Hey friends,
I haven’t had much writing time since my announcement a month ago. It’s a summer of transitions as I hand off the co-op and prep to enter academia in the fall. And during summer, my priorities are gathering with community and moving my body out in creation as a member of creation.
My sense is that you can continue to expect a newsletter from my every 2-4 weeks (I continue to be perfectly fine with this “sloppiness” …this isn’t my job and nobody’s paying which sounds like a good reason for no one to stress!). I plan to re-share a couple of my favorite essays and articles that were published in other outlets. I’ll also share some notes and reflections on the books I’m reviewing and reading. And maybe an original essay or two mixed in. Tbd. I hope you’re too restfully busy soaking up the sun to really notice.
Part of this summer pace/content is because I’m focused on a few other writing projects: a piece on a fantastic collection titled Reparations and the Theological Disciplines: Prophetic Voices for Remembrance, Reckoning, and Repair for Pacific Review, another book review of Buried Seeds: Learning from the Vibrant Resilience of Marginalized Christian Communities by Alexia Salvatierra and Brandon Wrencher for Reading Religion, and, finally, because I’m trying to take on some bigger projects with the help of
’s wonderful group writing sprint #1000WordsofSummer.My summer slowdown is also just because life is life.
Two weeks ago when I was sitting in a Houston hospital with my dad (who is now home and doing much better!), it struck me that last year I was writing the first of these Toward Solidarity newsletters in a hospital room in Boston next to my then two week old son who had a bad eye infection. At that time, I wrote a paragraph that remains one of the essential threads I’ve had no choice but to weave into this tapestry of life lived toward solidarity:
There is no more gorgeous crucible than this for becoming tender, all this struggle, this suffering that’s just a part of being mortal. No better way to deepen our capacities and competencies to offer care, learning to embrace the tears always somewhere inside our chest, growing into the lightness and heaviness possible in every moment where joy and lament coexist, where most days are about running errands and cleaning the dishes and life is all the more remarkable because of it. The real trick of being human, perhaps some element even of what we could call the meaning of life, is being in the midst of life as it is and finding more and more the ability to respond in love and inclusion instead of harm and violence. The wounded Christ who gathered a group of wounded folks into a broken community to be God’s healing presence in the world seems to offer just such a strange non-utopic utopia as this. And this is the wild new life I’m yearning for. It’s a messier story of shalom than I’ve shlepped over the past decade of writings but it’s time to grow into it. Where would I rather be then holding this little boy through good days and bad?
Our intimate sufferings and celebrations always flow in the same braided stream of life down which the sufferings and celebrations of historical-political events cascade. The simultaneity of these experiences continues to be remarkable to me. How do we attend to it all, or at least the portion of it which is ours? How do we remain sensitive to both levels: the personal and the political, as feminists taught us? Where does the capacity for “it all” come from in a world with so little support? Can we in good faith pivot back and forth season to season? And how do we attend to the social crises of our times, in the midst of so many of life’s intimate demands, without succumbing to bitterness, callousness, resentment, discouragement, disregard, disillusion, nihilism, power grabbing or cruelty? Or, just as concerning, revert to some version of reactionary self-protective conservatism or technocratism?
The discontinuities and continuities between sick family members and unfolded laundry with class exploitation, political campaigns, climate catastrophes and genocides unfolding in real time are the concrete relational webs out of which our selves are formed and through which we participate in the life of the world. I suppose, as interested as I am in specific liberatory political alternatives and the organizing tactics required to bring them about, I remain equally interested in the intimate geographies within which each of our attempts at practicing solidarity unfold and through which our stories and persons acquire their unique textures. This is, in part, why I’m so fascinated by the relationship between our inner and outer journeys. Perhaps someone somewhere has had a different experience, but I have never participated in a liberatory politic that did not demand a liberatory spirituality. I have never participated in the normal human rhythms of growth, pain, and love alongside other people with flesh and feelings that did not beg for more compassion, tenderness, play, care and the Spirit that makes those qualities possible. Nor have I ever experienced a true deepening of my spiritual life that did not overflow back into relations with neighbors near and far, friend and stranger.
To paraphrase my big sister from another mister Amanda Henderson, life is always, always, just showing up and loving the best we can in the midst of holy chaos.
So. Here we are! Right where we’ve always been. Right in the midst of the holy chaos of our own lives and the chaos of history. It really does make me grateful to be one who confesses that God—Mystery and Liberator—is with us in the misty midst. May we be those who show up in the midst too.
Peace, joy, and justice,
Nathan
Here’s a few collected pieces from the journey right now…
Work
Last week I had the chance to join my dear friend and board member Maria Daniella-Fernandez on Java with Jimmy, a live-streamed podcast that’s popular in Boston particularly among BIPOC communities and folks doing community work. We got to talk about the power of cooperatives for organizing power and the ways we’ve been using this community-owned enterprise to close Boston’s racial wealth gap.
You can watch the livestream taping here. I think it will be out on other platforms soon.
Recs
- My friend Asjah Monroe, who joined me for a rich interview for this newsletter back in November, just delivered a phenomenal TED Talk on “Fighting youth homelessness with community care.”
- I’ve written before about how I think Prentice Hemphill is one of the best guides we have right now shepherding us into the future we long for. Last week I was rushing as fast as I could to click pre-order on her book released yesterday when I realized I’d already pre-ordered back in February! So instead of me accidentally buying a second copy of What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves can Change the World, you really should. She also has a new podcast called Becoming the People that going to be a blessing.
- On a similar note, I thoroughly enjoyed
’s latest essay in The Nation on Hannah Proctor’s book Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat. Its a meditation on the emotional life of movements and the people who, in fighting for radical transformation, so often live in the face of social violence and heart-breaking loss:“To burn brightly with radical desire and conviction is always to risk becoming burned-out. And this state of diminishment, finally, is Proctor’s principal subject. Radicals, she suggests, are not merely those who fight to make the world less wounding; they are those who become wounded in the process—and who must find ways to heal each other in order to keep on fighting.”
- Since moving to a proper union town and now on the cusp of joining one myself, I’m trying to dive into labor history — and gosh is it a fruitful vantage point for taking in American/global history, the essence of our struggles and goals, and grasping true spirit and practices of solidarity. Right now I’m a couples episodes into a new podcast called Fragile Juggernaut about the most remarkable union movement in 20th century America: the CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization / Congress of Industrial Organizations). Highly recommend taking a listen.
- A book I’ll be writing about and referencing a lot has a title that’s pretty obviously a slam dunk for this newsletter and, I would assume, its readers. Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix. Absolutely fantastic.
- For my basketball people, I’m pretty obsessed with the Mind the Game Pod with Lebron James and JJ Redick. I’m not even much a Lebron fan, but this is the best basketball content out there right now — no drama, just love of the game and taking us all to school about how it really works at the highest level. A great complement to finals basketball.
May you find time to be good to your self. Remind yourself to be kind—and kind to yourself when you’re not. Don’t let it all silence your voice or steal your fight. Don’t let it all shrink your circle of concern. Healing never happens in isolation. We belong together. Let’s struggle toward freedom like it’s already so.
Much love y’all!