great. I'm so glad that you're ordained. That's awesome. That's so cool. so having given us a brief-- and you said you're Baptist, so it's safe for us to assume you're Christian. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: That's right. 

RILEY BROWN: So having given us a little taste of your religious background, could you give us a brief spiritual autobiography? What role has your tradition played in your life, and how have you understood yourself relative to your tradition? 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Well, the Genesis of this association began when I was knee high to a grasshopper, as one deacon once told me. But I was quite young with my great grandmother who served as one of the mothers of the church. A church leader, she was among those first members when the church was established in 1956, that church being Southern Star. 

And I remember sitting with her on that second pew, just mesmerized at what was happening during the Sunday morning worship, from the singing to how the deacons prayed these long prayers to the sermon that our former pastor would deliver every Sunday that would give so much hope and bring about a great energy to people in their lives. And that was an experience. And I loved it, and I loved it so much, Riley, that I went back home and I tried to recreate it. 

I was about maybe eight or nine in my grandparents' home. Even I turned their back porch into a church. I would get supplies from school at the bookstore, and I had my own church in their back porch. And we didn't have any members, but somehow we started to grow. And that was a flood that happened in Louisville in 2009, unfortunately. And it affected so many people across the city. 

But my grandparents' home was touched by the flood, and they had to get rid of a lot of things and restore their basement. And one of the I guess, blessings was that I was able to go into the garage and get some chairs, and I placed chairs in the basement of their home. I found the old kitchen table and made it into an altar. I built a podium out of an old stereo system. I had a karaoke machine, so I had a mic and I had I'm about to age myself now CDs of different choirs and singers from my tradition. 

And I had my own church, man, and I was just in my world. When I would come home from school, after I would do homework, I was there at the church. And then by the time I got to middle school and high school, I said, I don't have to limit myself to the church at all. But I want people from all faiths and backgrounds to feel these values of hope, belonging, encouragement, and beyond and that's when I decided to run for class council. 

And from middle school on, I've been involved in how policies are shaped for students and to represent students. And I've had the pleasure of representing my peers and colleagues for some time now, and I've seen those two worlds blend for me and make it more meaningful. 

RILEY BROWN: So you say the way that your tradition has influenced you, it's brought you into, like you say, policy. From a young age, which is funny to talk about policy in middle school, but so religion and policy coming intertwined from a young age for you. And I want to ask because I wasn't making a church for myself in my basement or whatever, but I do-- have I grew up in a similar tradition, and I remember being so inspired by my pastors that in the shower, I would often practice sermons. And I was curious if you preached-- if you were preaching? 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I would take those stories that I would learn at church in Sunday school, bring them back home and recite them. Sometimes my grandfather and grandmother would come down there and had friends in the neighborhood, that would come and participate. 

But man, even if I was just down there by myself, it was just a divine connection that I felt within my being that I could not shy away from, I could not try to abbreviate or contain. It was this moral imagination that overcame me, that made me come alive greater than anything else in the world. 

RILEY BROWN: I'm reminded of an hour we were in a preaching class together, and Dean Teddy would always start off with a song, and he played once a song. I believe the hymn was named O for a faith that will not shrink. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: That's right. 

RILEY BROWN: And that's what I'm thinking of when you say you couldn't help, but it was within you. That's so beautiful. I wanted to ask. So a lot of people at HDS have this story of very dedicated religious youngster, but then a angry teen and this kind of I want nothing to do with my tradition. And then since coming to Divinity School, they've come back around. But it sounds your story. You never really had that. It was so deeply embedded in you. And I was curious if you could talk a little bit about that. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Oh, yes. It's not wavered at all. It's only evolved. I found God differently during my time in Divinity School for certain and in places where I didn't expect it. I didn't expect to have those divine interventions, connections. And it has evolved quite immensely over the last, I would say three or four years. It's grown deeper. 

I've had the experience to-- had an art teacher once. She was fantastic. And when we would crowd around her to see what project we would be working on next, she would always say, give me some elbow room. And I feel here in Divinity School, I've gotten some elbow room in order to grow and become and to think beyond the here and now. 

But to use that and other tools that I've had along the way to think about, where do we go from here? Where are some different ideas? How can we reach folks that need some good news in such a time as this? 

RILEY BROWN: Well, hope for this podcast is that hopefully we can give some. Maybe not the good news with a capital T, but we're hoping to bring some inspiration too. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: That's right. 

RILEY BROWN: So I'm curious now you've talked a little bit about your spiritual autobiography. Before HDS, you've talked a little bit about how your spiritual life has shifted being at HDS. But what brought you to HDS? 

AHMAAD EDMUND: It's an interesting journey. Again, this can be traced to about now 12 years ago, I was standing in a relative's living room in Brentwood, New York, the summer of 2012. College was a no-brainer, and I did some research on the programs here at Harvard, and I came across Harvard Divinity School. And I said one day I want to go there. I want to study at Harvard Divinity School. 

I didn't know what I was saying back then but it felt right so much so that when I was a boy preacher, much younger preacher than I am now, and that was the time that they would have youth days. And youth days were usually held once a month in churches. And that means that the youth would take over the service. They would be the ushers, they would be the singers, they would show up in liturgical dance or carry the service. 

And those are great days, fond memories. And they would have yours truly sometimes come and preach the word. So I would be preaching across the city and they would always ask for a bio. Now what bio would a 10-year-old or 15-year-old have? But my parents and I we sketched out a bio for me. And at the end of it, I actually said, could I put where I want to go to school? And they were like, sure. 

So literally, I have it at some back home in Louisville where it says Ahmaad plans to further his education at Harvard Divinity School. And when I was on my way here in 2021, my community came together, family, friends came together to host a little celebration for me, and one of my dear friends had me as a page for her when she was in the Metro Council, and she played back a recording of when she read that bio and it said Ahmaad planted for his education at HDS and the entire room was like oh my goodness, and how this happened. 

So it has been a journey to get here, and the reasoning that I wanted to get here was not because of the brand of Harvard, but because I wanted to be in a community of folks where I would be exposed and challenged in order to think about ministry in new ways, in ways that would be able to connect folks globally and to sit at a table of mutual respect. And I'm proud to say that HDS has provided me with that greater than I could have ever imagined. 

RILEY BROWN: That's great. I'm glad to hear that. And I'm also-- it strikes me as the man whose faith would not shrink. His dedication to Harvard Divinity School came from a young age, and here you are. That's amazing. So to shift gears a little bit, the central theme of this podcast is hope. But before we talk explicitly about hope, I was curious if you could talk a little bit about what I would call a vehicle for hope, or I was talking with my advisor-- or not, my advisor, my boss, Kerry Maloney, our beloved chaplain here at HDS. 

And she used the metaphor not of a vehicle, but of a tool. So if hope is a seed, what sort of gardening tools are we using to cultivate the soil so that it might grow? So what I normally think about, is insights or practices or activities that you engage in regularly that give you strength to go on, or courage or faith or whatnot. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Absolutely and it's funny that you brought up the term vehicle, because I think about the places where I've been most spiritually connected. Almost like being in a car, and before there was CarPlay, there was-- and still you can tune into the radio, of course, but of course their frequencies are much stronger now. But I remember the AM and FM dials, and sometimes if you got too far away from the tower, you would hear static. 

And I think where I found God most intimately, has been when I've been in motion, when I've been either in a plane, on a train, walking around this incredible community, seeing family, seeing bikers or runners, or just friends communing together. And to see the beauty of people interacting has given me a growing list of not just shamanic notes, but spiritual, I would say understanding. 

There was a time I was in a plane coming back to Boston, and there was a young family traveling, and I would assume that this couple may have had their child probably 15 months prior to the time that we were on the flight together. The baby was going crazy, needed something to restless. I don't know, maybe the anxiety of a flight, being in a new space and new world, all that good stuff. 

And the father entertained the child for a little bit. And then I saw him, put him next to him in the center seat. And then the baby stood up and was looking at the people behind him, and then started pulling on the back of the seat. So the father picked the child up, held it in the air, then put it to the floor. And I'm watching this father interact with his child, and I'm like oh my goodness, this is a lot. 

What if the baby falls out of his hands, what is he going to do? His head is literally almost to the ground. Or what if he somehow loses control when the baby falls from the sky? I was thinking. then I heard a divine voice. Had to be the Holy Spirit say, but look at the child. Out of all the movements that the father did with the child, the child never took his eyes off of his father. 

The joy was planted within. The father never lost control of his child. And sometimes Riley it seems like the world is getting the best of us. We feel like we're in over our heads. Sometimes we feel like we're pushed to the ground and can't rise again. But the hope that I get out of that story, is amidst all the external circumstances that one must deal with, the internal decision to stay in tune with the frequency of this spiritual light, this guiding principle, these values can help us to find joy that sustains us amidst whatever happens externally. 

RILEY BROWN: I appreciate that story. I know, having lived in Boston, which I'm also from. Kentucky would be the South, but I'm from the Midwest, Missouri, which is not too far. And I travel a lot more in Boston by public transportation. And I see people going by a lot more. And I can think-- I relate to your-- there's a weird something that can happen. Oftentimes I dread getting on the train here. 

But there's some mornings where I'm on the orange line and/or the red line or whatever, and I see all these faces and it strikes me how many faces that I'm seeing and how unique they all are. And I wanted to pull up. It reminds me of a song by Louis Armstrong. where he says, where is the line here? I hear babies cry. And now they sing, I watch them grow. They'll learn much more than I'll ever know. 

There's the other part. Where is it? Here I see people going by. I can't find the line here, but of people going by, I see friends shaking hands saying, how do you do? They're really saying, I love you. And that's-- 

AHMAAD EDMUND: What a wonderful world. 

RILEY BROWN: What a wonderful world. It's so beautiful. So travel. That's great. And I want to now dive deeper. So if travel is the method that lets you plant your little seed of hope, what is the seed itself? What gives Ahmaad hope? 

AHMAAD EDMUND: What gives me hope is every time I open my eyes in the morning, I have a ritual where I go over to my window and raise the shade. If I looked at my phone and it was 7:00 AM or 8:00 AM or such, and it was still pitch black outside, I would have thrown in the towel. But no matter how challenging the night becomes for me, when I open the shade and I see that the sun is up, that's what gives me hope. 

Another day, another opportunity, another possibility-- a possible encounter with someone, something that can not only inspire me, but I encourage me in my tradition, the scripture tells us that Jesus went around doing good and that's what I feel for me. The sun comes up, we're ready to go. 

RILEY BROWN: And also I'm reminded of another scripture. His mercies are new every morning. 

AHMAAD EDMUND: That's right. 

RILEY BROWN: And that's-- 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Every morning. 

RILEY BROWN: Every morning. That's great. Well, thank you so much for sharing. There's so much wisdom that you've imparted here. And before I let you go, I wanted to ask you if you had any parting wisdom by way of a recommendation and what I mean by that, is there a practice, a podcast, a book, a movie, a poem, whatever else you might recommend to listeners who need a little hope? 

AHMAAD EDMUND: Absolutely. I would say one of the other tools that have been encouraging to me, it's been just some quiet time. Some devotional time, a time of meditation. I did not realize how essential that is to one just navigating divinity school, but navigating life itself, but I would encourage every listener to take some time out, whether it be in the morning or midday, or right before you go off to sleep. Take some time where you just sit in silence and commune. It will work wonders for your life and I'm better for it. 

RILEY BROWN: Well, there you have it. Ahmad Edmund thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. And that's that. We did it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. That's great. Well, I hope so. I think--