Meditation on Regard, in Response To Your Questions.
Faith is all we really have; faith that love and care will help heal wounds and flourish gardens of planted seed.
Dearest Saint Trey W.,
Your questions have floated in my own mind for quite a while— to dance with life, in the way they demand, I couldn’t respond with a text; so, dearest, I hope this will suffice.
You asked how do we, those committed to justice, truth, and grace, contend the worst of humanity thrown upon us and our brethren, and still believe everyone, in all places, at all times deserve access to the fountain of redemption. Further, as you wrote, how do we reconcile and make home between accountability and refusal to put oneself in harm’s way. How do we treat each other when harm occurs? What is to be done by and with our community?
What are we to do, therefore, in the midst of devastation, despair and disregard; a complete withdrawal of social safety and expedient institutional instability; widespread ecological turnings, continued stratification between those with few and those with fewer, mercy untended; mad men with mismatched emotions placing us all on a fast track toward the end.
What do we do in front of the ever-growing fascist imperial order? One that strips away our ability to be human— to touch the glass of difference and see all of our similarities, nonetheless. Beyond its impacts on our institutions, politics and interactions, we are, in some regards, less human now than we’ve ever been before. This is the point, though, to make us machines unable to suppress the worst animalistic characterizes to conquer and destroy. But, such is the harvest of a nation, and global order, for all this land has endured: chattel slavery, genocide of Indigenous people, to name a few.
Staring down the barrel of despair running rampant in our day to day lives, how will we tend to the soul in soulless times. Who amongst us do we dwell with? Where are the angels — Safe, enough; Holy enough? Worthwhile, enough? We are, in many ways, a walking advertisement of actualized greed, self-interest, tribalism, and inhumanity. After all, it was the people who stood by and killed the Savior, so what more can we expect? Even still, however, daily I’m reminded that though we aren’t worth very much in deeds, we still are the salt of the earth.
“Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing— marketing for power. It is recognizable by its need to purge, by the strategies it uses to purge, and by its terror of truly democratic agendas… it changes neighbors into consumers— so the measure of our values as humans is not our humanity or our compassion or our generosity but what we own…” - Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations.
All of us here are proof there is a God and their mercy ever-lasting, but how do we realize this in our lives and livelihoods. I heard a pastor say recently, if you want to know who I am, look toward the Church that raised me. Go back to the places where we learned to be human to be reminded of our humanness, of our capacity to be what our God intended: faithful stewards wrought with sin, saved by grace, kept by mercy, sustained by fellowship.
In a piece I titled, I Miss the Amen Corner, I explored the teachings and feelings of being at St. Johns AME Church, a place I take with me every day. It’s been a few years since that piece, but the feelings hold true: I miss being in my church because it was truly a place for one to be regarded. There, people genuinely wanted to take heed and tender care, saints wanted to rejoice with you for overcoming another week, missionaries demanded testimonies, pastors preached about redemption and tried to live out mercy.
These are places built on the rock of communal engagement— the call and response of good preaching, altar calls, and congregational hymns, to be in Church one had to be in church. It wasn’t a performance but a prolific commitment to seeing God dwell— to gather in such a way that Spirit has to show up. Regardless of what happens outside the church doors, there would be some redress. As megachurches abound with the lights off and Christian contemporary music taking over and get-rich glory revivals take whatever pennies congregants have, we must return to posture of communal consideration. We must see each other more than commodities, or anthropologies— things to study, to entertain, exploit, control— but as fully flawed individuals just trying to reconcile life in the afterlife of chattel slavery.
“Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.”- Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations.
Regard. A few months ago, when I moved into my new place, I met a neighbor who would take walks with Jimi and I when she could. On our last walk together, this neighbor shared some things with me that were troubling and heartbreaking— parts of her story needed God right in the midst of it. As we passed by neighbors walking their dogs or sending there children off to school, I would speak and wish them well. She eventually would say: “Wow! You speak to everyone! Is that not scary?”
Her statement startled me because from where I come, speaking is natural— it’s how we actively show up for life, never mind what someones response is, we have an obligation to acknowledge what we see. On a more recent walk with Jimi, I realized my commitment to regard stems from my values; values that guide my public and private life, which drive my responses and engagements. These values are a practice, though, because I don’t respond the way I want to all the time, but I’ve gotten to a place where most are.
Values shape our futures and they intertwine with our past. Want to know who a man is— ask him his values. They are different than rules and yet they govern our lives, and more or less determine where we go and for how long we stay. To know who a woman is, ask her what does she value— and not a long drawn out thing, but at the root, in the marrow, what guides ones life. Values do not, by themselves, make us any safer— and it’s important we know that nothing is safe, including safety itself, for something is always chasing us— but they create the conditions to reduce instances of harm for ourselves and the ones we’re in community with.
“Let there be no weariness in witnessing one another— let us boldly look into the glass of difference, see each other clearly and know we are holy and sacred, needed and necessary.” - Stephon J Bradberry
Working with college students really forced me to name these values and to build a career— and program— reflective of them. The summer bridge program I inherited came with many rules and regulations for participation. Of course it is a symptom of carcerality: our need to control, contain, circumvent, and surveil one another beyond the prison walls. I chose three values to guide our program and our responses to situations that arose. It comes down, in my mind, to A.I.R.— Accountability, Integrity, and Respect.
On day one I explained it this way: Accountability is a holy thing, to stand in the fullness of who one is and what one does allows us to be fully human; we are what we are and sometimes that creates space for harm, how we respond determines the depth of that humanness. Even dogs hang their heads for wrongdoing, oftentimes with or without public acknowledgment. Leading to Integrity which most people describe as ‘doing whats right when no one is watching’ but I always believe it to be: ‘doing whats right because you are watching.” This frame, to me, helps accept the fullness of my role in my life, my community, my sorrow, shame, joy, and accomplishment. I see what I do— and I matter, it matters that I don’t stray too far from St. Johns, from my people, from the things that help me be human: empathy, compassion, and regard. It helps one own ones actions without staying in pit of shame or the cycle of repeated, harmful, and disempowering behaviors: integrity helps us Respect ourselves and other people. I can only respect you to the level in which I respect myself, which is to say if I see God in me, I have to see God in all; including those who are described to be the worst of humanity.
“Community cannot feed on for long on itself; it can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming of others from beyond them— unknown and undiscovered [siblings]. Twilight— a time of pause when nature changes her guard. All living things would fade and die from too much light or too dark, if twilight were not.” - Howard Thurman, The Search for Common Ground, 1971
We created a framework to guide our dealings and regrettably, harm still occurred— even with these guardrails, but we acknowledged the wrongdoings and repaired what we could. I messed up and so did the students in that program but I refused to succumb to the belief that because something happened we had to break down, refusing to try to do the messiness of being human together. From what I’ve experienced of God, who is omniscient— knowing everything, completely and perfectly, independently, simultaneously, and innately, intimately; large enough to be everywhere and small enough to be near, in my heart, there is room for creation and destruction, persecution and protection.
Dearest, we are both believers so I’m going to close— at some point— but I must talk of faith, of believing in the hope of tomorrow despite everything we’ve endured today. Faith is all we really have; faith that love and care will help heal wounds and flourish gardens of planted seed. Some would say we’ve been tricked and bamboozled into a religious doctrine unable to make room for those of us on the other side of the color line. And, truth is, many of us have accepted into our hearts the doctrine of white supremacist religiosity. I understand the questions: where was God during slavery? Where is God now? What does it mean to be God who destroys one world to build another? What does it mean to have faith in a God who sacrifices His son?
What does it mean for us to do this human thing together? To reconcile why slavery happened during a time of God or during our times of genocide and ethnic cleansing, of unchecked power and unmitigated poverty. God is God without the need for permission— They Are who They Are. They will be with or without us. God can do this, I believe, because He owns all that happens— makes it plain: I will send the floods, and droughts, I will allow famine and heartbreak, I will send the astroids to start over and will send my Son to redeem the soul of a sometimes soulless creation.
We cannot be God, but we can be God-like. We live our values and stand in the fullness of our human experience. Some people will get it and others will not. When people harm us and we tell the story, some souls it will stir and others it will only momentarily disturb. We must continue on. Our limits of pain are not that of others; we can control ourselves and God-willing we are anchored in communities that fully embrace the messiness, and if we are not, then we must own our choice to discover our own reservoirs and residences of grace and mercy. I can only stand at my vintage point of values and when someone is in opposition to them, I determine what happens next, not them. Get away from those who dismiss your harm and pain for the sake of keeping the peace— make your choice to honor the God in you.
Well, I must begin to leave these words to you and to others. God is and is not— both holiness and hellish. Thats the type of theology— and life practice— I ascribe to. My God redeems all without an asterisk, the knowing and unknowing, the just and unjust. I’m talking of a faith predicated on hell being empty, where when He grabbed the keys it meant no man was held in the grip of damnation, either on earth or the ever after. Which is to say, we practice until we get it as close to right. And, if they never get it right, well, my faith says they’ll be dealt with someway and somehow. It does stir the soul to do wrong so often you believe it’s right, I know it does, but it, like all other drugs, is intoxicating. The only one who can get the drunk off the bottle is themself, we can tell them all day long how bad it is and what it makes those of us on the outskirts feel— but they must find the God in themselves enough to begin again (shout out to Eddie Glaude).
“To the only wise God our savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forevermore. Amen.” Jude 25
On another walk through my neighborhood I thought of Jude 25 and the closing benediction in the African Methodist Episcopal tradition: Praise Ye from Whom all Blessings Flow. To the only wise God be glory and majesty, dominion and power— I was feeling happy already by this point— both now and forevermore followed by a giggle and praise. Now, in the midst of despair and forevermore, which means glory and power four hundred years ago, majesty and dominion one thousand years in the future. So long as living things endure, whether as humans or fauna, greenery, or single-celled bacteria, there will be a God of contradiction and redemption, pulling all things toward the twilight— a space between light and dark, where the most unique configurations of life dwell.
What I have laid out here is how I see it and I respect if you do not see it the same, but you and I are writers, bound to the tradition of truth telling, so I do hope you write back; let us think together, as we always have.
All my love,
Stephon