UnCrossing the Streams...? Musings for (only) this Moment

[With gratitude to one CF fellow I'll call "Dallas" who responded (a bit defensively) to my final Facebook post, and to two coaches who reached out to me not in defensiveness but in kindness... Welcome to the deep-feeling Life here, if you so choose...]

CrossFit has been a haven for me for these last six years, creating (1) practice-space for me to heal from decades of ingested body-shaming and (2) community within which to laugh, lament, and celebrate body challenges-victories-wonderings. I was reminded this morning that my entrance into CrossFit community was quite unusual: a strong feminine presence with expert physical-therapist wisdom to protect me, my body. It is quite unusual to have a CrossFit mama, but that was the foundation of my introduction, practice.

In reality, CrossFit is more masculinized, even majority Republican, which today means majority MAGA. Or if not MAGA-cultish, as many who voted for Trump are not, most voters were not concerned with a broad swath of news they ignored, neglected, disregarded as ‘the liberal media.’ I say this because there are now stories of surprise and awakening of such Republican voters to the potential impending deportation of millions of undocumented in our land/economy/families, the actual price-hikes that will come with tariffs, the specter of an American authoritarianism that looms, with the proposition that we may or may not have elections in the years to come.

CrossFit is therefore a majority community now obviously out of political-religious alignment with my values: the irrepressible dignity of each human being, the necessity to prioritize the voices and stories of the most vulnerable, the necessity to listen to the stories we most don’t want to hear. I’ve grounded these values in spiritual practices of my life as a Christ-follower, a woman deeply devoted to the abundant-wisdom-resurrected Life of Jesus which is increasingly averse to the religion about Jesus, held in bondage to a primarily socialized form of civil-religion congregationalism or a socialized biblically-literal rarely exegetically-literate Modernist Christianity intent upon faith as certainty, belief and doctrine. (Deep bow to Howard Thurman here–Jesus and the DisInherited). Is it finally time for me to uncross these streams, letting CrossFit be itself and my woman's body breathe in spaces that are actually proactive for her best care/self, beyond the gaze of the masculine?

[For those unaware, I am a fully-tenured Professor of Practical Theology and Contextual Ministries at United Theological Seminary (Dayton, OH) who was trained at Princeton Theological Seminary, then in multiple fellowships via the Luce Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, the Wabash Center, and more. I have written four books, with my next one due out late spring 2025. I'm about as establishment Protestant Christian as you can get though I have no love for so-called 'higher' theological education, which struggles more and more to be a place of faith awakening amidst fearmongering of 'lost faith' in our deeply rooted, historic Christian global faith traditions. Protestant Christianity today doesn't know how to educate itself for community-building in trust, led by emotionally-unskilled and body-dissociated PhD's without much emotional intelligence for community-building. Yet here we are...serve Godde where you're planted, I've said these last twenty years.]

Today I therefore get to wrestle with all I did not have to see (because it wasn’t really dominant), then did not want to see, or even thought my presence could eventually deepen/awaken for Good (if not change). I get to/need to discern whether I can remain a part of a community that perceives itself to be hospitable and welcoming, even though I experience it much like the churches they attend: welcome, if you become like us. Not welcoming as Jesus was, in other words.

Protestant Christianity is mostly like that, including my own theological communities, so that’s not intended as a slam, but simply a statement of how White Christianity refuses feeling and stories that don’t align with our own socializing-narratives. White male Evangelical Christians in particular have demonstrated themselves repeatedly unwilling or unable to hold dissent well. Google "church schism" if you want to see the fruit of refusal. Google "the conscious feminine" if you want to feel the chasm between a grounded awakened woman’s body-wisdom and more traditional Christianity (that wounds both men and women, by the way). In such eyes, whatever I might say as such a woman can’t possibly be useful to defensive-wounded-white-men, let alone true, so is dismissed with great energetically-charged argument or debate. The energy is the interesting bit, for those who want to deepen in faith. Sadly, socialized Christians have few skills by which to face the inner work necessary for the deepening of trust in ongoing relationship with their God, more than static belief statements about their image of God, projected outward into orthodoxy/heresy judgments of others.

I have therefore withdrawn into the Silence so to reground in the wisdom of the earth, with safe-companions who not only honor but seek out the stories and fears of the most vulnerable in our immediate contexts today. I have paused my membership(s) so to live into this strange time with more space, time, interactions through which to discern. My own intention is to love everyone I encounter, by which I mean honor the divine spark in every human being I meet. Every person who reaches out to me I covenant to welcome with a curiosity of what I am to learn in Spirit–some valued and welcome, some difficult and potentially triggering. While I will share this post, I will not reach out, per se.

Because integrity also requires boundaries that define love in freedom (i.e., the distance at which I can love you/other and me at the same time–Prentis Hemphill). I yearn to do no harm while also living in an integrity so many American Christian traditions are losing (if they really ever had it, immersed in empire as we’ve been for centuries). Empire, Christianity, and Orthodoxy have slept in the same bed since the third century, after all. Nothing new, yet always relevant.

So who am I becoming as a Christ-follower moving away from Christian-identities immersed in rising authoritarian Christianity? Listening…but for any who are willing to listen alongside me, these are the questions that arise today…

So many in my current CrossFit community are faithful members of the military, who’ve I’ve really valued getting to know, to feel their implicit connectionalism yet also their guardedness in an unending war culture-at-large. I feel a LOT when I’m there, recognizing most of it isn’t mine, per se. Our military carry a lot of responsibility in shielding from…(fill in the blank). As I have befriended some of them, I wonder too: how will they respond when the military is required to round up American’s family members who are undocumented, so to put them into internment camps here on American soil? Will they resist? Will they have any challenges of conscience? How can they be supported to remain true to American democracy protecting everyones’ rights when those who do not look or act like they do/we do (and also women) are losing rights? Or can they even be supported to face this specter of authoritarianism coming present in Christian-wolf’s clothing? Isn't it more Christ-like to support the undocumented, the vulnerable, the women and children?

And the testosterone in the “box” often overwhelms the space, whether it’s in competitive trash talk or comparison and conquer or (often unconscious) denigration of the F/feminine. I see this potentially toxic-masculinity in women-athlete’s self-condemnation and disempowering self-talk, with no counterbalancing available or mirrored by coaches or other athletes. It’s a space for working out, not for engaging in any spiritual-community-awakening work, I know AND…people are people. True community that is not primarily an insular tribe requires an overt energy of welcome and weaving in. I empathize that this is really hard for such an in-out, military-mobile collective like my current “box.” But this lens also demonstrates the reigning assumptions of the presumptive whole, defined by Evangelicalism: “Why did you tag your post to our CrossFit box, given this is its major demographic?” I was asked. “Because the box is one of my current communities, for the moment,” I responded. One cannot be imagined to belong to this community unless you are willing to not challenge the dominant demographic of White Christian Evangelicalism? It would seem. Or mostly, folks just don’t want to be bothered with politics when they want a safe space with others like them just to work out. I get it. I wanted that too, which means I’m probably going to be grieving as I no longer belong.

I've done the unthinkable for such "communities." I've called out things folks don't want to deal with...so I'll be scapegoated and avoided, which is fine. I'm used to it. Besides, ironically, Crossfit is NOT church, though here it is Evangelicalism that is rigid and refusing. That's white male Evangelicalism, where men are too immature inside to face up to anything but mothers, wives, sisters and mistresses. Heaven forbid they encounter a fiercely-gentle, loving, wisdom-woman without bondage to any roles defined by men or even family. (Cheshire Cat Grin)

For myself with any of this language that is received as incendiary, my own bodysoul has been so wounded by the abandonment of the F/feminine by family, church, even God when looked for through all the world’s wisdom traditions, that no one in my current “box” feels welcoming, willing, or companionable at the moment. They may very well wish to be...but I cannot see it, feel it. Which is not a condemnation of the “box”; it’s the polarized America we’re living in today. Looking through my own woundedness, my body’s visceral reactions to the election of a felon, rapist, misogynist? All I can see with this “community” is defensiveness around “politics,” which is dissociated in embodied experiences, away from “the personal.” We white women are good at collusion and attempts at indirect power in such situations–we turn on one another in the power of the masculine gaze, so to retain our own connections. But women have been saying for decades now: politics is personal and the personal is always political. It is a statement of fact, with evidentiary claims from "both sides," that we have elected a rapist and felon who disregards women's bodies to do with as he pleases, period. With no law-and-order authorities to prevent him (now).

I take comfort in the wisdom of a Zen priest I sat with (on Zoom) on Thursday morning. “We don’t know what will happen," he said. "Perhaps I will be in a detention camp in a year’s time, as we live in terrible times not unlike centuries of humans have endured over our violent history(ies). How will I live in that moment, moment by moment, so to honor human flourishing?” Trump is in a long line of authoritarian men leaders from the beginning of time, Pharoahs rising and falling, emperors, and more. He's actually not even that interesting, or worth all the outrage, given he's so common in human history. Then from elsewhere: Trump has the attention span of a gnat, and he rarely listens to his own advisors. I had to laugh at that one.

Ultimately, we just don’t know what will happen. Practice is for the moment, where freedom means you always have a choice in how to respond.

So each of us must, in prayer/practice, ask: who am I becoming, consciously, unconsciously? Who do I want to become in this time?

Who do I have in my life that will mirror to me the things I don’t want to know or see about myself? If you’re never mirrored to in ways that make you uncomfortable, then you’re in an echo-chamber, relevant to no one but your insular looking tribe. If you’re actually a person of faith, you’ve learned to welcome all that makes you uncomfortable, with a community that can witness your pain and help you do your healing work. People of faith can hold irreconcilable opposites, particularly if Christianity is your faith. Jesus was both divine and human–utterly irreconcilable–yet held in his Person. So who do you allow to make you nervous, uncomfortable, even angry?

I’m surrounded with and even grateful for this Invitation. It’s a moment-by-moment kind of time, and so I will listen…at some distance from those who refuse to feel into any of this. I welcome those willing to feel and listen together, for a companionable way that honors the irrepressible dignity of every human being, regardless of nationality, documentation, creed or more. And if I do feel Led to return to my box, sometime in the remaining weeks of my membership or at another time as a drop-in, it will only be when I’m in a grounded, centered body-being in which I can see others there with empathy and curiosity.

But the hard truth today for a bridge-builder like I have been for ages: It may take a while. If ever. 

What IS it about Christian habits of mind...? This Election Day

I have been interested in ‘habits of mind’ for as long as I can remember, though an ostensible intensification came when I dipped into meditation practices back in 2005ff: calm abiding (Theravadan Buddhist), centering prayer (Christian), then mindfulness/visualization (Mahayana Buddhist), and Choosing Presence (Christian) practices. The husband of a close Christian friend of mine was Buddhist and she felt Led to explore Buddhist meditation. Instead of reading books, as was his method, I pushed for affiliating with a local Buddhist sangha, convicted that one doesn’t really know a spiritual practice in isolation. Only in community, which of course brings all the human foibles into the mix as goads for growth. I’m all about goads for growth, but this election season is goad for growth on steroids. A bit much, if you ask me. [image: a SoulCollage card I made over a week ago], resting in the Sun, aware of the aged building under which I sit].

In my anxieties about a week ago, I dipped into a book Brian had downloaded onto our Kindle account: Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (Zondervan, 2024), by N.T. Wright and Michael Bird. I was hopeful to listen in on a couple scholars' input into being a peaceful, ecclesially-minded presence in these days. (I use ecclesial to describe "all those who gather," as it means "the gathering." It's not a church term for me, in other words, because the gatherings that have most healed me have not been church-identified.)The first chapter, “The Kingdom of Jesus in the Shadow of Empire,” begins in Bird’s voice: “I was born in a country that no longer exists,” by which he means the Federal Republic of Germany, which was partitioned into West and East Germany (1945-90), before reunification into a new entity. His point is well taken for Christ-followers: empires rise and fall but the Word of our Lord stands forever (or some such aphorism)? My NT colleague imagines the book to be mostly written by Bird, as “Wright, while a good scholar, has been coasting for some time.” But the itinerary becomes clear: a manifesto for God’s kingdom in a troubled world. Focused on God’s providence. Reflecting God’s purposes. Creation transfigured into a new creation. The constant call to be a people of prayer. 

At heart, I don’t actually disagree with any of this, though my language would be different. Kin-dom, for instance. This highlights kinship more than lordship, which doesn’t necessarily mean taking Jesus’s unique life-death-resurrection out of the light (in contrast to the either/or thinking of many of theological colleagues). It does honor the reality that the bible is immersed in empire-thinking and our notions of power-over prevent us from truly ‘catching’ the abundant relationality of Jesus, de-emphasized if not repeatedly eradicated out of the institutional church, grasping for its political power(s). If we actually took Jesus seriously, instead of imperially, a whole lot of our assumptions would begin to topple. Which brings me always to how to support institutional-thinking that is open-hearted for more and more of us...because we need new collective ways of being human(e) together.

Which brings me to my musing for the day, this Election Day: How and why is it that Christianity lends itself so very well to authoritarian nationalism? [This is not to say that other traditions haven’t had their expressions of this, to be sure–militant can describe any faith tradition, be it Muslim, even Buddhist etc., when given the necessary human-cultural-social-cultural pressures to deform in such fashion]. Many progressives today simply broad-brush the whole religious enterprise–word chosen intentionally, as that is how many have been marketed religion–and suggest a pathway beyond all wisdom traditions. This may work for them individually, but I’d argue it’s not working for us collectively. What is it about the Christian soul today that makes it so susceptible to authoritarianism?

The road here and the factors involved are multiple and complex, of course. But it’s hard not to find at least one common thread amongst all who profess themselves Christian today: the authority of Scripture. Over 500 years ago now, the reformers needed an accessible magisterium to combat the Magisterim (teaching authority) of the Catholic church. Scripture and the tools of exegeting, interpreting it became the primary soldiers in the battle, which became overwhelmingly powerful with the creation of the printing press. So now we’ve had well over five centuries of the centrality of the bible, interpreted in quite diverse fashion, yet wielding power over silenced or unvoiced oppositions unable to wield the bible's magisterium. 

I don’t intend to throw the bible out, to be clear from the start, but I am fascinated by the habits of mind that are shaped into Christians from the moment they begin to call themselves Christian: authoritative allegiance and obedience. Supposedly to God, born witness to in Scripture, but wow has that gotten fuzzy and impalpable. I can’t even imagine that Jesus is attuned or approving of how so many of us use his name for our egoic purposes. Which always begs the question of how the church uses Jesus for its own material gain, rooted in fear and scarcity. Polarizing habits of scriptural interpretation have led to polarized tribes of Christian communities, with nary a majority ever seemingly interested in unity of any kind…perhaps to be found by slowing down, breathing, listening, receiving in silence all the suffering of the world we can no longer ignore. Which no one chooses to do, because it's the rigorous work of faith, not the certain work. It's increasingly bewildering and overwhelming, in fact.

I have found this in myself in spades, of course, though with a broader brush to “aligning within the historic Christian faith.” It used to require all input into my thinking, my imagination, even my wonderings and curiosities, to resonate within what I will call the counsels of the elders in some fashion. I have ideas, contributions to make from my particularities, but I also want these things to contribute to the Whole, to resonate with wisdom from the past. This sets up a dance of leaning into the New while discerning resonance or energetics with the Old. Which of late has meant greater and greater dissonance with what Christianity is becoming today, whether in a declining mainline or in a biblically-literate, other-refusing and creation-destroying Charismatic/Pentecostal/Evangelicalism. Am I ready to unaffiliate from Christianity while honoring I am yet a Christ-follower? I wonder...

The authoritative habits of mind, the constant need to be affirmed or confirmed by ‘dead traditions of the past,’ is the focal point of concern for me today. And as I get closer to being in that council of elders in the ancestral plane, I’m less and less concerned with aligning with the past. I’m beginning to trust its presence and wisdom in my own belly, both on fire and in cooling waters for saying what needs saying AND holding space in silence for what needs to be witnessed, without fixing or denying, but honoring. Reverence. So absent in collective expressions of Christian community today.

I don't know how to build toward a collective future built upon love, trust, compassion, healing, kindness. I suspect it is not dis-affiliating from human collectives, yet fewer and fewer actually live into what their professed values are. I guess what I’ll be praying into today is simply for each of us, each image of God in human form, to allow greater curiosity and trust in encountering one another open-heartedly, with a willingness to be seen and heard in our own fragilities, woundedness and desires. Within the three feet around me I’ll have access to all day…

 

Is "Every Stranger an Enemy" for You?

“Many people–many nations–can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that “every stranger is an enemy.” For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection…when this does come about, when the unspoken dogma becomes the major premise…then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager.” ~ Primo Levi

These words, this Lager, found me in a book I’m reading prayerfully, slowly, a bit at a time: The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss, and the Common Life by Douglas Christie (Oxford University, 2022). Christie moves gently into his own experiences of irrevocable loss, uncertainty, bewilderment, suffering…and his inability in language to breathe, to create meaning, to comfort. Primo Levi’s words–recounted in the chapter “On the Dark Path”--stopped me in my tracks. 

I’d just read the headlines about Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden. I’d just unwillingly digested into my spirit the hate-speech against Puerto Ricans (and more), the uncanny resemblances to another rally there in 1930, the fear-mongering that passes for political rhetoric today. “For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection…when the unspoken dogma becomes the major premise…then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager.” Ooph. Welcome to Monday morning, fall of 2024. [Image: Monozigote, Wikimedia Commons]

Contrary to my first association as beer, “the Lager” is shorthand for Arbeitslager, the German of which should make you nervous. Arbeit means work. Those deported and held in such places used the shorter word, Lager, as shorthand for all that dehumanizes and exacts cruelty into the world. Levi’s work noted that when the Germans finally fled, leaving the prisoners to face the Allied Forces whenever they might arrive, they began to share food with one another, to care for one another in ways very few did before the Germans left. The Lager had finally been broken. Prisoners began to be human with one another again, in the loving, humane sense of human. Who of us may find themselves in deportment camps? I found myself pondering as I listened to clips of the rally...

But more importantly: What will it take to break the Lager finding an increasing hold on hearts and minds in the American public today? I won’t and don’t demonize Donald Trump here, because he’s not actually that interesting. What is of note is how we are collectively allowing all this flame-throwing of such fear and hatred to gather as much momentum as it has. How have we collectively lived into “every stranger is an enemy”? How do we begin to alter course? Can we, regardless of our politics? [Preliminary YES: There are several organizations beginning that work, which helps: Braver Angels, Starts With Us...]

I have lived into it by avoiding walking in my own neighborhood where I see more Trump than Harris signs. I am literally, viscerally, nauseous with “too much Trumpism,” so I walk elsewhere. I don’t chastise myself too much for this because I’ve learned to honor my body’s triggers, which make me a bad conversation partner with anyone “culturally Republican” or a “low-information voter” who simply doesn’t want to be bothered with our collective life today, even though we make each other's lives possible, interdependent, needing to rely on one another. I get how folks eschew and avoid politics today, but can we at least talk about how we commit to a better, more humane collective common life? Can we begin to relearn all that we've forgotten? I honestly wonder some days, like today.

Because in my refusal, I implicitly empower precisely the opposite of what I desire for our country today: neighborhoods where human beings are there for one another, regardless of politics, seeing neighbors not as strangers who are enemies but as possible resources, companions; communities where I can speak openly and not be silenced or disdained for my woman’s body’s experience; self-reflective companions seriously interested in spiritual growth that challenges one’s assumptions instead of reifying and confirming only previous certainties of static/orthodoxies that have harmed and wounded many of us for centuries.

I have supported the political campaigns of my choice-candidates–national, statewide, local. I have attended Peacekeeper and Election Poll Monitoring trainings, so to be civic-responsible in this election season. I have even voted across my party for the candidates who have proven themselves faithful to our city, our district. I am practicing seeing every stranger as ‘divine spark’ and not ‘enemy,’ and yet I still hurt. I still fear, trying not to digest toxicities I cannot process but also trying to stay informed with information from multiple sources. I see who perhaps over half of us are willing to stomach in order to get their own economic scarcity pie or their own control of traditional-dogma or their own refusal of others unknown to them. Mostly, I feel alone. Unmoored. Incredulous but persistent too. Tenacious. Practicing hope amidst waves of hopelessness.

I want to see my neighbors as those who have my back, who will be there for me when I’m hurting, who will struggle alongside me in becoming more humane–perhaps especially to those who have lost their humanity to hatred, greed, and power. I don't want a government that promises deportation, pointing the finger at "the enemies within," refuses of democratic processes when "the other" wins. And I try to see the pain that is so deep within so many of us that a possible/near-majority is willing to unleash forces to destroy the federal government. Lord knows I'm not a big fan of organized institutions--I work in and for the church, for Pete's sake--but I also know human collectives need strong institutions to rein in our worst proclivities.

I recognize at least a bit of how hard it is. I can’t even walk in my own neighborhood to see and be seen, to even say hello. I guess that’s my first step to take, then. Today, I will go for a walk in my neighborhood, practicing seeing human beings as neighbors, as community, as those who hunger for being seen, belonging, safety. What we direct our attention to will grow. The wolf we feed will become stronger. Let me direct my attention to my neighbors, communities, strangers who could become friends, being the neighbor and companion I wish to encounter.

I wonder if I will get better at this…with practice…

ENACTING Beloved Community

This is a phrase that undergirds the work of C. Anthony Hunt (or here) as well as a curricular goal of one of United Seminary’s Immersion Experiences, required for completion of the Masters of Divinity degree. This year, several international students were not going to be able to leave the States and then return for completion of their degrees…visa issues. A strange convergence of Homeland Security stipulations and my administration of an Immersion program therefore led to this past week’s offering of a Beloved Community pilgrimage to Alabama, what Hunt calls “the fertile crescent” of human rights. He mentors a Doctor of Ministry cohort for United, and I serve as the group’s faculty consultant. It’s too soon to know fully the fruit of the journey, but so many pieces fit into a forming image of blessing, completion, hope. I am exhausted but grateful, wanting to catch at least a few of these images onto the “page.”

Twenty six pilgrims–about half DMin students, half Masters of Divinity students–arrived into Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday night to begin the journey. United blessed us with a bus able to get us to everywhere we needed to be that week–Selma, Montgomery, then other community-sites in B’ham itself. The concluding–and celebratory–day was in Atlanta. There, our Beloved Community family of pilgrims got to steep viscerally in the ancestral lineages of the Black social gospel in both the presence of inductees and their communities come to celebrate them. (Shout-out to Dr. G. Martin Young, now living in Atlanta after working with us at United for several years; gratitude you tracked me down in the aisle  to say hello!) That day ended with a visit to the MLK, Jr. Center there on Auburn Ave (“Sweet Auburn”). 

Each morning our day would begin with a time of devotions, led by one of the “discovery groups” or smaller group teams–named Faith, Hope, Love, and Peace. Each night, a time of debrief and reflection-questions would close our time together. The pilgrimage itself concluded with a closing “circle” and then holy communion, shared serving one another in song. Enacting Beloved Community, a community of scholarship and of shared spiritual practice. I already miss the call to attention, "Beloved! Family! [then some announcement or instruction...]." I startled to send a text to the strand of doctoral students with an "FYI, Family..." This shared web is more beautiful and Gift than I could really say.

The induction invitation altered the itinerary from the previous pilgrimage, October of 2022, but the group got still to meet local leaders and elders in the Civil Rights movement all week, as well as visit actual sites on the land–National Historical Parks/Sites with interpretive centers, historical markers interpreted by Hunt, even the Edmund Pettus Bridge so visually-significant in the attempted and then completed Marches to Montgomery back in 1965. Brown Chapel there in Selma had been under renovations in 2022, but was open this time. We got to meet Joyce Parrish O'Neal, a Selma “foot soldier,” which means someone who was actually there on Bloody Sunday in March of 1965. She told her story and led us in song there in the fellowship hall. 

In Birmingham, we visited the 16th St. Church before Bishop Harry L. Seawright, Executive Director Brandon Cleveland, author-scholar-professor Tyshawn Gardner blessed us with their welcome and Work, speaking with us at St. John AME Church in B’ham (blessed by Pastor Ronald Sterling). We visited the church of the Rev. Fred Shuttleworth and the Daniel Payne Legacy Village Foundation, experiencing the school that is thriving there as well as the grocery soon to bless shoppers in need of foodstuffs. Niki’s West has offered good southern fare as well as a back room for table-fellowship and continued engagement with speakers. That day concluded with a visit to the Birmingham Jail where King was held, where he pulled together scraps of argument that became the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, one of the most important documents of the twentieth century. 

Montgomery’s visit included The Legacy Museum with the Peace & Justice Monument, along with several of us visiting the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park for the first time–open only about two weeks!--because we got on “the wrong bus” by accident. Holy Accident, as several DMin students were able to track their ancestors’ probable locations in the database there, converging ancient census information with Ancestry.com or surnames’ information. This is huge for those of African descent, whose ancestors were ripped from their homes and separated from families in the chattel-slavery history of the States. 

Atlanta welcomed us in good time into Morehouse College, the induction ceremony for the MLK, Jr. Collegium of Scholars and a formal address by renown scholar Gary Dorrien on the Black social gospel lineages, given he’s just completed a three-volume work published through Yale University Press. (See A Darkly Radiant Vision, volume 3). We spoke afterward of some poignancy, some tenderness, receiving such an august address from a white man in a roomful of Black social gospel lineages. I'm not sure but something in me was both afraid and healed in that: afraid for the alignment with unhealed whiteness in the room, healed to hear the congregation/audience responding with such heart and affirmation to Dorrien, touched it could happen.

The birth-home of Martin Luther King, Jr. was under renovation this time, but the historical Ebenezer Baptist Church offered the grounded and engaging retellings of history-narrative, given by park ranger, Doug Coyle. The MLK, Jr. Center offers exhibits with interpretive centers across several blocks of the neighborhood.

The itinerary is what pilgrims initially focus on as the curriculum of the trip. The sites are significant, pivotal, telling. The implicit curriculum, however, is the energy that drives the whole Immersion: enacting beloved community. Being in the liminal spaces between events or sites. Traveling with a wildly diverse group, some of whom don’t even consider this history to be connected to their own histories at all. Table fellowship. Devotions. Song. Weariness shared in walking, hours on the bus, listening to interpretive histories together.

One actually hears history differently if you are in a group as diverse as our own was this time. Our soul energies bump up against one another–easily and with difficulty–as each of us responds or reacts to the stories being told and heard.

Which means the trip for me as a co-leader is always exhausting. I grow inordinately sensitized to how we human beings behave amidst painful retellings, amidst histories we wish weren’t true, amidst histories we think are not about “us” but about “them.” Every human being does this, of course–pushing away painful stories, detaching from painful feelings too hard to feel or express in a group of unknown companions. But if I’m not consciously surrendering to the Spirit’s purposes for each pilgrim–which I will never know, of course, because it’s their walk with Godde*–I can take on responsibility and even sensations of guilt for things that are not mine to hold. When you travel with a group of adult-learners, you need to trust they are receiving what they are there to receive. i.e. You cannot as easily approach an international student and chastise him/her for detaching from the group by constantly being on their phone. Or perhaps I should have? I don't think so. The cultures represented this time had such honor/shame dynamics that it would have shamed, further dividing the group... I don't know. My learning here is that I will articulate a policy for pilgrims with phones, inviting conscious reflections for why are you on your phone when someone in our beloved community is speaking? Sometimes detachment is a necessary defense mechanism when someone’s emotional intelligence is so underdeveloped as to be unable to be present in horrific retellings of human history. Sometimes life-in-the-church-at-home pulls us away from the group. Either way...it was hard to see, to forbear.

And in the end? Almost all the participants were able to build the bridges from their own cultural backgrounds to this difficult if resilient and inspiring human and Gospel story of individuals and communities of faith in the mid-twentieth century into today’s backlash/return of inhumane behaviors gaining foothold once again. Students made the connections of our story as human beings, image-bearers of Godde for one another, giving one another hope that the world can become a better place if/when we enact beloved community. The African proverb, of course: I am because we are.

It’s not easy, nor is it comfortable. People are people, bringing their own ancestral woundedness into the mix, seeking consciously or unconsciously to be healed in a community strong enough to hold the Center, able to witness the pain while it is felt…and then potentially released. For now. For this time. A student made connections to his own church community in which religious leaders are being assassinated by the military. Another woman awakened to her own arrogance in seeing these stories as unrelated to her own, now recognizing what happens to one of us happens to all of us. The Black social gospel tradition spoke and sang in many of our pilgrims, blessing all of us. I received inordinate blessing myself before wearily crawling into the car-ride home, finally letting myself receive a benedictory blessing from a sister in word and song, finally letting myself weep-in-public, which I rarely do in my professorial-self. 

So I come home to my own beloved family, eager to rest for some days by Lake Superior–She Who is the Biggest–while I dive into the sacred anthropology books of Gardner, the huge tomes of Dorrien, and an unexpected recommendation of a friend before I even left, The Garden Within by a Dr. Anita Phillips. May these days of immersion have served their holy purpose in Spirit's tether. May the sacred work of all we met, all with whom we traveled, continue to bless the world in action, enacting, Beloved Community.

*Godde (pronounced just like 'God' but including More) is my written expression that names a Force or Flow that never lets us go. Part way between God and Goddess (a term difficult for so many Christians to forbear), honoring of my own Pennsylvania-Dutch lineage within German-esque sensibilities (Gott), this word found me in some process-writing amidst my own conscious feminine awakening. Language matters and the church's language persistently neglects and abandons women's voices, experience. This term allows me my own integrity as a conscious feminine theologian while also honoring the faith community is not remotely for the F/feminine, is (un)consciously hostile to Her.