at ease, beloved

for those still gathering themselves this Pride Month [ft. a poem by Clint Smith]

Hello gentle-people,

I hope you are finding other gentle-people to come around you these days. If not, perhaps a good friendship inventory is necessary? I say that like I have a formula but I don’t. I just know I have seasons where busyness, pain, depression, or some other thing contributes to missed opportunities with friends.

So this past week, I went and messaged friends I haven’t heard from in awhile. Some of the messages were simply “just saying hey and I love you.” There are so many things in the way of approaching the world with a sense of belovedness…let’s not add to it by tallying absences and imagining “ends” where there was only ever a “pause.”

Say hello…and say hello again.

“No one will know the violence it took to become this gentle.”

—Unknown, sourced from a meme or something.

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🐦‍⬛ before lift off:

Please bear with me as I indulge in writing these air travel metaphors. This post recounts some traumatic things that may be unsettling to anyone. So I want to issue a few reminders at the top:

1. Remember where your exits are. Some good somatic exercises to engage afterwards or alongside this post will be in the landing tracks below. But you’re welcomed to take them at any point. You may want to take two to three deep breaths at the top. You can decide you need two to three days, and not breaths, to return to what is here.

2. Put your own mask on before you help others. So often, the impetus for posts like this is to send it on to someone you know who needs to read it. Or we immediately begin to teach, illustrate with examples from our own unprocessed pain. Perhaps pause and ask yourself—what did you need as you read it? Have you given it to yourself (or begun the process of finding) what you hope the person who receives this gets from reading it?¹

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🐦‍⬛ in-flight reading

This post was inspired Bethany Nicole’s post called “the intimacy of scrutiny.” I recommend pausing here to go read it, if you have time. It will be worth it. Here’s a quote for now:

“Flourishing under scrutiny requires that we let them see us. That we stand ready to be received with love, or revulsion, or passion, or boredom, and that regardless, we will thrive.”

—Bethany Nicole, “the intimacy of scrutiny”.

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queries of unrest

I really do believe my best ideas gather themselves, sometimes. I read a lot of poems and let them sit with me. They often find a place in my body and mind to lodge themselves…kind of like when you hear a story that tells your truth so loudly, you can feel your own throat begging you not to betray your allegiance to silence.

Most recently, a poem by Clint Smith called “Queries of Unrest” from his collection Counting Descent² sat with me this way. The queries that put Smith in a place of unease resonate with me and these pieces in particular sits with me like a weight on top of my eyelids:

Maybe when I was a kid
a white boy told me I was marginalized
and all I could think of was the edge
of a sheet of paper, how empty it is—
the abyss I was told never to write into

[....]

Maybe I'm scared people won't think 
of the poem as a poem, but a cry for help. 

Maybe the poem is a cry for help.

I really do believe my best ideas gather themselves, sometimes, I mean, when I wrote “a poem about my eyes,” I picked because “eyes” is a slant rhyme to “rights,” and I was reading a lot of June Jordan at the time and thinking of “A Poem About My Rights.” Another poem of Jordan’s I have memorized ends with the line “I am Black alive and looking back at you.” This has been an affirmation for me since I incorporated into a reflection on race for a synthesis panel talk on theology and disability last year.

a poem about my eyes

….ideas gather themselves, sometimes, and as a lifelong scholar, I commit to noticing. As a theologian, I often name, explain and complain, in no particular order, about what I notice. But I was not always able to be vocal. There was once a time when I wasn’t allowed to point (things out). My first few years in America, my family lived in NY. I learned not to point at police cars and police officers. I remember, even at four years old, being discouraged from pointing, lest my hand be mistaken for a gun.³

What becomes of someone who sees but cannot name what they see? Someone filled with questions who can not ask them, let alone answer them?

I can tell you, they try very hard to shut their eyes, hoping their own imagination can become a place where they roam free.

And mine was.

“You cannot corral any aspect within your life, divorce its implications, whether it’s what you eat for breakfast or how you say good-bye. This is what integrity means…[…]…None of us is perfect, or born with integrity, but we can work toward it as a goal.”

—Audre Lorde, “Sadomasochism: Not About Condemnation,” A Burst of Light and Other Essays

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close your eyes

My imagination served me well over the years.

In the absence of places to go (because the Pax Romana of a Haitian household is the three L’s—legliz, lekol, lakay), I developed a wide array of hobbies, to the point of confusing a lot of people about what I would do in the future. I faced adversity with my versatility and allowed my gifts to lead the way of crafting belonging for me in different spaces.⁴ Churches loved that version of me. So long as my throat tightened around my questions and my eyes were closed to curiosities that were unwelcomed.

In absence of spaces that welcomed my intellectual curiosity, I had the public library (I often call it my “4th L”). I had stories on stories on stories to immerse myself in. I developed an empathy, which coupled with my general naiveté about the world around me, was often taken advantage of by manipulators and energy vampires.

In my room, often a final frontier, I closed my eyes, and wrote some stories of my own, too. Stories with main characters that went places I could not go. Engaged art, had a wide variety of friends they could see outside of school. I wrote main characters who were scrutinized for their ways of being a woman not lining up with the norm.

Remember—my eyes were closed. I was not allowed to notice then, that I was writing myself onto the page. I was not allowed to draw a line between the world I saw when my eyes were closed and the girl I saw in the mirror.

Afraid to be my own officer mistaking a pointing finger for a gun, I did not dare point to myself.

…“Queer' not as being about who you're having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but 'queer' as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

—bell hooks

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on guard

I was trying so hard not to notice—and not to be noticed for—the wrong things. Afraid the wrong person would point me out and I wouldn’t “pass [inspection].” I know now that I was always on guard. I was always working hard to make sure I was convincingly cis-heterosexual.

I was on guard when I cut my hair at age 18, in my first attempt to experience some sense of freedom in the world beyond my imagination. So I started an acrylic nail set,⁵ started wearing more make up and big jewelry to offset the new change. It didn’t stop the elderly residents I took care of in my job as a nursing assistant from calling me “young man,” on a regular basis.

Not too soon after, a new friend who started coming to my church told me how he made peace with his queerness and believed God loved him. He sat in my passenger seat, as I grabbed the wheel tightly to protect my face from displaying the tension. I reached into my heart for the most compassionate thing I could say, keeping my own stories under the cage in my buzzing throat as he spoke. After a silence passed between us, I assured him God loved him while I reinforced the walls around my guards by telling him I disagreed with the particularity that his queerness could be beloved. I could not offer a balm I could not give myself.

There are many moments of being on guard that have shaped my life. To this day, there are settings I am still learning to be myself in. I am still letting all of myself show up in this body.

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are — until the poem — nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.”

—Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” Sister Outsider

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at ease,

Maybe I am meant to understand that 
darkness magnifies the sight of joy 

—Clint Smith, "Queries of Unrest"

I don’t want to land here as if this is a place I have fully arrived. I am still stretching my legs, as one does after a long flight. I chose the phrase “at ease” thinking of its connection to a military stance. To be truly at ease I would have to believe I will never have to fight again. I can throw my weapons down, walk away and maybe even close my eyes peacefully, without being jerked awake by some threat lurking in the background.

I have heard people, when they introduce meditation something like, “if you’re uncomfortable closing your eyes, pick a spot to stare at.” That resonates with me—

About a year ago, I had shared my truths with the last people who needed to know for me to feel like I could live in the world, as I am fully. The last front had fallen and I was exposed. As I searched for new anchors, I was connecting the dots. The dots I was not allowed to connect for years felt like they were all trying to download at the same time. I could not slow down, though many encouraged me to. My tongue—once held back by chains to a locked throat and tight chest—was restless.

What becomes of someone who sees and can now name her reality? Someone filled with questions who now asks them unceasingly?

I can tell you words tripped over themselves on their way out of me. I was finding words for myself, naming the hurts, unveiling all the ways I did not fit—and all the ways I could now affirm I have been tailor made. I kept reaching for paper and feeling frustrated that I had so many words but no energy to write them down. I was additionally frustrated that those around me could not grasp the gravity of the situation that laid before them: There was a new me in the world, and her screams now resolved to deny oppressive silence another moment of pleasure.

I talked until I was finally tired enough⁶ to slow down again. Feeling gathered at last, I was amazed by this new ability to close my eyes and welcome myself in and to open them and send myself out into the world.

I really do believe my best ideas gather themselves, sometimes, like a lot of queer imaginings do. They often sit together in a space others decide they do not belong, until someone with a discerning eye comes along and draws out a story.⁷ To be at ease is to seek out this kind of integration, with every fiber of your being. For some of us, to quote Smith, this journey includes gathering ourselves across an “abyss [we] were told never to write into” and tell a story only we can tell.

When I say, I’m at ease, I mean I am here to notice. Take it all in—life and all the beautiful things I love to learn along with the hobbies I enjoy. Some people will watch on in confusion, trying to connect the dots I’ve gathered. Some will say the pace of my awakening is too slow.⁸ Some will say I am not using the right language to describe myself.

Some will say, some will stare, and some may not even care—⁹

—But I’m at ease, as in yes, there is a war still raging on—against me and others like me. But I am at ease, as in, I are committed to an internal ceasefire¹⁰—I am no longer at war with myself. Now, I find myself doing the work of recognizance and reclaiming my “permission to speak freely.”

I am at ease, as in leaning into a deep recline,¹¹ as someone identifiably exhausted. As one who often chases rest with a fervor that looks like work,¹² I know this body will continue to meet pride month for years to come with a sense of restlessness. There’s so much work to be done and I was raised never to let anyone in to visit a messy house. I am blessed, somehow, to experience being at ease with those who don’t mind the lived-in quality of this gathered body-home.

I am at ease, as in watching the world with my eyes open to catch in the light that landings in dappled revelation.¹³ Under the dappled light, I get to choose, which shadows lay on me. I get to close my eyes and let the patterns entertain my eyelids as my imagination interprets the scenes that play out in the flashes. Here, we can imagine a space where truths do not (have to) drop like bombs. Someone keen enough to notice can gather (under these) truths with the intent to enliven collective possibilities for deeper aliveness built on a foundation of care.

beloved:

Truths can settle into you and you can find your way around speaking/living them—but you can never deny them. They will make a home in your body, perhaps making it a little hard for you to close your eyes when you most need a break. You will be on guard to protect yourself, unable to relax into a posture that feels natural. Unable to even let your eyebrows slip up, lest you tire to the point of breaking your performance. You will wander around, even in your mind, in search of a place where you can roam. The wilds of you will resist, even when the truth flashes before the eyes of those who do not notice you kindly. You may sense a war around you as well as within you. If this is you,¹⁴ living painfully aware of all that stands at odds with you, I hope you find cultivated spaces¹⁵ to gather your truths into your self. It is my desperate hope today that the fortress hold until you can be at ease, beloved.

🐦‍⬛ landing tracks

I hope to speak truth that helps us gather ourselves. A Gentle Landing does not have to arrive at tidy, all-encompassing, resolutions. I am always arriving and taking my time to stand after I have been laying down for awhile. I crack my joints, yawn, and stretch and I hope, as you are able, you can too. May these practices guide your stretch into your full humanity and lean into the ordinary everydayness of queer celebration.¹⁶

🐦‍⬛ There is a time to dance and a time to cry…and sometimes you can do both at the same time.

The song “COZY,” by Beyoncé has been sitting with me as I wrote this. “She survived all she been through.” She captured the spirit of someone who has found themselves at ease, or “comfortable in [their] skin.” There is something intentionally transgressive here—this is a song you can dance to that honors the grief that still moves through that same dancing body.

🐦‍⬛ There is a time to laugh…in spite of your pain and maybe even through it:

The same muscles are moved when we laugh deeply as when we cry deeply, isn’t that something? I enjoyed the Netflix special “Gender Agenda,” featuring LGBTQIA+ comedians, curated by Hannah Gadsby. Here is a preview of it, but at some point, when you can, put it on and have a good laugh.

🐦‍⬛ There is a time to embrace…yourself and someone who embraces who you fully are:

Perhaps, if you are still gathering yourself (finding integrity, speaking/writing yourself into being, etc.), reach for a community that sees you. Perhaps those people aren’t around you right now. You do not have to be alone…Sometimes finding a community that sees you is the first step in embracing yourself. I want to highlight a community that has personally seen me during seasons where I felt alone. Liberated Together, led by Erna Kim Hackett, offers many different cohorts and events for QT-/BIPOC women/femmes. Erna and a variety of facilitators offer embodied spiritual care and theological frameworks grounded in expansive spirituality.

🐦‍⬛ There is a time to gather stones….or learn about Toni Stone!

Boston Area Locals: I recently saw a play written and directed by Lydia R. Diamond called “Toni Stone” at the Huntington Theatre, which runs through the 16th. Stone was the first Black woman to play professional baseball for the Negro League, on a team of all men. It was beautifully heartwarming and hilarious!

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This offer expires June, 27, 2024. You can explore the details of what will be available for different subscriptions on my “About” page.

🐦‍⬛ Locked In presents…our Unlocked newsletter!

Locked In is a writing group for Black, Indigenous, and Writers of Color/the global majority on Substack. We currently write together on Fridays at 9am EST. We just launched Unlocked | BIPOC Reads—to share curated posts featuring work from members of our community to a wider audience. Our first newsletter, curated by Zefanwill be out sometime today!¹⁷

1. You can surely share and expand…just make time to come back to yourself.

2. This is an affiliate link.

3. I also recall the days of conservative Christian church, where I was discouraged from pointing out how things that were happening were unbiblical or nonsensical.

4. You could say, like this viral TikTok audio, “my [queer] audacity leads me to believe I possess any and all required skills to complete a task whatever project I’ve set my mind to despite having no particular experience in that particular craft—”

5. After a couple months, I missed the guitar too much and said good-bye to them. Even playing guitar comes with reasons to be on guard, for a girl who needed short nails. *le sigh*

6. Read: sedated.

7. In a future post, I may talk about this and what it means for us to create “a moment.”

8. It’s honestly nobody’s business, per Bethany Nicole’s post. I identify as queer and you can continue to scrutinize the specifics for your own pleasure. I used my imagination, use yours? Anyways, I wrote this on Threads to describe where I am at currently, which does not serve to uncomplicated any aspect of my identity for anyone ever.

9. I want to emphasize Bethany Nicole’s post which highlights this. See the first quote above.

10. Can’t mention the word “Ceasefire,” without pointing to this collaborative effort by Substack writers to provide relief for the children of Palestine! Click here to read about it and support!

11. In my former favorite translation of the Bible, stories of Jesus dining with disciples and others would say “reclining at table.” I have loved that expression in my conservative Christian days and still love it now.

12. And often is.

13. I will soon be writing more about how much I love dappled light. I didn’t even know there was a term for it—and yet I have been gathering myself under it all these years.

14. Holding space for those who feel, as they read this paragraph, the evangelical urge to have a “come to the altar moment.” Holding space for those who feel, as they read this paragraph, face the progressive Christian urge to manufacture a sense of arriving at being okay with ideas that are still new.

15. I never say “safe space”…a “safe space” in college ruined that term for me. “Brave space” doesn’t work for me either.

16. As a Lucille Clifton scholar, I am always thinking about how celebration can be found in the ordinary & mundane. Pride month will eventually go and we must find ways to gather ourselves in the daily. I love “if I stand in my window,” in particular, which was highlighted for me recently by Professor Honoree Jeffers. Jeffers talked about how Clifton, who never named herself a feminist or womanist, is still pointing to the experience of a woman’s liberation at home. Here it is performed by Jamaica Baldwin.

17. I schedule these newsletters in advance, so if you’re interested in a direct link to the Unlocked newsletter when it’s ready, I’ll pop it in our subscriber chat!