Thank You Very Sweet

Child’s Pose

Bring your knees wide and your toes together to touch. Press your sit bones back to your heels and stretch your arms long in front of you. Feel the tops of your feet, your ankles and shins rooting down to the floor; root your palms and spread fingertips well. Breathe deeply through the nose, find a nice even pace to your breath and release your tongue from the roof of your mouth. Take an inventory of the body as you breathe, notice any areas that may feel tight (the inner thighs, the hips); send your breath there. Child’s pose is a wonderful restorative pose, it is calming and centering; Child’s Pose can be held for an extended period of time.

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Last night I paid a visit to my tree, Hope. Hope is planted in Hopewell, NJ at the home of my friends, Pete and Mara. On my drive to the country I wondered how I would find her. Could she have grown? Would there be fruit?

Nope, no fruit. And she looked pretty much the same to me, but maybe a bit more worn; and shorter. “She’s aging nicely..” Mara said. I agreed. My tree is four now, she’s a bit shorter because her roots are settling into the ground; she’s a bit worn because the deer nibble at her bark. But she is growing strong from the inside out, she no longer needs the protective net that used to cover her. She is subject to the elements just like the tall steady trees that surround her. What a witness they are; what inspiration they provide.

I feel like this tree. The same but different. Growing stronger from the inside out. Shorter, having been humbled – continuing to be. And a bit worn from nibbling deer. But firmly rooted, steady and inspired. Ironically I’ve been emphasizing tree pose this week in my yoga teachings. Or maybe that’s not ironic.

A few weeks ago my colleague, Toby, told Governor Christie that “Hope is powerful, yet fragile.” I couldn’t agree more…

I look forward to Hope’s first fruit. For we, who have no clue what sort of apples she will bring forth, will delight in surprise and sweet satisfaction. Amen.

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I can remember vividly being very angry with a woman friend of mine last year. I thought she was judging me and it made me so mad! I could tell you every thought that she was thinking about me and it really pissed me off!

How dare she judge ME!

But then I talked to my Soul Friend, Jessie, about it. Jessie is a minister, a teacher and a wise woman. She suggested to me that perhaps it wasn’t this woman that was judging me; perhaps the real judge was ME.

I recalled this story to mind today as I was leading a guided meditation for a group of women at Rutgers. Before we entered our space of stillness, we considered the patterns of the mind. We considered the pattern of “blaming” – holding others responsible for our pain and/or blaming ourselves for every problem. We considered the pattern of “personalization” -believing that what we feel MUST be true; if we feel guilty, we MUST have done something wrong. Right? We considered the “critic voice” – that voice that tells us that we are not good enough… And we considered the ways that we “catastrophize” – turning our smallest challenges into HUGE disasters; all the while distrusting our own abilities to endure adversity.

Boy is the mind a monkey! The purpose of meditation is to calm that monkey down!

And before we calmed it down, we also considered “Mind Reading” – assuming that we know what others are thinking and feeling about us; based on our own ideas, not theirs.

What my Soul Friend taught me a year ago, and what this meditation today reminded me of, is that A LOT of the time we function as “mind readers.” We feel judged at times, and then we get angry at the person who is “judging” us; we personalize; we even catastrophize… And we waste A LOT of energy.

I’ve never met anyone who has read my mind, have you? And if there are mind readers around, it is a rare gift; not common. In other words, maybe those thoughts that you are so sure about are your own. Perhaps YOU have projected your own judgments of self onto someone else…

Consider it.

When I was a child, my mother used to share this simple nursery rhyme with me: A.S.S. – U.M.E.; ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME. In other words don’t ASSUME that you know what others are thinking; rather, if you have a question, ask it.

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At Garden State Yoga.

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Root Chakra

Tonight at my 8PM class at Jai Pure Yoga, we will be focusing on the root chakra. This energy portal, located at the base of the spine (the perineum) is, according to my friend Jim, the chakra that roots us to the earth. It is associated with grounding, survival, family, stability, security, structure and a sense of order. When this chakra is blocked we can feel that we are not rooted; we can experience a sense of not belonging. But we all belong. Groups of people who have historically been marginalized may have difficulty with the root chakra; or maybe someone who doesn’t feel like they belong in their family. Personally, I have had difficulty with this chakra in the past, most recently in my doctoral program- a space where I feel so very different from everyone else. But alas, WE ALL belong. We are all children of God, and we are here, rooted here, for a purpose.

We bring awareness to this chakra by bringing awareness to our physical bodies. Our bodies matter! They are important, some faith traditions teach us to deny the body to the point of complete escapism. I disagree with this. Our bodies, our physical health, THIS LIFE, matters. The practice of yoga in itself brings awareness to the root chakra; practicing yoga begins the important work of clearing this channel. Tonight’s will be a great class, filled with rhythmic beats and base.

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This letter was delivered as a sermon on July 8th 2012 to The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Plattsburgh NY

7/5/12
Dear Husband,

I really want to talk with you about this thing that has been blowing my mind since last Tuesday. I was at the Links convention last Tuesday, listening to a presentation given by Dr. Jane Smith from Spelman College and she said that Black people will be extinct by the year 2060. Damn! I thought. At first I didn’t want to believe it but then it all started to make sense.

She started off talking about our percentage decrease in the population between 2000 and 2010. While South and Central Americans are celebrating their growth in North America, Black Americans (specifically those of us with the legacy of American Slavery) are slowly dying.

Whoa.

I spent the rest of the week looking for someone to blame for this…

At first I blamed it on genocide. Genocide is defined as the deliberate or systematic destruction of a racial political or cultural group. Surely we can think of the various ways that the act of genocide has been inflicted on our black brothers and sisters. We have been hated, to death; Feared, to death; objectified, to death – And at the very least, studied to death…

I sit in the halls of a criminal justice PhD program as we speak. All we talk about are black people, how depraved… How wild and unruly; “They” who don’t know how to raise their children to be contributing men and women in society. Criminal Justice might as well be renamed to African American Studies; we function as if crime doesn’t happen in any other culture. We don’t talk about white collar crime, or crime against the government… or the people– no we just talk about street level crime. Prisons are being built for our little black boys as we speak. Yes we will be studied to death and incarcerated to death. And yet, there is no responsibility taken for the generational pain inflicted upon us; the structural disparities, poor education, poor healthcare and sheer hatred.

But then I thought about suicide as well. French Philosopher Emile Durkheim said that in a society, if one cannot identify a clear path to success then they are likely to commit various forms of suicide. In other words, Durkheim talks about how different levels of social integration condition suicide. I see this also. Black people are committing suicide – not in the literal sense, but sort of. We are eating ourselves to death. Metaphysiscist, Louise Hay, says that over-eating is a protective mechanism, if you feel that the world is unsafe, you eat. That makes sense to me. And we are killing ourselves with drugs, addiction has everything to do with brokenness and untended emotional wounds – I get it. But so many of us are like zombies in the streets now. And the massive addiction problem creates a competitive drug- economy, a way for our little boys and girls to grow up and achieve financial success when other doors are closed to them, They can sell drugs to make money. But they end up killing each other in the process…

We are committing suicide by killing each other, through street violence, and gang violence, and domestic violence, and sexual violence. You know… “Pain gets turned into anger, anger gets sent through the chamber…” We as a people are dying more quickly than we are reproducing.

And on top of all of that, not only are our guns and drugs and drug economies killing us, but our mentality is killing us as well. I remember working at the women center in Trenton and women were refusing our help. They didn’t want to change the way that they lived, they didn’t want to change their world view. We fight desperately to debunk the myth of the welfare queen, taking advantage of the system. But if I am honest, I met welfare kings and queens, living comfortably with no ambition or dream. Lord have mercy on us we are dying.

Who could I be mad at, the system that created this culture: institutionalized Racism, intolerance, or do I blame a culture of people that this system created – often times hopeless, unmotivated, angry and reckless. I don’t know. It still doesn’t help that so many of our children are being under educated today. What options do they have now? Marianne Wright Edelman says that our poor black youngsters are being pipelined directly into prison. They build prisons now based on third grade test scores…

I was in a prison once where a young black man said that “if you were to pull the roof off of this place, it would look like a slave ship. The way that black bodies are piled on top of each other in this place…” Our black men are there…

go see.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this relationship between genocide and suicide last week, and then another thought came to mind as well. The third piece of the equation: That of evolution.

The last reason that came to mind was this concept of evolution. Evolution will also be a contributor to our impending extinction. Black people are the least partnered race in our society – look at me, writing to an imaginary husband. Do you even exist?

Or take someone like Condoleezza Rice. I sat at the Links convention last week next to Condoleezza rice, we had lunch together. She is lovely and brilliant and she has great family stories to share. But Dr. Rice is also un-partnered and she has no children. And she is not alone in that.Take Oprah.. There are so many bright and brilliant black women and men out there that have so much to offer the world but so many of us are un-partnered and have no children. There will be no future generation. And our kids today, so many with no identity, no Black consciousness. apathetic. dry. empty. depressing.

Yes these are to blame: Genocide, Suicide, Evolution…

I want to blame!

But I cant. You see I remembered that thing that Elaine Pagels told me about blame. That blaming someone or something makes you feel powerful. Or maybe a little less powerless. What good does it do for me to to blame this on any one thing, it won’t stop what is happening? It won’t make me more powerful.

This is just something that is happening. It is something that is.
I cried a little when we sang the Black National Anthem at the convention. “sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, sing a song full of the hope that the presence has brought us…”

Hope. Hmmm….

As Jane Smith continued on in her lecture, after breaking the news that black people are nearing extinction, she said that what we all need to be concerned with now is legacy building.

So I spent some time thinking about that too. What will they say about the Black people 100 years from now? Who will tell our story? Will the headlines of today get to determine what history says about us tomorrow? Will they talk about how we kept this country honest? Will they tell the stories of Emmit Till and Traynon Martin? Or Eric Garner and Micheal Brown? – and what about the nameless others?

Will the truth be told about the realities of slavery, convict leasing, lynching, black laws, mass incarceration? And will they talk about our strength, our great beauty, our music, our poetry, our food, our flavor, our culture, our gorgeous women and our strong beautiful men? What will be said of the African Americans after we are gone?

You see, something happened to me when I heard that message last Tuesday. It freed me a little. It freed me to be just a little bit more healthy and just a little bit more strong, it freed me to stop resisting so much. I remember so vividly fighting tooth and nail to save the community center that I ran in Trenton NJ. I fought and fought to restore our funding and in the end not only did the center still close, but I missed the fact that my boyfriend – KESNER – was also dying in the process. I lost both at once, because I was resisting the flow of life.

But I realize now that this thing that is happening is like the giant concrete ball in the Indiana Jones movie. I don’t know that I can change the generations of racial bias and fear of black people that pervade the psyches of so many who are not black. And I don’t know that I can change generations of self-hatred and ingrained inferiority that pervade the psyches of those who are. I don’t know that I can change the education system, or mass incarceration, or the destructive lyrics in many commercial rap songs. And I’m not sure that I can change the mantra “get rich or die trying” or “Live hard and die young”…. Are we speaking these things into existence?

What I can change is me. I can be whole. I count it such a privilege to be a Black woman because I can walk into so many spaces. And I will go into those spaces and I will tell the truth, because that is my calling. You see being whole helps me to understand that I am here on earth for a purpose.

I do not agree with Jane Smith that we will be totally gone by 2060, I think there will be a remnant: The last of the African-Americans. An evolved group who will tell the story, with the help of concerned others.

They will talk about us.

So this seems to be where we are heading… One day African Americans – Black Americans (those of us with an American slave legacy, those of us whose ancestors are the only non-voluntary immigrants to this country, those of us who have been here since 1619…) One day our people, our soul, our flavor, our swag, will be a memory….

I sat outside in Plattsburgh on the evening of the fourth of July and I pondered how I would share this story with the UU Fellowship on Sunday. How can I just make the statement that African Americans are a dying race and just drop the microphone after that? It’s such a big thing to say. Surely there would be resistance, shock, sadness… But it’s come to me now, as I type this letter, that I am meant to preach this letter that I have written to you. This is my sermon. Why not? Last week I preached from a blog post, it makes sense to keep it interesting… And creative… Thank you Husband, for being my inspiration.

Whoever you are.

And as for the African Americans, thank God for our story. We are not the first and we will not be the last, many great civilizations have lived and then died. Perhaps our extinction will be the final gift that we leave America with; without a fully oppressed people, the ethic of inequality will have to change here. And I think “whiteness” will have to change too, for what is white without black? There is evolution happening there as well.

So I am grateful, and a little sad. And my concern now is telling the truth, preserving our history and celebrating our legacy.

Love Kim

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On Saturday morning I went for a walk with my friend Erin from seminary and then later had coffee and a muffin with her and her husband, Evan – also a seminary friend.  Erin and I enjoy rich conversation over spiritual matters and this week she shared that she has been exploring what it means to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

My initial reaction was that unceasing prayer is faithless.  If you ask over and over for the same things, then it means that you don’t have faith that your prayers will be answered. But Evan chimed in with a different view, suggesting that the meaning of prayer is to draw you into solidarity with others.  We should pray unceasingly in order to remain connected. 

We agreed that we didn’t have the answers and moved on in our conversation.

However, In the time since Saturday (its Monday) I have been privy to three strikingly painful stories involving three different people that I really love.  In each situation I was faced with the reality that I don’t have the answers and that I cant fix things for my friends. 

So instead I prayed. 

I prayed for wisdom and strength as they shared. I prayed that GOD’s LOVE would flow through me as I listened and responded to their stories.  I prayed for words to say that are wise and true.

And now I am praying for these three and others.  I am praying that GRACE flows through them and aids them in their healing; gathering the broken and torn pieces and mending them back together.  I am praying for LOVE to permeate the systems in which they function, eradicating external factors that are intensifying their pain.

I am overflowing with empathy and compassion for my loved ones in this moment and I am with them as they explore life’s difficult questions. 

Why is life so hard?

I don’t know. But I am praying. Without ceasing.

They are truly amazing, those lessons that LIFE brings when we start paying attention.

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Yesterday I went to a Copeland funeral. My line sister in Delta Sigma Theta is married to a Copeland. These are the Copeland’s of Trenton, I am a Copeland from Ohio, we cant prove a familial tie but one can never be sure about those things.

What was amazing about this funeral is that it brought me back to the place where Kesner’s funeral was held, almost three years later – to the day. Readers may remember the myriad of feelings that I experienced at Kesner’s funeral, I expressed them so very clearly in my prior note – “Homegoing.” The bottom line is that I was angry.

But I realize that something in me has changed.

My friend Andrea said that holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. I think she got that from someone on facebook who got it from Buddha, or the Dali Lama.

So I decided to go to the funeral. I actually felt compelled to go to the funeral and to stay all day. I wanted to be there for my line sister, mainly so that she knew that there was someone in the room that was there just to support her. The ministry of presence. And I also viewed this as a sweet opportunity from GOD to exercise my forgiveness muscle and to see what it would be like to let go of my anger.

The funeral was amazing. The Copeland brother that passed was somebody who had changed also; as an audience member who did not know him, you got the sense that this brother may have disappointed some people close to him at one point. But he had a second chance. The theme was all about second chances and the sermon was extraordinary.

extraordinarily excellent. Life won.

And I forgave. I let it go.

I wasn’t big enough to go speak to the pastor after the service to thank him. I didn’t have enough courage to do that, so there is still more work in me to be done. But isn’t that always the case? That we are all works in progress, all of the time?

Many things have come full circle since this story began. Lessons have come up again, allowing me the opportunity to respond differently. with more maturity. This is growth. And yesterday felt like a homecoming.

It was so fitting that this all happened with the Copelands. I think we are family. We must be. There was a young cousin there, about 24. He looked like my brother Gary!

My grandfather’s grandfather was killed on a train track when my grandfather’s father was 6 months old. that’s as far back as we can go. Maybe that man had brothers? Maybe one of those brothers made it to NJ. And maybe God brought us all together again to sort of figure it out, or at least wonder about it. A homecoming.

This life is full of mystery and wonder. Thank God for the journey!!

Hallelujah!!!!!!!!!!

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For some time I have been meaning to write a blog post about the Resurrection of Christ. This thinking began at the beginning of March over breakfast with a fellow seminarian and friend. We got to talking about the resurrection and decided that it should be understood as a continual process rather than a one time event. I then later decided that it also really can’t be understood without consideration of the sociopolitical climate of the time.

The Roman Empire was powerful and mighty and it was imposing that might on poor farmers. Roman authorities used religious leaders like the chief priest (Sadducees) to collect taxes and enforce Roman laws. Meanwhile other religious leaders (Pharisees) were pretty irrelevant. There was a lot of inequality. People were poor and many were homeless and living in the streets. Jesus came to where the people were with a message for everyone that basically said that you don’t have to stay stuck the way you are. You are not who society says you are, you are who God says you are. You can change. You can grow. You can heal. There is more.

Jesus was such a threat to Rome that they crucified him. People didn’t get crucified every day, it was a death reserved for the most vile offenders. They killed him. And he returned in three days!! The victory in the story is that the resurrection communicates that those things that are true, spiritual and Of God are more powerful than any societal structure that humanity could ever create on its own.

……………………………………………..

Tonight I am thinking about the concept of victory in my own life. Kesner’s mom said “First comes suffering, then healing, then victory.” I have lived by that over the last three years: I suffered and healed and up until recently I was waiting for my victory to arrive. I was looking for “my victory” to arrive from an external source but I realized the other day that I am already victorious. My victory has been accomplished through an internal process. Today I am strong. I can do things today that I could never do before. I am fluid, I am growing, I AM resurrecting…

Victory!!

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Its 5AM and I am perched comfortably in a private third floor bedroom belonging to a lovely stranger named John. I met John on Friday (its Sunday) when I moved into his beautiful Montclair, NJ home for the weekend.

John’s Home

I met John through Air BnB https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/596487. Air Bed and Breakfast is an internet platform that allows every day people to open their homes to serve as bed and breakfasts. It is the sort of thing that allows a traveler, like me, to experience the comfort of home away from home; typically at a fraction of the cost of a hotel.

When I arrived at John’s on Friday evening there were four strangers sitting around a fire-place with red wine, fine cheese, good music and conversation. There was Katie from Connecticut, in town for a funeral; Matthias, the Swedish executive, in town for work; John, our host, who used to be in the zoo business; and Phineas, an eleven year old greyhound who lovingly rested his head in my lap as soon as I sat down to join them. And there I was also, Kim, an African American Yogini, in town for a yoga intensive training weekend.

John’s living room

It was a lovely meeting in a lovely home, we shared stories and small pieces of ourselves. At one point I heard Matthias say that it was so nice to be half way around the world, yet sitting in a comfortable home around a warm fire.

I grew up hearing told: “be careful how you entertain strangers because you may be in the presence of angels.” My mom used to say that to me and her father used to say that to her. I realize now that this is scripture. Specifically Hebrews 13:2 says: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Hospitality is an ancient virtue and a gift; ancient hospitality codes actually required people to offer food, shelter and protection to travelers along the way. My great grandparents Bessie and James understood this. They opened their Tennesee farm on countless occassions to poor black farmers who needed a warm meal and a place to stay in the 1920’s and 30’s. Similarly my grandparents, William and Jessie Bell, opened their two family home in Ohio to boarders and factory workers from down south who were transitioning and looking to make a life for themselves up north during the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. And in the 80’s they became foster parents.

Showing kindness to a stranger is a radical gift but a lot of us dont get that. When we were children we were taught to be afraid of strangers and as adults many of us have adopted that as a way of life.

But, alas, we are a nation going through changes, as Common says. Many of those changes revolve around our plummeting economy and they will feel like growing pains if we allow them to. But we are a young and interesting country and once we cut back the excess, what’s left are interesting and diverse people, great music, a warm fire, sharing, and maybe some fine cheese.

…………………………..

John has invited me to stay an additional night, we are going to watch the Oscars together.

Sidney Poitier

© Copyright Thank You Very Sweet, 2013

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