Blog
A reflection: to have your body the subject of national moral panic is both odd and familiar.
It’s odd because one’s body–the very fact of its existence or your relationship with it–should be uncontroversial. The intimacy of one’s self-concept, self-identification, and self-determination is so obvious that it should not invite public scrutiny.
"The 'Tree of Life' project examines the ways in which people of African descent create pathways to achieve resiliency and sustain health through their responses to the legacies and impacts of slavery and structural inequality. Scholars suggest that spirituality emerges as a protective factor for physical and social well-being (Chao 2010; Crowther, et. al. 2004). What can be learned from the legacies and traditions of African American communities as sources of survival and healing for body, mind and spirit?”
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes – (372)
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
“I was seeking a spiritual cleansing, but I didn’t know that that was what I needed,” says Heidi Williamson, a black social justice activist who recently saw Faithful for a session. “The talk therapy alone was not working. The exercise, diet, meditation alone was not getting it either. I needed something else.” Faithful says this is a common thread among the people who seek out her services: “Sometimes I’m the person that folks seek out last because they’ve tried everything else.”
There must be spaces where authentic selves engaged in interdisciplinary discourse can come together to address inequality and work for social justice. Dr. Nigel Hatton made this point when he spoke of the critical importance of the Braxton Institute at our October 27, 2014 “Recovering Human Sustainability in a Time of War” symposium. Nigel’s observations remind me of Parker Palmer’s essay “Now I Become Myself” and the importance of naming all of the fragmenting things that get in the way of that wholeness and that becoming:
