On Writing Love|Balms as "The Work My Soul Must Have"
Need a shorter Love|Balms Journey?
1) Jump to the Journey Flow Forwards at the end.
2) Check out the Journey Playlist that (for me) narrates the piece in literary mediums aside from text.
I wasn’t expecting to have this particular epiphany while sitting at my brother’s work, having brought him lunch. (I was on vacation; he didn’t pack one; I had time. And no, I did not make it—I love him.) And, this is the way of both mindfulness and examen: the practices of being both present in our life and fully aware of it as it’s occurring; and reflective as to how what we experience and notice are calling us towards unveiling our deepest lessons and desires out of everyday spaces we tend to consider meaningless.
My brother’s company had hired a singer and guitarist for the main public area for the Christmas season. And she is phenomenal—straight up vocal blend between Carrie Underwood and Alison Krauss (bless the whole LORD for her gifts), and super sweet and kind. I was the only person sitting near her while waiting for my brother to finish up with his current client, and we were making idle chitchat while she set up, tuned, and began singing with what this ridiculously and beautiful gifted heifer had the nerve to refer to as her “morning voice.”
(I mean—she knows better than anyone that she can perform better. It was my astonishment and envy that was like, “How dare you call this your ‘morning voice’ when that’s my glory voice after a steaming shower, gargling three times, avoiding milk and sugar for three weeks, and two hours of vocal warm-ups? How…dare…you?”)
As I was sitting there completing my journal redesign to take to the printer while awaiting my brother, she’s just killing song after song. I amen’d when she laid out ‘Jolene.’ A, the “pastor is so blessed that he’s about to call to pass the collection plate,” amen. She did the thing.
And while she was doing the thing…
Staff were milling about chatting with each other about sales reports, heads buried in paperwork, backs to her, so on and so forth. Doing what they were there to do, which meant largely ignoring what she was there to do. While she was in the midst of doing her whole…entire…thing.
While I was first appalled by the employees’ behavior, and then sympathetic to the reality and sad for them that they were provided this gift that their work didn’t grant them opportunity to truly appreciate, I witnessed the performer continue singing and playing; adjusting her equipment; smiling and chatting graciously with staff as they walked by.
From The Black Theology Project
And I had this sudden realization that the singer was living out Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon’s wonderful and famed invitation, shared with me by Dr. Phillis I. Sheppard : That we are each and all here to “do the work your soul must have.”
The singer could press on despite who wasn’t listening, pausing to chat between songs, and returning always to singing and playing, singing and playing so genuinely and beautifully—not because she had a captive and enamored audience, but because she embraced and lived that her life and soul couldn’t. not. do it.
There she sat singing and playing so beautifully and deeply, performing on a Saturday morning in this work space as if she were singing with an audience of fans equally enraptured in shared passion, or manifesting a special and intimate experience with her lover.
I nearly decided to pass on this Still Small Voice moment, this peering into the veil through the seeming ordinary. My brother came in a few minutes later, and introduced me to his client. I gave him his lunch and they wandered away to complete paperwork. Duly disrupted on whether or not I would capture this moment—I had no doubt that I should—I gathered my things and went to my car.
I stopped short with my hand poised to turn the key in the ignition, because I have been at this point enough times to now recognize: This matters. We need to capture this.
And as I was writing I realized it matters because I needed to ask my Self:
Why am I so excited for how Love|Balms is forming and emerging for 2020, but terrified to proactively pursue bringing it into life?
__________
The first of two reasons to immediately surface, surprising me that it was lingering in my subconscious, is fear of lack of “traction” with “followers,” that it won’t mean anything to anyone in the world beyond my Self.
This was odd to me because I don’t necessarily want followers, since I don’t think of my Self as leading anyone anywhere. I view Love|Balms as me consciously processing and sharing my journey in transformational healing, and inviting whomsoever feels so led to consider how it may be meaningful for living their own journeys.
But I realized I had this shadow of a narrative reverberating within and weighting me down, this quote I heard someone say in a (turrible) speech on leadership when I was about twelve: “How can you tell if someone is a leader? By whether or not anyone is following them.”
I thought then as a I consciously do now that it’s dumb as hell. No one who knows anything about leadership progression and development should actually believe that. Most people begin with NO ONE following them. People eventually begin following because the person is so persistent in their passion that similarly interested folks eventually recognize and are like—“Hey, that matters, and we’d like to join in, too!”
2001 rendering of a Galilean man from a skull from Christ’s time by forensic anthropologist Richard Neave. Just an fyi…
Jesus Christ is pretty okily dokily known today, but a fairly popular theological interpretation of the Gospels is that we literally crucified him out of fear that he was a raggedy upstart nobody, who had to be dealt with before he brought holy hell against his community from the Roman empire. He had a few folks who were regularly kicking it and holding it down with him, and most of them took off when the police ran up on them. (No shade—most of us would do the same today. That’s part of the point of that story.)
To clarify and reiterate: today’s professed Lord and Savior of approximately 70.6% of the US and just over 31% of the planet once had barely any followers. We’re not actually clear how many regularly committed followers Christ had while he was bodily alive. We hear about the Sermon on the Mount and the Feeding of the 5,000 and we’re like, “But so many people were regularly around him!”
This can be hard to imagine because most of us are told Sunday school stories that are a summation of Christ’s ministry, without the in-depth “Before They Were Stars” exposé. TL;DR: his entire ministerial existence up through his death and resurrection is a fairly good chunk of his “Before They Were Stars” exposé.
Beyhive | Doing what it do.
Think of the various followers like how many of us are Beyoncé fans, post-DC. Only the committed few are inner-inner Beyhive—been on since Destiny’s Child hummed their first notes, and are not going anywhere. Ever (…for worse and better—because Beyhive can get a little obsessive, and would be the ones to let us know about the tomb!). The disciples and apostles were rocking with Christ no matter what.
Some of us still are genuine believers and supporters of the ministry, provide meals and places to sleep, contribute to the coffers. This person we look to does deeply impact and help shape our lives. And, we’ve still got our additional leaders who also hold our attention.
Many of the rest us are more the 11 out of 12 lepers who got our healing and bounced without even saying thank you. If anything happened, we’d be like, “Wow, I knew him! That’s a trip!”; scroll social media for the sordid details as long as it was major news; and then go on with our life when it no longer was news, or until our On This Day brought it back through.
This is more what we should imagine it was like for Christ. From what we actually know, Christ had a lot of folks who wanted things from him, or wanted him to be a specific something, and that’s what they came for. He had far and few rolling as genuine #squad for what he believed and preached he was here for. And for moments in his greatest human suffering, he had no followers at all, or nearly none.
Now? While the speaker I was forced to listen to at age twelve—who clearly had NO BUSINESS speaking to children about leadership—would tell us by their definition that JESUS CHRIST wasn’t a leader, it seems like The Big JC has had a pretty good come up over the last 2000 years.
“If I fall, I will fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off.”
Yup. She said that. And she lived it through.
Fannie Lou Hamer: Drinking her water and minding her business when white supremacist medical practices came for her uterus in 1963—a “Mississippi appendectomy” this was called, when black women were systemically sterilized to prevent them having children. And was minding her business still when she registered to vote, which was supposed to finally be clear and legal for black folks in our Christian, democratic, “land of the free.” Her refusal to withdraw her intention to vote, as well as actively advocating for black women’s bodies and the right for black folks to for real get to vote—even after being kicked off her land for doing so—led to SNCC seeking her out to become one of their organizers.
All of this quickly led to her becoming the leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which did a lot of awesome ish. In particular, we can thank the MFDP for creating significant shifts for equality during the 1960’s Black Freedom Movement.
(I will write about her more, and heretofore refer to her as Fannie Lou Baemer, because she’s my relational justice boo.)
He-ey, Martin… <3
My favorite story about a leader who began with no followers, because so few folks know when we think we know so much about him, is that of MLK, Jr.
Martin (his mama named him Michael) was planning to go be the pastor of a church. The end. He got his dream congregational appointment, that’s all he wanted, he was set to lead his flock and bless his days. And Then the Holy Spirit sent folks knocking on his door to let him know: “We need you.” And he didn’t want to, because he already had what he wanted. But he felt God was calling him to serve with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He sensed that this was, in fact, a part of who he was, even though it wasn’t what he’d had in mind. And then he was called deeper and deeper, and further and further…
For each of these now-considered great leaders, the work that their souls must have was defined by their living what was genuine and true for them—not whether or not anyone was following behind them. It’s fair to say that two of them didn’t initially want to go to where they ended up being followed.
I don’t know that Auntie’s Toni, Maya, June, Audre, or Angela knew that their singular names would come to define spectacular and irrevocable greatness of and for black women all over this country, and even the world. They simply could not go without, and so lived, the work that their souls must have. And when Grandma Lettie, and Aunts Barbara, Sonja, and Jeanette, and my own Mommy lived and live the work that their souls must have, it didn’t matter and wasn’t necessarily a focus that they never gained national or international fame, but that they live for their lives, and also modeled for their girls how to do the same.
I know this, because they have always been so embracing and open about who they are.
So why, one month shy of 35, was I sitting in my car, realizing that I was afraid of a stupid “leadership” quote that I personally believe and know is absurd as all get out?
I am deciding through this writing to turn that asinine quote and its hold in me inside out, and dive deeper still into what leadership does mean to me.
And I recognize that leaders, to me, are uniquely gifted people called to in some way step out and shine their Light for one another to see and vision—in order for one another to learn to recognize, find, and live the Light within them Selves.
That’s all of us.
None of these phenomenal humans set out to be a leader so much as they set out to live themselves—that’s what made them phenomenal. The work that all of their souls must have—that all of our souls must have—is in fact to live our Selves. That’s ultimately what each of them is seeking for all of us.
Being their authentic, God-gifted selves is what makes them inherent leaders to those like me—folks searching for vibrant, steady beacons in the rolling and roiling blackouts of morals, ethics, and authenticity.
So I think on these things and I feel lifted. I feel called to remember, every moment, every breath, every day: The very purpose of my being here, is to be Me. If I’m not living that, I’m not affording my Self the opportunity or gift of genuine life, or relationship with one another. And whomever may be following me, for whatever reasons they feel so led, is being paraded through a vast vapidness if I don’t show up.
So let do this right. Let’s do this well. Let’s do this real.
Let’s begin.
*Phew* Issue one down…
My Flow Forwards
There is something that we each and all desire to live, which we feel incomplete without, no matter what else we may have. We must find it. We must live it. Mine is transformational journeying, and honestly capturing and sharing that journey.
We need to remember again and again to live for our lives rather than for ‘likes,’ and ‘follows,’ which tell us only what’s popular at this moment—not what’s genuine, meaningful, lasting, or fulfilling.
The greatest accomplishment we can live is our Selves. If we’re not showing up as and sharing our Selves, we’re not truly present. As Dr. Kirk Byron Jones says in his book Soul Talk, “Attendance is not presence.”