at the Church of Black Feminist Thought’s summer solstice session “It Is Our Duty to Witness, It is Our Mandate to Intervene, Black feminist cultural work in Times of Crisis”1 they opened the space by asking: what do you do every day that makes you feel liberated?
i felt moved by the group’s answers. greet the plants and the planets in the morning. sing. read. talk to myself in the mirror. i felt moved that i had an answer. sing (or dance) to one song. find humor.
i felt my mind start to rip a little at the paradox between the constraint of devotion and the unpredictability and expanse of freedom. i don’t yet understand how they go together. somehow they do.
the dependability (or predictability) of a daily practice is at odds with what i’ve been taught about freedom, in this “sweet land of liberty” (propaganda is wild) which is to do whatever the hell i want, to be accountable to no one, no place. what we (americans) call freedom is so often domination, control of other people’s labor, land, movement, and lives. we call the ability to extract, accumulate, and consume freedom. what we call freedom terrifies me.
the liberation the church prompted is thankfully at odds with this freedom. i am interested in this liberation, a kind of freedom that is about remembering agency, about acting from love and not from wound.
their question reminded me of my own power to care for myself, my spirit, for life — and my power of selection, to choose what and who i give my time and attention to.
these kinds of reminders are urgent in a society where so much is conspiring to make me feel apathetic (absence of care) and powerless (no choice). callousness and oblivion are rewarded in this culture. i am “accustomed to living in a place where there is no mercy.”2
this paradox only stands if i stick with american, culturally imposed “freedom.” shedding this, devotion and liberation become collaborators.
as in, when water is funneled through a more narrow channel or container, it flows more quickly and powerfully. the pressure of constraint, constriction, creates force.
i wonder about daily practice or devotion as a type of funnel which helps us access our own power, a funnel of attention or care whose force can free us.
i wonder about the practices and choices that allow us to access or harness the fuel already within us and our relationships; the tiny choices and expressions of agency that can, dare i say, propel us.
that we might realize and rush towards what and who we depend on, in the still places and in the rapids.
the session focused on the role of writers and cultural workers in times of genocide, studying some texts of Audre Lorde and June Jordan—both poets and organizers / revolutionaries. they offer so much spiritual and political fortification. support their work! ↩
Larry Ward, America’s Racial Karma ↩