A Community Practice: Joy & Wonder

Black Liturgies for Staying Human

This community gathering invites nonviolent, intersectional, and interfaith meditation and reflection practice. The theme for this month will be Joy & Wonder.

The program adapts Cole Arthur Riley's Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human (Penguin Random House | Also: Black Liturgies on Instagram) into a type of spiritual—not religious—“liturgy” that draws quotes and insights from Black intellectuals, ancestors, authors, and mentors. It also features some short passages and reflections from the book itself.

Cole Arthur Riley describes her hope for Black Liturgies: to provide safe harbor for people who have “escaped the trauma of white Christian nationalism, religious homophobia and transphobia, biblical ableism, and ecclesial misogyny … people “healing from spiritual spaces [and practices] that were more violent than loving, more tyrannical than liberating.” (xii). Thus, the program centers Black ancestors who were also queer, indigenous, nonbinary, disabled and/or other historically disenfranchised identities.

Professor Rossing from Gonzaga University will be facilitating this gathering.

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