I can't keep doing this

on the question of commissioning, calling, and coming to my senses - Black women deserve sabbaticals, no. 3

Hello gentle-people,

This post began as a GoFundMe update then I realized it was getting long and I had so much more to say that ties in with my other writing on here and the theme of this series: Black women deserve sabbaticals. So I pasted the update here and continued to write and let the words flow.

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This past week I took a trip to the retreat center for a few days to begin my work study. For those unfamiliar with the concept, work studies are a practice some retreat centers offer for those who want to do some kind of work in exchange for room and board. In some places, if there are retreat offerings and programs taking place, work study participants can take part in those as well.

My journey to the retreat center consisted of two Greyhound buses, which was the first time I had ever used one. For part of the way there, I found myself so filled with anxiety, I pulled out my laptop and began looking at job postings. Yes—I know I made the decision to move forward with this sabbatical even though I am still fundraising but old habits die hard.

I had to do some breathing exercises to remind myself that I have enough to be okay for awhile. That I am on my way to beginning to do the kind of vocational work I have been longing to do for some time. As I watched the scene of city buildings turn into trees, I got closer and closer to believing myself.

Things got even better when I finally arrived at the retreat center and got a tour of the place by the amazing land steward. My stay there was pretty brief this first time, with only one full day and two nights. I did some writing work for them but otherwise enjoyed being all by myself in this place that was created to receive community leaders, movement workers, culture workers, and healers into the rest they so deeply deserve.

I spent my first night looking back through some of my newsletter posts and listened back to one of the videos I recorded almost a year ago. I was discussing how there are dreams that I have for what A Gentle Landing could be beyond a newsletter but I needed support to get there. In the video I said I felt stuck. So my answer to feeling stuck was signing up for a variety of professional development and networking opportunities.

I signed up for 1) the Social Weaver cohort with Nevertheless She Preached, 2) the African American History and Culture Fellowship with Rose Library at Emory University to study the Lucille Clifton papers, 3) the EcoPreacher cohort with the BTS Center, and 4) the Made for Pax contemplative activism fellowship in songwriting.

(In my application frenzy, I also count the Better Selves Fellowship at Knoll Farm but please note that my experience ended up being mostly restful. It was also only a week, and not months long as 1, 3 & 4 were. I call my time with the BSF the “rest of my life.” The invitation in this fellowship was unlike the others, so for the sake of this post, assume I am only talking about the first 4.)

At the time that I was signing up for all of these things, I had a lot of energy. I certainly had a lot of belief in my ability to do the work these opportunities represented. Time would tell a different story.

Prior to these opportunities, I felt under-supported and a little lost. In the video I recorded, I talked about how I am tired of being told that I am some kind of important emerging leader while being disenfranchised and unsupported beyond verbal affirmations.

I signed up for these cohorts because I was actively resisting applying for a 3rd masters degree or certificate program. To be honest, I thought I was taking an easier path. I thought the energy I had when I signed up would carry me through these multiple months long programs.

But that is not what happened. As I have shared, I have a mental health struggle that I am still learning how to live with and it almost cost me my freedom again this year. I got through the cohorts and fellowships but in September and October I missed out on the retreats associated with two of them because of my mental health. That loss would reverberate into a sense of disconnection from other fellows and a feeling of being behind.

Most of my fellowships/cohorts have wrapped up except for one that ends this coming Thursday. After which, I will take some time to reflect on what I have gained from these experiences. As proud as I am to have gained new knowledge and new connections, my sabbatical is causing me to reflect on whether or not I have simply just arrived at new levels of stuckness.

But today, I felt some sabbatical driven clarity I would like to share. And it all begins with this realization:

The sabbatical is my commissioning—

Well, it is close enough.

“Commissioning in ministry is a formal, public process where a church or religious organization sets apart and authorizes an individual to serve in a specific role. It acts as an official endorsement by the community, often combining specialized training with prayer and the "laying on of hands" to equip and bless the candidate.”

Based on this definition from the Google AI summary,¹ we’re going to have to hold the word a little more loosely. There was no formal process, no official church or religious organization. There was certainly “no laying on of hands.” In fact, I still think most people are confused about what it is I am here to do. Sometimes I am, too.

So how have I been commissioned?

Some of you may not know that I attend a church. I attend a church and sometimes think of myself as a member even though I have not had a formal membership process. I attend despite feeling disconnected currently with most of the Sunday service experience.² I attend a church despite the truth that the Church breaks my heart quite frequently. I suppose I am drawn by the promise of what these communities say they will be in the world. I suppose I imagine I can have some part in helping make those dreams into reality.

Sometimes individuals within the church surprise me by being the Church. Please read that sentence again. This helps me hold on to hope, but still:

My relationship with Christianity has been complicated. To share all the stories of how would fill a years worth of newsletters, I’m sure. But to put it simply, the church and the world have both invited me to play the role of the Strong Black Woman. While the world does it to perpetuate harms that trace back to slavery, the Church dresses it up under the words “ministry” and “calling.” Before I went on this years long journey to redefine my work, I was following a “call to ministry” that looked like denying my humanity, aided by my church work. If my body didn’t say a hard no, if my mental health did not collapse, I might still be following that call—

But listening to my body-mind³ is part of my training. I have to thank numerous disability theologians and ministers, somatic practitioners, embodiment scholars, and yoga teachers for helping me lean into its wisdom.⁴ I am still learning my limits and finding practices that help me arrive at being who I feel called to be: a soft Black woman learning to land gently. But what does that mean?

On the surface, this looks like a statement about being well-rested. But in the world of my ideas, it is also about work. The phrase “a gentle landing” has been used by midwives to describe a successful delivery of a baby on the other side of laboring. For me, the question I am always asking looks at what a well-rested version of me is able to do as much as who I am able to be. A gentle landing has always described the rest I need to flourish as well as a description of my work done at the pace of flourishing.

There is no part of me that believes I can live into that vision for my life alone. Which is why I have been writing about the gentle landing I’ve been seeking all these years, in hopes others would desire to come alongside me and help me experience one and sustain the work that helps create it for others.

There have been many times I’ve felt naive. But I have read enough to know that feeling that way is all part of the pain that comes with resisting cultural hegemony and systemic oppression in the way I live. As soft as I am, my life is still a fight: against the pull of of the racist, sexist, ableist, and capitalist violence that calls me away from my humanity. I refer to these as devocations.

As part of my training, I have also read and walked alongside folks who have helped me arrive at new understandings of (my) vocation through their work.⁵ Some I have unpacked here and some I endeavor to find more ways to uplift their work. But I must say my most profound vocations stirrings happen in relationships. With Black women, femmes and nonbinary people in particular. With Bethany Nicole, author of The Soul Work Newsletter, specifically. It is because of my time reading her writing and in friendship with her that I have arrived, again, at the shores of this truth:

A Gentle Landing is my soulwork.

When beginning to describe what soulwork is, Bethany Nicole writes,

“Soulwork is the name I have given to the spiritual, intellectual, and experiential framework I developed while trying to survive my life. Soulwork was born from burnout. From the betrayal of institutions I had given myself to. Institutions that took what they needed from me and handed back something smaller and more diminished in return. Soulwork was born from the moment I quit my job without a plan, scared and certain simultaneously, knowing only that I could not keep surviving inside systems that asked me to betray myself daily.”

— Bethany Nicole, soulwork defined (emphasis mine)

Just like me, Bethany Nicole’s work is concerned with the labor of Black women and how it has been distorted by oppressive systems and cultures. She calls it the “Racial Capitalist Labor Regime,” which serves to take away so much from Black folks, including our inner lives:

And we have done all of this while being told, by the dominant culture and sometimes by our own communities, that our interiority does not count. That our knowledge is not knowledge. That our suffering is not suffering. That our calling is to give, not to become.

But here is what the regime did not account for: that surviving all of that, with your soul intact, makes you an expert.

— Bethany Nicole, soulwork defined

I love how she lands on survival⁶ as an epistemology (way of knowing). If I needed to feel anymore called, here are the two sentences I need to keep coming back to:

Soulwork’s argument is that this specific social location makes Black women and people of marginalized genders uniquely positioned to lead the charge toward vocation. Toward labor that makes us more free.

— Bethany Nicole, soulwork defined

In a future post, I will explore the other 4 of the 5 pillars of Soulwork but for now I will sit with community. She writes:

Knowledge is co-produced and sustained through collective bonds. In Soulwork, we are validated through relational accountability. We don’t heal alone, and we don’t work alone.

— Bethany Nicole, soulwork defined

Ki moun ki voye’ou?

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

— Isaiah 6:8, NRSV

Growing up, there were times when I would try something new or different and fail. Times when I got burned by my naiveté, walking into a situation where I did not have all I needed to make an informed and safe choice. There were times when I was hurt by those who deceived me because I let down my guard for a moment. In all those times, I have heard one of my parents say “Ki moun ki voye’ou?” or “Who sent you?” I have always interpreted that rhetorically the answer is “no one.”You have to hear it as a reprimand for it to make sense. It reminds you to mind your business. Mind yourself. Mind the work that is before you, not what you bother yourself with out of hubris.

“Ki moun ki voye’ou?” comes to me when I get burned. Isaiah 6:8 is where I go to remember that sometimes the call begins with a burn.

After seeing a vision of heaven (allegedly), the prophet Isaiah has this to say about his emo self:

“Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

— Isaiah 6:5, NRSV

One of the angels responded by pulling his mouth(—feels like a reprimand, right?—) and pressing a hot piece of coal to his lips, then said “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

To be honest, I don’t understand why he had to be burned for his sins to be forgiven. Why was the path to redemption lined with pain? Does pain make prophecy clear?

I ask these questions and don’t answer them because I do not intend to make proclamations. I also share these to say that in a moment of confidence about feeling called a minister, I bought some clergy wear. And then I got burned.

In my head heard the voice of my parents saying “Ki moun ki voye’ou?

My “woe is me,” is often wound up in my awareness of where I sit on the margins of society, among others who sit on those same margins—we’ve all been burned. My “woe is me” is often wound up in my uncertainty that I have actually seen the “the Lord of hosts.” But when I am at my wits end, exhausted beyond belief, I find a dream that ministers to my soul. The angels who dance and worship in those dreams are Black like me.

The burns seem to hurt even more when you have a vision of heaven you hold on to, something to point to that reminds you it doesn’t have to be this way.

After Isaiah’s lips are burned and the Lord asks the question “Who shall I send?” It is then he responds “Here am I! Send me!”

God then gives him the first prophetic word he must speak, which includes the recognition that he will share these truths with people who will not be able to understand. He will watch as destruction comes upon them and throughout this, he will share a message that few will grasp—and among the rubble, only a stump will remain.

The message is bleak, except that it ends with “(The holy seed is its stump.)”

Yeah, in parentheses just like that.

Again,

BLEAK.

For over a year, I have been on this journey of looking for a clear sense of call alongside some validation that I have been doing alright. And every time I feel like I find it, it disappears behind a fog. Sometimes I go looking for it in the wrong places and get burned yet again in a way that further obscures my connection to a sense of purpose.

“Coming to my senses” for some might mean pursuing work where there is more institutional support. Work that the dominant culture recognizes as important. But in a world that is collapsing, “coming to my senses” looks like realizing I am among people who do not understand, and with a vision of heaven (a world otherwise) I want to see come into reality.

So I guess I’ll take the stump.

I will take what is left standing after I have spent my life faithfully doing my soulwork.

don’t write yourself off yet

Here I am wearing something else that makes a different part of me come alive. It is amazing what a wardrobe change or a wig will do to one’s personality. The work of being and becoming is fluid, isn’t it?

People keep telling me I look like Storm whenever I wear this wig. I have always admired her and saw the Strong Black Women in her, in her capability to make changes on a global scale. She can weather any storm because she is Storm. Her calling is anywhere there is weather which is potentially everywhere. Some say she is the most powerful mutant ever—yet she still has to navigate discrimination as a Black woman and a mutant. Even Storm does her work through the burn.

In the video, I am singing a song that has always helped me come out of my blues. It begins with these lyrics:

Hey, don’t write yourself off yet
It’s only in your head, you feel left out
Or looked down on

Just try your best
Try everything you can
And don’t you worry what they tell themselves
When you’re away

— Jimmy Eat World, The Middle

Central to the story of this sabbatical is this sentiment, because for many reasons, I was getting ready to write myself off. I still get in my head about not feeling supported, but I see the support through this fundraiser. I see it in the many moments and people beyond the institutional church where I’ve experienced belonging.

I don’t agree that my feeling of being “left out or looked down on” is only in my head—but I have often internalized the messages the world and the church have given me: that I am only accepted so long as I am willing to play the Strong Black Woman role.

But sure, Jimmy Eat World—and y’all—I will keep trying my best. But I am not so sure “everything-everything will be alright” but I suppose that is the burn talking. “Ki moun ki voye’ou?” my inner voice asks again.

A photo from inside the retreat center, in front of a wall of windows looking out at a lush view of trees.

The sabbatical is commissioning me—or better yet, it has been exactly what I needed to stop looking for a commissioning in the way the Google AI summary described. The sabbatical is sending me into my soulwork because I have realized:

I can’t keep doing this.

There must be a better way.

I gotta keep seeking it and invite others into seeking it with me.

Because this [gestures wildly everywhere] isn’t it—

We can’t keep doing this.

For now the clergy wear sits in my closet. I haven’t worn them since a year ago when I tried them on and took that picture to send to a group chat with some Black women friends. I remember them holding my tender hopes with me as I shared my testimony with them last year. Our group chat, called “Black Girl Softness” is just one of the many ways I am connected to Black women who are brilliant and also often exhausted and stretched thin.

I write as I do, telling my stories but remembering theirs.

so I have more support than I initially imagined…

I started this newsletter because more people were listening to a podcast I started about Black women needing rest and softness than I had ever thought would listen. I wondered if they would read my words as well…so I wrote here, for over four years.

I wanted to find a way to continue to center Black women’s call to a vocation of softness and address the very real truth that these systems are actively harming all of us. Gentle-people, I hope I have created something that achieves those aims.

So long as I have done that—as I do this—it matters very little whether I am recognized as a minister in any official capacity or not. This is my soulwork. My practice. My struggle. My labor.

The stump is what survives. What continues on after something has been cut or worn away. The stump is what remains to confound us all—

Waitaminute. Have I been stuck or am I simply having a restless dreamer’s response to being rooted?

I don’t know the answer but I know all of this came out of my reflection after two days at a retreat center, exploring the work of rest and retreat for myself and others.

I don’t know, but I know the names of the individuals who have invested in my sabbatical dreams for this summer. More than I could have ever imagined.

A gentle landing is possible.

It is unfolding in my life.

I am carrying new dreams.

And it finally feels like it is time to push.

1. Anyone else finding Google impossible to use these days? I could not ignore how much I liked this definition and struggled to find one that was as succinct.

2. I am increasingly drawn to quietness and contemplative practices and meditation. I also attend a sangha (Buddhist community) from time to time.

3. This is a term I learned from Amy Kenny’s book My Body is Not a Prayer Request.

4. To name a few, Sharon Betcher, Amy Kenny, Resmaa Manekem, Michelle Kemp (Earth and Vessel), and Queen of Flow in Faith. I also consider Lucille Clifton’s poems for their lessons in embodiment and sovereignty.

5. Here is a short list of my favorite books & resources on vocation. These are all affiliate links.

Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood - Patrick Reyes

The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive - Patrick Reyes

Tending Call: A Liberation Theology of Vocation - Callid Keefe Perry, new book just came out this year!

You Don’t Need a Calling: An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto for a Life of Purpose - Damon Garcia, coming out this September. More to come on this one, btw.

Check out Bethany Nicole’s The Soul Work Newsletter. I will share more about it in the post but it deserves it’s place in this list.

6. I have also written on survival on AGL. My favorite is this affirmation I wrote that continues to keep me dreaming.