It was not election night in Northern Ireland last night, so there wasn’t the usual anxious (yet somewhat hopeful) air that I’m used to, but finding myself at an event I had no idea about other than the fact that it was called “Sacred Space”, ended up feeling exactly where I was meant to be.
My friend Paul has a knack for finding unique spaces of rugged community building, and the rest of my friends are big into the “might-as-well-tag-along” philosophy, so we trekked all the way out to a bar on Ormeau Road for this month’s Borderlands gathering.
Borderlands is a reinterpretation and reinvention of traditional spaces of faith and what we aim to get of them. It acknowledges that at the heart of religious and spiritual life is a seeking of intentional community and intentional living— and its not really the ‘who’, ‘what’, or ‘where’ that is important, but the ‘why’ in coming together and in finding purpose in/through connection.
So there we were, sandwiched on the second floor (Irish people would call it the first) of a three-story bar where we could hear music and chatter from above and below in the moments of silence as we explored the idea of Sacred Space through song, story, and dialogue.
I’m very fascinated by acts of community-building1 in this current moment (especially as we navigate significant and intensifying polarization in the United States) and living and learning in Belfast reminds me often that investing in community, in healing, hoping, and really hearing each other out is a constant and radical act.
I am often very moved by ideas of calling and purpose, and especially by the belief that there are things much larger than us, things we can’t always explain, that matter and define us exponentially. One of those is the idea of community; as a force larger than us, but that we also make up. A force that connects us, drives us and gives us purpose. Sense of community, for me, creates a feeling of duty to those around me, to our shared space, and to our collective experiences.
But sense of community and community-building itself is not easy. It asks a lot of us. It requires vulnerability, trust, and hope. The latter two are the ones I find the most difficult, especially in thinking about my community back home in South Carolina, and I still have many questions about what it means to hope, what hope looks like, and what we might-should even hope for. Still, I know that hope is the tradition of my people in a country that we have built with our bones and blood on land that is not ours to begin with.
So, there I was in Borderlands on election night, an ocean away from my community, thinking about the power of gathering, hoping, and healing, and how just those themselves are sacred acts. And as I woke up in the middle of the night to discouraging (but not unexpected) election results, I went through what feels like a ritual at this point (*shudders in remembrance of 2016*): let myself feel the anger, the fear, the frustration, the bitterness. And then I looked for the good, the celebrations, and the hope.2 One of the Borderlands speakers said something really simple, yet resonant: “Love your people. Say your prayers. Don’t complicate it.”
As I (along with the rest of us) process what the election results mean for my life, my community, and our country, and as I wrap up this newsletter-meets-think-piece, I do not mean to end on hope as a cheesy, toxic-positivity device. I mean to end on hope because when all other actions and emotional responses are exhausted, it is often the only thing left to do.
Where will we find community as we continue to navigate uncertainty and when our spaces of connection (physical and digital) are changing, moving, and maybe even disappearing altogether? This has been a question for me for a while— and it’s why this newsletter even exists. I’m open to (and excited by) creative, thoughtful, and obscure stabs at this. Borderlands is one of them. Keep me posted on where you find these experiments and let me know what you think.
This is actually what I’m writing my master’s thesis on. Examining non-traditional spaces that bring people together through intentional engagement with the past/difficult community histories as a way to move forward and create new ideas and spaces of community. At some point, I’ll put together a newsletter post just on this idea and the many tangents that come out of it. I find these spaces (& the act of building & sustaining these spaces) incredibly urgent and necessary.
An actual question that I hope you will follow up with me on: What are you doing to take care of yourself post-election? How do you process and move forward?