Despite the intense shutdown I began experiencing as an anxious, queer child in an Alabama Baptist church, there were two aspects of church I always looked forward to—praise and worship, and the benediction.  

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It was the instruments. The way they sang before the singer hit their note, the way the musicians let the melodies pour out of them, the way the tools coaxed and guided their voice, and, most pertinently, the way the entire room moved with the Spirit.  

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Together we sang. Together we swayed. Together we rocked. And together we cried. We cried out to God—to that Spirit that had led us, that led us to that moment, that led us to that sanctuary. The one we were to rely on for our motivation. Our soul. Our intuition. Our fight. Our joy.  

Our God was not the white god that told the pilgrims to massacre, rape, pillage, and (attempt to) enslave the Indigenous Americans. Nor the one that told the corrupted colonizers to massacre, rape, pillage, and brutally enslave the transplanted Africans. It is not that vicious colonizer god that informs the African American spirit. It is the knowledge that a restorative, uplifting, discerning, communal Spirit led us home. That at home, we worshipped and gathered, chanted and rocked—stomped, danced, and jumped. That together, we beat to the drum and shouted and responded to those shouts. We asked questions and pleaded to the spirits that had been guiding us and asked them to keep on keeping on, and they answered with insight. It is the knowledge that white folks been scrambling and readjusting—reinforcing and reimplanting they lyin’ superstructures for fo’ hunnid plus years, and we still standin’ and able to worship. Together, we still chant, we still ring shout, and we still come together to tell our spirits to move and to rise—to remember that you know. And that in all that, white folks still working to fit they two-plus servings of hellfire into perpetually imposed iniquity on us.

 

What’s mo’ powerful than that? That born from the hymns, songs, and chants of our enslaved mothers, fathers, and healers are the likes of rock n’ roll, r&b, blues, jazz, soul, funk, rap, and gospel? That we created these songs because we were in pain, yes, but also because we were in community. We wuz gon lift our voice and sang, and when we sang we made the beauty we had preserved and repurposed. The beauty we fought to keep and, truthfully, could never be white folks fuh duh taking.  

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I loved praise and worship, and I loved them instruments because that’s when I knew it was time for my spirit to move. I sang right along with them, anxious as I was. Clapping, rocking, mimicking my sister for the rhythm and letting them notes lead my soul.

 

Yeah, I loved praise and worship because it was time for my people to sang and be set free. That was our time. Then we had the word, and the preacher rang out the benediction with the piano and the choir and gave my folks the good word. He let us know it was okay if we needed to be called in—that we can get that prayer, that cry in. We could get that revelation, that revolution, that community embrace, that shout of encouragement, that “yes Lawd!” as you walked down the aisle to the pulpit, that symbol of liberation and truth, and know that here you are before the Spirit—before God. Here is that spirit, that Goddess, that gay, queer, Black, Indigenous, merciful, beautiful, righteous, and rightfully angry, guiding God in the room. And here was our knowledge. Here was our route home. Here was our celebration and recognition that had them familiar sounds, them familiar voices, them familiar hands, words, wisdoms, and patterns we knew at our home and had kept in our bones. God wuz in duh warduh in duh womb.  

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And now God wuz movin’ duh Spirit in duh room.