I feel extraordinarily connected to the black community of which I am a member. I wish I could adequately explain this condition, but I don’t know that my vocabulary is strong enough or perhaps poetic enough. One night when I felt this connection most acutely was June 17, 2015. That evening America learned that a number of black church members had been murdered as they participated in Bible study. It was as if my own church family had been attacked. When I woke up the next morning, the suspect would not be caught for another forty-five minutes. Finally in police custody, politicians and the media began to declare that it was time for healing. I had to turn my television off. I was not ready to heal. I was in pain. I was scared. I still wanted to know the names of those who were killed. I wanted to hear their stories. I wanted to go to my own church, to challenge the fear welling up in my soul. The physical threat was over, but the faces on television seemed unable or unwilling to comprehend the spiritual, emotional, and mental damage that had been done to black America. It is a pattern that is repeated too often. It is disturbingly underestimated how people of color suffer as a result of battling against white supremacy. We never talk about how consistently engaging in the never-ending task of disentangling the knot of white supremacy and Christianity is deeply spiritual work for people of color.

As I unpack this beautiful but painful work, I first must acknowledge that my lens is quite specific. I am a black woman. I am also a black woman who has spent a lot of time navigating whiteness. I do not suggest that the spiritual work I will describe is the same for all people of color, all women of color, or even all black women. I ask that you accept my spiritual journey as reflective of those with whom I happen to do this work, in largely white spaces. My descriptions here are not universal to all who seek racial justice; however, I want to assure you it’s also not just me. I hope that we can begin to give more space to this topic so that the people of color in our lives can name their own spiritual journey—both the similarities and the differences.

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01.  The Other Talk

In recent months America has awakened to “The Talk” parents have with their black children in an effort to keep them safe when they leave our homes.

 

• “Try not to wear hoodies out of the house.”
• “Never put your hands in your pockets, hold them where people can see them.”
• “Try whistling or smiling if you can see the nervousness in someone’s body language.”
• “If pulled over by the police, always explain exactly what you are doing with your hands, even if you’re obeying an order. Narrate everything!”

 

The list goes on and on, sometimes given all at once, but for some families given bits at a time for fear of completely overwhelming still growing brown bodies.

But this is not the only Talk with a capital T that occurs in the homes of black families. There is another that has less to do with protecting the body and much more to do with protecting the soul. It’s a talk that is chiefly concerned about the ways white superiority begins to change the way we think of ourselves.

When my younger sister was five or six, my parents determined to begin teaching her how to use her spirituality to combat the messages of white supremacy. In my house, the very first verses my sister learned was not the Lord’s Prayer or John 3:16 or “Jesus wept.” The first verse we taught her was Psalm 139:14, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works and that my soul knows very well.” Her little braided pigtails with colorful balls on the ends smacked her in the face as she danced and sang the verse. We made her repeat it over and over again. We would begin, and she would finish. We took great delight in her little lesson, praying it would be strong enough to combat the messages coming her way.

This is just the beginning of the ongoing Talk, the unending refrain in the hearts of black women who confront white supremacy. We read the Bible in search of ourselves, since too often even so-called multicultural churches would have us believe we are nowhere to be found in Scripture. We seek and find in Hagar and Zipporah, in the queen of Sheba and Solomon’s love. We find our stories in men and women who were seen by God. We find ourselves in Jesus, who suffered the hatred of the world and crushed hatred with love.

We work to include ourselves in the biblical story. We declare with confidence that we believe we are included in the wonder of biblical passages like Genesis 1:26 (NLTScripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Streams, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.), “Let Us make human beings in our image.”1 We must believe there is no exception clause that would discount my body from bearing the divine. And we work to reject false narratives. We cast off being responsible for sin entering the world, or that my dark skin bears the mark of Cain, or that slavery and oppression of black bodies is a God-sanctioned curse on Ham.

Our fingers bleed because the hardest knot to undo isn’t the injustice out in the world. It is the knot in our souls, tied to who we are and who we could be that is the hardest to disentangle. Discarding the lies of inferiority, especially for those of us who do not work or live in communities that mirror our bodies, is a daily spiritual practice. We practice finding ourselves in God. We practice seeing God in ourselves.

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02.  The Daily Grind

Daily life in a brown body can be so dark. It’s a difficult thing to express to those who experience the darkness only as unique phenomenon, glitches in normal life. To those who believe the darkness of racism is naturally fading from the world, how do I explain the weightiness of space that exists between our two worlds? How do I express the injury done when my church wants my face represented but not my opinion? How do I describe the discomfort of seeing the greatest number of faces like mine during missions Sunday? How do I give language to the ways I bend and contort myself to fit in to culturally narrow defined boxes like “leadership” or “excellence”? What analogy could I use to make clear that the impact of microaggressions directly effects my sense of unbelonging? How do I make clear that all these daily experiences converge when the day is done and a boy who looks just like my little brother is dead in the street? How do I express my bewilderment that half of America needed videos on phones to believe what we’ve always known to be true? How do I explain how it feels to push it all down and every day, pretend that our lives are the same? There is a totality to the darkness that whiteness would rather ignore.

It’s so much easier to see black lives as compartmentalized—the one time we cared about a specific hashtag and that other time something horrific happened in Charleston. Surely these have nothing to do with the hurtful thing my coworker said last night or the tightness in my chest when I deleted all those hateful messages from my inbox. Listening to the pundits and the preachers who do not experience the cumulative impact of racism, and it would be easy to believe that black bodies need to get over it, move on, and begin the healing process. But we who live in these bodies know different.

We know that part of our spiritual journey is caring for our bodies. So we lather ourselves in shea butter and coconut oil. We take hot baths and long showers. We let our hair speak to us, using our fingers to ask if it prefers to be free or contained today. We sit between the knees of women who know us and let them twist it or braid it, blow it out or condition it. We know it could be hours, but we believe our bodies are worth that time and attention. As often as we give our bodies to healthy community, we also know our bodies need solitude—away from the noise of social media and the news, away from opinion pieces and comment sections. And when our bodies begin to feel free, complete just as they are, we know they desire beauty. And so we adorn them with unique jewelry and perfect shoes, with bright lipstick and dark eyeliner. We care for our bodies as spiritual practice to assert our innate beauty just as we are, to claim that we are important to God, to remind ourselves that white supremacy doesn’t have permission to define us anymore.

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03.  Claiming Our Full Humanity

Even as we embrace our bodies, we know this is not the full extent of our work. For just as the physical body must be embraced fully, so must of our emotional lives. So we reject the notion of the strong black woman who can handle any and everything. In a world that would prefer we be stoic and silent, we choose expression.

But even this is not without costs. Black women who yell are scary. Black women who cry are overreacting. Black women who challenge are toxic. Black women who are angry are intimidating. Black women who are quiet are unfriendly. Black women who are quirky are too unprofessional. Black women who laugh are too loud. The emotions of black women are often not received openly and empathetically.

Rather than listen to our hurt and anger, we are often ripped apart for not being gracious or forgiving enough. Or we are accused of hurting others because our tone is not kind enough and our demeanor is not welcoming enough. Others are quick to present Jesus to us as a towering symbol of judgment for our reactions to the world around us.

Yet, we choose to see Jesus as he existed in the world, fully divine but also human. It is an astounding thing to me that Jesus cried, experienced anguish, nursed a broken heart. It seems impossible that Someone who holds all power would choose to experience pain. I am so glad Jesus didn’t opt out of deeply emotional experiences, because if the Savior of the world can cry, why can’t I?

And so we practice honesty about our emotional journey even in spaces where the truth will slice through the superficial harmony those around us have been enjoying. Like Jesus, we weep. Like Jesus, we express anger. Like Jesus, we experience agony. Like Jesus, we are moved deeply. Like Jesus, we experience joy. Like Jesus, we love. We take our cue from Jesus and allow ourselves the same expressions of our humanity.

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04.  Falling Up: The Temptations of Moral Superiority

While expressing my full humanity and complete range of emotions sounds delightfully romantic, let me tell you that this same humanity makes it easy to fall up. I find that I must guard against my tendency toward moral superiority over white people. My humanity in its imperfect state desires to lord the ugliness of white supremacy over those who are recipients of the spoils of its legacy. And so resisting this desire becomes the final spiritual practice that shapes my spiritual formation—constantly reorienting myself toward love.

This love I seek to embody is not without accountability. It is not love without truth or love without justice. It is not a love that chooses empty amicability when gracious correction is necessary. But it is a love that is unwilling to condemn those who inhabit a different body from mine. I seek love that refuses to perpetuate the dehumanization that too often polices black bodies. I must guard against placing myself on a pedestal for not being like those people, thereby exchanging place in an evil system of superiority and inferiority rather than destroying the system altogether. This love I seek chooses equality over power.

It would be so much easier if the temptation to fall up stopped right there—to be called toward justice only, making things equal, correct, just. It would be so much easier for that to be the end of the line. But this Jesus calls me to do more. This Jesus calls me to seek justice and relationship, defined by oneness. “For He himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14, ESVScripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version^® (ESV^®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.). It is not enough that love only go far enough to resist superiority. It is not enough to seek equality. This Christian walk requires a recognition that Christ’s very flesh bears the scars of what it took to create a peace so profound as to create one body. I can’t just be a neighbor, can’t just be a sibling, but must be one body who shares in the sufferings of others, who considers others as myself—as my own body. This is the work of reconciliation.

And if I was going to be really honest, I’d tell you that this sounds awful and painful and radical and beautiful.

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05.  Beautiful Hope

And so this journey of wading into the darkness of white supremacy and maintaining some semblance of personhood is a tremendous undertaking. It is a lifelong practice of spiritual formation as Jesus builds up and tears down—builds up beauty and tears down pride, builds up confidence and tears down superiority, builds up love and tears down hatred. But it is a hope-filled journey, a hope deeply rooted in Christ alone, that He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.See Philippians 1:6. So we keep moving through the darkness, holding onto the Light.