[00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Hey, Esther. Hey, Darren. We are back for season two of Second Sunday. Pew, pew, pew, pew. Hey, I'm looking forward to it. This season is going to look totally different from the last season. Absolutely. I mean, last season, we talked to folks who have stories like mine. People who are working from within the church to build inclusive spiritual [00:00:30] spaces for Black queer folks.

This is what a church community should look like, a place where everyone is welcome, where I'm not afraid to name myself and I'm not afraid to name you as being welcome.

But we know that the need for this kind of spiritual inclusivity doesn't stop at the church doors.

This season, we're mostly talking to people exploring their faith outside of church.

We call it the Mystic Law and all these different things because it just does what needs to be done. And as long as you show up, as [00:01:00] long as you keep showing up, that's all that is required is that you show up in front of the mirror. That's it. And that you look at yourself clearly without filters, without whatever, and that you polish that.

It's amazing to me how people always find a way to connect with their spiritual higher power, even when it's outside of the traditional church. She said,

but I do know the presence of God when I feel it. And God does not inhabit a place that is against God's will. When she said that, they [00:01:30] almost lost their mind.

The sites ain't ready for this.

But we're still gonna talk about it. Catch second Sunday from The Qube and PRX's Big Questions Project. Available wherever you get podcasts starting April 24th.

Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther. And this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

One of the reasons that church right [00:00:30] now, religion is in such a mess, such a quandary, is because the people that really have the answers are the people that are least welcome. They have the answers because they're not stuck. They have the answers because they're not stuck by the walls and the jail that is religion.

Now that's powerful to me, to just immediately name that the church needs the [00:01:00] people who the church has not been very welcoming of. If you look back through church history, that's who's made it better for all of us. High key. It reminds me of that, this concept we've spoken about before called like ministering from the margins and how looking in the places where we normally don't serve and connect with people is really how to make things better for everyone.

Because when you take care of the people who are least cared for, then [00:01:30] by default, like. Everyone is included in that. Absolutely. And, you know, Esther, when we started Second Sunday, we really did this deep dive into what's happening inside the church, the way that Black queer people are surviving and thriving, and even when they leave, they often come back.

This season, we're also going to get into some other kinds of stories. Yeah, this season, we're going to talk about people who are [00:02:00] finding faith and spirituality outside of the church in so many different ways. And in all these stories, I feel like it gives us an opportunity to understand ourselves better, to understand our faith and our beliefs better.

I'm honored that we have Bishop Yvette Flunder kicking off season two. Bishop Flunder is a preacher, activist, author, and you'll hear her describe herself as a gatherer. In 1991, she alongside Mother Shirley Miller, founded [00:02:30] City of Refuge, United Church of Christ in June, 2003, Bishop Flender was consecrated presiding bishop of the fellowship, a multinational fellowship of churches and faith-based organizations across the us, Mexico, and parts of Africa.

Bishop Flunder is a San Francisco native, and she grew up with deep roots in the Church of God in Christ. I mean, her granddaddy walked with Bishop Mason, who was the founder of the Church of God in Christ. That is a spiritual lineage, y'all, and I think it certainly was [00:03:00] passed down to her. I knew from day one almost, time I was five, six years old, that I was a pastor.

I look back on it now, I didn't know what to call it then, but I was the little girl that if I sat down on the curb outside the house, three or four little children would come over and sit next to me and they would ask me, so what you doing? If you understand what I'm saying, there was a gatherer [00:03:30] inside of me.

I didn't have to go to school to learn it. I always wanted to heal something. I catch the birds with the broken wings and the frog with the, you know, with one leg missing and I would bring them to the house and my mother would just have a fit because it was in me. I think we come from. eternity into time with an assignment.

I believe that. I don't think that eternity begins because you die. I think that there's a part of us [00:04:00] that is from God and returns to God. And I think that it is literally the part of us that is spirit. I believe we literally come into the earth realm. with an assignment. And something sort of chases us.

Why are some people artists? You know, why are some people musicians? Why are some people great cooks? Without anyone showing them what to do. There's some things that are sort of written, I think, on our DNA. [00:04:30] And for me, it was to be a gatherer. Her calling as a pastor wasn't the only way she felt set apart from everyone else.

In the early part of my life, I realized Early on, that I was different. You know, unusual. I was set up by the church to take the path that women take. When you get to be a certain age, they start talking to you about marriage. And, you know, [00:05:00] they'd have a, all the families intermarried when I was a kid, you know, families from different churches in the Bay Area and down in Los Angeles and like that, when the children got of age.

They would start, Well, what do you think about brother so and so? Well, sister such and such, you know? And, um, so they had started looking for folks, you know, for me. And I was not pleased. Maybe that's a good way for me to say it. It wasn't working. And I remember some years and years [00:05:30] ago, one of the older women, you know, we had those older women that I call battle axe women.

So this was one of those ones that wore the nurse shoes and everything, you know, she was full of the Holy Ghost and heavy handed and authoritarian. So she came to me one day and she said, listen, baby, she took me to the side. She said, I want you to know, we know who you are. So immediately I knew what she was suggesting because I knew there was something [00:06:00] other about me.

Like I said, I wasn't finding anybody at the musicals that I wanted to marry. This is the truth. And so she said, um, Here's what you need to do. You can go right on, she said, in the church. If you'll just get you a little husband. She didn't say much about what she meant. I absolutely understood, however, what she was saying.

I have to get me a honeydew. You know, honey [00:06:30] do this, honey do that. Got to get me a little husband that I could be the heavy. in the relationship, and if he would be amenable. If I got a husband, it would be okay for me, essentially, to be a woman's woman, a same gender loving woman. Now, I didn't have any words for it then, but I knew what she was talking about, just like I'm talking about it today.

I was [00:07:00] shocked because I did not know the underground. It took me a while, but I began to learn that I would never have to leave the church that I was raised in, in order to be a same gender loving woman, as long as I followed the rules. and regulations, if you understand what I'm saying. And I carried myself in a certain way.

Oh, it's the honeydew for me. Wow. I [00:07:30] was lost in the sauce on this one, Darren. You know, it's always about the story behind the story. It really is. Where you get the good nitty gritty. They said, we see you, baby. And by the way, here's tea. And they said, we're going to set you up for success. That's the mothers of the church.

Even the battle axes. Oh, to be a battle axe. I immediately think of pantyhose, um, a certain shoe [00:08:00] selection, a certain closeness to the ground, groundedness, one might say. Someone that could really put hands, but maybe could scrub a pan. Yes. If they, like, bathed you as a child, they'd be very rough, but you'd also be clean.

You'd put lotion on, Vaseline, okay? That's a battle axe. Vaseline down. Washing the sheets by hand. Okay?

But, you know, we are talking about a different generation. We're talking [00:08:30] about people who really had to do what they had to do to get along, and we That's what she did. Eventually, Bishop Flunder does go get her a honeydew husband, and she struggled with how to deal with it. I did get married because I, I just couldn't figure what else can I do?

You know, if I'm going to have intimacy, I thought about having children. I wanted to have children. You know, I [00:09:00] just couldn't fit the role. I couldn't fit the required diminishment of myself. That was the problem. That was the real problem for me coming along. Why would God do that to me when I feel called?

I don't fit the calls that are for women in the church, and I just couldn't pull it off. I could not pull it off. And I have to say, I pulled back, you [00:09:30] know, and I married a gay man. I didn't know I was gonna marry a gay man, but I wasn't surprised. Because we sort of cancelled each other out, if you understand what I'm saying, it's, you know.

And we made an incredible baby. Absolutely, I have incredible respect. And sometimes I'm in awe of my child. She's remarkable and incredibly gifted. She's a great [00:10:00] seer and she's multi faceted. Faith. She's a wonderful blessing and I, I'm very grateful. Life really does take us in wild and unexpected ways.

And for Bishop Flunder, she ended up moving away from the church of her childhood and she found purpose in helping others through her community work. Then, in 1986, she found herself drawn to the needs of the community that surrounded her. This included being on the early front lines of the HIV AIDS care and [00:10:30] activism movement.

Fear and stigma had many distancing themselves from people living with AIDS, but she stood in the gap. It began for me when we were at Love Center, because that's when, you know, we first started seeing it. When we were the Arc of Love then, 501c3, we had to get some money. We were the first black Faith based organization that provided services to the black community in Oakland.

We were the first house, [00:11:00] we rented a whole house because people's families were throwing them out and they were not playing about it. We did that before anybody did it. that we knew of in Oakland because everybody was afraid. The funeral homes were afraid to take the bodies. That's just how, how it was.

And when I got involved in HIV and doing that work, I had already come to Love Center. In fact, I was already the associate pastor. It [00:11:30] was Love Center that came into my life. Bishop Hawkins, and Edwin Hawkins. They came into my life at a time when I was out of the church of my youth and just unchurched. I was giving my time to serving.

I was serving seniors with food programs that we developed and housing programs. I was serving people who were [00:12:00] aging out of the systems for teenagers and they were young adults and floundering and trying to figure out what to do. And I felt like that was as wholly a work as anybody needed to do, frankly.

I'll just be honest. And then when the HIV epidemic started coming. It's about that time. I came to Love Center because that was about 40 years ago. And when I started at Love Center, serving at Love Center, the epidemic blew up and blew up and blew up and we had to do something. And [00:12:30] that's why we, you know, got the houses and started doing the services.

Services as in getting people food and caring for people. And it got so I was doing like two or three funerals a week. And it was hard. My emotions were just really in bad, bad shape. But I married someone just a few years before the HIV epidemic, and I do not know why I was not infected by HIV, or my daughter, [00:13:00] because that is how her father died.

And it got me deeply involved and engaged in a broader understanding of the LGBTQI community and the way in which there were literally people in areas of faith. Who were thanking God for the epidemic because it was killing people in certain populations more so than others. [00:13:30] And I've been working around HIV and AIDS since the time that it was called GRID.

I remember I was having one of those meltdown and I was playing Donny Hathaway music, now that'll get you, you know, and that song that I was, I remember singing it, you know, he sang a song. It was like. Giving up, you know that when it's hard to do when you really love someone. [00:14:00] And I was singing it in the dark and drinking bourbon, and that was when the Lord began to speak to me.

Just for anybody that hears this, the Lord will speak to you. Singing Donny Hathaway music and drinking bourbon. I knew it was God calling me in that moment to do even more for people who were living and dying. Being broken and feeling bad and [00:14:30] carrying on, I knew I had to act up. That was the beginning of the African American funding that came from the CDC.

That initiative, which eventually was an enormous amount of money. It was several millions of dollars that came to us from the CDC as a result. Uh, that moment with Bourbon, and getting together with a bunch of other people who went down there and said something has to happen. Cause the black church is not [00:15:00] gonna help us, the black community is not gonna help us, there's too much prejudice.

We are going to have to get some help from the Centers for Disease Control, and we did get help.

You had me at Bourbon. Listen, the spirit speaks through the spirits. She was having a spiritual experience. That's what I got to say here. Exactly. More puns, please. You know, there are so many ways that I have seen God show up in the least likely way, and [00:15:30] I, I think it's really powerful. One, we got to hear her sing.

So epic. Gosh. Right? At the end of the day, I think everything that is wonderful and good and beautiful has the potential to give glory to God. And Donny Hathaway's song certainly gave some glory to God in that moment. And this is a really critical moment because when the AIDS crisis first began, doctors didn't know what it was.

And people didn't know how to respond to [00:16:00] it. You know, the pandemic really helped us maybe get a fresh understanding of just how scary it can be when people around you are getting sick and even dying, and no one knows what's causing it or how. And in the eighties, they didn't even have Google to go search and get some conflicting answers about.

Not having Google is wild. I'm sorry. Now you're dragging me. No, but. But. High key, the really fascinating part about this is she wasn't even necessarily [00:16:30] part of the church at this point. She was doing God's work in the community, and she was with the people.

I was driving down the freeway, and all of a sudden, I started to emote, and I started to pray. And I hadn't prayed and prayed in tongues in eons. So the presence of God caught me in my car. I had to pull over. I pulled over the side of the road and went all the way in. It's not that I didn't know [00:17:00] what it was.

It's just that I had been ignoring it for a mighty long time. And my yes came out, all the way yes. And I agreed with God, I said, I don't understand how we gonna do this, because this me is not the me that I'm experiencing again. You know what I mean? The me that I am now, this is not how I move in the world.

I'm trying to understand how we're going to homogenize these [00:17:30] things. And I could feel in my heart that God had an intention, something, you know. I never heard God say, you got to un gay yourself. That's not what happened. I never heard God say, you need to find a husband. I never heard God say any of the things that the people told me.

Someone found my Bible. I dug around and dug around and dug around until I could find it. I was led to the book of Revelation, first chapter. And [00:18:00] I understood what the message was. That there are a lot of people that the Spirit of God wants to use right now that think themselves incapable, unworthy. One of the reasons that, that church right now, religion is in such a mess, such a quandary is because the people that really have the answers are the people that are least welcome.

They have the answers because they're not [00:18:30] stuck. They have the answers because they're not stuck by the walls and the jail that is religion. It is for freedom. I love that passage. It is for freedom that Christ has made us free. Don't be entangled ever again with the yoke of bondage. Don't do it. It is for freedom.

For freedom. Hallelujah. That's why we are being made free. [00:19:00] And for Bishop Flunder, finding romantic love was also part of that freedom journey. Bishop Flunder and Mother Shirley Miller found love while singing with the Hawkins family. In 1991, they birthed the ministry we know today as the City of Refuge in Oakland, California.

It's a radically inclusive ministry where all are truly welcome. When I received the freedom to drive a few cars and kind of understand how I [00:19:30] could land as it related to my own idea of intimacy in relationship, it wasn't long after that, that Shirley and I met one another. And we met one another when I became a part of the Hawkins Center.

She is first cousin, as you know, to Edwin and Walter. And we were on the road, out there singing. And if you ever watch us sing the longest song that Walter ever wrote, which was, um, Grab a Hold, as we called [00:20:00] it. And we sing a duet. I sing and then she sings and then we sing together in harmony. And we recorded that at a love center in Oakland on MacArthur Boulevard, that, that love center.

And I sing a verse, [00:20:30] she sings a verse, and then we sing the harmony together. We were madly in love, but for a period of time we walked alone. Her family wouldn't talk to us, my family wouldn't talk to us. So it's not that they were beating us up, they just figured that at some point we'd come to ourselves.

And we walked that. We first walked it alone, and then we got together and walked it together. And then, well, we got pregnant. [00:21:00] We gave birth to City of Refuge together. And when we got pregnant with the call for City of Refuge, I left Love Center, where, you know, I wasn't alone as the same gender loving person in that church.

But we didn't talk about it. We talked about it as LGBTQI people. But I was a pastor, and I didn't talk about it from the pulpit. Don't ask, don't tell, because always, it's always the gay people have to take it easy with the straight people, [00:21:30] because you know, always, they're sensitive. When God called us to City of Refuge, we gave birth to City of Refuge together.

Our child, our call, and where God leads, God feeds. Where God guides, God provides. It's true. Because it was time for the all of me and the all of Shirley. I felt relieved that we actually were going to plant a church. Where from day one, everyone would know [00:22:00] who we were. And we've had several members who are not identified as gay or trans or on the line, even, but I think that it was because, and still is because of our authenticity.

From day one, we made it clear about who we were and we have not lied since then. We have not needed to. I have too great a woman in my life to pretend like she's not who she is in my life. And I found [00:22:30] a certain stability, and she was and is very clear about who she is. Someone who loves God, who loves people, who loves to worship, and we've been together just a little over than 40 years.

That love and authenticity. drives Bishop Flunder's liberating mission. She, with Mother Shirley, have built a thriving place of worship with a simple commitment to do no harm. And I [00:23:00] think the last part of it would be this. Do no harm, the prima facie duty. When a doctor takes the pledge that needs to be taken to become a physician, what is involved in that is in the Latin, the prima facie duty.

Do no harm. Do no harm. I think that that is the heart of the teaching of Jesus. [00:23:30] We spend a lot of time talking about what is right and what is wrong, particularly as it has to do with human sexuality. What is right and what is wrong? But it's these boxes that we put people in that cause harm. Do no harm.

I say that because that is the heart of ministry for me. But at the end of the day, what we are trying to do is work with [00:24:00] a group of people because I'm called to them because I am them. Work with a group of people who have been marginalized. Everybody's welcome. And there are all kinds of people in closets that do need to be a part of us.

But simultaneously, there are a whole lot of people who are not gay who also need to be a part of us. If we'll stop being afraid, we can do this. If we'll come out of these closets, we can do this. If we trust in the Lord with all of our heart and whatever way we see the [00:24:30] divine, know that the divine is the divine by any name.

Still the divine. That's my heart to yours. God bless you.

Esther, this, this just stirs so much in me. As someone who spent so much time inside the church and quite literally being abused and harmed by the church in the name of love, [00:25:00] right? I love the way that she brings us home. And she just reminds us what doctors pledge an oath to do, that I really wish more churches would consider their role in the world.

To be like, yeah, you could believe a lot of things about LGBTQ folks, but if you're putting your kid out on the street and exposing them to more harm. Kind of defeating the purpose here, guys. And I feel like she just cut [00:25:30] straight to the core of it. We're doing harm, then we're doing something wrong. Yeah, if you're welcome has to come with terms and conditions, and you have to read three pages of fine print.

I'm that. It's not about to happen. And

so I'm hoping that, This season, maybe we can go on a different journey and learn some things about the folks that we learn to hate. That we can go outside [00:26:00] and find out how is God moving in the world and where is God showing up in some of the ways that maybe are a little unorthodox or a little unusual.

But either way, I'm so glad that folks are joining us again for season two.

The [00:26:30] second Sunday podcast is hosted by Estrie Coro and Darren Calhoun, but podcasting is a team sport. So a big thank you to our dream team, our producers, Estrie. Sean and Nicole Hill, our associate producer, Amber Walker, our sound designer, Florence Burrow Adams, and our managing producers, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled They Don't Know. You should download the full song today. To learn more about today's guests or the show, visit our show [00:27:00] notes. Second Sunday is a production of The Qube in partnership with the PRX Big Questions Project, which is generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QTPOC podcasts. Support this show and more like it by joining The Qube app. And follow the Qube across social media at the Qube app. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next [00:27:30] episode.

Angelica Ross Transcript

Angelica's Mom: [00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Esther: Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther. And this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

Angelica Ross: [00:00:30] I would always hear them chanting from his room or whatever, but when he invited me to the Buddhist Center in Los Angeles, the Friendship Center, we parked the car in the parking lot.

I'm telling you, I never felt something so immediate. When I got into the space, it was from the parking lot to me getting inside the building in the room where they were chanting. It felt like I was in a scene from Avatar, [00:01:00] where I'm walking in on them all connected to that tree. And they're all doing a thing.

I grew up in church almost all my life. So the Black women I met at the Buddhist center, to me, felt

Esther: free.

Darren, this season of the show is going to be really interesting because we're talking about faith and spirituality outside of the church. Now, [00:01:30] I feel like that's a bit taboo. Do you feel free to look for faith and spirituality outside the church?

Darren: I mean, I've been through enough moments and highs and lows to know you got to get it where you can get it.

Uh, and in so many ways, I think church teaches us we have the truth, and if you look for it anywhere else, or if you find truth anywhere else, that you're somehow in [00:02:00] danger, but High key, the reality is that there's some powerful stuff all around us, and we just haven't made enough space to look and see and find where the God of the universe is showing up for us.

Esther: Black queer people have found so many different ways to look at faith and spirituality outside of the church, and I'm really excited to understand where people's different journeys have led them, how people have applied this kind of new lens. of spirituality to their day to day [00:02:30] lives. I'm especially excited about this episode because we're focusing on Buddhism.

And in having this conversation with our guests for this episode, it made me start thinking about challenges in a different way. I think, what if we looked at challenges as a gift, like the challenge of finding yourself worth, if you don't automatically get it from. outside. The challenge of learning how to honor your parents, even if they don't necessarily show up the way that you need them to.

[00:03:00] In this episode, we're going to explore the challenge of being a Black woman of trans experience. Some of us were given

Darren: a theology that glorified suffering, right? It was like, oh, well, if they talking about you and if they don't treat you right, it's all for God's glory, right? But I don't think that's a fruitful or generative kind of perspective.

And it's not to say that I never believed that. I even preached it at one point. [00:03:30] But what I've come to realize is that. There are different ways or different perspectives we can take for how we see what the divine, what the universe, what God is doing. And for some people orienting it as, Oh, well, God wanted you to go through this, or God set you up to go through these hardships and difficulties.

I like to think of it more of how is God showing up with me, right? The Bible talking about God as the man of [00:04:00] many sorrows, or talking about Jesus as the man of many sorrows. There are so many ways that I think the divine chooses to be with us in what's going on and that we can change the way we hear the story when we think about it, again, from another perspective.

Esther: So the voice you just heard at the start of the episode is Angelica Ross, a groundbreaking entrepreneur, transgender rights advocate and actress in the award [00:04:30] winning series Pose, where she plays ballroom baddie Candy Ferocity. She grew up in the 80s attending a Church of God in Christ in Racine, Wisconsin, of all places.

Huh? There's black people in

Angelica Ross: Racine, Wisconsin? Yes, baby. First of all, there's black people everywhere and I need us to get to that understanding and that there is no place where blackness does not exist. Number

Esther: one. She's also been practicing Buddhism for 13 years, and her journey to Buddhism actually came partially as a result of a [00:05:00] breakup, which is where a lot of journeys begin, if we're being honest.

This wasn't just any breakup. This was a breakup from what seemed like a perfect relationship. Darren, it's funny to me that Even though we, as people who are, you know, in the alphabet family seem to be so far outside of the margins of quote unquote mainstream society in the way that we love and express ourselves and couple, we still emulate heteronormative culture in so [00:05:30] many ways in our relationships.

And this is one of those stories.

Angelica Ross: He was everything that my mom wanted for us in the sense of either be a doctor or marry a doctor. And I was on the road to marrying one. I had the engagement ring and everything, but I gave the ring back and I broke off the engagement because I realized that I could never reach my full potential living in his shadow.

It was [00:06:00] only going well as long as people didn't know I was trans. When I left my ex and left everything and started my life over.

Darren: We coming from Chicago.

Angelica Ross: First, I went to Chicago and I did drag for a while, whatever. But when I finally decided I did not want to lip sync, I wanted to learn how to use my own voice.

That's what started me not only singing, but speaking up.

[00:06:30] And so when I moved to California, had nothing. I was living in a motel, didn't even have a job yet. It was the same motel they filmed Pretty Woman in too, you know, and I answered a Craigslist ad for a roommate and that roommate was a Buddhist and that roommate eventually introduced me to Buddhism. Once I got into the home.

I set my bags down. I closed the door [00:07:00] and I mourned my relationship. I was depressed for a really long time. I was hurt and my roommate kept inviting me to come chant with them. And I was just like, yes, I've been reading Buddhism and I, you know, I think I like it, but Just another time, another time. No. And I think that that probably was another barrier for me in the sense of, you know, that's for y'all.[00:07:30]

I would always hear them chanting from his room or whatever. But when he invited me to the Buddhist center in Los Angeles, the Friendship Center, we parked the car in the parking lot. I'm telling you, I Never felt something so immediate. When I got into the space, it was from the parking lot to me getting inside the building in the room where they were chanting.

It felt like I was in a scene from [00:08:00] Avatar, where I'm walking in on them all connected to that tree, Ewa, and they're all doing a thing. Ann. It immediately felt right and I didn't know nothing. I didn't know nothing. I didn't know what this was. I didn't know nothing.

What I loved about the practice is even as I was chanting words and learning words that I knew nothing about, the real meaning of them manifested. Regardless of my [00:08:30] true knowledge in it, and as my knowledge actually grew out of it and studied it, holy moly, because I'm trying to tell you, the Black people that I met at these Buddhist centers, to me, and I'm just putting this out there as my experience, the Black people at that Buddhist center, I grew up in church.

I grew up in church almost all my life. So the black women I met at the Buddhist center, to me, [00:09:00] felt free.

I did feel this immediate connection, right? But I also felt this buzzing anxiety underneath. Because, here I'm coming into a space, I'm trans. I know that always results in some kind of conversation. Some kind of explanation. Some kind of, well, you know, [00:09:30] something. And,

I'm telling you. To have the response from a community of people when you tell them that I'm trans. And even if they don't know, they're whatever, they were had different beliefs before, anything. If they've been practicing in that practice for two months to 20 [00:10:00] years, they immediately pull back and look at me and smile and say congratulations.

With every person being identity. comes challenge. And we [00:10:30] believe on the other side of challenge is strength, is wisdom, is clarity, is blessing, is a benefit on these challenges. So whenever we have anything really challenging in life, I lost a job, something happened or whatever, they say, congratulations, you know.

And so for them to say congratulations to me is to congratulate me on the blessing of That is the challenge of my life.[00:11:00]

It is the cross that I pick up and walk with. You understand what I'm saying? That will be a blessing onto me and onto others. There's a profound deepness. It's the way that I practice and why I practice and all the things is because we say that one phrase or passage is like a ship to cross the sea of suffering.

And we say that because just one thing. One of [00:11:30] these things unlocks such a piece of your mind that it adds an element of freedom to your life. There's more to be had that adds this element of freedom. And so, as someone who's been practicing now for 13 years, the depth at which the blessings that I receive from this practice is immeasurable.

Esther: Darren, you and I have talked about suffering a lot in this podcast, and we've often had to push back on this idea that [00:12:00] long suffering is a positive thing because it's so often used to excuse abuse. How do you see the differences that's in between this idea that's ingrained in us that long suffering means that you don't speak up against oppression?

What's the difference in your mind between that and this idea of challenge as a blessing? When

Darren: Angelica was talking, I thought a lot about both the places where I have experienced suffering as abuse, [00:12:30] and the places where I've been kind of liberated, and the places where I feel strengthened. I often call them my bittersweet stories of both.

This should never have happened, and I wouldn't be the person that I am without it happening. I think that's kind of what she's describing, how we get unlocked. We find things that are true about ourselves. I keep saying this phrase, God's working all things together for good in these moments.

Esther: So Darren, one of [00:13:00] the things that really struck me.

Even though I've grown up in the church and we have this whole thing about honoring your father and your mother, Angelica introduced me in this conversation to this concept of the debt of gratitude.

Angelica Ross: We call it the mystic law and all these different things because it just does what needs to be done.

And as long as you show up, as long as you keep showing up. That's all that is required is that you show up in front of the mirror. That's it. And that you look at yourself clearly without filters, without whatever, and you, that [00:13:30] you polish that mirror so you can see through the dust so you can see yourself and other people clearly.

Esther: And this concept is a really big deal in Angelica's life because growing up in Racine, Wisconsin, it wasn't really the easiest thing in the world for a Black trans kid with a very religious family, specifically a very religious mother. Things were really tough, but they got even tougher when Angelica started to transition.

So

Angelica Ross: about the time that I left the military when I was [00:14:00] 19 is when I started to transition. And As I started to transition, that's when my relationship with my mother really kicked into high gear of discord

Esther: and disrespect. Things are tough with Angelica's mom, but the relationship really comes to a breaking point when her mother gives her an ultimatum demanding that one of them takes their own life.

My mom [00:14:30]

Angelica Ross: asking me to take my own life. It's basically in essence of a space where we understand that having an ultimatum like that, you take your life or I'm going to take mine, is a space where you're telling me you do not value me or my life as is, that as is, my life does not have value. So initially I was not trying to hear that disrespect.

And so I [00:15:00] was. in a position where I started to be disrespectful to my mother. And, you know, I remember having a conversation sort of argument, three way argument with my mom and my dad on the phone. And my dad is like, one thing you will not do. I understand your mom is wrong and doing these things or whatever, but one thing you will not do is disrespect your mother.

And it's odd because as someone who has had such a rejection of authority because of the way my parents have disowned me when I [00:15:30] first came out and all the different things or whatever, I still felt the conviction of

Esther: what he said there. So instead she chose to walk away from her mother and the faith she'd been raised in.

Angelica says she felt spiritually homeless until the day she found Buddhism.

Angelica Ross: We went through a period of about 10 years of not speaking to each other.

Esther: This Buddhist practice of being grateful to her parents led Angelica to reflect on her mom's journey and what she'd been through in life and [00:16:00] find a way to empathize with her.

So because of her faith, she reaches back out to her mother, and that is how they both end up on Oprah Winfrey's stage in 2019. Listen to this clip.

Angelica's Mom: My religion was very, very strict. I'm talking about strict. We're not allowed to wear pants. You can't wear makeup. You can't go to movies. You can't, you know, just strict.

And so, uh, when Angelica came out with, to me, It was just, it was devastating, you know, [00:16:30] and I really, I couldn't work. I ended up seeing a psychologist. I was on, um, Zoloft, I was on, you know, I had medication because I just couldn't take it. And I did tell her, I said, you know, you need to kill yourself, or I'm going to kill myself.

It's always preached, you're going to hell. You're going to hell for this, you're going to hell for that. I wasn't knowledgeable. I didn't know. I didn't know. And I hate that I missed so many years out of her life.[00:17:00]

Angelica Ross: When I was able to see that she had her own journey and that along that journey, she had a baby and that somehow she made it through the journey with the baby alive and intact through patriarchal violence, through family disdain and through judgment and through all of these things. And when I tell you, regardless of her ignorance, Regardless of any [00:17:30] of those things, I am so grateful.

I don't judge her. Not one single bit. The freedom that has come in my practice is that it has removed all judgment for her. What I know is that my mom is a woman and a black woman in the United States in a patriarchal racist environment. And so. The fact that she got some things wrong. I [00:18:00] can see why I can see how it is, what it is.

And so as an adult, I move forward in power in the sense of knowing that her mistakes have no burden or control over my life today, and that I have every bit of power and ability to do something different to shift the wave of energy. And when I tell you many people, when they see the video. On Oprah Winfrey's network [00:18:30] of my mother standing up in front of a hundred black women and saying, I didn't know any better.

And that I told my own child to kill themselves. And I would have regretted if that would have happened and that I knew that I had to change or else I was going to lose my child. And so hear me when I'm telling you, when I told my mother that her purpose would be tied to mine and that she would now be standing on a stage.[00:19:00]

Where we know that there are black mothers around the world who are still trying to reconcile their faith with their relationship with their children. So not only that, but then you have to think about then my role in POSE. So to see profound purpose go across intersection and industry, to communicate from the personal to the political, from the individual to the collective, that our problems are our problems and challenges to deal with.

[00:19:30] But they're also ours to deal with so that we can move into the collective healed.

Esther: You know, we have this conversation all the time, but I don't know if we necessarily fully embody it. We always say that our parents are human beings. But I don't know if we necessarily really embody what it means to see others as human. And the inconvenient part of that is that they are on a journey of their own and that they come to [00:20:00] realizations in their own time that they can grow.

So as taboo as it is for Angelica, and the way that she was raised in the Church of God in Christ to seek spirituality outside of the black church, that actually helped her forgive and accept her mom without judgment. And then it made me think in my head about the ways that I have been judging and holding on to people who have hurt me.

And [00:20:30] It's not to say that those people are excused from the hurt that they caused, but oftentimes, I think subconsciously, we could hold on to those people and see them as stagnant. And there's a freedom in just stepping away from people, both for yourself and for them, so that they can just go through what they need to go through.

And then also in stepping away through this conversation and hearing Angelica's story, I'm hearing that Removing your responsibility from how people choose to go through their journey also creates [00:21:00] room for you to look inside yourself and heal yourself and face the demons that you have to face through those challenges.

And honestly, really to me, it says, Darren, that you don't realize the ways that you don't love yourself until you stop trying to figure out why other people don't love you.

Darren: In addition to us figuring out how to, you know, take care of [00:21:30] ourselves and distance ourselves, I love that Angelica brought out this important piece of being able to see herself and others. To say trans women aren't your enemy, we're your sisters. To make this interconnected. and related and to see how the impact of the grandmother impacts the mother impacts her.

No matter how much you want to point blame, or no matter what systems of oppression exist, we are all being oppressed [00:22:00] together. And therefore there's something powerful to be said about how we find that empathy, or we find that ability to, to see a person, like you said, as human. And then from that place, realize.

I had to go through my own journey and that person also has to go through their own journey 'cause we're all living in a world that doesn't make it okay for any of us.

Angelica Ross: So my Buddhist practice with my community, [00:22:30] which is the Soka Gaca International, the SGI, we practice. And so the Soka Gakkai was created a long time ago by President Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who created it as the Value Creation Society.

That's what the Soka Gakkai means, the Value Creation Society. And so the whole purpose was in understanding that every child would come to an understanding, an unshakable understanding of their value. [00:23:00] Because I believe that when someone does not value their lives, they All other problems can arise from that point alone.

The world I want to see, the things I want to see is places where we can evolve beyond capitalism being the dominant force, where we learn other forms of exchange and valuing each other. And where we are able to make very conscious decisions about [00:23:30] where we place our value, who we align our value with, and our very understanding of what that is.

Um, and not tricked into being in places we don't want to be in because we don't understand that. So I think when I see that. That's what I love about not defining, Oh, I want to see this, this, and this. No, if I know I see this element in the space, then I know so many other things are going to be beautiful.[00:24:00]

Esther: The Second Sunday podcast is hosted by Estrie Coro and Darren Calhoun. But podcasting is a team sport. So a big thank you to our dream team, [00:24:30]

Darren: our producers, Esther Ikoro, Anna Deshawn, and Nicole Hill, our associate producer, Amber Walker,

Esther: our sound designer, Florence Burrow Adams, and our managing producers, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

We also want to thank the SGI Atlanta Buddhist Center for contributing to this episode.

Darren: Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled They Don't Know. You should download the full song

Esther: today. To learn more about today's guests or the show, visit our show notes on our website, 2ndSundayPod. [00:25:00] com, and on Instagram, at 2ndSundayPod.

2nd Sunday is a production of The Qube, spelled with a Q, in partnership with the PRX Big Questions Project, which is generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

Darren: TheQube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QTPOC

Esther: podcasts. Support this show and more like it by joining TheQube app and follow TheQube across social media at [00:25:30] TheQubeApp.

Thank you for listening and we'll see you

Darren: next [00:26:00] episode.

Staying True to the Body with Donte Hilliard

[00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther. And this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

That truth might be a [00:00:30] Patti LaBelle song. That truth may be a James Earl Hardy book. That truth might be a look in the eye of a person with whom you share deep desire. The Christian scriptures do say, you shall know the truth and it shall make you free. And I do live and die by that one. Darren, in this episode, we are talking about the power of authenticity and how we [00:01:00] can kind of go about recognizing authentic truth, which sounds simple, just being yourself.

and being real with yourself and authentic sounds super simple until you recognize that we live in a world which from birth is constantly telling us who we are supposed to be and what we're supposed to be. And in this world, there is a lot of power and freedom and finding out and being your authentic self.

But before we get into this episode, I want to know how you recognize [00:01:30] authenticity in your life, Darren. For me, in a lot of ways, it is a gut feeling. You know, if you get into the Myers Briggs, I'm an ENFP. So a feeler and perceiver is just the way that I see things in the world or the way that just feels right to me and that aligns to the values that I have.

Wow. You're an ENFP. I'm an LGBT. You know what? That's my Myers Briggs. Do you feel? the truth anywhere in your body or mind? [00:02:00] Like, does it leave clues? Is there a certain feeling in your brain or in your gut when you're like, this is it, this is a light bulb. Let me just look in the mirror. Oh, absolutely. They are blues clues moments in my therapy journey, learning to check in with my body and to notice where there's tension or if I get a gut feeling as well as just what makes sense.

And some of that has been moving [00:02:30] away from always knowing what's exactly 100 percent right or perfect, and instead answering the question, what's right for me in this moment and what aligns with the direction that I'm moving in? Yeah, for me, it's any time I feel like I'm not being myself and I'm purely not enjoying myself, which is different than not being challenged.

But if I feel like I got to contort myself too much and I'm [00:03:00] becoming someone that I'm not and someone that I really don't want to be, because, you know, there's some versions of me that I want to become that are uncomfortable because that's growth. But sometimes you stop and realize, I'm I'm trying to fit myself into a space that I don't actually, if I'm being completely a hundred, if you take people's validation away from it, I don't actually want to be here.

I don't like these people. I don't want to hang out here. Like fitting in would also be uncomfortable in this way. And that's the part where we also [00:03:30] kind of get taught by parents, by maybe different authority figures, or church. We get taught to disregard those gut feelings and gut reactions, and instead to listen to authority figures, um, specifically to go against what we feel is true.

And so yeah, it's so important to be open. able to check in with yourself and to think about what it is that you believe or what it is that you understand to be true. So that truth is familiar. Yeah. [00:04:00] And sometimes I think the first time you encounter truths like that, it feels really unfamiliar and unsettling, but then there's this aha moment, this light bulb moment where you're like, Oh, everything makes sense now.

And I've had a couple of those moments in my life. Like the first time I hung out with a group of comedians, I was like, Oh, I think this is, this is me. These are my people. Or the first time I spent time with a bunch of creatives, it was like, Oh, you carry a camera around too. We're kind of quirky in the same ways.

We're [00:04:30] struggling with the same things. We're kind of obsessed with some of the same things. There's a liberation in discovering that you aren't weird. You've just been surrounded by people who are nothing like you.

But before we get too deep, let me introduce our guests for this episode. Dante Hillard holds Master's degrees in Black Studies and Religious Studies and is currently a Doctor of Ministry student at Meadville Lombard Seminary. His work explores storytelling practices across the [00:05:00] African diaspora, with emphasis cosmology, song, dance, drumming, and textile art.

His work emerges at the nexus of liturgical theory, embodiment, art making, and social movements. I was that little boy. You see these memes that float around Beyoncé's internet. With little kids in church praising God, and that was me. Church and school. Those were my happy places. Those were the places where [00:05:30] things made sense.

When you're a little fat femme boy in the 70s, you know, there's not a lot of safe spaces, not even among the people you're related to. But church and school were Places where I felt seen and appreciated for my gifts, even if I had problems with my peers or adults. But being in church and school always fed me spiritually.

So I was raised in a combination of Black Pentecostal and Baptist traditions. [00:06:00] I got saved when I was 13. I didn't know then that I would have multiple salvation moments. Dante had several salvation moments, and the second moment happened during his first year in college. I met a group of Black men who we didn't really call ourselves gay, but we knew who we were to each other.

They weren't out publicly, but they were out to each other. And I showed up on campus and somebody looked at me. I was like, Oh, [00:06:30] child, come here. And those men loved on me and cared for me and taught me to love and care for myself in ways. that I had not discovered before, and I wouldn't be the person that I am without them.

I often say it was in this sacred circle of sisterhood that these sissies introduced me to the gospel of the flesh. There's an important thing. that Dante was saying [00:07:00] when he talked about unwashed, unanointed, uncalled people. A lot of times we have been socialized to only see truth as coming from certain people, people with certain degrees and certain pedigree, people in certain positions of power.

And it makes the discernment of truth something that exists outside of ourselves and instead is discerned through the society and the power structures that we're kind of born into. [00:07:30] But I love this idea of the good news, the gospel of the flesh, being what is your body telling you and what feels right based on what you're hearing, what you're experiencing.

Some people get scared, and even Paul wrote about people who Only consider the body to be bad. It was a train of thought back in some Greek and Roman societies, but high key, being [00:08:00] reconciled with the body and the spirit and truth and the divine, all that stuff really does work together. And I love the way that we talked about it and continue to talk about it as authenticity, because the thing about authenticity is that it's individual to every person.

There's no blanket authenticity. Only the individual has to know what is authentic to them specifically. Growing up, the flesh was always spoken about as something to be fought. It was [00:08:30] home to all of the impurities known to humanity, and it was to be broken and offered as a sacrifice to God. Right. Dante talks about the flesh as this embedded instinctual compass for what's real, true, and authentic.

It's like listening to his gut but feeling it throughout his entire body. You know that deep down feeling when you know that something is right for you or something actually is inauthentic or makes you uneasy? This feeling can happen in any part of [00:09:00] life, but no matter what, when that truth compass points in a certain direction, To Dante, that knowledge is always divine.

And I don't care what your model of divine is. I don't know anyone whose model of divine does not contain truth. And when truth is present, my body recognizes it. I don't see a separation between the sacred and the profane, the mundane. My perspective is extremely. African in that [00:09:30] sense that there is no separation.

We are all the stuff of the cosmos, right? Therefore we are all divine. We are all stars. Our bodies know things. And if we listen, if we're wise and we're smart and we listen, it will teach us. I don't argue with my body. So even though my theology told me I wasn't supposed to touch boys, the first time I had an encounter, I said, Oh, that's true.

Ah, okay. Now [00:10:00] we understand why things felt so discombobulating. Now I understand because my body helped me understand truth. We

get a different version of the gospel of the flesh. We get the gospel of what's wrong with the flesh. We get the gospel of, of harm yourself, deny yourself. yourself, lie to yourself. lie [00:10:30] to God, lie to everybody else. You ain't got feelings. You don't have sexual urges. You don't masturbate. Deny yourself, deny yourself.

So God so spirit can have its way with you. But the gospel of the flesh, the gospel of embodiment, the gospel of incarnation, which According to Christianity, the reason Christ is here to say God is with us and that God is in us. But unfortunately, the gospel of incarnation, the gospel of the flesh, in my life, I've [00:11:00] mostly found it outside of quote unquote, traditional spiritual spaces.

I had to go to college and meet gay men who were willing to name that for me and call me in to community. I got that on the dance floor at the gay club in the 90s, sweating to house beat tracks like I got a deeper love inside and I called it pride. Boy, everybody sweat, you know, um, that [00:11:30] spirituality that is.

Unbound by people's bulls t. It is the spirituality that survived the Middle Passage. It's the spirituality that allows our ancestors from our first ancestor to speak to us in our DNA in the very present day. It is that spirituality, the gospel of the flesh. And I think So many of us lose faith because [00:12:00] or think we're losing faith because we can't find the gospel of the flesh in the places that we have been socialized are the spiritual spaces.

And so we think we're leaving spirituality or religion, but in actuality we're seeking like the woman at the well, what I'm seeking. So this ain't satisfying what I need. And so I have to go elsewhere to be full, you know, and again, I left church for a while. I'm [00:12:30] back in church.

So that's one way Dante recognizes the truth in his life. The other way I understand truth is For me, the divine speaks in metaphors. I see signs and wonders and symbols. So I learned through parable and metaphor. And so that started as a child, perhaps in church and in what we call scripture. But I've come to understand [00:13:00] that scripture is anything that you understand as truth.

And so, that truth might be a Patti LaBelle song. That truth may be a James Earl Hardy book, which was for me, B Boy Blue Saved My Life. That truth might be a look in the eye of a person with whom you share deep desire. But you know, the Christian scriptures do say, you shall know the truth and it shall make you free.

And I do live and die by that one. [00:13:30] Darren, this part of the conversation really resonated with me because I was raised to only think about divine inspiration as it pertains to the Bible. We have so many traditions that are pretty much disconnected from the history and the origin of where they came from.

Like, for example, why do churches have stained glass windows? That was a tradition of making the Bible narrative accessible to the masses who [00:14:00] were not literate. They could not read. And so putting up these pictures that tell stories about the Bible, especially Considering that churches at one time, at least in the Catholic tradition, were done completely in Latin.

Like, it was really important for you to be able to know what was going on, to be able to see art, to see the statues, and to see the murals on the walls and the ceilings, to see the images depicted in stained glass, it was [00:14:30] important for you to be able to access this divine story via art. But you know, as time goes on, we're just like, Oh, that's just, you know, pretty stuff.

And we focus super heavily on the text of the Bible. But for the majority, I might even say of course, Christian history, or at least the spiritual legacy that we come from, for the majority of that, these were storytelling exercises that people did. These were monks who were writing things by hand and drawing [00:15:00] illustrations in the corners.

There's so much about what we have from scripture that comes from and is preserved through art. And you know, Darren, just even in saying that about stained glass, it makes me think about the deliberateness behind how we decorate houses of worship and how the color and the form and the, all of the things that go into it serve to give us a feeling and tell us a story that even if we're not reading it, we're feeling and [00:15:30] embodying it.

And I think that storytelling is to the divine because it's a language that doesn't have to be spoken in just one way to convey a feeling or message or speak to a truth. There's this quote that I heard maybe a while back, like in college that says, the artist keeps us honest. And sometimes it feels like Octavia Butler, Beyonce and Marcus Aurelius can all heal, reveal and read you at the same time [00:16:00] about the same thing in completely different ways.

I, as a creative, as a musician, as a photographer, as all these different creative professions and influences that I've had, I've strongly resonated with the idea of me being an image and likeness of God is to be a creator.

So while I was listening to Dante talk about his journey of [00:16:30] finding authenticity, I couldn't help but wonder how that impacted his relationship with church. And it turns out he left the church and ended up coming back, and that process started with an experience he had in undergrad. There was a speaker who came to my campus.

I mean, he's a black psychologist. His name is Dr. Naeem Akbar. He used to be very prominent in the nation of Islam. And at that time, I was what we would call a deep Christian. Oh, I was steep in my, I think I was in ministry. I, I [00:17:00] recognized myself as an evangelist and all of that. Although I was a psychology major, I wasn't going to go to the talk because the man was a Muslim.

And literally the spirit said, Oh boy. Are you really not going to go listen to this black psychologist talk and you want to be a black psychologist? And I was like, well, I guess that don't make sense. So I go to this talk and I'm riveted the entire time this man is speaking. But at the very end, [00:17:30] it's the question and answer session.

And one of the other deep Christians gets up. Cause you know, we roll deep and was like, blah, blah, blah. I'm a Christian, blah, blah, blah. You're Muslim, blah, blah, blah. And Dr. Akbar looked at us and he said, well, my brother, if your Christian faith and my Islamic faith do nothing to change the material conditions of our people, we both need to throw them away.[00:18:00]

Slay. The ushers bring me a sheet because I was laid out. Because that was the most profound and powerful thing I'd ever heard. And it shook me so deep that I was unsatisfied with church. That's the first time I found myself unsatisfied with church. Because what he told me, again this was number two, [00:18:30] that if we just go on a church, but it's church.

transforming us? Is it transforming, not just our personal journey, is it helping us be liberated and free in this world that is so hell bent on destroying us?

I came back because I became a seeker and I read, I studied everything. I studied African traditional religion. I [00:19:00] studied other religions. Forms of black Christian religion. And you know what I found out? People's BS lives everywhere. I was over with the all Sarah set society people. And I was like, yes, I'm being Afrocentric.

And then I was like, oh, but you can't be Afrocentric and a homosexual. And I said, well, I thought I just left the church for this. Oh, but I can't be gay over here either. Oh, okay. And you start to [00:19:30] realize it's not. Faith. It's not God. It's not religion. It's people. It's people and they mess. And so once you become a seeker, you begin to understand, you see the patterns and you begin to understand.

It's not that I may not believe some of the things in the way that I was raised to believe and see. But it does not believe there [00:20:00] was that value in it because it is that path. They got me to where I am. It was in black church. When somebody said you're a teacher and at 13 and patent teach an adult Sunday school, right?

It's in church where people said, Oh, you speak, you're going to be speaking all the program. So it was in black church where people saw gifts and cultivated them in me. And I can't spit on that. I can't spit on the way people love. Yes. I had some experiences that were not affirming. Yes. There were some [00:20:30] theologies that were harmful, but which one of us was raised by a community of people that also did not cause us harm.

So if we're going to throw away everything that's ever caused us harm, we don't even have to throw ourselves away.

So now I identify as a Unitarian Universalist and for the last, Eight years or so has been a home for me, spiritually, where we are bound [00:21:00] by the sacredness of blackness, but we don't require that everyone be the same. Some of us are Unitarian and Christian. Some of us are Unitarian and Buddhist. Some of us are Unitarian and Pentecostal.

Some of us are Unitarian and African traditional religious practitioners. We are one in our plurality. We don't require everyone to be the same in order to be in community. And I think it's the most beautiful thing that I've ever [00:21:30] seen. And I think that's the thing we have to be brave enough to do is to not overstay in places where we are no longer growing.

I think that is a mistake, and I don't care whether you are a person of faith or no faith, and I don't think that principle applies to just The notion of a faith journey, I think it applies to being human.

You know, when a plant gets too big for its pot, you got to repot it. [00:22:00] Or it's going to die. It can't grow in this pot that's too small. And I think we have to be brave enough to know when it's time to repot ourselves. Soil so that we can continue to grow and flourish and not be afraid. Some of us have been taught to be afraid of our power and we are afraid to actually come into the fullness of ourselves.

Be brave enough to shine, be brave enough. To transplant yourself into a place that [00:22:30] is, that is appropriate for who you are now. If it doesn't serve you, why are you holding on to it? If you holding on to things that don't serve you, how are you going to catch the thing that does?

It's the freedom. To not be afraid for me. The part where we set up the idea that we need to replant ourselves, that the safety, the comfort, the [00:23:00] nutrition, the care that was maybe true and useful and helpful and even instrumental to us growing for one season may be a thing that we have to leave to go and be our most full and thriving self in the next season and As somebody who's spent his, the majority of my adult life out here trying to make the world a better place, to be reminded that we don't [00:23:30] have to.

We don't have to tell it all. We don't have to proclaim it all, but we just have to be fearlessly and relentlessly be who we are. That's empowering. Like, I really do think that's the kind of stuff that does change the world. You know, in my life, I feel like I have been trying to blend in for a lot of life and it just don't work.

That's just not my lot in life is not [00:24:00] really to meld into the crowd. Right. And. just accepting that there are some places that I'm probably never going to feel welcomed or never going to feel completely natural in and just accepting that those things are not for me and finding out the things that are for me has been so freeing because now I can focus on what I actually like and what I'm actually good at and who I'm actually comfortable [00:24:30] being versus doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out how to be who everybody else is and who everybody else thinks I should be.

A big part of that freedom for me. that has come from talking to so many people in putting together this podcast with you, Darren, has also been accepting that everyone is on their own journey. And I think that's really the T for this entire process, because I feel like learning your truth is the first step.

And then the thing that [00:25:00] pairs with that immediately is learning that everybody doesn't have to accept your truth and that you don't need to go into the world. Pushing your truth onto other people and that there is a peace and just holding your truth and just nurturing it and exploring it within without worrying about how that looks to everybody else.

I think that's really, that's peace right there. Yeah. And know that when you begin to live in the truth or the perspective or the experience, [00:25:30] That is right for you. People who have a different thing will sometimes be afraid of you not staying where they are. And so sometimes they'll say all kinds of negative things and they'll push back and they'll maybe even villainize you because from their perspective, you're not doing the right thing.

When in reality, it's just like, no, that's what's true from your perspective. That's true from where you are. And I'm in a different [00:26:00] spot and your thing can be true and I can have a different perspective and still everything doesn't fall apart. The world can exist. There's still a greater truth that is.

And my. Shifting a position or perception doesn't eliminate your thing. It just means I'm in a different place, and that's okay.

I was [00:26:30] raised in a Pentecostal tradition. I don't do a whole lot of this. Oh, thus says the Lord of hosts. Oh, the Holy Ghost told me the Spirit said. I don't do a lot of that anymore. I just ask questions. Is it possible that? Have you considered it? Even if I believe that is my God voice speaking to me, I don't talk to people like that anymore.

Sometimes I think it's really condescending because here's the truth. What I believe is if [00:27:00] you're a speaking truth, people will recognize it. And you ain't got to try to prove you spiritual by talking about the Holy ghost told me God said, cause guess what? If that's the truth, they need to hear. They're going to recognize it.

What I've learned is that you get what you need. And just like, you know, in school, you get to grade 12, you're supposed to graduate. You move on to another level. Now that may still be a space that's useful for somebody [00:27:30] else. I don't got to tear it down, but it may not be the space that I need. For the next part of my journey.

The second Sunday podcast is hosted by Esther Ikoro and Darren Calhoun, but podcasting is a team sport. So a big [00:28:00] thank you to our dream team. Our producers, Esther Ikoro, Anna Deshawn, and Nicole Hill, our associate producer, Amber Walker. Our sound designer, Florence Borough Adams, and our managing producers, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled, They Don't Know. You should download the full song today. To learn more about today's guests or the show, visit our website. Visit our show notes on our website, SecondSundayPod. com, and on Instagram, at SecondSundayPod. Second [00:28:30] Sunday is a production of The Qube, spelled with a Q, in partnership with the PRX Big Questions Project, which is generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QTPOC podcasts. Support this show and more like it by joining the Qube app and follow the Qube across social media at the Qube app. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next [00:29:00] episode.

Chose Wholeness over Holiness with D. Danyelle Thomas

Speaker: [00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther, and this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

Speaker 2: What I [00:00:30] find a lot with the church is that we prioritize holiness over wholeness. I wanted to be whole and I was in a space and in a culture that believed that holiness was the only wholeness that you needed.

Speaker 3: The voice we just heard was Danyelle Thomas, but some of us know her as Pasadena. She [00:01:00] already preached the whole word. Esther, let's talk about it. There are so many ways that we compartmentalize our identities to fit in and it has an effect on our lives. Can you tell us about a time where maybe you felt like you were fully seen and fully known and fully loved?

Speaker: Ooh, fully seen, fully known and fully loved. I would say the first time I was in a church that was both predominantly black and queer friendly. That is a time that I felt fully [00:01:30] seen because it was All of the familiar things that are comforting to me in a worship space were present. And then this new element of being able to be out and queer felt very comforting and made me feel very seen.

So being able to go to church with my partner as a Christian queer couple, just going to church, it seemed so mundane, but it was so radical feeling to me.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel you on that. And it's interesting that it's also church [00:02:00] for you. Cause for me, it was when I first started working at my fully affirming church, I came in used to having to like dance all over the place and word things a certain way and walk on eggshells.

Yeah. And then I realized just on a regular old Sunday that I was common in this church. Everybody had a story like mine. Everybody was navigating things and asking questions. And it was like, Oh, this is me. This is me together. I don't [00:02:30] have to separate parts of my story. I can just show up. It was so affirming and so enriching, but it also reminded me of just how much struggle I was carrying, trying to fit into some of the churches I'd been a part of in the past.

Speaker: Yeah. It's almost like you don't realize all the ways you were holding yourself back until someone's like, you can just be yourself. You know that, right? And you're like, Oh, my bad.

Speaker 3: Exactly.

This season, we're focused on people who are [00:03:00] exercising their faith outside of the traditional church, and Danyelle Thomas is doing that through her work as a Black faith and spirituality speaker, author, public theologian, spiritualist, and activist. Her work centers on the intersection of faith and social justice.

particularly with regard to issues of race, gender, and sexuality. She is the founder of the Unfit Christian, and her approach is deeply grounded in the Christian tradition and reclamation of African spiritual practices. In today's episode, we're going to join [00:03:30] Danyelle on her journey to choose wholeness over holiness while living in our Black bodies.

Speaker 2: So I grew up very much deeply in Protestant rooted ideology and dogma and theology about God, the Bible being inherent and infallible, most living, most pleasure being defined as sin. All of those things led me to a very restricted life.[00:04:00]

So, I grew up in a sense that you had morning service, you broke, and you might have had, you know, communal dinner, then you're right back into evening service, and then by the time Sunday ends, Tuesday's here, it's time for some kind of rehearsal. And on Wednesday, we're here for Bible study, and on Thursday, it's probably somebody's revival starting, and then we just start the cycle over and over again every week.

Speaker 3: Given Danyelle's strict religious upbringing, we wanted to hear how she began to break away from traditional church values. And [00:04:30] guess what? It all started by missing one Sunday at church.

Speaker 2: I describe it as going through drug withdrawal because no, I've never done heroin, but I've absolutely had an overdose of the Holy Ghost.

And that first morning that I did not go was like the coolest withdrawal. Like I literally had to breathe and talk myself through it to understand that even if I just missed this one Sunday, there was no [00:05:00] condemnation there. But to a mind that had been shaped and formed to believe that one does not forsake the assembling of the saints just for any old reason.

Like you need to actually have a good reason to not be at church to simply decide not to go because you don't want to seem like the first step over to a reprobate mind. So, uh, For me, it was that moment of constant, like, battling within myself [00:05:30] about should I go, should I not go? Well, okay, it's okay to miss this one time, but maybe it's not.

Well, if you go ahead and get up now, you'll only be a little bit late. You could still go. I had to force myself to say, let's just try it. Because I wasn't going because I had this deep desire to be there. I was going because I had a condition to be there. I'd already been at a point of impasse with the church.

I had already been a point of questioning what I was doing in my constancy of church [00:06:00] attendance and At that point, I was in undergrad, so I was starting to undo a lot of the theological frameworks I had learned because of the new information I was attaining through my educational experience. So it was real hard to hold on to these ideas about, you know, love the sinner and hate the sin when you start to actually understand the human mind and psychological behavior through psychology courses.

It's hard to see, you know, goodness being associated with well. When [00:06:30] you take sociology courses and you start to understand, you know, systems of power and understand that it's not about goodness or being favored by God, but it's about privilege. These are things that I knew and kind of understood by Earth.

being black and also other marginalized identities, but they were not things that I had concrete ideological frameworks for until I got to college. So I wasn't like thug because I just wanted to be in the fellowship of [00:07:00] church. I was fearful of what it meant. To disengage this practice for my faith. If not in the sanctuary, where was I going to find God?

So that really, truly forced me into this space of, you don't know where you are and you may not know where you're going, but you can figure it out from here.

Speaker: Having withdrawals from church is

Speaker 3: wild. But [00:07:30] I have felt that thing. We were. indoctrinated into this idea of missing church is like missing God altogether. And that part is the unspoken part. It's the unnamed part. I mean, some of us heard it literally say it that way, that set us up to be in this internal conflict like that, that really does keep us locked into certain places.

And at some point we have to reckon, is this truth? Is this liberating? Is this [00:08:00] freedom or not? What about for you? Was there a time when you, like, missed a Sunday service and you felt a certain way about it?

Speaker: I feel a way every time I miss church, even though I haven't gone to church recently. I feel a way every Sunday when I wake up and I'm like, it's really hard, Darren, to miss church.

What's the feeling? What's happening in you when that happens? The feeling is This is worship and there's a discipline to it. That if you only go to church when you feel good, that's not [00:08:30] how church works. And then there's a part of my brain that's like, you're supposed to rest and you can have church here if it's that much out of your reach today.

Yeah. And there's also part of me that's like, God knows how I feel right now, you know, and that's the thing that I rest in. But then there's the discipline of having a practice, praying. a certain amount and like just going back because sometimes it feels like if you [00:09:00] only do it when it feels like it's doable then it might never get done.

Unfortunately because of the way that I was raised and how a lot of people were raised the noise of people's talking really has cluttered up a lot of my own Desires and convictions that I could work through on my own. So sometimes I do be staying home. I'm not gonna hold you

Speaker 3: For me, even though I share, you know in our first episode about having [00:09:30] experienced a cult and all this other stuff The fact that I was in a school that required religious studies specifically required non western religious studies as opposed to part of everybody's education, it exposed me to some other ways of thinking and seeing the divine that had nothing to do with trying to change my beliefs, but was all about me having a broader worldview.

What about for you? Were there things or resources or books or videos that helped you maybe see some other [00:10:00] perspectives? Esther?

Speaker: No. It has really only been through conversation. It's really only come from just gradual conversation and interaction with people that just didn't make me feel judged as I worked out what worked for me.

Cause I think there was maybe a part of my life where I wanted a formula. And the reality that I learned probably around college time was There's no one size fits all salvation. There's no one size fits all regimen for how you connect with God.

Speaker 3: [00:10:30] Amen to that. And for Danyelle, missing that one Sunday was the beginning of building a new understanding of belonging and belief.

Speaker 2: You have to understand, like, not basically being in the building didn't disassociate me from the practices and the culture of Black church. Let me start there. It's like me saying all the time, take a person out the hood, but you can't take the hood out the person. [00:11:00] You could take the girl at the church, which you can take the church out of the girl.

So it really kind of became this space of like, well, I'm still fundamentally myself, but I'm not going to church. And at that time in the beginning, probably about the first year, I kept telling myself, well, I'm just looking for a new church home. So it went from every Sunday attendance to, okay, maybe I'll go try this church or I'll go and attend this one.

Maybe this is a time for me to explore, uh, [00:11:30] different fellowships, maybe. Maybe this will offer me what I'm looking for, which at that point was just really contentment and comfort. I was looking to re engage the faith that had raised me, the knowledge and the wisdom of the spaces in church that brought me to, the places that made and unmade me.

So I think for the first year or so, I just kept telling myself I was looking for another church home. It wasn't until, honestly, when I started [00:12:00] hitting. My core major level classes that I started to consider that there were other practices or additional things and ways of knowing for me. And so my undergrad degree is in Africana studies.

So as you can imagine, I took a broad scope of things and knowledge learning about the diaspora, including religion. So all of these things have happened to my people, my ancestors, and their living descendants, myself [00:12:30] included. I know what it's like to live Black in this body, in America, and quite frankly, across the world, as somebody who travels internationally frequently, what it means to be Black in different spaces.

And Yet and still, I'm being told to believe in this God and to love this God and to give my all to this God who seems not to be interested in intervening on behalf of people who look like me in the political struggles that we have, in the socio political [00:13:00] struggles that we have, the geo political struggles that we have.

Name a thing, attach it to politics, because the Black identity is a politic. It is a political identity, as is any racial identity. But, To experience all that and to begin to know it in such a way made me begin to really question whose God had I given my devotion to all these years. And that honestly is the turning point that sent me into a search for [00:13:30] finding a God in whom I could see my whole self.

I grew up in a space where God could love, The giving part of you, but not the queer part of you. God could love the serving part of you, but not the woman part of you. There was a God that loved you in parts and in pieces. And I didn't want to experience God in that way anymore. So truly kind of being armed with this knowledge.

Didn't send me to an immediate, like, this is the change in practice and [00:14:00] this is how I define my faith now. It sent me into the necessary state that must come before any kind of decolonization or deconstruction of religious practices, which is questioning. I just got to start asking some questions. And I gave myself room to ask questions without needing to know the answers and not in my traditional religious way of, well, God's ways are not our ways or any other things we do to lie to ourselves.

I was going to [00:14:30] use a nicer word, but anything else we do to lie to ourselves about, um, what God has or has not said or what spirit has or has not said to us. I allowed myself just to not know and to sit with the feeling of not knowing. And then allowing myself that space allowed more opportunity to engage in knowledge sharing, communal building.

I've always had diverse friends across all religious backgrounds. So talking to them [00:15:00] about their spaces of faith and how they believe, how both practice. I've always included atheism and agnosticism in my conversation partners, because I feel like if you could just absolutely go, like, I don't think that exists at all.

I want to know how you process that as somebody who has never had an opportunity from birth being a preacher's kid, a kid of a prophet, like. I ain't never know nothing but God. So how do you have such deep [00:15:30] faith that God doesn't exist? And how do you move with life without that anchor? For me, my spiritual practice is a deep anchoring part of my life.

So how do you continue to move it seems successfully, joyfully, peacefully through life without those beliefs? And I think it's really truly having those friends that allowed me to be more comfortable with what I don't know and that feeling that you need to fill those voids. With [00:16:00] platitudes that may or may not bring comfort.

I'm just okay. Not knowing. And that is my comfort spot.

Speaker 3: There were so many times where we were directly preached at that. If you were friends with an atheist, that if you were friends with an agnostic. That you were just busting hell wide

Speaker: open. It was like those people were portals to hell and the [00:16:30] demons were going to jump through them. Like they would transform into a black hole.

Right. They was going to put a spirit on you. Just from having a hoop earring from their one earring or tattoo. They were going to become a portal to the afterlife, the dark part.

Speaker 3: Right. It was always, they gonna put a spirit on you. They gonna, they gonna lead you astray. It was also weird to me that that was the posture we took when we were so much about having the power of God, the authority of God.

I was just

Speaker: about to say, we can [00:17:00] trample on serpents,

Speaker 3: right? We got all this power, not

Speaker: on that belly ring

Speaker 3: or not on that belief or lack thereof. Right? Right. It was odd. It was so weird, but I think it goes back to that idea of how do you maintain control? And that is by not leaving room for questions. For many of us, growing up in spaces that are.

Conservative or fundamental means [00:17:30] a space that declares that it has all the answers. It tells us we know what's right, we know what's true, and we pick who's in and we pick who's out. And that the way to be safe and the way to be okay is to not disagree, to not have any difference.

Speaker: As I began to get older, and see people's hypocrisy as I began to see people as more nuanced.

I began to be like, Oh, well, maybe these people don't know everything. Cause how can you say this and believe [00:18:00] this and then act like this? How can you say that you are for this and then condone this or turn a blind eye to this or not protect this person and this and that? And so I was like, well, you're imperfect.

There's no way that. You know every single thing because you're not even walking the whole walk, you just look like you're walking a walk and nobody can tell you that you're not walking a walk because they're scared. So, you know, it's just like at a certain point in high school, early high school, I started just to be like, it's me and Jesus.

Speaker 3: They were two [00:18:30] places. That really also helped in my own journey with this. One was a group of friends invited me to be in their Black Atheist Facebook group.

Speaker: Uh oh!

Speaker 3: And

Speaker: A portal!

Speaker 3: Darren, you opened portals on the World Wide Web! People actually would inbox me. Because, you know, sometimes Facebook will show that you're part of a group if it's not a completely secret group.

People would inbox me. Darren, you in this demon group? Yes! They were like, oh my God, somebody added you to this Atheist group and I know you not like that. I was like, [00:19:00] I'm not, and I'm fine. And they were like, Oh, well, oh, you in there trying to convert them? No, they're fine where they are too.

Speaker: Oh, so you just hanging out by the portal, like it's a fire or something to warm your hands by the gates of hell.

Danyelle's

Speaker 3: new posture of holding space for questions led to a new [00:19:30] way of being in community for herself and for those who are around her, being the daughter of a preacher and a prophet, we wanted to know how her parents handled all of Especially as it leads to the formation of the Unfit Christian, a blog and digital gathering space.

Speaker 2: Here's the thing, the people that mattered didn't care. And the people that mattered actually changed with me. My [00:20:00] courage to question, confront, and say maybe this doesn't fit encouraged their ability to do the same. My mother is my greatest witness of. It's never too late to redefine your experience of God because as I pushed.

My mama pushed. So I started talking about Unfit Christian as a brand, I guess, in 2014. I launched a blog in 2016, April. My dad passed in January. [00:20:30] My dad and I would always kind of have these tete would have these conversations and philosophical debates, and he encouraged my questioning. Unlike a lot of churches and a lot of church leaders, my father was not afraid of my questions.

which began to reflect my relationship with God. I started to understand the God who was not afraid of my questions either. So having parents who supported me made this journey much easier. Now, I will tell you who began to [00:21:00] question me, and it was the folks who I had found in community along the way. So prior to doing Lancet Christian, this You know, voice of decolonization, deconstruction of faith.

I was all, I've always been very public and very loud about my faith and my Jesus. I'm a black Christian. Of course I'm loud and public about my faith in my Jesus. Um, but prior to that, I was a purity culture girl. That was my vice. I tell everybody that every Christian you meet has some kind of theological dogmatic advice [00:21:30] and mine was purity culture.

So I had written a book called Closed Legs Do Get Fed, navigating celibacy in today's world. And Honey, the church girls loved me. I was getting invited to all the conferences and like that book literally still sells to this day. I had to take it off digital sale on Amazon because I didn't want people to keep buying it, but the hard copy.

Speaker: It's a collector's item. Now I might have to go find me one.

Speaker 2: It's still on Amazon. I'm like, you can just Google it. It's [00:22:00] there. Um, but they really love to me. When I come out with Unfit Christian, the posts that people started to notice that there was a change in my theological approach was my first viral post called Hosein 1 We Just Lost, right?

And so I unpacked this Madonna Whore complex dichotomy. And the ways in which we've been taught, like, I don't know, all the hoes are winning. That was the conversation at that time. And it's like, sis, they're winning because [00:22:30] they're not uptight about what they're doing with their bodies. And they understand that everything is an exchange.

And so they just get the highest value for what they're exchanging. And so like, they were kind of hanging in with me there, but they were starting to question it then. And of course, as I progressively came out more and more, later that year, that same Same year I would release a book called The Cult of Heather Lindsay, which I would really attack purity culture at that point.

And that's when the girls were like, absolutely not. She's going to turn over to a reprobate mind. We're going to pray for [00:23:00] her.

I will never lie to you, Percy. When you begin this work to unpack and, and redefine who God is to you or for you, your community is probably going to be the first ones to go. That church home no longer is a home for you because home is made by collective agreement, not just residency. It's made by [00:23:30] communal agreement to what we believe and what we don't believe, which is why some churches can never go visit the other ones because they don't believe what the other person believes.

I'll say it freely. A lot of us were in a cult of not our making per se, but certainly our willing participation. And that willingness came from this constant idea that you don't question God. You don't question the man or woman of God. There's a heavy spirit of anti intellectualism in the [00:24:00] church. or at least in my experience.

So questioning becomes very much associated with heresy. There is a point where I finally was called a heretic and I knew that's when I was doing something right. That's when I knew I had finally fully crossed over. Like the moment I had called a heretic, I don't even remember what it was for. It was some post I had written.

And somebody sent me an email and was like, you're a heretic. And this is heretical. And I was like, mama, I made it. I'm doing something right. [00:24:30] If I'm making the religious gentry, the religious guard uncomfortable, I'm doing something right here.

I wanted a faith that moved and grew with me instead of one that I was constantly outgrowing and looking for ways to supplement. So I think it's important that the question you ask. It gave me an opportunity to start thinking and ruminating as I [00:25:00] was answering, but I hope that this conversation, as our listeners are kind of contemplating for themselves, why am I so adamant about this being defined for who I am?

Because no matter where I move with my gender or sexual identity, I'm still going to be At my core, I'm a liberationist. At my core, I believe in us as a people. My soul is never for sale. That's what I always say. And so what matters in my soul is never up for debate. But I'm not that married to my [00:25:30] gender or my sexual identity as the identifiers of who I am at my core.

So, so many ways the way in which our faith is practiced is a reflection of the lives that we lead. You don't think there's any wiggle room for questioning or deconstruction or unpacking and maybe trying again in your faith because your day to day life is lived that same way and you believe in the Bible infallibly and with inerrance and literally.

So you say, as above, [00:26:00] so below. So if it's happened like this in the world, that must mean it's how God wants it to happen in heaven. It's why when we describe heaven, the streets are paved with gold, and we all got mansions. We all have the trappings of capitalist success. That's what heaven is? Like, that's where your soul's gotta go afterwards?

So again, these systems are all part of each other and I don't mean to sound like I have a tinfoil koofie on like, but I'm [00:26:30] saying that these systems are all intertwined and sometimes The biggest theft from the people is the theft of our imagination. When you can't dream it, you can't see it, and you can't believe it's possible.

I believe that anything I can imagine means that it exists in some realm. It may not exist right now here tangibly, but if I can dream of it, that means it's possible. And I don't want to sound like an [00:27:00] after school special, but I truly do believe that it is possible. And I think that's what we need more than anything else.

More than tolerance, more than more resources, more than anything else. We need possibility because possibility births all the rest of those things.

Speaker 3: Today, Unfit Christian is a digital gathering with tens of thousands of people following and seeking a faith community outside of the traditional church.

It's happening on Facebook, on Instagram. It's [00:27:30] happening inside of a private network. It's happening all over and Danyelle is leading the way.

Speaker 2: I have built digital faith communities now, and I literally find myself being that person who leads and initiates as a writer, as a speaker, as a healer, as an insert title here. I think it reflects that more than like, this is an exception. rather [00:28:00] than the norm or the rule. Um, and I'm proud to be exceptional in that way.

And I'm glad to be able to give a testimony of hope that like, you ain't going to lose everybody. You might lose a lot of people, but you won't lose everybody. And so in this undoing into my becoming, it is scary to love an institution that has both made And unmade you over time. That journey has been in a single [00:28:30] word, scary.

And in a phrase, scary, but liberating. And freedom is always aspirational and desirable, but freedom does not ever come without a cost. And so a lot of that cost for me was giving over the fear I had of hell, the fear I had of condemnation, the fear I had of separatism from community, into realizing that there are possibilities in a world where I [00:29:00] can Enjoy God, not as something that I feared, not as something that had the ability to destroy my life at a whim, but a real true relationship to and with God and experience of God that sees the whole.

That's what it has felt like over these last years, moving into this space.[00:29:30]

Speaker 3: I love that she named fear here and that fear of losing people. I think that's the thing that, that has a very valid. often grip on us when it comes to The thought of moving into a different space, whether that space be embracing our own sexual identity or our gender identity expression. Maybe that space is moving into a different faith practice or a different spiritual belief or leaving that all

Speaker: together.

You know, what really [00:30:00] resonated. The most with me from this conversation are two things. One, how real man made fear can be, like how tangible and intense you can feel about something just based off what another person. has told you and what has been ingrained into your mind about right and wrong that could have absolutely nothing to do with what you are supposed to be in church doing.

So yeah, the fact that Danyelle made a community [00:30:30] where people feel safe to explore in that way, I think that you don't get there unless you go on your own journey, because what you need might also be what somebody else needs. But it takes bravery to step out there and try to even figure out what could work.

And God is everywhere. That's the thing, like, if this is about Christianity, there is no place that we can create that God is not present before you even get there. So this idea that we have to only experience spirituality and our faith in this rigid structure is in [00:31:00] itself kind of Insulting to God,

Speaker 3: one of my favorite scriptures.

There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God at all goes into that whole list of height, death, angel, principality, creature powers, things, present belly piercing tattoos, things to come things in the past. Nothing can separate us. And there really is hope there is a, an expected future. [00:31:30] There is something that works out for us.

As we close out this episode, I want to invite you who are listening, if you want to find out more about what Danyelle is doing, check out unfitchristian. com or keep an eye out for her upcoming book titled The Day God Saw Me as Black, The Journey to Liberated Faith, which releases September 24th of this year.

Overall, we are here. [00:32:00] So we also would love to hear from you. Be sure to hop on our social media. Let us know what's on your mind. We love the conversation. We love your questions. We love your doubts and we love you. So join us next time.

Speaker: One more thing. Can y'all please take our survey? We know you're out there and you're listening.

So if you can hear the sound of my voice, please. Take our survey cause we want to hear from you. And we want to know more about how we can better serve you, who you are and what type of content that you want to hear. So check out our [00:32:30] survey at the link in the description.

The second Sunday podcast is hosted by Estree Coro and Darren Calhoun. But podcasting is a team sport, so a big thank you to our dream team,

Speaker 3: our producers, Esther Ikoro, Anna Deshawn, and Nicole Hill, our associate producer, Amber Walker,

Speaker: our [00:33:00] sound designer, Florence Burrow Adams, and our managing producers, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

Speaker 3: Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled, They Don't Know. You should download the

Speaker: full song today. To learn more about today's guests or the show. Visit our show notes on our website, SecondSundayPod. com, and on Instagram, at SecondSundayPod. Second Sunday is a production of The Qube, spelled with a Q, in partnership with the PRX Big Questions Project, which is [00:33:30] generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

Speaker 3: The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QTPOC

Speaker: podcasts. Support this show and more like it by joining the Qube app. And follow the Qube across social media at the Qube app. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next [00:34:00] episode.

We Are Faith Embodied

[00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther, and this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.[00:00:30]

One of the leading principles of the faith is that God is love. The folks that I had come into community with who showed me love the most were black trans women and fems. And so I started saying that God must be a black trans woman because the people who On this planet, in this world, on this plane right now, who are embodying what we're so to [00:01:00] believe is the most central part of God are black trans folks.

It's the way some folks probably just took a gasp for me. You know, I've always hung my hat on this idea that we need to stop referring to God in general as anything human. That's always been a big area of contention for me, [00:01:30] but yeah, I'm sure that one sent a couple folks. Yeah, we didn't have a problem when God was in the image and likeness of men.

Right. We didn't have a problem when the mass marketed multiple produced famous picture of Jesus in the brown robe was in the image of a specifically Scandinavian or Norwegian man. I was about to say, we don't even have to start at man. Let's just start at white. Okay. [00:02:00] But the part where It's so important for us to realize that our vision of God comes from the people who show up for us.

Like, we, we see God through people and, you know, it may be parents, it may be church or spiritual leaders, but God is showing up in the peoples. Exactly.

The voice that opened our show today was the [00:02:30] Tre'vell Anderson. And they are an award winning journalist, social curator, and authoress doing world changing work around society and culture. Esther and I had a time with Tre'vell. I have not laughed that hard in a long time, Darren. That was great. Tre'vell, like, comes on with all of the energy, and I love that.

I love it. They came through swinging. I mean, just even from the clip, I was like, okay, we should have started recording before we started recording. It [00:03:00] was everything. As you may know by now, in this season of Second Sunday, we're talking with folks who've left the traditional ways we think about church.

So, in this episode, we get to hear how Tre'vell found community and navigated their identities while remaining a proud, self proclaimed church queen. My mother was a single parent. She was in the army for 23 years and when she was overseas, my grandmother would take care of us. I grew up as her [00:03:30] shadow, so much so that my nickname when I was younger was Preacher Man.

I was one of, you know them videos that you see on TikTok of the little boy dressed in a three piece suit, preaching Krav Maga Dala or somebody like that? That was me, okay? I was, oh, I could get him up out they seats, honey, alright? Everybody thought I would be in somebody's pulpit getting it together. And, uh, church was just like a big [00:04:00] part of our life.

And because I was a kid and because I didn't really know too many people beyond family in Charleston, I just tagged along with my granny. She also had a radio show on the AEM side of things that I would go on and I would read out the Bible verses. I craned my grandmother for making me into a church queen, a title that I hold proudly [00:04:30] to this day.

I always say that the black church is actually a deeply campy place and a deeply queer place. We were in one of those churches where my granny had a nice old hat, okay? That matched the shoes, it matched the shawl, it matched the briefcase of her Bible that week. You know what I mean? She would have that, that regular outfit, but then you know you gotta change, okay, when you getting ready to preach.

And [00:05:00] so she would go in the back, and she would have turbans that matched the color of her rose. That was super campy to me. The woman in the church who is doing entirely too much. You not! Slayin in the spirit, for real, you carry it. Even the ways in which the ushers would parade in from the front door.

Come on now, the choreography, laughing to the right. Come on, why y'all playing in my face? So yeah, it was a deeply camp [00:05:30] place, a deeply queer place, and yet also so restrictive in retrospect. And part of that restrictiveness showed up when Tre'vell was really young, and it showed up as a form of conversion therapy.

There was a situation when I was four years old that resulted in a very much pray the gay away seance type moment. I [00:06:00] remember very little things from my childhood, but I remember that. And It quite literally was me in the middle of a circle and people one day after church. I'm trying to figure out why are we lollygagging?

What's going on? Next thing I know, the lights are off, candles are lit, and I'm on the floor in the middle of a circle. Again, did not have language for what it was they thought they were casting out of me [00:06:30] at the time. But in retrospect, I can see and say that they saw queerness in me and felt the need to pray it away, or to try it.

Cause, here we are. And so, when I think about, what queer existence looked like in my life at that time, there was nothing. And so, you know, I was in my Sunday's best, honey, carrying on with the [00:07:00] rest of them.

I'd say I was in the church deeply, maybe until about 14 or so. And then you start reading the Bible for real yourself. Okay. And then you start seeing, um, The church folks lying and stealing and talking about people behind it. You like, now hold on now. I thought we was supposed to be living Christ in this.

I know what that means now for myself. And your behavior [00:07:30] is not reflecting that. Something's off. And so I think I started. Consciously stepping away from that. Yeah. So I didn't begin to even think about queerness or transness as being, um, terms or a possibility for me until I was in college. I was at school at Morehouse and these other black queer people had recognized in me what I was not [00:08:00] able to recognize in myself and welcomed me into, to a space that truly.

You know, allowed me to blossom into my truth while also maintaining a relationship to that world and that black church space that so many of us have these affinities toward.

I tell this story story in my book which came out last year. I talk about how my time at Morehouse [00:08:30] coincided with a shift in my own identity and my own articulation of how I wanted to show up in the world. In 2010, during Tre'vell's sophomore year, Vibe magazine published an article titled, The Mean Girls of Morehouse.

reporting on the appropriate attire policy introduced that year. The policy stated that students referred to as Renaissance men were not allowed to wear caps, do rags, sunglasses, or sagging pants on campus or at college sponsored events. But the [00:09:00] part that really drew attention was the rule about women's clothing.

No dresses, no tops, tunics, purses, or pumps. The vice president of student services was reported as saying that the entire policy was based on five students who are quote, living the gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress in a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.

And I was this little young, [00:09:30] Baby queer, barely beginning to dip my toe into the streets of Atlanta, Georgia. Okay. And to be caught in these conversations, literally on the corner of Brown Street on our campus, where other students were debating about whether or not this specific group of students were proper representations of our school because they were queer, trans, gender non conforming was really wild.

Knowing what I knew. Right, was, [00:10:00] was bubbling up within myself. Those are some of the first, ultimately, trans people that I saw and was in close connection with, in some way, shape, or form. Didn't really know them because the majority of them were upper class people. There was something there. And I remember that kind of being like a, a catalyst for me.

To stand even more in my truth, I stopped wearing suits that year, which to do at an HBCU, [00:10:30] specifically at Morehouse College, where these people are wearing three and four piece suits to class every day.

It was a big deal because I also was a bad bitch, right? So I'm getting recognized in all these different ways. And there would be different events on campus where we are expected to dress up. And I would show up in not a suit, not in anything necessarily too femme to be clear. I [00:11:00] was still wearing pants and all of that stuff.

But I would have a little cow neck sweater or something. So just something with a little, little panache, you know, just a little something. And there was literally a situation in which a professor remarked to another professor who they did not know I had a great relationship with about why is he, I used he and pronouns at the time, why is he wearing that?

If he's supposed to be getting honors, why is he wearing that? The professor that this professor told it to [00:11:30] ends up relaying this information to me, thinking that I would laugh about it, but it was not funny to me. And because I was a bad bitch, I reported her directly to the president. And I said, I find it wild that on a day that I am being honored, she's worried about what I'm wearing.

The appropriate attire policy. I'm not, they didn't know it was a women's top, but they didn't know that. It's okay. And so long story short, I [00:12:00] ended up meeting with the president. The president ends up making me, my professor mentor, and then the professor who said this thing, have a meeting, makes her apologize.

And I said next time just mind your business, okay? But I just remember how the quote unquote mean girls and that article and what they Navigated in that particular moment in that very specific kind of [00:12:30] environment and being like Galvanized to be like, you know, what y'all treat these people really wild right now Not knowing that there are others of us here and maybe you wouldn't care Maybe they didn't care regardless, but that's when I just really started trying to be my fullest self, trying to figure out the language that made sense for me at that time, and then finding the community, specifically other [00:13:00] Morehouse students, right, who also were and are navigating this thing called gender and sexuality at this very specific moment in our lives.

As Treyville continues to navigate Morehouse, they find themselves reconnecting with the church several years after deciding to step away. I think junior year, I was an RA by this point. As an RA, you sometimes [00:13:30] do group activities for your residents. And one of my friends at that time was an RA in another building and he wanted to do a Sunday church trip for everybody.

The end. The residents was like, you going to come to church with us? And I said, now hold on, now hold on. But I ended up going, we ended up going to the service at Clark Atlanta University, right behind us. And it was wonderful and it was beautiful. And it was beginning of [00:14:00] me recognizing that I could have whatever relationship to God and spirituality and religion that I wanted, it could be as simple as just going to church.

So. The Clark Atlanta Choir, because they used to eat up their songs. It could be that I wanted to hear some sermon or message. It could be none of that. And when I was in college, I really was able to just begin creating the life [00:14:30] that felt right to me, despite all of the foolishness, okay, that I was navigating as somebody coming into their queerness.

Eventually coming into their transness and non binariness in this deeply masculine and toxic environment.[00:15:00]

As Treyvail matures into their identity and how they show up in the world, they experience a profound breach of trust.

While I was in college is also when I was outed to my family. My mom was in the military. Like I mentioned, she was stationed in Columbus, Georgia, outside of Atlanta. My grandmother was living with her at the time. My mother got a new duty station and they decided that they were going to drive from [00:15:30] Columbus to the new duty station.

But my mom owned a house in Columbus and she was a little nervous about the community. And so she wanted me to every other week, drive down to Columbus. Check on the house, make sure it was all right. And so they were stopping in Atlanta to give me the keys. And I met up with them at a gas station, random Shell gas station.

I had on a yellow shirt, a pair of black shorts, that actually hit my knees, okay? So I [00:16:00] was doing the masculine thing, okay? Come on now. And then I had on a pair of red Tars, the little moccasin looking fabric shoes. Two weeks later, after that. Hi, bye, with my mother and grandmother, I receive a letter, a handwritten letter from my grandmother, and in that letter, she asks me if I'm gay, and she, this is the grandmother who was the pastor, by the way, she asks me if I'm gay, and [00:16:30] she says, if you're gay, Then you're going to hell and that I have put you on a pedestal.

The family has put you on a pedestal and now that pedestal has a crack in it. I used to love and ride hard for my little sister. She said that I was no longer a good role model for my little sister who would eventually come out as a lesbian. [00:17:00] But she said I was not a good role model for her. Okay. And I got that letter and I was enraged to say the least.

And so I said, you know what, I'm gonna write her back. Okay. So I got my little piece of laptop. Okay. My Lenovo. Okay. And I feverishly typed out a response of my raw emotions to my grandmother. Okay. And [00:17:30] I told my grandmother in that letter. I said, if I'm going to hell, I'm gonna see you there. Because you did X, Y, Z, L, M, N, O, P.

I have seen this and this. I read the Bible. I went in. Cause also now, I am grown and I have my own relationship to this text that we have invested so much into, right? That she is using [00:18:00] to say all of these other things. And so I just, I write this letter back to her and I send it off. I send it off. And in the letter I say, cause this was a few weeks before Thanksgiving break.

I say, I know you're going to show this letter to my mama. And so I'm just going to do y'all a favor and not come home for Thanksgiving. And I won't be home for Christmas either. [00:18:30] If y'all act the way I think y'all gonna act, right? At that point in time, I had been speaking to my mother at least once a week.

Conversations stopped for at least a month or so. Thanksgiving comes and goes, and shortly before Christmas break, I get a call, random call from my mother, and I answer the phone and she says, [00:19:00] I read the letter. You need to apologize to your grandmother, and I better see you at Christmas. Now, I was feeling my oats, right?

So I say back to my mama, Christmas is potentially on the table. However, I'm not apologizing. Because you didn't see what she wrote to me. You got the response. But you didn't see that which necessitated that response. So we go back and forth for a [00:19:30] little bit. Ultimately, she says, you better have your behind home for Christmas.

I go home for Christmas and it's not brought up. We never talk about me being queer through the point that my grandmother eventually dies some eight years later. But that happened while I was in school and was another like catalyst point to where I was like, well, all right, girl, you basically done got these people off.

You know [00:20:00] what I mean? Like, you told them you ain't got all privileges, which you did not do in my family, in my experience. And it really allowed me to stand on business and stand on my own. And so when you ask about where my state was then, it really was one of rebellion. I was like, God, this you, God, this, this is you.

[00:20:30] And. Eventually, and I would say this would be maybe five to eight years later, I would, one, find a home in my non binariness and in my transness, and I would come to realize the innate divinity within us as trans people, and that allowed me to really reconfigure a relationship to spirituality [00:21:00] that made space for who I am and who I believe I'm supposed to be in the world.

As Tre'vell became more comfortable in their own skin, they began to reconnect with their spirituality.

A lot of it was around just like research, looking [00:21:30] for other examples of trans people. People moving through the world, I began to discover that queerness and transness is actually a deeply African experience, contrary to what I had been told. When I realized and found out that prior to colonization, so many cultures across the world not only had space for queer folks [00:22:00] and trans folks especially, but that those folks were the conduits for religion, for spirituality, for healing.

I said, now hold on, Lord. Okay, I hear you, I see you, you're doing something. Because I was able to take a lot of that, like, joy that I experienced in the church and figure out ways to tap into it outside of those walls. [00:22:30] I remember being on the dance floor at a club. I was at Bulldogs, yes, in Atlanta. And I don't remember what was playing, but I just felt like a transcendent experience come over me.

And I was like, this reminds me of God's tabernacle, honey. Okay. And it was then that I began to realize that church is actually a mindset that you can experience revelation and the gospel [00:23:00] literally back in that day. up on the dance floor at Boo Dolls, right? Because I had not felt myself really, truly right before that moment.

And I can't remember the song that was on the dance floor, but I just remember feeling so free. And I said to myself, this is, I like this. This is what I want more of. This is what I think they were perhaps [00:23:30] actually talking about. When they talked about the transformative powers of God and faith and belonging to a particular type of community.

And so since then I've really been saying to myself that one of the leading principles of the faith that I was brought up into is that God is love. If we have to believe that God is love and that we are made in God. So therefore we are [00:24:00] to be embodied versions of God. The folks that I had come into community with who showed me love the most were black trans women and fems.

And so I started saying that God must be a black trans woman because the people who live on this planet, in this world, on this plane right now who are embodying what we're so to believe is the [00:24:30] most central part of God are black trans folks. Now you can't say that in certain communities because people look at you weird and all of that.

Um, but really throughout my entire journey, what I can say is that. In the moments that I have felt the most alone, it has been knowing the truth of myself that has kept me going. And to me, [00:25:00] God, the universe, spirit, whatever you call them, had to have something. To do with that because there were so many times where you know, it could have been With the songwriter said let me stop.

I won't go there, but that's what comes to mind

I say that i'm christian ish Like that's the foundation. That's where i'm mostly coming [00:25:30] from But I don't really care what name you give the person that you're talking about, right? Whoever gets you to that province land that we say we want to be in Listen go forward I call mine God. Okay, but my God is also a black trans woman.

So do with that what you will. So yeah, I say Christian ish, which is supposed to be very like asterisk. And that asterisk just means a whole lot of other stuff. I should start saying Christian plus, like LGBTQ [00:26:00] plus. It's like there's a whole lot in that plus. I think the secret to the black church as an institution sustaining and remaining or returning to some sort of meaningful relevance in our community lies within the queer folks and the trans folks who are interested in being in those spaces.

And that's just because every [00:26:30] major, uh, shift in society, for the better and some for the worst, have been at the hands and as a result of the brilliance of Black, queer, and trans people specifically. And

I think so many of us recognize the possibility that lies within a relationship [00:27:00] to a higher power. And many of us are finding that in different ways, right? Whether it's on the dance floor, whether it's in community at a book talk, whether it is volunteering someplace, but for the folks who find their callings, bringing them back to that staple, I think they are that secret sauce.

They are the folks who need to be platformed. Formed, they are the pastors that I [00:27:30] want to hear from. They are the, the theologians whose scholarship that I want to to read more about because at the core of at least my understanding of what this thing called being a Christian, God fearing, et cetera supposed to be, is having faith in the unknown.

Um. And how many of us is Black queer people, Black trans folk, are [00:28:00] manifestations of faith. We are faith embodied. Black trans people, we have crafted ourselves out of the depths of our imaginations, right? And we show up. And the fact that we do, the fact that we exist, to me, is proof of some other, you some other influence because ain't no way so [00:28:30] many of us are able to be out here and navigate what we're navigating.

To be clear, it's not cute out there and yet we are here. And folks have remarked to me when I often tell the story of my journey that in so many ways I, I am, you know, speaking to the people. I am preaching. I am bringing people together. And I used to think that it would be from a [00:29:00] pulpit, but it's been through my writing.

It's been through my speaking. It's been through my social media. And that's beautiful. And so I would tell my younger self that, yeah, it's coming, and yes, this is hard right now, but keep listening to yourself. You are going to figure out how to survive and navigate this space until you get to a point where you are able to truly blossom.

And there's nothing wrong with that. [00:29:30] Because everything works together for your good. Because you the bad bitch. You just don't know it yet.

Wow. [00:30:00] I mean, I do know that I'm a bad bitch, but I feel like I like it better when they say it. And it's just like, yeah, because indeed the world we're in is jacked up. And I still think we have a message, a gospel, an idea, a spiritual. prompting that there still can be something better, that the worst of what we see and the worst of what's going on isn't all that there is.

And [00:30:30] so I love that. I love that the ways that, that Tre'vell is just like, listen, We gonna do this thing. For me, it goes to show how the power of spiritual connection and seeking spirituality on your own exists in a lot of ways outside of other human beings and how it really is a personal thing. Because I feel like we spent so long talking about the institution and the people that make it up that we forget that people feel things regardless of whether anyone is watching or not, you know?

So yeah, it was definitely important. [00:31:00] At the end of the day, the world needs us. The world needs you. There are so many things that come against us and they're trying to shut us down. Tell us to be quiet, to tell us not to be so fabulous and so sparkly. But when we show up as our real selves, the ones who can handle the real, the ones who can keep it 100, they are going to find us and we are going to build the best community ever.

So as Treyveille said, Use a bad bitch, keep that shit up, and [00:31:30] be blessed.

The 2nd Sunday Podcast is hosted by Esther Ikoro and Darren Calhoun. But podcasting is a team sport, so a big thank you to our dream team. Our producers, Esther Ikoro, Anna Deshawn, and Nicole Hill. Our associate producer, Amber Walker. Our sound designer, Florence [00:32:00] Burrow Adams. And our managing producers, Christopher D.

Jocelyn Gonzalez, and Courtney Florentine. Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled, They Don't Know. You should download the full song today. To learn more about today's guests or the show, visit our show notes on our website, SecondSundayPod. com, and on Instagram, at Second Sunday Pod.

Second Sunday is a production of The Qube, spelled with a Q, in partnership with the PRX. Big Questions Project, which is generously supported by the [00:32:30] John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions. The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QTPOC podcasts.

Support this show and more like it by joining The Qube app and follow The Qube across social media at The Qube app. Thank you for listening and we'll see next [00:33:00] episode.

[00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther. And this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

I was a [00:00:30] heathen turned believer. Now I'm a believer turned knower. I was known in high school as king of the lesbians because I was so masculine. So I was like this masculine lesbian, it was like a thing. Until my senior year. But I was still very curious about what it would be like to be with men. But I had so many people with an expectation of who I was supposed to be and what I represented.

And so, I ain't even gonna hold you, I think I just naturally have a flair for the dramatic. Because it wasn't just like, let's just make a small adjustment, you know? No, I went from [00:01:00] like, rockin a shortcut, And jeans and looking like a dude full time to wearing skirts, getting my nails done and having earrings my entire senior year.

Dexter Davis is a motivational speaker, advocate, and artist currently living in Hampton, Virginia. Dexter is dedicated to creating spaces of connection, education, and empowerment. Currently Dexter works as a community health navigator at the LGBT life center and serves in multiple capacities with [00:01:30] organizations such as the men in transition.

the National Transgender Sports Association, and Black Trans Men Can Cook. Dexter started life as king of the lesbians, but he went on a journey that would lead him through realizing his identity as a trans man, and surprisingly, into some very traditional spaces. Okay, so Darren, I grew up in really traditional worship spaces, and I grew up steeped in that church culture and that tradition that was [00:02:00] centered on Christianity.

So feeling the presence of God was familiar to me at a really young age, but I'm curious, when was the first time that you felt the Spirit of God? I mean, oh, you gotta have me go back there. I think the quick version is I was singing Perfect Praise, aka How Excellent. In church. That'll do it. You know? It's still funny the way we always make the title of the song the first line of it or [00:02:30] the line we remember, not the actual title.

Anyway, I digress. I was singing that song and I remember I started to cry. And I asked my teacher, Ms. Robinson, I was like, why am I crying? There's nothing wrong. What's going on? And as only a Black woman can say, she just looked at me, she's like, baby, that's just the Holy Spirit. And it was just like, Oh, that's it.

And before that, did you ever stand back and observe people feeling the [00:03:00] Holy Spirit and wonder what is going on before you felt it yourself? No, I figured if people were crying, they were crying because there was something going on. Right. Again, for context, I was still in the Catholic church at this time.

Um, we would have revivals that were ecumenical with other Christian faiths that were a lot more charismatic or expressive, but you know, I just figured, you know, God was doing whatever, but something was probably wrong. And it wasn't really until I had that moment where it's like, there is absolutely nothing wrong.

And I'm over [00:03:30] here crying, ugly crying. Yeah. The tradition and the spirit moving among people in the church was just a fact of life for me growing up. And so that feeling and seeing people being in that headspace and just the existence of that headspace, which is actually a little abstract if you don't know about it and if you haven't experienced it or weren't raised in it, that's a feeling that in some ways I've taken for granted because it's just always been part of my life and my worship experience.[00:04:00]

Dexter's journey through finding identity is linked to his searching for this feeling, this spiritual feeling, this feeling of connection with God and wanting to feel the presence of God. And this journey leads him to explore the ways people live and love, and bring something into his life that he was not expecting.

My earliest memories with spirituality or anything, like even in a religious sense, was that I grew up, my folks were Easter folk, so we only went on Easter. For real, for real. [00:04:30] Dexter grew up in Virginia Beach in the 90s with his mom, and at the time he didn't have a relationship with his dad. At home, his church experience was pretty casual.

But my neighbors across the street, they were into the ministry, and they went regularly. But my neighbors And this, I didn't realize for a long time, was a completely different church going experience. We could go to church in jeans and t shirts listening to rock music for the Lord, okay? So like, this [00:05:00] is a little different.

Um, just, just a little different, right? It was a fun experience, but there was always a hole. And I remember telling my best friend, her name was Erica, at the time, who was the daughter, they were like her version of a PK, I guess you could say, because the family was so involved. I remember telling her that I really struggled with not seeing Jesus.

This was like, and this really stressed me out, like this, this weighed on my soul so much because listening to how everybody spoke, [00:05:30] I was just like, who is this person? Where are they? I'm not seeing what y'all are seeing, and I feel really bad because I'm in these spaces and it's almost like you're asked to pledge allegiance to something you don't understand.

And I'm like, and if you say you don't understand that people are looking at you like you're crazy. So then I'm like, look, I'm already the darkest thing here. I was already a lot going on. Like when I go to y'all's houses, I'm like, y'all parents do these things. Like, what is going on? Like, I already fell out of place, but then this is the one thing you don't want to be out [00:06:00] of place with.

So I just kind of kept to myself about it, but she gave me something that has always stuck with me. And she said, you know, honestly, she's like, I mean, God knows you. Imagine we're like six or seven at the time, right? She's like, God knows you, God knows your heart. I don't think all that other stuff really matters.

Just be you. You know what I'm saying? And that has always stuck with me. I think as part of what's kept me from going to the complete extreme of saying that there could be no God, that there is no God. When they [00:06:30] finally moved, I stopped going to church because no one else took me to anything like that.

But I had friends of different spiritual systems. And so then I met a friend who is Jewish, but she's Reformed. Her mom is my mom's best friend. We were both in the Performing Arts Academy at Salem. It was the love of arts that Produced a conversation.

I think it was like an instant connection, but I'm glad because it was like a gateway [00:07:00] Into this insane spiritual journey that I've taken that actually culminated in me becoming Dexter in the first place I'm a transgender man. So I was born as a girl. So during this time I'm actually a whole female up until this point which is important because that was how my understanding was informed right in school I was known in high school as king of the lesbians because I was so masculine.

So I was like this masculine lesbian. It was like a thing until my senior year. And up until that point, I think I just, you could say I had a breakdown. It was like a [00:07:30] breakthrough. It was a breakup. It was a lot of breaking.

This has been my lived experience is essentially being a lesbian for the first three years of high school. But I was still very curious about what it would be like to be with men. I was actually, at this point, curious about it, but I had so many people with an expectation of who I was supposed to be and what I represented.

And so, I ain't even gonna hold you, I think I just naturally have a flair for the dramatic because it wasn't just like, let's just make a small adjustment. You know? No. I went from, like, rockin a short [00:08:00] cut, you and jeans and looking like a dude full time to wearing skirts, getting my nails done and having earrings my entire senior year freaked everybody out and myself.

So, you know, it was a lot, right. But I was doing this to try and find myself.

Dexter graduates high school and goes to Ithaca college where he meets someone at an elevator and the experience changes the trajectory of his spiritual journey. I'm living in an all girls dorm. I live on the sixth [00:08:30] floor. We have 13 floors in this building and only two elevators. So when one elevator's down, you only got one and you got a bunch of freshmen, which means elevators almost are never in order.

So this day I decided, I'm not waiting for these elevators. I just need to get me some snacks. I'm just going to walk down the flights of stairs to the second floor so that I can go get me some snacks. As I'm walking down the stairs, There's a random girl in the hallway and I'm like, okay. And she was like, Hey, can you help me?

And I'm like, Hmm, this is giving stranger danger. Like you standing outside of a door and you ain't [00:09:00] got no key. What's going on? And she said, you're not going to believe this, but I'm Jewish. Like that was supposed to explain why you're locked out. I had a Jewish friend before, but like never have I been in this situation.

What is going on? It was Friday night. And so she was like, tonight's the Sabbath. I'm conservadox, but my family's conservative. She said, so. is Shabbat. I can't use the door. So she has a key card and she's not allowed to carry anything on that day. And the key doors are all electronic. So she's like, I can't use any electronics on the Sabbath.

So now I had to [00:09:30] open the door to get something and then the door shut behind me. And she's been out here trying to get back into her room for the last hour since. And so I was just like, I'll let you in. But like, I now have more questions. And so that is what opened the door.

So Dexter started dating that girl he met at the elevator and in the process, learned more about Judaism and his identity. [00:10:00] At that point, I was like, I don't know if I am a bisexual or a lesbian or if I'm masculine or feminine. I don't really care. I just kind of like gave up at this point because college was hard.

So I was like, I'm just trying to survive school. Getting to know her, you know, we talked and the more she was teaching me, she was teaching me just about her experience. We were just growing closer. And one day out of the blue, just to give you an idea, she's a writing major. What do writing majors do? They are blunt people.

2. 30 in the morning conversation. It just comes out of [00:10:30] nowhere. And it's like, did you ever think you might be transgendered? And I'm like, this is what we just do up here in these Northern States. Y'all just don't, y'all have Southern hospitals. And how dare you? And what? Tell me more. So she was just like, in the time that I've known you, you just haven't really seemed satisfied in who you are, but it's like, you know, who you are.

It's just like, it's just something I wanted to ask you if you've ever considered or thought about it. I had one friend who had transitioned when I was in high school, so I wasn't completely unfamiliar to the concept. So [00:11:00] then it got me thinking and then I went down. doing research. And then I was like, Oh, yep, that's, that describes a lot of things.

A lot of this is making sense. And it lined it up. All right, down. Interesting for me, I will say that my transition and my spiritual journey actually coincided and started at the same time.

Dexter was really drawn to the discipline of the Jewish tradition, and he hoped that throwing himself into such a disciplined [00:11:30] spiritual practice would create that feeling of connection with God that he was missing. He was also beginning to consider his identity as a trans man at around the same time, and a conversation he had with his girlfriend about the process of converting to Judaism led to a major point of clarity.

The question she asked was, if you are going to do this, then you have to make the decision, do you want to be a Jewish man or a Jewish woman? Because there is no early in between, so it's which one are you going to make that decision? And it kind of solidified, okay, [00:12:00] you know what? I'd rather be a man. In the best case, it's going to be a Jewish man.

I think for my mom, the most stressful coming out was me trying to go to college for literally barely six months and then coming back saying I'm now trying to be an orthodox Jewish man. Like, I feel like of all of the things, At this point, the man thing, all right, like I'm not, I'm not surprised, but why ain't gotta be Jewish?

Like, do you know what we eat? But I will say despite any of the hurdles [00:12:30] we've come through, she has always tried her best to be supportive as best she could. Darren, what do you think is more stressful for a mom? Do you think it's about their son coming out as a trans man or their son coming out as a Jewish man when you are a Black Christian mom?

I mean, at the end of the day, is your child coming out as Black? is distress and everything else is a complication of the stress that you're trying to navigate. So she's pre stressed. Right. You know, it's pre stressed. It's been [00:13:00] preloaded. Um, you know, that's a hard one. There's both the gender, crossing the gender divide where there's things that get implicitly taught to and expected of people who are assigned female at birth.

And there's the parts where culturally we tend to not know much or not have good feelings toward Judaism, you know, sometimes based on experience, but often based on just the ways that the world is a [00:13:30] mess. It's a lot. And I get it. I think that. If I told my mom flat out that I didn't believe in Jesus, that would be the hardest.

Or that I was pursuing a faith that didn't hold Jesus in the same light as our tradition holds Jesus, that she would just be like, Oh, so you just don't want the ticket, huh? She's like, I'm gonna go send you to see Jesus. Oh my goodness. Now before you maybe had the ticket, but you might have been sitting in the back, but now you just don't even want to be on the train.

Lord. [00:14:00] So hats off to Dexter's mom, because I know that probably wasn't an easy conversation knowing that they come from a culture adjacent to the one that we come from.

So picking a name is a common part of both the trans experience and the process of converting to Judaism. So Dexter goes through this whole process of trying to pick a name that It's both his identity and his newfound [00:14:30] spiritual journey. I started around Purim. The story is right around April. This is actually right around the time that I came into my journey around 2013.

Purim, the story of Mordecai and Esther. Um, and it's the story of, you know, Esther and her people, and the story of Mordecai around, you know, right around the same time of year. And I was really drawn to the name. This one, I've always kind of enjoyed that story. And I was always drawn to that name. And so, [00:15:00] between her and I, because one of the things that you had to consider was a possible name.

There's a renaming experience. You know, Mordecai was the name I was looking at. But she was like, a common nickname in community for that is Morty, and that's not really your personality. She said, so between us, the nickname that she had given me was Dech. And that's fine between people who speak the language.

I said, but to everybody else, especially my black mother, Dech sound is not going to work. Um. I already know. I already know where this is going and I'm not even gonna try her on that. And I'm gonna tell you to [00:15:30] spell that it's like D E C H and I don't know what sounds like in a text message like this is not going well at all.

So we're just gonna go with Dex like and that was my first nickname was Dex. Dex, and that's actually how it led me to Dexter. Um, because I was like, I need a goy name, an everyday name, because I'm just telling you right now, my life is difficult being this color and sounding like this. I don't need anything else to make my life more difficult right now.

Um, I love myself, uh, too much to put any [00:16:00] more on my plate. So, and that was again, some of the things I was considering. I was very intentional when I chose my name because I was like, I need a name that's not going to make my life more difficult. I'm already complicated enough. We're already spicy enough over here.

So like we don't need anything else adding to that because I knew that there wasn't a guarantee that I would complete and or finish this process, but there were certain things in the spiritual experience I was looking for. And at the time I think I really just wanted discipline and I wanted tradition, but the lessons.

The stories, [00:16:30] the puzzles that go into learning, I was in the process of learning Biblical Hebrew because in order to understand certain things in context, you actually have to know what they're said, what the Hebrew origin is.

I will say actually in New York and down here, I won't say that I ever experienced a whole lot of overt discrimination. Um, I worked in a kosher kitchen on campus. I lived and worked around Jewish men. There was, as long as you respected the rules of like, this is masculine, this is feminine, it wasn't a whole bunch of challenging, it was a lot [00:17:00] easier.

And I was. I was surprised at how accepted I was. I was actually surprised because when I made the decision, right, I'm on a college campus. So me and my girlfriend at the time, we're not even from her hometown. Her hometown is Cleveland. That was a whole different experience, right? But now we're in a place where she doesn't know the spiritual leaders either.

And in Judaism, she's like, there are different sects, you know, but the main four you're dealing with is you got your ultra Orthodox, your Orthodox, Conservative, and your Reform. She's like, that's basically what you're going to deal with on campus. [00:17:30] Little differentiations, but on that campus they had Chabad, and that is a very ultra Orthodox sect.

And so she said, the thing is, even though I was conservative, I follow Orthodox principles within reason, because she identified it as lesbian. So that's kind of what kept her in this in between place. That was her, she's like, look, I was born Jewish, that's what we do. Literally, questioning God is what we do.

So that was her argument for all of her shenanigans. But she said, you have to talk to the Rebbe. She says, because again, as a conservative [00:18:00] person, when I think of the different spiritual leaders, she says, that's the most authoritative Jewish source, and authority sources matter. She says, if you get the Rebbe on board, that's really what you're willing with, is the people who will have something else to say, because the other two groups are going to be like, oh, okay, right?

And so I got a chance to meet the Rebbe, who was local to the area, and he was, Very much so the same, very straightforward. He said, you know, it's like essentially is that I don't have a lot of this in Jewish law. He says, but if this is the journey that you wish to take as a convert, they [00:18:30] even have an adjusted version of circumcision for people with my parts.

Like, you know, there's, there's a way around it. Right. You know, so, um, there there's a way you can do that. Right. Um, but he said, what's very key is that that entire process must be Be done as a male, as expected. You will have all expectations that men have. Even so much so, when I was working in the kosher kitchen, I could not hand it anything to the female assistant manager.

This process for Dexter is all about connecting with God. He wants to feel something. And he was [00:19:00] hoping that diving into his commitment would help bring about that feeling. But the universe had other plans that would lead him to his father of all people and back to Christianity.

Having the acts of tradition, I was hoping that doing these things would be what created that spiritual experience. And that's actually part of the [00:19:30] reason why I've discontinued the process when it got to be, like, a little further in. And I realized, I said, as much as I'm doing these things, I'm not getting that hole that I'm looking to fill, this intuition that I'm feeling.

It's still there. And it's not because of lack of repetition of the processes, because I realized that the processes were, they were more as a psychology major, right? More of those grounding techniques, very similar as I could compare them to a yoga technique. Those are additions, but not the thing I [00:20:00] was looking for.

I was looking for a wholeness. When I think of the spirituality and what people express to me in each of their spiritual systems, there's a wholeness that it's not like I'm scared. It's just this feeling of coverage and how I figured out that's what I was looking for actually had to do with me finding my dad.

So that is actually how I got to that point. I did the Jewish process. It was transitioning. [00:20:30] At some point, the different restrictions were becoming cumbersome upon my real life. And now I was becoming a general manager at stores. I could get myself out of the financial situations and out of poverty. But it would come at the cost that most of these jobs require you to work on the Sabbath.

If I can't work on the Sabbath, I can't work. And now I'm back in the same place. So, I had to make a decision for my livelihood, which again, goes back to me just existing first.[00:21:00]

As I continued that, as I became a manager, I tried to, I hired a friend. And in this process, my manager's like, you should Google your friends. You should actually do that sometime, but I'm gonna let you make this mistake. And when she told me, you know, you can just do a background check on people. That's when it clicked in my mind that I could look up my dad.

I had his name, his birthday and his social security number. That's Found my father for 97 cents online, very fascinating. Ended up calling my biological brother, left a voicemail on his work voicemail, which I [00:21:30] already know had to be wild, um, he called me back a few hours later and got me in contact with my dad, who had been out of my life for 22 years.

And so then we began a new process.

So remember, at this time, Dexter is still in the process of converting to Judaism. And through this process, He's connected to a rabbi who tries to help him figure out if this is the right path for him. I'm looking for knowledge. I'm looking to understand. Again, [00:22:00] there's this hole that I'm looking for I can't really fill.

I said, but I am Looking for teachers to explain it helped me make sense of this. And what I liked about him is how he explained messages. Because he's like, there's a scripture to explain and experience. But then there's experiences to explain scripture. So even if I was going through something, everything always was back in a circle when he would start talking to me.

So it would start one way and it would end another. The reason I really valued him was when I most recently went back to him to talk, I was like, I was feeling lost [00:22:30] again. My life was just kind of all over the place.

Dexter still had questions about a lot of things, including the faith he'd seen people like his childhood neighbors practice. And I told him, I said, love, I like Judaism and there's things about it that I can understand. I said, but I am curious about understanding Christianity as well, because I deal with quite a few people where this is their very lived reality.

And he said, I can teach you about Judaism. [00:23:00] I can't teach you about Christianity. He says, you need to find the right teacher for you to do this. And you will know. You're going to know inside of you when you found that teacher, you need to find the right kind of teacher. And when he said that to me, I knew because the right teacher ended up being my dad, my actual dad.

The process of us getting to know, mind you, he hadn't seen me since I was a kid. So he knew me as his baby girl. Here I am a whole 25 year old man. Now, um, at [00:23:30] this point, like I'm looking at it like this. When I told him, I said, look, you've been out of my life for a while. I counsel people connecting with their families.

I have to say if I want a relationship with you, there's a possibility I'm going to have to fight for that. And I'm willing to fight for that relationship with you. At least give it a chance. And if you can look at me and not see me within you, then I'll leave you alone. And that clicked in his mind because he was always accepting.

He was mystified, right? For him, he's like in his 70s now. [00:24:00] He said, it relates to the verse, I am that I am. He says, when you said that to me, he says that first and most clicked, like you're mine, right? Funny enough, everybody who's talked to me are like, I'm his twin. I am literally his twin.

I was like, you couldn't parent me out of you because I'm the most like him. My grandfather was still alive. I got a chance through my big brother to, you know, meet everybody on a zoom before my grandfather passed. My grandfather was in his 90s. [00:24:30] My grandfather is my dad's stepfather, excuse me, so he chose him and, you know, he was there for him as a father and he was counseling him all through this experience.

And so when I was talking to my dad, And telling him up until now, like, all the stuff I've learned in different spiritual systems, a little bit from Buddhism, the same teacher who helped me get into college was Taoist, so I learned a little bit about that. He learned some stuff in school. I was very, again, interested in Judaism.

I loved Hebrew. I loved the philosophy, and then I love philosophy, so I'm telling him all these things. [00:25:00] And for the first time I'm getting the healthy dad, right? The healthy version. I'm a dad's fourth kid. He didn't raise me, but I'm his fourth kid and I'm getting the sitcom dad. Like, I can't believe he's real, but he is.

He gives me dad isms and dad advice and he's there. He's actually like, Really a good dad like I'm shocked like oh my god like this is real, right? But he's genuinely accountable like has me whole shook will never cease to remind me of The pain that he's caused and the consequences of all the actions due to his lack of [00:25:30] presence But all of that the realization of here's a person who's really Whose absence caused so much hurt and pain and all of the formative people in my life and all of the destruction and things and negative things that have happened.

And I have somebody who can show up and cover me. It took us years of us being like, I've met him in 2017, I want to say. And then later that year, right around my birthday, he was in a coma and it shook me. It set our relationship back. Cause I said, bro, I literally waited to meet you. And I said, I've never [00:26:00] had to mourn you.

So the thought of just now meeting you and then. You dying, that is so stressful. And, you know, it put that into perspective for him. He told me, and this is one of the things that opened me up to the potential and to the perspective to receive Christianity and not just read it. He said, I want you to imagine it like this.

Is that you ever made a mistake, right? You got into an argument, you made a decision. And you were ashamed and embarrassed to the other [00:26:30] person, so you avoided them. And then the next thing you know, hours turns into days and then days turns into weeks and then weeks turns into months. And then a whole year or two goes by and you don't even realize you and this person haven't even connected.

But every time you go to contact them, it's harder and harder because it's been so long. And so then the gap widens. What do you say to someone after 22 years of not being in their life? How do you even address that? Like, what am I supposed to say? He said, but this is the thing. He said, I had all of [00:27:00] this shame and this guilt and my pride.

And as a result, all of these things, when he listens to me, he's like, all of these things happen to you because I am still paying for a decision that I made 20 some odd years ago. He said, but this is the thing. I carried that pain with me. And when you came back into my life, I kept saying to my granddad, you know, he said, cause I kept saying to my granddad, he was like, I'm not worthy.

You know what I'm saying? I'm not worthy of this. My granddad said, you need to pray on that. [00:27:30] Cause you ask God for your children back. You ask God for your family back, but I need you to pray on that. And he said, you know, the message that I've received, especially when I was in that coma was this, he said, I beat myself up for so long.

I was full of so much shame and guilt that it kept me from you. I punished myself because of that. And in doing that, he said, I had a conversation with Jesus and it went, man, don't you think I already paid for that? He said, you've been making this decision and you've missed out on all this time [00:28:00] because you're paying for something.

You're paying a debt I already paid you don't owe. But he said, you know what? You don't want to hear me, so let me show you. Now I came to him. He said, I was a heathen turned believer. Now I'm a believer turned to knower. And so he said, at the time that you met me, I was coming from being a heathen in my, just doing for me.

And I came to a place where I started to believe in God and you came into my life. Now, again, we've been disconnected. Everything about. [00:28:30] Me to someone else could say you got to be this you got to be that right I came to you as a man I'm a queer man at that all of these differences I'm not even like oh, I'm a staunch any all of the things about me.

That could be problematic, right? And he said but this the thing every fact in your life says I don't love you And I'm gonna tell you right now, love is action. It's a feeling. I had love for you. He says, but love is action. Love is what you do. He said, I wasn't there for you. I didn't reach out. I didn't contact you.

His current wife was trying to find me, but because I changed my name and I [00:29:00] did these things, they didn't know how to find me, right? He says, but everything that I did showed you I did not verifiably love you. And I wouldn't be a man if I couldn't stand on that and say, I didn't love you. He said, and if you had followed fact and science, which you had total rights to do that, you would have never reached out.

Why reach out to this man? He ain't trying nothing for you. He don't care about you. He don't love you. Nothing in his actions say he cares about you. Nothing say he loves you. So why are you going to sit here all this time? It's the internet. He can figure it out. He said, but something in you [00:29:30] believed in me.

And I, when I talked to him, I said, number one, the kind of man you were, my mother never said anything negative about you. Whatever you were was a reflection of me. I have to get to know that person. She never had a negative. She told me of your dates. I wanted to be you so badly. She never had anything negative.

So that already let me know. I said, she salvaged that part of that relationship. I said, number two, there was this, this thing, that child in me. And he said, that faith of a mustard seed.[00:30:00]

Funny thing was when I came back from school, I went to NSU. It's HBCU, Historically Black College. One thing they will do here is put Bible verses in the classes you would never expect, okay? And I had this class was my health class, and that's why I learned the Bible verse, the faith of a mustard seed.

And so I was like, you're right. With the faith of a mustard seed, that internal, that child, that belief, not only did I come to him, I wasn't angry. I was excited to have my dad back. I greeted [00:30:30] him. How he saw it was, he said, when you met me, you had a throne ready. You sat me down. You sat at my side. He said, like Jesus.

And you said, father, he said, and you washed my feet. And I said, I don't deserve this. He said, and you just looked at me and said, father. And I hurt you and I did all of these things and I wasn't there and you had to suffer so much because of the decisions that I made because I didn't want to be a man of the responsibility.

I broke the contract. I broke the contract of being your dad. I don't deserve this. And you just looked at me and [00:31:00] said, father, I just want you to be my father. And he said, and one day I realized you were giving me the chance. To be a father. He says, so you teach me every day how to be a dad. By offering me that chance to do that.

And what I realized was, The kid in me has been healing over the years because every time I've been in a situation and it's been very bad like 2 30 in the morning I had to call the police I had crazy roommates I had an issue with my car the tires blew I could have [00:31:30] died in the process I didn't have triple a like I had all these crazy situations where I needed someone when I called him mind you he a truck driver so he could be anywhere at any time every time I called him he answered and he couldn't always take the situation away and I wasn't calling him to do that I was calling him to first just cry and fuss and get it out, and then he would help me solve the problem.

And he showed me what covering looks like.[00:32:00]

And so what I realized was my faith, that thing I was looking for is that if I have a parent who can teach me, treat me, love me like this, I can now start to believe that there's a creator or something even bigger and better.

And that covering was very timely because he found himself suddenly mourning the loss of one of the most important people in his life. [00:32:30] When Dexter had gone off to college, he became deeply connected to a queer community. One of the people who was instrumental in his development was Lex, who became his chosen mother.

He was as close to Lex as his bio mom, and they even spent Mother's Day together. Losing her was devastating when Lex passed. She had texted me 15 minutes before a drunk driver drove the wrong way through the tunnel and killed her. And we were supposed [00:33:00] to go out and hang out. And, um, that process had, has been very difficult because it was December 31st.

My dad told me, he said, get as much rest as you need because, you know, when the New Year starts, you're going to be working hard. And I'm thinking, he's talking about work. And I had to spend the first two Two to three weeks of the year planning for my chosen mother's funeral alongside of her Jehovah's Witness mother and family.

Through that experience, um, I could have definitely lost hope, but I gained my faith during that time because not only did I [00:33:30] know there were moments where things would happen that were just too coincidental, I found purpose and comfort and peace. I realized in that moment, we're not here to live a long life.

We're here to live a life of purpose. My dad says life is too short, but it's also too long to be unhappy. So when I put it all together and I'm just like, you know, we're here to live a purposeful time, a great time, the best time. It might not be a long time. So if that's the case, [00:34:00] I have to look at that part of me to be the part that can forgive this person for the decisions that they made.

The part that can forgive the people that caused me hurt and abuse. Some of the same people who abused me as a child were the same people who Made my New Year's meal because they made all my favorite foods. When my mom made sure that they found out about this and they had to stay their well wishes.

Like if I can be that forgiving and loving of a spirit, I could do it on my own, but I don't wanna take all the glory, the grace for that. [00:34:30] And so now this experience has been that of renewal and realizing that I'm not alone. Help me.

You know, Darren, this story reminds me of all the times that I felt God's love through my relationships with other people. Can you relate to that? Have other people brought you closer to God just [00:35:00] through the way that they love? In so many ways, I think that is our primary experience of the love of God.

Like God is this big cosmic question mark for so many of us. But we know what it's like to be loved by family. We know what it's like to have a friend who shows up and loves us just the right way at just the right time. And Yeah, I think more than we give it credit, it really is the people that matter.

And accepting [00:35:30] his flaws and accepting his father's flaws and the process of loving each other through all the decisions that they had both made in the past and all of the decisions that the people who were maybe hurting him a little bit presently were making on their journey, there's kind of a perfect love within that, where it's like, no matter what, I'm still gonna try my best to love you as best as I can and accept your love as best as I can.

You know, as he mentioned, the people who [00:36:00] maybe hurt him as a child were also the ones who, because of where they were on their journey, ended up making him a plate, which I think is really beautiful. If it weren't for the people that we have around us, you know, if it's like me with my experience with Miss Robinson.

who was that signpost to say, Oh baby, you're just experiencing the Holy Spirit. The people around us really help illuminate and make sense of all this important, [00:36:30] wild, in your feelings stuff. And so to me, it's awesome. that the people around Dexter, the people who showed up in unexpected ways, the people who maybe at the beginning of the story, you had already written off, right?

Like you, you hear certain things or you, or you kind of assume certain things based on your experience. And you're like, Oh no, I know how this is going to go. But in reality, I think that's a part of the beauty of how God shows up for us, that the people and the [00:37:00] experiences and the ways that we navigate all of this stuff really does have some, some plot twists and some surprise endings.

But at the end of the day, I love, I love the way that Dexter's story kind of comes back around to, I just want to know. I just want to feel, I just want to experience, I just want to figure it out. I think that's something we all can relate to. So now it's a journey of becoming a believer. I'm believing in something here and becoming a knower.[00:37:30]

I am a student and a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ. I am studying to learn. and figure out how I can better show up in this world, but also have peace. The[00:38:00]

Second Sunday Podcast is hosted by Estri Coro and Darren Calhoun. But podcasting is a team sport. So a big thank you to our dream team. Our producers, Esther Ikoro, Anna Deshawn, and Nicole Hill. Our associate producer, Amber Walker. Our sound designer, Florence Burrow Adams, and our managing producers, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled, They Don't Know. You should download the full song today. To learn more about today's guests or the show, check [00:38:30] Visit our show notes on our website, second Sunday pod.com, and on Instagram at second Sunday Pod. Second Sunday is a production of the Qube spelled with the Qube in partnership with the PRX Big Questions Project, which is generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QT podcast. Support this show and more like it by joining the Qube app and [00:39:00] follow the Qube across social media at the Qube app Thank you for listening and we'll see you next [00:39:30] episode

Transcript - Mark Miller Plays with the Spirit 

[00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther. And this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

As an organist, pipe organist, [00:00:30] I realized there was a whole genre of music that I couldn't play. I had just graduated from Juilliard, and I was working at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem, and one of the Sundays, they had asked me to play This Little Light of Mine, and the minister of music said, I'm You know, Mark, you able to do this?

And I was like, yeah, I kind of offended. I went to Juilliard. I can play this little light of mine. And then I made the crucial mistake of like taking the [00:01:00] book out, taking out a hymnal.

You know what's funny, Darren? When I first heard that story, it really brought to light, no pun intended, how much I take for granted all of the things that have been instilled in me growing up in a black church. Like, How you play this little light of mine, like how it goes, you know, for [00:01:30] a lot of my life, I thought there was only one way to sing and play this little light of mine specifically, because it was so basic that I'm like, wait, how else does it go?

I did not, I just never encountered that other version of that song particularly. It wasn't until I was in an evangelical church where there was a, uh, like somebody had a little gathering at their home and, and one of the guys who played in our band and our band was very [00:02:00] contemporary, but one of the guys who played in our band pulled out the handbook and we just started having an old hymnal and it was very, uh, Bill and Gloria Gaither style, like everything was this little light of mine.

I'm gonna let it shine. It was just like, why is it so fast? Where's the rush? Where are we going? And also I realized too, that when I think of the song, This Little Light of Mine, I automatically start clapping in a certain way, right? You can't really sing it any other way if you clap automatically in a certain [00:02:30] type of way.

Baby. It was that one in three clap or that one, two, three, four clap. That's the only way I know how to go. Anyway, how important has music been in your church experience? I mean, you know, music is just the foundation of so much. I think for many of us, our first memories of church are a song or a moment that was underscored by an organ or something along those lines.

So yeah, everything [00:03:00] I remember about church was either singing a song or really captured via some special music that was happening. Did you all have a particular flavor or cadence? We had two versions because I remember my first church was a Catholic church and we had two different choirs. We had like our adult choir, which was more hymnals and everybody could read music and it was more traditional choral European, if you will, [00:03:30] stylings, even if they were doing Negro spirituals.

The stuff the men's choir would sing. Oh God. But you know, it was just very, almost operatic. My youth choir that was where I first started singing, we were doing more of the Kirk Franklin's type stuff, Kirk Franklin and the family, as [00:04:00] well as Kirk Franklin and New Nation or whatever, different iterations.

But we were doing the more contemporary gospel style music. It wasn't like. Full on black gospel that many people might recognize, like a Sweet Holy Spirit Mass Choir. It wasn't one of those. It was very, it was gospel. But it was light. It was light skinned gospel. [00:04:30] Gospel light is funny.

But before we get too deep into it, Darren, let me introduce the voice that you heard at the beginning of the episode. Mark Miller is a graduate of Juilliard and Yale University with an expertise in choral conducting, sacred music, and voice. His hymns and anthems are sung by communities of faith throughout the world, [00:05:00] and his album, Imagine the People of God, is available on iTunes.

Mark believes that music, social justice, and the beloved community are inextricably tied. When he's not working, Mark is home in Plainfield, New Jersey, with Michael, his husband of 28 years. Keith and Elise. Mark was born in Vermont and was adopted as a baby into a family where four of his seven siblings were also adopted.

I say sometimes I was [00:05:30] raised by wolves, but that's not true. I was just raised by white people. And. The family that raised me are just incredible people. Chuck and Carol Miller. Mark's dad, Chuck, was a Methodist minister, and Mark's most vivid memories of going to church with his family involves his fascination with the huge pipe organ.

My whole little body was drawn into church by this. Pipe organ and music, of course, [00:06:00] people feel it, you know, but in this case, like my body vibrated, it shook. I just felt, I couldn't name it at the time, but like God's presence, because the organ like fills the room in a way that I find other instruments don't.

It turned out that that was going to be my, um, my instrument. The [00:06:30] organ wasn't just an instrument for Mark. It was a foundational part of his spiritual identity. For me, the organ. Kind of gave me a, a way into. understanding the divine. And the organ also is very interesting instrument because it's self sufficient.

Like I didn't need a bass player or another player. And so I could make the experience happen on my own for better or worse, but it [00:07:00] also, I find organists to be, you know, sometimes we can be kind of solitary people, you know, we spend many hours in a church alone, uh, practicing. And in that alone time, Mark found not only spiritual solace, but a growing realization and comfort in another part of his identity.

Maybe because I knew I was gay at a pretty young age that it was okay to be alone. Like I felt okay to kind of [00:07:30] have an experience where I didn't have to defend myself or explain myself and I could just be. Even at the earliest ages, I knew of my attraction to other boys, but I didn't have a name for it.

Church camp, I probably came out for the first time to, uh, By the time I was 15, I, I came out to my dad when I finally was able to say the words, you know, dad, I think, um, [00:08:00] I said, I think I'm bi because I couldn't even express how afraid I was if I could, you know, just throw all in and say, I'm gay because, uh, you know, what do you do without a parent's love or acceptance?

But he came through, you know, said your mom and I love you no matter what, and God loves you. And. I was 15. It was 1983.[00:08:30]

Growing up, Mark says it was easier to develop his understanding of himself as a queer person than it was for him to understand the implications of being a Black person in a predominantly white area. A signal moment for me probably came when I was 12 years old. And even though, you know, my parents were white.

They adopted five of their seven children. So I had a brother and sister who were white, my younger sister and I were black or biracial, and I had [00:09:00] two sisters and a brother who were Korean. And I have to say, as children do, I mean, I didn't see them as anything but my siblings and my parents. Um, I didn't see my mom as, you know, white.

I just saw her as my mom. And I was 12 years old and I had a friend over. Now, we lived in a town where everyone was white. I mean, it was, our family was the only people of color I knew growing up. [00:09:30] And this friend came over, my mom came in and fixed us a snack, and when she left the kitchen, my friend turned to me.

And it was like, Oh my God, your mom is white. And I looked at him shocked. And I said, Oh, wow, she is like, it was just as shocking for me to have that realization verbalized something I'd never even thought about, which actually this is the first time in my life I'm thinking, you know, Usually someone has that realization when someone names [00:10:00] you, you know, you get called the N word or you get called different, or you like, you know, there's something that happens to you.

But in this case, it was to my mom who was being named that. And I, I don't know how to say it. I didn't confront my racial identity until I was in my twenties, because maybe I was You know, cisgender male, you know, I was masculine presenting. I feel like I got [00:10:30] away in high school with a lot of, um, assimilation and not thinking much about it.

My younger sister, who is about my shade and color, and she's a year younger than me, she had a very different experience growing up in our high school and a lot more harassment and just kind of casual racism that she had to deal with as a But I didn't know anything about it pretty naively, pretty, um, kind of embarrassed to say [00:11:00] until I was older, but I had a full understanding.

I felt of my own sexual identity and who I was.

As he developed as a professional musician, Mark started playing in a variety of worship spaces, which eventually brought him face to face with the stark differences between the predominantly white culture he was raised in and the culture of Black churches. The[00:11:30]

biggest revelation for me came when I was about 24 years old, working in a Black church for the first time. As an organist, pipe organist, I realized there was a whole genre of music that I couldn't play. I Juilliard, and I was working at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem. And one of the Sundays they had asked me to play this little light of mine.

And the minister of music said, you [00:12:00] know, Mark, you able to do this? And I was like, yeah, I kind of offended. I went to Juilliard. I can play this little light of mine. And then I made the crucial mistake of like taking the book out, taking out a realizing that as I was playing it, they weren't singing what I was playing at one of the most humiliating moments of my life, but also the greatest teaching moment where the minister said, you know, brother Mark, he stopped me.

And it's like, we do it the other way, you know, the [00:12:30] way you probably know. And so all the assumptions about the fact that I was a black musician, but I couldn't play this little light of mine, it really, uh, really hit home. And I also realized that was the day I started deconstructing my white supremacist upbringing and what church music was all about.

Can you play it how you were playing it versus how they wanted you to play? Oh yeah, sure. Can you hear this? Yep. Yes. So out of the hymnal, I started [00:13:00] playing, I'm gonna let it shine. Because that was in the Baptist hymnal at the moment. Wow. Yeah. I've never even heard that version in my life. before. Yeah.

Well, that was the version I was playing and they were, of course, trying to sing.

And, uh, that went on for like five verses. Oh, wow. When the pastor stopped me after verse [00:13:30] one and said, you know, we do it the other way. I heard him say with more life or something, so I was like, okay, okay, here we go then.

I'm going to have to stop here for a second, Darren. Saying we do it with more life is kind of a read.

We do it like we're alive, Mark. You remember that, right? We do it with the ancestors. A [00:14:00] little more salt. With a little more pepper, but back to Mark.

It's kind of funny because when I was adopted into my family, the only thing they knew they were getting this little black boy from Vermont, it was, you know, 1967, a closed adoption. And I guess when I arrived at the airport and it was a cold night, I was in a bundle and they unwrapped the bundle. And my [00:14:30] sister was four years old at the time.

Looked and was like, he's not that black. We wouldn't have talked about it in 1991 as a triggering moment. But when I couldn't play this little light of mine, I felt like the 800 congregants were all looking at me going, you know, he's not that black. My identity was in question and being molded and shaped by that traumatic experience, but instead of saying, I won't play [00:15:00] that anymore, I, you know, that's not my lane, I'll stay in my lane.

I was like, no, I need to learn the music that moves the heart of these folks. Cause it moves my heart. So I learned to shut the book. I learned to open my ears. I learned to use my eyes, watching people play as opposed to looking at a static piece of music. Yeah. So now when I can be like, you know,[00:15:30]

and, uh,

and today I get the chance to teach organists how to play like that up at Yale, play off the page. You know, this is a performance practice. You can learn.

Isn't it funny how you can tell the difference between something that is being played with what we would call soul, right? As a musician, what is that [00:16:00] difference to you? There's something about this idea of rightness. The idea that there's a very specific, certain, strict way of playing and doing things.

that is somehow better than a more improvised, a more stylish, charismatic, if you will, standard. And historically, that was part of how you kept people in line is how you maintain the [00:16:30] power. So for a lot of people who were raised in kind of a European tradition, music was about keeping people out. It was about setting these very strenuous standards that many people couldn't access.

Whereas on the contrast, folk music or music of the people. That was all about people collaborating and making it new and it was going to change and it was going to shift and it's going to be influenced by all these different things. It wasn't, it was never going to be pure [00:17:00] anything. And so what ends up happening is the music of our people, of black people, It was always about, you know, here's a little of this and a season with a little of that and is informed by some of that.

And we were always growing and changing. But for the Academy, for people who have been in Ivory Towers, it was very much, no, this is the one right way. And this is the one way it's supposed to sound and how you're supposed to express it and emote it. And [00:17:30] yeah, it really cuts people off. We just inherit this idea that there's supposed to be a right way to do music or to make music.

And it really just depends on where you come from, who taught you in so many words. I'm going to keep it real with you though, Derek, regardless of who taught you for the most part. We're all friends here. Oh God. When they hear our music, they know it sounds better. I'm sorry. There's a universal flavoring.

And what I think, this just dawned on me. [00:18:00] I feel like the gospel tradition and the traditional way that Black music, even across the diaspora, plays with things like improvisation. It leaves room for a reaction. In some ways, those flourishes almost feel like the music is reacting to itself. Like it stops to go, did you catch that?

Like it stops to respond. It is interactive. It expects a call and response. And [00:18:30] it definitely makes you feel different. Like, of course, I love a good chamber. music CD. I had to think phonograph, like what do they play it on? Wow. I love a good Gregorian chant, like the next person, Darren, but there's something about these flourishes that really plays at the heartstrings in a different way and acknowledges the humanity of the listener, which in worship music, [00:19:00] maybe it's just me.

But feels like it facilitates something. And Mark came to this realization as well. He calls it playing with the spirit. There are textbook players and there are people that play with the spirit. And I know it as soon as I hear it, you know, when someone's playing with the spirit, that's kind of like a preacher, right?

I've heard people say. Preaching with the spirit with a manuscript in front of [00:19:30] them. And you know, I've heard deadly preaching with people who think they're, you know, they have no manuscript, but they're just lost in the wilderness somewhere. But that playing with the spirit, I call it communication. You know, you're, you're able to communicate the spirit to people, which has a lot to do, I feel as a performer with making sure the spotlight isn't Directed to you, you know, the end point [00:20:00] isn't you, like how good you're playing or how wonderful, you know, the music is that you're making, but how wonderful is the spirit of God in the room?

Like that binding together of people that make them feel that lifts us, lifts us closer to, you know, that place, that place called home or God or the divine. Obviously some of that cannot be taught, but. I feel the values [00:20:30] that I want to impart to musicians are things like you need to be present. in the moment.

Like, you can't call it in if you want to have the Spirit come. You need to be present, which means you need to be listening. In church, I like to make people, I don't know, think differently. When we're, you know, we might be singing, I don't know, we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the [00:21:00] Lord. And then I'll just break out and, you know.

Like a little Herbie Hancock, and it works because

those kinds of moments, which are unscripted, but if you're open to the spirit and you understand the sense of timing and flow, then I think you're headed to a good place of how you're going to lead the people. [00:21:30] I work in mostly mainline Protestant, mostly majority white spaces, even today. And I would say the, the time of Trayvon Martin, when Trayvon Martin was murdered, something started happening to me and as the onslaught kept building, Michael Brown and, um, Eric Garner and, I mean, I could just go on and on, but I, I had always described my [00:22:00] music and kind of Uh, happy terms.

I'm a bridge builder. I'm, I try to bring communities together and I do want to do that, but I really started thinking, you know, Mark, are you just enabling white folks to feel okay with what's going on in these, uh, Christian spaces in America?

Darren, I feel like this musical journey that Mark has been on that has [00:22:30] connect with his Black identity in this way through Black church, which is at the core and a lot of ways of Black American culture. I feel like he was in a bubble and then that bubble exploded when he came to terms with his Blackness in a certain type of way.

And it's one of those things where You can't put the genie back in the bottle, as they say. You can't unsee something once you see it. In some ways, it feels like you can't get [00:23:00] that close to blackness and embodying, playing with the spirit and the, the ways that Mark was on this journey of really understanding who he is as a black man, and then go back into the bubble where you don't see or understand what happens with race in America.

Black struggle is a huge part of our story and our experience here and globally, but it also [00:23:30] still isn't the whole story, right? We have our joy songs. We have thousands of years of history pre enslavement and so forth. There's so much that we pull from that you still see it in the rejoicing and our dancing.

You still see it in how modern hip hop and modern dance still echoes back to some of the movements that have existed for thousands of years on the continent. Like, there's so much to [00:24:00] us, but At the same time. Yeah. Like in this country, there is a deep grief. There is a deep pain that comes out in many of our expressions, even, even our shouting.

It's like we got to shout our way over. Right. We got to think about I'll fly away. And, you know, being beyond the suffering of this present world. There's just a lot that we hold all at once. And then the contrast that with whiteness and the [00:24:30] ways that whiteness often is looking away, whereas we turn toward what's going on.

Whiteness is often like, Oh, let's sing about the valleys and the hills and the, and the birds and the bees. And black folks is like, no, I'm going to sing about how I got over. Um, and not to ignore it and yeah, it continuously caused people to rethink how they look at the world.[00:25:00]

Coming to terms with these types of realizations forced Mark to rethink who he was and what he thought he wanted to do. I began to think about how I, I really want to be somebody more like Harriet Tubman. Like, I feel like I wanted to help people. Bring people to a safe space or like, I realized my work is not necessarily [00:25:30] on the surface, but it's kind of working subversively or trying to bring us all over to a more liberating place, not just building bridges to what, you know, what already has been created.

Being biracial, growing up the way I did, um. Being queer, gay in a straight, [00:26:00] heterosexist world, I think many of us understand that the double consciousness or how to, how do we manage? And I thought of myself as more unique in that way till I realized, no, we all are that. We all are that way. And if we are honest with ourselves, we know exactly who we are.

We have our identities and so many different. spaces and places. Um, and I definitely have struggled. I've wanted to [00:26:30] run back to my parents. My parents have been my rocks. You know, they, they passed away on this plane of existence, 2018 and 2022. Our home is home for many, many folks as well, because, you know, what does home mean?

But belonging Acceptance. I've thought about forgiveness a lot. Like, what does forgiveness mean? So I think it's the heart of the [00:27:00] spiritual journey. I think more about the values of what makes home. And then I try to live those out and try to find the people that are interested in living those out. And that usually creates a really great group of people.

That I get to be around, but it's a lot of like DIY, like we're going to create these spaces.

It's interesting that through connecting with church, Mark was able to understand a part [00:27:30] of his identity that he wasn't familiar with, which isn't the typical trajectory that we hear on this show. Church usually starts off as a big part of our guests identities, and then they step away in some form or fashion to understand other parts of their identities that couldn't be explored in church.

Yeah, absolutely. The ways that we come to understand ourselves because of the communities that we're in just can't be underscored enough. I think about the ways that me stepping [00:28:00] into more white evangelical spaces actually made me even more aware of my own Blackness. Whereas in Black spaces, I was more aware of my queerness.

And in all of it. It's all like, what is my masculinity? What is my Blackness? What is, you know, what are these things and who gets to define them and who gets to determine them? And what I think is beautiful for all of us is that we do have this space. [00:28:30] of self determination. We have this space of growing and defining and redefining and reshaping, you know, just like Mark is able to blend different styles of music from his various backgrounds.

We all are blending together our experiences and our stories and our styles and our, our songs and, you know, telling a new story. And that telling of a new story is the great part about how faith and spirituality seems to be [00:29:00] evolving. People are really finding ways to make it their home and make it their own.

Like Mark said, we're creating those spaces rather than stepping away in order to discover ourselves. And I think that's really beautiful. If we take that liberty to improvise, to know and to step away from that idea that we have to get it right by the book, whether that's the scripture or if it's by the music song book.

If we step away from that just enough so we can improvise [00:29:30] and find that creativity and find the ways that God is working in us and through us that might not be written on the page. I think there's something profound that can be unlocked in all of us. And there's something amazing that can come out of it.

Yeah. But that's a brave space. It's a challenging space and folks are going to not like you sometimes because you're not playing by the rules that they were playing by. But yeah, that's my hope that we could just all take something from this as an opportunity to be like, you know what, I'm going to try something [00:30:00] different today.

I'm going to make this fancy.

The Second Sunday Podcast is hosted by Estrie Coro and Darren Calhoun. But podcasting is a team sport. So a big thank you to our dream team. Our producers, Esther Ikoro, Anna Deshawn, and Nicole Hill. Our associate producer, Amber Walker. Our [00:30:30] sound designer, Florence Burrow Adams, and our managing producers, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled, They Don't Know. You should download the full song today. To learn more about today's guests or the show. Visit our show notes on our website, second Sunday pod.com, and on Instagram at second Sunday Pod. Second Sunday is a production of the Qube spelled with the Qube in partnership with the PRX Big Questions Project, which is [00:31:00] generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QT podcast. Support this show and more like it by joining the Qube app and follow the Qube across social media at the Qube app. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next [00:31:30] episode.

A Season of Reflection with Anna DeShawn

[00:00:00] Anna DeShawn: There is no place like the Qube.

[00:00:10] Esther: Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther. And this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

[00:00:27] Darren: I'm still hearing the stories of people who were just around. I wasn't preaching at them. I wasn't trying to tell them this and that and let's say at the Lord, I was just trying to be me in public in, in church community. And then years later, you hear the stories of how people were impacted by your story being available.

And so to me, that's, that's why a podcast like this is so important. It's just like, this isn't just for gay people. This isn't just for queer people. We need our stories to be part of what people are talking about a hundred years from now.[00:01:00]

[00:01:03] Esther: Now, Darren, do you really think people are going to be talking about us a hundred years from now?

[00:01:07] Darren: I certainly hope so. Shoot. But for real, I loved us having this real time feedback, seeing the faces of the people who have been listening and supporting us, all the moments of laughter and even the tears.

There were a lot of

[00:01:25] Esther: tears and a lot of laughter too, because one thing about us, we are going to crack a joke. All day. And that is what I love about this podcast.

[00:01:32] Darren: So we wanted to share a clip from the live event with everyone for our last episode of season two. The live event took place on May 30th at New Covenant Baptist Church, and we are sending them a Big thank you for hosting us and their team was absolutely wonderful.

This event was a part of PRX's big questions project. It was a virtual event called making it a night of big questions.

[00:01:58] Esther: And it was a really great opportunity [00:02:00] to make this recording event. our own. So we wanted to do a live recording with a small studio audience. And it was also a really good opportunity for us to sit down with our producers, Anna, Nicole, and Amber, and reflect on the entire process of making the show, which is a conversation that we have never had before.

[00:02:19] Darren: So today, you're only going to get the conversation we had with Anna on this episode. If you want to watch the full thing, you've got to visit the Qube's YouTube channel. And that's Qube with a Q. We've included a link in the show notes. So go subscribe, turn on the notification, do all the things. Make sure you check it out.

[00:02:38] Esther: Yes, all the things, all the things that Darren said, we really had a time at this recording and we are excited to share a small piece of it with you. So without further ado, let's get into it. Enjoy. What up Anna? Hey,

[00:02:54] Anna DeShawn: hey, hey. How you doing? Hey y'all. What's good? This is the first time Darren Esther and [00:03:00] I have ever done an interview together like this.

[00:03:03] Darren: Clearly.

[00:03:04] Anna DeShawn: So this is a special, yeah, this is like a special moment. I got cue cards and everything. I know. I love them. And we're

[00:03:11] Darren: three years in on this project and this is the first time we've actually just sat in the same place just having a good conversation.

[00:03:17] Anna DeShawn: It is. And let's talk about the journey.

Because there was a podcast before there was PRX and we started this journey, I looked at my phone. Our first picture is from 2022. Wow. And we were in the 1871 studio. Yes. All of our locks were about two inches shorter. I didn't have that much hang time. Darren was a lot less gray. It was a moment. So tell me, like, how has the journey been over the last two years of putting this podcast together?

Darren, I'll start.

[00:03:53] Darren: Yeah, it's, it's been a journey of discovery both for myself and in what I [00:04:00] feel like I'm capable of. If anybody knows me, you know that I'm late 97. 5 percent of the time and I tend to feel like super bad every time I walk into a, into a space late and I would be late for every single one of our recording sessions.

Every single one. Every single one. Yeah. And I remember during that time, like fighting the urge to be like, Oh, well, the most horrific thing happened on the way here because you know, sometimes you got to tell a little lie. But one of the things that happened instead was I've actually got my ADHD diagnosis and found out I'm on the neuro spicy spectrum.

And I realized. Like suddenly all these pieces came together of my story where it's like, why am I always late? And I was like, Oh, there's time blindness. There's some, there's some actual things that happen. So it wasn't just like this interpersonal part of working to be like, Oh, I think we can make a podcast.

I think we can tell a story. I think we can do something that's useful. It was also that that interpersonal part of becoming vulnerable. Y'all were some of the first people [00:05:00] I told that I got an ADHD diagnosis. And being like, Hey, I can only do this much. And it was so powerful to me to be able to continue to work with the team and not feel like y'all was just about to cut me for always being late.

[00:05:15] Anna DeShawn: Let me just tell y'all as a Virgo in my seventh grade. spirit is challenging. Okay. I'm the Virgo. I was challenging, but then Esther would be late. What?

[00:05:24] Darren: Welcome to riding under that bus.

[00:05:28] Anna DeShawn: Wow. I feel attacked. Why am I in it? See how they always throw me and stuff? I know, I know, but we, it was, it was like learning how to work with each other because you all didn't even know each other before this podcast.

Correct. Correct.

[00:05:41] Darren: I'm still trying to figure out who Esther is and so many lovers. We're best friends. friends right now. We are, but also it was, it was two years in before I found out Esther is a whole comedian.

[00:05:50] Esther: Yeah. Like a whole comedian. It's been interesting. I'm glad that we got to know each other through the podcast because if you've heard, um, we [00:06:00] interview each other in certain instances and we have these conversations for the first time.

So there's a lot of stuff that's in the episode, especially episode that focuses on Darren that I learned for the first time. So the reactions. are real, like very real. Like I was really in the tea with you.

[00:06:15] Anna DeShawn: And let's talk about some of those, right? Because they are very vulnerable on this podcast. So if you've never listened to Second Sunday before, I mean, you should go do that, but they are also very vulnerable, right?

So Darren, you talk about the cult, right? And that whole experience is episode one, season one, and you are very vulnerable in that episode. And then Esther, you talk about growing up in an African family, correct? Being queer, what in the world that means, and it gave the audience an opportunity to get to know y'all's story, but it also gave y'all an opportunity to know each other.

[00:06:46] Darren: Right.

[00:06:47] Anna DeShawn: Yeah. And so, during this process, what has been probably the most challenging thing that you've had to overcome in telling y'all's own stories? [00:07:00]

[00:07:01] Esther: I'm a private person, as you know, um, so if there was a decision point where I had to choose if I was just going to like tell my story or if I was going to hold back and I'm always going to pick like the thing that makes the episode the best.

And so there was definitely like a transition point where I was like, Ah, should I say this? Should I say that? And I was like, Oh, it's going to be whack if I don't fill in all the blanks. Blanks, you know, looking at it, listening back to it. And so there was definitely a moment where I just decided to just like loosen up and just be like, you know what, can we curse on here?

No. I mean, Florence might bleep it, bleep it. Um, there was definitely a freedom in that because the story. story and just even having some of these conversations, you don't know until you're in it. You're like, wow, I'm actually really exposed right now. So, um, that was something that happened for me in real time.

And it's definitely because I felt really comfortable with you guys. And it felt like we were, you know, handling the stories in a way that [00:08:00] was really responsible and it was coming together nicely. And so it just felt like I just needed to just I'm going to throw my whole self in it because it's more than just about my personal, you know, journey or comfort level as I was listening to what we were making and some of the reactions that we're getting from people is like, no, like this is really important and we need to do it and be really thorough about it.

[00:08:22] Darren: Yeah. And it's, it's worth saying that the, our original intention wasn't for it to be, uh, like a deep dive into personal stories. Our original intention was that we would talk about the topics, that we would talk about what the Bible says about homosexuality, or we would talk about the role of women in church, which are important and valid topics, but they can get kind of heady and disconnected.

Um, and it was our, it was our team at PRX that really helped us reshape this thing into something that was narrative driven, that was digging into these stories that yes, we cover all of those. topics, but we do it from this [00:09:00] first person, here's what I experienced, and this illuminates what's happening in the larger church.

[00:09:05] Esther: Yeah, and that was a journey, because we had a whole podcast season recorded before we started this fellowship with PRX and the Templeton Foundation. We had already interviewed people, we went back and had to re interview people, because like Darren said, when we first started, we were like, oh, like, we have these things Topics, you know, we're we're confused about these things.

We're upset about these things. Want to dissect these things. And then as we started learning about like storytelling, we thought, okay, no, we need to make this about people and their experiences because that's the most powerful thing. So we have talked to a lot of the guests on our first season twice. Uh, one time we were like, let's do this interview.

And then the next time we're like, you know what? We actually want you to talk about your parents a little bit more. So that was great. and you know, I'm not a perfectionist. But I was like, all right, let's, we're, we could do takes. I can be a bit of a perfectionist. [00:10:00] And I always told that line between wanting things to come out, like really put together and knowing that we need to push publish.

And this is a moment where I'm glad that we didn't push public. And it was meant to be that this whole grant thing happened and we were able to really learn how to do it in a very specific way because it came out better than I could have ever imagined. A hundred percent.

[00:10:26] Anna DeShawn: Second Sunday was the first podcast I ever wanted to produce.

and every queer person I meet that's black, we end up having some type of church. And we end up talking about church because it has impacted us so much.

[00:10:42] Darren: Right. Whether or not you stay in church or leave it, it's a residue. It's just on you, It's on

[00:10:48] Anna DeShawn: you! And it ended up being the last podcast we produced that came out last year, but it was the first one I wanted to do.

And it's the one I think that is making such a tremendous [00:11:00] impact on the folks that listen to it, that hear it, because the stories are so powerful. And I'm excited for everybody to also hear some clips. Today. And we can dig in and also hear from our live audience in the building. Live audience. Can y'all make some noise?

So everybody on the virtual audience knows you here. So I say we just jump into some clips. Let's do it. All right. The first clip, which is, okay, I've interviewed a lot of people, but Bishop Yvette Flunder Come on now. Is top three, okay, of interviews ever done. It's such an honor to have her on this podcast and have her voice and have her story told.

And so this first clip is Bishop's Plunder. Let's listen to it and then let's talk about it.

[00:11:52] Bishop Flunder: I was driving down the freeway and all of a sudden I started to emote and I started to pray. And I hadn't prayed and [00:12:00] prayed in tongues in eons. So the presence of God caught me in my car. I had to pull over. I pulled over the side of the road and went all the way in. It's not that I didn't know what it was.

It's just that I had been ignoring it for a mighty long time. And my yes It all the way. Yes. And I agreed with God. I said, I don't understand how we're going to do this because this me is not the me that I'm experiencing again. You know what I mean? The me that I am now, this is not how I move in the world.

I'm trying to understand. How are we going to homogenize these things? And I could feel in my heart that God had an intention. Something, you know? I never heard God say, You got to un gay yourself. That's not what happened. I never heard God say, You need to find a husband. I never [00:13:00] heard God say any of the things that the people told me.

Someone found my Bible, and I dug around and dug around and dug around until I could find it. I was led to the book of Revelation first chapter. And I understood what the message was, that there are a lot of people that the Spirit of God wants to use right now that think themselves incapable, unworthy.

One of the reasons that church right now, religion is in such a mess, such a quandary. is because the people that really have the answers are the people that are least welcome. They have the answers because they're not stuck. They have the answers because they're not stuck by the walls and the jail that is religion.

It is for freedom. I love that passage. It is for freedom that Christ has made us free. Don't be [00:14:00] entangled ever again with the yoke of bondage. Don't do it. It is for freedom, for freedom. Hallelujah. That's why we are being made free every time.

[00:14:16] Anna DeShawn: Amen. So in this episode, Bishop Flunder talks about emoting, right?

And being overcome while she was driving in traffic. But this is after she didn't have bourbon and a joint. Okay. So Flunder talk about having bourbon in the joint. I wasn't even ready. Okay. Okay. But just where she was able to find God for herself while she was not in the church, which is a conversation she doesn't get to have very often.

And so hearing her also talk about having to go find her Bible, when do you think Bishop Flunder couldn't find a Bible? Well, there was a point in her life she too couldn't find a Bible. And so then she gets this call, um, from Bishop Hawkins, the infamous Walter Hawkins, Edwin Hawkins singers to [00:15:00] come to their church.

I mean, the whole conversation is just very powerful, but what is y'all reflections on Bishop Flunder's episode? Um, this moment of realizing, um, We are made to be free.

[00:15:15] Music: Mm hmm.

[00:15:16] Anna DeShawn: Even though we may be the least welcome We may just have the answers

[00:15:22] Esther: Yeah, um, you ever feel like throughout this podcast There have been moments where people have been talking and I'm like, I know I'm supposed to be producing this episode and interviewing you But you're talking to me right now.

Hello, you know that happened like every episode I was like, okay This is for me this for me to all in the Kool Aid all of this is for me. And um, Um, these moments, one of my favorite types of moments that people describe is when they have direct encounters with the Holy Spirit. Like, first person experiences, and they feel their call directly, uh, and it really clarifies for me, because, like Darren said, we, we started off wanting to [00:16:00] talk about the topical things, like the institution, and this and that, and it's like, the reason people are still there is because they can feel God directly, and this was one of those moments where she was making it clear that And even though the thing she felt called to do was very difficult, um, it was clear that it was something that God was calling her to do.

And because most of the people that we interview aren't stereotypical church folk in the sense that they're not stereotypically welcomed, we got to see a lot of the ways that God calls and speaks and, and, you know, touches people wherever they are and how powerful that is. It's to overcome what is a very present, you know, fear and apprehension and self doubt that people feel in their own journeys of their identity, but also in their journey as they grow to serve in the way that feels best for them.

So I love that story. Um, I love the bourbon. I love the joint. I love all of it. [00:17:00] It was a vibe. And then God was like, and we vibe in here too, cause here's what's going to happen. And she was just like, I, Lord, I mean, you know, sometimes it's like your gift will make for you. And you're like this. room. Are you sure about that?

[00:17:13] Darren: Yeah. What do you think there? Oh, I mean, that's absolutely my, it was, you know, I can't, I grew up thinking I was just this unique little person that God was just doing all this special stuff with. And then as you hear other people's story, you'd be like, wait a minute, that was my car story. I was 290 while I'm trying not to pull off the road, but I had to pull off the road.

And Jesus is. It's just moving in my life and telling me everything's going to be okay. It was like, Oh, I guess, I guess God is showing up for more than just me. But also that part of realizing in the midst of the places where, where you've been counted out by churches, where you've been rejected and where the church said, Oh, God ain't going to use you.

If you in the midst of all that to see like, Oh yeah, God is definitely using that woman to God. God is definitely using [00:18:00] me. Um, and it, and it happens. Because it didn't, it's not always on somebody's altar on a Sunday morning. Right. Like it, it can be why you're driving down the street or, or why you're in a bar or why you're, you know, doing whatever.

And to me, that's, that's the thing that's so powerful. It's like, we have to remember that, that God, faith, the universe, however you, you term spirit, that it's present and it transcends all these walls and all these things we build up. Um, and you know, again, that's, that's the thing. Like. I am so hoping we get to put an extended version of that interview out.

Oh, we will. Because it was, what was it, like two hours?

[00:18:38] Anna DeShawn: It was two hours and the episode is 28 minutes. 28 minutes. Y'all, there's so much cutting tape on the cutting room floor of this podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Flunder needs her own whole bonus situation. Whole deal. And so family, if Bishop Flunder is If this moment means something [00:19:00] for you, we'd love for you to share it at the microphone.

[00:19:04] Rev. Kevin Tindell: Good evening, everyone. I'm the Reverend Kevin Tyndale, and I am ordained under Bishop Flunder, um, and have been since 1999. And it's not the question of losing your Bible, it's finding out the truth. And understanding where and how you can do the things that God has called you to do. And you know that God has called you, no matter who you are.

And so it's a matter of freeing yourself so that you can free others. Because we've been bound by so many, so much rhetoric and so much doctrine, which is man made. And often when people ask me or tell me different things, I'm like, well, who told you that? Where'd you see that? Who told you that? Have you gone to the history books?

Have you gone to, you know, what, where did that come from? Because we have put pastors on pedestals and they are the, you know, they are the expert without having expert [00:20:00] knowledge. And so it's about finding, you know, I learned over these years, it's finding your freedom, your personal freedom, because you are called to free others.

And that's what it's about.

[00:20:13] Anna DeShawn: Amen.

[00:20:14] Rev. Kevin Tindell: Please.

[00:20:16] Anna DeShawn: Woo!

[00:20:18] Darren: Yes, Lord.

[00:20:19] Anna DeShawn: And I think what's beautiful about that is that in the episode, Bishop Flunder also talks about how she believes we come from eternity into time. And then we go back into eternity. And that we all come here with gifts. Um, and it's on us to figure out what those gifts are and to use them so that we can find that freedom.

[00:20:41] Music: Yeah.

[00:20:42] Anna DeShawn: And I think that that's also a really powerful part of the episode when she said that when she said that, I was like, Oh, we coming from eternity into time.

[00:20:50] Darren: Right.

[00:20:52] Anna DeShawn: It just gives a different perspective on life.

[00:20:55] Darren: Yeah. And, and for me, the thing that stood out the most was how she talked about [00:21:00] being a gatherer, that, uh, the thing that she's doing.

is about bringing people together. And I know many of you may have experienced, whether you're inside of a church or whether you're the den mother, the club mother, maybe you're the house person who, who everybody knows to come to your house to get fed, to get clothed, to get whatever. But there are ways that we gather folks, that we bring folks around, that we take care of each other.

Um, and I think we, I think we should lead into that. You know, I don't get prescriptive too often, but I think that's one of those gifts that sometimes gets downplayed because they told us we couldn't be the gather in the front of the church pew because they told us we couldn't be the gather in the, in the choir, but we've been finding ways to gather people and empower folks around us for a mighty long time.

[00:21:47] Anna DeShawn: So this is a great time for everybody tuning in. That was a moment. Go ahead and share that. Hashtag SecondSundayPod right now. Let everybody know that you are tuned in. And now, I mean, this second season [00:22:00] started off pretty fine. Our second episode was with the Angelica Ross. Yes. Who joined us on the pod.

Who's experienced It's so unique in so many ways, um, and so familiar.

[00:22:14] Angelica Ross: So let's play this clip from Angelica's episode. When I left my ex and left everything and started my life over.

[00:22:21] Darren: We coming from Chicago.

[00:22:23] Angelica Ross: First I went to Chicago and I did drag for a while, whatever. But when I finally decided I did not want to lip sync, I wanted to learn how to use my own voice.

That's what started me not only singing, but speaking up.

And so when I moved to California. Ornia had nothing. I was living in a motel, didn't even have a job yet. It was the same motel. They filmed pretty woman into, you know, and I answered a Craigslist ad for a roommate and that roommate was a Buddhist and that roommate [00:23:00] eventually introduced me to Buddhism.

Once I got into the home. I set my bags down, I closed the door, and I mourned my relationship. I was depressed for a really long time. I was hurt. And my roommate kept inviting me to come chant with them. And I was just like, yes, I've been reading Buddhism. And I, you know, I think I like it, but just another time, another time.

No. And I think that that probably was another barrier for me in the sense of, you know, that's where y'all, I would always hear them chanting from his room or whatever. But when he invited me to the Buddhist center in Los Angeles, the friendship center, we parked the car in the parking lot. I'm telling you, I, Never felt [00:24:00] something so immediate.

When I got into the space, it was from the parking lot to me getting inside the building in the room where they were chanting. It felt like I was in a scene from Avatar where I'm walking in on them all connected to that tree, Ewa. And they're all doing a thing. And it immediately felt right. And I didn't know nothing.

I didn't know nothing. I didn't know what this was. I didn't know nothing.

What I loved about the practice is even as I was chanting words and learning words that I knew nothing about, the real meaning of them manifested.

[00:24:43] Darren: It was that, that interview that I like, we had so many technical challenges. And Angelica was absolutely amazing and had me teary [00:25:00] eyed just talking to her about her experience.

I was like, this is a whole Holy Ghost moment and we talking about Buddhism.

[00:25:07] Anna DeShawn: And let's talk about why are we talking about Buddhism on this very black, queer, Christian podcast.

[00:25:14] Esther: Why are we talking about Buddhism? So the podcast is about finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith, right? So, you know, the first season, we really focused on people's stories in and around the church, but people's journeys through spirituality, uh, lands them in a lot of different places.

And so this season, This season we really wanted to, uh, explore some of the different places that people landed spiritually. Some of them are a mixed bag. Some of them really, um, dedicated themselves to maybe something that they weren't necessarily raised in. But we wanted to tell all the stories because even though a lot of these people were raised in and around the church, how that has evolved and what has fed them over the years as they've grown into who they are and, you know, gone on their own individual spiritual walks are, [00:26:00] are so different.

And so I think we really wanted to be a to discuss faith and spirituality, whatever it means, the full spectrum. And so I think that Angelica's story and her journey through Buddhism was just an amazing place to, to do that.

[00:26:15] Darren: Yeah. Angelica even talks about her growing up in the church of God in Christ.

And moving into this other form of spirituality, but still she kind of, and you'll hear it in several other interviews we do this season, still retaining some of those cultural harm hallmarks, right? Sometimes I think we think of church only as a spiritual place. spiritual discipline as a certain set of rules and, and so forth, but it's also a culture.

And so even when people don't necessarily believe the theology or when people don't necessarily practice, um, as a part of the institution, there's still things that we find resonance in. It's, it's how you get to know somebody you, you know, you say, praise the Lord saints and if they say, praise the Lord, you're like, Oh, We have something in common.

And so we, we [00:27:00] wanted this season and we wanted all the work that we're doing to be about black queer people first. It's not just about church because yes, there's church podcasts and there's black podcasts and there's queer podcasts, but we wanted to have this to be about us black queer folks and our inclusive and expansive and unique and diverse and individual.

Experiences of faith and community.

[00:27:26] Anna DeShawn: Oh, it's just so good. I love this podcast so much because of that. Yeah. Right. And this is why we do the work. And this is why we tell our stories. And this is why storytelling is so important.

[00:27:36] Music: Yeah.

[00:27:37] Anna DeShawn: Because if we don't tell the stories, then people aren't, don't have an opportunity to see reflections of themselves.

I see a reflection of myself in these stories, you know,

[00:27:45] Darren: exactly.

[00:27:45] Anna DeShawn: Because. Because faith is not linear, um, because our experiences aren't linear. Come

[00:27:51] Darren: on now.

[00:27:52] Anna DeShawn: And so, I can do church all day, but let's be clear, I go to my meditation corner in the morning because I also need that [00:28:00] type of peace. And so, we get stuck sometimes in the dogmatic view in which we were taught.

But there's so much more to God, and I think we limit God in boxes if we don't allow the divine to show up in all the places and in all the things.

[00:28:14] Esther: And I love us for that. One of the things that I really liked about Angelica's episode and just the conversation of people who, um, went, um, away from the church and kind of explored other faiths is that a lot of times it gave them a different view of Christianity.

You know, Angelica in this episode talks about honoring her, her mother and honoring your parents and things like that, which is a very Christian phrase and way of thinking and how she may be pushed against that. But then how through. her Buddhist practice. It reshaped and kind of brought her back to that.

And we heard that a lot. So it's almost like once people are able to freely explore and question, um, they find that the things that people kind of were trying to force on them aren't things that they necessarily [00:29:00] disagree with. But it's really about, like we said earlier, about Freedom to explore and answer and seek those answers, um, for yourself that really lets people kind of come back to, you know, what we would think of as their home base or come home to themselves.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:29:19] Anna DeShawn: So does anybody who's joined us in our beautiful audience have stories around leaving Christianity, leaving the church? Maybe not want to come back, finding a different practice or incorporating different practices into your own life.

[00:29:34] Joy: Hello everybody. Um, my name is Joy Barrett. Um, so I grew up in Alabama.

I grew up Kojic, so Church of God in Christ myself. So, um, I resonated with a lot of things. So when I was growing up, I remember specifically there was a sermon about not being gay. And I remember sitting in the audience and the pastor was talking and I was like, well, thank God that's not me. [00:30:00] And I just remember sitting there even growing up.

I cannot lie until I got to Chicago where I was like, well, thank God that's not me because It's like growing up in church, it was like, you know, that's wrong. And queer people essentially have cooties and it's going to rub off on you if you hang out with other queer people and stuff like that. And it wasn't until I met Darren.

So I got baptized about 10 years ago at a church that we were both attending and he changed me.

So let me know that. Yes, I'm a heterosexual woman. And but to love other people is not, it's not wrong. It's for me, the way I look at it now is how in the world can I ask people of another race to love me if I can't even love my own brothers and sisters that look [00:31:00] like me.

[00:31:00] Music: Yeah.

[00:31:05] Joy: I'm sorry. So the way I look at it, like church was wrong the way I was raised, the way I grew up was wrong.

If I cannot look at everybody, all my brothers and sisters and love them for where they are and where they stand. How can I love? How can I ask another race to look at us as being one and love each other?

[00:31:31] Esther: Look, do not start me crying up here, please, because I told you guys, if I start crying, I'm never gonna stop crying. So let's not even go there. I'm so close. I'm like, you remember there was one in during season one. I was like, I think it's the fan is blowing my eyes because I couldn't talk. I could not speak.

I was on zoom and I was just like, let me turn the camera off, cut the camera. I'm the one controlling the camera. Um, wow. Yeah, we, I think that's the. Um. The first [00:32:00] wound of being a black, queer Christian is that, you know, black church is a part of black culture. And we spend so much time as black people talking about how we're supposed to be taking care of each other.

And, um, we're the first people to throw away. You know, I always make this joke. I'm like, you know, all these black church people, they get dressed up and they put on a, you know, when we get dressed up as black people, we put on clothes by gay white designers, you know, well, when we were getting ready to step out, we put that gay white, you know what I'm saying?

We, we dripping. And, um, you know, we could never have our own Kristen Lubitsyn because, you know, DeMarcus with the bag down the street is not welcome, but you saved up money to go buy something for a white gay man somewhere who probably might not even let you into his fashion show. And we all have iPhones and Tim Cook is also gay, the CEO of Apple, but you know, some of you have Androids and that's okay.

You're welcome here, [00:33:00] but, okay, we don't, but what I'm saying is that, you know, we And they spend so much time, you know, as black queer people seeing firsthand that the people that are supposed to protect us from a world that doesn't protect us are the first ones to put us out. Um, and you know, they tell us it's about this and tell us it's about that.

And then there are contradictions because it's not that same energy. So I really appreciate that because that, I think that's the thing that when you talk about gathering people and the importance of community, when we've had these conversations with people throughout the podcast. Finding community and finding your people and realizing that you're not alone and you're not unique and well, you are unique, but you know what I mean that you're not the only person that is experiencing what the goal of ostracization is to make you feel like you're the only person, right?

And so in hearing these stories and these experiences and the commonalities, it's like, oh, we've all just been [00:34:00] siloed and going through all of this stuff. The same kind of stuff and thinking like, how can I? speak to God when I am just like alone and isolated in this way. So the community of it all is, is the bedrock, I think, of where the healing comes from just to be seen and to be loved and embraced and welcomed, and then to feel emboldened to be able to ask questions about, you know, your soul and existence and all of these things.

It feels like, you know, our divine right to gather and discuss and explore.

[00:34:31] Darren: Yeah. And Something so important about, uh, Joy's testimony, if you will, is the power of being vulnerable. Like, I enjoy a certain level of privilege where I'm not always assumed to be gay. And so for me to come out in my church that at the time was a non affirming church, they wanted to be inclusive of me, but they didn't know how to do that in their policy.

They didn't know how to protect me. And [00:35:00] so I had to be very Intentional about sharing my story and sharing where I was on my journey. And it is 10 plus years later. And I'm still hearing like, actually, I think that's the first time Joy shared that story. I'm still hearing the stories of people who were just around.

I wasn't preaching at them. I wasn't trying to tell them this stuff. And that, let's say at the Lord, I was just trying to be me in public, in, in church community. And then years later, you hear the stories of how people were impacted by your story being available. And so to me, that's, that's why a podcast like this is so important.

It's just like, this isn't just for gay people. This isn't just for queer people. We need our stories to be part of what people are talking about a hundred years from now.

[00:35:44] Anna DeShawn: One of my. Faves, who listens to this podcast, is Connie Lindsey, straight black woman, goes to church every Sunday and she says, I love this podcast because I also know what it feels like to be ostracized inside the [00:36:00] church.

So queer folks, yes. But women, no. Yes. Mm hmm. Right. People who are differently abled. Yes. Yes. Also feel ostracized and left outside the, the bounds of church. And so, so many people relate to the stories because they're so relatable and they're good. So once again, if you are not listening to Second Sunday, just fix that.

Okay. Tweet, share that you are listening to us. Hashtag SecondSundayPod. I just want to say thank you. Thank you all for being on this journey. It is a mood. It's a team sport.

[00:36:32] Darren: Absolutely. There's

[00:36:33] Anna DeShawn: lots of slacks. There's lots of text messages and one of them is all the things and talk

[00:36:40] Darren: video. There's

[00:36:40] Anna DeShawn: so much sharing happening and we're creating something really impactful and really beautiful and we do it together.

So I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all of you. Don's going to close us out with a word

[00:36:55] Rev. Don Abram: to the God of the galaxies, designer of destinies and lover of [00:37:00] life to the God who stepped out on nothing and made everything. To the God whose imagination birth galaxies, we approach this sacred and solemn place with righteous rage and holy hope, recognizing that we should give God praise for life.

For your word says it is in you that we live, move and have our being. This very testament suggests that God is in all and with all. In your divine wisdom, you have imbued us with inherent dignity, divinity, and spectacular humanity. As a mother tends to her child, as an artist tends to her masterpiece, as a potter tends to her clay, your divine wisdom and sovereignty tended to us.

And so God, in this very moment, we thank you for after you created the universe, you created us. And after you've created [00:38:00] us, you called us good. Every tendon, every expression, every gender, every sexuality, you called us good. Those left behind, those left out, those cast aside, those thrown away. You called us good.

And so God, as we conclude this moment in prayer, we simply say, thank you. Cover us, protect us, guide us, love us as we continue to wave the banner of freedom and liberation and set the captive free. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make her face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And as we depart from this play, may your battles in the way that they should.

May your bad days prove that God is good and may your whole life prove that God is good. Amen.[00:39:00]

[00:39:06] Darren: And the way that the Reverend Don Abrams speaks is always an on time word from God. And then To just top it off, he worked in that line from Jonathan McReynolds song, God is good. May your bad days prove that God is good and may your whole life prove that God is good.

[00:39:29] Esther: And that was such a perfect way to end this recording and this season because it really speaks to everything that we've heard from all of our amazing guests.

[00:39:39] Darren: Now, our producer Anna Deshawn has given us a reflection question. Are you ready? I'm ready. Can you describe the season in one word?

[00:39:49] Esther: Challenging. This season has been challenging in so many ways. First of all, it's been spiritually challenging, which is not a bad thing, actually. It's been spiritually challenging because we've learned [00:40:00] so many different ways that people have gone through their spiritual walk and we've heard their visions and interpretations and how they see God.

So that was challenging. This season has been emotionally challenging because we've had so many tearful moments and so many funny moments, but it's also helped us and helped me specifically just rethink things like forgiveness and moving forward. So that is also emotionally challenging and then just mentally challenging because this is our first time working through this process in this way.

Uh, so we've had to, you know, write the scripts and record the episodes and edit and all of that fun stuff that goes on behind the scenes with all the logistics. So all of those things have been challenging, but challenging in the best way possible. And a lot of growth has really come out of it. How about you, Darren?

Can you describe this season in one word?

[00:40:51] Darren: I would really say expansive. Like we expanded the scope of who we're talking to and the kinds of stories that we're able to [00:41:00] fit in. And low key, we couldn't even fit all the stories in, right? We still have content that's yet to be released, but there's so much room for us to look at the experiences of Black queer folks, to look at the faith and the spirituality and all of that.

And it's just like, yeah. This just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It's like the faith, the size of a mustard seed, you know, it starts off tiny, but baby, this thing keeps on growing, keeps growing.

So with that being said, it's the end of this season. It's the end of this moment. Just like a black preacher's sermon. It's over, but it's not really over. Even after this episode, we're going to push out bonus content on the feed, and we're going to be preparing for season three.

[00:41:54] Esther: And be sure to follow us on social media because we're going to be hanging out there, like Darren said, [00:42:00] posting up bonus content and responding to all of you all.

So we are second Sunday pod on all platforms. Go check us out.

[00:42:07] Darren: And don't forget if you want to watch the entire live show, and I encourage you to do so check out the Qubes, YouTube channel at youtube. com slash T H E Q U B E A P P that's the Qube app. So youtube. com slash the Qube app. And as always. The Saints ain't ready for this, but we're going to talk about it anyway.

[00:42:44] Esther: The second Sunday podcast is hosted by Esther Ikoro and Darren Calhoun, but podcasting is a team sport. So a big thank you to our dream

[00:42:52] Darren: team, our producers, Esther Ikoro, Anna Deshawn, and Nicole Hill, our associate producer, Amber Walker,

[00:42:58] Esther: our sound designer, [00:43:00] Florence Burrow Adams, and our managing producers.

Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

[00:43:04] Darren: Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track title. They don't know. You should download the full song today. To learn more

[00:43:11] Esther: about today's guests or the show, visit our show notes on our website, second Sunday pod.com, and on Instagram at second Sunday pod.

Second Sunday is a production of the Qube spelled with the Qube in partnership with the PRX. Big Questions Project, which is generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

[00:43:33] Darren: The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QTPOC podcasts.

Support

[00:43:40] Esther: this show and more like it by joining the Qube app and follow the Qube across social media at theQubeapp. Thank you for listening and we'll

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