Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | A Leader Surrendered To God’s Plan | Rebecca Weiss Podcast

today I sat down and talked with Robert F Kennedy Jr we talked about his relationship with God and how to stand up and do the right thing in the face of great opposition you're going to want to check this out we're just going to start talking because I don't think you need much of an intro I am here with Robert F Kennedy Jr I cannot believe it thank you for being here thanks so much for having me back I just want to say I'm so proud of you and H maybe it's cuz I'm hormonal cuz

I just had a baby but Congratulations by the way thank you I have three children and you know because of your work so many mothers their kids are healthy because you've helped inform parents about the dangers of vaccines and just everything going on in um in big Pharma big food so I want to say thank you for that first and foremost oh thank you yeah it's such an important message and you know not a lot of people want to talk about it because when you talk about it you put a Target on your back and

I think one of the first things I want to ask you is how does someone stand up and do the right thing when they know that they're going to face great opposition when they do it well you know first of all you're a your mom and and Marcus were the um you know were the templates for courage during Co they were the this was one of the only platforms where I could actually come and tell the truth on television it's probably the only platform and I was speaking to such a large audience and they you

know they paid a price for that and uh but they told the truth and now you know that I think they the the answer is that um you have to have some kind of of spiritual commitment because uh the the punishment and the disincentives for telling the truth are often overwhelming if you are just living in the in the material world yes um you know I was raised with my I'll tell you my my dad um had a a conversation with me about two weeks before he died where he gave me a book um and

it was a book by Camu and it was called the plague and he he had me in his room his bedroom and he handed me that book and he said I want you to read this I was 14 years old at the time and my father often gave me books to read or poems to read and asked me to read it but he said it with kind of special intensity and then two weeks later he was dead and so I you know went through that book I read it a number of times in order to

kind of unlock the the message of the lesson that he was supposed to be giving me and or that he intend to give me and the the book is about a doctor in a in a fortified City in Northern Africa um during a um during an epidemic and the the city is um is embargo so it's under quarantine and nobody can come in and come out and the the the plot is around this doctor and at the beginning of the book he's in his uh his apartment frightened to go out because this this plague is

a very high infection fatality rate nobody knows what it is nobody knows how to treat it and Camu describes the conversations that this doctor is having in his own head about why should he go out out because he can't really help anybody he doesn't know the treatment and he doesn't know any protocols and he's highly likely to die himself if he gets exposed and why not just wait this out in his apartment and in the end he goes out and he does his duty which is to to minister to the sick and to comfort them

even if he can't cure them kamu who wrote this was an was an existentialist and he was in the in the tradition of the stoics of ancient Rome and and Greece and stoicism was the the the iconic hero of the stoics is Copus and Copus was a person who would who did some great benefit for Humanity and as a result but it offended the gods and he was cursed by the gods and his sentence was to push a boulder up a hill every day to try to get it over the top and he would always

make get almost to the tippy top Summit just before he reached there the bould would always come back and and crush him mangle him and then it would it would roll down the hill and all night long he had to walk back down the hill and in the morning he started pushing the boulder up the hill again and he was doomed to do that for eternity but what and in the eyes of most people Copus would have been a miserable person cuz that's a miserable life but in the eyes of the stoics he was a

happy man because he put his shoulder to the stone he had his duty and he he performed it and in doing that he brought some order to a chaotic universe and throwing his Gauntlet down at the gods and saying I'm going to do this I'm going to do my duty my job and I'm going to perform it to the best I can even if it is even if the even if it's hopeless and fruitless and somehow that willingness to do what you're supposed to do brings order to an absurd universe and um and you know

my father um believe that we should be indifferent to what people thought about us that we should do the next right thing and that we had to be indifferent ultimately to the world and to you know what the stoics believed my father was was was a stoic is that we should be indifferent to our own desires our own pain our own uh you know all of the things that that drive us in the material world and that we should uh we should our our duty was to figure out what our function was and then to

to perform it no matter what the cost so I grew up kind of in that milu and um and to me you know every person that I've admired throughout my life have been people you know who I read about historical figures they're all people who went through a um they they went through a valley of the shadow of death they went through periods when the world turned against them when they were abandoned by their friends when they were um they became Paras in their community and they person evered so for me you know the the

the public rebukes that I as long as I feel like I'm doing the right thing the public rebukes are a kind of gift because they're confirmatory that um you know I'm doing something difficult and that I should be you know I need to be grateful for that and not feel never feel like a victim and never feel self-pity and ever you know laps into those uh into those Myers so you know for me I'm doing what I I'm supposed to be doing I'm very confident of that and you know my my only other job is

to be grateful and to be peaceful that's so good and you feel like that gratitude and that peacefulness your your relationship with God it help it helps ground you going through these difficulties and it helps Propel you forward yeah I mean I you know the same FR V easy said that we should turn our lives into a prayer and so that we're in conscious contact with God every waking moment of the day and not just you know Pray by Road in the morning at night to you know to turn everything we do when we're eating

when we're exercising when we're doing our work and all of that should be um performed as a as a prayer and I you know I try to do that I try to um keep God close to me all the time to um and to you know continue to to uh to maintain that posture of of surrender I got sober when I was 28 years old in in 1983 I came in really broken and um and I surrendered to my God at that point to a higher power of my understanding um but my inclination like I

think most of us is that when the chips are down you know God is very very present for us and we're willing to do what we have to do and to invite him into our lives and to surrender to his will but then when you know life starts getting good again which my life went from being very very small when I was an addict to very big very big very quickly and my inclination when the cash and prizes start flowing in is to say thank you God I got it from here and then take the

wheels of the car and drive it off the cliff again and then have to come in on my knees again and the challenge is how do you stay in that posture of surrender even when everything is going well in your life and that's the challenge because so much about of addiction is about Abus of power and so much of the S of the The Temptations of life and the bad uh the bad paths we go down are all about following self-will and about all of us are given you know some power in our lives it

may be good looks it may be athletic ability it may be wealth and maybe connections and maybe education um but do we make that asset serve a greater purpose which is God's will or do we make it the slave to uh to self will and you know self-will is always the enemy and um and you know the challenge is how do you stay in in self will and what I try to do is I try to um turn my life I try to look at it every day God gives us this gift of time but

he breaks it in into manageable units called days and every day we get to try again to live a perfect day and perfect surrender and I try to get up in the morning and then do the things you know break my day down into about 40 different decisions each one that now has a moral implication for me oh do I get up you know immediately when the alarm goes off do I make my bed do I hang up the towels do I put the water back in the ice tray before I put the ice tray

back in the freezer do I put the I put the uh shopping cart where it's supposed to go in the in the parking lot when I was when I first got sober my life as I said went from being very small very big very quickly and I was uh I was running about 2 or 3 months later I was running through national airport in Washington to catch a plane that I was going to miss but that getting on that plane was mission critical it was like the apocalypse was going to happen if I didn't get

on that plane I was running as fast I could and I as I was running I was B balling up a little piece I I put some denene gum in my mouth and I was balling up the rapper and I was running past a garbage can and I threw the the wrapper in the garbage can and made a perfect Arc right into the center of the garbage can and but as I was running past it I noticed that it must have hit something in there because it jumped back out that little rapper and I was

like well that that was God's fault because I made the I made the shot you know so that's God's problem that it that it jump back out and um and I continued running but then I got maybe 40 or 50 or 60 ft down that terminal and it just started eating at me and I finally I put on the brakes and I went back and I put that you know wrap it back in the garbage can for me that even though I did make the plane but the most important decision I made that day was

to do that because that kept me in that posture of surrender and that is the challenge for all of us how do we stay you know in that posture of of um of God's will rather than you know self will I have a a friend of mine who says at the uh you know the devil sleeps late and he says it's really easy to be a good person early in the morning and then later on in the day you know you start making mistakes and when I I I spent a lot of time doing extreme

sports in my life so I did a lot of Whitewater kaying and a lot of first descend on rivers that have never been done before and also back country skiing and when you're doing particularly when you're doing a Whitewater River and you come to a big class five rapid you usually climb up on a bluff above the rapid before you run it and you look at you study the water you study the Rocks the obstacles and you you make a plan you plan your moves and you may have to make eight or nine moves getting

through that that stretch of white water you might have have to do cross river fairies or you know whatever it is and you plan each one of your moves and you plan your line it's called your line and then when you get in the river if you can stay on that line you're going to be safe but a lot of times you'll wash out and then you're at the mercy of the river and to me I do meditations every day and the meditations that I do are are like standing on top of that bluff and

what and and figuring out what my day is you know do I need to have a conversation with one of my kids am I going to make that kid feel loved am I going to am I going to have to appear in court and when I appear in court am I going to be doing God's Will and be honest and whatever the cause that I'm going to do that I may have to write whatever it is I need to do that day or go on a TV show I asked to to do that and to

keep God in my mind while I do that and God in my in itions and in my actions and for the strength to do that and so and it's like planning that line for the day and I don't there's almost no time that I make that line all the way down but I may make the first you know 10 of the 11 moves that and that's a pretty good day and then the great thing is I get to start again the next day yeah um final question you know you've gone through so much in your

life you've seen so many things but how has Jesus revealed himself to you in your life well I like I say I try to stay in conscious contact with God and you know I see God's presence in my life through all these little synchronicities these coincidences that happen that should never happen yeah um you know this week I um my my wife was having a a really hard time and I was thinking to myself we we were getting on a a plane to take it the first vacation that I've had in 17 months first day

off and we were going to do three days in Mexico and but she was struggling with an issue um and I was thinking to myself I have a friend who's kind of a Healer and a you know a psychologist and I was thinking and I had said to her the day before I really want you to talk to this friend of mine um but we were now on a plane to Mexico so you know that was impossible but I was sitting on that plane thinking I really wish she had been able to talk to him

before we went on this trip and at that moment the guy walks onto the plane and and sits and he and his wife we were in the first row and and there were four seats in the first row and he he and his wife were in the other two seats no and he ended up I ended up trading seats with him and he sat next to my wife during that trip and you know and really said the words that she needed to hear uh to reset herself and it was really beautiful but that kind of

synchronicities you know happen to me all the time in fact and they're really Miracles because this chance of that happening or what one in a trillion right and yet um it happened and and I see that kind of stuff almost every day in my life and I now sort of count on it and am not surprised by by it but it's just a confirmation for me that God is in my life and that you know it's not an abstraction that is real and that we all have to walk with one foot in the spiritual world

and one and one world in the material one foot in the material world the people who have it easiest are are the monks who go up and and you know live in an isolated place where the world's not around right but if you're actually walking through the world and it's coming at you all the time and the opportunities for lust and anger and resentment and self-pity and you know all of the seven deadly sins are are are coming at you every moment of the day it's a much it's much more difficult to maintain your your

balance and your faith and um so that's you know I I need to stay in conscious contact with God every moment of my day and that's what I end ever to do I don't always do it perfectly but I I try every day well I'm so proud of you thank you for sharing your story it's encouraging and I just love hearing how your life is a testament how God has been there for you he's always going to be there for you and thank you for the work that you're doing so many of us are praying

for you and we just want to say keep going because you're doing the Lord's work and we're just so proud of you here thank you so much always good to be with you thank you w [Music]