Formation. Re-Formation. Slay.

Psalm 51: 1-17 and Isaiah 58:1-12

Last year for Lent, I gave up white supremacy, cis-hetero-patriarchy, and all the hegemonic idols that never had any intention of allowing me or the Others to live. This year I’m thinking about the excesses, that we might think of as loss, but have the capacity to compose/formulate meaning in the world. Formation. Clean hearts? Yes. Clean from self hatred, others hatred, doubt, and all the ways that black-femme loathing for profit/prophet manifests itself in me and in the world… I pray that prayer every single day… “Create in me a clean O God, and renew in me a right spirit.” Yes. (yaaass.) Formation and re-formation.

But the excess that goes missing in the cracks, that slip through after the sharp beat… the sharp tongue, the death that is performed by black lives, the meaning that is seemingly absent but present is demanding a witness to its testimony. The loss…the ghosted history from the dead bloated bodies, destroyed city, drained swimming pools. Excess… hot sauce, crawfish, cheddar bay biscuits, children playing, undulating excessive fleshiness-blonde weave-Afros-string stretched hair-Afro.Creole.French.Spanish.Afro.Negro-Texas Bama-chocolate of every shade. Every shade. Excess. Even if you don’t understand every lyric from Beyonce’ Knowles’ latest single that broke the Internet on Saturday, the stunning visuals and phrases throughout the video indicate meaning that are beyond the simplicity of the words themselves. The accent, the inflections tell a bigger story about New Orleans, the south, black women-ness, gender, gender identity and all the shades of blackness that all have a slippage that sometimes goes missing but is always excessive in the ways/methods they show up. In In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Fred Moten asks the question: “where do words go?[…] [there is] a difference between words and sounds; […] words are somehow constrained by their implicit reduction to the meaning they carry […] a missing accent or affect; the impossibility of a slur or crack and the excess – rather than loss – of meaning they (words) imply (p.42).” Slay. Slain.

It was no mistake that Beyoncé released this video the weekend of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland’s birthdays, Mardi Gras, the Superbowl, and for us Ash Wednesday the beginning of Lent. It was also no mistake that she was paying homage to the King of Pop, the 50^th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, Afros, Malcolm X – both very black and global citizen in her half time appearance at the Superbowl. In the current movement/moment of Black Lives Matter, it is important to realize the disparate parts of blackness that her performance brings together… past, present and future. The precarity of black life is not new… it is always at risk of being stolen, ghosted, killed, oppressed, drowned and burned (shot) to the ground. Slay. Slain.

 

Bringing these insufficient words to the Lent/Ash Wednesday text, the performativity of disparate parts that slip through the cracks into excess find themselves in Isaiah. I won’t go deep into that Isaiah was concern with hypocrisy and boastful fasting (which Beyoncé directly addresses with the lyric “y’all n-words corny with that Illuminati mess.” And so does Isaiah 58:5 “Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” Seriously, church people, let that go. There’s not a “there” there. Stop it.) The beauty of the video and the Isaiah text talks about fasting (go with me metaphorically here). Fasting that is absence is also excess. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58: 6-7)” Absence of oppression, injustice, and bondage. Excess of food for the hungry, a home – a sense of belonging for the homeless, clothing for the naked. These things fall through the cracks when we worry about being respectable. The yoke of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, classism, ableism etc kill us. They slay us. Slain.

I don’t know that I agree with Bey that “the best revenge is your paper,” but I do think that the voice that protests, the light that breaks forth like the dawn (Isaiah 58: 8), is the healing for which we are seeking this Lent. The healing is the self-redemptive, restorative love for which we are looking. The healing is the hot sauce, the cheddar bay biscuits, all the colors of black, brown and beige, and even the loveliness of fleshy gloriousness. They are the food of self-affirmation, love and value in the world that we’ve been waiting to see. The shelter of beautiful people, the beautiful dance, the beautiful skins, the beautiful people slain in the spirit, the beautiful culture that make up the far-wideness of blackness that slays and is living in this excess of meaning. Formation. Re-formation. And I slay, you slay, we slay.

 

— Cecilia Olusola Tribble is an arts and cultural educator, consultant and critic, with a M.T.S. from Vanderbilt Divinity School and a M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University.

The Creation, Continued, From Genesis 2:18-24 and Beyond, Poem by Cherlyn W. Tribble

 

From Genesis 2:18-24 

And God sat down, yes, God sat him down

And he looked at man

And God said: That’s good.

So he gave man some learnin’

And God said:  You is in charge.

Man learn’t to name the things that was creepin’

And man learn’t to name the things that was crawlin’

Man learn’t to call the swimmin’ things in the sea by name

And man learn’t to call the walkin’ things on the land by name

Man even learn’t to name the things that was flyin’ in the air

And God said:  That’s good!

But then God thought and he thought

And God said: Man has looked at all these creatures, but he looks sad

Hmmmm, I know, he is lonely,

I’ll make him some company

So God made man sleepy and laid him down in the dust,

He laid him down and put man under the knife without a knife

And this magnificent, all-powerful, all-knowing God performed the first surgery

He took the rib out of man,

And like a plastic surgeon and orthopedic surgeon combined,

God formed woman in his own image

And God said, now that’s real good!

And man was pleased.

Man and woman went by Adam and Eve

They called their home Eden

They took care of their home and enjoyed living with the other creatures.

God gave Eve learnin’ too so she would know what Adam knew.

God said:  I gave you all of this,

But don’t eat off of that good evil tree over there in the middle

You eat off of that tree, you die.

Adam and Eve obeyed, they did good,

For a while

But one day Eve was lookin’ at the fruit on that good evil tree

And it looked so good

All at once a slimy, slithery, tricky creature came up to her and hissed:

Don’t that look good?  How ‘bout a taste?

I heard God say don’t eat off of it, did you?

And Eve said: God said don’t eat off of it and don’t even touch it or we dead

And the slimy creature said: Awwww, he didn’t mean it,

He jus’ afraid you might know as much as him, go’n and taste that good fruit

Well, Eve tasted that fruit and gave fruit to Adam

And all of a sudden, things was changed!

It was not good, the way things was changed………….

All of a sudden, Adam and Eve needed things that they didn’t need before.

They needed clothes

They had children who needed anger management training

They needed farm implements to take care of the land

And generation after generation struggled to obey God

Many even ignored God, even after God flooded them out once.

And the earth groaned.

People enslaved other people

People killed other people

People stole from other people

People pushed other people out of their lands and took it for their own

The women needed pre-natal care and medication to ease the pain of childbirth.

The generations began to invent things to try to make their lives easier

But this came at a great cost

And the earth groaned.

He came, Jesus Christ God’s only son our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.

The third day he arose from the dead.

He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God Almighty,

From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Some believe in the Holy Catholic (Universal) Church,

the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.

But that didn’t make no difference to some.

And the earth groaned.

People lived in fancy houses, and drove fancy cars and bought fancy clothes

They made weapons to protect all of their stuff, and to punish those who touched their stuff

They made knives, bows and arrows, catapults, gallows, and guillotines

They made cannons, muskets, shotguns, pistols, and rifles,

They made bombs, atomic bombs, AK47s, Uzi’s, nuclear warheads

They made biological weapons………..

People robbed, raped, oppressed, suppressed, ignored, disenfranchised and marginalized

Other people

People squandered, wasted, misused and abused what they had

And the earth groaned.

But wait, this is not just past tense, this is in the recent past and in the now

Black smoke belching out of tall stacks and truck exhaust pipes

Blue and green stained soil underneath houses

Where groundwater full of benzene, toluene, ethylene and xylene flow

Cancer clusters, strange looking frogs and albino deer near nuclear research facilities,

Hazes over cities, forest fires, algae in streams,

fish floating, whales beaching, polar bears falling off of ice caps

Fracking, methane gas floating up in drinking water as the earth shifts

And the earth groans.

People buying yachts, people buying castles, people going to outer space on vacation

Millionaires, billionaires buying $3000 shower curtains

People in the streets, people in the gutter, drugged out of their minds and selling their bodies

For just one more hit.

People in the emergency room with no primary care physician

People wanting education, but cannot afford it.

People losing houses that they once could afford

And the earth groans.

Preacher’s churches purchasing planes, preachers purchasing Bentleys,

And telling people your lack of faith has made you poor

Church folk arguing about how much to spend to buy new pews

For what?  The man outside with the dirty clothes won’t be welcome to sit on them

The people with the different color skin and the different language can’t come in either

And the earth groans.

Politicians making promises, some good, some bad

Healthcare, senior care, education, housing, taxes, foreign policy, defense, equal rights, civil rights

Same ol’ same ol’

Hail storms, earthquakes, hurricanes, soil bakes due to drought

Tsunamis, floods, pests, mold,

Disease ravages crops, pets and humankind

And the earth groans.

Did the fruit of the good evil tree give Adam and Eve more knowledge?

And the earth groans.

And God says: That’s not good………………………………..

  

Copyright 2015, Cherlyn W. Tribble

— The Rev. Cherlyn W. Tribble is a preacher, pastor, poet, author, music minister and an environmental engineer. She is a recent Master of Divinity graduate of Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University and is currently taking doctoral classes at Columbia Theological Seminary.

*The painting is “A Part of the Mind” by Mike Mucker of Nashville, TN.

Do Good and Be Good.

James 1:17-27

During my teenage years when getting off the phone with my mother’s father he would always say, “Be good and do good.” Looking back years later, I find it interesting that in this grammatically incorrect sentence my grandfather spoke to both my ontological presence and my actions. From his statement it seems as if the two are intertwined; one cannot be good without doing good. It seems to me that this statement agrees with the words of Jesus, “out of a person’s mouth does the heart speak.” The being, the heart of a person always shows itself. In the same way, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” There is something about the material world that indicates even those things that we cannot see.

Brother James packs a lot into these few verses, but the essence of this text is about doing. The idea that seems most appropriate here is relevant in terms of living faith. Faith is certainly more than belief and participating in religious ceremonies that help to continue our human institutions. Faith, relevant living faith, requires us to do good. Mentioned at the end of this passage is the care of orphans and widows, this is the measurement of faith. I’m not arguing with the text but I’d like to expand it just a little. Orphans and widows should be on the list but maybe also the mentally ill, the differently abled, chronically ill and perhaps even the poor and homeless. The measure of religion, of a faith that cannot be seen, is quantified by what is seen.

I imagine there are more than a few people who would say that you couldn’t measure faith. And maybe this would be true if all it took to have faith was belief. But faith is more; it requires action much like my grandfather’s statement, “be good and do good.” James puts it another way, “Do not just be listeners but doers of the word.”

21^st century church leadership is not just about belief, correct doctrine, but it is about relevant living faith. Action plus belief that helps to transform a world whose actions tell day in and day out where its faith resides. Our hearts “go out” to those persons mentioned above who fall into a relatively defenseless class, but what are we doing?

In closing there is a story of a young minister returned to his church after taking a group of kids on a college tour. He returned to the church in the middle of night because there were a few mishaps on the ride home. Upon arriving at the church, he noticed a man sleeping under the awning at the main entrance. He walked past, hoping not to disturb the sleeping man. He thought, “There is something wrong with this picture. This building is empty, but this man sleeps on the concrete on the doorstep of the church.” How many people sleep on our doorsteps while people of “faith” walk by trying not to disturb? We pat ourselves on the back, noting we have not disturbed them and stating, “At least they can stay dry”. Is this admirable? I’m not sure. It seems like listening and not doing to me. Be good and do good.

— The Rev. Joseph T. T. Tribble is the youth and young adult pastor at Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church in Nashville, and professor of Religion at American Baptist College.

Living with Dead Time: Performing Black Death and Reaching for Promised Possibilities

Proper 8 (13) Black Canadian academic, Rinaldo Walcott claims that black life in the Western Hemisphere/black Atlantic is framed and inaugurated by death. He claims that an African cosmology – in which death is not considered the end of life, and the dead exist in the present alongside with the living – survived the Middle Passage. Walcott struggles with the desire for freedom from white supremacy naming and shaping of black life/death with what it means to be human; and the “inability to lay [the] dead to rest” in the throes of unfreedom, which is in the midst of death – the inaugural point of black life.[1] Certainly in the past weeks as we mourn the desecration of black sacred spaces and black life, we have to realize and understand that there are no safe spaces for black people in America (and by America I do mean the United States—but I also mean the Western Hemisphere, North, Central, South, and Latin Americas). We have just seen, heard, tasted another installment of domestic terrorism. Yes. Dylan Roof is a terrorist. The confederate flag is a terrorist symbol that has been harbored and protected under the American flag…. (I’ll leave that there). This latest installment of white supremacist terrorism has outlined for us the very nature of black life in the Western Hemisphere… a life, lives, futures and past lives that have been continually performing death.

Looking to the lectionary readings for this Sunday, each text performs and reperforms death. Lamentations talks about a spiritual and social death – having been rejected by God (“the Lord does not reject forever”); and the famous gospel passage about – the woman, who is socially dead, with the issue of blood intertwined with the story of Jairus’ dead daughter, Talitha. If we look at these texts in relation to the events in the past weeks, months, years, centuries in the United States – people of color have been rejected, in a continual cycle of various forms of social death(s), in that they are/have been interpellated as those who do not belong, and therefore have the inability to assimilate into majoritarian society. [2] Certainly the woman with the so-called issue of blood and the dead little girl could never assimilate into majoritarian society as they are both female; but they are both dead because society has labeled them as being a problem, unclean, sick, dead… ghosts… ghouls…zombies…living in a spook house… where we hear “maddening screams and the soft strains of death…”[3]

“but you promised me… you promised me. Somebody. Anybody. Sing a black girl’s song…” [4]

The woman with the so-called issue, knowing she was unseen, unheard, and socially dead, reaches for Jesus’ garment anyway. Even as her very body performs the death that it was socially constructed and instructed to perform, the healing of the bleeding woman in Mark – rather her reaching for a promise — indicates a life beyond the death that society has overdetermined for her. Living with dead time. In his essay, “The Scene of Occupation,” Tavia Nyong’o discusses the scene of masked dancing protesters at Occupy London. While performing a dance that resembles Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” – these protesters occupy a liminal space where the movement and substance of precarious lives under capitalism live with/through dead time.[5] The immanent “danger of being human”[6] calls for a zombification such that “the zombie performs the body as an accumulation strategy: an accumulation of genre, of history, of gesture, and of race. The zombie dance is a survival skill for living with dead time.”[7] The zombie dance is not only a survival skill, but it is a movement beyond survival…toward a futurity… Insisting on living in the face of death.

The 5 year old girl and her auntie who played dead in Mother Emanuel AME Church know something about the insistence on living in the face of death. Her future hinged on her performing herself as dead. Living with dead time. Though Talitha in the scripture was actually dead, Jesus’ call for her to wake up is a kind of promise. How did the little girl know it was time to wake up that night? Did she hear Jesus’ promise? Or did she reach out for it? “You promised me. You promised me. Somebody, anybody… sing a black girl’s song.”[8] I’m not going to finish by saying that Jesus is the promise or that Jesus sings the songs of promised hope and possibility, even though that is what I believe. But I will say that we have to sing those songs. The scale, length and reach of Bree Newsome tearing down the Rebel flag in South Carolina reaches for what we’ve been promised. We have to continue to promise, reach for the promise and hold society accountable for coercing black death into existence. We have to make manifest life in the face of death. We have to do more than live with dead time. We must insist on living, and singing so that black people can have a future, because our lives – our past, present and future lives matter. We must sing the righteous gospel that is our future, our possibilities, our lives.

—Cecilia Olusola Tribble is an artistic and worship consultant, and cultural and arts educator with a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University Divinity School and a Master of Arts in Performance Studies from New York University.

[1] Rinaldo Walcott, “Black Queer Studies, Freedom, and Other Human Possibilities,” in Understanding Blackness Through Performance: Contemporary Arts and the Representation of Identity, ed. by Anne Crémieux, Xavier Lemoine, and Jean-Paul Rocchi, (New York, Palgrave MacMillan: 2013) p. 145.

[2] Orlando Patterson, “Alienation, Authority and Social Death,” in African American Religion Thought: An Anthology ed. by Cornel West and Eddie Glaude, Jr. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), p. 109.

[3] Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. (Scribner Poetry: New York, 1997), p. 2.

[4] Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. (Scribner Poetry: New York, 1997), p. 3.

[5] Tavia Nyong’o, “The Scene of Occupation,” The Drama Review, Volume 56, Number 4, (MIT Press: 2012), p. 139. [6] Nyong’o p. 140.

[7] Nyong’o p. 145. [

8] Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. (Scribner Poetry: New York, 1997), p. 4.