On a beautiful summer afternoon a few years ago, I sat at an outdoor cafe drinking lemonade and people watching. This is one of the joys of living in a college town: an endless parade of interesting people and stories exist just outside your door. I noticed a young woman in a beautiful sundress; the color was flattering to her skin tone and the cut of the garment was perfect for her body. She looked like a walking advertisement for summer. I kept thinking about her dress and wondering why it looked so familiar to me. It slowly dawned on me that I had that exact same dress.
It was perhaps a week later when I pulled my sundress out of its bag and ventured to wear it around town. I caught a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror and thought that this dress looked nothing like the dress that was on the walking model. Now that I had actually seen the dress on a size 2 frame, it looked like a potato sack on my size 10 frame. How did I ever convince myself, when trying it on in the store, that this dress was flattering on me? And so I tucked the dress away, in the back of the closet, where clothes go to die.
Last summer, bereft of anything to wear to a picnic, I scoured the depths of my closet and found the discarded sundress. I put it on, along with some strappy sandals, and walked confidently out the door. I hadn't become the size of that walking model. But I had grown comfortable and confident in my own skin. Some tough things had happened to me over those intervening years, but borne of those tragedies was my desire to love myself fiercely, to love the skin I was in, and to be truly comfortable with my flesh.
The same process has occurred with my spiritual walk over the years. There is no "one size fits all" approach to spirituality. I am as likely to worship with Anne Lamott and James Baldwin, as I am to read the words of Paul. I embrace my womanist identification, even as I embrace a high Christology in my theology. I joyfully worship with my whole body in high praise; but I also seek those spaces of silence and stillness. My prayer life consists of letters written to God. The text of my sermons come from Langston Hughes and Audre Lorde. Fasting is as much a part of my worship as is preparing a bountiful table to feed family and friends. I have learned to be comfortable and confident in my own spirit.
And perhaps this is the path to spiritual maturity: wholly embracing the skin you are in, loving the spirit that encompasses it, and using the mind to relish the connections between body and spirit. I'm looking forward to summer, wearing that dress again and others like it, and enjoying the knowledge that God loves me and has fearfully and wonderfully made me.
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- professor, minister, displaced New Yorker, social activist, feminist, and lover of words
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5 comments:
Thank you! I find myself amazed in the number of African-American women who on one side still find it difficult to embrace all in who they are and yet on the other their are women of color who are coming out of their cocoons - embracing their black wings and soaring. So...Please keep doing what you are doing and sharing what you are sharing. In spring, we will see a slew of black, brown and ecru butterflies.
This is such an inspiring post. The phrase, "my desire to love myself fiercely," in the context of surviving hard experience moves me. And linking that path to the spiritual one and, indeed, to the one concerning knowledge and intellect? Powerful.
Thank you for this. I will save it and read it again, and again. God made you, indeed.
This was a beautiful post. Thank you!
this post makes me laugh ("...where clothes go to die") & pray all at the same time. here's to a Spirit led Lenten season.
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