Bio: Cole Arthur Riley is the creator of Black Liturgies, a space for Black spiritual words of liberation, lament, rage, and rest; and a project of The Center for Dignity and Contemplation where she serves as Executive Curator. Born and for the most part raised in Pittsburgh, Cole studied Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of the recently published book, This Here Flesh, Spirituality, liberation and the stories that make us. 

Dr. Russaw talks about her work as a Womanist scholar, expressing how part of her work as a professor and scholar is to “engage others in life we may have read over, may have missed or misread all along.” As Dr. Russaw mentioned in her essay “Wisdom in the Garden,”: "Womanist ways of reading the biblical text are subversive in that, by and large, they disrupt tightly held images of God and God's relationship to humanity.”

Bio: 

Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw is associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, where she serves as the chair of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics program unit. She is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Her many publications include Revisiting Rahab: Another Look at the Woman of Jericho, and “Undaunted: Reading Miriam for the Sisters They Tried to Erase” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition. Russaw has lectured or presented at events for PBS, Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East, the Association of Theological Schools, and the Society of Biblical Literature, in addition to events at many universities and seminaries. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel from Vanderbilt University, and she is an ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“I hesitate to connect mysticism with activism without a huge asterisk because the vast majority of people whoo call themselves mystics are really just  help white people connect with some sense of peace and they’re not in solitary with like Black trans women and they’re not trying to think about ‘well what does mysticism look like in this context.’ And they’re not working against the systems off capitalism that keep people working 80-hours a week just to put food on their table. They’re not working for any off the things that would create some space for other people to connect with mysticism.”

Dr. Ambrose explores the transformative power of truth-telling and the ways in which we mirror one another, naming the ways in which we avoid the difficulty of transformation "in the interest of preserving our comfort.”

Dr. Ambrose describes contemplation as a "listening with one’s whole self. That’s attunement through the body, attunement through previous experiences, and being able to integrate all of that.” 

Bio:

Elyse Ambrose, Ph.D. (they/them) is a blackqueer ethicist, creative, and educator, whose research, art and community praxis lie at the intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and spirituality. Ambrose’s forthcoming book, A Living Archive: Embodying a Black Queer Ethics (T&T Clark, Enquiries in Embodiment, Sexuality, and Social Ethics series) centers blackqueerness in constructing communal-based sexual ethics.  Ambrose currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethical Leadership and Society at Meadville Lombard Theological School as a Louisville Institute Postdoctoral Fellow. 

You can find out more about them at elyseambrose.com

Davelyn Hill is the Executive Director for Speaking Down Barriers. Speaking Down Barriers is a team of listeners, healers, artists, researchers, teachers, theologians, & creatives who work together using spoken word poetry, transformative dialogue, workshops, and deep listening, in order to move people, communities, organizations, & institutions towards an equitable world through healing & justice. In this Episode, Davelyn talks about the ways in which Speaking Down Barriers is a “tool of expansion” to open the room up and she shares that she sees mysticism as directly connected to community saying, "I don't think I can say that I am a mystic without being connected to community."

Davelyn has a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy from Converse College and is working on a Masters in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry. Alongside providing counseling services, she has led support groups, presented research, and conducted university presentations around racial trauma and oppression. She enjoys facilitating groups and retreats around grief and wholeness. Davelyn Hill, also known as Davelyn Athena is an author, poet, and intuitive painter. Davelyn’s poem “Deloris” was published by the Plant and Poetry journal. Her poem “Questions” was been featured online through Spark and Echo.

In this conversation she also explores the ways in which collective breath can allow us to move together in various forms of protest and collective care, “when I read Jesus in the biblical text I see Jesus gathering groups of people to actually walk against a Roman imperialistic supremacist system."

Dr. Angela N. Parker a Biblical scholar currently teaching at McAfee School of Theology. In her research, Dr. Parker merges Womanist thought and postcolonial theory while reading biblical texts. Dr. Parker’s books include  If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority. In this book, Dr. Parker draws from her experience as a Womanist New Testament scholar in order deconstruct one of White Christianity’s most pernicious lies: the conflation of biblical authority with the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility.

In her second book entitled Bodies, Violence, & Emotions: A Womanist Study of the Gospel of Mark, Dr. Parker thinks through the issue of imperial violence and its effects on the bodies of Jesus, John the Baptizer, and the woman suffering in a flow of blood in Mark 5. This study allows Dr. Parker to engage real lived experiences of violence and emotions in contemporary society.

“Allow what you’re fighting for to shine through… Find what you can do and work with that hurt… We are all too valuable to burn out.”

Dr. Anthea Butler is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her latest book is White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. Her other books include Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making A Sanctified World. She is also a contributor to the forthcoming book, A New Origin story, The 1619 project out November 2021.

In this episode Dr. Butler talks about the ways in which contemplation can often insinuate privilege, saying “even to say the word ‘contemplative’ at this moment is a word that says ‘privilege’… It means that you have time and most people don’t have time.” And reminds us of the everyday ways in which both contemplation and activism can be yielded to: “We tend to think about contemplation or activism on a big scale, I think we have to think about them as the everyday quotidian things that we do that can engender hope.”

Quotes:

“For me, being a contemplative doesn’t mean that you escape society or you escape the world but that you find a place to anchor yourself firmly first of all and then secondarily take care of those things in the ways in which you need to take care of them…” 

“We tend to think about contemplation or activism on a big scale, I think we have to think about them as the everyday quotidian things that we do that can engender hope.”

“How can you be contemplative and take a step back when the situation and the society and the murderous ways in which black people get treated in this country continue to happen on a regular loop?”

“even to say the word ‘contemplative’ at this moment is a word that says ‘privilege’… It means that you have time and most people don’t have time.” 

During the Ferguson uprising in 2014 after the murder of Mike Brown, Dr. Gunning Francis was serving as the Associate Dean for Contextual Education and Assistant Professor of Christian Education at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. As a result, Dr. Gunning Francis wrote the book Ferguson and Faith: Sparking Leadership and Awakening Community. In the book, She interviewed more than two dozen clergy and young activists who were actively involved in the movement for racial justice in Ferguson and beyond. Her forthcoming book is titled Faith After Ferguson: Resilient leadership in pursuit of racial justice — and is due out later this year with Chalice press.

Dr. Gunning Francis earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Hampton University; a Master of Divinity degree from the Candler School of Theology; and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.

In the end of her book, she writes a message as relevant today as it was during her book’s release in 2015: 

In this episode we talk about activism as being "a return to the core and crux of our faith," and the fact that "what you're contemplating ought to cause you to live differently and intentionally." Enjoy this episode where Dr. Gunning Francis concludes that where she sees mysticism today is: “Every time I look in the eyes of the young people, of not so young people out there on the streets standing up, speaking up, I see mystics. I do.”

Dr. Coleman Brown has contributed essays to Embodied Spirits: Spiritual Directors of Color Tell their Stories and Living into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America. She completed the Spiritual Guidance Program at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in 2008. Her book When the Heart Speaks, Listen—Discovering Inner Wisdom tells the story of her heart transplant. 

In this episode, she and I talk about our need of being more expansive with definitions of contemplation and mysticism. "Mysticism is just one of those kinds of things that happens," she says. "I hope that we will abandon this idea that mysticism only happens to special people.”

In the Episcopal tradition, she was elected and consecrated as the 11th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis in 2017, making her the first Black woman to be elected as a Diocesan Bishop. In an interview with Sally Hicks in Feb of 21, she said, “I just think racial justice is the work that has to be done 24 hours a day, all the time, every place.” 

In this conversation, Bishop Jennifer and I discuss contemplation, mysticism, and activism. We discuss the need to intellectualize less and remember that the work of social injustice is also heart work, and work that requires us to, “Feel the feelings and let’s get to work to make the world better.”

She is the author of several books including The Deepest Peace: Contemplations from a Season of Stillness, Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging, The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender, and Be Love: An Exploration of Our Deepest Desire.

In this conversation we explore the ways mysticism cannot be embodied, the importance of sanctuary as a place of safety, and the value of rage. On being a contemplative, Sensei Zenju says, “Practicing to be a contemplative… you’re learning to be embodied and to be boundless at the same time.”

TW: In this episode suicide is briefly mentioned in the context of dealing with rage and racial injustice. If this would be difficult or problematic for you, please let me know and I can work to get you a version with that portion edited out, no questions asked. 

When her first novel, All I Need to Get By, was published in 2004 Sophfronia was nominated for best new author at the African American Literary Awards. Her other books include the novel is Unforgivable Love, an essay collection titled Love’s Long Line, and a memoir, This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World, co-authored with her son. 

Her most recent book, The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton, was published just this year in March of 2021. In her chapter "Hopeful Eyes on a Hopeless Issue: How to Resist Racism," she writes "If we don’t become the truth-tellers, then a different kind of erosion can happen in which resentment breeds, a resentment that would threaten the wholeness of my heart and soul. If nothing else, I must be whole and respond to racism in a way that is true to the depths of my being. What does that look like?"

In this episode, author Sophfronia Scott and I discuss the power of truth-telling, encounters with mysticism, and the ways in which contemplation can lead to mystical encounter. Of mysticism she says, “There is something all around us that sustains us and the mystical is when we can reach for that and to know that there is something beyond the veil.”

More about Sophfronia.

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Sister Barbara told the Washington Post,  “There comes a point when you have to get off the merry-go-round. I could only do so much with my two hands. Through prayer, I feel I can touch the world.”

In this interview I ask Sister Barbara about mysticism's role in activism, and we talk about Black Lives Matter, the insurrection of January 6th, and more. She defines a mystic as “someone that observes mysteries or experiences but their intuition is held by God. And so they’re able to understand beyond the human understanding, beyond it.”

Sister Barbara Jean's writings
1983 NY Times piece
1983 Washington Post piece

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Before that, Dr. Lightsey served as Associate Dean of Community Life and Lifelong Learning, Clinical Assistant Professor of Contextual Theology and Practice at the Boston University School of Theology.

Her work centers on the causes of peacemaking, racial justice and LGBTQ rights. In her book, she writes, “Queer womanist theology makes the claim that those bodies of LGBTQ persons are important for the tasks of helping build a peaceable and just world. That happens in relationships.” and “At the end of the day, eradicating oppression is the heart of queer womanist theological reflection. We must examine not just racism but sexisms, not just homophobia but transphobia, not jut poverty but war, and not jut the fluidity of boundaries but the hegemony of the status quo.”

More about Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey

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She is the founder of the Spiritual Directors of Color Network, an international, ecumenical/interfaith association of persons of color with a ministry of spiritual accompaniment. A native of Washington DC, she now lives in Maryland. Her ministry, like her books, explores the intersection of contemplative spirituality and the ongoing struggle for social justice and the dismantling of racism.

Spiritual Directors of Color Network

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