share your spiritual biography in 10 words, or less:

Ever-opening to remain a full-hearted, deeply feeling being

where are you turning for soul nourishment / joy / aliveness?

I am turning to movement. In movement, I remember the tenderness and felt glow of being in my black, queer, trans bodyself. I sense into the vitality and the limits of flesh. I embrace that all is in motion and it is a gift to participate heartily in this flow. I bring movement into the everyday-ness of my life (in a car on a long ride, in a chair while working) and more recently, into my art. I am nourished as I feel the wind move against my limbs, the solid ground beneath my feet, the sweat that sometimes collects in new and tried places. I have recently become 40 years old, and I am even more committed to never stop getting my life on a dance floor (a dance floor is any floor that can receive my movement).  

what is a text you hold sacred?

The lyrics to “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley and the Wailers (especially as it was performed live at the Rainbow Theater in London, June 4, 1977). Within these words I deepen into the sacredness of the fight, the fury in the call-and-response war cry, the urgency toward action and togetherness. I am struck by the fierce beauty of these words being in song to be passed on and on for years to come.

what is a spiritual practice currently sustaining you?

Perceiving awe. Particularly, taking the time to relish in the gift of being with someone i love. Opening to be wowed by the beauty of being with like-hearted people. Connecting with non-human beings and knowing our oneness. Leaning into the wonder that comes with sitting with nature, especially the elders— a great body of water or a shady, deeply rooted tree, birds— and those new to the earth — a seedling or a new plant, a baby, a kitten.  

how would you describe the work you feel called to do in this world (even if it is not the work you get paid for)?

To learn and to communicate the learnings by all means that move me.

knowing that none of us “has it all together,” what is one question you are wrestling with, or bit of wisdom you are struggling to enflesh in your daily life?

I wonder how do we hold all of this, especially the hard parts. I sense the answer is that we hold it in part, and we hold it together, and we hold it in light of the grandness of all that is. Sometimes I am so happy and full that I could explode. Sometimes, so disillusioned and enraged that I could explode. And I wonder how this/your mind-heart-body can hold the realities surrounding my cellular device, the realities of the global violences and destabilizations that enable many U.S. night skies to be quiet, the secrets, evils, and joys within my ancestry, of all that is wasted so that we can have normatively-shaped produce, of the fast-fashion and oil in the ocean to name a few that are with me in this moment of writing. It is a lot. It is too much. And best held and addressed together.

who is one elder / ancestor / mentor whose guidance you draw from? what is one piece of wisdom they have offered?

Toni Morrison, in Beloved, through Baby Suggs, holy says in a hush harbor like Clearing, “…love your heart. For this is the prize.” Learning to love my heart that is housed in this black queer trans person’s body— to tend to its sorrows and pleasures, to nourish it, to ensure its lightness, to allow it breaking (though never wholly because in loving the heart it is persistently mending)— I learn what I believe matters most: remaining a feeling being. And doing so no matter the ways “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (bell hooks) would want to harden or poison my heart. That’s the prize. 

what’s one oppressive untruth you are practicing unlearning / divesting from?

Production > practice. I want to be in the practice of love. In the practice of beauty. In the practice of searching and learning. To value the process and the steady plodding because this is changing me and our worlds more than whatever becomes through or after practice. 

what is one thing you wish were required listening / viewing? (please link to the song, poem, art piece, podcast, etc.)

“Ahya Simone’s “Siren’s Call”
and Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home“

any links we can follow to learn more about you?

instagram: @el.yse.ambrose