Last week when I was thinking about writing this, I would have had a slightly tweaked answer. You see, at the heart of Spirit School is my own longing for a spiritual community that is open to deconstruction, open to transformation, open to liberation. I’ve worked for or been involved with a particular predominantly white Christian denomination for the better part of 10 years. I joined the church because at 22 I was longing to be part of a contemplative space, a community that was tending to the inner life. I was just beginning to unpack my own story of being a Brown woman in a white world—I had to face my own privilege of a woman that grew up sheltered by whiteness, with proximity to wealth, enshrouded by evangelical piety and its power in a local community, and the push for higher education that would make me palatable to the whiteness that I would be undoubtedly working beside one day.

The story of that 22 year old is for another day, but it did put me on the path of finding myself deeper and deeper into the heart and decision making centers of this particular white Christian denomination. And to my horror, as I simultaneously became more aware of how deeply anti-black and anti-life this country is, I realized that this same insidiousness was in the DNA of the church I had found myself in. In the people, perhaps, but more I was struck by how deeply the systems of church clung to the power that white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism (among other forms of distorted power) afforded them.

There have always been individuals moving to create a more just and open church, but the history of the church—as a sidepiece to the colonial and imperial movements of destruction in this world—is rarely acknowledged. And not just in words, not just with affirmations of how we are complicit in the sin of racism and how we work towards racial reconciliation, but with actual shifts in power, in money, in how and by whom decisions are made. Christian churches in the United States have historically benefited from systems of oppression because we were right there when they were first created.

So why Spirit School? Because this week, again, another Black individual has been murdered by the state. Because last week it happened as well, and the week before that, and back and back for 400 years. And yesterday I sat in a zoom room full of a few dozen Christians talking about what God has been teaching them during this season of Covid-19 and not a single person named the death and dehumanization of yet another Black man. Not a single person named anything about justice or equity. Not a single person acknowledged the immense amount of privilege they carry from being a white Christian in this world. One, in fact, named their excitement at having had the opportunity to work with the local police department during this time (sidenote: I firmly believe that churches have no business being cozy with police officers and police systems, there is absolutely nothing about them that is just. That’s a history lesson you can google if you don’t already know. Break off those relationships STAT).

Why Spirit School? Because I’m not sure that the conversations of decolonizing our spirituality, of decolonizing our churches, is going to happen within the walls of our churches anytime soon. I would love for them to, but that would require change, letting go, death. It would require humility and persistence. And most white churches haven’t communally centered the spiritual tools we need that would allow us to edge into those hard places with hope and grace.

Why Spirit School? Because when we accept our innate Belovedness we can admit how we have distorted it free of shame. When we accept our innate Belovedness we can face our shadows without fear. When we face our shadows without fear we see that they’re offering us a new way of being—change, possibility, new life. Our shadows are great teachers. They are not here to shame us, they are here to make us more whole, more True. And this True Self is the one that is able to hold the complexity of our story—one of holding privilege while wrestling with the ways we are also held captive by dominating systems.

Why Spirit School? Because the work of liberation is a dance between contemplation and action, between the inner life and the outer life. It is attending to my shadows so that I can confront the shadows outside of me with the same commitment, the same tenacity. And in the midst of it all, the True Self ebbs and flows. There are days when I see Her so clearly, and days when she is distorted by the temptation to give into what will move me forward at the expense of others. I need space to admit this and move forward in new ways.

I’m not meant to do all this learning and growing alone. Transformation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it happens when I edge up on discomfort, when I’m called out, when someone else’s story asks me to question my own biases. It happens when I’m connected with the stories of agitators, prophets, revolutionaries from the past whose spirits live on in our bodies today. Spirit School is meant to support us in the hard soul work of anti-black biases, ego work, growing roots of fortitude and self-compassion, and spiritual awakening for the self and others. The tools will be different—white folks need spiritual tools to dismantle, give up power, deconstruct, and be reformed. People of color need spiritual tools for resiliency, grounding, claiming our power, and self-expansion. But we all need community .

I don’t know about you, but I’m longing to not feel alone in liberation work. I’m longing for other voices to encourage and to challenge. I’m longing for partners in dismantling systems (church and otherwise) so that justice and equity are the norm and not what we tack on to seem PC. I’m longing for a world where another Black death isn’t the impetus for conversation and change, but rather these are conversations that are had every day so that we can be fortified to change our communities. I’m longing to know that we don’t walk alone.