as a black woman who is established as disabled through the mental health condition called complex post traumatic stress disorder, currently being assessed to see if there are more conditions that my symptoms fit the criteria of, it’s not lost on me that there is a very real tension between the necessarily colonial origins of psychiatry and yet the reality of behaviours that feel maladaptive in some way. it’s equally not lost on me the irony of trying to think through and remedy such tensions through the english language, which in and of itself embodies certain biases and ways of seeing the world through it’s particular grammar, lexicon and structure.
when we return to first principles, the question becomes whose behaviour, actions and reactions are see as the normative default that we are comparing ourselves too? and when we consider this question, do we often find that what we regard as disruptions and interruptions are in fact reasonable and perhaps even healthy reactions to systems that were never designed to encompass the totality of any healthy human, but only that of the master and the subjugation of the master’s subjects?
in many ways i think that we will always circle back to the spiritual nature of these interwoven systems of hierarchy and suffering, which are far more sophisticated beyond designs capable of being produced by human thought alone. we give far too much credit to the western, “white” or ”european” world when we regard these intricate and deeply penetrative systems as something that any group of old white men are capable of consciously creating through their own merit. i’m immediately transported to the work of michael heiser, the american old testament scholar who brought the book of enoch and therefore the supernatural nature of the bible back to the foreground.
in the face of such complexity which can feel so physically overwhelming that we do not even attempt to approach it for what it is, i’m reminded to rest in the knowledge of a God of supreme creative intelligence, and therefore equally supreme empathy. supreme empathy that also engenders supreme levels of understanding. in moments where our feelings or expressions dumbfound broken systems of health, humanities or science, there is a quiet rest that we can try to hold onto in that beyond it all is a personable, knowable and once-human God that knows the pain and loneliness of life, and that deeply desires a personal one to one relationship with us.
the image i have chosen for this week is a painting of a young black girl in all white, presumably dressed for church, on the sidewalk in miami by jamillah jennings. i’ve chosen this image as it feels like it invites us to break the white-evangelical imaginations of who yahweh is in the western mind, and begin to imagine the language of both word, imagination and all human sensory capacities that the living God whispers, laughs and cares for black women in.
“mi sorv Gad wid aal a mi aat. a sorv mi a sorv im wen mi priich di gud nyuuz bout im bwai pikni, an im nuo se wa mi bout fi se a chuu: mi aalwiez a tingk bout unu. an wen mi a prie, mi aalwiez aks Gad fi mek mi kyan kom si unu, az lang az a dat im waahn.” ruoman 1:9-10 (di jamiekan nyuu testiment)
i pray that this week we would dare to speak to yahweh in our native tongues of our hearts and minds of an innocent, and dare even more to hear him talk back in just the same.