field notes on living my best life

featuring an original poem -- also this *feels* like a newsletter-newsletter and I am leaning into it

Hello gentle-people,

This feels like the perfect season to rededicate this space to poetic play. In my poetry class two weeks ago we talked about and then wrote some list poems. It was a fun time. The poem I share below was written as an exercise in my own creative practice time, inspired by that class work.

In this season I have been testifyin. It has been so hard to contain—but I am encouraged by my friends to “let it shine.” This is Black aliveness.

I am also thinking of ways to use this “testimony energy” to lay the groundwork for new things. I have a file growing in my Google Drive of ideas that are at least 2-3 years out. Maybe even 5. I even bought a project planning notebook so I can sketch out the next year. In survival mode, often you can only see the next few steps in front of you. A Gentle Landing began for me that way. I am beginning to invest in the dreams that are possible after one has encountered a gentle landing.

Someday, with archival devotion, I will look back on this particular season and say “this is where it began. One of these days, I will tell you what it is. I will invite you to dream with me and help make it real.

Until then, I will be archiving this joy and celebration of my life in this season, like this:

---

field notes on living my best life by rose j. percy

the birds are loud
the dragonflies are hasty
your hips and waist know what to do
traffic does not bother you
it give you time to see the flowers growing between the cracks

the one friend who talks too much is just too excited for silence 
and so are you. a love that was a whisper yesterday 
now screams your name in the middle of the street. 
the only way to respond is to dance in the heat. 

hands attached to faces you don't know 
wave at you from a passing car, you wave back 
before you realize you don't know them. 
you compliment a Black man at whole foods 
with blonde hair and in a voice with hushed amusement 
he tells you all the Black women do this to him. 
you laugh and say we love a blonde moment. 

at the river where you sit and reflect on the beauty of the world 
you are dancing like snoop dogg and yelling with tom morello. 
all hell can't stop us now. 

you don't recognize yourself. 

the river is still 
with light ripples 
interrupting
making their way to you 
like the tiny blessings 
you've been stacking on your head 
held high, so as not to drop a single one. 
a hunger you've never known announces itself 
and you give it daily bread 
until you are ready to tell on yourself.

---

landing track:

• Field Notes: Take a moment to sit with what you notice happens around you during a moment of joy. Name all that you experience with your five senses.

catch me outside this newsletter

I am preaching at New Roots AME Church¹—where I serve as Director of Spiritual Formation—for our online service this Sunday, July 13th. I will be drawing from my almost five years of engaging poetry as a spiritual practice and highlighting Lucille Clifton's poetry on nature.

It has been awhile since I have preached—over a year since my last sermon and before that, several years. I am glad to be getting back out there in a community that cultivates space for post-sermon dialogue.

If you're interested in poetry, ecological justice, womanist theology, and embodied practice, I welcome you to attend. Of course you could "watch it later," when it appears in our sermon archives—but I encourage you to consider entering a space where your presence and contribution matters.

I was invited into a conversation that will be part of this lovely Faith and Flow Summit, put together by Queen Robertson, an alum of one of my cohorts! In my interview, “Wholeness Remembered: The Sacred Rhythm of Breath,” I talk about how Lucille Clifton’s minimalist poetics invite us into a relationship with breath that calls our attention back our sense of purpose and humanity.

Whether you’re new to yoga or deep in your practice, there’s something here for you!

This is my affiliate link! Registration for the summit is free, but if you end up signing up for the VIP package, I get a lil something something.

The “new bones” Fund & tender work

I’m raising funds to support a season of transformative fellowships and cohorts that will deepen my work as a writer, artist, and spiritual leader. This includes travel, lodging, tuition, and integration time for four opportunities: the Better Selves Fellowship (August 2025), which offers rest and renewal in nature; the Rest & Reimagine Cohort from Nevertheless She Preached, which nurtures justice-rooted spiritual leadership; the Made for PAX Fellowship, which will ground my songwriting practice in contemplative activism; and a research fellowship at Emory University’s Rose Library, where I’ll study Lucille Clifton’s papers and further develop my framework of archival devotion.

This campaign, The “new bones” Fund, is an invitation to co-create with me as we imagine future spaces spiritual creativity and rest-centered ministry are offered to the restless dreamers who find this tender work.

I love a word with beautiful interlocking meanings and “tender” is one such word for me. I am tender—soft. I am tender—bruised. I am a tender—mending. I invite you to join in the tending that is keeping supporting this newsletter.

If you can’t become a paid subscriber yet but want to tend monetarily you can Buy Me a Feather. You could visit the Bookshop, where I earn a 10% commission and buy a book for yourself or for me.

Want to explore collaborations, connect or share a resource for A Gentle Landing? Feel free to click these helpful Substack buttons below.

1. Zoom meeting link is on the website. Just click to join.