This post is part of the Breathing is Brilliant reprise of the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus for Black History Month (also known as Audre Lorde’s Birthday Month) 2019.

“The power of love in the world is the greatest power existing,” was a phrase that shaped the trajectory of life-long activist Bayard Rustin. Rustin, the key architect of the monumental March on Washington, participant in non-violent protests throughout the nation, and activist on the front lines of movements for peace and justice until his last breath offered a spiritual understanding of power, that gave him and many others the bravery to challenge state and economic power collectively.

Rustin also developed the phrase “angelic troublemakers” to invite what he hoped would be generations of activists who would stop the gears of militarism, racism and capitalism not out of anger, but motivated by a higher love.   However, there were times when Bayard Rustin was not considered angelic enough and indeed too much trouble to be fully embraced even by movements and structures that he himself developed, including the Civil Rights movement.  There were even more times when as a gay Black man the political structures that he sought to make inclusive would not include him.  For example, in order to have a recognized legal connection to his life partner, he had to adopt him as a son, because there was no structure through which the logistical needs of their life together and his legacy could be honored on the terms he imagined.

   I think often of the fact that Bayard Rustin grew up as an athlete and a singer.   He was part of teams and choirs literally and metaphorically his whole life.  What can his life story teach us about the difference between moving between different roles for the sake of the team, or harmonizing and modulating our voices in collaboration with a choir and the erasure and silencing of institutions more attached to respectability than to the transformative power of love?  What is happening right now with your voice and your energy, in the context of the institutions where you work, create or mobilize, as love transforms you?

What are the places in the institutions you participate in and create that the power of love is showing up?  Are there current concessions you have made to other forms of power that now need to shift based on what love is teaching you?

Our offering is this guided meditation chant, inspired by Bayard Rustin from the 2014 Black Feminist Breathing Chorus.  May it be with you wherever you are, that love may flow through and activate the angelic trouble that is necessary in our times.

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And here are links if you want to support the Black Feminist Bookmobile Project and the ongoing work of the Mobile Homecoming Trust Living Library and Archive.

Loving you with every breath (because breathing is brilliant,)

       Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs