Blog Post

There continues to be a lot to process after the shooting in Atlanta last month. Tragedy and grief continue to stack and yet we trudge forward. Many of us are numb and exhausted and the thought of one more zoom meeting alone is enough to make us want to disappear forever. 

It feels easy to become inundated with fear that nothing will change. Tragedy in tow, our capitalistic culture insists on moving at a pace that is incredibly harmful. Our central nervous systems are wrecked by the continuous uncertainty of the pandemic, plus one traumatic event after another. Even the little things, like doing the dishes, feel overwhelming and unmanageable. It has become very obvious to me that we will not survive if we continue on in this way. I have been taking a lot of naps, eating a lot of indulgent food, and watching a lot of RuPaul’s Drag Race (a very problematic, guilty pleasure, I know).

I want to lift up the legacy of Black and Asian solidarity and a term used by one of my heroes Grace Lee Boggs that guides me and gives me hope: solutionary. Reconciling an entire white christian supremacist world rightfully feels daunting and unattainable. I witness so many organizers burn themselves out or stay spinning in spirals of unresolved rage. And while rage is righteous, rage alone won’t save us. We also need rest, resolve, laughter, and replenishment if we’re going to be in this fight together for the long haul.

To me, a solutionary approach is to find what is solvable, what is doable, what is attainable in the moment in order to remain in the movement. It’s also employing our innovation and creativity and trusting that change is possible, and that we have everything we need within us and around us to dismantle oppression and build a new world. 

I have learned that I feel the most empowered when I take responsibility for my own actions, my own rest, and my own energy. I am further empowered when I believe that my participation in my community is important. And that I am where I am today because I am part of a collective. We have to believe these things; these must be our inherent truths. And we must become unshakeable in these beliefs. 

At Soulforce, we have never shied away from confronting hate and harm head on. And in my personal life, I know that I am most available to provide support and fight back when I am grounded and well-rested. This isn’t always the case; I’m definitely guilty of not drinking enough water, doom scrolling, and coping in many other non-generative ways. But if I travel down that route too far, I instinctually begin to feel as though I have lost my way. I am called to do much more in the world than witness life happening around me through twitter or the tv screen. I am called to be very active in the overthrow of that which keeps us from being free. 

I feel very in alignment with Soulforce’s charge to face oppression head on, and I believe naming the sources of harm clearly and unapologetically is a central strategy to our healing.

There is no question that white Christian supremacist rhetoric and purity culture emboldened the shooter in Atlanta to do what he did. The united states’ legacies of imperialism, xenophobia, and stigmatization of sex workers made the gunman feel like murder was a perfectly logical and morally justifiable action because Asian women, whether actual or perceived participants in sex work, were a ‘temptation’ that needed to be ‘eliminated.’

This is heart wrenching. How do we reconcile a world where a white guy having a ‘bad day’ feels justified to murder eight people because he felt sexually tempted and repressed? (A lot of deep breaths, punching pillows, and screaming into the void to start.) Because how do you undo such deep seeded messages of hatred and entitlement? It honestly feels like too much. 

But after I’ve had a nap, some good food, and I’ve calmed down my central nervous system, I can expand my purview and remember that the incident in Atlanta is nothing new and neither is our survival, or resistance, resilience, and solidarity. White Christian Supremacy that empowers white guys to kill when they have a bad day is fucking tired. White Christian Supremacy that inspires policy makers to write discrimination into the law is a long-employed strategy of the right. White Christian Supremacy that seeks to control the bodies of women, LGBTQ+, Black, Brown, and disabled people is baked into the foundation of the united states of america.

We have to name the sources of harm clearly and unapologetically. Whenever there is a mass shooting, many politicians respond with this is ‘unamerican.’ And that really makes me laugh. How can we say that a country that was founded on the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of Indigenous people is any different than what it built itself on? 

Although particularly insidious and shameful in its current iteration, exemplified by the numerous extremists who have made it into public office and the slew of bills attacking trans youth proposed this year, we have to remember that White Christian Supremacy is behaving this way because it’s fighting for its survival. This also means we’re making progress and the opposition is scared. As overwhelming as everything can feel right now, we have to remember that we have more tools of resistance available to us than ever. 

There’s a line a in a gorgeous video poem entitled “What came first, the fear or the virus?” by Jenevieve Ting & Jensen Reyes that states:

“If our hurt is connected, so too is our healing, so too is our holding, so too grows our capacity to stand together in the face of fear and render it into a formless fiction.” 

We are far more equipped to defeat the systems of oppression that plague our world than the fear-mongering tactics of the opposition would have us believe. 

White supremacy lies to us all. It divides and dehumanizes. White supremacy will tell us that it’s Black and Brown communities that are tearing each other apart and that we are ‘the violent threats of the world’ that need to be eliminated but in reality, it’s all of us (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, AND white) that have the capacity to build and organize together to defeat the actual threat of white supremacy. 

Solidarity is our strength. I wrote a haiku that goes:

white supremacy 

lies to white people too, says, 

 ‘this is what white is.’

White supremacy will tell us that there isn’t room for your humanity and mine. White supremacy leaves room for no humanity at all. 

I have been devastated by every mass shooting and police killing that has happened. I don’t need to be Black, disabled, Jewish, Latinx, or a family member of a gunned down child to grieve the loss of those lives.

We should be seeing ourselves, our humanity in each other, and not in a way that is toxically positive or imposing, but one that is deeply connected and reverent of each other. White Christian supremacy will tell us that dominance, hierarchy, and suffering are the only way humans can exist. But we know this is a treacherous lie.

There is room for all of us. There is space for your humanity and mine. Healing and transformation is possible. And there is plenty of time to rest and take care of ourselves and each other so we have the collective will to keep going and create a different world.

I will close with two other lines from the poem I mentioned earlier by Jenevieve Ting & Jensen Reyes:

“…we belong everywhere and we are the living embodiment of a thousand deaths and rebirths, shaped into a body that is still fighting to find a home.”

“We are not afraid because we are not the descendants of fear, we are the descendants of love, and of joy and of possibility and of promise.”

If you are in need of support or if you’re looking for ways to be in solidarity with Asian Pacific Islander communities, here are few resources I recommend:

Atlanta based organization, Asian Americans Advancing Justice is offering bystander training

RedCanarySong – Atlanta based organization supporting migrant sex workers

18MillionRising – National Asian American organization connecting communities through media

Asian Mental Health Collective 

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

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.

This article was originally written for Q de Cuir, a digital Cuban magazine for the empowerment of LGBTQI people. Read the article in Spanish here on Medium.

Why is it that in almost every queer gathering, someone will ask another person, “what’s your sign?” And then the inquirer will go “ahh, I can see that,” or “uh-oh, better watch out!” especially if the responder is a Scorpio or Leo?

Why is astrology so important within queer communities and how is queer affinity to celestial guidance connected to Christian Supremacy?

I’m no expert and there’s no catch all to this question. Even within queer communities, interest in astrology ranges from in-depth study to casual acknowledgement or a ‘food for thought’ type of approach. 

While the investment varies, my take is that queers are more likely to ascribe to astrology because no one has been kicked out of the universe for being gay. The expanse of the universe doesn’t care about our gender or sexuality, in fact these aspects of our lives become trivial when placed in the context of the infinite possibilities of existence available to us.

Commercialized astrology will guide us to ‘finding the love of your life’ or ‘making the right career choice.’ More social justice and queer oriented astrology, such as the offerings made by Chani Nicholas will remind us of our connectivity and collective destiny while affirming our unique and complex experiences.

There is also something quite decolonial or precolonial about astrology because it reconnects us to the earth and nature and literally places us among the planets. Our charts are determined by what was happening in the universe at the moment of our birth and each planet and its position can provide guidance for every aspect of our life. 

This expansive offering is a stark contrast to the rigid, binary gender rules imposed on us by Christian Supremacy. These are the rules that perpetuate notions of women as property and heterosexuality for the sake of procreation as the only acceptable form of sexuality.

For those of us who have been kicked out of faith communities, the stars have always been there, and it’s refreshing to be invited to think more deeply about our unique existence and how we want to be in the world, and co-create our experience with the universe rather than being scolded for not living up to a repressive, dogmatic standard. No one has been condemned for being an ‘unnatural’ Gemini or a ‘disobedient’ Taurus.

Another appeal of this precolonial/decolonial sophistication is that astrology is generally always generative. Astrology done well is rarely ever disparaging. It provides people with a sense of autonomy while connecting us to our past and our futures. It allows us to participate in our own lives in more intentional ways.

Ultimately, what makes astrology appealing, particularly to queers, is the ability to interpret it as you see best for your life. In Christian Supremacy, there’s no room for self-determination, critical thinking, or even feelings about the life instructions given in the Bible. It’s very authoritarian and patriarchal, and if you question or disobey, you’re either condemned or kicked out of the community.

Horoscopes provide guidance without the pressure to be and do anything that doesn’t feel right for you. It’s not for everyone and that’s also part of the appeal; there’s no pressure, just an invitation to think more deeply and expansively about your life and your purpose.

Grace Nichols is the Kinship Minister for Soulforce. They are passionate about transformation through creativity and revolutionary relationship building. They are a Scorpio Sun, Gemini Moon, and Capricorn Rising.

Just when you felt you couldn’t believe in integrity anymore…

In a shocking twist on December 19, editor-in-chief for Christianity Today, Mark Galli, showed an incredible amount of conviction and integrity by coming out in public to the world of conservative Christianity to declare that Trump should be removed from office and behaved in ways that are “profoundly immoral”.

The editor, of course, paid for his sin by getting roasted in the media and losing many subscribers.

But it is worth acknowledging that in spite of a laundry list of grave political differences — he and the magazine steadfastly oppose abortion rights and marriage equality — Galli displayed actions currently unseen in this moment of unwavering devotion to Trump by conservative Christians and ever-looming threats of person and political reprisals for anyone who steps out of line.

We call on the Right to take responsibility for the consequences of their faith: how those theologies land on the bodies of people historically and today.

We call on them to recognize the ways their theology harms LGBTQI people, women, the poor and working classes, immigrants, and on and on. 

We call for consistency: applying one’s beliefs to ALL circumstances, not just when it is politically convenient.

That is called integrity, and in another time this was a requirement for righteousness among Christians. Integrity is what we in communities of faith strive for in our lives.

While it is sad that consistency in this political moment is the low bar we measure hope with, Galli showed the world a glimmer of hope that all people of conservative Christian faith cannot be bought or threatened into staunch submission.

His bold decision to tell the truth about the media outlet’s commitment to Christian values that extends to their position on the impeachment of this Republican president — in a way consistent with their position on the impeachment of Democratic presidents in years past — is nothing short of a miracle.