this is me for now

perching lines, no. 16

Hello gentle-people,

I have been looking forward to this weekend for some time so I could be in the company of Black contemplatives at a virtual Black Contemplative Prayer Summit. While I knew a few Black folks who identify as contemplatives, such as my friend Robert the contemplative and the keynote speaker, Cole Arthur Riley, I couldn’t have imagined a gathering like this.¹ I came away from the summit feeling like I will be alright—identifying and pursuing a contemplative life—because I am in good company. An expansive and diverse company.

In light of this weekend, I hope you’ll indulge me in this brief reflection that kind of feels like it narrates what it means for me to be contemplative. Let this also serve as an introduction to my work for new subscribers—hey!

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A “perch” is a light rest. Much needed in a world where many of us have to learn how to catch a break while standing up. In these lighter posts, I will offer poems, questions, and connections for those brief moments of reprieve. [Explore more in this series.]

a being becoming

i'm not done yet by Lucille Clifton 

as possible as yeast
as imminent as bread
a collection of safe habits
a collection of cares
less certain than i seem
more certain than i was
a changed changer
i continue to continue
what i have been
most of my lives is
where i’m going

Every feather softens the fall.

Since 2021, the poetry of Lucille Clifton has gripped me. Every once in awhile, that hold is reaffirmed in moments of reckoning.

Lately, I have been in such a place—this surgery changed me. I am viewing my life—my “call to life”²—in new ways.

Today I pulled out my deck of Lucille Clifton quote cards and spread them out across my bed and picked three. One of them jumped out to me immediately with the words, “a changed changer/i continue to continue.” Recalling the poem, I recited the lines that followed it from memory.

Then I sat down at my desk, where I work, write these newsletters, and do my morning pages. I took out a box which contains the affirmation cards that I am building into a deck of my own. I released a fresh 3x5 index card from the stack and wrote in calligraphy:

This is me for now.

On the back of the card, the lined side, I wrote words the “transience” and “identity” so that future me might know there was a message for her on that card when she went looking through the deck for inspiration. For present day me, I slid the card into the clear plastic photo frame that lives in front of my desktop computer. Now when I write, until I feel inspired to change this card on display, these are the words I will see:

This is me for now.

I want to remember that I am a being becoming. The first sentence of my biography is “Rose J. Percy is a being becoming.”—so I want other people to know as well.

a Lucille Clifton scholar

The words of Lucille Clifton³ became a companion to me as my sense of vocation was shifting. I was burnt out and leaving white centering work behind. I was taking a break from being part of a church and loosening the shackles of life-denying theologies. I was also at the end of my Master of Divinity program and had no clue what was next for me.

The practice of writing affirmations came to me in this same season of uncertainty. The first affirmation I remember guiding me was this one:

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.

I wrote these words because my body was experiencing the pain of neglect from chasing a death-dealing path. One that was lined by white people saying things like “we need your voice.” My body was saying no and it was saying it loudly. I would write many more affirmations during this time, each one helping me find language for something worth living for.

In the midst of a program that offered few glimpses of true education,⁴ I decided I would call myself “a Lucille Clifton scholar.” There was something about the everyday and the ordinary to learn from her, something about the wisdom of Black survival and the expansiveness of Spirit. In her work, my body was remembered, in a way I did not feel it was remembered in the classroom or in the predominantly white (evangelical) church I was leaving. In her work was an expression of Black aliveness that felt tangible and simple; deep and light. There was a resistance to dying quietly and a commitment to surviving loudly— “won’t you celebrate with me,” she says.

I went into her words to find my own. They helped reshape my scholarship as one of (archival) devotion as opposed to rigor. They grounded me in deep expressions of joy and the release of humor, even as they delicately laced together the seriousness of tragedy. Her words explored her history and helped me ask questions about my own.

With her, I have a testimony: I was suffocating and in my search for breath, I found oxygen offered to help me inhale and exhale into fullness. I was lost, but I would find myself over and over again—and in case I needed help, I had a guide.

This is me for now

As I said, having surgery changed something for me. More accurately, my season of recovery has been illuminating. I got to live with my two best friends since middle school. My mother and friends made so many delicious meals and dropped them off for us. I got to spend time with my sisters, marveling at the adults they have become. I realized I am now looking up to my youngest brother. I laughed vicariously through my parents, who I rarely see in such high spirits, cracking jokes and teasing one another.

This past week I read The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive⁵ by Patrick Reyes. I reached for it because it was quoted in a book that will soon be published on a liberation theology of vocation. I reached for this book because I felt gut punched by every quote that was cited. I knew it was the companion I needed for this season I am in. Who would have thought I would be misty-eyed just reading the acknowledgements:

“To pursue my purpose, life has taken me a long way from home, and I am homesick.”

— Patrick Reyes

Clifton’s poem above says “what i have been most of my lives is where i am going.” As I return to the affirmation that this is me for now, I reflect on many lives. Yes, I am only in my early 30s but I have already lived a few different lives—I’ve come a long way. I have a long way to go. But this is me for now.

This is me for now:

This is who I am for this moment.

This is me taking in this moment.

This is me taking this moment—

I have already lived a few different lives and I am not so sure I know where I am going. But there is something about today, and every day after that I will call “today” that makes me suspect I am already doing some things that reflect a possible direction.

I am listening for it through the many contemplative practices that I have woven into my life—my morning pages, my affirmations, my poems, Clifton’s poems. I am listening for it in the laughter that can now reach the bottom of my healing abdomen. I am listening for it in conversations that take place in my home around the kitchen. For now it seems to be speaking so softly, I cannot yet make out the words—but I can already tell it will not be a sentence.

Landing Tracks

1. What does it mean for you to “continue to continue”? What parts of you remain as you go forward in this life? What parts are changing?

2. Do any parts of the “Lucille Clifton scholar” section resonate with you? Is there a poet who has shaped how you see life? What would it mean for you to be a scholar of their work?

3. Who are you for now? How is your identity in flux and taking shape as you embrace this moment and this day? What is the now calling you to? How do you take (in) this moment?

1. The purpose of this gathering wasn’t to draw those who identify as Black contemplatives, but for the ones that do—who led the various sessions—to share Black contemplative spirituality with whoever was interested in attending. So it was not just Black folks gathering.

2. I am indebted to Patrick Reyes who talked about vocation as “a call to life” in his book Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood. This is an affiliate link. I earn a 10% commission on purchases made through this link.

3. I have many of her poetry books, including The Collected Poems, which contains every one of her opens. But I started my journey with the collection How to Carry Water, edited by Aracelis Girmay. Both links are affiliate links.

4. I am thinking of education as the practice of freedom as expressed in the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire and bell hooks, as opposed to an education that demands we all become a “self-sufficient white man,” as critiqued by Willie J. Jennings in After Whiteness. Affiliate link here, too.

5. This is an affiliate link.