Credit: Nicki Dugan Pogue

Elle Dhanani met God at summer camp. A victim of intense bullying at school, she felt “camp was home.” It was where she found community and where she felt whole. This past summer, however, all of that unraveled. “I’ve always struggled with my sexuality,” says Dhanani. “I never really knew where I was on the spectrum until this past year. I hadn’t come out to my parents or any of my friends. Camp was the first place I came out.”

Ontario Pioneer Camp (OPC) is a place Dhanani and countless other people, young and old, call home. For years I have marvelled at the people who are products of OPC. They are able to lead a canoe trip just as easily as a group discussion. They are thoughtful and confident, with huge hearts and deep friendships with each other. This is why my husband and I chose to send our children to OPC.

The camp, which operates under the umbrella of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), has a set of statements in their code of conduct that some volunteers and staff have disagreed with and refused to sign over the years. Others, like Dhanani, have signed despite their discomfort with statements about divorce and homosexual and lesbian relationships. “I just signed it . . . because I wanted to work at camp,” says Dhanani.

In the summer of 2016, OPC directors decided it was time their staff enforced the part of the staff contract that says, “homosexual and lesbian sexual conducts are not to be practiced . . . Teaching and communicating beliefs that are contrary to these stated practices is not tolerated.” At their Girls’ Camp site, leadership staff were interviewed individually by a camp director and asked what they thought about OPC’s position.

When Jeeae Choi, then program director of Girls’ Camp, was interviewed, she says she was unwilling to say, “Being gay is a sin.” At the end of a long conversation, where the woman asking the questions was visibly “emotional,” Choi was told she had to return home at the end of that two-week session. The next day that decision was reversed. Choi believes this is because the camp directors knew if they sent her home, along with other senior Girls’ Camp staff, many others would follow. This was early in the summer.

Allegedly, nearly 50 Girls’ Camp staff will not be returning to OPC in 2017. Most are acting in solidarity. Some were told they could not return, while some became vocal about their beliefs and identities, knowing this will mean they cannot return.

Dhanani had kept her sexual identity a secret for a full year because she didn’t want her place at OPC to be jeopardized. “I did not come out as bisexual because of camp. I never posted anything about my support of LGBTQ rights on social media.” She was shocked to hear program staff were being interviewed, and felt she had to be honest about her own sexual identity, but this came at a significant cost. “All of a sudden this camp that I called home didn’t want people like me in it.”

I was volunteering in the Girls’ Camp kitchen this summer during the last week of camp and the sorrow in the air was palpable. On the last night, girls embraced each other and cried, saying goodbye knowing they would likely never be all together again. That night my daughter, 12, told me with wide eyes and the sound of grief in her voice that many of her favourite leaders were not coming back. Dhanani weeps as she tells me, “A place that I never felt broken is now the core of a lot of the pain that I feel today.”

I reached out to OPC leadership for an interview so I could understand what happened in 2016 and IVCF responded with an explanation of their hiring process. “Alignment with our Statement of Faith, Code of Conduct and Risk Management policies is . . . a condition of employment. Anyone is welcome to apply to work with us and to go through the interview process. As is the case with any organization, this interview process determines whether or not a candidate is offered a position.” I still don’t know why staff were questioned on their beliefs about homosexual and lesbian relationships. Perhaps it was in response to a movement gaining ground called OnePioneer. OnePioneer is a group of OPC alumni looking for, “a safe place for LGBTQ campers and staff to have the same experience as straight kids,” says Laura Tobin, member of OnePioneer.

I met Laura at camp the summer of 2015 while I was volunteering in the kitchen and she was running the bakery. Laura cared for everyone around her while baking homemade bread and sweets. For 33 years she spent most of her summers at Ontario Pioneer Camp, doing everything from leading outings to being Girls’ Camp Director.

In March of 2016, Laura received a phone call telling her she was not welcome back at camp, “because I was an advocate and didn’t agree with IVCF’s position on the issue of sexuality.” Laura had quiet conversations with camp staff for several years asking for dialogue about LGBTQ inclusion. In early 2016 she wrote a letter to OPC directors and IVCF formally stating her position. “I feel if I had never written that letter I could have continued [to work at camp].” This was a devastating blow to Laura who says she is, “grieving the loss of relationships…and the loss of community, the loss of family.” Laura joined OnePioneer shortly after and is committed to being an ally for the LGBTQ community.

I attended two OnePioneer gatherings in Toronto. At these events I learned many members are living with deep pain. A place they once felt safe, no longer welcomed them when they started to have questions about their own sexuality.

Although there are stories of people like Laura Tobin and Jeeae Choi, who were told to leave OPC, there are many more stories of young people who just never came back. Some came out publicly and knew they couldn’t return to camp, but some spent years not knowing how to define themselves and found themselves struggling and alone.

It is common for Christians to believe individuals choose to be queer-oriented, but at one event a young woman rubbed her hands together nervously and said in a shaky voice, “Why would I choose this?” She described the lack of self-worth she felt and the thoughts of suicide she struggled with when she realized she was queer. She described how much she needed and wanted support from her camp community.

Members of OnePioneer lost so much at the hands of the camp, and yet still speak of OPC with respect. Initially, I thought the respectful attitude towards camp was calculated, that the group had strategized about how they could be most effective. I soon realized, despite the pain they felt, they maintained a profound love for this beautiful place in the woods. The main thing they want is dialogue. As Laura Tobin says, “we do not want to see camp hurt because of this, we don’t want to blame, but we want to engage dialogue. . . we don’t want to be aggressive, but we don’t want to go away. We want to be part of seeing change at Pioneer Camp.”

My observation that OPC produces good people seems so much more true now. Here they are demonstrating generosity and love when many would want to throw rocks and light fires. It seems they would all go back to camp tomorrow if only it were an inclusive place. Elle Dhanani echoes that desire that, “one day people will be able to return and feel loved again. I’m very hopeful that that day will come.”

Kathryn Gray lives in Toronto and is afraid this article will mean she is no longer welcome at Ontario Pioneer Camp where she has enjoyed slinging grilled cheese sandwiches and going swimming in the lake, but has never signed the code of conduct.

Eds note: For further reading, see Kristy Woudstra’s piece in the Huffington Post (March 9, 2017), and Kevin Makins’ video reflection on OnePioneer, “Why We Need Queer Christians in the Church and Disagreeing Well.”

Through pottery, I have discovered not just an art form, but also a connection to creation and the Creator. Recently, I was given the opportunity to practice a new technique: Raku firing.

Raku, known for its captivating rapid-firing and its ceremonial act of removing each piece while still in a blazing molten red-orange glow, has taught me so much about healing, control, release, endings, and transformation.

Intentionality is needed in choosing the clay. The clay needs to have enough grog in it so it can withstand the thermal shock of being taken out of the fire and cooled rapidly. Grog adds grit; it is the rustic texture that aids in everything from shrinkage to the drying of a piece.

Raku pottery uses a kiln that is heated up faster than traditional kiln firings. The process is intense. After you secure your molten piece, you can do various things. The most common is to place it in a container with combustible materials, like sawdust and paper. The combustibles themselves serve as violent paint brushes that leave new impressions. These combustibles starve the piece of oxygen, crafting unique colors and textures that signify more than art – they symbolize resilience, transformation from oppressive heat, and the beauty of impermanence.

This ancient Japanese method has one purpose: to promote beauty. The word “raku” literally means “pleasure.” None of the Raku pieces I have made are able to hold water; they are strictly decorative. They are beautiful and that is their sole purpose. My Raku pieces remind me of the elements: the earth and water it took to build it, the fire that surrounded it, and the wind as I pulled it from the hot kiln. All these things come together to create something new and beautiful.

Highlighting the act of creation has emphasized that art’s true value lies in its molding and giving, not its lasting. Oftentimes, the art (and possibly the human) is to be appreciated solely for its beauty as it is, and not for its function.

I live with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). It stems from religious trauma and has kept me away from most faith gatherings. This condition makes it difficult for me to approach God, or feel the Divine’s presence. I frequently feel like I have lost myself, lost my purpose, and lost my functionability. I have had to learn to listen to the voice of the Creator through the lessons in the clay, water, wind and fire.

I have had to navigate through anniversaries that reopen wounds and try to find my center in the midst of intense pressure. I have had to take intentional time away from public life to heal. In that season, I have found solace in the philosophy that is reinforced in Raku: embracing the unpredictable, understanding the value of release, and recognizing the beauty in creation, without critique or regard of its function.

The first rule of pottery is to not become attached. A piece can be lost at any stage of the process. It can be ruined on the wheel, while trimming it, glazing it, or firing it. You may be so delighted when pulling out a perfect piece from the kiln that you mishandle and drop it.

The clay teaches me that the lesson is found in the act of creating. With Raku, we see that the final piece is just a representation of the process it took to get there. With trauma, I know that my final form will only be a representation of the process it will take to get there.

It is easy to believe it is all worthless when you live with CPTSD and when your pottery pieces keep getting ruined. However, pottery has led me to find new communities of artists to share with. It is in these communities where I have learned to shift my focus from mourning broken or damaged pieces to celebrating what the creative process offers – the joy, the healing, and the anticipation.

Hazel Salazar-Davidson (she/her/ella) is a potter, mother, widow, partner, and pastor. She throws mud around in her art studio that she built into the third stall of her three-car garage during the pandemic. Hazel resides on the unceded Chumash lands of southern California with her family and two (sometimes too) attentive dogs.

I’d never experienced a house fire and I’m not sure where the deep fear of its possible occurrence came from. I suspect it was largely from the images on the six-o’clock news, which even as a child I watched zealously with my parents. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s, arson was a huge problem in my hometown of Buffalo, New York. I’d later learn that some people were so economically desperate that they’d burn their own houses down for the insurance money. At six, I knew nothing of the reasons. It was just the visual image of houses in flames that consumed my imagination. With the fervor of contemplative monks praying the Divine Office, I prayed for the safety of my family home.

I didn’t express this fear to my parents. Though I knew they loved me, I feared my mother’s temper, which could ignite at a moment’s notice. I learned to keep some things to myself. After a few years, I outgrew my obsession . . . though I always asked my middle school science lab partners to light the Bunsen burner. As an adult I’ve never burned incense or candles in my home; the very sight of matches is enough to make me cringe.

Despite my negative association with fire, I have always loved the rows of votive candles in church, their flames recalling the tongues of fire over the apostles’ heads at Pentecost, tiny arrows pointing upward toward a world beyond this one. At Girl Scout sleepaway camp I loved evening bonfires, their swirl of oranges and yellows making something inside me dance. It’s a sensation I’d remember in 2020 when gathering around a bonfire at dusk was one of few ways I could safely see friends at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’d wake up the next morning with my hair smelling of woodsmoke, an aroma that, like incense, seemed to come from a numinous realm I yearned desperately to believe in.

On June 4, 2023, I shared my fortieth birthday celebration with the 150th anniversary of Saint Stanislaus, an ethnically Polish Roman Catholic church in Buffalo. The church was founded by my great-great-great uncle, a priest who made it his mission to welcome fellow immigrants to the new land. At the anniversary celebration, I recited a poem about my vision of the beauty and promise I still find in the faith of my childhood. Despite the horrors of the Inquisition and colonization, the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the child abuse scandal and all the other problems that come with an all-male leadership, I still believe the Catholic Church contains some flicker of the “living flame of love” that John of the Cross found in the faith.

But after the celebration ended, I left the banquet hall to see a disturbing sight: the sky cloudy, covered in ash. A few days later, we would all be horrified by the image of New York City’s skyline – as well as that of so many other eastern and midwestern cities in the U.S. – turned orange by wildfires burning across Canada, an alarming betrayal of smoke. Throughout the summer, we who live in eastern North America would learn what West Coast dwellers have known for years: we are burning the world.

Ite, inflammate omnia, Saint Ignatius Loyola exhorted his missionaries. Go, set the world on fire. In Christianity, fire is a sign of the Holy Spirit. It burns weeds and refines gold. As climate scientists warn us that we are passing the point of no return, they also assert it’s not too late to make a difference. How can we turn the fire of destruction into a fire of passionate conviction, of zeal for change?

My Uncle Bob was a volunteer firefighter in the Buffalo suburb where he spent his whole life – a mission that required many sacrifices from his family. When she married him at age twenty-four, my Aunt Pat couldn’t have predicted that he’d leave her to raise their three children largely on her own while he added an all-consuming commitment to his full-time job as a supervisor at a public utility. For fifty years, Bob was on call each day and night, his scanner sounding during Thanksgiving dinners and summer barbecues. From his late twenties to when he got too ill with Alzheimer’s to continue his work, my uncle devoted each day to the quiet work of repairing his small part of the world.

Perhaps he didn’t make any huge change, but he did what he could in the best ways he knew. I believe this is still possible for us all. The faith of my childhood – once nearly burned away – has been refined into the faith of my adulthood. It asserts that each of us has a calling. It claims that we each have a responsibility to use our gifts for the greater good. It tells us that love casts out fear . . . even my lingering pyrophobia.

Jeannine M. Pitas (she/her) lives in the home of the Wyandot, Monongahela, Lenni-Lenape, Shawnee, and Haudenosaunee peoples (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and teaches at Saint Vincent College.

Detail of “The Rest of Faun,” Davide Edoardo Cassano, 2023 Graphite on paper, 42 x 29.7 centimetres

One night in the car, I overheard my kids arguing in the backseat over the strengths of oak trees versus cherry trees. At first, I was intrigued by their knowledge and passion for the topic . . .until I realized they were talking about video games.

How did this happen? How had the accidental educational video games during Covid’s initial sheltering-in-place days morph into such regular and constant screen time?

As our kids entered the world of video games, my partner and I worked hard to avoid the most violent ones. I still watched as they fell in love with these other worlds. It wasn’t long before they’d rather be swept into the world of screens than be with company around the dinner table.

As a society, we are pouring trillions of dollars into the technology machine creating worlds more addicting than the real one. We see it everywhere. Phones out all the time sucking us in. I know that I am also culpable.

As I witnessed my kids build worlds in Minecraft, I was surprised by a different grief. They were learning about the strengths of oak, birch, cherry, and maple. They were learning about the elements of stone, lava, and bedrock. They laughed as they named their beloved pigs and built houses for chickens.

I also watched in astonishment as they would open pixelated craft boxes and mix stone with cobblestone and sticks to make an ax. Or craft leather into leather boots. Or string and sticks into a bow and arrows. Or combine eggs, milk, sugar, and wheat to make a cake.

I couldn’t shake the dissonance and sadness I felt in my body. I wanted them to know oak trees by the feel of their bark. I wanted them to know what pigs smelled like. I yearned for them to pick up a carving knife and stick, and make that bow with their own two hands. I wanted them to know the tools of crafting by holding knitting needles or spatulas in their hand. I wanted them to smell that cake and know the feel of the boots on their feet. I wanted their brains and their joy consumed by the very real and tactile world that surrounded them.

What will it mean in the climate struggle if we keep our eyes more attuned to these technological worlds than the one that is slipping away before our very eyes?

For this and many other reasons, my partner and I decided it was time for a digital detox. Two weeks. No screens. No video games. No television. It would be enough time to reset our dopamine levels. That detox went for us grownups too. When we weren’t working, we were off screens. We would stop being more accessible to work or social media than to the children in the room.

It did require of us more willingness to be available for our kids. We crafted together and played board games. We read out loud to them and went on family adventures.

I was so nervous when we broke the news to the kids that we were all going to do this. I knew they would be sad. They certainly were disappointed, but they rolled with it. It turned out to be more incredible than we could have imagined. It was such a dramatic shift in our kids that we extended it for another two weeks. Then, at last, we said they could have one hour each on Saturday morning for screens. That was it. Otherwise, screens could be used for researching or for the occasional family movie night.

The summer of the digital detox, Cedar, who is seven years old, read over 100 books. Isaac, 10, took up baking and leaving the kitchen constantly a mess, but our bellies delighting in his newfound talent. Cedar’s anxiety decreased. They both stopped fighting as much.

We asked the kids how they felt and what they learned after the two weeks?

Isaac said, “We found out what we can do when we aren’t on the screen. I liked getting outside more and spending time with family. It works. Other families should try this.”

Cedar chimed in, “Now I feel like I would rather go to the pond and check on those toad eggs than play video games . . . kind of.”

I am grateful to learn that it is never too late. You can get hooked on screens and realize it’s too much and make a shift.

The world we live in is breathtakingly delicious. Along with my kids, I want to fall head over heels for all that I can smell and touch and see and taste and hear. I don’t want another world besides this one.

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann is an editor at Geez. She lives on Lenape land in Bangor, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the forthcoming book This Sweet Earth: Walking with our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse (Broadleaf, July 2024).

Detail of "AI Pastor" by Darryl Brown

The email simply read, “Have we ever considered a purely online church?”

The email was sent in response to the calls of distress coming from across the church: what will we do in a world with limited physical interaction? How will we survive when all we’ve known is ministry with physical proximity? How will we manage?

It may have even just been the subject heading; no body to the message. Perhaps a fitting format for what the pandemic brought on: floating heads on electronic meetings with disembodied speech.

But I think that would be a disingenuous characterization, at least in my experience. For while the global pandemic we’ve all been reeling from (I don’t dare quite say “recovering” yet because I’m not convinced society is or has), it was a mini-apocalypse that pulled back the facades that we had all been living under with institutions that promised security, longevity, invulnerability. It did what all apocalypses do.

It unveiled some deep truths.

Deep truths concerning the fragility of our institutions, including the church.

Deep truths concerning the underlying loneliness of humanity that didn’t suddenly appear during the pandemic, but was certainly accentuated by the crisis.

Deep truths concerning the insufficiency of our abilities to cope with the huge human record-scratch trauma that a global pandemic put on us in these times.

The pandemic was apocalyptic in the truest sense of the term. Into this revelation, we started wondering what might happen if we breathed into this landscape a digital-first, Christocentric community? A community that took the medium of technology as primary for proclamation, not a secondary consideration? After all, I think we’ve all watched enough recorded worship services to understand that the worship experience church leaders were trained to provide doesn’t translate well to the digital space.

No recorded live-worship is “awesome” in the literal sense of the word “awesome.”

Anam Cara Community, a collaboration of slightly disaffected church leaders and hopeful voices that comprise our community and curators, was born out of a desire to honor not only the cracks in our human experience that the pandemic highlighted, but also to honor a Divine presence that has always been mediated through the available materials: wine, bread, water, spoken word, written word, radio, television, fiber optic cable, and digital media.

Three distinct advantages have proven themselves with this pivot to a digital-first community.

Accessibility

One of the amazing advantages that Anam Cara Community, and other similar “digital first” communities have, is the ability to reach anyone, anywhere, any time. Many of us have friends and family members who have proclaimed with finality, “I’ll never darken the door of another church!”

And they mean it.

Anam Cara Community provides no such barrier. You get to sit anonymously on our back pew any time you’d like. This, of course, brings some problems, too. Without making yourself known, the curators will never know who you are, what you need, or why you’re deciding to make the spiritual leap to check things out. But if given the choice between the barrier of the church door, and the barrier of “follow” to make yourself known, we’ve chosen the follow.

The digital space allows us access to not only have people engage with us at their readiness, but also be perpetually accessible. Our content will, potentially, live on in perpetuity, and therefore continue to do what our ultimate goal is: reach people with some good news.

Diversity

Anam Cara Community is able to offer what we call a “constellation of offerings.” We have a regular short-form podcast that digs deeply into the lectionary for any given Sunday. We have online worship experiences to engage the senses as well as the soul. We have a blog that enriches spiritual lives through thoughtful content.

We’re able to offer a lot, regularly, that many brick-and-mortar communities struggle to produce. We do so with the medium as first and foremost in our minds.

We’re able to highlight diverse thought-leaders through these diverse offerings. We have a guiding principle that encourages us to be mindful of diversity in our voices. With this mindfulness, we’re able to regularly connect listeners, worshipers, and readers with a spectrum of voices from across the world. The apocalyptic pandemic shrunk the world, and we’re utilizing that leverage to introduce voices into the resulting empty space that so many would not have had access to previously.

Attending to the Rhythm of Life

Church attendance has been changing.

Whereas a “regular church goer” was every week, this next generation’s “regular” is once or twice a month.

There are a number of reasons for this, the least of which is the rampant hypocrisy running through most all supposedly moral institutions, including the church writ large. Other reasons seem to revolve around an evolving rhythm of life that we are living into. Weekends are no longer the optimal time for intentional spiritual growth for many. Many people connect spiritually in places outside of a typical liturgical service.

Perhaps, humanity is newly awakened to the fragility of life, and so time is at a premium these days. Perhaps it is becoming increasingly true that we are more fully aware of how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, and we’re refusing to spend our lives on things that don’t enhance meaning in them.

Spirituality is important. We’re finding ways to grow and develop spiritually, just in new ways and new rhythms.

Anam Cara Community’s format adapts to these new rhythms of our individual and shared life, providing the scaffolding for a spiritual encounter that is ever-ready, ever-green, and ever-nimble. This medium also tends to the new rhythms of pastoral life, allowing the curators of Anam Cara the flexibility to contribute to the world in a number of ways through other vocations, allowing Anam Cara to organically take shape. There is no rush to create content or attract followers. Rather, there is a slow and steady pace of making what feels right when it feels right.

The rhythm of life, when well attended, is an ever-flowing well-spring that can counteract the burnout we’re seeing in so many congregational and clergy corners.

Next Steps?

As the most recent pandemic wanes, there will be a bit of a backlash, a call for “in-person only!” engagement. That is certainly expected and warranted. Face-to-face interaction cannot be replicated through a digital medium in a way that is identically satisfying.

That being said, an experience that takes the medium as primary, a “digital first” experience, can also not be replicated in a way that is satisfying through other means.

I believe the future of the church will be through at least three branches.

Some communities will form in-person, some will be digital first, and some will be a hybrid of the two, honoring the new rhythms that humanity is living into as we both embrace a renewed freedom to explore the world while also honoring the vast reach of digital mediums that expand our horizons past geographical restrictions.

The future is hybrid, Beloved.

Tim Brown is a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and currently helps curate Anam Cara Community, a digital-first offering. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife and two sons. He can be found at a coffee shop or brewery reading or writing something he thinks is interesting.

The Mechanical Turk from Karl Gottlieb von Windisch’s 1784 book “Inanimate Reason”

In 1770, Wolfgang Von Kemplen, a brilliant inventor and member of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa’s court, brought his newest technological marvel, the Mechanical Turk, to amuse and astound the Habsburg royalty. Von Kemplen constructed a clockwork robot, or automaton, that could play chess and best many of the chess masters of Europe. In its 85-year career, the automaton came into contact with many historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Catharine the Great, and Edgar Allen Poe.

Von Kemplen’s creation consisted of two major set pieces. The first was a large wooden cabinet hosting a chessboard. Within the cabinet were densely packed gears and cogs which would spin, whirl, and click. The second was a man carved out of wood wearing a robe and turban in the style of a Turkish magician. Together, the gears would move the wooden man and allow him to move chess pieces around the board. Von Kemplen would then invite a member of the audience to play a game of chess against his automaton. In a seemingly miraculous show of technological ingenuity, the automaton would nearly always win.

But the Mechanical Turk had a secret which remained unknown to the audience: within its cabinet was an elaborate compartment for a human to control the movements of the automaton. Many came close to discovering how the machine truly worked, the writer Edgar Allen Poe being one who got particularly close to being right. In 2024, this seems obvious and silly. Of course, a clockwork robot from 1770 couldn’t beat a human at chess. After all, it wasn’t until 1997 that IBM’s chess-playing AI, Deep Blue, would beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov.

Our modern feeling of superiority is unfounded because we still share in the same astonishment as those gawking at the Mechanical Turk. Like the Mechanical Turk concealed the labor and genius of a real human chess player, technology like AI conceals the real human labor necessary for it to work. When it comes to technology, our beliefs about it far surpass what it can actually do.

AI platforms give us a similar feeling of amazement. We live in a time when AI can summarize a book, write poetry, create art (sort of), and more. But because capitalism obfuscates the production of commodities through a fancy sleight of hand called “commodity fetishism,” the human labor on which AI relies goes unrecognized. Throughout the Global South, workers in countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Kenya, India, and the Philippines perform “microtasks” for data companies to train the AI. In a harrowing twist of irony, Amazon’s microtask platform is called “Mechanical Turk.”

Pay for these microtasks ranges from two cents to 50 cents per task, resulting in around one U.S. dollar for an hour of work. While the pay is meager, the irregular pattern of work makes life increasingly difficult for workers doing these jobs. Sometimes, there’s not enough work to fill an entire week, making finding additional income a priority.

The people of Von Kemplen’s time are not fundamentally different from us. They didn’t believe in the Mechanical Turk because they were unsophisticated or dupes, but because they, like us, believed in a frictionless world where science and technology could handle all of our problems. Like us, they also often didn’t recognize or couldn’t imagine how it all worked. No matter how magical it appears, technology relies on real and exploited human labor. When it comes to understanding our technological world better, we ought to follow in the footsteps of those who tried their hardest to understand the magic of the Mechanical Turk. Like Edgar Allen Poe and other investigators of the Mechanical Turk, we must become detectives of technology and look for where our human and nonhuman siblings are being exploited.

Matt Bernico is a labor activist and writes on topics pertaining to religion, social justice, and climate change. You can hear more from Matt on his weekly podcast, The Magnificast.

Detail of “Dream Reality,” Creativepowerr, June 2023, Digital art, 3000 x 4000 pixels

Philip Butler believes it is necessary for us to question the things we claim to believe. Assistant professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems at Iliff School of Theology, Butler’s work has intersected four areas: neuroscience, technology, spirituality, and Blackness. He is also the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational artificial intelligence with mental health capacities.

In our conversation, Butler and I covered a vast array of topics from what led him to his research, to his relationship with the church, to his thoughts on society’s discomfort with AI, and his hopes for the Black community concerning technology and artificial intelligence.

Mashaun D. Simon: The work that you’re doing now, Afrofuturism work, where did the seed get planted?

Philip Butler: I used to like going to the previews more than going to the movies themselves. I went to the movies early one day, and it just so happened to be a preview for a documentary about the relationship between science fiction, the future, and the making of technology. The question that was posed in the preview for the documentary was, “What will the world look like in 80 years?” As I was sitting there I thought to myself, “I have no idea. But I want to have something to say about it.”

Mashaun: You graduate from Candler School of Theology, move out west, and you begin your studies at Claremont.

Philip: Yeah. Neuroscience was already an area of interest from playing sports in college. During the time of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial, and the murder of Sandra Bland, I had these questions. The whole time I am doing my coursework, I am trying to ruminate on how I do this work and answer that question from that day in the movie theater for the people I claim who also claim me. I was like, if I do not like this present that I’m in, I need to start looking ahead.

Mashaun: What I am hearing you say is, you got to this point of asking, “How do I create a different future for us?”

Philip: Yeah.

Mashaun: In considering that, and considering that this issue wants to look at the relationship between faith, technology, and AI, why are we as a society struggling with what is seemingly inevitable?

Philip: Which society are you talking about?

Mashaun: I would say majority society. If our premise is that imagining beyond our reality and a different future is part of the practice of Black folks most specifically, then our struggle isn’t embracing the possibilities. Our struggle is access and permission, right?

Philip: What it says for me is that Black folks are expected to be along for the ride. Part of the basic premise of my first book, Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Spirituality and Technology, is that if Black folks don’t get beyond using technology solely for consumption and move into the space where we make technology, then we’re always going to be the recipient of somebody else’s future. Black folk haven’t embraced technology and AI because we’re not actively making it in the ways I think we can, especially with the level of imagination that we have.

I also accept the idea of access. Fallon Wilson talks heavily about the ways Black folks have access to the Internet via mobile devices, but not through desktop or through laptops. Most tech is made on a desk or a laptop. Coding is much harder to do on the phone. It’s even harder to have stable, fast, high-speed Internet on the phone as well. And a laptop and a phone are not that much different in price, but the payment plan is different for the most part.

I think most folks push back on AI. If they have an opinion at all about it, [it] has more to do with fear around what it means to be a human, and by that I mean, like a dominant kind of apex predator in the world. The fears around AI stem from fears around aliens, which are also fears around being colonized, or at least being the thing that’s probed but not the thing that’s doing the probing. These barriers of entry are different and even the basis of apprehension are also different because they’re contextually oriented around, “Let’s not change the status quo” versus, “I’ve accepted what’s on the horizon, even though I may not necessarily be the ones making what’s on the horizon.” My part of the work is to get folks to buy into the fact that they can actually be the ones who are shifting what’s on the horizon, particularly Black folks, because that’s who I do this work for.

Mashaun: So what does that look like? How do we motivate Black folk, or make them more comfortable, when access is the issue, but the creativity or the desire is there?

Philip: There’s a couple of things that come up for me. At the turn of the 20th century, a lot of folks grew up in the church. But then, when they left and got their education they never came back. The space that helped make them was no longer a space that could fit who they became. Churches have resources. Maybe not every church, but many of them. Where’s the church computer lab? Where’s the church studio? Who is making use of all of the music equipment when no one is there? Who’s recording at the church? Buy a couple computers and create a computer lab and have the younger generation teach the older generation how to use them. Now you have some intergenerational things happening.

I’m going on seven years without a church. I haven’t been in church in a minute, and I don’t see myself going back. I have gone through several phases where I was like a straight up humanist. I am a post-humanist now, but even in that, on a baseline, I am a physicalist, meaning that whatever we have is what we have got. If you want to go to heaven, by all means, but that’s here. We can never leave earth because the matter that we have here is the same matter that is millions of miles away. If you ever thought heaven is somewhere else, wherever that is, it’s made of the same of what is here. When we talk about the ancestors, they have not left, they’re just in a different form.

This is part of the reason why I think the here and now is so important. The things that we’ve held near and dear have become the things that are holding us captive, I think. And as a result, we are not only losing touch with physical reality, but the people who live in everyday life – let alone the technologies that we can make because any technology that looks far enough away from our current understanding of the world looks like magic. Part of that’s going to have to come with us, not so much catching up with, but becoming informed on the things that make what looks like magic now, so that we can be the ones who become the progenitors of the new magic. If that makes sense.

Mashaun: Yeah, it does.

Philip: Whenever I do put on a theological hat, right – like it would probably be under a liberation school of sorts – you know there’s that question of like God having this preferential option, whether it be for Black folks or for the poor. But you look at society, and again, I think about the time I was in coursework. It did’t seem like it mattered if God cared, and if God did care, God wouldn’t do anything about it. Why are we clinging to like these ideas of what it means to almost be killed off? That’s not who I want to go hang out with forever if this person didn’t want to intervene and make themselves known.

Mashaun: How does that show up in the work you’re doing around Afrofuturism and AI? What considerations are there for theology and religion if that’s not where you are?

Philip: I’m at Iliff right now. Our approach to theology is centered on really asking the tough questions about the things that in many cases you’re not supposed to. The greatest level of commitment requires the highest level of critique or the highest level of scrutiny. If I’m to give my life to this thing then it owes me answers. And if I’m taking that seriously, I’m going to ask any and every question. My doing of theology is really the constructive aspects of asking those questions that shouldn’t be asked, that folks are afraid to ask.

Two or three questions ago you asked about churches, or people just in general. This is not to be like looking at fancy ways for people to get together, but I think it’s part of reimagining what it means for folks to congregate. People will still get together. People are going to congregate. How do we imagine congregating, especially when the folks who are congregating in church spaces are becoming older and older and smaller and smaller? I remember having conversations with Clemette Haskins back at Claremont and Clemette, who was once a chef, asked, “What does it mean to have supper club and have dialogue there?”

Mashaun: Congregating becomes that much more effective. It becomes that much more impactful.

Philip: What future do you want us to have? What future do you want to live into, even if you can’t see it? It reminds me of the mountaintop speech. Even if I can’t touch it, my work towards it suggests that I’ve already lived here so I’m living somewhere else that people may not know or be able to see, and maybe our kids will see it, or grandkids. But the idea is that on the road toward that space, if I don’t already exist in that world, in that timeline, then that timeline may not manifest.

It goes back to the “heaven is here” thing. When we manifest this thing, then how beautiful would it be to be able to sit back and watch as people carry on in the work, and catch the vision, so to speak, and embody the great thing that you’ve spilled your life for? Find what you love and let it kill you.

Mashaun D. Simon is a preacher, teacher, writer, and scholar – uncle, husband, son, and former pastor. He is a Doctor of Ministry candidate from Columbia Theological Seminary and resides in Stone Mountain, Georgia with his husband, Elvis.

Detail of “The Age of AI Art,” Davide Edoardo Cassano, 2023, graphite on paper, 21 x 14.5 centimetres

Earlier this year, I was at an academic conference sitting with friends at a table. This was around the time that OpenAI technology – specifically ChatGPT – was beginning to make waves in the classroom. Everyone was wondering how to adapt to the new technology. Even at that early point, differentiated viewpoints ranged from incorporation (“we can teach students to use it well as part of the curriculum of the future”) to outright resistance (“I am going back to oral exams and blue book written in-class tests”).

During the conversation, a very intelligent friend casually remarked that she recently began using ChatGPT for therapy – not emergency therapeutic intervention, but more like life coaching and as a sounding board for vocational discernment. Because we all respected her sincerity and intellect, several of us (including me) suppressed our immediate shock and listened as she laid out a very compelling case for ChatGPT as a therapy supplement – and perhaps, in the case of those who cannot or choose not to afford sessions with a human therapist, a therapy substitute. ChapGPT is free (assuming one has internet), available 24/7, shapeable to one’s own interests over time, (presumably) confidential, etc…

In my teaching on AI and technology throughout the last semester, I used this example with theology students (some of whom are also receiving licensure as therapists) as a way of pressing them to examine their own assumptions about AI – and then, by extension, their own assumptions about ontology. If the gut-level reaction to ChatGPT therapy is that it is not “real,” then – in Matrix-esque fashion – we are called to ask how we should define “real.” If a person has genuine insights or intense spiritual experiences engaging in vocational discernment with a technology that can instantaneously generate increasingly relevant responses to prompts, then what is the locus of reality that is missing?

Some insights emerge when we think about how our spiritual traditions (in my case, Christian theology) have sought to describe genuine connection. Many of the more affective terms (e.g. feeling understood, feeling synchronicity between two entities, etc.) are, I would suggest, increasingly plausible through connection with AI. In other words, if “real” connection comes from feeling truly connected, then there is no reason to think that AI technologies will not be able to replicate and perhaps even surpass person-to-person connection on that front in the near future. However, Christian theology has also described genuine human interaction, not simply as feelings of connection, but the experience of correction – specifically, the realization that the Other with whom I am engaged is not simply a screen on which to project my own desires (Feuerbach-style), but a genuinely different consciousness than my own, one that is not plastic or shapeable to my own desires. One that can push back, one that can free us from the prisons of our own minds – especially when we do not recognize our subtle and not-so-subtle twisting of external realities for our internal desires.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his masterful book on Christian community Life Together, argued (in a manner surprising for a German Lutheran of his time) for the restoration of individual confession and absolution among Protestants for precisely this reason. He pointed out that, if I am only making confession to God in the solitude of private prayer, it would be easy to shape God into a self-serving idea for my own justification. However, the presence of another human being as confessor forces me to engage that which – unlike the idea of God – resists my subtle twists into idolatry, namely, the flesh and blood human other. For Bonhoeffer, the reality of God is iconically present in the reality of the human other.

Theological conversations around AI will necessarily evolve as the technology does. But we would be wise to make sure that talk of genuine connection incorporates insight around the blessedly “hard” facticity of the human Other as its own gift of freeing ourselves from ourselves.

Robert Saler is Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Detail of “Legacy (Uterus, Ovaries and Fallopian Tubes),” Christine J. Holton, 2021, Mixed media, currency and credit cards on canvas, The Corpus Chromatic Series

I spent forty days in a cocoon of care in 2023 after the arrival of my firstborn. This convalescence was a prescription by my mother and the closest thing to a command that she could issue to me. Zuo yuezi, or “sitting the month,” is a centuries-old Chinese postpartum tradition that originated from necessity and poverty. It centres the healing of the birthing parent even over the primacy of the newborn, and it requires the administration of an elder – usually one’s own mother or mother-in-law. During this time, the new parent eats restorative foods, spends most of their time in or near their bed, and delegates most responsibilities to family and community.

Today, yuezi feels like a luxury.

My own mother was not so fortunate. She and my father brought us into the world in fierce and costly independence, separated from family and isolated from community. My mother believed that the postpartum health challenges she faced could have been avoided had she experienced a yuezi after each birth. And so, she was the conductor of mine, determined that I wouldn’t suffer as she did.

The Chinese are not unique for their postpartum healing practices. In Mexico, birthing parents experience a cuaranta. In Nigeria, the Igbo tradition of omugwo serves a similar purpose. In Germany, people undertake wochenbett, or literally, “weeks in bed.”

But I come from the United States, where we lack a national mandate for paid postpartum leave, let alone a standard of quality postpartum health care. Many working postpartum parents are expected to return to the workforce after two or four weeks of rest, at which point some are still bleeding and unable to lift weights, running on the potent fumes of a postpartum hormonal cocktail. Postpartum health policy in the U.S. seems to indicate that bearing and raising children are less valuable activities than economic participation. The increasing nuclearization of middle-class family units means that many non-parents are unaware of the immense labour required to support new parents and their babies.

The specifics of zuo yuezi arose from an agricultural context: avoid bathing because of the scarcity of clean water; eat rich foods because of the demands of subsistence; rest because the alternative is strenuous labour. And yet, its observance today can feel more like privilege than necessity because so many new parents go without comfort and community.

My own yuezi included traditional Chinese foods meant to restore my strength and fill the emptiness that birth created. It also included the provision of our church and the friends who came to walk our dog and talk to us. It included the loving touch of a doula who taught and held us. And crucially, it included paid time off for both my wife and me.

In the midst of my yuezi, I couldn’t separate gratitude from guilt. I was weaker than I thought I’d be. My sleep was fractured by night wakings, frequent pumping, and the adrenaline and cortisol that flood the body after birth. “And this,” I thought, “was my experience even with the best of care.”

The guilt and gratitude, the intense need, and the relinquishment of control, created a coil of questions about privilege and responsibility:

Should I prioritize my own rest when what is asked of me is paramount? How can I rest when I’m painfully aware of parents who undertake the same ordeal with fewer resources than I have?

Is interdependency a sufficient response to my own need? Is interdependency a sufficient answer to the needs of others?

What are my material and spiritual duties to others who will become parents – and to my community at large?

Zuo yuezi was an experience of unparalleled learning: I was mothered as I became a mother. Popular wisdom in the U.S. assured me that rest is important because it better prepares me to work: to be of service to my family and society. I could not pour from an empty cup, I learned. But during my yuezi, I watched and fell in love with my daughter who spent much of her days sleeping. Meanwhile, I frequently heard my own mother’s demands that I rest. I believe now that we deserve to rest, in our postpartum days and otherwise, not only because it makes us better members of our families and society, but because we inherently need it as beloved creatures of God.

On this side of those acute postpartum days, I also see with more tenderness that interdependency is not a sign of weakness; it’s the fruit of connectedness. I told our doula, “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

With her hands over mine, she replied, “You could have. But you shouldn’t have to.”

Zuo yuezi is like many health measures that work: an uncomfortable tangle of privilege and necessity, and an invitation to advocacy. What we truly need to be well is too often out of reach.

Individualism taught me to accept others’ deprivation as my fault, as though I alone were capable of the systemic change necessary to transform postpartum care. But what I’m learning through my own matrescence is that there’s a difference between fault and responsibility. We are our mothers’ keepers. Or, more accurately, we can co-create a better reality for other parents.

Those first weeks in bed, I often turned to prayer to bridle my sleepless postpartum imagination. I thought of the many stories of Jesus healing. They include a woman who bled without ceasing; a man at the baths of Bethesda who was paralyzed; and a Samaritan woman at a well who was healed not from a physical ailment but from misconceptions by her peers. In many of these stories of healing, the outcast receives not only the wellness they desire but also the chance to be reconciled to their community. The logical outcome of healing was that the healed became the apostles – the first bearers of good news. Light crept out from under a bushel.

To tell the good news in our own context includes testifying before our elected officials to advocate for paid family leave. It includes letters to the editor, grassroots advocacy efforts, local organizing, and more. In our workplaces, it provokes us to review our benefits for gender equity and maximized paid time off. It encourages us to fight for policies from which we may never benefit but that will ease the way of new parents to come. And it invites us to step boldly into the circle of care for those whose families are about to expand.
We could do this alone. We could do this without each other. But we shouldn’t have to.

To share the good news of postpartum care done well includes telling the story of our healing. It includes being unashamed of our interdependency. Zuo yuezi and other postpartum care practices dispel the myth of independence and resurrect the global, age-old story of how we heal: together, cyclically, yes – for our children’s sake, and for the sake of our own wholeness.

Ophelia Hu Kinney lives in Maine with her wife and daughter. She is a child of Chinese immigrants.

Detail of “Divine Autonomy,” Christine J. Holton, 2021, Mixed media, 24 x 36 inches, The Corpus Chromatic Series

To begin, I need to confess that I didn’t grow up all that involved in the faith that had been given to me as an infant. I was baptized, but for a variety of reasons we never really did much with it. I share that to say this: I didn’t grow up thinking that God and modern medicine were opposed in any way. I was not taught to be suspicious of doctors or pills or anything of the sort. Quite the opposite, really. It wasn’t until I was older, in my 20s, that I started taking my faith seriously and began to ponder this question about the relationship between faith and medicine.

If I pray, am I affecting a medical outcome? What does it mean to pray for healing? What about my mental health? If I have Bipolar 2 (which I do), am I possessed by some demon? Some days feel like that. Should I also be seeking the help of an exorcist alongside the help of a psychiatrist? So many questions. I have also worked in the hospital and hospice setting as a chaplain. What is that work all about if prayer isn’t curative?

Recently, I started a new position. Because of the healthcare system in the U.S., this new job meant I needed to switch insurance providers and pharmacists. I take several medications for chronic mental illness. Running out would be a very bad thing. I endeavoured to make sure I did not run out during this transition. As fate or providence or inadequate health care would have it, I did run out. I ended up spending a month without my medication. Suddenly, the mental health I had been enjoying had been shattered. I was manic and insomniac.

I didn’t pray for healing. I knew where healing would come. Instead, I asked for God to sustain me in the midst of the madness. I asked God to stay with me. I didn’t ask for
promises. I didn’t ask for relief. And yet this old chestnut kept popping up in my head.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff comfort me.

Psalm 23 from the Coverdale Psalter found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer . . . I’ve sung it a thousand times and it’s the version I find myself praying when times get tough. It is God’s comforting staff.

For so long, I feared my mental illness. “My brain wants me dead,” I would say. But this time I could simply say, “I’m sick and I need medicine.” Healing. Wholeness. Peace.

This came in the form of my therapist keeping me grounded while I flailed around in my manic state. It came in the form of the various skills I have learned (mindfulness, meditation, etc.) over the years. I nagged my new pharmacist. I nagged my psychiatrist. Daily, I called and prodded. “Someone please do something here!”

I have enjoyed good mental health for the past few years. It’s gone so well that I recently asked my psychiatrist if I should begin to titrate off of my medication. “No. Let’s not fuck with fine,” he said. Strong words, but they proved to be almost prophetic as I struggled to find my footing without my meds. With the assistance of a broken medical system, I had fucked around and found out.

The disappointment and shame I felt was overwhelming. How am I supposed to parent with a brain like this? How am I supposed to be a good spouse? And let’s not forget that I am required to make a living somehow. Late capitalism in the U.S. is voracious and expects sacrifice. There is an almost ritualistic quality to its demanding rhythm. To survive one must produce and consume. Produce. Consume. Ad nauseam.

The LORD is my shepherd
therefore can I lack nothing.

How am I supposed to hear this promise? Is this a panacea against the ills of corrupt economics? Perhaps. Again, the psalm would not let me go. Faith has its own call, its own demands, that are often contrary to our lived reality. The psalm takes an almost revolutionary tone.

Thou shalt prepare a table before me
in the presence of them that trouble me.

I appreciate the language here. It’s not “enemies” but “them that trouble me.” These are troublesome adversaries. One need not look for malice. One need not go that far. And the troubles, they come.

No one was out to get me. This turn of events was a systemic failure, the fruit of greed and false compromises to be certain, but not a malicious attack. Trouble, indeed. There was no one person to blame. There was no one at fault. And that reality proved more troubling to me than if someone had been trying to hurt me.

Systems have an ephemeral quality to them. Once they begin to work against you, they can be hard to shut down as there is often no one person to contend with. So, this promise of God’s to prepare a table before me in the presence of them that trouble me is even more surprising. In the face of all manner of systemic trouble, God promises a table.

God promises to sustain us. That theme is constant. The covenant here is the covenant that God has made with all creation. If you wish to seek God’s presence in a time of trouble, one only need to seek from where sustenance comes.

Surely thy loving-kindness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life;

We must look for loving-kindness. That is where God is. Even in the midst of trouble, there is loving-kindness to be found. For me, it was the kindness of a supervisor who covered for me when I needed to take time off. It was the support of family and friends whose righteous indignation gave voice to my own, who gave me permission to cry out, “No!” and “Help!” It was in the invitation to write.

So, back to all the questions at the beginning of this missive . . . I don’t really have answers to them. But I am beginning to see a promise, a theme, emerging where God sustains. God sustains as Godself and through those I am in community with . . . “and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

Tripp Hudgins (he/him) is a former Baptist minister living life as an Episcopal layperson in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife and son.

“All Beings Celebrate Creation”, Emmy Brett, October 2023, Collage with words by Hildegard von Bingen translated by Gabriele Ulhein, 6 x 6 inches

Koinonia Mutual Aid, founded by marginalized faith leaders, centres its mission on healing through community and relationships. A bold message resonates on its website: “All We Need is Each Other.” This emphasizes the power of solidarity within our community.

Membership in Koinonia is open to LGBTQIA+ and/or BIPOC faith leaders. One can also become a sustainer by providing financial support to both Koinonia and its members. Furthermore, there’s a fund available to reimburse members for various expenses, extending beyond emergencies to cover everyday needs like a cup of coffee or a relaxing massage.

Among the valuable resources provided by Koinonia is the concept of pods. Pods are made up of people who can offer support to help members navigate life events or transitions, particularly crucial during times of trauma when isolation can be overwhelming.

I’ve experienced the benefits of a pod as I prepared for gender-affirming top surgery. The wisdom and support of my pod members have been truly invaluable. Koinonia has also assisted me in raising funds to offset surgery costs and promote overall wellness. This community has empowered me to seek help in ways I never thought possible, allowing my folks to rally behind me. The relationships I’ve cultivated within Koinonia have been life changing.

Faith leaders often grapple with conflicting demands and antiquated institutional policies that overlook unique needs. We are asked to place others’ needs above our own and are unclear about where to look for support when the same institution that promises to support us is also tasked with disciplining us. Koinonia Mutual Aid grants us the time and space to forge connections, dream collectively, and offer unwavering support. It’s a place for growth, mutual learning, and mutual support.

The need for community care and mutual aid is at an all-time high. We yearn for spaces where we are nurtured, understood, and can both unravel and practise asking for assistance. These spaces provide refuge for saying, “I’m not okay,” met with responses like “Tell me more” and “I’m here.”

Koinonia Mutual Aid fulfills this need, fostering a community where relationships, support, and care are prioritized.

Margarette Ouji (she/they) is a trans/queer Iranian pastor and crochet enthusiast striving for a liberated community grounded in ancestral wisdom and good food.

Detail of “And Despite Everything I’m Still Human”, Robert Valiente-Neighbours

On my first day as a student chaplain, I stood outside the Health Care for the Homeless Program (HCHP), suddenly terrified. I was six months pregnant. While I excitedly anticipated this placement for my Clinical Pastoral Education practicum, my idealism bumped up against my racism and privilege. HCHP was in a section of Washington, D.C. many said to avoid. I pressed the doorbell and waited to be let in while my mind and body urged me to flee.

It was the summer of 1995, over a decade into the AIDS epidemic. HCHP provided meals, counselling, and health care to unhoused men living with HIV. The placement felt like a perfect match as I had entered seminary, feeling called to serve as an HIV and AIDS chaplain. I came into adulthood when the AIDS epidemic was decimating communities marginalized by homophobia, racism, addiction, sexual exploitation, and poverty. Witnessing the AIDS quilt in front of the Washington Monument – the panels of names of the dead covering the size of a football field – affirmed my call to serve those ravaged by this terrible disease.

My awkward start continued once I entered the building. HCHP never had a chaplain before. Nurses and social workers had no clear role for me while they were busy caring for their clients. Even the director had little time for an overwhelmed seminarian. Eventually, he told me gently, “Just sit and listen.”

I sat at the table with the 20 or so men who had my pastoral care foisted upon them. At first, no one spoke to me directly. Then, one-by-one, they invited me into conversation, opening my heart as they opened theirs.

James shared stories of what he believed to be encounters with the devil, embodied by the drug dealer waving a packet of heroin on the street corner. He asked if I would pray for him to withstand this constant temptation.

Fred imagined the meals he would prepare in a home of his own, each ingredient carefully described.

Nathan, the one openly gay man, carried a gold lamé pillow to rest his arm, aching from the port inserted for his intravenous treatments. That pillow provided startling elegance amid the beat-up tables and ragged rugs.

Most beloved was Peanut, a small gentleman living with HIV who made us laugh with his wild stories. He withdrew into himself when he became diagnosed with AIDS. During my visits with him at the hospital, we silently watched the dialysis machine relentlessly clean the blood in his body.

Surprisingly, it was the new life I carried that connected us. The men shared stories of their children and grandchildren, of love and family – heartbreaking in loss and astounding in depth. I returned the following spring with my infant son to meet the men who blessed him so.

That summer, patients in the AZT trials experienced what some considered a miracle and called the “Lazarus effect.” Medical science transformed an HIV or AIDS diagnosis from a death sentence into a serious, but treatable, chronic condition. However, for those who suffered and died, and the many ignored and even outcast by their families and communities, the miracle didn’t come fast enough. It was too late for Peanut and several other men I came to know.

Standing in the stairwell that first day, I embodied the fear of being made “unclean” by people already outcasts, some even before being diagnosed with HIV or AIDS. Responding to God’s deeper call, I stepped through and found my heart transformed and humbled by these remarkable men – a heart made clean.

Ellen Rowse Spero lives in Acton, Massachusetts, with her spouse, Josh, and their two dogs. She has been serving the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Chelmsford, Massachusetts since 2002.

“The Future Is Mutual Aid,” Olly Costello, 2020, An Expanding Sense of Self Series, mollycostello.com

I think it started when I first felt my own humanity being diminished. Not that I understood my feelings or had the words for them as a 6-year-old eager to be accepted at my new school. I came to the United States as a foreigner, or at least it was made clear that I was seen as one. What started back then was a sense of rebellion, protest – to fight against the box I was being put in, and the injustice of being regarded as something less than human because of how I looked.

It grew significantly when I experienced, as a teenager, how it feels when people dismiss you when you’re vulnerable, scared, and trusting others to provide care. I was with my mother, who was suffering from a debilitating illness, at doctor’s appointments. We were hoping for answers yet finding that a diagnosis and effective treatments were elusive. Perhaps it was some combination of overwhelming workloads and a lack of training and resources, but it was clearly felt that my mother was neither seen nor heard at multiple clinics because she was a “foreigner.” I went from scared to angry and started searching for how I could fight against the unjust forces in front of me.

That fight was also nurtured at church where I connected my faith to being called to fight for justice. My faith tells me that believing in the greater good in the world requires contributing to that greater good and fighting for justice. By the time I was in those clinics with my mom, I knew that too many of us would continue to experience being treated more as objects than humans, but I was still taken aback. How could these sacred places, the clinics dedicated to healing, where individuals in vulnerable states would have to detail their personal stories, allow for humanity’s injustice to pour in?

I now find myself in middle age, with knowledge and experience that there is no place that is free from the injustices we’ve created and perpetuated as a people. Working to enforce civil rights laws as an attorney, then turning my focus to health care, I learned the insidious ways that structural racism has touched every notable facet of our society. I also learned that unless we actively fight against it, we are complicit in how injustice is perpetuated. This is why I work in health care, to fight for justice.

Health disparities abound, reflecting the systemic injustices replete in the everyday experience of whole communities across the U.S. Black people have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension than white people. When it comes to death rates, Black people are more likely than white people to die from cancer and pregnancy. Black children have a 500% higher death rate from asthma compared to white children. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black, Hispanic, and Asian people had substantially higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death compared to white people.

These stark statistics demonstrate the immense work we must do, including ensuring that every human has safe spaces that support their health and well-being. Consider how discriminatory housing policies led to disproportionate numbers of Black people living in areas where toxic substances in the air and water are more likely, and access to health care more challenging. Our failure to fight and halt unjust practices and policies perpetuates preventable suffering and loss. We are all called to fight for justice, which will ultimately reform institutions like healthcare.

Annie Lee, JD (she/her) is a first generation Korean American and lives in Denver, Colorado. She is CEO of Colorado Access, a non-profit health plan.

"The Andean condor soars," flyingfabi CC, Cañón del Colca, Peru, December 2020

Coffee & tumbao to greet
the morning. Conga & trombone to gather
steam. Campana & timbal to whittle
down the cerebral buzz
with sticks that tap
into an overwhelming breadth
& compress a 500-year-old history
of gold-eating
men into a single bite
size invocation that erupts
into trumpets
that push my gaze
not beyond the Basque & the Spanish
& yet bask
in the height of Huayna
Picchu

where I squint
at the absurd nine foot
wingspan of a bird that can fly
upwards of five hours without so much as a flap
of its black wings
& my ancestors
grasped the vastness of God in the condor —
how its immeasurable flight
could widen eyes
to the height & depth & breadth
of the cosmos.
Just imagine if my opposing forefathers
had seen. Imagine if you could read
this poem
in Quechua.

Alfonso Sito Sasieta is a mixed, white-adjacent Peruvian-American poet and dancer. Sito works in a L’Arche community and performs with the acclaimed Cuban dance company, DC Casineros.

“Samhain altar” Credit: Pat Kight CC, Monteith, Albany, Oregon, November 2009

The Gaelic festival of Samhain marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter.

The Gaelic festival of Samhain marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. During Samhain, it is said that the veil between worlds thins and the spirits of the dead cross over into the land of the living. Traditionally, Samhain is a time to communicate with ancestors. This liturgy is written for those who are fighting for radical social change – whether activist collectives, affinity groups, churches, or families – to look to their roots and to honour the diverse origins and ancestries of the social movements to which they belong.

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Preparing a People’s History Altar

To begin, you may create a spirit altar that celebrates history from below. You can place flowers; votive candles; autumnal foods; a beverage, such as water or wine to serve as a libation; and pictures of any radical leaders, popular social movements, or revolutionary events you wish to commemorate.

Let us reflect for a moment on the long, powerful lineage of the struggle for freedom – freedom from the violence of racial capitalism, colonialism, and empire; freedom to live with dignity, autonomy, and self-determination. Silence.

Invocation

Let us name our ancestors in this struggle.
Each participant may name a revolutionary figure or movement that has inspired them, e.g. Lucy Parsons, the Young Lords, etc., while lighting a candle on the altar. With each name, respond:
We remember and call out to you.
As we face the darker half of the year,
we also face dark times in our world:
imperialist wars, rising fascism,
ecocide, climate apartheid.
on the long road to liberation. *We invite you into this space,
to surround us, to bless us, to protect us,
to walk among us as comrades and kin.
We call out to you, our forerunners
We welcome your wisdom
into our lives and into our movements.
We summon your hidden histories
and untold stories
of subversion, of strikes and sabotage,
of community organizing,
of riot and rebellion
and revolution.*

Litany of Gratitude

We have reaped an abundant harvest
from the seeds you already planted
in the wild gardens of history.
We have learned so much from
your visions and victories,
as well as your missteps and your mistakes.
We celebrate each element of your movements:

The organizers and educators among you,
We celebrate you.

The artists and poets,
We celebrate you.

The mothers and grandmothers and matriarchs,
We celebrate you.

The warriors and the guerrillas,
We celebrate you.

The others who we now name:
Participants may offer other gratitude.
We celebrate you.

All of the freedom fighters
who laid down your lives
for the sake of a future you would not live to see,
We honour you, we mourn for you.

Participants may pour out their libations, either onto the earth, if outside, or into a bowl on the altar.

Closing Prayer: To Be Good Future Ancestors

“When I say, ‘Ancestors, use me,’ what I mean is, ‘I surrender my life to you.’” – adrienne maree brown

Ancestors, may the Spirit of
struggle live on through us,
guide us toward collective action
to dismantle the systems that harm us,
and build the society we dream of,
so we may be good future ancestors
to the generations that will inherit the Earth.

As we enter the winter,
may we embolden our resistance.
As the days grow shorter,
may our imaginations stretch further.
As the nights grow colder,
may our hearts burn stronger.
As the leaves fall, may we rise.
For the veil is thin
between the world as it is
and the world as it could be.
Let us seize that possibility.

Amen.

Matthew Kennedy (he/they) is an organizer with a political education collective in Cleveland, Ohio (Erie land) and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.

"Sunset at Rockville Cemetery," John Brighenti CC, Rockville, Maryland, March 2023

Here’s to the ancestors

who struggled
and survived
and did harm
because they didn’t know how not to
because they were beholden to lies
about who doesn’t deserve safety.
Whose stories get told as if they were good,
instead of as heartbreaking tales
of no good choices
or as cautionary tales.
Because of you,
I know to be more aware
of the family I’m not taught
are family.

Here’s to the ancestors
who resisted
who stood up
and were beaten down
only to stand again.
The ancestors whose stories
are whispered
at best
if we’re lucky
or who hide between the lines
if we are skilled enough
to spot disability
queerness
race traitor tendencies.
Because of you,
I know that to be hidden
might be because I’m
the right kind
of dangerous.

Here’s to the ancestors
who suffered
because they were
women
queer
different
dark
vibrating on a higher
and therefore wrong
plane.
Whose stories
maybe get told
as tragic romantic
instead of rage inducing
warnings of the violent world
we still inhabit.
Because of you,
I know I am called
to stand with people like you
because they are also
people like me.

Here’s to the ancestors
who don’t share blood
except the long-ago ancestral blood
of the motherland.
The ones who showed us
another world is possible.
The ones who risked it all for us
because we belonged to them beyond blood
beyond legacy
beyond caste and class and race.
The ones they forget to tell us
are also our ancestors.
Because of you
I know
I need to be
the ancestor
that all the descendants on earth
deserve.

Sandhya Jha is a light-skinned mixed race South Asian American queer Disciples of Christ pastor and the author of_Rebels, Despots, and Saints: The Ancestors Who Free Us and the Ancestors We Need to Free. _Sandhya is the founder of the Oakland Peace Center on occupied Ohlone territory. They are currently working on a PhD in social policy in Philadelphia. They love jam sessions even though their guitar playing is only meh.

“We Are Each Other’s Wings” Credit: Angelica Frausto, 2021, Digital

The Spirit of Miz Patty-O Furniture draws me into a valley full of dry bones.

Miz Patty-O struts among the bones, still donning their grass green beehive, pink flamingo crown, and lawn chair props they wore on stage before. Before the diagnosis. Before the pneumocystis. Before the AIDS that stripped flesh from bone. Bone to ash.
The valley is strewn with thousands of parched bones, scrutinized by an oblivious sun. This valley is known by many names: Club Q, Pulse Club, Ward 5B, The
Upstairs Lounge.
Come here, Child of the Most Fabulous, Miz Patty-O’s words whoosh like a powerful wind blowing back a curtain. They snap their fingers at me. Go water these bones with your tears. And bring your people.
I have no tears left, and there is no one here but me, trails from my mouth, just as a queer multitude accordions out behind me. Shaved heads and wigs, heavy boots and spiked heels, propel us out into the valley like catwalking down a runway. DJ beats pulsing as we move among the bones.
Miz Patty-O’s raspy voice sings out, Prophesy. Prophesy to these bones. Make these bones live.
A dam unleashes out from us, water streaming down our faces, soaking the dry bones. Drenching the valley. Tears causing rhythmic beats to thump up from the ground.
Thump, thump, thump, up. Thump, thump, thump, up. Bones rattling, reassembling. Sinews returning. Fleshy bodies regenerating and rising up from the valley floor. Reemerging faces of Sylvia and Marsha P., Sylvester, and Christopher Lee. Audre, Bobbie Jean, Harvey, Joe Rose, Leslie, and Riven. Thousands standing up like queer monuments in the valley. Clad in swirls of black, purple, magenta, and clown fish orange. Mixed ruffles, leather, plaids, paisleys, denim, and gold lamé. Costumes morphing, shapeshifting to remixed jams. Flesh begins to tap, to snap, to bend, to dip, swivel in full rhythm, then full sweat to the dance beats. The whole valley vibrating, tectonic plates shifting, groaning, lush, and untamed.
Miz Patty-O, hand on sequined hip, belts out, Prophesy with your breath.
Buoyed by bass rhythms, a chorus of ancestors calls out in response: Receive this risen army of queer ancestors. To our trans and non-binary descendants, take our bones as armor. Carry our flint hearts as protection in your pockets. Adorn your ears and tongues with us.

Remember. We are. Still here. Always. Becoming.

Carol Robison is a queer white elder, ritualist, and altarist, working at the intersection of ancestral lineage healing, genealogy, and cultural repair. Carol lives on Ohlone land, also known as Oakland, California.

Detail of “A Prayer for Release” by Zelda Edmunds, 2023

Grandma’s teachers would slap a ruler across her mouth if she was ever caught whispering in anything but English.

When Grandma started school, she only spoke Norwegian. They literally slapped her first words out of her mouth.

Many years before I knew that story, I was taking Norwegian college courses and I remember coming to her excited about learning the “mother tongue.” I was attempting to connect with my roots and to Grandma in a deeper way. I expected her to be excited for me. I thought she would be interested in conversation, in helping me try out the new words in my mouth. She wasn’t.

Until I knew more of her story, I simply brushed my grandmother’s lack of enthusiasm off as her forgetting – she didn’t want to talk Norwegian with me because she didn’t remember the language. What I never imagined as a young college student was that maybe she didn’t remember because the language, a link to family and a homeland only two generations past, had been forcibly removed from her lips and replaced with the only way she was allowed to speak: “white.”

A decade later, after a series of falls and as depression slowly swallowed her, she was forced to leave her home of 64 years. For months after, she sat in anguished silence. I realize now that it was not just words shut up inside of her it was ancestors. They too had lost their voice, culture, stories, and songs.

Feeling my way into my grandmother’s story means trans-generational healing. Embodying that healing in my own life makes possible ancestral liberation and a future beyond whiteness. It means solidarity with those of Grandma’s generation who endured Native American boarding schools and with immigrant peoples of today who are also forced to forsake their languages. It means recovering the languages of my ancestors for collective transformation.

Craig Simenson is of Norse, Celtic, and Germanic peoples. He grew up on Ho-Chunk, Kickapoo, and Meskwaki homelands in Wisconsin. He lives with his wife and daughters (one named after Grandma) in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“Laughing dove in flight,” Hari K Patibanda CC, 2021

Habibi, we’ve been travellers since before we were born.

Ten thousand specks of infinity, all the eggs we will ever carry, were already inside us when we were born.

Pigeons, al-hammem b’il 3rabiyya, crowded the sidewalks in Brooklyn, New York as great-grandfather Kherbawi’s black priest robe brushed over shit stains. My people were Syrian Orthodox priests who brought their flock to Amreeka. First wave Arab immigrants and yet it was almost 20 years before I learned the precious love-word habibi. Learned to whisper it in my grandmother’s ear to relax her Florida-browned shoulders, ball bearings beneath a thin polyester caftan.

Pigeons and doves are the same, really. Most languages don’t have different names for them. Imagine that you’re a dove all your life, and then you move to a new place and you’re a pigeon. How do you raise your new pigeon children?

Storks, pelargos in Greek . . . their migration patterns bring them to Turkey. Ours too. We left Greece for the sake of an empire, for the sake of a cultural expansion. Centuries later, your great-grandfather Theodore came here to Ameriki. From ancient colonizers to fleeing for their lives. You’re born where you’re born, right? We make the best of what we inherit, re-learn languages that were un-taught but never forgot. I can only assume. The gap left behind by what was never mine to remember still feels like failure.

Doves and ravens, (yonah and korax in Hebrew), searched for dry land after the flood. The Torah is full of imagination. She taught me that to trust something outside of ourselves can be what saves us. Our people were Jews in shtetls, rabbis and beauticians, diaspora to Amerike. Bubbeleh for real, we were more Jew than country residents, citizens, or anything like now – escaping pogroms. The identities don’t always line up with the boxes on the form.

And like the wind under wings, coasting for a rest, identity shifts. As an adult I learned that my mother sang the shema every night while she was growing up. Where had her Judaism gone, I wondered? When you’re raised within it, she told me, assimilation isn’t something you can see.

At the flower farm in Detroit, Michigan goldfinches eat thistledowns. Their bobbing yellow-black flights look like time flowing, bumpy and beautiful. Pheasants warble every morning and remind me to return to the empty place where G-d lives. What, just because it’s vacant you think nothing holy happens there?

Habibi, bubbeleh, sweet darling. It takes such faith to believe that life persists where we cannot see it. We wish to record it all, to affirm our path with relics. There are empty robin eggs on the sidewalk, shells a fragile blue recollection of life held. May their memories be for blessings. May we find faith to believe we are enough as we wing.

_Sarah Marika Pappas (she/they) writes, parents, gardens, and learns in Waawiiyaatanong, Detroit, Michigan. Pappas is white, of Greek, Arab, and Jewish ancestry, and grateful to live in a both/and time, resisting either/or. _

“Transported back to childhood,” marneejill CC, 2016

I’m not sure what to do when the positions are switched like this. You are standing there, person whose body created me and my brothers, my long lost sister, too. Rage has beat against you your whole life, tightening muscles against bone. You are the one whose moods and migrations determined our days. This has shaped all of us, this culture of fear and caution that taught us to be conflict negotiators, to cajole laughter out of the angriest of strangers. Now, on this day, you are sputtering with anger. I am watching you. In the middle of your rage, someone smaller seeps out and enters the room. Someone confused, afraid.

Many years ago I read an essay by Tim Wise about his radical grandmother, an anti-racist organizer who began spewing a stream of hateful white supremacist crap after Alzheimer’s impacted her sense of self and memory. Wise reflected that after she had forgotten the faces and names of her grandchildren, what his grandmother still remembered was the violence that shaped her early life. It would have horrified her.

I remember this essay as I watch you shrink into apology and shame. It’s like a hall of mirrors; anything I say is just another entry point to “I’m sorry” and “I shouldn’t have” and “I’m sorry” again. I’m watching you and remembering that when I was the small one, alone in my bed, this is what I wished for, this quick contraction that might have taken you from a big scary monster to the one who was trembling below the sheets.

On this day, here you are, getting smaller with each word. It’s not what I hoped for. I don’t like how it feels – this switching of sides.

We are not alone in this room. There are ghosts around you. I can hear them scream. You are nothing, you are nothing, you will never be anything. They tell you that you will always be alone. That you should give up, disappear. That each time you try to get bigger in that wild way that revels in the feeling of its own life, each time you do this, you will be beaten, you will be shamed. How dare you leave us to come into your own?

When I was small and your rage would fill the air in our lungs and the feeling of our skin, I knew those ghosts were there. I would whisper to myself, this is not her, she is not like this, this is a Spirit inside that is making her do this and then do that. I don’t know why I knew that someone else was in there with you, but I did. It is what kept me loving you when I would have been justified in stopping.

It takes so much energy to build structures on top of the terrors and loneliness so that we move through our days as though we are strong. These structures have to be constantly tended, in the same way that public relations firms and advertising agencies reframe white supremacy as logical. Rational. How things always will be. Our wildest selves, the selves that came through at birth as part of Spirit and ancestor’s dreams, are good at sniffing out the bullshit. It takes so much energy to turn those wild selves into the ones who obey, who fight without teeth, who are too alone to topple what is keeping us apart.

As you are nearing the end of this life, that attention is gone. You are tired and the walls are tumbling. The lift-up energy that finds a way to fight without stopping every second of every day, it’s failing, falling, and what is left is what was always there: a small frightened child.

I am sorry, you say, implying with body and words that you should never have been born.

I sit in your living room, relearning what it is to love you. I don’t forget what your rage has done – this has nothing to do with words like forgiveness or accountability. It’s just that the memories keep moving into a conversation of generations, one after another. What does it say about a people who believe that the only way to keep their children safe is to make them afraid of the ones who say they love them? Because this is what our ancestors did. Not intentionally or strategically, but in the same way that evolution works. Slowly, one action or inaction at a time.

I believe that a community that lives in a good way centres the children. We centre a child’s wonder, learning, simplicity, and clarity about how all is connected. We centre the certainty of their touch when the connection goes wonky. And we need more. We also need to centre the generational comet’s tail that streaks behind each one of our young. It’s there, even when the children are small and tender and trust those of us who care for them implicitly. These tails take far longer than a few years of solid love to disappear entirely. It is not my child or your child, it is our children, backwards and forward.

The fact that these littles – these small mewling things – come through with an infinite capacity for wonder and love and rage and grief, just as all wild things who remember they are part of a pack do, is a constant gift. It’s a gift that says, always but always, we are more than what has torn at us. We are more than the weapons that some of us have wielded.

The wee ones, when they first come through, bring us possibility. The old ones, when they become small and unfinished again, show us what is still here. They show us the wisdom we want to lift up and claim or, more often, that which is preventing us from a song of something bigger. The hurt of it. The break of it. This is when we learn what is still in the way, what wants to be healed and transformed, so that we can refind the sound and shape of coming home.

Susan Raffo lives on Dakota land in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A writer, cultural worker, and bodyworker, she is the author of Liberated to the Bone .

Endangered Species Series

“Bleeding Toad,” Mabel Wylie-Eggert, 4 Bleeding toads are solitary except in the breeding season when they gather in a huge numbers at the pond.