The Book of Queer Prophets. Группа авторов

we take small but confident steps towards healing: Look at how I’ve survived!

      Isn’t that God?

      Even still, a reimagining of our Godliness doesn’t heal the wounds of so many words weaponised against us. And to incorporate God, faith, a spirituality into our lives doesn’t necessarily negate what was once (and often continues to be) a bone-deep internalising that we are somehow wrong, that we fall just outside the bounds of God’s love. And so a divorce has to take place in order to create something new, something healing. The project of a queer faith is not only a rejection of the narrative that excludes us, but a complete dismantling of that narrative: a queer black editor striking through in red, contextualising the Word for our current moment and tearing out pages to lighten the books we’ve been beaten with. It is a wholesale ownership of our own narrative – cast in the images of ourselves and our community.

      The very unique journey of blackness and queerness is not a Dante-esque descent into hell. It is not preordained marginalisation, nor is it death. It is the manifestation of possibilities and futures that are borne from radical potential. What Jesus, God, the spirits and the numinous have in common is that whether we look up into the sky or call forth from nature, we believe that someone or something is bearing witness to our lives. We hope that someone or something sees who we are, who we’re trying to be, what we desperately hope to become and will help us, guide us, to the promised land of self-actualisation. We cry and we languish and we beg for help because there must be something greater than us, because there must be a way out, because this can’t possibly be it. But when we call out, we call in. We begin to see that it is we, a community of survivors, who are bearing witness to the lives of our siblings. It is we who are fighting for a world we all deserve to live in. It is we who are exercising a patience beyond comprehension. It is we who touch and guide and advise, who speak up for the voiceless. We embody on terra firma the answer we look for in the sky. We are not Jude, but Moses. We are the guiding light, the answer to our physical and spiritual liberation. And when our voices are united, they rise up in a thunderous chorus: Let my people go!

LAMENTATIONS

      At present, as far as I can see, religion is failing in its duty to provide moral and spiritual leadership.