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Counterfeit Forgiveness.

Beloved, you will find that in this life, you will often be called upon to provide others with absolution. They will come to you, either truly contrite or else out of obligation or duress. They will either offer a specific apology, quite clearly aware of the hurt or the slight they’ve inflicted, or else they will say they are sorry you misunderstood their intent, implying they do not intend to assume responsibility for whatever they did that upset you. This latter is called non-apology, and non-apology is a semantic labyrinth; if you are not careful, you will find yourself at a loss as to who should be doing the absolving.

This will only exacerbate the offense.

The act of pardoning should always give you pause. To exempt someone from the fallout of their actions is a weighty, unwieldy thing. It can be like offering to clean up after the volcano whose lava has obliterated the homes of your family. It can be like deciding to keep as a pet the pit bull that bit your baby. Neither the volcano nor the dog knows the destruction it has left in its wake. Neither the volcano nor the dog can comprehend the acts of apology or absolution. To forgive, then, means nothing to the offender.

This does not mean forgiveness will always be difficult. After all, the person in a position to forgive holds the cards, holds the keys, holds the power. She has everything to gain and nothing to lose. And so, initially, you will feel quite like a royal raising her scepter: All is forgiven; your debt has been cleared. Go forth and offend no more! And you will feel quite emptied and cleansed by the act of it.

See, it is rarely that first offense that is challenging to forgive. It is rarely the second that singes us when memory reignites it. It’s that seventh insult; that fifteenth incident of neglect; the third lie or the ninth or the twenty-seventh. It is the arrogance that allows your offender to believe himself exempt from apology. Or the strangely righteous indignation that seeks to insist that you are, in fact, the offender and any anger you feel is your fault.

These are the conditions under which bitterness best takes root. These are the conditions under which forgiveness seems nearly impossible to impart.

At this point, you are likely wondering why anyone would continue to offer her company to the type of person who would offend her thirteen or thirty times. She wouldn’t, unless her ties to him were essential. She wouldn’t unless, for every offense she could number, there were five rescues, three gifts, ten acts of love.

In my life, this has been the case, exclusively, with family. Their slights hurt more than anyone else’s, their investment in and hope for my success far greater than anyone else’s. They can give so generously with one hand and then take so cavalierly with the other.

The past year, in particular, held more than its share of offense. And I have struggled more than usual to excuse it. To ensure that this new year holds none of the hurts of the last, I have been reading about forgiveness—or more specifically about counterfeit forgiveness. Apparently, counterfeit forgiveness is defined by five distinct characteristics: stoic numbness; minimization; psychoanalyzing the offender; holding one’s breath emotionally; or being an overachiever.

I am guilty of four of these things.

I spent much of your first year, either numb, minimizing, excusing someone’s psychological damage, or sucking up all that I should’ve been letting out. I said I was okay when I wasn’t. I said things were no big deal, when they meant everything. I complied with my offenders’ need to “just drop it and move on.”

Your second year has already been different. I have learned to lay the axe at the root of offense. I have stated, in no uncertain terms, that I am displeased. I have refused to be baited into unnecessary conflict.

One can never truly argue who argues alone. Daughter, we have so much ground to gain and to recover. I have no energy to expend on assuaging the bruised egos of others. I cannot afford to entertain every hurled accusation, every thinly veiled aggression, every insidious rumor. If I did, I would become like a cursed fig tree, small and shriveled, unable to grow.

These declarative statements have been a step, but they are not yet true forgiveness. That will take a bit longer this time. But I will acknowledge the lava, will hold its magma ‘twixt my fingers. I will cry out to God and ask why. I will cry out again when I have allowed myself the time to grieve, accept, and understand.

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Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice.

Christmas hasn’t been a favorite holiday of mine since I was a child. It feels claustrophobic and excessive and so, so impossibly gaudy and red. But the pocket of time between 25th to the 1st has always been hallowed for me. I treat it with seriousness and give myself wholly to reflection: on the Nativity; on the subsequent Massacre of the Innocents; on those who go hungry; on the children who have to square their shoulders, lift their chins, puff their chests, and let their eyes become stones, when they awake on Christmas morn to the same bleak cots in a shelter, to the same loss or absence that claimed a parent near some Christmas past; to the same dearth of gifts or of cheer.

Joy does not always come easily to the world these days. And despite our best efforts to tinsel over everything that ails us and others, there are many who cannot forget their struggles through caroling or office holiday parties or heavily spiked punch and nog.

What is so heartening is how vigorously we try. Every year, we volunteer; purchase that extra unwrapped toy to take to the nearest giveaway station; write checks for international causes; give bonuses to civil servants; reconcile with estranged loved ones; make peace with our long-feuding neighbors; light candles and place them in our windows, as if to alert to all who pass by: Cheer is welcome here. Hope is present here.

If you read this blog often, you know well that I am big proponent of hope. And the last week of a year seems to be when mankind is most open to it. We have suspended our cynicism, in preparation for the swell of possibility every countdown to a new year provides. And suddenly, the world’s ills seem solvable. Galvanization seems sustainable. True love seems well within our grasp. And every dream in default is made current.

The New Year is the Great Equalizer. Even for those for whom the holidays feel unbearable, there is a great sense of relief at their coming and going. It means that there is something we can definitively put behind us. It means there is a mystery. For all we know, this is year we will finally feel at home; we will sail the seas; we will find a job; we will beat a repossession, a foreclosure, an eviction; we will graduate; we will marry.

This is the year that will satisfy some large and persistent longing.

For me, the end of the year is about eradicating regret. It’s about our realization and, perhaps, our relief that we come here, to this earth, in part, to falter. It is the only thing that earns us empathy and humbleness. Whatever the next annum will bring, it will certainly include our mistakes. Often, the mistakes–more than any of the things we get right–are what carry us to the next year’s shore, altered, enlightened, matured.

And that, more than lit trees, wrapped gifts, and a cheery array of confections, is worthy of the effort it may take to rejoice.

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Make Haste.

I am often afraid, though Your word says, “Fear not.” I have been told that my fear offends You, that my anxiety is a rebellion You cannot abide. I am told that I am not to rely on this brain You’ve given me, so limited in its purview, so primitive in its ability to decipher; but instead, I should relinquish the boundaries of my own intellect and allow Your presence to invade that which my instinct tells me to protect and to closely guard.

I do not know, I do not know, I do not know what I know.

So, come. The kingdom I’ve erected is crumbling. I am willing to let You reign. I will quit the deteriorating palace and take residence in a hut at the foot of the hill, until You re-establish all that my hand has failed.

This does not mean I will be an unquestioning subject. It will be difficult to see all my work dismantled: the education I fought so hard to attain, through debt and jobs worked well after midnight, to finance what exorbitant loans could not; the home I scraped up just enough to rent, by teaching twice as many courses as a full-time professor, at three different colleges, while sleeping on the sofa of relatives; the car I waited 13 years to own, 13 years to be able to drive, after droves of attempts at earning a license.

These will not be easy losses. And though I know that I only attained these things because You allowed me to, I still do not want to let them go.

It is terrifying to trust. And it is terrifying to plead into the silence of a dark room for deliverance from a disaster of my own making. I do not like the idea of needing things I cannot supply for myself. Basic things: food and shelter and transportation. It is too cliche a fate, to be pressed into trust by the vices of under-employment and poverty.

But if such pressing is what is required, I submit myself to the stocks.

We have been here before. And I know that we are here again because I did not learn how to trust You implicitly the first time. We are here because there is a point You need to make. We will come here again, and again, if need be; we will return to this isle as often as it takes me to accept that I am not You.

On this isle, there is a scripture in the sand, just beyond the reach of a rising tide. It is the first I ever learned, the one I hoped I’d never truly need, though I recall and recite it for even the lightest afflictions. It is the one I’ve never needed quite as much as I need it today:

Make haste, O God, to deliver me. Make haste to help me, O Lord.

I learned it when I was eight, and somehow it still carries me. It is the raft and the oar, when I am tossed from the oceanliner into the sea. I say it when reason betrays me and the sky closes under Your eyelid and the water of an unrelenting rain is all that is keeping me alive.

Hurry, it says. And wash me back to the shore of choice. I will choose differently, this time. I vow I will choose only You.

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Constants for the Wanderer: Mali Music.

I hadn’t heard of Mali Music before the Gospel Music Channel started incessantly airing Deitrick Haddon’s debut feature film, Blessed and Cursed, which I LOVE for reasons that could probably fill a whole other post. Another day. But yeah, Mali Music played Deitrick’s cohort who “backslides” because he experiences a betrayal as a member of Deitrick’s choir. He then becomes instrumental in setting Deitrick’s character up, inviting him to a club where he encourages him to get completely smashed, while someone tapes the whole drunken mess and takes it back to the Bishop who employed him as a worship leader.

Mali Music doesn’t have very many lines. His most memorable one is something along the lines of, “I’m sick of church. I’m sick of gospel. I’m sick of Bishop. I’m done.”

While I’ve never been there, I understand.

My mother’s marriage fell apart while she and my stepfather were serving as part of our church leadership staff. At the time, I was writing and performing a lot of Christian spoken word—this was before it was en vogue; it was almost unheard of back then, in 1999 and 2000. Arts ministries are relatively new and while drama and liturgical dance were in full bloom, poetry was just becoming a viable ministry medium.

So our family was high profile at our local assembly. My parents were well-liked, sought after, even, when congregants had problems they wanted discussed with discretion, compassion, and respect. And I was kind of this retreating enigma–as soon as church dismissed, I tended to duck out to the car and hide while my parents spent an hour or more post-church-socializing–until I was behind a microphone on the pulpit, rapid-fire reciting admonitions and observations about the crumbling state of the church. (It was your typical fare: get right, we’re too judgmental, be who God made you, don’t conform… but it was delivered so quickly no one caught that it was kind of critical.)

I got a lot of, “When you gon’ write me a poem?” and a lot of requests for performances–at weddings, children’s birthday parties, and funerals. I even did a housewarming once. I felt defined by what people called My Gift, as though I wasn’t much more to anyone than a performer–and a niche one at that, only marketed to church groups and youth conferences.

So I stopped.

My parents left our church. A year or so later, they broke up altogether. I felt like I couldn’t discuss that with anyone at church—it would’ve been a betrayal to my parents, who were still held in high regard by the congregants—but it was a really difficult time for me. Their whole 11-year marriage had been a difficult time for me. And though I enjoyed church–the hallowed way I felt upon entering, the utterly cleansed way I felt walking out, the warm embraces of people who didn’t know my secrets and didn’t need to, to be warm and welcoming–I was always quietly recoiling from it.

I didn’t belong. Anyone who attended church with me, at any point in my life, would disagree. I was a model church member. I dutifully turned to scriptures, took copious notes, highlighted key verses. I raised my hand to answer biblical questions in youth group. I performed at church block parties and washed cars to raise money for the building fund. I passed out bag lunches and Chick tracts to the community. I told strangers that Jesus loved them. I made my all my decisions, particularly those related to private and public conduct, with the very earnest belief that I was being constantly surveilled—by Christ, a nearby congregant, or both.

And these things did give me great joy. I loved everyone I prayed and worked and believed alongside.

But I never felt like I was one of them. My mind was always somewhere else, concocting stories. Writing about “secular things.” I didn’t have much interest in only being a Christian poet or a Christian novelist or a Christian anything. I tried it, making sure that all my stories had a wayward, tortured soul who had a conversion experience by narrative’s end and all my poems referenced scriptures and the Savior. But that felt false somehow–or if not false, then certainly forced. I wanted to use the gifts and talents God knew I’d have when He created me, in any way I saw fit. I didn’t feel a responsibility to contain them, so that they were only functional within a Youth Sunday or special service context.

I just wanted to be a citizen of the world, a writer, a wanderer. I wanted to be like Jesus: everywhere and ever speaking in parables.

But how do you explain that without sounding like a heretic?

You don’t.

You don’t.

But back to Mali Music. I was struck by his character’s frustration in Blessed and Cursed. It stemmed, as a lot of frustration does, from being misunderstood, from being treated with distrust when your intentions are noble. And his response to that frustration was, like mine, the wrong one.

I don’t know much about this artist yet. Sunday, he appeared on the BET Awards, in one of its Music Matters segments. In a post-awards interview, some artist who performed on Music Matters last year, said of Mali Music, whose name he didn’t remember, “His performance gave me chills.” It was unclear whether or not he knew that Mali Music was a Christian artist; it seemed that he didn’t. But he was moved, repeating that phrase twice: “gave me chills,” in a tone that suggested that he didn’t understand how it had happened.

I was on Twitter when he performed, and my timeline had a similar response: “Googling Mali Music.” and “I didn’t know this cat was gospel. He’s not wack.”

I began to feel about him the way I feel about anyone I encounter these days who has cracked the code, who’s found a way to be like Jesus–a citizen of the world, a philosopher/artist/thinker, a wanderer–everywhere and ever speaking in parables–without being confined or cast out.

I think, “Good for him.” I think, “That could be me.”

This morning, I found a song of his from two years ago: “Foolish.” It’s part of a project I didn’t know existed, called Gumbo Red. And the lyrics convey that resonant frustration, this idea that people have to be who we expect them to be in order to be ministerial or even Christian: seminary graduates, skilled musicians, scripture memorizers. The through-line is that God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, which is a scripture oft-misinterpreted, if you ask me. Sometimes, people just trot this verse out when they want to use an Isley Brothers sample in a gospel song.

But this song seems to get the scripture right–at least as I understand it. Sometimes the role of art in the Great Commission is just to leave someone feeling moved, without expressly stating why you’re able to do it. This seems to be something Mali Music understands.

There’s another piece to this, involving the Holy Hip-Hop Movement that got its start a few years before I started reading poetry at church and how Mali Music definitely seems to exist within the confines context of that movement, even as his work seems to transcend it. But again: different post, different day.

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The Complicated Practice of ‘Shouting.’


* I’d like to apologize on behalf of whoever posted this for classifying this person as a “churchy white guy.”

It often begins with a promise. Nothing grandiose. It’s usually something commonplace, unremarkable on its surface. A statement that, outside the rapturous context of a Charismatic sanctuary, would seem merely sentimental or cliché. Without the urgent syncopation or the unrelenting bass, whatever statement sparked the frenzy would seem simply two-dimensional; it may have resonated from where it appeared on a page, but it would not have caused unbidden joy to surge up like a geyser.

It would not be the stuff of public spectacle.

This promise may originate in scripture, or in the oft-echoed archives of a minister’s book of sermons. It will likely resemble, “Your breakthrough is coming” or “… But God!” or “Joy comes in the morning,” though I have heard it in iterations both more profound and far less.

For the uninitiated—or the rhythmless—the spontaneous outbreak of loud prayer and dance known in many circles as “shouting” can be equal parts wistful and disconcerting.

I encountered the video above for the first time yesterday, though it’s been available on YouTube for nearly two years now. Watching it, I immediately shifted back to the neo-Pentecostal context within which I was raised.

We weren’t strict holiness; pants weren’t banned among women and makeup a-plenty could be found on their faces. But we, like our ancestors, believed that the day of Pentecost recounted in Acts could be recreated in services on Sunday mornings.

This in-filling of the Holy Spirit we found ourselves re-enacting through dance and indiscernible utterance was a regular, if not frequent occurrence. The keyboardist would strike an initial chord and halt, a cue to those eager to revel that their time was about to come. Congregants arose, expectant, as the same musician teased out a few more riffs before stopping short once more, this time to leave a preacher room to reiterate his proclamation–and within minutes, the floors, though plushly carpeted and the chairs, though neatly arranged to give the place a more contemporary feel than arcane, hymnal-holding pews, begin to shudder.

Now, in my time, I have been both an active participant and a detached observer of this practice. I was always more comfortable standing relatively still during the worshipful melee, being quietly reflectively, like someone whose life is flashing before her eyes as she stands in the eye of a tornado. Though it’s been the experience of many that “shouting” makes them feel closer to God, I tend to feel closer to Him when I refrain from it. I imagine myself standing with Him, watching, and I try in great vain to read His mind.

Participating in a shout means risking being consumed by it. I do not fancy myself a control freak; I believe in recklessly abandoning decisions and actions to faith. I am less comfortable with forgetting my self and surroundings in a public setting. I am never entirely un-self-conscious, and whenever I attempt to dervish in this way that indicates the “liberty” I feel in Christ, it often feels false, conjured simply because the music and the congregation call for it. It feels less unprompted than orchestrated and I’m unable to concentrate on God when I’m questioning my own sincerity.

Mind you, in the privacy of my home, with an Israel Houghton track or my own voice or a worshipful silence as accompaniment, I have been known to gesticulate wildly and allow my body to be the prayer my mind cannot construct.

But that’s private.

There have been other times when I have looked with longing at the dancers all around me, completely unaware of my conflict and experiencing no similar ones of their own. Like the brother in this video, I’ve clapped with restraint and with hope that I’d feel, even if for just a moment, whatever they were feeling. These are the moments when I’m able to lay aside my skepticism that the whole thing is so much pomp and performance, and I wish I knew how to entirely leave my wits for a moment simply for the purposes of praise.

So I can relate to him, when he’s called out by the minister who lays his hands at the man’s feet, trusting that God will grant him, not the ability to jig, but to be entirely un-self-conscious in his pursuit of closeness to God. I won’t get into my lifelong fear of being “called out” of a congregation and summoned to the altar for prayer, where the minister insist that the Lord has told him to reveal some secret facet of my life to everyone within earshot.

That’s a different essay for a different day.

This is just about what it is to subscribe to a faith whose practices are often as unsettling as they are uplifting and edifying.

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Philippians 1:3.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.

From ages 8 to 15, I was a member of a church called The Power of Faith Evangelistic Ministries—at least that was what the white-lettered name typeset on the electric blue awning said, out front. All we ever called it was Power of Faith.

The address was 5242 Park Heights Avenue, and it was right across from the famed Pimlico racetrack. During Preakness season, you could see the thoroughbreds galloping when you stood on the sidewalk after service. A few years into my attendance, some Asians opened a greasy spoon called Pimlico Chicken & Fish. There was bullet-proof glass separating them from us.

They sold chicken boxes—five wings and fries, slathered in ketchup of questionable freshness from a gigantic unmarked bottle; “shrimp” as big as three fingers; soda rumored to have been chemically engineered by White folks to sterilize African American men.

We ate there at least once a week.

It was its own world, Power of Faith, all the more surreal right now, from the vantage of adult reflection. To adequately describe the experience of growing up there, you would have to have access to certain points of Christian reference. You would need to have some concept of the Chick tract—and what it feels like to be 12, trekking through the Park Heights community, handing them out to drunkards and addicts and shop-owners.

You would need to understand how Children’s Church or Youth Group can feel like a kind of orphanage, just by virtue of its isolation from our parents’ main service experience, and how in our temporarily parentless haven, we spent much of our time relying on and confiding in a group of kids we saw up to three times a week.

You’d have to know what a shut-in and a three-day fast are, how it might feel to show up at your church after dark, with a blanket, a pillow, a grumbling stomach, and an excitement to whisper conversations to your friends, while your parents paced the sanctuary floor in prayer.

You’d need to be able to wrap your mind around being one of two teenagers left in that darkened sanctuary on a Friday night, waiting for your respective parents and listening on in silence while they commanded demons to exit some woman’s body in the church basement.

This was no ordinary upbringing. These were no ordinary church services, of the type that last two hours, where you leave your worship experience and your Sunday morning relationships at the exit door till next time.

Power of Faith was in your blood. Being a member there was like marrying into a family; even if you got divorced (read: left and joined another church), you still considered all the people you’d inherited there your aunts and cousins and sisters.

Whenever a new family joined, we children immediately checked out their kids, hoping to graft them into our group and see what unique energy they’d bring to the collective. Fortunately, most members were super-involved and showed up for Wednesday, Friday and both Sunday services, so we spent loads of time bonding with new kids.

Everyone in Power of Faith’s youth group was known for something. Lashawn was a genius and a singer; she’d grow up to become a physician. The Brebnors were three siblings from Trinidad; they’d let you live in their home for whole summers if you wanted and for an only child like me, that was a singular experience, being part of a home that was bustling with noise and laughter and drama, that was rife with rhythm and creativity. But it wasn’t until Nikia came to the church that I understood what it might be like to have a sister.

I’d been a member at Power of Faith longer than most of the kids in our group, but I’d always felt slightly isolated. I’ve always been retreating in large group settings and because of the infrequency of my smiling or laughter, I was often mistaken for sullen. Nikia wasn’t as socially withdrawn as I, perhaps because she had a number of brothers, but like me, her smile had to be earned, her humor was wry and she tended to stand off from a big crowd on occasion, to observe.

I had my first crush at Power of Faith. It began when I was ten and lasted till long after I left. Even now, I remember that boy with a kind of wonder. And when I think of what I’ll tell my daughter about love, it will begin with a description of the infatuation I felt for him.

Our entire youth group knew about that crush, but they were mostly polite and empathetic enough not to tease me mercilessly for it.

When the Walkers arrived from St. Louis—a single mother, her adolescent son and pre-adolescent daughter—the chemistry of our group was forever altered. The son, Jason, made fast friends with the guys in our gang; his easy grin and infectious laughter immediately put people at ease. His lanky, boyish good looks made him a hit with the ladies, too.

With the Walkers’ arrival, Power of Faith had its first encounter with liturgical dance. Jason’s mother, Laurene, had founded a troupe called Namyanka, which delicately blended African movement and worshipful music and gesturing. His preteen sister, Jessica, who had been dancing since she was two, was the troupe’s star performer. Jason played the djembe during a selection of numbers.

A few of the girls in our youth group joined and I was one of them (another was a tiny girl close to Jessica’s age who’d grow up to become Jason’s wife). I’d soon learn I didn’t have the confidence for public dance performance. That was more the domain of Dejelle and Jacqui Brebnor, whose long, lithe limbs seemed made for graceful gesticulation.

But there was something truly thrilling about being a part of a Namyanka rehearsal. Even now, I look back on our performance of James Weldon Johnson’s The Creation with an awe I only reserve for the works of art that have made the deepest imprints in my heart. It was while rehearsing for this that I began to really understand how amazing the Walker family was. As Sister Laurene recited Johnson’s words like an incantation and Jessica flailed and whirled with urgency and elegance, Jason kept our rhythm with his drum.

With each strike of his palm or the heel of his hand, he seemed less the elastic-limbed boy we saw performing pratfalls in the church parking lot and more a man-in-the-making, more the warrior-hunter he would’ve been if he’d been raised in the Africa whose music he’d learned to so fully invoke.

It was with this dual perception I would always regard him. Jason was part prankster, part math scholar; part hip-hop, part classical enthusiast. He was his mother’s joy and his sister’s protector. He was kind, even when teasing. No matter how goofily he’d guffaw at a joke, you just knew that quite soon he’d grow into the disciplined, responsible soul his mother already trusted to steady the pulse of entire performances.

He did. Jason grew up and became a husband and father to four daughters. He was a loyal and trustworthy friend. He was still in close touch with many members of our Power of Faith youth group.

And yesterday, he died.

I hadn’t seen Jason since I left Power of Faith over 15 years ago, and we didn’t talk much even when I knew him. I could probably count our conversations on a hand. But he, like everyone I encountered there, had remained tenderly preserved in a snow globe of memory. There, I can access them all—and the flurry of emotions I felt about them—instantly and when I do, I feel as close to them as if I’d just passed them a note during praise and worship yesterday.

So it is no small thing to have lost Jason Walker. And as I reflect on his passing, I want to send this transmission out into the ether.

To Nikia and Eugene and Dejelle, to Jacqui and Rashid and Jaye, to Tonya and Booker and Theodore, to Chris and Damont and Philip, to Tami and Kim and Markia, to Angel and Shawn and the Mathews siblings, to Lashawn and April and Raheem, to Paulette and Tia and Terrell, to Jason and Jessica and TJ, to Carlos and Emmanuel and Jonah, to Sherman and Katrice and Tasha, to Kenya and Ronald and Kenyetta, to everyone whose names I’ve forgotten, to all those who’ve faced death before the rest of us:

I love you all. You’re never far. I’ll see you soon.

From ages 8 to 15, I was a member of a church called The Power of Faith Evangelistic Ministries—at least that was what the white-lettered name typeset on the electric blue awning said, out front. All we ever called it was Power of Faith.

The address was 5242 Park Heights Avenue, and it was right across from the famed Pimlico racetrack. During Preakness season, you could see the thoroughbreds galloping when you stood on the sidewalk after service. A few years into my attendance, some Asians opened a greasy spoon called Pimlico Chicken & Fish. There was bullet-proof glass separating them from us.

 

They sold chicken boxes—five wings and fries, slathered in ketchup of questionable freshness from a gigantic unmarked bottle; “shrimp” as big as three fingers; soda rumored to have been chemically engineered by White folks to sterilize African American men.

 

We ate there at least once a week.

It was its own world, Power of Faith, all the more surreal right now, from the vantage of adult reflection. To adequately describe the experience of growing up there, you would have to have access to certain points of Christian reference. You would need to have some concept of the Chick tract—and what it feels like to be 12, trekking through the Park Heights community, handing them out to drunkards and addicts and shop-owners.

 

You would need to understand how Children’s Church or Youth Group can feel like a kind of orphanage, just by virtue of its isolation from our parents’ main service experience, and how in our temporarily parentless haven, we spent much of our time relying on and confiding in a group of kids we saw up to three times a week.

 

You’d have to know what a shut-in and a three-day fast are, how it might feel to show up at your church after dark, with a blanket, a pillow, a grumbling stomach, and an excitement to whisper conversations to your friends, while your parents paced the sanctuary floor in prayer.

 

You’d need to be able to wrap your mind around being one of two teenagers left in that darkened sanctuary on a Friday night, waiting for your respective parents and listening on in silence while they commanded demons to exit some woman’s body in the church basement.

 

This was no ordinary upbringing. These were no ordinary church services, of the type that last two hours, where you leave your worship experience and your Sunday morning relationships at the exit door till next time.

 

Power of Faith was in your blood. Being a member there was like marrying into a family; even if you got divorced (read: left and joined another church), you still considered all the people you’d inherited there your aunts and cousins and sisters.

 

Whenever a new family joined, we children immediately checked out their kids, hoping to graft them into our group and see what unique energy they’d bring to the collective. Fortunately, most members were super-involved and showed up for Wednesday, Friday and both Sunday services, so we spent loads of time bonding with new kids.

 

Everyone in Power of Faith’s youth group was known for something. Lashawn was a genius and a singer; she’d grow up to become a physician. The Brebnors were three siblings from Trinidad; they’d let you live in their home for whole summers if you wanted and for an only child like me, that was a singular experience, being part of home that was bustling with noise and laughter and drama, that was rife with rhythm and creativity. But it wasn’t until Nikia came to the church that I understood what it might be like to have a sister.

 

I’d been a member at Power of Faith longer than most of the kids in our group, but I’d always felt slightly isolated. I’ve always been retreating in large group settings and because of the infrequency of my smiling or laughter, I was often mistaken for sullen. Nikia wasn’t as socially withdrawn as I, perhaps because she had a number of brothers, but like me, her smile had to be earned, her humor was wry and she tended to stand off from a big crowd on occasion, to observe.

 

I had my first crush at Power of Faith. It began when I was ten and lasted till long after I left. Even now, I remember that boy with a kind of wonder. And when I think of what I’ll tell my daughter about love, it will begin with a description of the infatuation I felt for him.

 

Our entire youth group knew about that crush, but they were mostly polite and empathetic enough not to tease me mercilessly for it.

 

When the Walkers arrived from St. Louis—a single mother, her adolescent son and pre-adolescent daughter—the chemistry of our group was forever altered. The son, Jason, made fast friends with the guys in our gang; his easy grin and infectious laughter immediately put people at ease. His lanky, boyish good looks made him a hit with the ladies, too.

 

With the Walkers’ arrival, Power of Faith had its first encounter with liturgical dance. Jason’s mother, Laurene, had founded a troupe called Namyanka, which delicately blended African movement and worshipful music and gesturing. His preteen sister, Jessica, who had been dancing since she was two, was the troupe’s star performer. Jason played the djembe during a selection of numbers.

 

A few of the girls in our youth group joined and I was one of them. I’d soon learn I didn’t have the confidence for public dance performance. That was more the domain of Dejelle and Jacqui Brebnor, whose long, lithe limbs seemed made for graceful gesticulation.

 

But there was something truly thrilling about being a part of a Namyanka rehearsal. Even now, I look back on our performance of James Weldon Johnson’s The Creation with an awe I only reserve for the works of art that have made the deepest imprints in my heart. It was while rehearsing for this that I began to really understand how amazing the Walker family was. As Sister Laurene recited Johnson’s words like an incantation and Jessica flailed and whirled with urgency and elegance, Jason kept our rhythm with his drum.

 

With each strike of his palm or the heel of his hand, he seemed less the elastic-limbed boy we saw performing pratfalls in the church parking lot and more a man-in-the-making, more the warrior-hunter he would’ve been if he’d been raised in the Africa whose music he’d learned to so fully invoke.

 

It was with this dual perception I would always regard him. Jason was part prankster, part math scholar; part hip-hop, part classical enthusiast. He was his mother’s joy and his sister’s protector. He was kind, even when teasing. No matter how goofily he’d guffaw at a joke, you just knew that quite soon he’d grow into the disciplined, responsible soul his mother already trusted to steady the pulse of entire performances.

 

He did. Jason grew up and became a husband and father to four daughters. He was a loyal and trustworthy friend. He was still in close touch with many members of our Power of Faith youth group.

 

And yesterday, he died.

 

I hadn’t seen Jason since I left Power of Faith over 15 years ago, and we didn’t talk much even when I knew him. I could probably count our conversations on a hand. But he, like everyone I encountered there, had remained tenderly preserved in a snow globe of memory. There, I can access them all—and the flurry of emotions I felt about them—instantly and when I do, I feel as close to them as if I’d just passed them a note during praise and worship yesterday.

 

So it is no small thing to have lost Jason Walker. And as I reflect on his passing, I want to send this transmission out into the ether.

 

From ages 8 to 15, I was a member of a church called The Power of Faith Evangelistic Ministries—at least that was what the white-lettered name typeset on the electric blue awning said, out front. All we ever called it was Power of Faith.

The address was 5242 Park Heights Avenue, and it was right across from the famed Pimlico racetrack. During Preakness season, you could see the thoroughbreds galloping when you stood on the sidewalk after service. A few years into my attendance, some Asians opened a greasy spoon called Pimlico Chicken & Fish. There was bullet-proof glass separating them from us.

They sold chicken boxes—five wings and fries, slathered in ketchup of questionable freshness from a gigantic unmarked bottle; “shrimp” as big as three fingers; soda rumored to have been chemically engineered by White folks to sterilize African American men.

We ate there at least once a week.

It was its own world, Power of Faith, all the more surreal right now, from the vantage of adult reflection. To adequately describe the experience of growing up there, you would have to have access to certain points of Christian reference. You would need to have some concept of the Chick tract—and what it feels like to be 12, trekking through the Park Heights community, handing them out to drunkards and addicts and shop-owners.

You would need to understand how Children’s Church or Youth Group can feel like a kind of orphanage, just by virtue of its isolation from our parents’ main service experience, and how in our temporarily parentless haven, we spent much of our time relying on and confiding in a group of kids we saw up to three times a week.

You’d have to know what a shut-in and a three-day fast are, how it might feel to show up at your church after dark, with a blanket, a pillow, a grumbling stomach, and an excitement to whisper conversations to your friends, while your parents paced the sanctuary floor in prayer.

You’d need to be able to wrap your mind around being one of two teenagers left in that darkened sanctuary on a Friday night, waiting for your respective parents and listening on in silence while they commanded demons to exit some woman’s body in the church basement.

This was no ordinary upbringing. These were no ordinary church services, of the type that last two hours, where you leave your worship experience and your Sunday morning relationships at the exit door till next time.

Power of Faith was in your blood. Being a member there was like marrying into a family; even if you got divorced (read: left and joined another church), you still considered all the people you’d inherited there your aunts and cousins and sisters.

Whenever a new family joined, we children immediately checked out their kids, hoping to graft them into our group and see what unique energy they’d bring to the collective. Fortunately, most members were super-involved and showed up for Wednesday, Friday and both Sunday services, so we spent loads of time bonding with new kids.

Everyone in Power of Faith’s youth group was known for something. Lashawn was a genius and a singer; she’d grow up to become a physician. The Brebnors were three siblings from Trinidad; they’d let you live in their home for whole summers if you wanted and for an only child like me, that was a singular experience, being part of home that was bustling with noise and laughter and drama, that was rife with rhythm and creativity. But it wasn’t until Nikia came to the church that I understood what it might be like to have a sister.

I’d been a member at Power of Faith longer than most of the kids in our group, but I’d always felt slightly isolated. I’ve always been retreating in large group settings and because of the infrequency of my smiling or laughter, I was often mistaken for sullen. Nikia wasn’t as socially withdrawn as I, perhaps because she had a number of brothers, but like me, her smile had to be earned, her humor was wry and she tended to stand off from a big crowd on occasion, to observe.

I had my first crush at Power of Faith. It began when I was ten and lasted till long after I left. Even now, I remember that boy with a kind of wonder. And when I think of what I’ll tell my daughter about love, it will begin with a description of the infatuation I felt for him.

Our entire youth group knew about that crush, but they were mostly polite and empathetic enough not to tease me mercilessly for it.

When the Walkers arrived from St. Louis—a single mother, her adolescent son and pre-adolescent daughter—the chemistry of our group was forever altered. The son, Jason, made fast friends with the guys in our gang; his easy grin and infectious laughter immediately put people at ease. His lanky, boyish good looks made him a hit with the ladies, too.

With the Walkers’ arrival, Power of Faith had its first encounter with liturgical dance. Jason’s mother, Laurene, had founded a troupe called Namyanka, which delicately blended African movement and worshipful music and gesturing. His preteen sister, Jessica, who had been dancing since she was two, was the troupe’s star performer. Jason played the djembe during a selection of numbers.

A few of the girls in our youth group joined and I was one of them. I’d soon learn I didn’t have the confidence for public dance performance. That was more the domain of Dejelle and Jacqui Brebnor, whose long, lithe limbs seemed made for graceful gesticulation.

But there was something truly thrilling about being a part of a Namyanka rehearsal. Even now, I look back on our performance of James Weldon Johnson’s The Creation with an awe I only reserve for the works of art that have made the deepest imprints in my heart. It was while rehearsing for this that I began to really understand how amazing the Walker family was. As Sister Laurene recited Johnson’s words like an incantation and Jessica flailed and whirled with urgency and elegance, Jason kept our rhythm with his drum.

With each strike of his palm or the heel of his hand, he seemed less the elastic-limbed boy we saw performing pratfalls in the church parking lot and more a man-in-the-making, more the warrior-hunter he would’ve been if he’d been raised in the Africa whose music he’d learned to so fully invoke.

It was with this dual perception I would always regard him. Jason was part prankster, part math scholar; part hip-hop, part classical enthusiast. He was his mother’s joy and his sister’s protector. He was kind, even when teasing. No matter how goofily he’d guffaw at a joke, you just knew that quite soon he’d grow into the disciplined, responsible soul his mother already trusted to steady the pulse of entire performances.

He did. Jason grew up and became a husband and father to four daughters. He was a loyal and trustworthy friend. He was still in close touch with many members of our Power of Faith youth group.

And yesterday, he died.

I hadn’t seen Jason since I left Power of Faith over 15 years ago, and we didn’t talk much even when I knew him. I could probably count our conversations on a hand. But he, like everyone I encountered there, had remained tenderly preserved in a snow globe of memory. There, I can access them all—and the flurry of emotions I felt about them—instantly and when I do, I feel as close to them as if I’d just passed them a note during praise and worship yesterday.

So it is no small thing to have lost Jason Walker. And as I reflect on his passing, I want to send this transmission out into the ether.

To Nikia and Eugene and Dejelle, to Jacqui and Rashid and Jaye, to Tonya and Booker and Theodore, to Chris and Damont and Philip, to Tami and Kim and Markia, to Angel and Shawn and the Mathews siblings, to Lashawn and April and Raheem, to Paulette and Tia and Terrell, to Jason and Jessica and TJ, to Carlos and Emmanuel and Jonah, to Sherman and Katrice and Tasha, to Kenya and Ronald and Kenyetta, to everyone whose names I’ve forgotten, to all those who’ve faced death before the rest of us:

I love you all. You’re never far. I’ll see you soon.

To Nikia and Eugene and Dejelle, to Jacqui and Rashid and Jaye, to Tonya and Booker and Theodore, to Chris and Damont and Philip, to Tami and Kim and Markia, to Angel and Shawn and the Mathews siblings, to Lashawn and April and Raheem, to Paulette and Tia and Terrell, to Jason and Jessica and TJ, to Carlos and Emmanuel and Jonah, to Sherman and Katrice and Tasha, to Kenya and Ronald and Kenyetta, to everyone whose names I’ve forgotten, to all those who’ve faced death before the rest of us:

 

I love you all. You’re never far. I’ll see you soon.

Posted on by slb · 4 Comments

Be Grateful.

I get chills when I listen to this, and I wanted to share it with you today:

God has not promised me/sunshine.

That’s not the way it’s going to be.

But a little rain, mixed with God’s sunshine…

A little pain…

Makes me appreciate the good times.

If you’ve been following my work here, you’re well aware of how difficult my 2010 was. For the past year, the arteries of my blog have been clogged with musings about my tower of challenges. I value that writing; I’ll continue it. But today, I just want to be appreciative. Of my life. Of my child. Of my God. Of my abilities, my opportunities, my slowly increasing drive. Of my ideas, my future. Of my daughter’s health, of mine. Of my large, extended family. Of the fact that both my parents are still here–and better still, that they are so accessible. How beautiful it is to be able to build bridges of dreams with them and to cross the long-held reservoir of water underneath them.  And what of my daily increasing capacity to love, of this miraculous wonder whose tiny arms reach out, of their own accord, and search for mine, to provide a reanimating embrace at the end of a deeply exhausting day?

Can you imagine? Who could ever lament the obstacles of a life this full and this rich, without taking frequent reflective pauses to say, “Nevertheless…?”

I hope you’ve had a few moments today to take yours.

Posted on by slb · 8 Comments

A Post-Pentecostal Musing.

People hear that you grew up religious, and they can’t imagine you’d have a complex relationship with faith. If you believe one part, you must believe it all. But who gets more chances to see the absurdities than the devout? An answer that’s satisfying on Sunday becomes contradictory by Wednesday night. Belief is a wrestling match that lasts a lifetime.

— Victor Lavalle, Big Machine

What I am is haunted: stalked, reticent, silent. I can’t dance to any song, watch any film, hold any man without feeling surveilled. No thought goes unheard; no motive remains mysterious. I am hawked, dogged, tracked. There are no restraining orders. I can’t speak to the degree of shell-shock in others; I have only my own to catalog, to manage. What I have are memories, of an elderly woman shoving a huge leather-bound bible into my hands so the devil the pastor was about to cast out wouldn’t “jump into me,” as I sat waiting two rows behind the altar; of a man lifting a leg to the back of his neck and standing on one foot while ministers prayed for him; of the HIV-infected visiting prophet whose testimony involved locking himself into his church for three days until the spirit of homosexuality left him.

What I have is a residual belief in the strangest of all my strange experiences, a lingering pre-intellectual instinct that keeps me from being an entirely rational thinker. Some nights, I still think I’ll see a demon at the foot of my bed. Some mornings, I still wake and panic about whether or not the Rapture occurred while I slept and I, for whatever transgressions I committed between dusk and dawn, have been left behind.

What I see when I envision God is a vapor overlaying everything. A voyeur, a protector, an executioner, depending on the day. Binocular eyes, a sword to slay giants, and sickles for hands. Body of stone and body of air, at equal turns.

What I see when I envision Jesus is a hippie, barefoot, in blue tattered dungarees and a white linen tunic embroidered with navy thread. Listening and pacing and staring through the cookie-sized holes in his palms. Smiling and running frustrated fingers through crazy-thick hair.

What I hear when someone tells me he/she is a prophet is an echo: an imperceptible white noise beneath loud and sincere speculation.

In some half-carved hollow that logic can’t touch, I believe everything. No matter how thoroughly the messages of my brain excavate the corners of my body, they never find this hollow. Their reason can’t be heard here. I believe that prayer has the potential to animate paralyzed limbs. I believe people who insist that their malignant growths have shrunken to non-existence. I believe a bush can burn without being consumed. I believe a too-wistful woman can transmogrify to salt.

No amount of evidence or education can completely erase my socio-spiritual imprinting. What is there will always be there.

But age intensifies suspicion. Experience encourages examination. I cannot be a scholar without questioning. I cannot be a woman without relinquishing some of my naivete. I know that I know very little for certain, and wondering calms me.

I know that the answers I’ve always been given are not quite whole answers at all.

Posted on by slb · 9 Comments

Our Little Boys are Growing Up!: Mutemath’s Armistice.

Mutemath’s sophomore album (if you’re only counting the full-length LPs and the Warner Bros.’ releases) dropped two days ago. I preordered it, something I’d never done in the several years that I’ve had iTunes, so I was almost startled Tuesday at the crack of midnight, when it became available to me. (What? So soon?) I downloaded it immediately thereafter. I was flying to Grand Rapids from Baltimore that day, so I didn’t get a chance to listen to it in earnest until I was at the airport, and even then I resisted.

You want your first listen to a new project by your favorite band of all time to be exclusive and undivided and hallowed.

So when we boarded the plan at 2:20 pm, only to learn from our pilot that we’d be captive on the tarmac for at least an hour, I finally pulled out my iPod.

I’ll admit that, on first listen, I wasn’t entirely impressed with this album. There are songs on it that practically scream: “Maybe this’ll be the one that lands us that headlining gig at Madison Square Garden!”

I almost let myself feel a bit betrayed—and I’m usually not one of those toolish indie band fans who gets genuinely irritated when its band “goes mainstream.” I’m usually not one of those people who has to stand on a soapbox and rage into a bullhorn, “I knew them when! I had them first! You don’t deserve them!”

Because it’s pretty lame to get downright proprietary about people you don’t even know.

Even so, this wasn’t the Mutemath to which I’d grown accustomed. The sounds on Armistice are milder, quieter, tamer (appropriate, given the album title, but still). Whither the Paul who shouted through most of the tracks, backed by frenetic percussion and landfill-funky bass? Whither the songs that allow you to envision exactly the moment at which Paul will handstand on his organ in concert? These songs simply weren’t as full of bangs and blasts and crackles and roars.

One thing seemed certain: gone were the days of the Atari.

Rest of the article and video after the jump.

Posted on by slb · 2 Comments

an inarticulate description of faith.

Sometimes, when I look into a mirror, my body becomes fleetingly, fully aware of how temporal it is. And in that instant, it ceases to exist. My spirit sloughs it off and regards itself with calm, matter-of-fact detachment.The whole thing takes about .05 seconds.

But this is why I’m certain of eternity and confident that a God presides over it.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to adequately capture those half-seconds and still find them entirely inexpressible.

That is why I don’t proselytize.