So Leonie, Alana, and I were sitting around my kitchen table, sipping Leonie’s good (and so very spicy!) ginger beer and preparing to enjoy Alana’s good roast and potatoes.
Well, not really–Alana and I are here in SoCal, and Leonie is on the East Coast, but these last few days as I have contemplated their words in the Bistro, I have had these imaginary conversations, with different (so many different!) dinners.
I know Alana intimately because she’s my oldest sister, and I am having the singular pleasure of getting to know Leonie more and more.
Their commitment to their Blackness and to their people is irrefutable.
Their wisdom, forged from years, is unassailable.
Both of them are dedicated to tough talk leavened with love. I imagine that, if I actually and truly got Alana on a plane and we surprised Leonie, they would take to each other quickly and deeply.
That’s why they both have surrounded me in these last weeks; at the kitchen table, on the porch, in the car, where they both have strong opinions about my driving chops. They are with me in quiet moments, and, in my imagination, they are also spirited and direct as they surround me with love and plain talk. They encourage, admonish, and never allow my head to dip.
I have needed them both, particularly as I have been contemplating the issue of lanes and lines and the relational.
Let me just tell you, there is nothing better than sitting with two women, even if only in my imagination, there is nothing better than abiding with two women who know how to hold–whose advice and exhortation, even when hard to hear, is somehow also a balm. I soak it in, even as I sometimes strain to fully grasp what they are telling me, and they patiently repeat time and again till I get it.
We drink, and eat, and laugh, and they ask pointed questions, and they remind me of the woman I am, and how I want so very much to internalize and inculcate the one woman in the head wrap and the other woman in the baseball cap, both of whose very presence prompts me to be and to remain the woman with whom *they* can abide, a woman with whom they are not just willing but proud (I can see that pride in their eyes and ach, what a blessing) to lift glasses and break bread.
In my imaginary scenario, we hear footsteps coming up the steps and then a gentle knocking on the sliding glass door. It’s Mary Jane, with soup and bread. Her path to my door has been circuitous; from practically the Canada line, to the Northern Plains, to the Texas Gulf, and now here, offering soup her hands have made. Is there room at the table? With Mary Jane’s fragrant lentils and crusty loaf, how could there not be?
She listens to the conversation with kind eyes, also filled to the brim with Hesed. Listening to Leonie as she talks about lines and lanes and when they can become less tools for engagement than excuses for inaction or, worse, collusion, and Alana as she talks about responsibility, individual and collective.
She accepts a (diluted, cuz it’s seriously strong) glass of ginger beer. She takes a plate, but first she serves her soup to each of us, ladling oh so very carefully, handing us all a bowl with both hands and with her shoulders rounded in humility and service. She waits for a lull in the conversation, and then Leonie asks her thoughts. She, beautifully taciturn and a lover of the economy of words, blows on her soup and then says simply, ‘Permission in community. There is permission in community. And imperative’.
And there it is, from all three of these wise women, who love me, in different but complementary ways, oh so very much.
There is the imperative against distortion and exploitation of a maxim. There is the reminder that we cannot always see the path, or even the need, to and for course correction on our own. And then there is imperative in permission; permission given in the context of relational community, where there is an imperative to hold the Other as we see them in the here and now in both actual regard and in a fictive imagination where we hold fast to the best in the Other–even when the Other–actually particularly when–the Other forgets or disregards.
To do less than this is to abdicate the responsibility of being in communion with the Other, for both parties; both the often unspoken but very real imperative of the one in relationship that there is indeed permission being given as a crucial and integral component of relationship itself: this permission for the Other to be able to ‘get inside our force fields’; and an imperative to have shields down in order to accept and consider the perspective and the wisdom of the other. In relationship, as Leonie rightly asserts, there are lines, but there are no lanes, or, more accurately, as relationship deepens, the lanes can blur and fade.
Lines are important, as Leonie acknowledges. Permission is not license. There are lines for everyone we are in relationship with, no matter the depth or the length of the relationship. Humanity must never be compromised; there should never be punch down; never ever should humiliation or contempt enter in; and all wisdom and perspective and opinion should be in service to the Other; to their benefit and not for self aggrandizement or from a self serving and top down stance.
The level of community does dictate the manner and depth and even if wisdom can or should be offered at all. I am less obligated to the lady behind me in Valley Farms when she opines on the items in my shopping cart; I am not in deep communion with her (although it must be noted that wisdom can and often does come from seeming strangers; if she notices that something in my cart is made by sweatshop workers, it is a kindness to point it out. I don’t have to follow her advice, but if that advice is offered in right spirit and devoid of judgement, I cannot demonize her for risk taken (we’ll get to risk and gift in a moment).
Being in deeper community, as with Alana, as with Mary Jane, as with Leonie, the lines and lanes are both sharper also both more and less fixed. The deeper I enter into relationship with one or all three of them, there is a stronger imperative for them to act, and also a stronger imperative for tenderness and holding. I am not a random person with a shopping cart in Spring Valley; rather I am a person with whom they have made a contract, however unspoken. That they will indeed speak into my life, be it for encouragement, approbation, course correction, or even straight up admonishment.
And this: even if the maxim of who can speak to whom is accepted (it isn’t by me) the act of acceptance of relationship, either individual or communal, automatically waives the prohibition. Because, if the prohibition is intact, is there really community, is there really authentic relationship at all? If permission is rescinded or provisional, is there truly eye to eye?
That my job as their beloved is to listen with shields down, and for both of us to believe in and rest in the best intentions of the other is crucial. This is relationship worthy of the name. They do not bear responsibility for my choices, but they, by the very nature of friendship and shared community can indeed hold up a mirror of the person I have confided to them that I want to be. And while I may turn away from the mirror of my best self and my best impulses that *I myself gave them*, their responsibility is complete. My task is to remember that this mirror is one I myself crafted. One that I gave them for safekeeping. I need to remember my discernment was sound in trusting them with the glass forged in my very soul.
Parity and mutuality are key. All three women are esteemed by me; each has something to give me which I gratefully receive. And, though they occupy a vaulted (but not idealized) place in my life, my responsibility to each of them–to safeguard the mirrors they have entrusted to me–is no different and no less. Whether from the Caribbean, or from the American South, or from the dense treelines of the Canadian border, each of us can speak into and be held and spoken to by the other. In fact, the imperative demands it. If I love my friends, I will walk in ways that matter.
No, that is not at all how the world works. But it is certainly how we roll. We are New People Doing New Things in New Ways, and that includes rigorous interrogation of commonly held orthodoxy. If we are going to all sit and sip soup and drink ginger beer and spoon potatoes and savor roast, we must all commit to this new way of living. We must pass the bread with intention. We must accept the basket from everyone at the table.
Another gentle knock. This time it’s Cheryl, with moist cake and a topping that goes with.
We let her in, pour her water (no spice for Cheryl), fill her plate, ladle her soup and abide with her as she nourishes herself and comes to speed. She listens intently as she dips her bread into her soup.
When she finishes she gets up to slice and serve her cake, then she offers her glaze.
As she serves us, she meditates aloud, about cake, but not only about cake.
The cake is a gift, she says. Freely given, a happy sacrifice from her kitchen. Then she holds up the pitcher with the glaze. I offer you this too. It goes with the cake. I am not sure you will like it, but I put my very best into it, my love, my hopes, my very self. It’s a risk. But without the glaze, the cake is too sweet; it is less than nourishing. I want to truly feed you.
Gift and risk. When people speak into your life, into my life, I need to remember just what a gift, and what a risk it is. Let’s stipulate that all of the above, all of the Hesed (which is a non-negotiable part of all of this), are present in the offering of the gift. Let’s also stipulate that risk is real. The glaze could make me reject the cake, and also Cheryl the chef herself.
She could have held back the glaze, only offering approbation and reinforcement, but no. The gift is only complete with the risk.
It takes a tender and undefended and Hesed heart to see the tenderness and the undefended and the Hesed heart of the Other. To partake of the unknown. To receive with gratitude, not resistance and retaliation. To honor the gift, and the giver, and to acknowledge the risk inherent in the gift itself.
And then, to ask for another serving, and then another. With heaping helpings of the glaze.
As we, all five of us, finish our meal with cake and glaze and coffee and tea (and whisky for those so inclined), I look at my four guides. Different hues, different perspectives, different ways to love me; all with selfless Hesed. Both our bellies and our souls are full.
The sun has set. Alana goes to tend to her family; Mary Jane to her grandchildren; Cheryl to her beloved. Leonie waits for me as I quickly clean up and take her to the airport so she can go back to her Eastern life (but she’ll be conjured again tomorrow! Leonie is always with me, despite the miles).
The Beloved Community is bigger than us all, and is also as small as my kitchen table.
So should it be, so must it be, for us all.
Keep walking.
With Love,
Your Lace
Join the conversation back at the Bistro!
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