Soulforce

Sabotage Christian Supremacy

Rev. Alba Onofrio

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Asking me as an American to make Thanksgiving about family and food is like asking me as a Christian to make Christmas about Santa and presents.

The truth is that it sucks not celebrating Thanksgiving. I loved this holiday. I love the whole day of cooking, the food rituals. I love that almost everyone has the day off or a shorter shift that allowed us all to eat dinner together. It was the single time of year where the whole family gathered at our house, where everyone was welcome. More than Christmas, more than Easter or fourth of July, this was the time where we got to be together and where the matriarch, my great grandmother got to offer wild and generous hospitality to all who crossed our threshold that day. 

When I got my own place I continued that tradition and loved more than anything the always interesting and beautiful gathering of friends and family and acquaintances who showed up to our open invitation. It was especially meaningful that there were always queer folks around the table in our fullness, sharing a meal together often because we couldn’t go home or were unwilling to cram ourselves back into closets or boxes that no longer fit. When an LGBTQ community center opened in our town, we hosted the first queer Thanksgiving potluck where were we learned about the real Thanksgiving and have gratitude that we had all made it another year of life. We found home and family in the company of each other even if we were strangers before that day. 

Now that I have my own kid, I lament not celebrating the day full of food traditions and centering generosity for our wider community. I would love to make their great-great-grandmother’s recipe for sweet potato casserole and discuss at length how to keep the dressing from getting dry or what in the world a tofurky is. 

Lots of people have recommended picking literally any other day of the year to do a harvest and thankfulness meal, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It just isn’t the same as when the whole country pauses to be with friends and family on this one day. There’s a synergy that is missing on other days that feels like being out of step.

Other people insist that in fact, Thanksgiving *is* about family and food. Whatever it’s history, now it’s just about being grateful for what you have and spending time with those you love. I wish that were true for me. That I could just put away the true history of invasion, genocide, and white washing of the horrors of white European colonization of this land, but as an American citizen, I cannot set it aside on this day. It’s like asking me as a Christian to make Christmas about Santa and presents and Christmas tree lights. It’s unthinkable. Christmas is about joy and children and generosity and spending time with our families, but the origin story of it as a Christian holiday is indivisible from our holiday celebrations today. We retell the story, we create holiday traditions that we pass down through the generations. All of this reminds us who we are, what our values are, and where we come from as a people…. Much the same as Thanksgiving in fact.

It’s because of this part -the reminding ourselves who we are as a people- that I choose not to celebrate and not to pass on this holiday to my children. We, as a family, cannot celebrate Thanksgiving and ignore its origins. In this way sometimes it feels like we ruin everything… All the simple joys of our idealized childhood get tarnished with the truth and nothing is quite the same anymore. What’s actually true is that white Christian Supremacy ruins everything, and living a faithful principled life in this particular nation at this particular moment is just difficult sometimes. Solidarity with oppressed peoples still implies moving countercurrent, no matter how many of us claim to be woke.

Our indigenous sisters and brothers ask us not to ignore our past. They ask us to remember the truth, to not perpetuate lies of happy little indians and generous white pilgrims, not to dress up our children in feather headdresses and black Pilgrim hats, to stop the white washing of our nation’s origin story, and to take responsibility for our past in order to move together into a future where we might all live and thrive. They ask us to remember the names of the Wampanoag, Massasoit, Wamsutta Frank James, their stories of the past, and their struggles of the present. They ask us to mourn with them as our ancestors and theirs are inseparably tied together in the painful history of this place we all now call home.

It’s important to name the loss and grief that comes from choosing to live a more conscientious life; this life isn’t always the funnest choice. It often means abandoning thoughts and habits that were once really enjoyable or meaningful. It means recognizing our privilege, even if we also come from oppressed peoples. It sometimes means leaving things behind that were once really special and really important to us. It almost always entails learning truths that you can’t unknow, feeling the pain in others that you can’t unfeel. It often means seeing the ugly reality behind the beautiful idealized facade, even when we were more happy with our fairytale. Sometimes, it means saying goodbye to traditions we love and feeling distanced from those who chose to stay in the fairytale. 

It is easy to build up anger and resentment for those who chose the easier, happier fairytale route. Some years I feel jealous of them and the beautiful pictures of food and family I see on social media. My pride gets the best of me, and my integrity becomes a bitter pill to swallow.

Weas people who have had the privilege and innocence not to know the truth of this holiday, not to carry its burden all these years have a responsibility to be honest with each other, and work on it together. I think it’s important that we don’t just pretend that the high road is easy or our feelings resolved. It’s meaningful to share where we struggle, where a principled life gets hard, where it feels lonely, where the right decision feels tough, and the loss we feel from losing a lie that felt so good for so long–even while we acknowledge that others have lost so much more.

It is not my place to judge what others choose to do or not do for Thanksgiving. I can totally understand why folks choose to rename it or reframe it and keep the rest the same. I choose not to for my own reasons, and I let the grief I feel for myself in losing this holiday flow as a stream of empathy into the ocean of pain that our indigenous siblings and ancestors have felt for centuries. 

When I’m at my best, I let it renew my hunger for justice and peace and wellbeing for this planet and her creatures. And I give thanks for the life and strength to contribute to this struggle, and for the love that fuels it, generation after generation.

This blog post is part of a series called How white Christian Supremacy Stole…Everything, where we’ll unpack some of the sticky feelings so many of us have around some of the US’s major holidays. The series aims to give a voice to us buzzkills who devote our lives to social justice and have a hard time not feeling like a grinch during every. Single. Holiday. You’re not alone in your grinchiness! Understanding what is harmful about a cultural phenomenon, or what doesn’t sit right with us, can help us identify how we want to reclaim our agency and observe those holidays (or not) in alignment with our ethics and beliefs. In that way, we hope this blog post feels like spiritual accompaniment.

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Glitter is a symbol inseparable from our Queer history. Countless ancestors have adorned themselves with glitter at Pride parades, drag shows, and just to make us happy in our day-to-day lives. Glitter is emblematic of our utter fabulousness and shine (though we concede that some folks in our community detest it with as much passion as others of us love it). Its notorious staying power is also a reflection of our tenacity as a people. (Can you ever get glitter out of anything? Not really.)

Today we celebrate the LGBTQ+ Christians who you may see rocking a glitter cross on their foreheads because of Glitter Ash Wednesday, organized annually by Parity NYC. They call this movement a proclamation and reclamation of faith, and for me, it also represents a beautifully powerful protest statement to any who would try to deny the validity of a Christian identity for LGBTQ+ people.

Ash Wednesday is one of the most popular and important holy days in the Christian calendar marking the beginning of the Lenten season, a time geared towards spiritual introspection and self-work. The traditional ashen cross reminds us that death comes for us all (ash to ash, dust to dust), and it literally marks us as part of a collective body of believers.

For Queer and Trans people, the precarious and precious nature of life is often all too real. We as Queer People bear “marks”, often not of our own choosing, so acts of self-pronouncement through things like glitter, drag, and queer campiness, are ways that we can “come out” and name and reclaim ourselves.

Combining glitter and ash on Ash Wednesday is a powerful statement: In mixing these two distinguishing markers of Queerness and Christianity, we proclaim that the identities and faith of Queer Christians are authentic, and that the ways we express ourselves and our lived realities won’t be suppressed.

To me, the cross that resembles an “x” on one’s forehead reminds me of an X that marks the spot of our pain, our bodies that receive the harm of white Christian Supremacy and incorporates it into our beings. Using glitter to make that X into a queer protest of the wound of Christian Supremacy on our bodies, says, “This mark that is supposed to represent belonging to a body of people, the Church, marks our exclusion from this belonging because of this other identity that is also freely given by God.” In the act of bearing the glitter ash cross or X, we name ourselves and the wounds of the exclusion and spiritual violence of the Church, and we protest the ways we have falsely been marked as wrong, evil, outside the family and the will of God.

In James Cone’s book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone posits that until we theologically understand the sacred bodies that are being crucified on the Cross today – Black bodies, Queer bodies, immigrant bodies, women’s bodies – then we won’t be able to truly understand this thing called the Cross, or the Christ. We need to understand that the institutions and ideologies of Empire that crucified Christ are the same powers that are crucifying marginalized bodies now.

As someone who identifies as a Queer Latinx Feminist and a Christian I imagine myself adorned in glitter ash in an act of resistance to the systems that tell me I cannot exist; that my body is not welcome, that my soul does not belong the faith that raised me. And at the same time, I am naming the wounds that come from the violence stemming from the collusion between the State and Christianity and the Church, and I am naming my truth and my most authentic (and fabulous Queer femme) self. There are many of us. We continue to grow in numbers and audacity as we carve out space for Queer Christians and lay claim to our own sacred bodies and truths. We will not be silenced, and we will not uphold the white Christian Supremacy that kills our bodies and our souls.

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Today we introduce a blog series called How the Grinch, I mean “How White Christian Supremacy Stole Everything.”

In the original design for this blog series, we had the Grinch representing white Christian Supremacy, but after seeing him (designed by the brilliant artist Bryony Dick​), we realized that he is actually one of us​. We are ​those who​ have​ ​learned some of our histories, who now ​remember out loud, ​the ​Pagan and Indigenous ​origin stories of the holidays that we ​love to​ celebrate as American ​and/​or Christian​ holidays (aka “holy days”)​. ​W​e​ are those​ who ​understand how holiday ​narratives are beautifully spun to get us to buy more and more ​​​stuff to ​once again ​prove our love to those we care about​.​ ​W​e ​are those ​who are unwilling to forget the atrocities committed in the name of seemingly good ​ideals,​ like love, gratitude, freedom, God…

We, like the Grinch​,​ are told that we are​ just​ no fun to have at the holiday part​y​ because we ​ruin the mood​. We are told​ that o​u​r hearts are small and diseased, that we take things too seriously​​, take things ​​too far…​ But those things that we take too seriously and too far, we call those things our ethics, values, solidarity, honor, justice, morality… *LOVE*, if you will.

We hear over and over​ things like​, can’t we just enjoy the meal…it’s just candy… it’s just a day for family… it ​doesn’t have to mean what you think it means​…​ or what it used to mean… can’t you just let it go… for the sake of the family/the church/the nation/fill-in-the-blank-here… Think of the children, they say, as if *we* are the ones ruining the Christmas feast and gift exchange, as if we too didn’t love the ideas and traditions we were given ​before ​we​ kn​e​w ​the truth (I mean some of us didn’t love them, but many of us did)…

But​ there are certain things that we can’t unknow. Histories that none of us should be naive about, especially because we can do better now.

​W​e *are* thinking of the children, including the younger versions of ourselves who were given false narratives about our histories and religions and our identities. ​We do lose some of our innocence as we learn about the sometimes disturbing​,​ oftentimes violent histories of ​holidays and ideals we celebrate​ as a culture, or a nation, or as Christians. It is okay to grieve that loss, and the Grinch is one of the ways we can look at ourselves and feel empathy for that loss… even as we double down on our political and ethical commitments to know better and do better, as our beloved ancestor Maya Angelou taught us.

Most of the time it’s no fun being Grinch (well, for most of us), but we hope to bring a little bit of levity to the reality that we may often find ourselves as the voice crying for justice and integrity in the wilderness (or at the family supper table). We need to be clear about our commitments, well-informed about our histories, and honest in our intentions. And, a​t the very least​,​ we hope that​ Grinch will go with you, as a reminder that we are not alone in this struggle.​

​There are ​so ​many acts of capitalism that​ not only represent ​but have become a stand-in for ​things like ​”​love​”​ or ​”​gratitude​,”​ so in this series we ​now ​see ourselves as the Grinch​, who,​​ because of his ​awareness of the reality of the world of capitalism​,​ heteropatriarchy​,​ colonization​, systems of power, and white supremacy​,​ can no longer celebrate holidays like Valentine’s​ Day with uninterrogated buy-in. We cannot innocent​ly add our few dollars to the billions​ and billions​ of dollars that are spent each year proving acts of love​. Romantic ​[heterosexual, monogamous, life-long marriage] ​love​ did not begin with God and Adam & Eve in a garden, but rather​, it is a concept​ ​has ​been politically cultivated in ​recent centuries​ and ​continues to be used​ as a weapon ​of “morality” ​to ​prioritize certain kinds of relationships and ​withhold rights f​rom others​​.

Much of the Western history of marriage has not had anything to do with romantic love. It began as a way to​ limit inheritance rights and marriage benefits to the wealthiest and most powerful men in Christendom.

So many of us are choosing a different path. We are going the way our ancestors knew, how our abuelas taught us, the way our grannies showed us, that it truly takes a village… and that our families are *never* just centered on two people in a romantic relationship. We strive to live in networks of support, communities of care that extend way beyond whoever we are having sex with at any particular moment. Who we are having sex with (or want to have sex with) or not is mostly a private choice, and should be mostly irrelevant to webs of love we build over our lifetimes. Our value is not diminished, and our love should not be diminished in any way when we are single or when we choose not to have children.

Self love also fits here, because as the Bible teaches us, we cannot love others well if we do not first love ourselves. As our beloved ancestor Audre Lorde and many others have taught us, loving ourselves in a world that is hostile to our very existence and caring for ourselves under systems of power that seek our demise are deeply political and revolutionary acts (in addition to teaching others how to love us well).

Maybe it’s rebellious, maybe it’s revolutionary, maybe it stems naturally from who we are. Most of all, it is the way we can live most into our beliefs and ethics and live as people with integrity. We no longer choose to prioritize certain forms of love, specifically romantic love, Disney princess love, love as solely valid between one man and one woman that ends in procreation and marriage (I’m sorry, it should be marriage and *then* procreation).

So on this Valentine’s holiday, let the Grinch remind us that candy and chocolate and roses and pretty words do not equal love (that’s mostly just capitalism).

Let us also be reminded that our queer families are chosen; that our beloved community is made up of our circle of friends and loved ones, and they are actually the ones who keep us alive (not capitalism); that our families are valid no matter their formation, and that our lives are precious.

Let us be the ones to remember the history of how Christianity has been stolen by imperialism;

…how the Church has maintained power with false narratives of love;

…how marriage has almost always been about power–political and social allegiances and not love or choice;

…how love and marriage have been and often continue to be a burden forced on women’s bodies with unequal expectations of care and service;

how laws based in Christian Supremacy, enforced by the State and upheld and socially enforced by the Church, have been used over millennia to keep inheritance and wealth in the hands of the elite;

…how secret loves have been scorned to keep lovers with same-sex desires apart;

…how marriage has been used to divide classes, how it has been used to withhold marriage rights from lovers who embody different races, and how love in Christianity often becomes synonymous with violence–physical, emotional, and spiritual;

…and worse, how love is used, even in the Bible, to justify harm and violence because it is supposedly punishment or for substitutionary atonement of sin or worst of all, as a necessary violence in exchange for eternal salvation… And even when it is (supposedly) executed by God, the violence goes unquestioned… under a banner of *love*.

So call us killjoys, call us the Grinch, but we will no longer accept heart-shaped chocolate boxes and call it love. We will no longer swallow the poison messages of white Christian Supremacy… even if they are floating in beautiful bubbles of champagne flutes. We will judge *love* like we judge theology. That which causes harm, pain, suffering, is violent, withholds basic human dignity and rights from anyone is bad love, just like it’s bad theology. Relationships centered on consent, respect, mutuality, care, and desire (sexual or non-romantic) that help us live full and abundant lives, we will call those LOVE. We will call those people our family, our loves, and we will celebrate all of the ways they choose and we choose to live life together or apart, in whatever configuration, for whatever time that love lasts.

Can we celebrate Valentine’s Day with roses and candlelit dinners and love letters? Sure, but we will not do it naively. We will not love unquestionably or give all of ourselves unconditionally. For some, that will make us the Grinch, but for many of us it makes true love all the sweeter.

This blog post is part of a series called How white Christian Supremacy Stole…Everything, where we’ll unpack some of the sticky feelings so many of us have around some of the US’s major holidays. The series aims to give a voice to us buzzkills who devote our lives to social justice and have a hard time not feeling like a grinch during every. Single. Holiday. You’re not alone in your grinchiness! Understanding what is harmful about a cultural phenomenon, or what doesn’t sit right with us, can help us identify how we want to reclaim our agency and observe those holidays (or not) in alignment with our ethics and beliefs. In that way, we hope this blog post feels like spiritual accompaniment.

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Sometimes healing and ancestor work is just plain hard. It’s great when we can light a candle and call on a beloved we remember fondly or someone we love and admire. Even in the pain of loud and grief, we can touch the powerful love that evokes such pain. I’m so grateful for the amplification we get when we can tap into the positive energy they offer us from beyond the veil.

But. Not. All. Ancestors. Are. Like. That.

I have been working towards peace with my ancestors on generational wounds for several years now. It’s intense. It spans centuries and continents, some information is impossible to find; most things are just about following my feelings and intuition about where the work goes next.

Some of our ancestors are beloved and wonderful or strong and bold leaders. That’s great. But what is also true is that all of us have ancestors that weren’t very good people, others who were wrecked with their own traumas, and many of us come from legacies of violence and the weight of oppression bearing down on the necks of our ancestors for generations. It’s a lot.

I’m currently working through my new relationship with my recently-deceased, estranged father… i.e. nobody I want close, and yet, here I am with the ashes and my ancestors telling me *in my body* about getting into the right relationship and my duties to ancestors.

I feel annoyed and frustrated: Why do I have to do this difficult, painful work of healing? I complain about it. A lot. And every time I do I get back the same answer, from my healer friends, from my partner, from my best friend, from the spirit world… They say, “Why you? Because you can, that’s why!”

Because I have been blessed with community and resources and personal fortitude. And because I have done my work to get this far, I find that there is always more, harder work to do.

“It isn’t fair that I have to do the work because he didn’t!” I complained to my healthcare clinician recently. She responded with a shoulder shrug and an Italian saying from her father in the old country, “Those who are born with broad shoulders help carry other people’s loads. This is how the village survives.” Worse than that she reminded me what we all know is true: if we don’t do the work to heal the wounds, the pain will fall to the next generation to solve.

This is how I think about the work of sabotaging white Christian Supremacy. Not all of us have the fortitude or safety to be out. Not all of us can take on white Christian Supremacy head on in public, but those of who can, should.

So many of our people still don’t know that the violence and spiritual terrorism waged against us and our ancestors are rooted, not in the Divine, but in the false gods of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and domination. These idols who steal the language, Scripture, and culture of Christianity and twist them into weapons of violence and death.

All of us who know the Truth can do the hard but incredibly important work of healing our own hearts and communities from religion-based spiritual violence by disbelieving the lies of white Christian Supremacy and rewiring our hearts and actions to represent life abundant for all Creation, leaving shame and fear behind.

In this time of year, when the veil is thin and we remember those who have gone ahead into the cloud of witnesses, may we remember that just like trauma, healing also works across generations. This is my time to heal; it’s my work because I have been given what I need to be able to do it. And, I do not walk alone. We are never alone.

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January 16, 2021 – Rev. Alba Onofrio

Hey there Soulforce fam,

It’s a tense and tender time, and a lot of us in the United States are on edge about what may come this weekend. I want to take a moment to center in who we are, and why, we as a people of love, work for justice.

There have been many waves of political upheaval and violence over these last four years. It can be so overwhelming to our spirits that we may feel simultaneously, both a desire for peace and for justice. In these times, calls for unity can feel comforting.

However, unity without accountability is cheap grace, and it is a primary strategy of White Christian Supremacy.

This idea that you can do whatever you want, harm whomever, and then fall on your knees and pray to Jesus and all is then forgiven and you are pure again — that’s cheap grace, and that’s not how grace works! 

We cannot truly heal or find peace as a country without coming to terms with the origins of our nation, without acknowledging the Original Sin of White Christian Supremacy in what is now called these-here United States; without asking forgiveness, and even more importantly, making reparations for harm caused and changing the landscape for how we move forward together in community. 

Unity implies that we are all equal, or at the very least have the conditions for the possibility of equality. This is not currently our reality. And though we all may be equal in the eyes of Creator God, here on Earth we still have a lot of work to do!

As says Frederick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” He says, “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”

Now, I’m sure that’s exactly what some people who participated in the failed coup of January 6th believed they were doing. And there are plenty of other people, perhaps as many as the 74 million who voted for white supremacist patriarchy in the most recent election, who believe those insurrectionists were demanding justice from power because something has been taken from them, something has been stolen, some great wrong done. Their language sounds similar to ours in that way, but let me be clear about what is different from my vantage point–

It is indeed true that “they” are losing their power:

Those who believe in the supremacy of the white man above all others, those who feel God gave them the Earth and its people to exploit and dominate for their personal gain-

Those who pray to a white man-god jesus to “wash away their sins”, rather than seek salvation from the Original Sin of White Supremacy through reconciliation and restitution-

White Christian Supremacist institutions and the people who identify with them are losing. They are losing the hearts and minds of this nation and the world every single day. And they are losing their power over our lives. I truly believe this… if we continue to do our work to live, to love, to hustle, and to push for change.

As we keep watch in these next few days, we may continue to witness the distressing death rattle of expiring theologies and ideologies. In this difficult moment, let me remind you of this, in case it is helpful to you… to your soul, Beloved. Let me remind you of who you are, Dear One, who we are:

We are a people of love. We love each other, and we act from love as we seek justice and equality for all of Creation.

We are a people who do not accept cheap grace and believe it to be our salvation.

We believe in honesty, compassion, accountability, dignity, love, respect, community, and action. 

We believe that no one can flourish while White Christian Supremacy reigns. Even those with privilege suffer under toxic belief systems, in the degradation of their souls.

We create miracles from our love for each other. Even in this time of pandemic, we collectively have created change that, for many of us (myself included), blew our minds and expanded our hearts. Things I hadn’t been brave enough to hope for started happening at a new pace.

We took our love for the most vulnerable of us and organized community care in the form of mutual aid. Our people took our love for Black people and together we knocked down statues to white supremacy and confronted white supremacy in our systems, our communities, our churches. We took our love for each other and made sure we saw more marginalized people represented in our political systems than ever before.

We are working and winning in the legacy of love and hustle from Women, of People of Color, of Queers, of Southern organizers, all the organizers, and lovers, and families, and chosen families, and leaders, and everyday people. So let us understand that this hate-filled grasp for power is a response to our gains. 

We are indeed a dangerous people to the systems that seek our submission and demise, for we are claiming souls for justice every day as more and more of us awaken and stand ready to make the changes needed to build a world we want, the world our young ones deserve, our elders and ancestors before us dreamed. As they continue to make the way before us, it is our duty, our honor to continue on the path to Freedom.

We hope that you will keep your people close these days, and check up on each other. Know that even though we are distanced from one another, you are never alone. You belong to a people. We are in this thing together. Please take good care of your body and your spirit, alongside your love and care for one another. 

We here at Soulforce are sending you love, glimpses of freedom, and glitter sparkles of hope from our unicorn homes to yours.

With hearts ablaze and spirits unyielding,

Rev. Alba Onofrio

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Equinox each year reminds me of balance, a reminder I need over and over again. It’s a call that I need especially this year when everything feels very extreme, very urgent, and so uncertain.

I’m thinking about how to maintain stability in my spirit with so much uncertainty about what’s to come. Part of keeping myself in balance for the long term is about creating stability and peace within my own self. And what I have learned during this pandemic time, when the world feels like it’s falling apart in so many different and unexpected ways, is that I actually have no idea what is to come.

There are many educated guesses about what might happen in the future, many people who are claiming they can predict certainties of what will eventually come to pass. But so much feels like it is being tossed up in the air with probabilities we cannot truly determine. And trying to prepare for all of them makes me utterly exhausted.

I worry that the outcome of this election in the United States, regardless of who wins, could turn violent– which is scary on many levels. I feel like the end of our democracy could be at hand. In some ways this can feel fecund with possibilities for new worlds, but the idea also feels rife with more suffering and intensified harm against our most marginalized communities, my communities.

One of the only things I know for sure is that I don’t know. I don’t know the perfect thing to do to be ready for what’s next. I don’t know what’s to come, and that creates a lot of anxiety and intensity around trying to figure it out and make plans, trying to prepare for the future.

I’m learning that when I focus only on all of these questions and all of that uncertainty, I miss what’s happening right now. Today. The alive things that are worth fighting for as a movement. The joy of seeing a plant bloom, or hearing a story from my child. Harvesting the last of the basil from a window box, or making sofrito or jam or preserving food for the winter. This year because of the pandemic there were blessings that I got to notice by being in one place for so many days in a row: being able to see the change of seasons, the cycles of plants, the daily rituals of home, continuous time with my child.

Right now, I am working on restoring balance in my body and spirit. Balancing plans for the semester, plans to vote early, plans for our organization and the future that I hope and wish for our community …alongside what I need for right now, what’s on this week’s to do list, making food for my family, getting outside and moving my body.

So now that equinox is reminding me of balance, I’m trying to hold my anxieties about an uncertain future in check with the many things I do know for certain. Today the dishes have to get washed. I have the power to make someone I love smile. I can choose to move and care for my body. I can notice little joys and enjoy little comforts.

And in terms of the future, alongside my civic duty to vote and my ethical responsibility to continue to contribute to change and demand justice, I am orienting my spirit to listen for what I can do to be ready for what comes next. We can’t all grow our own food or live off the grid, but we can each prepare in some way by living into whatever our talents and curiosities implore us to learn, and listening for where we are needed. As for myself, I’m learning more about plant medicines and teas and herbal remedies that grow in my yard. It is not the only solution, but it is one small thing that I can contribute to our collective skills and knowledge.

And also, I am continually in prayer for our planet, for our leaders, for our families and the well-being of our young ones and older ones, and for the healing and power of our communities.

Every day we take those prayers and manifest them in small and large ways through our actions toward a reality where every life is full of dignity, justice, kindness, safety, possibility, and love. 

This is how I hold fast to hope for our future. Even when I can’t control everything (or sometimes anything), I commit to finding a balance for myself that keeps me spiritually grounded in our struggle— regardless of what’s next.

Rev. Alba Onofrio is Soulforce’s Spiritual Strategist, and serves as our Co-Executive Director. You can read more of their writing on the blog: https://www.soulforce.org/blog/author/Rev.-Alba-Onofrio.