Ayana: Gardening really does soothe my soul.
Gwen: Has it always been that for you?
Ayana: Yes and no. I think it has definitely developed more as an adult. My mother always had plants. She would plant annuals and she would have her annual geraniums, but there was always plants in some kind of gardening, but not to the extent where I am now. But once I had my own home, which was more permanent, I just started thinking more about sustainability initiatives and environmental justice, how I wanted to develop my little backyard. I don't want to be mowing constantly and putting fertilizers down. There are just things that I don't want to be contributing to. I just remember buying my house and my dad just kind of like starting to go through all the things that he would do with a lawn, right? Well, you need to do a fertilizer at this point. You need to do a weed suppressing at this by this day. And I was just like, I don't want to do any of that. What's your relationship to gardening?
Gwen: I just started a huge native plant garden this summer as therapy for my soul. It was nothing, like zero, until, oh man, I would say the last few years. Mine is a direct result of just a lot of deconstructing that I've done, I would say religiously, because I never felt a connection to the planet, the environment, to species. I always kind of saw that hierarchy of quote unquote man is up here and then we use the earth to our advantage. I've been reading a lot of indigenous authors. A lot of those books have kind of become my holy grail and have been life-changing for me. Learning that we're all interconnected, and that plants and animals are considered people by the indigenous cultures and knowing now how connected everything is and how much we can learn from the natural world. I've definitely taken to like; what can I do with my piece? I hate even calling it my property because that's, think, part of what has ruined us as a world, a nation. But tending to what's been given to me and feeding my plot and putting my gloved hands in the dirt because I'm pretty sensory sensitive. But that has just saved me this summer. We've had a lot of transitions in our house, a lot of chaos, good chaos, gardening, having things like live and tending to them, I think for the first time has been part of my therapeutic soul process.
Ayana: I really appreciate that framing of not using that language of my property. I appreciate you talking through that.
Gwen: Yeah. I see so many people that feel, ugh, just like they are owed. This is mine, I own this, and it just causes so much tension. So that is definitely something I've been learning more about.
Ayana: I'm interested in, going back to your bio, that phrasing of Christian privilege. And part of me is wondering because I grew up very heavily steeped in the Black church. Like, and when I say heavily, my great uncle is the founder of that church. And my first uncle is the current pastor and my mom, and my grandma and all of her sisters have attended are like we are a church family, but I wouldn't have phrased it as Christian privilege.
Gwen: For me, it's very much white Christian privilege. You know, the Black church was a totally different world that we didn't mix with. I grew up in the Christian reformed tradition, which unfortunately hasn't evolved much. And so, it’s really kind of segregating in and of itself right now. But my husband and I left the Christian reform tradition, oh, probably 15 years ago, very intentionally. But I've learned so much now deconstructing that experience and that specific tradition I was raised in. Thinking that my way was the right way and this is how everybody should believe, and salvation is at risk. But I have it, good for me. I am going to be a good girl and make good decisions, and it was all this determination of heaven versus hell, and I was just born into that and didn't know a lot of people who lived outside of that world. Like I didn't know people in the Black church who held a lot of the same belief systems as us, but I think was a vastly different experience than being white and Christian. That relationship that I can only imagine the Black church had with God and Jesus was a very different than the white experience. I didn't need or rely on my relationship to God outside of I needed it to make sure that I wasn't going to go burn in hell.
Ayana: Interesting.
Gwen: Does that make sense?
Ayana: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Gwen: Whereas from what I've learned even the Black experience in the church was one of more depth of I drastically need this relationship with God because white Christians have done a whole lot of damage in the name of God. So…
Ayana: Absolutely.
Gwen: And now I see that as oh my God, I was a part of that.
Ayana: So how did you get to that place? Growing up in it and then, you can clarify, but I'm kind of assuming, right, that part of that experience is what led you to Calvin, but you're very far away from that now. What prompted that exploration, that rethinking of the things that you held to be true.
Gwen: Yes. Calvin is the only school I applied to. I didn't really understand that there were other schools out there that I could be a part of. My parents went to Calvin, my brother went to Calvin, my aunts and uncles went to Calvin. So, I went to Calvin. Met my husband at Calvin, because that's what you do. You go to Calvin mainly to get married. At least you did when I was there. Then moving to Denver, we started to meet and become very close with a lot of people who did not share a Christian faith. So, I the eye-opening started there. But then when we adopted our son, who is now 17 and is autistic, all of sudden as he grew up, we stopped fitting into our Christian church circles.
Ayana: Wow.
Gwen: He couldn't go to the Christian schools because they couldn't serve him. We were still tithing money for other kids to go to the Christian schools. And nobody saw that as problematic. They kind of shunned us because we weren't going to Christian schools. So all of sudden there was a whole lot of not belonging happening and it was all because we had a kid who had a disability and he's an amazing kid who has taught the world a whole lot. But we felt for the first time like an outsider and that started me doing more listening and learning from voices that weren't inside of my tradition and then I couldn't stop. There was so much to learn about different world religions and different spiritual traditions and just totally different models of thinking. So, your religious experience stemmed in the Black Christian church. And can you kind of talk me through how that has evolved and where you are now?
Ayana: My great uncle, when he found the church, was kind of very recently moving to the Chicago area from Mississippi. Black Baptist, very much Southern infused and perhaps not conservative in the way that we think about white Christian churches as being conservative, like not conservative as those beliefs might shape how they view politics in the world.
Gwen: Sure.
Ayana: But conservative in the sense of still having a very traditional sense of like what women's roles were in the church. Just as an example, like women can't wear pants in the sanctuary. At the same time that I was viewing my mom, and my grandmother and all of my aunts do a significant amount of work of the church, right? So it was this like disconnect for me going like, okay, but when we need something done, when we need, have a question, I know who to go to and it is very rarely the men who are also imposing these very rules around like what I can wear or what I should wear. Early teenage years by like 11, I just had dissonance with it. I don't like that I keep getting told I can't wear pants to be in the sanctuary. What are we actually concerned with when I come to church? Is it what I'm wearing or is it a relationship with God? What are we prioritizing?
Gwen: Were you met with answers? Were you met with dialogue or was it more of a...
Ayana: No, it was just more of my mom just being like, I hear you. This is how we do it. There was also this tension. My dad actually wasn't very religious, so he didn't attend church with us. His family were and are Jehovah Witnesses.
Gwen: Hah.
Ayana: Through his adult life, was mostly kind of like, I go to church with my wife and my kids when, you know, my wife wants me to come. But I think he wanted us to have that experience of going to church and relationship with church, but it wasn't something he prioritized for himself. So, I had this kind of like my mom being like, when we're at church, like, this is just how it is. But they weren't echoing those rules from church. The rest of week, my parents are actually really not trying to enforce that on me.
Gwen: That must have been really confusing.
Ayana: Well, that's part of why I've had so many questions. We as a family unit, this isn't even how we talk about things or live those experiences the other six days of the week.
Gwen: Yeah.
Ayana: Why do I have to keep going to church and then like being much more quote unquote kind of submissive? Yeah, pretty early on I was kind of like mostly at that age was just like this doesn't feel fair. I don't understand this, but it doesn't feel fair. But also, this isn't for me. And like I came to a place of understanding, like I have to endure this until I leave for college.