Faith in a Fresh Vibe Rohadi

Season 8 opens featuring author Camille Hernandez. Currently located in California, Camille is a writer and public educator pursuing an abolitionist world by dismantling systems of oppression created by settler colonization. Her forthcoming debut book is entitled, "The Hero and the Whore. Reclaiming healing and liberation through stories of sexual exploitation in the Bible." Sound intriguing? It's more than that, it's a fresh and exciting way to give space for marginalized voices in the Bible to speak unto collective liberation. Let's go!

We discuss Camille's book and ideas surrounding decolonizing Christianity, healthy boundaries, healing, liberation, and more.

Follow Camille on Substack, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.
Camille Hernandez is an abolitionist, community facilitator, and poet. She describes herself as a doula using care-centered leadership models to help survivors know their voice, be nourished in community, and develop self-compassion practices in order to birth new liberated realities into existence.

Season 8 continues with Episode #54 featuring the voice of Rose J. Percy. Listen in as the rain falls and the thunder hits in the background as Rose and I discuss all pieces decolonizing faith. We start off with a "get to know you" through a conversation on food, then quickly pivot to the importance of cultivating rest for imagination. We switch gears into identity, and how vocation is the work to uncover the things that make you you. Rose discusses some of her work helping others build strength through a 'ministry' of midwifery. We then trail off the second half discussing aspects of somatic (body) liberation and the wider connections to liberation. How might bodies on the margins find liberation through the stories of our families and beyond?



Rose J. Percy, M.Div is a contemplative theopoet with a background in justice-oriented education and ministry. Rose writes affirmational prayers and poems for weary dreamers. Her work engages theopoetics, mysticism, identity, vocational discernment, trauma, and theology.
 
Rose started “Dear Soft Black Woman,” a podcast and community space for Black women+ to inspire and celebrate flourishing beyond the “Strong Black Woman” myth. She writes affirmational prayers, poems, and grounding reflections through a newsletter called “A Gentle Landing.”

Have you ever heard of the Enneagram? From church groups to corporate development, the Enneagram is a tool used to help find your personality type. Increasingly, church groups are adopting the tool in their small groups and leadership development. But what if, like so many personality systems out there, the way we understand the type numbers are filtered through a particular gaze? Jessica D. Dickson joins me for this episode to discuss decentering white hegemony in the Enneagram, in search of a more embodied and holistic perspective of self. Jessica challenges the implicit bias and assumptions wrapped within "typing" individuals. Your community, environment, and who you even learn the Enneagram from will impact how you perceive yourself through the tool.

Show excerpt:
"...so the Type-8...the reason it's taught often like a white male with a lot of power, is because the Type-8's focus is about who has power, are they wielding it well, my autonomy, who to keep it, how to make sure I don't get it. There's a focus on me controlling my destiny and having an impact on the world. That wasn't really encouraged in community, especially white evangelical community...but you can serve. Twos (2) can serve. A lot of women who come to the Enneagram through white evangelicalism think they are a twos (2s) at first.

The reason why I (Jessica) don't recommend tests is because often when we are testing there's an ideal we are holding of ourselves, and it takes a good amount of self-reflection and the ability to be real with our selves, to be vulnerable, that it takes to answer that binary test with a level of honesty. Test also have bias, so its description of Types will describe the people that they know."
We end our discussion on the Enneagram as a tool unto anti-racism, and how we may wrap embodiment into our discovery of self. Enjoy!


Jessica Denise Dickson is a life empowerment coach who teaches and coaches for the reclamation of our full humanity, equity, justice, and freedom through the intersections of the Enneagram, antiracism, and embodiment. She does this in one-on-one coaching, in groups and workshops, and with organizations. To this work, Jessica brings a Master’s degree in Counseling, a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a career counseling certificate, and embodiment training with several teachers. She also has over 15 years of experience in diversity education; 9 years as an Enneagram student and teacher; years recruiting, training, and providing professional development for staff; and a commitment to her own personal and professional growth . . . and more. She believes when we do this work, we live more authentically with self-trust, self-safety, and fully-embodied freedom. When we do this, we change the world.
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Every episode begins with two questions: where are you situated (the traditional lands on which you dwell), and who are your people. Patty is located in the Niagara region which is Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory. Listen as she shares a marvellous story about finding her people. Her book Becoming Kin is part memoire describing her journey to find her people and what it means to be a good relative. From discovering her people--Ojibwae Anishinaabe--through on her father's side, to navigating her childhood brought up different in a 'typical' Canadian Ukrainian household.

After the intro, our conversation takes a turn into making sense of identity as multi-ethnic/bi-racial human and what it means to be among your people. We then the process of growing up in white evangelicalism and growing out of old Christian formation. We touch on the legacy of Christian mission and colonization and why finding your people and your identity is important to press back against white hegemony. Even white folks!  That will end part 1 before we join part 2 in progress that will discuss Patty's book in greater depth.



About Patty: Through writing and podcasting Patty Krawec (Anishinaabe/Ukranian) explores how we might live differently in the relationships we inherit. She is a co-founder of the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation and her book, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future was published in September by Broadleaf Books. Krawec lives on Twitter as @gindaanis. Find her online at http://daanis.ca

 

Part 2 in our two part episode centers around Patty's latest book, Becoming Kin. I begin with the question about the way forward: what does a decolonized and liberating community look like? Patty responds by sharing a story she recounts in her book about the deer. The relationships we have with the land can help inform and change the ways we organize our society. We examine how the racialized church creates barriers to belonging, and how some traditions must pause to interrogate how we form community and relationships. That includes the church as a whole wrestling with their central calling--is it mission? If so, is that inherently colonial?

We then switch gears to ask whether or not church institutions today can change. What would the institutional church re-orient towards if it was serious about ushering in change. Or is it more inclined towards self-preservation? Patty then introduces the "trickster" figure in various traditions, and how they operate as prophets who provoke change. Where are the tricksters today?
If the kingdom of God is among us, if it is here, shouldn't the [institution] be looking for it rather than imposing it? Shouldn't they be wondering, "what has God been doing here before we came?" But they never asked those questions, it was just about imposing their version of the kingdom on us. So if [this] institution fails, that's OK.
We close off about the talk of inclusion. Inclusion into what? Why would BIPOC folks want chairs at tables established by the western church? So what does a new thing look like? We spend the last third of our conversation adding language and features into the new thing. We can start by looking at the communities that we like....listen for more beautiful stories including a re-telling of the 'Good' Samaritan.



About Patty Krawec: Through writing and podcasting Patty Krawec (Anishinaabe/Ukranian) explores how we might live differently in the relationships we inherit. She is a co-founder of the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation and her book, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future was published in September by Broadleaf Books. Krawec lives on Twitter as @gindaanis. Find her online at htttp://daanis.ca

 

 

A short little Bible study in this episode on the Faith in a Fresh Vibe podcast. Stemming from regular occurrences of oft cited cultural events that conservative Christians decry for whatever moral reason, Rohadi ponders the question, "why do some (conservative) Christians seem to hate the world so much? It all comes down to how you read the Bible, and we discover how many verses leading modern Christians to "hate" the world have been misinterpreted. Learn why and how a more liberating understanding can help lead us forward in a modern world.



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