The Cultivation of Courage

As the covid-19 global pandemic impacts Black and Brown communities in the U.S. at disproportionate rates, and anti-Black racism tries to kill Black lives through state sanctioned violence, Baby Suggs, holy, from Toni Morrison's Beloved reminds us to Love our flesh...Love it hard.

"Here...in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard...  

Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it… No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again.What you say out of it they will not heed…What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give leavins instead. No they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it.

This is flesh I'm talking bout here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance. Backs that need support. Shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And oh my people out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck un-noosed and straight. 

So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver - love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet… More than your life-holding womb and your live-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize." - Toni Morrison

Written and Compiled by Rev. Toni Belin-Ingram, D.Min

“There is trouble all over this world!” While God calls us to be revolutionary, we must remember that care for ourselves is a revolutionary act. Self-Care is an act of Courage and Resistance.  In order to for others, we must be intentional about caring for ourselves.  For the month of June, we are praying for ourselves with intentionality. We must attend to the care of our mind, body, soul and spirit so that we are able to hear and articulate, feel and touch, perceive and inspire, gain and share.

June 1  VISION:  Aligning my life with God’s Vision

June 2  UNDERSTANDING:  Interpretation and Process of Information

June 3  UNDERSTANDING:  Senses – touch, taste, smell, hear, see

June 4  WONDER AND AWE:   Creativity and Judgement

June 5  WONDER AND AWE:   Thinking, Language, Reasoning

June 6  MINDFULNESS:  I have the mind of Christ    

June 7    MINDFULNESS:  Emotional Stability

June 8  MINDFULNESS:  Connecting Body, Mind, and Spirit

June 9  INSIDE OUT:    Internal Organs

June 10  INSIDE OUT:    Systems of the Body

June 11  INSIDE OUT:  Movement and Mobility

June 12  FORGIVENESS:   I have not treated my body well

June 13  FORGIVENESS:   I have been unkind to others concerning their bodies

June 14  REPENTANCE:    I will treat my body as the temple that I am 

June 15  REPENTANCE:    I will treat others with love and care and respect

June 16  HOLINESS:    My Body is not an apology; I am who God Made Me 

June 17  HOLINESS:    Affections

June 18  HOLINESS:    Desires

June 19   HOLINESS:    Senses

June 20  INTENTIONS:    I will cultivate a Sabbath’s rest weekly

June 21  INTENTIONS:    I will keep silence regularly

June 22  INTENTIONS:     I will set the atmosphere in my home for sleep

June 23  INTENTIONS:    I will enter each day in prayer and meditation  

June 24  DISCIPLINES:    PRAYER

June 25  DISCIPLINES:    FASTING

June 26  DISCIPLINES:    MEDITATION

June 27  DISCIPLINES:    STUDY

June 28  DISCIPLINES:    LAMENT

June 29  DISCIPLINES:    WORSHIP

June 30  DISCIPLINES:    PRAISE

Written by Rev. Leslie Callahan, Ph.D.

Also available on IFYC's PsalmSeasons

The complex emotions of exilic texts mirror my own complicated relationship with the United States, the way that I am aware on a cellular level that this place is simultaneously both home and not home. I am a U.S. citizen by birth. I know the pledge of allegiance and the Star-Spangled Banner. I have earned degrees from premier institutions, got jobs with benefits, and bought a house. But history and current events are replete with reminders that my people—Black and Woman— have only provisional welcome and entree in this society. We are embraced only on the terms and for the purposes of the captors’ culture.

Last year with a milestone birthday looming and a pastoral sabbatical beckoning, I made plans to travel to the continent of Africa. I had done no DNA analysis to determine from which community, nation, and people in Africa my blackness had originated. And although I associated an apocalyptic phrase from the tradition of the spirituals—“as soon as my feet strike Zion”—with the visit, I had no conscious expectation of anything earth-shattering to occur during the trip. I simply felt that I was behind schedule when it came to Africa, and it was past time to get there.

Following an overnight flight, my feet touched for the first time the continent that gave birth to humanity—Africa the mother of us all. I sighed. Standing on the shores of the Atlantic and looking west, I confronted the pain, sadness, and rage of my ancestors’ displacing event. Our group had retraced our people’s steps and walked back through the “Door of No Return,” praying and singing and weeping and wailing.

In an instant, I marveled that I had taken my Disney princess-fascinated 6-year-old daughter to Africa to visit castles. But this was no Magic Kingdom. These castles were real, and nothing about them is pretty, built as they are on the enduring foundation of racist, capitalist brutality. Goree in Senegal, Elmina and Cape Coast in Ghana, and many others up and down the coastline remain as monuments and memorials. They follow a pernicious pattern. There are dungeons, dark and dank, still carrying the memory and fragrance of barbarous captivity. Dungeons for men, women, and children. And above the dungeons there are the remnants of enslavers’ quarters and trapdoors allowing access to the bodies of their captives. There, too, are churches.

Have you ever seen child-sized shackles? While you imagine, grasp not just the sadness but also the rage. This kind of rage could easily manifest as a longing like that of the conclusion of Psalm 137, a child-sized violence to avenge what were no doubt child-sized violations in the exiling events. People who can brutalize children don’t usually stop until someone or something else stronger makes them stop.

The irony and tension of exile is that we make our home in places that we know on a cellular level are not really home. But it is not just the indignities of this land that remind us that another land exists, it’s also the soul-deep refusal to forget that some place more like home exists. It is the ancestors singing in our ears of places we come from but we have not yet seen. It is life-giving determination to live in the beauty of that unseen home. Perhaps this is why at the very moment when we question how we can sing the holy song in a strange land, we do so by means of a song.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1.  What role does the expression of rage play in the capacity also to sing and have joy?

2.  Do you experience a call that you recognize from the ancestors to return, to place your feet on the ground in places perhaps that were home to your forebears but not to you?

3.  When are silence (the refusal to speak or sing) and withdrawal (the refusal to participate) worshipful and holy acts?

Written and Compiled by Rev. Sheleta E.  Fomby

“You can pray until you faint, but if you don’t get up and try to do something…God is not going to put it in your lap.” 

~ Fannie Lou Hamer 

This month marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920, which gave women the right to vote. I think it is important for us to acknowledge this milestone 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. The role and import of women in politics and the democratic process is worthy of celebration. However, we must also point out that the history of women’s suffrage is complicated. Prevailing narratives of the women’s suffrage movement often overlook the key and critical contributions of Black women. History is rife with stories of determined and resilient black women who broke barriers in the fight to secure the right to vote of all women but who did not experience the benefits of the freedoms for which they tirelessly fought because of their race. As we commemorate this centennial suffrage celebration, we must elevate the contributions of Black women, namely: Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Fannie Lou Hamer, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary Church Terrell, Hallie Quinn Brown, Shirley Chisolm, and other unsung freedom fighters. 

The 2020 General Election is the most critical election of our lifetime as there is much on the line this upcoming election, especially for Black and Brown people. As we continue to struggle with the physical, mental and financial fallout of the COVID 19 pandemic, swelling racial tensions as a result of the vicious brutalization and murders of black bodies by the police; unprecedented joblessness, which disproportionately impacts communities of color and suffer high death rates due to the virus - it is fair to say this election is a matter of life or death. 

The lungs of democracy are on life support when voter suppression efforts are advanced every day to deliberately disenfranchise citizens of color. Historic voter suppression tactics like the poll tax and literacy tests have been replaced by modern-day obstructionist tactics, such as Voter I.D. laws, closing of voting polls, intentional mail delivery slow-downs, removal of letter mail processing machines, gerrymandering, long lines, undermining voter confidence in the integrity of the democratic process and a host of other encumbrances contrived to suppress the voting power of Black and Brown people. We must vote and vote decisively because our democracy, community, and families cannot survive another four years of governance under the current administration. 

One pew research study reported that 87% of black women polled identified as being registered as a Democrat, making us one of the most party loyal demographics in the country. In the 2017 Alabama special election for Jeff Sessions' Senate seat, political analysts agree it was the collective force of Black women’s votes that gave Doug Jones a decisive victory and sent him to the United States Senate. 

As a pastoral rallying call to inspire and urge our congregation to vote, I’ve developed a Black Women’s Suffrage Syllabus for our Women’s Ministry. It’s a compilation of books, articles, podcasts, and other resources in remembrance of the activism of black women whose contributions to the suffrage movement have primarily gone uncelebrated if acknowledged at all by historians. Still, nonetheless, they persisted in their pursuit to overcome the disenfranchisement of the black vote. 

I hope that these rich resources will raise awareness and deepen our appreciation for the sacrifices of our foremothers in the centuries-long fight for equality and freedom. The historic nomination of Kamala Harris as the first Black and South Asian woman nominated as Vice President to a major party ticket, has engendered new enthusiasm that we hope will translate into high voter turnout at the ballot box. The goal of this resource is to educate the minds and energize the hearts of our church members, women in particular, in hopes of empowering their faith to do their part in furthering our extraordinary legacy in the struggle for freedom and democracy. 

Books 

Abrams, Stacey. Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America. Henry Holt and Company, 2020. 

Jones, Martha S. Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Hatchett Book Group, 2020. 

Larson, Kate Clifford. Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: A Portrait of An American Hero. The Random House Publishing Group, 2004. 

Parker, Alison M. Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell. (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture). Released December 2020. 

Podcasts 

White, Jenn (Host). (2020, August 17). Black Women, The Right to Vote and The 19th Amendment. NPR 1A. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/903237839/black-women-the-right-to-vote-and-the-19th-amendment 

Edelman, Roz (Host). (2020, August 18). Women’s Suffrage and the Black Women Left Out. Post Reports. https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/womens-suffrage-and-the-black-women-left-out/?tid=aud_rsslink&utm_source=podcasts&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=post-reports 

Kim, Mina (Host). (2020, August 18). Historian Carol Anderson on Voting Rights and the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. KQED. https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101879200/historian-carol-anderson-on-voting-rights-and-the-100th-anniversary-of-womens-suffrage 

Bharara, Preet (Host). (2020, August 20). No Voter Left Behind with Maria Teresa Kumar & Martha S. Jones. Stay Tuned with Preet. https://omny.fm/shows/stay-tuned-with-preet/no-voter-left-behind-with-maria-teresa-kumar-marth

Dawson, Rosario and Retta (Co-Hosts). (2020, August 19). And Nothing Less: The Untold Stories of Women’s Fight for the Vote. PRX. https://beta.prx.org/stories/331098 

Faith, Justice and the Civil Rights Movement Through the Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Legacy Disciple. (Apple Podcasts) 

1964: The Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee. (2007, August 13). Say It Plain: Great African American Speeches. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/ 

Kaplan, Molly (Host). The Black Women Behind the Ongoing Fight for Suffrage. At Liberty: ACLU. https://soundcloud.com/aclu/the-black-women-behind-the-ongoing-fight-for-suffrage 

Suffrage isn't Simple. (2020, August 17). History This Week. https://play.acast.com/s/historythisweek/suffrageisntsimple 

Articles 

Waxman, Olivia B. 'It's a Struggle They Will Wage Alone.' How Black Women Won the Right to Vote. (2020, August 14). https://time.com/5876456/black-women-right-to-vote/ 

Blain, Keisha N. 'God Is Not Going to Put It in Your Lap.' What Made Fannie Lou Hamer’s Message on Civil Rights So Radical—And So Enduring. (2019, October 4). https://time.com/5692775/fannie-lou-hamer/ 

Brown, DeNeen L. Civil rights crusader Fannie Lou Hamer defied men — and presidents — who tried to silence her. (2017, October 6). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/10/06/civil-rights-crusader-fannie-lou-hamer-defied-men-and-presidents-who-tried-to-silence-her/ 

ZOOM Presentation. Race, Gender, Politics and History: Reconstructing Visibility of Black Women’s Activism. (July 16). 

https://dpla.zoom.us/rec/play/75Z8Ie6h_DI3T9PEtgSDVPEoW9TuJqis13BN_qIKzxmyVHMKNgamYLsWZeMsg3xlnOgP_huLHvi6gzs5?autoplay=true&startTime=1594918908000 

Truth Be Told: Stories of Black Women's Fight for the Vote. https://www.evoke.org/truthbetold 

Jones, Martha S. Black Women’s 200 Year Fight for the Vote. (2020, June 3). PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/vote-black-women-200-year-fight-for-vote/ 

Written by Rev. Pamela LIghtsey, Ph.D

One of my friends on a recent phone call for a potential city appointment was asked to describe her work. She began by saying, “Well for my W-2 job, I do…” and ended with, “And for my W-9 jobs, I do…” How apt for the lives of so many who are doing the work of trying to dismantle bigotry, to bring peace to our global worlds and to protect this Earth from toxic damages. We are constantly juggling projects and responsibilities while at the same time trying to make sure we don’t neglect something or someone(s). In comes the idea of self-care.

Self-care as a process has its radical roots among activist ranks spanning back to the time of the 60s civil rights movement. Self-care was “a claiming [of] autonomy over the body as a political act against institutional, technocratic, very racist, and sexist medicine,” according to The New School professor Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. These days, along with making claims for our bodies, we must stake claims for the time to care for our bodies.

While I respect the idea of self-care, in light of the actual truth of my day-to-day world, I wish we spent more time talking about what strategies we take to actually carve out the time for self-care. To practice self-care as it is often advocated, you need time! Yet, the frequent assumption as it is translated in the listener’s ear is that you just decide on some practice and do it. Pick a spiritual practice and commit to it. When? Figure out what feeds your spirit and do it. When? You really need to take time to care for yourself. When? How? If your W-2 consists of several jobs in order to have a combined livable wage and you are a single parent, how do you have time to practice self-care? Many people in our nation are moving from hour to hour to care for their families and self-care feels like a privilege that is far from their grasp. As an activist with long W-2 and W-9 hours, self-care sometimes makes me feel guilty. How dare I when so many don’t even have a moment to spare on themselves?

“Take it!” was a lesson my mother taught me, that has become a saving mantra when it comes to carving out time for self-care. The space that I practice self-care in doesn’t need to be cute or luxurious. The time needn’t be planned in advance. In fact, I think this way of thinking about space and time for self-care is counterproductive. My mother, while working as a maid in Palm Beach would often “take it” – that is, when the owners of the mansion were away and since she too was away - from all seven of her children - she would grab a nice cold Coke and a bag of chips and lounge by the pool. Sure, she was technically supposed to be working but that ethical perspective meant nothing when she weighed it against the long hours she worked and the poor pay with no benefits. Instead, my mom knowing they would not be in the city but instead living up north during the hottest part of the summer months, planned her workday to complete all her tasks in order to have time just for herself. She took time for self-care and that practice has been a life-long lesson for me.

This matter of taking time for self-care is a subversive practice in our “hourly-wage, 9-5” nation. It requires perhaps more courage to take time for self-care as it does to protest on the streets because it really takes courage to say, I matter, knowing that some people will hear that as arrogance or lack of concern for others. So then, the Black Lives Matter stance must also become a question we ask ourselves: Do I matter to myself? If so, how will we reclaim our time (thank you Representative Waters) for the sake of our Black lives?

Poem by Alice Walker, the 2012 Election version.

“Democratic Womanism”

You ask me why I smile
when you tell me you intend
in the coming national elections
to hold your nose
and vote for the lesser of two evils.
There are more than two evils out there,
is one reason I smile.
Another is that our old buddy Nostradamus
comes to mind, with his fearful
400 year old prophecy: that our world
and theirs too
(our “enemies” – lots of kids included there)
will end (by nuclear nakba or holocaust)
in our lifetime. Which makes the idea of elections
and the billions of dollars wasted on them
somewhat fatuous.
A Southerner of Color,
my people held the vote
very dear
while others, for centuries,
merely appeared to play
with it.
One thing I can assure
you of is this:
I will never betray such pure hearts
by voting for evil
even if it were microscopic
which, as you can see in any newscast
no matter the slant,
it is not.
I want something else;
a different system
entirely.
One not seen
on this earth
for thousands of years. If ever.
Democratic Womanism.
Notice how this word has “man” right in the middle of it?
That’s one reason I like it. He is right there, front and center. But he is surrounded.
I want to vote and work for a way of life
that honors the feminine;
a way that acknowledges
the theft of the wisdom
female and dark Mother leadership
might have provided our spaceship
all along.
I am not thinking
of a talking head
kind of gal:
happy to be mixing
it up
with the baddest
bad boys
on the planet
her eyes a slit
her mouth a zipper.
No, I am speaking of true
regime change.
Where women rise
to take their place
en masse
at the helm
of earth’s frail and failing ship;
where each thousand years
of our silence
is examined
with regret,
and the cruel manner in which our values
of compassion and kindness
have been ridiculed
and suppressed
brought to bear on the disaster
of the present time.
The past must be examined closely, I believe, before we can leave
it there.
I am thinking of Democratic, and, perhaps
Socialist, Womanism.
For who else knows so deeply
how to share but Mothers
and Grandmothers? Big sisters
and Aunts?
To love
and adore
both female and male?
Not to mention those in between.
To work at keeping
the entire community
fed, educated
and safe?
Democratic womanism,
Democratic Socialist
Womanism,
would have as its icons
such fierce warriors
for good as
Vandana Shiva
Aung San Suu Kyi,
Wangari Maathai
Harriet Tubman
Yoko Ono
Frida Kahlo
Angela Davis
& Barbara Lee:
With new ones always rising, wherever you look.

You are also on this list, but it is so long (Isis would appear midway) that I must stop or be unable to finish the poem! So just know I’ve stood you in a circle that includes Marian Wright Edelman, Amy Goodman, Sojourner Truth, Gloria Steinem and Mary McLeod Bethune. John Brown, Frederick Douglass, John Lennon and Howard Zinn are there. Happy to be surrounded!

There is no system
There is no system
now in place
that can change
the disastrous course
the Earth is on.
Who can doubt this?
The male leaders
of Earth
appear to have abandoned
their very senses
though most appear
to live now
entirely
in their heads.
They murder humans and other
animals
forests and rivers and mountains
every day
they are in office
and never seem
to notice it.
They eat and drink devastation.
Women of the world,
Women of the world,
Is this devastation Us?
Would we kill whole continents for oil
(or anything else)
rather than limit
the number of consumer offspring we produce
and learn how to make our own fire?
Democratic Womanism.
Democratic Socialist Womanism.
A system of governance
we can dream and imagine and build together. One that recognizes
at least six thousand years
of brutally enforced complicity
in the assassination
of Mother Earth, but foresees six thousand years
ahead of us when we will not submit.
What will we need? A hundred years
at least to plan: (five hundred will be handed us gladly when the planet is scared enough)
in which circles of women meet,
organize ourselves, and,
allied with men
brave enough to stand with women,
men brave enough to stand with women,
nurture our planet to a degree of health.
And without apology —-
(impossible to make a bigger mess than has been made already) -—
devote ourselves, heedless of opposition,
to tirelessly serving and resuscitating Our Mother ship and with gratitude
for Her care of us
worshipfully commit to
rehabilitating it.