It was Sunday morning and there we were, clustered together, in a little church on the south side of Chicago. We were deeply engaged in our weekly ritual of attending church. But attending doesn’t get to the heart of our gathering — attending brought remembrance, sought reconciliation and release and empowerment. We were in church and singing hymns while much more was happening within and among us. These hymns seemed to open the floodgates of heaven. You could really lose yourself in the singing and we often did, especially when we sang “Blessed Assurance.” This nondenominational church held so much for so many. Regardless of your spiritual or denominational journey, there was something for everyone that felt familiar. And when we sang “Blessed Assurance,” when the choir and congregational voices began to blend, you could feel the expanse in your lungs and your spirit.
In those moments something broad was happening, the great cloud of witnesses had joined in and we were heading toward the crescendo without obstacles and fears that were laid down as we belted out the chorus: “This is my story, this is my song, praising my savior all the day long.” There was something revealing about the way we sang the chorus without looking at the words or holding books. Hands lifted, eyes closed, swaying back and forth with shouts of “Thank you, Lord,” all accompanied with tears of cleansing, hope and testimony — the song became our experience. There was something being recognized as folks began to stand all over the sanctuary declaring the blessed assurance that had shown up and become tangible. I can only speak for myself, but my voice felt its clearest and on key in these communal moments. I stretched myself along with everyone else to get to where we were trying to go: the assurance. As Frank Thomas has said, “If you push a story deep enough it becomes universal.” As we sang, God was hearing us, beyond the sung word, God was hearing the undercurrents of our individual/communal stories. God was hearing the undercurrents of our heart songs and rejoicing in our testimonies of “I’m praising my savior all the day long.”
This song became the anthem of our little church. This song captured our imagination, gave us hope and rendered us somehow ready for the days ahead. These moments were coupled with a communion liturgy that called us to examine ourselves, inviting us with these words: “You that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins and are in love and charity with your neighbors and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God and walking from henceforth in God’s Holy Ways; draw near with faith and take this Holy Sacrament to your comfort and make your humble confessions to Almighty God. We invite that great cloud of witnesses, our ancestors in the faith, to join us at the Lord’s Table as we remember together the life, the suffering and death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” We were being invited to vulnerability, and what was this “intends to lead a new life” I had just prayed about?
These communal and personal moments continue to track me as I journey into the known and unknown spaces that ask more of me than I seem to think I have. The lyrics of the hymn haven’t changed, but the undercurrents guiding the depths of my singing have and the “intends to lead a new life” was then becoming what I now claim: my hermeneutic. I truly intended to be made new at the table. The opportunity of self-discovery, hope and connection is always there. It is from this place (that little church that I carry with me everywhere I go) that I write my story, my body, my song.
This essay will take a few leaps. This essay will be personal and communal. I invite you to join me in this journey. This essay will reveal my appreciation for hymns (one in particular — take a guess), for the ritual of communion, the reclaiming of my body, the hope of the church and the power of four words spoken by Jesus at the table: “This is my body.” Full stop. My experience of these four words are my response to “intends to lead a new life”! These four words have deepened and transformed my own self-connection and understanding that the communion table is an impetus for body-acceptance with the power to liberate and set free all who are marginalized and oppressed — for the table was set in the presence of my enemies! I have also come to see that what we bring to the table – how much of ourselves we allow to be transformed by God – is part of the song we sing!
My story
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
– Maya Angelou (in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”)
It was July 17, 2015, four days after Sandra Bland was found dead in her jail cell under suspicious circumstances. I wrote these words:
“I wanted to mope today about being black and female living in America. Especially after I saw the elbow of a white male cop, resting on the window pane of his cop car, what would happen if I glanced too long or he was just on some type of trip. Am I secretly being hunted for spontaneous sport? It’s become a bit much that I wonder whose hands I’ll end up in? God’s, a random cop’s, or a random brother’s with my lifeless body dripping from every side, no more bloodshed or swinging black bodies it’s doing nothing for our morale as a collective and sympathy doesn’t help and won’t help and forgiveness is a long way off, I wanted to mope about being black and female living in America today but Donald Lawrence won’t let me, repeating in my ear, ‘The systems of the world will try to take your confidence, these systems were designed to make you doubt what heaven sent.’ Wow! I thought I would mope about being black and female living in America today, but I can’t, heaven sent me in this glazed skin, soft body and afroed hair without apologizing or being afraid to do it, so I won’t mope, I’ll live into being an activist, live into being a bridge that brings me closer to myself and carries me to you, not on some lofty idea that life will be perfect but on the lofty notion that you need to see my face and know that I am not moping about being black and female living in America today.”
There is an intention in this writing that I had not paid attention to in prior writings. My physical body was present, right there on the page. I could see it: black, female, lifeless and dripping. And it was the random violent hands of another body that gave form to my body. I was connected to my body in this piece because I felt the hands of another taking it from me. I was connected to my body, not just the spirit but the flesh and bone that housed the spirit. Disembodiment was no longer an option. Disembodiment, an option that I didn’t even know I had selected, was being stripped away. I was connected to this body and intended to lead a new way of life. Embodiment was the only real option now. This body would with presence engage as an activist, a bridge and an unapologetically black, female living in America today. My body was forming and speaking and emerging like I had never heard, felt or acknowledged before. Strange to think of Maya Angelou’s words, so naturally, right now, “Out of the huts of history’s shame, I rise.” It was happening. I was rising from the lifeless body that I described to a fullness in body. This rising gave me joy and reasons for fear all at the same time. How do I not let the fear of what this means as a black female living in America take over? The truth is, I cannot not rise, so how do I get to this longed for, desperately needed, “intending to lead a new life” body that was forming?
Dots are being connected that felt scattered before.
The phone call I received late October 2010 is one of those dots. My gynecologist was calling and confirming my upcoming surgery date. Then the real question. “Nannette, when I open you up to remove the fibroids, if I don’t find any healthy uterine tissue should I just leave it all intact or remove the fibroids and the unhealthy uterine tissue?” DEAD SILENCE. She cried with me in those endless moments, I responded, “Take it all with you and do whatever you must do to make me well.” Through the tears she responded, “Okay.” We wept a bit longer and eventually the call ended. The questions kept coming, though: Who will I be in a world that values non-black bodies, mothers and wives, of which I would be the antithesis? I was stumped and afraid and held no doubt about my decision. I have a better understanding as to why Maya Angelou’s words came to me, “Out of the hut of history’s shame, I rise,” in the midst of writing this essay — I no longer live there! What rose with me in those moments, days, weeks and months were Audre Lorde’s words, “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” I was convinced that I no longer wanted to be eaten alive by stereotypes or expectations placed on my black female body. I wanted and needed to live fully into the woman I was, I am and would be post-surgery. Which brought still more questions: How to live fully when the pressures/demands of assimilation, socialization and constant images are pressing in, pulling you further from the center of yourself?
Dots continue to connect.
It was just last spring when a group of colleagues and I pushed ourselves to be conscious and concise, for a theological reflection for the United Methodist clergywomen journal, “Wellsprings” as they explored bodies, oppression and gospel, referencing “and the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
Our given topic was “lament, gospel, response.” Response felt most natural, so I wrote. Quietly, on a doorstep in Virginia, aware of only two things: the quick pace of my breath and my colleagues being in their neutral corners writing. I wrote. I wrote, attempting to keep up with what was being dictated. I wrote, my body responding with quivers of fear, deep sighs and an active hand. I wrote, an embodied tale of blackness that had been trapped behind the screen of disembodiment, fear and partial comfort. I wrote. This stream of consciousness was cathartic.
Response: Hope in “Isness”
“I CAN’T BREATHE!” the tragically famous last words of Brother Eric Garner, and according to Yale ethicist, the Rev. Dr. Ebony Marshall Turman, declaring his “isness.” As we watched that black male body struggle to survive while being choked to the ground, we hear him proclaim his existence: “I CAN’T BREATHE.” This moment is reminiscent of Malcolm X’s father (movie version) being tied to active train tracks with the sound of the train’s horn and the blinding light shining on him, shouting, “I AM A MAN!” and the screen goes blank. It is reminiscent of Fannie Lou Hammer rebuffing—without reticence and with clarity – her oppressors with, “I AM SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED!” These are not defeatist statements; instead, they are declarations of “isness,” existence and “I am somebody.” To unapologetically declare your space, place and “isness” as human, as a child of God responding in the face of hatred, brute force, and injustice is the zenith of resistance; giving no other human the final power over your being – body and soul and spirit. Continual blows of dehumanization can leave the being – body and soul and spirit – bereft and without hope, unless you know that you exist! It is the spirit of resistance that stirs in us to confront the oppressors’/dehumanizers’ glare and physical force with the fact of our existence and place. Recall Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, calm before the approaching storm. Recall Jesus with his disciples giving them a new law of love. Recall Jesus on the cross, declaring his “isness” with his last few words, even while he was being mocked. The embodiment of such gumption and spirit destabilizes governments; economic, political platforms; unjust systems; privilege; ancestral supremacy; and religion. This very spirit is present in each of our bodies, limbs, “isness,” and declarations. It’s in our showing up and in our very flesh (hard to unravel the two, impossible really)—spirit and flesh together. One without the other leaves a gaping hole of prayers with no protest or protest with no prayers; a gaping hole of embodiment with no sure housing, words with no real meaning, and life with no real point. Again, recall John’s description of Jesus: the word became flesh! God inhabits/embodies the praises, the declarations of the people. Show up, inhabit, embody, become flesh with your very first, until your very last, word and breathe. (Originally published as part of an article, “Bodies, Oppression, and Gospel: Theological Reflection,” in the 2017 edition of WellSprings: A Journal of United Methodist Clergywomen, ©2017, General Board of Higher Education and Ministries, The United Methodist Church. Used by permission.)
Prior to that collaborative effort, I had not recognized that at my core, the body and breath were deeply connected, with reclaiming not far behind. I was shaken and newly aware of the power of God, and I was reordered: All that I had come to know leaned neatly to one side pointing in one direction. I came to see God’s justice and our communion calling us in the same direction. Justice, since God is justice and love. And communion, because God’s justice can be known only in community. Jesus at the Last Supper named this new reality. Jesus claims his “isness” at the table: This is my body. “This is my body,” is a full sentence, and a full stop is necessary. Say it out loud. Hear it audibly and within yourself. “This is my body,” as a complete sentence, strengthens the breath that normally rumbles unnoticed. Say it and feel its effect as your lungs fill and your back straightens. Now, face your day and all that comes your way.
I talked about the leaps this piece would take and this is one. Already you are taking action. I assure you this is how I approach the communion table — with a profound mixture of solemnity, wonder and hope. We know that at the Last Supper Jesus has not been taken, but we also know how it all proceeds from that table towards treachery, tragedy and triumph. Through it all (an intentional reference to Andraé Crouch), Jesus with his last breath claimed this “isness” on the cross, defying and defeating death. Knowing all of this, I approach the table and as Jesus declares, “This is my body,” I too am
(re)claiming my body with assuredness that I am, that I exist, with assuredness that my flesh is real, that my scars are real, with assuredness that missing pieces are actually missing and the table beckons me just as I am!
My body
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Through it all, communion, justice and my body lay claim that God exists. God exists in personal, communal and global ways that should liberate us, not disconnect/disembody us from ourselves or one another. This is the pattern of God. The pattern of God is all about connection, the deep connection to ourselves that leads to outward motion and connection with others. Recall Jesus’ words in John 15:4: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” To me, that pericope translates full embodiment with God and self. The embodiment of God shows up in our willingness to approach the table, to approach God, to extend our hand as we imagine Christ does during the Last Supper, while holding the bread and giving thanks. Giving thanks for this body that will endure (remain) if we don’t deny that it actually exists. And in this country, in this world, my body exists in color. I no longer deny that “this is my body.” The truth is this is my body. The truth is I am female. The truth is I am black. The truth is I am childless. The truth is I am single. These are my truths. And Jesus is my prime example of how to accept my truth and my full self in a system that rejects it, in a system where I am a blind spot, in a system that renders my black, female, childless, single body invisible, muted, yet fashionable, in a system that is dead set on not doing justice, not loving kindness and not walking humbly.
Communion is an experience! Communion is not a ritual that confirms/affirms the status quo or extends the reach of the “world.” Communion is an act of justice for all those who are disenfranchised by the systems (you name the system) of the world. Communion is an act of justice for those who are disenfranchised from themselves as a result of the systems (you name the system) of the world. Communion as embodiment is real. We are mandated by God’s embodiment to connect with one another, ourselves and the (e)motions we experience and act out each day. Disembodiment is not a virtue; it’s a limitation that we rally behind responding to false starts of hope, wholeness and healing. The truth is our bodies respond to thoughts, words and actions (like the act of lifting the bread and the words “this is my body”). Take a moment with me (a leap is coming), settle yourself, inhale deeply (hold it momentarily) and now exhale slowly with these words: “This is my body.” You can even extend your hand (the motion of Jesus giving thanks at the table) as you say “this is my body.” It becomes a meditation, a breath prayer. What a gift. The gift of prayer, the gift of breath, a gift that we might stay connected with our enfleshed and embodied selves.
My song
“won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in Babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself?” – Lucille Clifton (In “Book of Light”)
Lucille Clinton’s poem “won’t you celebrate with me?” is serendipitous. Her poem tells exactly what was happening at the table: blending, converging and creating. A collision of that which I had unconsciously disembodied, discarded and forgotten: my black female self. That’s what was happening as I belted out my life’s song, stretching with all my might to reach the assurance. I sing with hope and knowing: “This is my body, this is my song, praising my savior all the day long” (rewrite courtesy of my experiences). Our Lord calls me, calls us, to claim our wholeness, newness, “isness.” I learned to bring my whole self as I was claiming my wholeness, my newness and my isness. Breathing the breath God shares with me does not skip over the broken places, but is rooted in my wholeness and brokenness/missing pieces. The broken places/missing pieces had me, focused downward to ensure the scars were not showing or the hurt seeping. You know the cultural motto “never let them see you sweat.” Except I was — sweating. But every single solitary moment when presiding at the table I focused upward with the bread, giving thanks and saying for all to hear Jesus say, “This is my body,” and for all to see: This is my body.
The dots that this essay connects simply blow my mind. Maybe I have been coming this way unknowingly, even unwittingly. The little church on the south side of Chicago, the singing of “Blessed Assurance,” the pondering of “intends to lead a new life” has been seeping out in ways I did not recognize until the penning of this long-look essay. What a gift, excavating that of my past and bringing it forward. What a Sankofa moment!
