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Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
As a follow up to her debut book, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd, Tamice Spencer-Helms is joined by folx from all walks of life and society to talk about picking up the shattered fragments of a faith we used to know. Life After Leaven is a podcast for those seeking to heal from the damage caused by toxic Christianity and rebuild something new and life giving in its place.
Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
Navigating the Abyss with Barnabas Lin and Jazzy Johnson
Have you ever considered the metamorphosis of one’s spirit akin to navigating the vastness of the ocean? This episode welcomes the deeply insightful reflections of Barney and Jazzy, as they chart their academic and spiritual voyages through the realms of religion, ethics, and ministry. Their stories of personal growth, akin to learning to swim in the deep waters of life, offer a poignant understanding of community and the profound impact of fellowship.
Within the tapestry of this conversation, we unravel the intricate relationship between power, magic, and the journey to self-validation. The episode is a sanctuary for the exploration of inner strength, particularly in seasons where external recognitions fail to anchor us. You’ll witness the emergence of a powerful narrative that hinges on the belief that language holds magic, and that our own light is conjured not from the validation of others, but from the depths of our personal convictions and worth.
As we wade through the concept of apocalypse, our dialogue shifts to a terrain that examines destruction and rebirth, informed by eco-apocalypse studies and the wisdom of black feminist literature. Barney and Jazzy join me in dissecting the potential that lies in what many fear as the abyss, suggesting that amidst the foreboding shadows of endings, there are seeds of transformation eager to sprout. This episode is an invitation to reimagine the way we view our world, our legacies, and the creative power we hold—urging us to craft a future that respects the intricate dance of life and its complexities.
Life After Leaven is sponsored by Sub:Culture Incorporated, a 501c3 committed to eradicating cultural, social, spiritual, financial, and academic barriers for Black College Students. If you are interested in giving a tax deductible donation toward our work with black college students, you can do that here. Thank you for helping us ensure temporary roadblocks don't become permanent dead ends for students with marginalized identities. You can follow us on Instagram: @subc_incorporated, Facebook: facebook.com/subcultureinco, and Twitter: @subcultureinco1.
Our episodes are written and produced by Tamice Namae Speaks LLC.
Don’t miss out on what Tamice has planned next! Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to her Patreon page.
What's up everyone. Welcome to another episode of life after 11, and we're in the birthday season, which means that the center of gravity this season, thematically, is me People. I love people who have had a significant impact in my life, people who have taught me and changed me, and so, of course, I had to have my previous co-hosts from stoop communion, barney and Jazzy, on, because I've known them for a while now and every conversation I have with them is extremely Edifying. It's life-giving. There's so many levels and depth to our conversation that I wanted you to meet people who matter a lot to me. So Today, barney and Jazzy are gonna read pieces that they created and then we're gonna jump into it like we used to, and I know that you will be enriched, just like I'm enriched every time we talk. So welcome friends.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm having us yeah so glad you're here.
Speaker 1:I want to know, I want you all to tell us, before we jump into the pieces themselves kind of what you do, what space you're occupying right now, like in the world of faith and life and justice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's good to be with you. It's me and I let's see what spaces am I occupying. Okay, so I am a second-year PhD student. I'm a PhD student in religion, which is, I think, an important distinction.
Speaker 3:I am trained as a theologian because I have a master of divinity and now I'm also studying religion and kind of like some of the maybe even bigger patterns around religion and religious practice especially, and but I still very much identify as a practical theologian, being trained in religion and a minister and and I think that is like, yeah, where I'm located, I still find myself as like kind of a minister in the in and I like to say in the wilderness, and also of the wilderness in the sense of like.
Speaker 3:I think the wilderness metaphorically shapes a lot of how I see and understand our spiritual practice and how I'm like trying to be in the world, and I think it also just like practically speaks to my own place right now of I am not Attached to you a church denomination, but I'm still very much a minister and pastor. I am studying and learning from the wilderness places that I feel that we actually are as a people, a greater people in general, which I, you know, maybe we get to. But yeah, I'll say that that is, that is, that is me as far as my kind of orientation in the world which there is a religious historian who talks about religion actually being about and our orientation in the world ultimately in the ultimate sense.
Speaker 1:So Love it. Oh my god, I'm so excited, barney.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me back to me. I am am also working on my PhD in theology and ethics and I, and you know, loving my people at our church that Jazzy and I go to, with a theologian in residence there and Living here in Pasadena, california.
Speaker 1:I'm very excited. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna have you all read your pieces and then, and then we'll just chat like we used to. Barney, won't you go first?
Speaker 2:All right. My life. Growing up, I was taught inadvertently to float up, to swim upward, not to drown, though my body was heavy, tied with tombstones, rock in my stomach, rocks in my stomach. I needed to hide fear in my throat. I Was taught to strain, to cut off parts of Myself so I could get lighter, to ascend to lighter, clearer, whiter waters, to not drown. But parts of myself could not be cut out, dark parts Too deep to integral. I Couldn't get the heavy rocks out and I always wondered but is this terror worth it? Am I supposed to swim up? But I was always told by those higher than me that, as long as I kept swimming upward, that I would be eventually saved, not drown. And so I swam hard, adrenaline pumping strong, but also saw other bodies behind and beside me sinking and People bidding me to pay them no heed. But pity that I had to save myself.
Speaker 2:But in 2014, the spirit trembled. The whole ocean got shaken up and I got turned around. I Lost my way which way was up, which way was down, and I found others with heavier weights, their cries bubbling up from below and the rocks in my stomach cried back. It's like the Sun had disappeared, shrouded by the cloud by day. But people were so sure of which way was what. This way was up. They said keep going. But my rocks pulled me down To the company of the weighty ones, the ones who joined arms and swam together. The weighty ones who raged and the ones that loved them held back their punches with their own bodies. The weighty ones who wept and the ones close enough to be penetrated by their muffled cries, wiping and crying with them. The weighty ones who were catatonic and the ones who carried them to. They were all bound by the heaviest weight of all love. And Along the way I got confused, I felt lost. I was angry about those who had shouted To me in the name of the Sun. Bile finally leaked out of me, while weighty ones taught me that to hold it in would truly kill me. But the exchange, the cost of that exorcism was Estrangement and betrayal from all that had grounded and directed my upward life before, and so I sank. But the heavy ones didn't abandon me, though they didn't always agree with me, for they remembered their anger and those who had absorbed their blows. They remembered their own weeping and those who had sat with them, and they remembered those who had held and carried them gently in love.
Speaker 2:And now, 2023, 63 days later. Now, we are together on the bottom of the ocean, the depths of the abyss, amidst the wreckage of the nations and all those imperfect limbs discarded, all the used-up Products, precious gems of the earth that we named trash, and down here I Can finally find my footing With the many, many more who are hurting, crying, broken, healing, who have been drowned by the weight and waters of love, yet find ourselves walking on the ground of many worlds, breathing spirit, blind eyes, learning to see and weep and be born again. Maybe we drowned like those of Noah's time, but at least we, swaddled and swallowed by the weighty waters of love, will perhaps be or avoid or watch Baldwin's fire next time and receive the many angry, terrified, immolated bodies who try to fly up and away but find themselves in the end, by grace, weary, unable to escape their own weight, drawing them down to the depths of love. Judged, received, like me, for to be drowned in this abyss, then not as I was taught, is to rest and and be free. Oh.
Speaker 1:Take a little minute oh. Oh thank you for offering that and for sharing that and Jazzy, whenever you're ready.
Speaker 3:Thank you, barney. As a little bit of context before I begin, barney's piece was in mind as I wrote mine and as constant kind of like, just like friends, as like co-strugglers, as Ken I do. You think I appreciate you Naming 2014 as a crucible moment, because I think it was true for all of us and the piece that I have written is rooted in a particular another crucible moment that we all find ourselves in. As a little bit of context, as I also am offering some reflections From and about the abyss, particularly coming out of a Season of what Christians call Advent, which is often focused on light and of Jesus as coming light. But I've been wrestling with that a lot in our understandings of light. So there's context for this piece, and Now I will.
Speaker 3:To our dear siblings of Palestine, of Diarkongo, of Sudan, other places where Ken suffer under blankets of white phosphorus vapor and the thumbs of Western Imperial greed, and to those whose cries we have yet to hear. I Hate that your cries, your threatened lives, your involuntary martyrdom are bringing me back to where I belong. You did not choose to forge the pathways to our salvation, nor did you volunteer to become ancestors as children, clouds of witnesses, as adolescents. There is no redemption in your crucifixion and I beg you to never forgive them. And I beg you to never forgive us, dear ones. You have already given us too much. You have called us back to the darkness to dwell with you, to recover what you know, and many of us have been made, remade to forget.
Speaker 3:In an advent season of light, even on the eve of Christmas, I have found I no longer trust my ability to discern what light is. Hmm, is it that thing that hovers over us or near us as we keep spinning, that shines upon some of us but others cannot feel its warmth through clouds of smoke and dust and thick enemy smog? Is it the one who appears as the day grows old and cold, as we return to the safety of our homes at night, with roofs and walls intact, as we took our children into their beds, and not mass graves? The one in the sky that comes to us in phases, which reminds us how many cycles have passed and still we have not traded bombs for bundles of food, medicine and drinkable water. Which reminds us how many months have passed since you held your loved ones. They were taken from you. Since you were taken from you, what is light, when you barely sleep and your eyes cannot rest from the terror of each waking moment, when there is no contrast between the things that go bump in the night and the things that hunt you by day, there are no monsters to be imagined. Everything that could haunt you accompanies you with no breaks and no rest.
Speaker 3:But these are not symptoms of darkness itself. Boogie men are not the machinations of darkness herself. They are the creations of those who call themselves people of light. There are ways of life lit by cell phones, laptops and television screens made from materials in humanely extracted In the Congo by you, our dear enslaved siblings. It is the places and the people who have audaciously crowned themselves ourselves as a city upon a hill, as lighthouses of democracies, as Beacons of light and morality, as the free world, who have plundered and desecrated the darkness, giving her a bad name, decreating her into the anti of light, into the evil in opposition of good.
Speaker 3:I Think perhaps it is possible that most light I know, most light we know, has been created, maintained and preserved by your blood, your labor, your loss, dear ones. These lights burn with stolen oil, they are powered by our plunder, but your grief, your love, your rage is rising from the abyss, dimming that which has lit the world for so long. Lately, my loudest ancestors have been those who found a new home in the deepest waters of the Atlantic, teeming with life, after colonial conquest forcibly removed them from their lands. Their voices speak in concord with you, dear ones, as they beckon me back to the darkness, to remember that which you, as dwellers in darkness, already know that it is not the darkness that betrays you, that we've forgotten darkness is the womb of all creation. So we must remember how to labor in the darkness, as you all, birthing mothers in Congo, in Gaza, in Sudan, have continued delivering life into conditions of almost certain death, where blood continues to flow and clean water does not. We must remember how to pray in the dark with you, for you and for us. We must remember how to love in the dark with you, from you, we must remember how to fight, how to swim, how to march, how to heal and mend, how to play in the dark. We must remember how to live in the dark rather than accepting false light, trusting that the light we seek, the light who conspired with the deepest darkness to form and birth creation, will make themselves known, for it is the people walking in darkness who have seen a great light.
Speaker 3:On those living in the land of deep, teeming darkness, a light has dawned.
Speaker 3:It is this light that does not exist in opposition to darkness, but was also formed in the darkness of Mary's womb.
Speaker 3:It is this light, emmanuel, that is not bright or boastful, not dominating or domineering, that I believe is with you under the rubble, as Reverend Dr Munther Isaac has declared over and over again this season.
Speaker 3:But why doesn't this light show up through the changed hearts of Western government officials and the downfall of genocidal bank rollers? What kind of light leaves the land in peril while filling the people underground with the audacity to rise and keep surviving in body by miracles and spirit everlasting? This is something I do not know, dear ones, but perhaps you do. It is something the ancestors whisper about, something the deepest, darkest waters discuss beneath us, something we know in our womb spaces, but perhaps not our conscious minds, something Mary did know about her baby boy and savior, something that the deep, the darkness knows, something that is activated in the darkness every time the light approaches her to conceive new worlds. Perhaps this next world will be one where you might live and not be sacrificed With the love that my people knew and know in the abyss, I sign this black love letter with an amen and haché.
Speaker 1:Thank you for offering that and for sharing it, and it's hard to move so quickly on, but I was trying to keep track of all of the things that were bubbling in my mind while both of you were sharing, and a couple of things came up in terms of even things that I've been thinking about.
Speaker 1:So I'd love to have a conversation about. I've been thinking a lot about conjure and I recently a little bit of context for that. The ministry that I was a part of before I came to the place where we work together is now embroiled in all kinds of whatever and did a lot of the work in religious trauma and understanding cults. But I realized that the power of a lot of these smaller cults and then these larger ideological cults a lot of it has come from identity and power that is conferred rather than conjured, and I've been thinking about that in the context of light as well and hope and resurrection, and thinking about all of these things just in different ways. So I would love to play with that idea here of what does it mean to conjure light from darkness? Can y'all hear me okay? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:You froze a little bit, but I know it's so funny.
Speaker 1:My whole computer froze and I'm like man. Is it because we're talking about Palestine?
Speaker 3:Okay, there you are, but we did hear your question.
Speaker 3:Okay, good, okay, they don't be playing with that stuff Right, how interesting it is that you are talking about conjured, because Barney and I have both been spending a lot of time thinking about magic and writing about magic. I just wrote a whole paper about magic and, yeah, I do think a lot. This is just an initial thought and then I'm curious how Barney will answer your question. It's interesting juxtaposition between conferred versus conjured and I'm curious to hear more about your thinking on that, because so much of what I do think is constantly happening in these apocalyptic moments is the revealing. It's like the apocalyptic is to reveal, and what I've been experiencing is the revealing of how power works, and even the shaking or unsettling for me has been around the ways that were taught that power looks like the positions that have been like conferred, but actually then that that teaches us to look away from actually the many sources of power that we actually do have as the people who are not in those conferred positions or even if we end up in them, where we're tapping it, what we're tapping into, and so I've been thinking a lot about sources of magic.
Speaker 3:Barney and I've been talking about this in a lot of different ways and, I think, in the ways that I wrote about it recently. I'm thinking about it from like the kind of like imaginational sources of magic, like the you know, barney, as a like, as a thinker in that with me, was talking about like linguistic and like kind of lingual power, like the power of language that we tap into sources of magic. I think the, the I could list off all the things I said, but like, obviously, like the line is one part of the power and there's all these other forms of power that we can like tap into as sources of magic for the like shifting of consciousness and conditions, right. So that's my like initial thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to me. That was really intrigued by and wanted to hear more. If you would share with us about that distinction about conferring versus conjuring. Can you tell us more about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean, obviously I was thinking about it in the context of how do we continue to be, or what was the root cause that I found personally in finding myself myself in toxic, abusive situations, toxic, abusive work environments, toxic, abusive, abusive theologies, and all of it had to do with I felt I really bought into a sort of intrinsic unworthiness that something outside of me needed to validate. But not just validate Validate actually feels like a very shallow word. It was, it was. It was more profound than that, I hate to say, but it was meeting someone else, something else, even a god I have to climb the mountain for, instead of recognizing within and sort of pulling out of myself.
Speaker 1:It made me susceptible to delusion, to believing lies, and I think most of the what I'm finding in my life is that the lies that were the most detrimental were the lies I believed about myself, because of the lies I believed about the divine right, and so I've just been finding that in this, at this stage right, I'm turning 40, right I just feel like there's a lot that has shifted from me in terms of the way I even think theologically, religiously, and a lot of it has to do with that. I am not on the chopping block of any god from here on out and or any idea from here on out.
Speaker 1:I've learned to trust myself and I think part of it is some of that. I keep finding myself surrounded by darkness or in these deep, weighty, hard, dark places, and I have to save myself. Right like I, I have had to save myself. I have had to pick up my stuff and leave, or say no to the job or, you know, say I know that I will lose something because of taking a stand on my gender identity, my sexual orientation, my feelings about Palestine, my feelings about whiteness. So I've been finding that the savior was not external in that sense or in the ways that I was taught.
Speaker 1:The savior was external, right, it was me having to say I am worth more than this and I bring things to the table that no one else brings, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with me, even though I'm limited and may eff up sometimes, you know, and and kind of. That is a kind of a concoction of whatever my way of being in the world. It's coming from this conversation about. I have had to conjure so much in myself and I've never felt more comfortable in my skin. I've never felt more aware though of of darkness, and delusion has never felt so sharp and hurtful to me. Um, and I think part of it is because I'm learning to kind of find myself in at the bottom of the sea, like you've been saying, like I've had to learn to produce the light to put to for the power of the resurrection to be conjured, like I will live and not die in this place and I pull myself out you know, in a weird way.
Speaker 2:I don't have the language, but um that's kind of what's making me think about it yeah, when you say what I'm hearing you say and tell me, come back and like, be like. Oh yeah, that's help, sir. But I hear you talking about the difference between conferring versus conjuring, as something that comes out of you conjures, like from the inside of you, versus bird which is like, oh, some external source has to confer on me power or right to be right yeah is that what it is?
Speaker 1:yeah, and I think it gives that person. Whoever has that power, can do a lot of damage. I think, um, and I think I'm seeing that in several different arenas in life and religion, justice, all of it, um. So anyway, that's where I'm at right now. I'm like, what if we conjure um, but that's, you know, I haven't thought for years and years and years on it, yet it's just new for me as I'm reflecting on life yeah what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:I love that. I mean, I'm just so grateful to for you sharing that. I do feel in a very similar place myself in um, the journey of what I've been writing about and thinking about is it is a re-existing, like a coming to life or being reborn, and it is not a shift of thinking or believing. It is an entire like how we move through the entire world, see the entire world and belong in the world, to have a right to exist in the world and not need that to be conferred upon us by whatever power there might be out there above us. Yeah, so I feel that really deeply and resonate with that, with you hmm, I'm thinking about that too, jazzy.
Speaker 1:When you're talking about apocalypse, what do you all see is like kind of the you see um conversation between apocalypse and revolution. Like I feel like, how are those things in conversation for you? Because apocalypse always feels very like dystopian and you know, I'm seeing fire and flames and smoke and clouds and billows, right, but revolution feels more grassroots and human. What are your, what are your thoughts on the ways that those things play into each other or inform each other?
Speaker 2:that's interesting no, that's interesting, was my thought too.
Speaker 3:I think it's interesting because I think a lot of my work in the last, I would say probably maybe six years has been re um like and I think we talked about this too community too, of like. I do think that we always come back to the apocalypse, but I do think that, like I, what I'm grateful for specifically around um womenist folks and um black science fiction writers have helped me with this is is is um not making the apocalypse with not seeing the apocalypse with the imagery you just described.
Speaker 1:Actually that's it it's been.
Speaker 3:It's been like a re understanding of apocalypse, um, as like as that which is revealed as as, and and though I think why I say womenist I say womenist specifically, and black science fiction, um, creators is because I think what they do in their work is womenist remind me that, like, specifically, our peoples, black peoples, have lived through many apocalypses. I also love the way that, like people like adria marie brown and autumn brown and and kind of their like crew, talk about this because they're like, yeah, like, how to survive in the world is like, because our people have survived the ends of many worlds and our many worlds, um, and so I think I have made apocalypse less, um, scary in that way that this is always, this is, this is actually the patterns of how uh, existence works. In some ways, and even when I read it scripturally, I've come to understand that, like when I'm like interacting with text of apocalypse, they're like tell, they're like actually like more than predictive apocalypse. They're like revealing to us the ways that, like powers work and inevitable, like, almost like, inevitable, like revelation of, like, where powers, like, if they continue to work in this way, will lead us right and are ready, are already happening right um, the death of destruction that we're imagining, that we externally imagine in the ways that we envision, apocalypse are already happening for a lot of folks, right um, and and so, in that way, when I think about the relationship between apocalypse and revolution, I think what? I wonder? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I think I have interestingly stopped thinking about revolution.
Speaker 3:Wow, okay, I think a lot about revolution, um, and a lot about changing the world, and it's a more recent thing for me to to abandon those projects, um, not because, not because I do not desire revolution, but but because I think that there are ways that, like, my like, aims and commitments have shifted, um, and even things like our friend, you know, our friend Leanne, said to us recently of like, oh, I think I think changing the world is a, like, a project of whiteness, and I'm like sitting with that a lot, because all of the things that you all just actually what you just described around like conferred, um, like what is conferred, it comes from the ways that, like whiteness, white supremacy, maleness, patriarchy, like these, like various forces that exist in the world, have changed the world and told us who we are, you know, like, and and so I think I like have moved away from these big projects of like of that, because I don't know if that's um taking us where we need to go.
Speaker 3:I don't, I don't know. I'm with it more to to express it in the ways that I really want to, but those are my initial thoughts.
Speaker 1:Oh, are you got thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, similar to Jazzy's initial reaction is just like interesting. I think that some of even how I have thought about apocalypse and is through, you know, my a lot of my own formation is through the bible. That's just like my own background and so I didn't grow up grow up in a charismatic or pentecostal space and we just didn't know what to do with the book of revelation.
Speaker 2:We're like I don't know, this is getting weird, you know, um, so that's a way that you and I are different to me than just how we were formed, right, um, but I was working on a conference in 2018 and the book we were studying was revelation, and it was really interesting because it was really clear that your social location dictated a lot of how you read that book and a lot of folks, primarily people of color, we're reading it.
Speaker 2:Being like this is a peeling back of the curtain that shows us what is happening right now. It shows us and tells us what is true. Um, and others were like this is about what's coming at the very end of time, and it nearly like broke us, I think, in some ways, to have such different images of what apocalypses are, and so for me, I think you know just the biblical word for apocalypse is a revealing, what is being revealed, and that's, I just think, how I do feel like we are in an apocalypse. Some of the stuff that I just shared, as well as what Jazzy has written, is that we are all grappling with like seeing more and perceiving more. That was that we were intentionally like made to not perceive before the blood of the martyrs is making things very clear so that you choose whether or not to see yes, and you can choose to harden yourself and see something and say that is not true. That kind of feels like the moment that we're in in this kind of, in this apocalypse.
Speaker 1:And so I just want to thank you all for that perspective. I think I need time with it because I think I've been using the framing of revolution to talk about change in a way that causes people to recognize humanity in one another, and so it's kind of a different. I hadn't thought about that. Maybe even the frame, maybe the framings of the ways that we think about both of those things have been leavened with whiteness. I just had never even thought about it because we talked about so many of my heroes as revolutionaries. But I'm wondering, if I'm wondering if it might be a helpful change. I mean, I'm getting a doctor right now in social transformation. I'm like, oh shit, whiteness again. So I'm kind of like, okay, how do we? Okay, so what does it look like to subvert that right, to subvert the ways that I even entered into thinking about what social transformation actually means and and what is the outcome of that? But I wonder if transformation is actually just a reorientation to the fact that we're already in the thing and we have to.
Speaker 1:We are being asked to wrangle light from darkness, and I've been writing a new thing about hope and all of these tropes, that that you're given and you're looking at pictures of babies every day on Instagram being bombed and it's like what, what Like? None of these words have any sustenance, they have no weight to them, right? And so thinking about hope that has teeth and and even, how do you even? Where does that come from? Where do you find it? What is it bound to like? What does it expect? I've been kind of thinking about these because I think I maybe just didn't know how to deal with the weightiness and being asked not to swim up, so to speak. Right, like you're told that struggle, you know, struggle, swim, keep swimming, like, instead of going. This is where we are and I have y'all seen this is random, but did you see, don't look up, right?
Speaker 1:so the way that that film ended, I love, was kind of like oh, it is the Tell the story while the room is shaking and we sip coffee while the thing is coming down, and is that in and of itself saying, you know, love is stronger than death, that life is stronger than death, like that, that, that light, light can pierce through darkness so that it actually is born of darkness?
Speaker 1:Those are things that I have been kind of not having the language for, but have been kind of poking at me a little bit that maybe, yeah, like you're thinking it, your desire is right, but the framing might not be as expensive as you're going to end up needing it to be which has been my experience right and evangelicalism and everything else that the framing itself was not expansive enough to make sense of the world, because the world doesn't make any sense. Thank you for that. I think I'm going to think about that. Was that a shift? What kind of started that shift over for you, like, can you tell that trajectory? I mean, I'm not sure you ever spoke about revolution and social transformation, but I think just the shifting in apocalypse in general and and how we, if we knew we were living in apocalypse right now, I might we live, those are questions I think.
Speaker 3:Well, I actually do think I spoke a lot about revolution and change, social change.
Speaker 3:I talk about a lot about developing world changers, right and oh yeah, which is just interestingly, I, you know, recently actually returned to the organization we all used to work for and offered a teaching around how we need to move away from world changing and world changers and like how that carries legacies of, like colonialism, the whiteness, and so I do think it's something I used to talk about a lot. I actually do think it drove me a lot, a lot, to be very, very honest. I used to even say like, oh, I love college students because they are the people who will truly change the world. Now, the sentiment behind that is still true in the sense of, like I do love them and I think that there are ways of living and ways of being. There's a there's like a lot there that really matters. But I'm no longer that's not the thrust that I think I'm like focused in on and and I think you know, one of the big shifts for me did actually come from you know we're talking about apocalypse. Actually, a lot of it came from taking a class called eco apocalypse During seminary for me, and it was taught by Colin blame and I, my seminary, and what I really loved about that class was like he just he helped us like see a lot of different perspectives around the ecological crisis and apocalypse.
Speaker 3:But like did it from? Like just doing good political theology and good like kind of theological engagement. But then also, like we did relate science fiction. We read parable of the sewer. So I would say, like Lauren Olomina taught me a lot actually from parable of the sewer, octavia Butler, labor butlers work, but what came out of that classroom we foundationally was of was like we have got to stop trying to save the world. That moves me toward some of our stuff around world changing, because there One I think like and even trying to like tap into the scientific kind of geological conversations around the Anthropocene and us living in, living in even a geologic era that has been so greatly impacted by like human making and specifically colonial world making that has like disrupted the patterns of the world and and and the ways of being. And then like then then to think that we can do something to save the world from our own destruction that we've created, and I think about like thinking through those things started to help a lot.
Speaker 3:And then I do always remember this moment that like I think I say that other people doesn't sound as profound, but I remember having a conversation in that class and our professor was like Well, what does this mean for our like discipleship and what are the like Christian practices that we have in our disposal?
Speaker 3:So we're like talking various forms of lament and all these different things, and then one of the things he said to us is he was like I also find it helpful to remember that we are people who love dying things and for some reason that shifted a lot in me. I remember like feeling really emotional about that when he said that and I do, like I think that there is something to offer, I think from my own spiritual practice as someone who still identifies within, you know, christianity, christian message of like there's something about dying things that matters, and whether that was from like Christians, like honoring and loving, like like the dead and actual like bodies of dying, but then also, like I do you think there was something in the ways that, like Jesus in like bringing forth a shift to his people, was like you know, like loving people through the death of like, of like how we're not going to die, how we're not going to be anymore you know like and I think there's like, there's like an honoring of the loss and the grief that comes with like.
Speaker 3:I think some of the things we talk about is revolution of like we, but like why that's connected to Apocalypse, is like we need old world orders to die and so we stop trying to save them, you know.
Speaker 3:And so I think that was a place where I started thinking a lot about these, like the shift started happening a lot for me in that way. And then I do think that's when kind of like womenist work and black feminist work within fiction, a lot of it, because not only like, not only like things like Parable of the Solar, but like returning to text, like beloved, return to the color purple where I'm like, oh, I'm within a lineage of black women who have always been writing about the abyss and there's always been love in the abyss, there's always in the abyss. There's always been creativity, like in search of our mother's gardens, of Alice Walker, like that essay alone of her mother, like planting gardens in their home, any place where she's creating beauty, like that is actually the work of the abyss. And so I realized there was also my like inheritance, you know, as a black woman, to like to be like recognize the abyss not as like a desolate place only.
Speaker 1:I was just. Can I let that hang for a minute? The abyss doesn't have to be a desolate place. Um, barney, I want to hear from you, but I feel like this is I have I'm having a visceral reaction, so I wanted to talk about it. Um, so I was recently and this is this is just personal, but you guys are my friends Um, we went to, I was at a thing for next generation leaders or whatever, and the guy was doing this thing called togetherness practice and he says you know, sometimes we have to trust when there's not a reason to do it.
Speaker 1:And I felt this reaction and out of my mouth, said fuck you to this man in the middle of the group. But the way that the group was framed, it was almost like a Hail Mary for me, for in terms of the ways that these systems work, I wasn't going to go, but the way that he handled that was um, no, okay, just breathe through it, like, and pay attention to your body, like let's do some journaling and then, when you're ready to come back and join us, you'll join us. The first time I ever had that happen, because I didn't have an ability to stop that right that later that night we went out for drinks to celebrate that we were having a baby and then four days later I was in the midst of miscarry, my partner was in the midst of miscarriage, and so that four day trip starting off with me kind of having this very angry response to the idea that someone would ask me to trust if I don't have a reason, and then kind of having this joy in this, like devastation, all kind of mixed up in the same four day period of time, that was also very kind of life giving for me, or I would say, rejuvenating for me in terms of vision for my own life. And I'm thinking about that as you're talking, jazzy, because I'm like to say that the abyss is not a desolate place, or doesn't have to be a desolate place. How on earth, what? Like? I just feel like, how do you, um, how does someone reconcile that?
Speaker 1:I mean, I feel like that that's probably my own preoccupation with hope and change is because I don't believe that, like I don't believe you should trust without a reason. I don't believe that the abyss isn't, doesn't have to be desolate, like, isn't that the definition right? And I'm aware that there is some sort of um, even enlightening, happening for me in this moment. I'm just wondering, like, can you tease that a little bit? Or, barney, if you want to speak to that like, like how could, how could someone possibly bring themselves to the brink of even shifting their thinking on something like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah especially people who've been hurt, traumatized, abused, had deep pain in life, and I'm trying to say that and have it be relative to the fact that we just talked about Palestine and Congo and Sudan, so it's like the yes, it's not comparable in that sense. So can you all of that, all of those things are what is popping up for me, and I think that that's why I really enjoy conversations with you all, because I think the way that my formation would call this is this is very much discipleship for me learning about how to hold space for these very conflicting ideas and very conflicting feelings and bad memories, and also having hope and just the whatever you would call that. So can you help people like me who might be feeling viscerally the abyss doesn't have to be desolate. What does that even mean? And is it possible to really believe that?
Speaker 3:I'm going to respond and I want to T Barney off to talk about things that he's really good at talking about, which is epistemology, which is I think epistemology is a big word really to capture our ways of knowing and the reason I'm saying I'm team burning off because I think I want, I would like for you to take us there, barney. I don't know if you know where I'm coming from, but I think what, why I respond in that way is, first of all, I want to say that I am in no way seeking to glorify the abyss and like there is a reality that, like the abyss as we talk about it comes from, like structural a lot of it comes from structural, constructed suffering, right and that, or just like harm you know like. So I'm not glorifying it, right, and why. When you asked me the question of where the shift has come from, I pointed to kind of like womanist folks, women, especially Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler, who you know, like some of these folks are going to still identify themselves in that way. But I experienced the work in this way and also I want to, you know, I want to bring in both the color purple as a text and also recently saw the new film right, and to even just give the color purple as an example of like you have these black women who are experiencing pretty much every level of harm that can be experienced, and they find ways of women loving women and women loving themselves and finding the divine in themselves.
Speaker 3:And why should a breeze character is so significant?
Speaker 3:And just like there's just like so much there of like you know, there's a way that she writes their circumstances do change, like silly, circumstances do change over time, but but there's something that matters before her circumstances change, right, there's, there's, there's something that matters about the love that she and silly find together, even when she's still under the thumb of Mr Right.
Speaker 3:Like there's like, and this is why I say don't glorify these things, because I wouldn't want any of us to be in the conditions that we often find ourselves within. But why I'm I'm naming it in this way is is I found that it's an inheritance, because I speak of it as an inheritance that comes from. I'm sure that it can point beyond what happened in the Atlantic, in the, in the transatlantic slave trade and that all altering of the world. I know that it comes from before, then I think I can even speak to various Yoruba traditions and Orishas who in deities who are connected to the deepest waters, right, and also I recognize myself as someone who is descended from people who were enslaved on this land and who come through that that Atlantic deepest waters abyss, and so I, I I am pointing to this of a place of belief. Mainly, it's not a place of belief, it's a way of knowing. I know that the abyss is not only desolate, because that's what.
Speaker 3:I have, like, lived through it and actually like love through it, and like love continues to be what comes out of it and in it, and and it's a way of knowing that that it's not only desolate, it's a way of shifting, you know, to speak to Barney's piece, it's a way of saying I'm not going to keep swimming up because up is actually not freeing me, like, not like I like there's something I'm knowing in like stopping the strokes to swim up that knows that that's not where rest comes from, or loves come from, or freedom comes from, but there's something in embracing the weighty ones and being here together that is actually a different way of knowing and a rejection of these other ways of like. Of like knowing that I've been taught is like the way you're supposed to know.
Speaker 3:You know and that's why I want to tee Barney off and to go into it, because I think it's been. It's not even like. I think some of our language of faith and belief and hope and stuff like that leaves us wanting, and but there is something in this embodied guttural knowing. That is why I can say those words to you, you know that's yeah, no, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:That's very helpful. Yeah, yeah, barney.
Speaker 2:Dear question to me is I think that you know a lot of the work that I've been doing. A lot of the work that has been happening in me is re existence is, if we use biblical language, like a resurrection, and the way that I think is the poem that I read at the beginning and what Jazzy's talking about is what I'm trying to do right now is put into words what has been happening in me and some of what it sounds like has been happening in you, to me, and I refuse to let those who gave harmful theologies to us have the right to retain that. They have the corner on what Christianity is, because it is the Bible, or the scriptures, at least for me, are such a source of power that if they can take it and I know that it's been so traumatic but if it can be completely taken and then abandoned as a source of power, it's like that's like a wind that I don't want, I don't think should be, and it is. It is our inheritance, it's my inheritance, and so when you were talking about that, I thought a lot about Psalm 139, if I go up to the heavens, you are there, and if I make my bed in the depths. You are there and I think about the central, animating memory, bodily memory, of Christian tradition, which is solidarity in the abyss.
Speaker 2:So much of the ways that we've been taught about what hell is or what heaven is. I think all that is wrong. It is to make us afraid that the abyss has no life and the abyss is hell. But it's a reorientation to saying, actually the body of Jesus showed us that there was life in the abyss, that there's a coming through of that. There's this empty tomb, this openness of life that comes and it doesn't have that. Actually the demonic comes. When you try to avoid that place, you start to try to make yourself more than you can be. And going back to me as to the video, it's so the movie don't look up. I've referenced that movie several times and felt kind of like you to be like anybody watch this movie Because it was so profoundly moving to me because, you have this elite class of politicians and corporate executives who are able to escape earth.
Speaker 2:God was so wonderful when Brontorac got killed on that eight planet by that alien bird whatever it was called.
Speaker 2:I was like God is divine justice right there. But I was so moved by it because it's also it was such an image of me of is what this is what faith looks like when you're in the midst of apocalypse happening, and it's in these small things of sitting around a table and of love that comes in the midst of these abyssal moments. It cannot be killed, it cannot be killed, and it did something to me. It deposited something in me that reverberates, because at the center of my own inheritance is somebody who showed us that there is a way through death and that is full of life. I love Jazzy's language and her love letter. It teams the abyss teams with life. It's not something we believe, it's something we know.
Speaker 2:And what each of us have experienced in knowing our bodies is that that is true. So, going back to the revolution language, a lot of the folks that I've been reading have said even Marxist revolution is a white idea. It's a white idea and it requires societal violence. But, who gets the most harmed in revolutions?
Speaker 2:It's like the most vulnerable, like the poorest, the children. That's what happens, and so I, too, feel like I still want, I still think that I have people would call us probably revolutionary, but there's an entire way that that, the way that that has been pictured, is just not the future that we desire. Jazzy and I have been talking about this this past week too, that some of the ways I think that social media works is that it teaches us and disciples us and disciplines us to be antisocial, because we think that justice can come without what Jazzy has told me often about, which is like organizing person to person. Organizing organizing is inherently social. Social media is inherently kind of antisocial, but with pandemic, with everything that's happened, we have an entire generation of people who think about a social justice ethic that comes from an antisocial means Instead of what it really means to build life in like small, revolutionary ways, in ways that Jesus was like not leading a new regime, but like loved a small group of people, and yet his name comes down to us as an ancestor that has, like God's hand, changes and directs our life in different ways still, and so I feel like that's some of my own shifting around revolution and also in embracing that God is in the abyss.
Speaker 2:Where can we go? Where can we be cast? There's nowhere that we can be cast. That is outside of where God is with us and in us. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. That was some sort of a portal, something I don't know Like I'm just very grateful to you both because I think I have and this always happens is I come to you all with like my little budding Y'all? I've been thinking about these little sparks and I don't know how to name them or even say them in a way that isn't like saying what I don't mean and kind of getting clear on what I actually do mean, and I'm just grateful for, among other things, for that from you all. In my life personally, I think what I want to do is have people. If you're interested in this, where can people find you and learn from you? If that's what you want, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Because I think that this is a very, very powerful and potent conversation that I'm sure people who have probably had the same little things bouncing around are going yes, that's yes, and so I would love to offer them more of your wisdom if you're open to sharing with folks where they can read or find you or anything like that.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, Jazzy, you can speak for yourself. It's funny because a lot of the ways I think that I work or we work is in very like small and local ways and in some ways, we, both of us are also in the wombs of like a PhD program or like a metamorphosis, like a cocoon of a time to like really retreat and do some deep work. So that's circumstantial. But also in our own ethics, I think we think a lot about like faith in small things. That's just who I am for sure you can find me on Instagram, but I write stories once. I write stories, but that's about it. But I was thinking to me if that's true, I think you could offer like an ask us anything and host us, and I'm more than happy to come and like talk about these things, because Jazzy and I are talking about these things all the time.
Speaker 1:It's so funny that, like even the like just I'm used to this from Stoop Communion but watching you both smile over the same like phrase or something at the same time, I'm like yeah, that's the way they are kin bro, that's true.
Speaker 3:And that's revolutionary right.
Speaker 3:We come from very different worlds and we found each other in the abyss. You know, and that's how you do it. You know, that's how you live, that's how you survive. Yeah, I would say yeah, I agree with Barney's idea. I like the ask us anything thing. Similarly, you can find me on Instagram. I'm in the middle of trying to figure out what I wanna do with Instagram because of the things we're reflecting on social media. But people I always love when people like we're genuinely wanna connect in that space, so I do open. You know, that's so my Instagram is. Should I say what my Instagram is? Okay, it's Jazzyjzyy, underscore Simone S-Y-M-O-N-E. This is also making me be like I always wanna like restart my blog. That I have, but I'm not gonna tell y'all what it is until I get it together. But all I have to say is I agree with Barney.
Speaker 1:I do, yeah, and I know that you are both firmly in your values and at the same time I'm like I don't know, the way I'm wired is just like more people to the truth, more people to the truth, like that's always been an impulse that I don't know if I'll ever be able to get rid of. But I'm like I'm getting the how complicated it can be to kind of like it's complicated, it's very complicated.
Speaker 2:Well, to me I also feel like that's just like your like gift in the body to like play. You know like it's so, because you do it, because other friends of ours do it, we don't have to do it, you know.
Speaker 2:Exactly, that's true, you're doing something that is needed. You know and you're functioning and I love that that impulse in you has continued through different you know spaces, because it's just so core to who you are and I hope that you continue to do it, and I hope that you continue to do it and I hope that you continue to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, god, dad, go on it. Those things really are irrevocable, because at the heart and at the truth of them it's.
Speaker 3:It is a true thing, the true thing about who you are, and how you're wired. Yeah, I'm on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're on that, yeah, but it's true like it's complicated. Yes, that's true People show up differently.
Speaker 3:that's how, yeah, but I'm wondering about what does?
Speaker 1:it look like to. I just don't, I'm not interested in like more of the stuff. It's like how do we really have the same values, not in a hegemonic way, but like the same ethical yeah ways of thinking and what? How dynamic could it be to get people with those? What could you build? What could you create?
Speaker 1:in the sense but now I'm thinking about do we need to create? So that's why you guys are always like, you're always just spurring me to think more broadly and more deeply, which is a real gift, and I'm very thankful for that, and I'm very thankful for both of you. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks to me. I do think we need to create. I just think we want to do it our way and I feel all that instincts in you of like it's tricky. We're like figuring out how to do something that we haven't really seen. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it always makes me think of, yeah, we definitely still believe in creating and, like I do think, like worlds are birthed, you know, like in the abyss as well, like I think that that's, that's not something to negate. It makes me think of of Willie Jennings language of like whiteness as a form of maturity, but as a form of creating that destroys creation, and so we're trying not to do that. Yeah, creating is actually really core, you know, I think it makes sense.
Speaker 1:I love you guys on a deep level. Thank you so much for being on on the show and I think I will be birthday. Thank you, I'm over the hill. Hey, hey, here we go. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to what a good years.