"we will wear new bones again": on vocational euphoria
testimony time, Part 2 & and life updates!
Disclaimer, not an apology: In general, I am reshaping this newsletter as I realign my energy in this season, which is going towards long-term projects I will share more about soon.
This season is a special exception because I need to testify. We make exceptions for testimonies.
I will continue to share perching lines, life updates, what I'm reading and working on with an ongoing focus on what a gentle landing is/could be. I would love your feedback on this new format (see last week's post for an example)! Comment below or reply to this email.
If you really miss the essays—or are new here and want to read more in depth thoughts, check out the archive from on/before May 14, 2025.Hello gentle-people,
I was so excited to share this that I decided not to wait til Wednesday.
Y’all—I am still testifying—this PART TWO, and it all began with this affirmation:
“I don’t want to be needed, I want to belong. The songs of belonging are different, I can sing them with my whole body.”
—Spring 2021
A friend recently posted a life update and used the phrase “vocational euphoria”1 and when I read it I thought, “I am here.”
I have experienced vocational dysphoria and devocations—calls away from my full humanity. Calls that distorted the voice of God. Calls that silenced my creative voice and destroyed my confidence in myself. Calls I had to walk alone or in a shadow of myself. Calls of survival mode. Calls from a church that needed me, but did not want me—not in my fullness.
God is my witness. My body is my second and my hush harbor of relationships with Black women friends are my third. A whole constellation of cares that I’ve formed these last 5 years is my fourth.
Then there’s the rest of you—
It’s a little too long of a story to unpack in what I call a “hello gentle-people moment” but I’ve been writing about it since 2021, in this newsletter, which has opened up for me pathways toward what I’d call my life’s work—living and defining a vocation of softness and calling others into it.
You see, I have a testimony. I thought all I wanted to do was land gently because falling was the only certainty. But in this season, while I feel more grounded than I have ever been somehow my spirit is soaring.
There’s so much I want to share about how I got here and my dreams have been telling me lately that I’m just getting started. I see flight patterns I’m still getting strong enough to fly—but I SEE them.
How did I get here?
I prayed for this.
I manifested this.
I dreamed this.
I wept over this.
I studied this.
I earned this.
I walked this.
In this season, I’m slowly unfolding a new approach to my public facing work, new ministry offering and new expressions of (my) Black aliveness as I enjoy it. I’m excited to share on this new sense of freedom as I arrive at new levels of freedom still.
Follow me as I (still) follow Christ. As I follow Lucille Clifton. As I help Blackbirds fly.2 As I build community. As I write, sing and play.
Emphasis on play.
Emphasis on play.
Emphasis on play—
How’s that for vocational euphoria?
And now..an ask
Hello, gentle-people,
On Lucille Clifton’s birthday this year (June 27), I had many reasons to celebrate. Some were quiet, still unfolding. But most are loud and asking to be shared. Words keep tumbling out of my mouth as I am overflowing with testimony. What I share below skips past the testimony and goes straight into its conclusion. But trust—I am writing and recording all the pieces of it as it comes together.
This newsletter began while I was in a season of podcasting and needed financial support. I have always known I would go back to using it as a way to support my work beyond the newsletter again. In this season, I am trying to make that shift—please bear with me and bear witness. If you're someone who likes a TLDR, here's one:
I’ve been accepted into four fellowships that support my work as a writer, artist, and spiritual leader. I’m raising funds for travel, lodging, and to secure my spot in a songwriting fellowship; a gentle landing for my next journey of becoming.
Keep reading for more details, or scroll down to where you can show your support!
Hi, I’m rose j. percy. I’m a writer, spiritual formation leader, and creative practitioner who is called to a vocation of softness. This season marks a meaningful evolution in that work.
“new bones” by Lucille Clifton we will wear new bones again. we will leave these rainy days, break out through another mouth into sun and honey time. worlds buzz over us like bees, we be splendid in new bones. other people think they know how long life is. how strong life is. we know.
I am in a new season of becoming. Of new bones, as Lucille Clifton would call it. And I’m inviting you to be part of it.
Over the next few months, I’ll be traveling across the country—Arizona, Austin, Atlanta, and Vermont. But these are more than just opportunities to travel: They’re sacred stops on a journey towards reimagining my vocation, deepen my creative life, and resting into the next form of my becoming.
I’ve named this campaign The New Bones Fund, inspired by the poetry of Lucille Clifton. I am growing in new ways—vocationally, spiritually, artistically. As I devote myself to this growth journey in the next year, I really want to be "splendid in new bones." This year, I’m stepping more fully into spiritual leadership and public creative practice. I want to continue to live into a vocation that isn’t about survival, but about wholeness. To be “splendid in new bones” is to lead, write, sing, and gather from a place of rootedness—not depletion.
This season is about sharing more publicly the practices I’ve tended privately until now—particularly, in how much they shape me spiritually. In my music, I honor the full spectrum of emotion—including grief, lament, and righteous anger—as part of what makes rest possible. (I believe you contribute to your rest when you show up as your full self.) In this season, I am also sharing my calligraphy more, letting myself be seen, heard, and felt poetically along the way.
These days, I’m also becoming more comfortable identifying as a pastor—one who gathers people—as I lean into my role as Director of Spiritual Formation at New Roots AME Church in Boston and continue building digital retreat experiences inspired by the Woven series on and offline.
These fellowships represent a turning point in my vocational journey—an opportunity to integrate years of spiritual formation practice, creative work, and rest-centered praxis into public leadership, artistic contribution, and sustainable ministry.
Here’s what’s also true for me in this moment: I am dreaming new dreams again. And I am pursuing opportunities to realize those dreams, which are increasingly further out into the future than I have ever dreamed before. Though I don’t treat darkness as negative, I’ve learned a great deal from stumbling in it. As a mystic, I do not leave this way of knowing behind, but I am embracing a new relationship with light these days. That light has taken the form of four opportunities to learn, grow, and connect in the coming year. This year, I was accepted into four fellowships—two focused on rest and reimagining, and two centered on creative and scholarly practice. The Better Selves Fellowship will give me space to restore myself in nature—so I can return more grounded to the work I’ve been called to. The Rest and Reimagine "Social Weaver" Cohort from Nevertheless She Preached will offer me rest and reflection time alongside other justice-rooted preachers and creatives.
I’ve also been invited into two fellowships that focus on creative practice and poetic scholarship. The Made for PAX Fellowship will help me root my songwriting practice in contemplative activism. My time at the Rose Library will deepen my archival devotion work as I study Lucille Clifton’s papers, exploring how her spirit writing might shape future offerings of poetic spiritual formation.
Together, these fellowships nourish the same vision I hold in all my work: rest as sacred, community as possible, and creativity as spiritual calling. For those who don’t know, my Substack newsletter A Gentle Landing already helps fund smaller growth opportunities—books I reference in writing and facilitation, cohort participation, and even the poetry class I’m currently taking, which is preparing me to study the Lucille Clifton papers more deeply. This new season simply asks for a bit more support, for a stretch I can’t make alone.
I’m inviting your partnership to fund a series of fellowships that will expand my work as a spiritual leader and creative. Your support will fund travel, tuition, and integration time so I can carry this work further.
For everyone who supports the journey, I’ll write your name in calligraphy on a feather—a small but real gesture of thanks. I’ll keep them together as a reminder of the gentle people—yes, you—who helped make this landing possible.
If you’ve ever wanted to help someone land gently—this is your chance. Not just to donate, but to become part of a shared rhythm of care and creativity. Your support helps make possible the kind of slow, thoughtful, spiritually rooted work we so rarely get to invest in. It's an invitation to co-create a future grounded in softness. Your support gives me the capacity to steward these opportunities well—and to offer back what I learn with the depth and care it deserves.
You can support me through my Buy Me a Feather campaign on Buy Me a Coffee—a place where I’m tracking this journey feather by feather. The first $210 secures my spot in the songwriting fellowship. After that, funds will go toward airfare, lodging, and integration time. All of this works towards creating a gentle landing for me through this year of reorientation, creative emergence, and leadership. Your support will help me move with ease in ways that will influence and shape how I show up in the world.
You can also support me by sharing this newsletter with others. Since 2021, I've been nurturing a vision for my life through A Gentle Landing—a space that asks what becomes possible when we turn toward our tenderness, not apart from it. One of the questions that has quietly guided me is: how many feathers does it take to soften the fall? When you share these words, you're helping them reach someone else who might need a gentle landing too. That, too, is part of the work.
I have plans to share the dreams I’ve been having with you all—but you may have to hold on awhile. I expect more shifting winds through these fellowships, so for now, I’m holding these dreams close to my heart.
Thank you for being part of this becoming. I look forward to sharing more news about this light I am seeing in the year to come—because I know one thing:
I am just getting started.
landing tracks:
Do you have a testimony you want someone(s) to bear witness to in this season? How can you invite someone into a space where they can hear your story?
Is your testimony still coming together? In a poetry class I am in, the professor, Martine Bellen said everything does not need to be held together by narrative. Even disjointed, irregular, and meandering, what parts are standing out?
join in the tender work
I love a word with multiple, 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.
Shout out to you REVEREND Lori Cook!
Are you thinking about “BLACKBIIRD” by Beyonce? Because you should be.
I am late, but I am loving this cut!!!
♥️