I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in the past few years thinking about lineage and legacy. While the thoughts about how my work and choices will affect the world and people in it have been with me a while, I’ve felt an increasing pull of curiosity about the familial, ideological, and spiritual lines of folks I descend from.

Sometimes that curiosity shows up in my prayers where I ask God to bolster the intensity and clarity of our connection. Sometimes I whisper thoughts, questions, and even apologies to them in my work to strengthen our bond.

But regardless of how, as I prepare to turn 40, I find myself reaching forward and reaching back to the community formed through those who do and will find meaning in my life and its offerings as well as the ancestors who’ve gotten me here.

The two pieces I’ll share here are for all of them. I wrote Reaching Back Before The End of The World after being moved by listening to Last Time I Seen the Sun from the Sinners Soundtrack as Alice Smith and Miles Caton’s voices pulled wondering about folks’ journeys forward for me. Us Holy Saturday Folk is an ode to those living out and longing for spiritually and sociopoliticaly integrated lives where they don’t have to pick and choose how to hold this world or its complexities. I wrote most of this before Easter as I thought of those of us who don’t fit in at times because the space we belong to is different but familiar because of its extraordinary ordinary nature.

I hope these words meet you where you need them to.

With love and in solidarity,

Alicia

Reaching Back Before The End of The World

Before I close these eyes of mine at the end of my days in this world

I hope I can say I know you

Not just from photographs or stories or memories that soften and fade as I age

But from doing my work to build up our bond even as we sit on different sides of the ancestral veil

I want to hold your wisdom and follies and the things that made you grieve or laugh from the deepest wells of your being as I offer you my own learnings, mistakes, lament, and loud unbridled joy filled cackles

Can you speak to me?

Can you tell me of your dreams and hopes, the things you clung to or left behind as you sojourned through the sunsets and moonrises that punctuated your days?

Can you guide me to new truths and perspectives that help me hold you whole because as whole people who lived whole lives you deserve to be seen more fully than I’ve been led to understand as valorization nor vilification afford you the dignity of just being human?

Speak to me in visions and dreams, in my waking and my sleep so I know what to lay pon our altar

it belongs to you and me both and I want it to help you to feel seen and honored, cherished and remembered

While war and calamity, megalomaniacs and fools influence the world I live in they do not shape or color it

Because of all you did and still do that equips me with intuitive and practical tools to carve out pockets of existence filled with welcome, embrace, delight, and care

I hold deep gratitude for this,

for you,

for the gifts of blood and choice that allow you to be my ancestors and me your descendant

And one who hopes before the last time I see the sun and this version of my world ends,

that I’ve done all I could to know and love you well

Us Holy Saturday Folk

After palm fronds are flung

Hosannas fill the air

And dusty, road worn feet are washed before the pouring of wine and breaking of bread that nourish the people

After tussles with agents of the state, confrontation, denial, and acceptance of our fates,

and the wails of pain and crushing grief that come from seeing one’s harbinger of hope raised high and killed by empire

and revelations of the wicked’s ploys to strike down confidence in people whose faith messenger died come into view

It is here in the after that us Holy Saturday folk reside

We live in the heartache,

lament,

the liminal and the margins

We make & take room for us,

without apology,

in deep determination to see the worlds we dream of become real in big ways and small doing so whether or not Sunday and its promise of resurrection comes

We do this because we are people of guts, bone feeling, and sight

Our intuition lets us Saturday folk know there’s need to open our homes and our arms to embrace those who are weary

and cultivate rest for those aching from their subjection to violence and are pained by death’s sting

We do not fear questions and know that even if folks question if there’s actual power in the blood that ran rivers down a Roman cross or in our streets,

we are convinced there’s power in the people who loved and learned from the God’s Beloved and our beloveds who were crucified, lynched, and gunned down until they gave up their ghosts

and the legacy of their being and doing and living are worthy of acknowledgment and praise

Us Saturday folk tend to the living while also honoring our dead

we know graves don’t stop care

and being on either side of death’s veil don’t stop us from being community

We gather burial clothes

prepare the feasts for repast

lay out precious things on and before altars

even when that’s looks like sniffles or silence or songs that help us remember our ancestors as our spirit dams release our feelings and release the waters that form the briny rivers of our tears

We embrace and tend,

feed and comfort,

prepare and remember

as we seek to honor God with us and the Divine we see in others

We believe that the holiest work we can do is most clearly revealed in how we love one another

So us Saturday folk aim to love big and full

our spirits and hands work to embody our care and devotion

For the Divine, sure, but also for the people whose complexity serve as prisms catching light, casting color, and giving of glimpses of the special that some folks call holy

Wholly, wholly, wholly

Lawd be with all feeling weary and not mighty

Let them know there’s room for them to be who

and how

and where they are

for real

Guide them to us Holy Saturday Folk so they can taste the sweetness of belonging and being somebody to somebody

Let them know they have a place with those who don’t bifurcate and compartmentalize life and human nature because their healing mean they demand to hold the whole

Let all who need know that have a people to belong to with those who make room for bitter alongside the sweet

Who refuse to ignore the worst parts of us and the grotesque impact of people’s choices in lieu of the life bits of grandeur and glory that others deem sublime

Let folks on a paths to being that start in oh so many places feel and sense and see that while Sunday or someday may come 

Saturday and her people are already here

One of the most moving images in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show was the scene where he gave a little boy watching his Grammy acceptance speech his award. So many of us wept seeing this and questioned if this baby was Liam Conejo Ramos, the little boy used as a pawn and then kidnapped by ICE in Minnesota. In our emotional state many of us - self included - made a microaggression misstep which I encourage us to own because we mistook a child actor for Liam and while the intent was well meaning, the impact still stings.

All little brown boys don’t look alike and if we would’ve taken a break and been slower to *share* our reactions we could’ve seen how incredibly different Liam and Lincoln Fox look. But the rapidity with which we press send and honestly, wanting Liam to be better off than he actually is right now made us mix these kids up. News reports name that Liam and his family are actually in protective community as they heal and also, work to legally fight the government’s viscous pursuit of them after their release. Mixing up these babies matters because not only do too many of us know that pang of annoyance in being mistaken for someone sharing our race, ethnicity, or physical features, we also projected a false narrative about Liam into the world that is in direct contradiction to his reality.

And you know what?

Sometimes we get it wrong in our work to do right.

We make mistakes, falter, fail, and accidentally hurt or offend those we are in solidarity with because the adoption of their struggle as our own means that sometimes we miss things and mess up. Contrary to the voices of shame that may shout at us, messing up is human and what counts is what we do next. We apologize naming the specifics of our misstep, resist the impulse to defend ourselves, and do the work to get it right next time.

So this is me saying that I’m sorry that I publicly mistook Liam Conejo Ramos for a child actor, even momentarily. My reasons for it don’t matter what matters is that I did it which contributes to the hurt some people feel right now. I will work to slow down, pay closer attention to people and their stories and my own sense of bias, and resist the impulse to post with such immediacy so I don’t make this microaggressive mistake again.

Actually, Jelly Roll’s speech began with him falsely asserting that he was about to get kicked off the stage then looking skyward and saying “First of all, Jesus I hear you. I am listening Lord, I am listening Lord” as if he was getting a divine message to share. He then slipped into an impassioned acceptance speech sharing how his faith catalyzed his journey to the stage before shifting to a textbook example of evangelical Christian evangelism that those who aren’t connected to that set of beliefs might sense or see as proselytizing.

For those unfamiliar with the term, proselytizing refers to the act of working to convert or recruit someone into a system of practice or beliefs they do not already practice or hold. The latter end of the video linked below shows the movement from gratitude and personal testimony to a concerning universalized faith declaration and religious pitch as Jelly Rolls states, “Jesus is Jesus and anybody can have a relationship with him”.

Link to the Jelly Roll speech

Here’s why Jelly Roll’s speech is a problem—people in the audience and at home were there to celebrate his and other’s wins; they did not consent to hearing a micro-sermon about Jesus or a declaration that they could have a “relationship with Him”.

When we watch televised awards shows, we enter into a loose social contract with artists or nominees. We agree to listen to performances and watch strangers with specialized work be honored and share their gratitude for that honor. Jelly Roll’s speech moved beyond that as he literally tried to use this global stage as a pulpit complete with Bible in hand. He went from uplifting his story to trying to sell folks on opting into his understanding of (apolitical but still MAGA-aligned, white) Jesus which violated what viewers expected and signed up for.

Are you sure this is a problem? I saw people cheering and clapping.

Absolutely! Jelly Roll’s Grammy acceptance speech is problematic because it was an exercise in both racial and religious power and privilege. In a religiously diverse country, Christians undoubtedly have religious privilege and can operate in supremacy. Nothing happens within a vacuum or outside of us having to consider the role power & privilege have in a given moment.

Thanking God and speaking about how faith sustains you is distinctly different from using a stage as a vehicle for an evangelical appeal no one asked for. When you consider that all of this was preceded by Jelly Roll suggesting that unseen forces or people were going to remove him from stage before he could say what he indicated he was hearing from Jesus, you have a deeply concerning moment that is as powerful as it is violent and jarring. In its most basic definitions violence is described as a force that harms and causes pain or injury to others. While violence is most commonly understood when it happens in physical form, religious/spiritual, emotional, and psychological harms are manifestations of violence too.

So yes, people cheered for Jelly Roll but that’s reflective of statistics that suggest that more that 60% of US Americans identify as some sort of Christian. And when someone gets on a stage and starts espousing their beliefs AND suggesting that others need to adopt these beliefs, that is an act of religiously violent, non-consensual behavior that dismisses, disregards, and disrespects people from other religious, spiritual, and ethical traditions who hold different things to be true.

Note that I recognize and say this as a Christian minister and theologian - not everyone wants or needs a relationship with Jesus. In his pseudo-preaching Jelly Roll said “Jesus is Jesus” which assumes a type of group think that religious minorities and even other Christians fall outside of and fail to understand. Viewers unwittingly had religious views that may not reflect their own pushed and foisted upon them and that’s not only not ok, it is a violation and disregard of other people’s agency and ability to consent. This truth can be hard for people to sense or see because we often limit conversations about consent to sex or body autonomy. When we consider that Christians are the US’ religious majority and take note of evangelicalism’s insidious and imperialist presence and function in and outside of the Christian tradition, we can then see that exercising spiritual and religious autonomy and trying to live a life free from certain Christian beliefs shaping what you have the ability to access or do is impossible. And I am saying that as a Christian.

Faith can be lived, it doesn’t need to be forced or pushed.

In posting about all this online, a social media friend reached out to ask me to clarify some things - specifically my assertion that not everyone wants or needs Jesus. I’ll share with you a built-out version of what I shared with him.

• The notion of having a (personal) relationship with Jesus is super evangelical and connected to the premise of being "born again". Even within Christianity, this isn't universal language people use to talk about following Jesus or to form beliefs about the significance of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, or resurrection. The National Evangelical Association refers to being “born again” on their website as an element of “conversionism” which reflects the “belief [that] lives need to be transformed through… [a spiritual rebirthing process they think people need to] experience…[that then initiates] a life long process of following Jesus.” This followership the NEA describes has specific contours and requirements that not only encourages them set themselves above and apart from people outside of the Christian tradition, they also count other Christian expressions of faith to be lesser or invalid when they believe different things about God, Jesus, faith, theology, humanity, and our responsibility to one another.

• Evangelicalism’s tether to white enculturation and individualism makes people focus on a "personal relationship with Jesus" instead of the dynamic and diverse beliefs and connections other Christians have regarding Jesus, God/Creator, the Holy Spirit, our ancestors, our descendants, and one another. Evangelical iterations of faith can place a hyper focus on the individual self in contrast to the collectivism that others may hold with reverence.

• The diversity of human experience means that not everyone calls Jesus Jesus or holds the Bible as their sole sacred text. I remember hearing a story as a child of missionaries visiting somewhere remote and in trying to evangelize those they were attempting to (religiously colonize) and convert made clear they already knew the story of this Jesus guy they were referencing, they just called him by another name. When asked how they could know about Jesus without evangelism or Bibles, the missionaries shared these folks pointed to the cosmos and said they saw Jesus’ story written in the stars.

  Hearing something like this early in my own religious and spiritual formation helped fortify the belief that Creator and the Holy Spirit can speak through anything whether that be the Bible, the stars, the color purple, flowers, and even trap music because different things minister to people needing them when they need them.

• One of things I hold in the highest regard is the exercise of people’s agency and choice. Respect for autonomy is important regardless of if it is reflected through one’s choices, consent, or refusal about their bodies, religion or spirituality, or their ethics. That means I respect people consciously or unconsciously choosing to not have anything to do with Jesus.

  It may shock some people to hear this because of my being a lifelong Christian, ordained minister, and theologian but I believe in the power of religious and spiritual choice in recognition of the fact that some of us did not or do not realize that we could enthusiastically accept or refuse the beliefs that were handed to us in our religious and spiritual formation.

  As such, I hold spiritual agency in high regard out of respect for other religious, spiritual, and ethical traditions, to honor the violence and trauma that makes people walk away from the Christian faith to survive, and as a recognition that following the same path or moving with the same communal energy Jesus did doesn't require you to think of or even know about him. Even though I deeply value and work to personally practice andembody what Jesus teaches us through the Gospels, I think it's possible for people to do immense and profoundly meaningful things in the world no matter their path.

• Good works, moving with an ethic in mind, and loving people well isn't just something that Christians, theists, or even religious and spiritual people more broadly have a monopoly on.

Not many people think or speak about the role consent should play in faith, specifically within Christianity. Consent is often actively discouraged as there are religious leaders, families, and community members who interpret certain lines of questioning for clarity as sin as a means of holding onto unearned and insecure power and control. Consent matters and Jelly Roll’s acceptance speech reminds that there is need to talk more about how we can uplift consent as a means of exhibiting respect and care for ourselves and others. That can shift how, why, with whom, where, and to what extent we share our deeply held beliefs

That said, regardless of his intent, the power and privilege Jelly Roll’s evangelical Christian faith and whiteness afford him caused him to unconsciously and unintentionally perpetuate harm on the Grammy stage by using it as a platform to soft pitch Christian conversion. This cannot be divorced from the horrifying reality of the White Christian Nationalism that is energetically catalyzing the fascist takeover we all now face and try to fight and resist.

Fascism strips away safety so some folks are genuinely shocked because what has long happened to us is now happening to them.

The rest of us have known these horrors we’re seeing intimately before the inception of the United States. Witness, survival, and flourishing despite state terror is in our very bones.

Hi there, Beloveds!

I’m Alicia, a Black, queer, disabled writer, justice educator, & Christian minister dreaming and working for a world where we all can flourish and be free. We all have things we can do things to bring a world tempered and defined by community, care, collective freedom, and solidarity into being and this new Substack, Bits & Pieces, is one of my offerings.

Why this, why now?

I’m a thinker and a dreamer and in this season I wanted to cultivate a new digital home where my thoughts and dreams could live. I recognized I needed to curate a new, more accessible space where my writing, work, and love for justice and people could converge. Some of my work is archived on blogs and my website, some lives in social media space, and some things have manifested in books and media projects—but here is a space where I can bring those things together. Sometimes my musings can be short and pithy and other times I need to share something in long form so that’s how Bits & Pieces was born.

What to Expect?

I’m honestly not sure what shape this project will take on but I’m excited to be on this creative journey. I may post videos, sermons, vintage blog pieces, links to resources, or even…my podcast!?! I really don’t know, I’m just going with what I feel makes sense in the moment as I try and share things I think may be helpful or meaningful at a given time.

My aim is to offer up words and perspectives that will encourage, challenge, honor, and help whoever finds their way here feel seen and held.

None of us has to go through life alone and my sincere hope is that you remember this truth as I share Bits and Pieces of my heart, thoughts, dreams, and life with you.

Sending love,

Alicia

P.S. If you feel like these Bits and Pieces might be for you, hit the subscribe now button below. My old lady baby dog Sunni said to remember sharing is caring so tell your friends and loved ones to sign up too!

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