By Robert Monson
“If you get there before I do,
Coming for to carry me home;
Tell all my friends I’m coming too,
Coming for to carry me home.”
– Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
We gotta go someplace
Piano melodies fill my home every single morning as the darkness hovers outside. I like to get up early before the sun rises. Not for any inherently spiritual reason, as some would define spirituality at least, other than that it helps my anxiety. My hands are steadier when I have a space and time to myself before the world awakens. This period of time that takes place before the sun rises is clarifying for me and helps me to realize how much discomfort I have inside of me. How much pain I have resting inside. Or…the joys that I have buried from myself. I give myself the gift of time and reflection. Chronic pain and chronic anxiety are part of my companions in the morning as I prepare myself for existing in a new day. Though my morning rituals have certainly evolved each year I age, I started waking up this early as a child because I knew that my body and mind were not in a place to rest. I felt the urge to go someplace well before I could ever articulate that burning need. I needed to go someplace where my own poverty and familial chaos would not be the only things that defined me. I created a safe space for myself in the womb of the morning.
America tells me to go someplace else.
(Back to my own country)
Capitalism tells me to go someplace else.
I remind myself that I can at least go to the place that I have cultivated within.
Loving self-affirmations, poetry, and precious chosen family have helped to change my inner voice.
All of this doesn’t change society quickly of course, but it does change me.
I write these words vulnerably and honestly because I have to speak my own truths as I have learned them. I’m not ashamed of my pain, physical or emotional, even if it doesn’t feel great all of the time. I write my pain in this way because it is the context in which I have learned to nourish myself and care for the well-being of others. I have had to learn how to recover myself and make a home for myself (often within myself) in a world that is bent towards ableism, racism, and cruelty of all forms. I am indebted to bell hooks who once wrote “Before many of us can effectively sustain engagement in organized resistance struggle, in black liberation movement, we need to undergo a process of self-recovery that can heal individual wounds that may prevent us from functioning fully.” These words are a balm when inundated with conflicting internal and external messages. Self-recovery is a work, a vital type of work, because how can we help others recover when we ourselves are lost/fragmented/pulled in opposite directions? In this nourishing work, I am reminded that I have the ability to name myself, free from the gaze of others.
We gotta go someplace when where we are is uninhabitable
We gotta go someplace when dis-ease and chaos is normalized
We gotta go someplace when our hearts are weighed down with cares too big for words
We gotta go someplace because here is not safe.
We gotta go someplace when our dreams beckon us.
We gotta go someplace when we need the generative touch of love.
We gotta go someplace beautiful.
Self-recovery is hard but necessary. My heart is with all of those doing this loving, inner work. I leave you now with words from Toni Morrison’s book Beloved. This scene in the Clearing is sacred to me as I often return to it. Baby Suggs offers this gift to us:
“‘Here,’ she said, ‘in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard… You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved.’”
Robert (he/him) is a runner, musician, and a Black theologian committed to softness, contemplation, and liberation for all. As a recent seminary graduate (with distinction), Robert studied in depth the intersection of Black Liberation Theology and womanist theology. Weaving together these two strands of liberation have been important work as well as other liberation based theologies. “How can we help facilitate community and provide answers to a hurting world that is reeling?” remains an important question in his work. While in school, Robert’s scholarly work was recognized and presented at various national conferences/outlets. Podcasting (two shows) and writing remain important aspects of his daily life as well as marathoning the latest Star Trek show(s).