Energy Spent Wisely

I was recently bullied online by someone I considered a friend because I hadn’t shared my views about the war in Israel/Palestine on a social media platform. I and others have a moral obligation to speak out online she posited, presumably voicing an opinion she shares, but I think her anger was just that I hadn’t spoken out at all. It hurt me really deeply that this person that I respect and admire would choose to manipulate me this way into doing something that I clearly wasn’t going to do. Additionally, it felt not at all relational: if she wanted to know what I thought, why didn’t she ask me? If she wanted me to understand how my reticence to share impacted her, why didn’t she share that with me? Anyone who knows me well knows that trying to manipulate me into doing something will only antagonize me, and thrust us both into conflict, and I might not like conflict, but baby, I ain’t afraid of it. Finally, it dawned on me that this person is also a woman of color, which made me really angry: for a Black woman to be publicly angry is a risk to her life in our world, and this person’s behavior seemed to ignore that completely.

Generally, when I get this hurt and upset, I have one move: emotional cutoff. I flip a double bird and bounce. (Well, let’s be honest, I rail and shout at the person and judge them, and then I flip a double bird and bounce.) One of my life lessons is to befriend the question of why: so for the rest of the day, this painful interaction worked in the back of my mind and in the space between my shoulders. Why did this bother me so much? Why had I been so hurt by this action? It’s never outside of yourself, I heard one of my teachers say to me. What is this touching in you, I heard another teacher say. Who do you want to be in this? I heard my higher self ask.

Let’s find out.

black-and-white photo of hedge labyrinth with person walking through it. photo by Maksym Kaharlytsktyi

*

The other morning, I was making my bed before work. It was dark out, my partner was away, and I was trying to move toward another day of meaningful (and taxing) work with equanimity, unwisely ignoring the fatigue and anxiety that I felt. I was listening to a recording of “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” by Audre Lorde, read by Teneshia Samuel. (As I write this, I rise from my desk, looking for my copy of Sister Outsider, so that I can run my fingers over the words, and I realize that, having just relocated to Boston from North Carolina, I have no idea where in my house that text is. The book hunt makes me smile.) Those prophetic and convicting words from Sister Audre were spoken:

“I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength.
I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
”

— Audre Lorde

At the time, I shook my head while tugging on the sheet, as if being admonished by the ancestral auntie who was, in fact, chiding me. What was I not saying, and why? What was I saving by holding my tongue, and would it be good for me in the long run? I look at my book today, and in the margin of this essay, I wrote in blue pencil, “permission to GRIEVE.” I am sure I was thinking about the way in which Black women must hold our grief apart from our presentational and subjective experience, because grief makes us human and vulnerable, and existing in a culture in which we weren’t meant to has taught us that to grieve and to be vulnerable is not safe. Anger is, at least, a shield by which we can defend and fight back; grief just makes us penetrable, pierce-able.

And so, if I will be pierced regardless of my consent, if I will die, if not under the gears of the machine, then by the Hand that transforms all things, then what must I say before I die? Who is served by my silence? Who is harmed by it?

*

I am in the process of working toward ordination in a mainline protestant denomination in the United States. One of the questions those in process with me are asking ourselves and one another is, is jess someone who will steward the access, privilege, and microphone of the Church with integrity, safety, and justice? Will she share the gospel thoughtfully and in accordance with the head of our Church, Christ? One of the ways in which folx discern this about me is by witnessing my preaching.

Now.

My husband will tell you that I love to preach, but that’s just because he’s closest and he often gets the earful. Truly, my day-to-day doesn’t offer me much opportunity to interpret scripture with and for others the way that my pastors and mentors do when they step into the pulpit. Not only that, but I feel the weight of that space whenever I preach: it isn’t (just) that I feel I have to say something that makes folx uncomfortable, but not so uncomfortable that they stop listening, and also interested enough to reflect on their own way in the world and that if they don’t like it, I don’t want to hear about it, and I will. Something happens when a person steps into that space. Suddenly, for some who are listening to them, that person becomes a vessel onto which we project all of our fears, or insecurities, or demands, or expectations, or needs related to our relationship with Divinity. Not only do I carry my own burdens into the pulpit that I have to deal with, but I receive those from others, without my consent. This is an occupational hazard, and it’s a rough one. Can I deal with it? I’m not sure—and for the record, don’t trust anyone who says yes unequivocally, they haven’t really sat with it if they’re super sure. With the help of God, yes, but this is what discernment is, right?

One of the questions I’ve been asking myself is, where exactly is my pulpit? If I were working as a pastor—assistant, lead, solo, resident, fellow, whatever—I’d know, it would be architecturally, energetically, and consistently clear. But I’m not; I’m working as a chaplain, and I’m doing so because Spirit has called me it. The Venn diagram of chaplaincy and pastorship is an intersection, but it’s not a union. For me to use the death of a loved one in my work as an opportunity for conversion to a faith tradition is religious abuse. (I happen to believe it is this when pastors do it at funerals, too, but that’s a different essay.) I do not preach at or to people in my hospital; I abide with them. I listen to them. I bear witness to them. I reflect them to themselves, and to others who may not see them as clearly. I invite them to feel, and I feel with them. My ministry has a different ask and a different shape.

Do I preach? Where do I preach?

I used to preach on social media; hm, well, if preaching is being vocal about my politics and the way they intersect my faith, then I used to preach on social media. I no longer think preaching is this simple. I haven’t preached lately, nor for a while. I’ve thrown all my energy into holding others’ trauma, into celebrating and grieving and lamenting and petitioning with others in real time, in real life, and the apps just don’t often feel like a space where that lives. I listen a lot on the apps, but I speak less, and if I’m honest, I think it’s really good for me. I also follow folks I consider faith leaders on the apps: my executive conference minister, Rev. Darrell Goodwin; Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis of Middle Church in New York; Candice Benbow; Gail Song Bantum; Jessica Chapman Lape; @TheHospitalChaplain; @DivergentChaplain, and many others who model for me what it is to engage social media (read the wild west) as a spiritual leader. Some of them preach with memes, some of them preach with videos or threads, and some of them preach with photos of themselves, in joy, in movement, in humanity. Their models cause me to wonder, am I doing this correctly? Do I need a “professional” account in places, and a place where I just wanna post selfies of me in my Black queer joy, or me with my Honey, or what I’m witnessing, or me face-deep in vegan food somewhere else? Is this a boundary worth holding, even? I tend to like erasing these lines, to like being my full self in one place, and it’s generally better for my mental health. To have an account that is “appropriate” touches a bunch of injury seeded in my family of origin that I am working to heal.

But until this person antagonized me for not saying what she wanted me to say, I never even wondered if anyone was listening to me on social media. No one else has asked me to speak on anything, not like they have asked Jamyle Cannon or Sunn M’cheaux. Our culture is such that if you step away from the mic for even a minute, your loyals will forget the sound of your voice, and so I have not been amplifying my voice because it’s already so facking loud out here, and no one is listening for me.

I was heated, literally, by this interaction I had online—I felt bullied, manipulated, and hurt that someone I thought was my friend sacrificed our friendship in favor of vitriol, antagonism, and frankly, cruelty. Fortunately for me, I have no chill, so I said to my colleagues, I need help, and I told them what had happened and how I was feeling. One of them wisely asked me, what’s this relationship like, maybe this person sees you as a spiritual leader. I couldn’t believe it. We don’t share a faith tradition; we haven’t been in conversation for years; we don’t worship or ritual together. It’s inconceivable that she actually cares what I think.

My higher self asked, but what if she does think of you as a spiritual leader, despite all that other stuff? I mean sure, in your embedded theology, a spiritual leader was a straight dude, Black or white, head of the family, and he told you what to do and you did it? You weren’t even present as a spiritual leader. Are you still erasing yourself?

Nah, that’s just ego, I said to myself. It doesn’t look like that out here.

Yeah, but they told you when you went to HDS, that after they came out, that reality was going to land for others heavy on the table. Maybe that MDiv is a microphone that is in front of you and others are waiting for you to speak into it. You made an impression while you were there, you made an impression in residency. You are out here hustling for reproductive spiritual needs. You aren’t invisible.

Ugh, but this isn’t the place. Nothing about this is real, it’s all curated and performative. If I really thought a well-timed post or story or TikTok was going to sway foreign policy, I’d do it. It’s just cacophony out here, full of sound and fury. I’m not Barak Obama for fuck’s sake, no one is waiting for me to sound off.

You’re right. You aren’t. And your silence will not protect you. Someone may not be asking you to speak, but they notice that you’re silent. You are going to die. So how do you want to live?

*

illustration of hand reaching down to take two hands in waves. illustration by Sue Carroll

I remember being angry for most of my thirties. I was unafraid of my anger; I understood it, and it felt like a resource, like a weapon, like a tool of clarity and meaning making. Man, did it cost me a lot to be so angry. I remember sitting at my dining table with a dear and wise friend, railing about how freely and indiscriminately Black folx were being killed, and how angry I was with the yogis in my life (still at sea in the white supremacy that undergirds the wellness industrial complex) who were either ignorant of the fact and who were advising me to spiritually bypass. Why weren’t they more angry? Why weren’t they doing or saying anything?

“It’s okay to be angry with people for not being angry enough,” she said to me. “I’ve felt that way. And if you are angry with others for not being angry, you’re going to be angry all the time.”

It stunned me. It was a lesson that keeps on giving. What a waste of my prana. My anger could continue to clarify my work, could invite me to speak on what mattered to me, but to rage at others for their way of moving through the world was just going to burn me alive. It was immolation that would not resurrect anyone’s daughter, would not bring her back from whatever field or alley or cell she’d been left in. My self-righteous anger would not make abortion access easier for a teen who lived in the bible belt, nor would it ease the aching heart of a mother who’d miscarried three times. It wouldn’t help the trans person discern their relationship to their changing body and how it related to their vision of parenthood. It wouldn’t transform the history of the American police force, it wouldn’t rewrite state and local policy. It wouldn’t even teach breathing techniques to police officers, which is something I could actually do.

I think about this person who attempted to manipulate me into action, and I remember a younger version of myself, who also needed other people to be publicly as angry as I am, to draw a line in the sand and say no, not anymore.

If this person is anything like I was, underneath the layers and layers, and layers, of rage, are bone-deep fatigue and grief. And fear. That version of myself is tired of living in a world that does not love me, does not see me, and will not keep me safe. That version of me wants to live, she wants to feel sunlight on her face and worship in joy and laugh with her loved ones. She wants to believe there is enough for all of us, and nothing about life has confirmed that. She is almost struck dumb with how difficult it is to live. She wants to live. She wants to feel safe, to know who she can trust, to know who will hold her during this existentially terrifying moment that we blithely call life. Who can she look to, will they recognize the grief and fear in her eyes? Who will protect her? It is intolerable to feel this frightened and angry and sad.

It is intolerable. It is part of the human experience, and it is intolerable. So when I felt feelings that were so big that I couldn’t hold them by myself, I absolutely slung them on other people and called it justice. The feelings were too big, I couldn’t hold them on my own, and so I slopped them onto others like mud and I made them deal with it. I discharged onto others. Did it make me feel better? Maybe for five minutes. But it didn’t change anything about the reality I was living in that is so painful, and it torched my relationships, which is not what I wanted.

We do this all the time. We make other people responsible for our feelings every time we yell at our kids or our spouse, the barista who messed up the order, the person on the other end of the phone who doesn’t understand us, whoever isn’t meeting our expectations. We do it every time any one of us picks up a weapon, whether we have a flag on our arm, a cause in our heart, or a manifesto on our computer. We do this because we don’t know how to feel our feelings, because our nervous systems are overloaded, because this is not how we were meant to live, and our bodies know it, and we can’t handle it.

I try so hard to love that version of myself. I see her reflected in every soldier, every civilian, every lone gunman, every disappeared girl. I try to love radically, and loving radically upsets our paradigms. It defies duality, it rejects the notion of arrows and straight lines. I pull that version of myself into  my lap, and I encircle her in my arms, and I breathe with her until our bellies are soft. I smooth her hair and we cry together, and then I whisper, I am here. This world is a prison, and this life is a penance, and the only remedy I have to offer you is that I am here and that I love you. I see you and I love you and nothing about this is fair or okay. Here we are, we have our breath, and we have ourselves, and we have each other, and we have a love that is more powerful than each of us. That can make something healed. That can make something new.

let’s hang out

When even a little of your life’s work or heart’s desire gets clearer, you suddenly want to move toward it fast, right? The thing you’ve been wanting to feel, the electricity, the flow, the zzZZZZZZZzzzzzz, you finally feel it, and if you’re anything like me, you want to move toward it at top speed. And then, something pops up in the road that slows you down; it grinds you to a halt, and forces you to be still, to wait, to do nothing.

For me, that thing is bronchitis. I know, it doesn’t sound so bad if you’ve had it or you know what it is, but just because it has a common name doesn’t mean it won’t take you out like a first-string middle linebacker.

This might make a better story if I told you that I’d been working myself to the bone, that I’d been spending shift after shift in the hospital praying with families who were losing loved ones, that I’d baptized five babies and laid to rest five more, that I’d presented three verbatims, and that I’d provided staff care for nursing staff on six different units, all in the span of a week! (And really, if you’re not a hospital chaplain, by now you’re rolling your eyes.) But none of that is true. My first week of work in May was pretty average: I did help facilitate some staff care on a couple of ICUs, and I co-facilitated a community health center spirituality group in which no one showed up. By the end of the week, though, I could feel that telltale sweat/chills/ache that said something bad was coming, and I spent most of the weekend in bed. I missed three days of work this past week to this infection. I came in on a Tuesday when I should have stayed home, and I came in on a Wednesday because I didn’t want to miss more education. My colleagues and supervisors all wore an expression of concern and incredulity when we talked: they looked at me like, woman, what are you doing here? You sound terrible and you look worse. It’s not that deep, go home.

I’m often a worker who believes in boundaries. My phone doesn’t ring after 9 pm because that’s how I set it up, and that’s how I like it. If I can at all help it, I do all my CPE writing at work, so that when I’m home, I can enjoy being there, and spend my time the way I choose to. When my colleagues are in need of time to tend to their lives—they’re sick, or injured, or a loved one has died—I’m big into them placing their attention where it belongs and picking up their slack. But somehow, when I was sick, I couldn’t show up this way for myself. I was stunned, honestly. I was embarrassed. It took several folks worrying over me to help me understand that this wasn’t something I could power through. What was at work in me that made me keep trying to pretend I wasn’t as bad off as I was? When I finally got home and was still, the rip tide of illness took me. My throat was on fire. My chest and belly were ceaselessly heaving and sore with coughs that buckled my entire body. My skin was clammy and greasy. My voice was hoarse, if it was there at all. I got tired getting up to change my pjs or just make tea. It was bad. Few times in life have I slept so much and still felt so tired.

I went to urgent care, and while I was there, I flashed back to the last time I was a child and was this sick. As a girl, I was desperately afraid of the throat culture: a nurse, armed with a Q-tip the length of a pencil and the circumference of a marble stuck a wooden popsicle on your tongue and went on the hunt for your tonsils. She would wipe over and over and over with her swab, and it was all I could do not to puke all over her shoes. I sat there and saw that nurse come in with the swab, and I was instantly ten years old, and started apologizing for whatever would come next. The, nurse, bless her heart, believed me when I told her I’d try not to boot, and she wheeled the laptop out of the room and out of the splash zone. Fortunately, the process has changed over the last 30 years. No more tongue depressors, and the touch is evidently a lot less precise. I managed to do a strep test and a throat culture without redecorating her scrubs, myself, or the room.

Parts of me have asked, in the haze of fever dreams, when did I get sick? How was I exposed? What caused this to happen: did my acupuncture loose something? Is this a healing crisis? I did a lot of energy work, do I need a cleansing? But I’m not sure how much any of the answers to these questions matter; what feels important is the stillness I must practice in getting well.

Stillness is not my favorite. I am a big woman with a big personality and a big reservoir of energy. So being still feels like I don’t care. It’s also worth saying, and it only occurs to me now, that there have been moments in my life when other people, white people or older people, people with more power than me, have perceived my stillness as a kind of flaw, some indicator that I don’t want it bad enough or I’m not serious, that in order to prove my worth and my capacity I must always be doing. Now, I’m able to look back and feel compassion for that poor younger version of myself who was always trying to prove, and to tell those folks who felt I didn’t jump fast enough to go kick rocks. But is that anxiety of proving myself still at work?

A friend and colleague in my cohort helped me surface an idea that I hold: if I’m not hustling or working or doing something, then I am sure (read, afraid) that something bad is going to happen. If I take my hands off the wheel, if I don’t work, if I am still and surrendered, Spirit is not going to bless me, but instead only ruin and desolation are mine. Can you imagine? What room is there for grace in this as a worldview? It sounds so Protestant and hard working: God helps those who help themselves, so get out there and do it, because you only get a blessing by earning it. Another colleague and friend reminded me of a member of the Major Arcana in the Tarot, a tool of reflection, insight, and/or divination: The Hanged Man.

The Hanged Man from Black Tarot by Nyasha Williams and Kimishka Naidoo.

This is my favorite rendering of the Hanged Man that I’ve seen so far. According to the Rider-Waite-Smith version, the card reflects a masculine-presenting person, caught by the leg in some kind of noose or trap, hanging upside down from something, and looks pretty chill about it. This is not a domestic terror act-cum-neighborhood picnic, and it’s not state-sanctioned murder; this is just a somebody who’s gotten scooped up, who can’t get untangled, and who’s just gonna relax and wait a while. This hanged man is female-presenting, has gorgeous locs (#hairgoals), and seems expressive in her suspension: she’s taking this time and making it creative, because what else would you do when suspended by silks, except see what kinds of cool shapes you can make with your body?

So I finally, finally feel like I’m in my zone, and I start to move forward, and I get grounded by a bronchial infection that makes me too tired to do much of anything. For days. I am forced, not just into energetic stillness, but into bodily stillness. I haven’t been back to work yet, so we’ll see what happens on Monday. But it would seem that there’s a new era, a new level, of stillness I need to practice. What will happen if I’m still? What will I miss out on? Will ruin and desolation come for me the way I fear they will? (I mean, eventually, because that’s part of the human experience right, but not like, tomorrow.) I don’t know what lessons stillness has to offer me. But I’m getting the signal loud and clear that it’s time to stop moving and just practice being still.

reluctant hope

This past Sunday I heard a pastor preach about Hope: because of the story of this day, we can have hope, she said to me. It reminded me that in previous Lenten and Easter seasons, I’m not the one who’s blasting trumpets and waving lilies and shouting for joy about resurrection; I’m quiet and anxious and awash in the mystery of my teacher not being where I left him. His body was right there. It sounds prosaic, like I’ve misplaced my keys or something, but the dissonance of him not being where he was when I saw them close the stone on him is so profound I feel it in my chest. He was just. Right. There. Now he’s gone.

There is a part of me that wonders if it’s a dirty little secret to acknowledge that I am a student of Christ who lacks hope, or at the very least, who doesn’t practice hope like it delivers and overcomes. On days when I feel bleak, when I am discouraged and enraged by the lack of love, the lack of morals, the lack of respect, that my fellow citizens feel for me, and for others with less power than I have, hope feels like an invitation to cruelty. I am supposed to have hope in a system that shows itself to be unbalanced, unfair, and unjust; I am supposed to hope that people with power chosen to represent my views and needs will act according to our shared conscience and shared beliefs; I am supposed to hope that the justice system will protect the ones I love. It feels mean to ask me to hope right now. Hope feels like a luxury for someone at less risk or with more privilege.

I won’t sing a song of victory over death for Easter; that’s a song that I’ve heard plenty of times before, and if I’m honest, it’s not as compelling, nor as challenging, as the songs I hear Christ sing about what it means to follow the Good Road in relationship with one another. Rather than hoping that my sin has been washed away, I hope that I can find or co-create a way to provide client-centered, compassionate, interfaith care for reproducing people as they grapple with the way their faith intersects their family planning choices. I hope that I am given the opportunity to bravely, tenderly chaplain folx while and after they are terminating a pregnancy for whatever reason they choose. I hope that I am brave enough to choose a life with more love today, and tomorrow, and the next day, even (or especially) if it flies in the face of chronos/capitalism/white supremacy/cis-heteronormativity. I hope that even if the path set before me is washed out that I can continue to traverse that which allows me to love others and to love myself. I hope deeply and desperately that the radical love of Creator Sets Free is even now loosing and dissolving chains that are being forged to oppress, deny, and destroy.

When I get confused or sad or scared, one of the saints I turn to is Julian of Norwich. I don’t yet know what she has to say about hope, but I know what she has to say about suffering. (Also, when I read her in old English, I read her out loud and let my tongue get kind of soft, and it’s the closest thing I can get to an imitation of Nicole Kidman. I smell a biopic.)

“… For I telle thee, howsowever thou do, thou shalle have wo. And therefore I wille that thou wisely know thy penance, which thou arte in continually, and that thou mekely take it for they penance. And than shalt thou truly se that alle this living is penance profitable.” This place is prison, this life is penance, and in the remedy he wille that we enjoy. The remedy is that oure lorde is with us, keping us and leding us into fulhed of joy.”

Did you get all that? Or, as the Penguin Classics put it:

“…for I tell you that you will suffer woe whatever you do. And therefore I want you to recognize clearly what your penance is, and then you will truly see that your whole life is a profitable penance.” This place is a prison and this life is a penance and he wants us to find joy in the remedy. The remedy is that our Lord is with us, protecting us and leading us into the fullness of joy; …”

Before I stroll away from the liberation I find so beautiful in Christ’s teachings into apologetics for Christianity as a tool of the enslavement and imperial projects, let me say I’m not positing—nor do I think Julian is positing—that we under the thumb of modern American Fascist Christian Nationalism must endure the suffering of the institution because we are the ones with less power, and to suffer makes us close to God. No. No no no no. I hear Audre Lorde whisper beside her, “I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself… the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak… I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective.” If suffering is a part of life, if it is a part of the human experience, then perhaps my hope is that God is with me, protecting me as I center love and beauty and mystery and pleasure even as I work at threshold spaces and on behalf of folks who need or want abortion. My hope is that the God who affirms the right of every person to choose their reproductive present and future also affirms in me the capacity to choose wisely. My hope is that the created plane that I delight in so fully becomes less and less of a distraction from the Oneness beyond all Separation, and that I will learn to love those who would squash me with their vision of fascist, white supremacist, Christian nationalism. I also hope that they will learn to love me, because they have much to learn about love, because they see me as human, and would seek to love me as they love themselves, which is, after all, what white jesus told them to do.

I was sitting down to write, and before Julian, before Audre Lorde, I heard the words of Emily Dickinson, like a chorus: hope is the thing with feathers, the thing with feathers, with feathers, but I didn’t know more than that. The Poetry Foundation races to my rescue

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

A photo of pale feathers of a bird wing. Photo by Pascal Bullan.

Sings and never stops. So even on my bleakest days, which can feel more frequent in our world, the thing with feathers inside me is still singing Hope, because that’s what it’s designed to do. Even on that Sunday morning, when the students of Jesus were exhausted and still traumatized, when the women were gathering their jars and pots, the birds sang: the song came in through their windows and outside their doorways, just like it did in my place this morning. The things with feathers sang, because that’s what they’ve been designed to do.

let’s journey together

An announcement and an invitation, my friends: I’ve been enrolled in a spiritual accompaniment training hosted and facilitated by Still Harbor, and I’ve reached the point in my training where I’m preparing to begin my practicum! This means I’m seeking a few people (2-3) who are available to work with me once a month starting in March to explore and be supported in their spiritual practice.

Though the term spiritual direction has its roots in a specific tradition, the close relationship built over time between two people with spiritual practice as its foundation transcends labels or religious history. I’ve been working with a spiritual director for more than a year, and I’ve found it to be invaluable in my self-care, spiritual, and political practices and spaces. The language from Still Harbor that describes spiritual direction is

“The process of contemplative listening carried out in the context of a one-to-one trusting and confidential relationship. A trained spiritual director journeys with another person by listening to that person’s life story and experiences with an ear for the movement of the spirit, the presence of the sacred, and/or the insights that come from making deep meaningful connections. By offering supportive responses as appropriate and encouraging deepening reflection, clients can open up to new understandings and paths of growth.
”

— Still Harbor

I have loved training and practicing this work with my colleagues, and it intersects beautifully with my spiritual care work within the health care community. I am so excited about continuing to move deeper into this work, and I’m looking for folks who are interested in working with a spiritual director, or who are interested in supporting my training and education in this work. I’m prioritizing my availability for BIPoC folx, for women & femmes, for queer folx, and for folx who are making plans and decisions around their reproductive health, and considering how their religious and/or spiritual life supports them, or complicates this. Having said that, I’m open to new clients outside these communities as well. In order to work together, I ask that we both make a three-month commitment, and that we begin in March. These three sessions are free. Please note, given my schedule I’m only looking for three clients, so if you’re interested, let me know soon, so that I can save space for you.

This work has been nourishing and meaningful for me, and I hope that it can be the same for you. As you reflect on and heal from your past, welcome and tend to your present, and discern and daydream your future, take some support.

A note about our relationship: if we are close, if we’re friends or family, it’s likely that our relationship outside this context would mean we shouldn’t work together; I would love to suggest a colleague who would be interested and available to work with you, though! If we haven’t spoken voice to voice, if we don’t have a relationship outside this space or social media, and you’d like to learn more, contact me! Rather than leaving a comment here, please contact me here.

photo by Brandon Atkinson

under construction

Reader, I’ve dispensed with the self-flagellation of not writing enough. If you want to whip me with a wet noodle, go for it. I’m letting myself off the hook today. xo

I’m currently working as a chaplain resident—someday I will rail about the racket that is chaplaincy training here and now, but not today—in a hospital in the American South. It takes great pride in the complexity of care it’s able to provide, and its legacy of patient diversity. When most people hear chaplain, they think a shifty, shady preacher who is coming to tell them how to believe, who will pray with them, and then split. I’d wager that most of the patients and staff that I spend time with don’t really get what my colleagues and I do. I spend my days walking the halls of the hospital, visiting with staff, with patients, with family, listening & talking with people who are not having the greatest time of their life, by and large, and being with them wherever they are. Some days we pray together. Some days I facilitate a ritual with them that makes them feel closer to the Divine, a closeness they can never be apart from, an outward symbol of an inward state of being. Some days I let them yell at me (mercifully few, because I feel ambivalent about this as quality care). Some days I let them tell me what they believe and how they’re making sense of what’s happening to them. Many days I sit with the dead and the dying, and their loved ones, listening, grieving, accompanying. Most days, I try to get folx to tell me that they are not fine, and what’s really on their heart, what are they going through.

You know what I don’t do? I don’t teach asana. I haven’t set foot in a studio as a teacher since I left Chicago in 2019. I rarely facilitate pranayama. The nature of my teaching has changed, or rather, the context has changed. I might teach nadi shodana to a pregnant person who has been in the hospital for weeks trying to stay pregnant, who is feeling overwhelmed by anxiety. I might breathe consciously while I am hugging someone (masked, of course) to allow their own breath to slow down and feel more present to them. I feel confused by this new context, and how I bring some of my pillars of practice and teaching into it.

This work is very different from my work as a yoga teacher, though the skills come in handy. It’s also really different from the work I recently did in div school, though there are also many lines that connect straight from one to the other. My current position has an expiration date, and I find myself asking a ton of questions, chief among them, how do I craft a career that explores these intersections that are so vital and meaningful to me?

One recent night, I was in the trauma room when a young man was brought in for care. My role in a situation like this is to stay out of the way of docs & techs & nurses, to provide a stable and grounding presence for everyone there, and when the time is right, to connect with a client/patient and offer to contact a community member who can show up for them. That is sometimes not possible, and was not possible on this night. He was not the worst-off client I’d ever seen, but his condition had a visceral effect on me. This morning, I was rereading some Simone Weil and I found,

“Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. ”

— "Waiting for God", Simone Weil

I instantly realized I had not had this capacity for this young man. I felt this when he was in the room, too. I reminded myself that grounding and stability cannot come from fear, that he was afraid, that the care providers, for all of their skill and knowledge, were amped up as well, and that he needed someone, someone, who could offer an energy that was stable and present. From across the room where I was standing, I planted my feet, softened my belly, lengthened my spine, and I took three deep breaths. I did not look away. I let him know that I was here, and that he wasn’t alone. He never looked at me. I did not get a chance to speak to him. So the outcome questions that you have, I have too. But I was there. When it was time for me to go, I made sure that my teammate had all the necessary info, and could show up as fully as I’d been able to.

Our world is full of folks who do not want to feel what we are going through, who don’t understand what feelings are and how to be with them, and so we turn to behaviors and choices that allow us not to feel them, whether those are visited on our own body, or on the bodies of others. These outcomes are often harmful, which is putting it mildly. My hope, and my desire, is that if we learn how to ask ourselves, what am I going through? and not to run from the tender, honest answer to that question, that practice will teach us the skills to be present with others and to ask them the same question. May those practices that allow us presence and stability show up for us in all the places and all the ways. May we find the place where the teachings and the paths converge, and allow it to lead us where we must go.