There are over 450 Black Madonnas found all over the world, and they are known and beloved by millions of people. But all too often, the Black Madonna is described in archetypal, disembodied language that completely omits a powerful truth: She is Black. This is a critical distinction, because as my latest guest has written, “the divine feminine alone will not liberate us from white patriarchy. She. Must. Be. BLACK.” Dr. Christena Cleveland is a social psychologist, public theologian, activist and author of the new book, God is a Black Woman, which recounts her epic 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas in France, and explores how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, disillusionment, and racial and gender oppression. A former professor at Duke University’s Divinity School, Christena is also the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal as well as its sister organization, Sacred Folk, which creates resources to stimulate people’s spiritual imaginations and support their journeys toward liberation. On the latest episode, we discuss what inspired Christena’s pilgrimage, how conservative Christianity’s “whitemalegod” functions as a tool of white patriarchy, how white feminism causes harm to Black women and stunts our understanding of the Sacred Feminine, and how sacred imagination can help us dream new possibilities for our future.
You can learn more about Dr. Christena Cleveland and her work at her website, www.christenacleveland.com, as well as at https://www.sacredfolk.com/.
Christena’s new book, God is a Black Woman, is available everywhere books are sold. Here’s a list of Black-owned, independent bookstores: https://bookshop.org/lists/black-owned-bookstores-2021
You can also support Christena’s work on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/cscleve.
The Palestinian Liberation Theologian Christena described is Naim Ateek, and his book, Justice and Only Justice, can be found here: https://www.orbisbooks.com/justice-and-only-justice.html
LIZ KELLY: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's
show. I am your host Liz, joining you, as usual, from
Virginia on the ancestral lands of the Monacan People.
I appreciate your patience with me, as taking one
moon cycle for winter rest kind of turned into nearly two
moon cycles. This is my first full winter on the East
Coast, and it's different; I find myself moving at a slower
pace. So thanks for your patience.
I'm really happy to be back with all of you today
and I am excited to be in conversation with my guest today,
whose work has been really inspiring to me and also
challenges me to grow in my understanding of the Sacred
Feminine and specifically where my understanding of Her
intersects with racism, sacred activism, and even my need to
liberate my experience of the Divine Feminine from the
gender binary.
Dr. Christena Cleveland is a social psychologist,
public theologian, author and activist. She is the founder
and director of the Center For Justice & Renewal as well as
the sister organization Sacred Home, which creates resources
to stimulate people's spiritual imaginations and support
their journeys towards liberation. An award winning
researcher and former professor at Duke University's
Divinity School, Christena is also the author of a powerful
1
new book, God is a Black Woman, which recounts her 400-mile
walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas
in France and explores how America's collective idea of God
as a white man has perpetuated hurt, disillusionment and
racial and gender racial oppression.
Christena lives in Boston, Massachusetts and she is
joining us from her home there today.
Christena, thank you so much for being with us.
DR. CHRISTENA CLEVELAND: Thank you for having me.
It's wonderful to connect.
LK: Yes, yes. Well, I know that we have so much to
talk about. I really loved your book, and there's so much I
want to talk about there.
What I usually like to start with in these
discussions is getting a little bit of a sense of your
spiritual background. I know you talk a lot about that in
your book, but I wonder if you could just give us a little
sense of the spiritual tradition in which you were raised
and what those experiences were like for you.
CC: Yes, yes. I'm a child of conservative
Christianity, both Black versions and White versions,
because I grew up in a Black family and very kind connected
to the Black church, specifically the Black Pentecostal
church, which theologically is very conservative. I also
grew up in a white suburb of San Francisco and my parents
2
had us involved in lots of white churches for their sort of,
you know, kids' activities and Vacation Bible School. We
went to private school at a particular school, private
Christian school. That was my world, you know, be as good a
Christian as you can possibly be, because you might go to
hell if you don't.
LK: Yeah.
CC: It's a world that, like, now that I'm pretty
far outside that world and I have lots of conversations with
people who don't know that world at all, they're like
that -- like this world makes no sense to me, like it sounds
like a cult, it sounds really harsh, it sounds really
constrictive and like restrictive. But when I was growing
up, it was just here, okay, Here are the rules, you follow
the rules and Mom and Dad are in charge and the Pastor is in
charge and they tell you if you're good or bad, and you
better just hope you're good enough for this god who
basically hates you but somehow killed his own son so that
he could love you. And so, a lot of fear, a lot of fear
growing up.
LK: Yeah. I'm curious, did you also get the
messages -- because I grew up in a Southern Baptist
church --
CC: Uh-huh.
LK: -- yeah, so I relate to some of what you're
3
saying.
But did you also get the side message, too, that
Jesus really loves you and like that, without any
acknowledgment of the contradiction of those two things?
I'm just curious. Contradiction?
CC: Yeah. To me it always felt Jesus loves you
because Jesus is such a great guy. It's because He's so
awesome that He's able to love you. It's not because you're
worthy of love, you know. I sort of got that message, but
it was always extremely confusing.
I mean, one of the passages we cut out of the book
just for space and time was me as a second grader getting
kicked out of Sunday School because I was so confused about
how a God who supposedly loved me could possibly kill
everybody in Noah's flood, in the flood of Noah's Arc. We
were going over that story in Sunday School, and I was just
like but I don't get it, He loves us, why would He kill
everybody? Kill everybody. You know, my little
seven-year-old mind was thinking of like drowning puppies
and like, know, drowning babies, you know, like super
graphic -- because that's not what's on the storyboard, the
graphic, but my head went there. You know, I was like, No,
these babies are drowning, these children are drowning,
children like me. And I just remember my teacher just
getting so stressed out about it, I got kicked out. This
4
teacher was probably a 19-year-old volunteer, you know what
I mean? They were not prepared to answer those sorts of
questions. But, yes, I just got banned from Sunday School
for like inciting a riot or something.
But, yeah, that contradiction -- I became very aware
of that contradiction at a very early age and there was no
resolution other than for people to tell me, You just have
to believe. So holiness, goodness, faithfulness meant
believing at all costs and never changing my beliefs, which
helps me understand now why so, so, so many people struggle
with my work, particularly people who have a Christian
background, because I think to them faithfulness means never
revising your beliefs. So if I'm talking about God is a
Black Woman, they're like, but I've always been told that
God is a white man, Jesus on the cross, you know what I
mean? So even opening up that question of, Well, can we
revisit that? Is it possible that that needs to be updated,
that needs to be revised, that needs to be made
intersectional, you know? And it's like, No, that's
actually unholy to do that. Like I understand that as
unholy, as sinful.
LK: Yes.
CC: So it's kind of almost like a bulletproof
defense to keep us in our place.
LK: Yes. I felt like I was always told as a child,
5
God gave you a brain and it is good to ask these questions,
however, there wasn't ever supposed to be a different
conclusion. Like, it was okay to ask the question, you
know, but just more in a hypothetical sense.
CC: Uh-huh.
LK: I wasn't supposed to change my mind.
CC: Mm-hmm. There's such an element of control,
right? Like, you get to exert your individuality to a
certain extent, but at the end of the day, we need you to
get into formation. And if you push beyond some of those
boundaries in those particular communities, there are real
consequences beyond just getting kicked out of Sunday
School.
LK: Right, yes.
CC: Yes. It's an interesting regime.
LK: So I'm curious, you know, in your own awakening
-- so, for me, there was, I think, a first awakening of
like, you know, just being aware of something like the
Sacred Feminine.
And I'm curious for you, when you looked at God,
like was there an awakening for you first that, Hey, this
God is white and I am Black and what is that about? Or,
Hey, this God is a man and I am a woman? Did those things
come at the same time? Were they separate? How did that
awakening kind of evolve for you?
6
CC: The awakening around God's race was much
earlier for me than God's gender. But part of that, I
think, has to do with the fact that as a Black Woman, in our
society, I often had to choose, What am I going to care
about today, my Blackness or my femaleness? Because there's
very few spaces where I can show up and be all of who I am,
and so -- and this is even the case in, like, non-Christian
spaces, right? Obviously, that's the case in Christian
spaces. But, I mean, I've been in a lot of like divine
Feminine spaces, and they're super White. And some of these
women get super triggered if you talk about race. I've been
on the receiving end of some of that violence, where it's
like... And then, also, when I'm in a lot of justice
spaces, particularly, pre-like Black Lives Matter, because I
think the Black Lives Matter movement being led by Queer,
Black Women has been fairly intersectional. But before
Black Lives Matter began, I was in all of these sort of like
multicultural church spaces or, like, justice spaces that if
you talk about Women's issues, you get shut down, and so ...
And that's very much what the Black Civil Rights
Movement was, too, right? So Angela Davis and other people
who were part of that movement have, since then, talked a
lot about how we were not allowed to be women, we just had
to be Black.
So I think, for me, I latched onto Blackness first
7
because there seemed to be -- that's just what felt so
obvious to me. Like, "white jesus" just doesn't jive with
me.
And then, it's so interesting, because we're right
now commemorating the ten-year anniversary of Trayvon Martin
getting killed by George Zimmerman. I can't believe it's
been ten years.
LK: Yeah, wow.
CC: But that was a huge wake-up call for me around
my Blackness and the problem of "white Jesus" because I saw
so many people in my Christian world who absolutely refused
to hear what Black people were saying in this, you know,
first big national conversation in a long time about the
problem of race. And so that was a much earlier sort of
process for me, where I'm like, okay, the problem is "white
Jesus," and it wasn't until five years later or so that I
was like, no, the problem is also "male Jesus."
And so, I was sort of able to integrate them, mainly
around Trump's election and the Me Too Movement and seeing
that, like -- yeah, I just remember Trump saying all these
like super racist things, super like xenophobic things, and,
of course, the Christian church in general just apologizing
for him, right? Saying, you know, He's just saying things.
And I was like, yeah, I get that. Like, I've experienced
racism, and I get it. But then -- so I get why Christians
8
wouldn't really care if the president's racist, the
presidential candidate is racist.
But when Trump started talking about sexually
assaulting white women, I was like, okay, finally, they're
going to stand up because they're going to protect their
precious white women. Like, I know they don't care about
Black people, I know they don't care about immigrants.
White womanhood in the Christian world is like -- I mean,
I'm trying to think of like a metaphor. It is -- it is a
sickness, it is an idol. I mean, there's so many issues
with white womanhood in the Christian church in America.
When I saw that, like, all of Trump supporters that were
Christian and pastors and stuff, seminary presidents,
supporting him in the wake of that, I was like, Oh, like,
okay, we have another problem. Like, we have a problem with
Jesus' gender, because I was certain they would not turn
their back on their white women, and that just shows how
powerful this idol is, right, of God's like toxic
masculinity. Because even the people that are most propped
up in a world will get completely obliterated in service to
this idol, if that's what it takes.
So that was a huge wake-up call for me. I was like,
Wow, like, Black people aren't safe, Women aren't safe,
like, nobody is safe. Obviously, LBGTQ people, we haven't
gotten to.
9
LK: So there's like four or five threads I want to
go back to there, so I'm like which one am I going to pick
up first. Okay, only because I'm going to go back to the
feminism, the Sacred Black Feminine specifically.
I want to ask you about -- so there's awareness,
there's an awakening awareness there. Did that -- I guess I
want to dig a little deep. Was it a response to what was
happening? Was it a felt sense of, like, no this cannot be
right? Was it something that you felt like you needed to
validate historically from a research perspective? How did
that kind of evolve for you?
CC: Yeah, my first go-to was to validate
historically because I'm raised, you know, raised in
academia and that was my way of knowing, and that was my way
of, like, achieving legitimacy. I think in a lot of ways I
was still trying to contort myself into what makes sense in
sort of a white patriarchal world. I was still at Duke when
I started this -- it wasn't the beginning of my questioning,
but definitely when I was starting to devote a lot of my
energy and my resources towards this question of God's
gender and race. And so, yeah, I was like, okay, I have to
prove it. I have to at least prove that -- I have to prove
its legitimacy, I have to substantiate it in a way that my
colleagues and the world can understand. And, you know,
part of that had to do with me, you know, protecting myself,
10
because it's very scary to start asking questions that you
know could lead to you losing your job, income, security,
those sorts of things. But, also, you know, I didn't -- I
was so disconnected from my body. I was so disconnected
from the earth. I mean, this morning I was just sitting --
I have like a little pond outside of my house, and right
before I was going to have this call with you, I just spent
time just looking at the pine trees, which, actually, you
know, they still have leaves, so they're gorgeous in the
snow, and just like reminding myself of my times when I was
a little kid at camp with the redwood trees and my
experience of the Divine Feminine there, even though I
didn't have a name for her, I felt so safe. I knew she was
in the trees. I knew she was in the trees. I knew that,
and the way I know I knew that was like I negotiated,
manipulated, scrounged so that I could go back to that camp
like five, six times a year. Like, I had to be at that camp
all the time. So it was like little Christena just knew
this is where she is. So, you know, like now I have these
practices where I can almost instantly tap into the earth,
the Sacred Feminine, my body, breathing. I didn't have any
of that. All I had was my, like, over -- it's like my brain
on steroids, you know.
So I just went straight into the history and
theology, and some of that was super helpful because it
11
turns out like I'm not alone. Lots of women feminists and
women theologians have been asking these questions across
history, contemporary, you know, so some of that was nice,
like, okay, good, like aaahhh, I'm not alone. I needed to
get beyond that.
LK: Yeah, it feels like the starting place for --
it was the same for me. I think, in part, it's because --
well, I'm kind of a dork, I like to read. I like research
you know, so that was a fun thing for me. But also, you
know, there was a validation based on my own religious
background, but also I think -- I don't know how you feel
about this, but I think there's a way in which we can
approach spirituality as something that's kind of extraneous
or woo -- yeah, so the validation, the historical research
felt really important to me to be like, No, no, no, no, this
isn't just me waving a scarf in the wind or whatever, this
is a real thing.
CC: Uh-huh, yeah. That can feel really rooted and
grounded in a way that's helpful.
LK: I want to go back to -- well, I want to go back
to what you're saying about really connecting this idea of a
Christian God to toxic masculinity, and one of the things
that I really appreciate that you do from a language
perspective is you write "whitemalegod" all lower case, kind
of all run together, to really separate the way -- well, I
12
would love to hear you talk about that choice. I'm going to
stop there. I would love to hear your choice of why you do
it that way.
CC: Well, I think in retro, like post hoc, after
the fact, I can maybe explain it.
But, in the moment, I was literally just on my
pilgrimage walking and thinking about like -- I can't
remember which of the Black Madonnas I had just gone to
visit, but I was thinking about how "whitemalegod" is just
so puny and so petulant and so easily threatened, and it
kind of made me think that the fact that like in the King
James version, every pronoun for "god" is like capitalized.
It felt like posturing, it felt like toxic masculinity
posturing, like, you better capitalize "He," you better
capitalize "Father" and "Lord" and all that kind of stuff,
and so I was just like you know what, We're going to put him
back down to size, we're just gonna just recognize that this
is like something that we can -- not necessarily beat,
because I'm not really interested in that sort of language,
mastery language, but this is not a threat. He is not a
threat. He wants us to think he's a threat, but he's not a
threat. And so putting him lower case.
And then I think I just wanted to put it all
together because that's just how it made sense in my head.
I'm super -- I'm an integration person. My life is like
13
really integrated and that comes naturally for me. Also,
I'm intersectional. It made sense. Like, I'm engaging this
book as masculinity and -- sorry, God's maleness and also
God's whiteness, so let's just put it all together because I
can't really separate the two at this point. They work
together, they're such good partners, and if we're going to
address this entity, this thing, this it, then we have to
address both. So that's kind of how it came apart. But,
really, it was just like in the moment, you know, just a
puny little non-threat, like you think of a threat.
LK: Yes. I think for me, you know, just seeing
that, it just reinforced this idea that these actions that
are done in the name of a higher power -- or I really love
that you used the language "Deeper Power"; I felt that was
so lovely. But they're really being offered to an
expression of white patriarchy not a divine force and that
it's so important to see the difference.
CC: Mmm, I love that.
LK: Straight from you. That's how I received it.
And so, then, we can start to think about -- I guess
seeing those two things separated made me realize that --
language is interesting to me, right? The word "god" if we
separate it from "whitemalegod", all lower case, this puny
little thing that isn't real, then maybe we can reclaim that
word and feel it and know it in a different way, as the way
14
I think it's intended to be and the way I think even some of
the earlier feminists were trying to use "goddess" in that
way, right? It hasn't really turned that way, but I think
this was the idea. I loved that. I loved that language.
CC: Mmm. Yeah, I love the way that you received
it, because -- yeah, it's helpful; thank you for sharing
that. It's not a real god. This is not a real god. We can
actually just acknowledge that.
LK: So I'm super interested in the ideas of
language and how we come up with different language that
works better for us. And I'm not good at inventing my own
words, so my preferred methods is, perhaps, rehabilitating
existing words or re-positioning, so yeah...
CC: Mm-hmm.
LK: The other thing I really liked that you laid
out so well is the case for understanding how even if you're
not religious or you didn't grow up in the kind of household
that you described or the kind of household that I grew up
in, how this idea of "whitemalegod" is the very underpinning
of our culture, and I wondered if you could speak to that a
little bit.
CC: Sure. Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I
just got back like two, three days ago from three months in
France. I was back in that same region that I went in my
pilgrimage in. It's funny because I started talking with
15
them, they were like -- the French people, they're like, We
don't get the United States, like, it's so religious, like
your president prays, your president talks about going to
church, like, that would never happen here. People actually
care what church your president goes to and whether your
president is Muslim or not. People -- like, that just would
never happen here.
So I think there is something unique about the
United States and just how Christian it is -- and
Judeo-Christian, you can probably argue and just how much
that seeps into every part of the fabric of our society. I
mean, down to what I pledge in the book, it literally says
"In God We Trust" on the money.
LK: It's true. It's crazy.
CC: Yeah, it's bananas. It's a white god, right?
It's this god who is supporting George Washington, who is
pictured next to the "In God We Trust" on the dollar bill,
who is like a slave-holding, white male, Christian male. So
if we can't separate -- there's no real separation of church
and state in the United States. As much as we would like to
believe that, there just isn't, because Christianity is just
so powerful and has a cultural influence.
And so, I think it was fun for me to start thinking
about like what's it like for people who aren't -- who
didn't grow up in my home. Because, obviously, I got these
16
messages so loud and clear, but as I talk about in the book,
like I got that message about who's sacred and who's profane
at my secular boarding school in New England. It's
interesting to recognize "whitemalegod" in the boarding
school and actually have it for the first time after growing
up in a lot of Black church spaces, all the sudden,
"whitemalegod" is actually white and male. But he was
showing up in all of these like Black and Brown spaces in my
earlier life. So this idea that kind of "whitemalegod" can
infuse everything and can be a shape-shifter, right, can
sort of inhabit different institutions of people and you
don't have to be white and you don't have to be a man in
order to be passing along and participating in and propping
up the toxic -- the white toxic masculinity of
"whitemalegod" is everywhere.
I was talking with my sister the other day about
this, she's like a huge like movie buff and TV, she knows
everything about -- like everything cool, basically, and we
were talking about how like even today, as much as like
Netflix is trying to diversify its cast, it's like, at the
end of the day, the object of obsession or affection is
still someone who is essentially a white man. Even in like
the more diverse ones like "Never Have I Ever," which
actually the protagonist is an Indian girl, but her like
love interest is this -- he's technically Asian, but he has
17
like -- he kind of embodies so much of whiteness and
maleness. And it's just interesting how like everywhere you
go on Netflix it's like we get to see who's valuable, who's
story matters, who's seen as the valuable one even in the
the story. So that's everywhere.
LK: So true. I always liked to think about it,
too, again from the historical perspective like when you
back up and say, okay, you know, if you look at all of the
institutions, all of the cultural things that underpin our
society, whether that's academics or our political system,
economics, justice system, like everything, everything, if
you look at it, well, what representation was involved in
creating this? You know. I think you see it played out
there. And if you take that back a little farther, well,
what was the dominant religious force at the time? It was
this "whitemalegod" in the form of Christianity that we have
here in the U.S.
CC: Yeah, and in the form of our government, you
know. Like the exclusion of women and people of color from
The Constitution, you know? Like, I mean, it's
unbelievable. If you start looking for it, you kind of see
it everywhere, this white patriarchy. I think a lot -- I
think white feminists talk a lot about patriarchy, but it's
a white patriarchy. If you look at who's on the Supreme
Court and who's in Congress and who gets to be in the Oval
18
Office, and it's a white patriarchy, it isn't just a
patriarchy.
LK: Yes, and I think that you do such a good job
talking about that as well. I would love to hear you just
talk about specifically white feminism. I'm interested in
having that conversation with you from the space of the
sacred and the spiritual, you know, but like how you've seen
this, you know, white feminism's exclusive focus on
patriarchy, what that actually does when you just sort of
conveniently bypass the white part.
CC: Mm-hmm, yeah, I think what felt particularly
painful for me was turning to the conversation of the divine
feminine and finding just another space in which I was
excluded, because I pretty much left some of those like very
conservative Christian spaces because I felt excluded as a
Black person primarily, but also, to a certain extent, as a
woman, as I was sort of awakening to that, and then to go
into these sacred divine feminism spaces or sort of feminine
spirituality spaces, and then seeing women just completely
erasing their -- erasing -- for me, in particular, the race
of the Black Madonna. Because white women love them some
Black Madonna. Like, white -- the Black Madonna is more
famous amongst white women than Black women at this point.
Hopefully, my book will change that because I think black
women need to know about her, but we don't know about her.
19
Like, we didn't learn about her in our Christian churches,
you know, and so -- and Black people are very churched. So
we just -- I didn't know about her. We don't know about
her. But white women kind of own her.
And I read tons of books on the Black Madonna when I
was first getting started because I wanted to know what
other people this about this, and it's all by white people.
And the only person who's written anything about the Black
Madonna that I know of who talks about Her race and what Her
race means for him is actually not even a women, it's
Matthew Fox, the white, male, gay Catholic theologian; he's
the only one of all the like dozens of books I read, and
that felt extremely painful to me, because I was like, wait
a second, She's Black. And so then, just seeing how people
would disembody her felt really painful to me as I got more
and more in touch with my Black female body and how
traumatized it is from being erased and silenced in our
society, and so then to move into those spaces and see these
white women talking all about the Black Madonna and having
all this knowledge, but when it got to Her -- specifically
about Her femaleness and how that's like a clarion call to
patriarchy, to fighting patriarchy. But then, whenever --
if they ever mention Her Blackness, it was also always
extremely disembodied, like She's a black light, She's
someone who -- She's there to help us in our time of death,
20
you know, the dark days. Like, it's always this like very
vague, effusive, hyper-spiritualized, as opposed to just
being She is in a Black body and if we actually claim to be
devoted to Her, we have to care about Black bodies.
LK: Yes.
CC: And the contrast was so powerful to me because
they talked in terms of Her femaleness, they made a
connection to her female body.
LK: Yes, yes.
CC: Like because She has a female body, we need to
care about contraception, we need to care about abortion
rights, we need to care about -- they were making that
connection for Her femaleness but not Her Blackness, and I
was just like I can't, I can't with these people. Like,
this is not my home. I need to keep looking. This is not
my home. I'm not safe here. And that was extremely painful
because I was literally a refugee from another place where I
was unsafe. And so, it's like wait a second, I just ran
from this other place, I'm literally on the run right now.
You guys told me you were safe. They're like love, beauty,
connection, or the Earth Mother, she unites us all, and I'm
like, no, no, that's the same "whitemalegod" lie they were
telling me in the Christian church when they were saying
"Come boldly before the son of grace. You're welcome here."
And I'm like that was lie, because I wasn't welcome there.
21
And now I'm here running into another lie, you know? And
so, that's when I was just like, yeah, clearly I need to
keep looking, you know? But when you're so beat down like I
was at the time, you're just exhausted and disillusioned,
you're like, man, is there any place? Is there any place
where a Black woman can go and be safe? Is there any place,
you know? That was a big question for me for a really
longtime.
LK: And so, you walked 400 miles --
CC: Exactly.
LK: -- to find that answer?
CC: Yeah, I was desperate.
Part of me is just adventurous and, you know, I like
an adventure, but part of me was just like I have questions
and I don't necessarily -- I don't know that I'll
necessarily find the answers, but I need space to be with
those questions. So that's why I went on that journey.
LK: I love it. And I loved reading about it.
I've only been to see a couple of Black Madonnas,
including one of the most famous ones that was white-washed,
the one at Chartres?
CC: Oh, yeah.
LK: Yeah, yeah. I got there three years after they
did that. I didn't even know it until I read it right
before we went.
22
But the thing about the Black Madonna, I want to go
back to your point about Her not being Black -- or, like,
actually Black body. That really resonates with me, because
I have not read as many books as you have about Her, but
what I noticed is an overemphasis on the archetypal
representation, you know, like what She stands for.
CC: Right, right, She's not an actual real person
grapple with.
LK: She is the way we have shunned the notion of
darkness. She is the way we have disconnected ourself from
the earth. I mean, I see that in all those, and to your
point, and She is in a Black body for a reason.
CC: Yeah, and I think -- it's so interesting
because -- there's two things, I want to talk about the name
that I chose for Her, the Sacred Black Feminine, in response
to that, but I also wanted to point out like in a culture,
like America, that's so shaped by Christianity, I think we
need to grapple with the body of the Divine because we've
been so shaped by Jesus, whether we've been in church or
not, you know. Like, almost everyone in the United States,
whether they're even Christian or not, celebrates Christmas,
which is literally about God coming to earth in a body. So
in the United States, like archetypes are only going to take
us so far because our entire understanding of spirituality
and religion is based on an embodied god. So we have to
23
look at that. We don't have to necessarily stick to that,
but we have to grapple with -- why is it that I want to
latch onto an image of the Divine that's disembodied? Have
I done the work that I need to around body that has shaped
me, because it has shaped us, whether we're conscious of
that or not; that's one thing.
But another thing it was really important for me not
to call her like a "goddess" or "divine one" or something,
because I really feel like I just wanted to emphasize the
sacredness of Black femininity and Black femaleness and
Black womanhood; that's why I call her The Sacred Black
Feminine to like not make Her -- I just didn't want Her to
be like this -- She's like this super hero that we can just
run to. We actually have to just grapple with that She's
just a person and sacred. So we have to deal with the Black
women around us who are just people and also sacred.
LK: Yes.
CC: So get away from that archetype, this sort of
like ephemeral, which is really like -- that's so
patriarchal like to live -- to like have it up like a mostly
ungrounded faith or spirituality, you know, to be like
"God's in the sky" or like "God's around us," like that's
very -- it's okay to have some of that sort of
transcendence, but what's so powerful about the Sacred
Feminine, the Divine Feminine, is the immanence. So like
24
really applying the immanence of Her Black body makes a lot
of sense in a sacred feminine spirituality. It looks like
-- to me, it felt like blatant bypassing.
LK: Yes.
CC: Like violent, blatant, like we don't -- we're
not even going to go there. I was just like that doesn't
make sense, because everything about your spirituality is
embodied and earthy, right?
LK: Yes.
CC: I'm so confused and, quite frankly, mad. And
so ...
LK: Yeah. And I think the word "bypassing" is
really -- it's a really good one. I mean, I'm thinking of
myself even, you know, on this journey of understanding the
Sacred Feminine, I can speak, Here's a white woman and my
experience of it, it is far easier to wake up to -- I'm
speaking for myself here -- my own victim-hood as it relates
to patriarchy. It is much deeper work to wake up to the
ways in which I have been complicit, in all the ways that
white patriarchy specifically has benefited me and kept me
and my ancestors safe. And so, there's, you know -- it's an
interesting dichotomy, I think, when you look out and go,
okay, I can claim the Black Madonna as this radical force of
empowerment for me and there's that whole individualism
thing that we have going in this country, too, like to
25
empower me personally, I am powerful now because I have
tapped into her energy, but what am I going to do with that
and do I recognize with that comes a lot of responsibility
to see -- well, what I've already said, the ways in which
we've been complicit, the ways in which we cause harm.
CC: And owe, owe reparations.
LK: Yes.
CC: That's one of the reasons why I really like --
even though it's just race and gender, which is just like so
limited, that's one of the reasons why I really do
appreciate the inherent intersectionality of the Sacred
Black Feminine and of the Black Madonna. Honestly, for me,
many of these Black Madonnas you can also put in a class
intersection as well, even just in Her stories, in the
stories of the people who have been devoted to Them across
the last six thousand years.
But one of the things that's been helpful for me is
is it's really required me to show up in my activism with
all the intersectional dimensions as well. And I feel like
my connection to the Black Madonna has had this impact on me
in just completely transforming my activism around
particularly gender issues when it comes to Trans Black
folks, and so -- which is so interesting, right? Because
it's like, well, I'm talking about her Blackness and Her
femaleness, and which I relate to both of those, and I don't
26
identify as trans or non-binary or anything. But because of
my relationship to Her and knowing she's inherently
intersectional and that, like, let's be honest, she's
probably trans, too, you know, like that has forced me to
get into formation around, well, how am I complicit in like
trans-antagonism, trans-phobia, and how have I benefited
from that, and how am I safe, and how have my ancestors been
safe because we have shown up in this world as this. What
does that cost me? Like, how should that impact my time, my
checkbook, my -- that's an outdated term, checkbook. But my
bank account? Who writes checks? But, you know, just what
does this practically look like for me as I follow in Her
footsteps and why? Because She's trying to help me be free,
She's trying to help us all be free. It's not a
"whitemalegod" thing, well, you better do this, or else... I
don't feel that way at all, but I'm like this is what she
cares about.
LK: Yeah, I want to weave back in the point about
our government, which is, you know, fundamentally a white
patriarchal structure, so then saying I want to rely on
government to figure this out for us is sort of the
ultimate --
CC: Makes no sense.
LK: Right?
CC: I know, I know
27
LK: It's like asking "whitemalegod" to solve the
problems that he's created, and it's not going to happen.
CC: Yeah, it's not going to happen, no. That's why
I like -- you know, I was happy for Vice-President Kamala
Harris and also just sad, because -- I have very mixed
feelings about her becoming -- this historic appointment,
because on the one hand like, yay, loike I'm happy for you,
Girl, you worked hard, you clearly want to participate in
the political system, so I'm glad that you're getting to do
that, and, also, this like, but the system is broken and it
really doesn't matter who's in the oval office, like -- and,
also, she's going to get clobbered because the institution
is inherently antiblack, antifemale, so like -- and I'm just
tired of Black women getting clobbered.
When bell hooks passed away like a month ago, I
think it was about a month ago, I saw a thread on Instagram
where someone was naming all the Black women sort of sheroes
we have who have been real on the vanguard, you know, and
how they all died super young, like all of them, like -- and
just realizing, you know, like Audre Lorde died really
young, bell hooks, Nitozake Shange died really young, like
all these people died. It's like at what cost are we out
here trying to break down these barriers that literally,
like, are designed to break us down, you know?
So I think -- I don't know where I'm going with this
28
other than just to say, like, we really need -- I feel like
I really need the Sacred Black Feminine to help me imagine a
subversive way, because I am not super connected to the
political world, but I was super connected to the academic
world, which is just as white and patriarchal, and I know
what it takes to succeed in that world in a Black female
body, and that is a dead end, that is a death trap. So then
the question is, everything I know is how to do this. I
don't even have a sacred imagination to envision something
else.
It's almost like Harriet Tubman, right, being like
everything I know is a plantation, but you know what? I'm
leaving. That was not a thing, to just leave. But she had
to have a sacred imagination about what was even possible,
about what was even possible, because everything she had
been taught was this is your best bet, stay here. There is
no other world. This is it. Make the most of it. Be the
most powerful enslaved person on this plantation. Do the
most kiss-up to the master. Do whatever you need to do
because this is it. I feel like we're all kind of in that
space on a level where it's like we have to have an
imagination to even begin to -- begin to work towards
something else. I feel like for me, the Sacred Black
Feminine has really given -- has really sparked some of that
in me. It was through this journey that I've been on that I
29
even left my job at Duke. It was like, you know, I'm not
going to stay in this type of capitalistic system. I
couldn't never even imagine that if I didn't -- if I wasn't
certain that God is a Black Woman in a Black body,
experiencing the world in ways that relate to me, and if
that is truly true, that I can leave this plantation at Duke
and trust that She's got me, because She knows what I need.
She knows what my body needs in order to survive. I don't
know how it's going to be, I don't know what it's going to
look like, I don't know how the resources are going to come
in, but I finally have an image of the divine that
understands what I need. And so, okay, then we don't have
to stay at this job.
I remember when I first got to Duke and it was a
mess, even before -- stuff I haven't even written about.
Like, it was a mess from day one, and I remember the dean --
I had talked to the dean and I said, Hey, you lied about
this, you lied about that, you lied about that, like this is
problematic, we have a lot of issues here, and he looked at
me like what are you going to do, what are you going to do
about it, well, you're here now. And I was like, oh, he did
not just -- I think they just expect, Oh, you should be
thankful. We have a spot for you on the plantation, you
should just be thankful, you know? And for a minute there,
I was like, yeah, I should be thankful, like, I don't have
30
anywhere else to go. But that was when I still like kind of
believed that God didn't have my back.
LK: Yeah, I was just sitting here reflecting on how
there's an irony of sorts of like -- like, some of these
concepts, spiritual concepts, that maybe I learned as a kid
I get to understand in a whole different way now. But like
the way you're talking about trusting the Sacred Black
Feminine and knowing that she's got you, that feels like
faith, but it's a whole different kind of faith than --
CC: Yeah.
LK: Right, than what we've been taught?
CC: Yeah, Uh-huh (affirmative).
LK: And faith in yourself and empowerment, knowing
that you were empowered to act how you want in the world but
not doing it through the expression of capitalism, which is
whitemalegod's, you know -- I don't know -- evil spawn,
whatever you want to call it. So I don't know, I was just
reflecting on how it's some of the same ideas but they turn,
you know, they have so much more power when you look at it
the way you're describing.
CC: Yeah, yeah. And, also, I'm grateful -- for
that reason, I'm grateful for my tradition. I'm grateful
that I grew up in a home where we were taught that faith was
important, because there have been many times since I turned
toward the Sacred Black Feminine where I have been faced
31
with a choice to either -- because "whitemalegod" is always
dangling a carrot, always, right? There's a reason why so
many people never left the plantation, because it's actually
really hard. Like, it's really hard to survive. It's
really hard to keep moving. It's really hard to make a new
life. Like, it's really, really, really hard and there are
all these opportunities to go back in some way, right?
So I quit my job at Duke in July and I wrote like an
open letter, just assuming like, you know, no one will want
to hire me after doing this, I'm burning all the bridges,
right? Yeah, by September, I already had an offer to go to
Berkeley, right? So I literally am doing all the things
that I think are going to finalize I'm leaving the
plantation, you know, there's no way they're going to put up
with a Black woman speaking her truth like this publicly,
right, that's not what we're supposed to. So, yeah, there's
always reasons, there's always some sort of lure back into
-- I think in the book I call it the "tiny, barren patch of
security and certainty," or something like that. But
there's always this lure back into that. That's like, you
know, just one example of a bajillions. Or just something
as simple as, like, hey, how am I going to approach the
leadup to my book launch? How am I going to deal with fear?
How am I going to deal with my competitive nature and seeing
other authors getting accolades that I want for myself? The
32
questions that I always come back to is, if I truly believe
that God is a Black Woman, how does that impact what I do
next in this situation? To me, that's like that faith
element where it's like, okay, if I truly believe that God
is a Black Woman, then I need to let jealousy and
competition go, because I need to trust that Her abundance
is enough for all of us. I know I was trained by
"whitemalegod" and by our society, but there can only be one
Big Black Book, there can only be one big feminist book.
The testimony teaches us that, right? And I've had
situations even leading up to this book, where major
companies, they're like, well, we decided to go with this
person so we're not going to go with you, and I'm like, but
the only thing we have in common is we're both black, like
we're not -- but to them, they checked the Black box, right?
So you also get feedback that you are in competition, right?
So there's so much messaging and so I have to go
back to, but this is what I believe. I believe that God is
is a Black Woman, and if I truly believe that, then I need
to trust that, I need to have faith in that, I need to trust
that She has got my back. And so, that's where, to me, I am
grateful for my lineage of faith that goes back generations
in my family, because my parents do that in their way with
their God, and I learned that from them, I really did, you
know. Like, we don't have to believe what the world is
33
saying. We don't have to believe what the evidence is
saying. And that's like a very mystical, straight-up
witchy -- which is hilarious; I don't think my parents would
identify with that -- but like straight-up witchy way of
going about the world.
My parents are prosperity gospel folks, like they'll
have friends who will get like a cancer diagnosis; they'll
be like, oh, we don't believe that. The doctors will say
cancer, but we're praying by faith for healing, you know
what I mean? That's the kind of language they use. And
there's a lot I admire about that. There's stuff about that
that is, you know, interesting, but there's a lot that I
admire about that.
LK: Yeah, I don't know if you would say this, too,
about your experience, but I think one thing that my working
with the sacred feminine has taught me is the answer is
usually -- if I'm seeking an answer, it's a "yes," it's a
"yes and..." like, there's always like multiple ways to view
things. So like what you're saying about your parents,
like, yes, we want to trust modern medicine and, yes, there
is something mystical and magical about faith.
CC: Wonderful.
LK: So the challenge is always not to -- this is
going to bring us back to the binary, which is so great,
because I wanted to go back to that.
34
We don't have to lock ourselves into this, It is
this or that, You're in or out, like, we can hold it all, we
can say "yes," and it's included. It's all included in that
immanence, you know, that all-pervasive immanence.
CC: Yeah, and we can be messy with it. That's one
of the things I really love about, you know, the Sacred
Feminine in general, but I would say definitely the Sacred
Black Feminine. But just like it's okay that we don't have
the answers, it's okay that like -- it's okay that I nibbled
on this one carrot from the plantation, or I know that
plantation, before I realized, you know what, this is just
death. I needed to remind myself this is just death. You
know, like the fits and the starts, and there's really --
you know, the spirals, the nonlinearity of -- that's such a
wonderful invitation to me, especially as someone who was
just like so trained by white patriarchy and just -- I think
that's what helped me in my activism work, my sort of
intersectional activism work, is that mentality of like I
don't have to get this right, you know, I don't have to -- I
just have to -- I don't have to -- I don't like using that
term.
But there's a powerful invitation for me to just
step in, to step into this work as best I can, as
authentically as I can, and just be a human. Like, that's
for me and that's for all of us, that's the invitation of
35
the Sacred Black Feminine. So a lot of those defenses can
can down.
You know, when one of my trans friends has feedback
for me, like, Hey, you did this, You said this, you know,
like there's an entitlement here. There is a silencing
here. I don't have to respond the way that the white
feminist from the spiritual places did to me, which is, you
know, just like triggered, you know. I can just, Oh, okay,
yeah, I'm learning and I'm really sorry, you know. And
there's just so much -- without trying to make her off a
like a mammy or something. There's just so much love there,
there's just so much love, that there's so much love that it
purifies if we allow it to. It likes sears us open if we
allow it to. It's this weird space loving and like surgery
space.
Go ahead. I'm sorry.
LK: No, no, I was going to say -- I was thinking of
-- I forget the name you gave Her, but it was one of the
Black Madonnas of our Lady of the Holy Mess or Our Lady --
CC: Yeah, She Who Cherishes Our Hot Mess.
LK: That's so much better than what I just said,
yes.
CC: That's fine, yeah.
LK: I love that.
CC: What's so funny is I return to that chapter
36
more often than any of the other ones because -- I don't
know if you know the Enneagram? I'm an Enneagram one.
LK: Me, too.
CC: Yeah. So, like, I always have to remind myself
that it's okay to be human and it's okay to not meet my own
standards, my own unrealistic standards for myself, you
know? It's interesting to me -- I think of that chapter as
the heart of the book, because it certainly is the heart of
my journey and it's the one that I have to keep going back
to remind myself but it's my mess that She cherishes, it's
not my clean room, it's my mess that She cherishes, because
there's been so many -- even with the lead-up to this book
coming out, there's so many times where I'm like I wish I
had been stronger, I wish I had been more gracious, you
know, like that, Enneagram one. You know what it's like?
LK: I do.
CC: I have an mentor who also is an Enneagram one,
and he said being an Enneagram one is like being body
slammed every 60 seconds.
LK: Sounds about right.
CC: I was like that's so accurate. I'm like, Make
it stop, make the self-criticism stop.
It's so wonderful to go back to that chapter and
just be like this is the heart of it is I get to be human
and on a level and on Enneagram one level that's huge, but
37
as a Black woman who has been a mule and a mammy and has had
to contort herself, yeah, like, it's so powerful to be like
I actually just get to break down right here, and that's
actually my offering, that's my offering is my breakdown.
There's no other place in the world where that feels safe to
me other than at Her feet, you know?
LK: Yes.
CC: And in communities that are devoted to Her.
LK: Yes.
CC: That really make a practice of needs, as needs
being -- your needs matter.
LK: Yes, all of that, and it's okay to rest and all
of that.
CC: Mm-hmm.
LK: I want to go back and ask you -- this is kind
of -- well, whatever, I'm doing the interview, so it's all
self-motivated to a certain degree.
But you have referenced trans and non-binary folks
and I would love to just talk with you a little bit about
that. You wrote early on in your book, "I often wonder that
asserting that God is female and feminine further tethers us
to the gender binary that excludes trans and non-binary
people and insists that femininity is the only legitimate
expression of femaleness."
And I think about this a lot because this idea of
38
sacred and feminine going together is so powerful for me,
and, yet, the last thing I would want that to be used as is
is a way to to exclude anyone. So I just -- I would love to
hear you talk a little bit about how you have navigate that.
CC: Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that I feel
about the Sacred Black Feminine is that it's an inherently
expansive identity, and if I'm not expanding, then there's
an invitation there for me to get into the flow in a level,
in a way that I'm not. Like, I quickly -- that's one of the
markers to me of -- to the extent that I'm in that flow of
the Sacred Black Feminine is, am I expanding? That's like
very Sacred Feminine -- I think Clarissa Pinkola Estes has
talked about this, you know, like, am I -- is my love for
myself growing? Is my love for Divine growing? Is my love
for others growing? And that's sort of like the marker of
this, like, whether I'm on the, quote, "right" end quote,
path, you know?
So it's very much a Sacred Feminie sort of spiritual
theology, and I take that -- so I think, for me, the more
I'm on this path, the more intersectional it should be and
the less attached to femininity as female or particularly
the femaleness of God. And that has been my experience.
You know, what's interesting is what's in the book
is really, like, Christena circa 2018, 2019, because that's
where the journey ends. But Christena 2022 is really
39
different. My literary agent is hilarious; she was just
like we better hurry up and get this book out because next
year God going to be a dragon, because I'm just constantly
expanding. So I feel like -- I wanted to name in the book,
and I got some consulting from some nonbinary editors on
that particular section, because I wanted to name in the
book that, hey, I'm a cis woman writing about this and we
live in a world where, like, this could be huge to erase
nonbinary experiences of the Divine, and I wanted to just
make a statement saying, like, that's not what this book is
for, like, we're not doing that here.
And, also, kind of going back to your like "yes,
and..." is that there's a real problem with patriarchy, too.
There's a real problem with anti-womaness that needs to be
addressed. It felt like spiritual bypassing to me to just
go in inauthentic to my journey to go straight to, but God
is nonbinary, which is what I actually believe. Because we
have to deal with the problem that God has been male for so
long.
LK: Right.
CC: I feel the same way about -- it's almost like
saying, Well, all lives matter, well, not really matter,
because Black lives still matter, right? And so it just
felt like bypassing. I have to be honest about the fact
that I was raised in this world that where God is a white
40
man and I'm a Black woman and I have to make sense of that
before -- and I have to do my work around that before I can
then go and hope to be helpful in other spaces, in other
intersectional spaces. So it's messy, you know, and untidy.
I wish that I could have written a book about God,
God is a nonbinary person, because I wish I could -- there's
still a white patriarchal urge within me that wants to have
mastered everything. And not show my journey to anybody,
just show the end result, you know.
LK: Yes.
CC: But my journey, my actual journey, was that I
was triggered by God is a white man, I needed to find God as
a black woman, and it wasn't until years later that I
actually got on board with God is nonbinary, God is trans,
and that's what I actually believe now, which isn't really
reflected in the book.
LK: Yes. Well, it makes me think of -- you know,
again, if we go back to faith and Her hand is in everything,
then it's all unfolding as it should.
I spent -- before I moved here to Virginia, my
family and I spent eight months traveling the country and
living in an RV.
CC: Oh, wow.
LK: It was a wild experience in many ways, but one
of the things it reinforced to me, I was moving from
41
California, from the Bay Area, is just how many Americas
there are and how many -- you know, just how there are
people who are having conversations like this and there are
people that would, you know, die to imagine God as black or
female, and that everybody is sort of evolving at a
different pace.
I guess it goes back to faith and trusting the
Divine timing -- maybe it's not divine, maybe it's sacred; I
like the word better. But, you know, there's a sacred hand
in all of it and it's unfolding as it should and it's
reaching people when it needs to.
CC: Who knows? Knowing me, ten years from now,
I'll be like redacted, redacted. Like, that's who I am.
I'm always journeying. So maybe it's sacred and also maybe
it's because I'm going to come back and be like I wish I had
written -- you know what I mean? -- God is a Nonbinary
Person.
What's interesting is, part of it like is marketing,
too. We chose the title God is a Black Woman, which I think
pushes the buttons enough for like America as a whole, you
know. But part of spiritual community that's like kind of a
goddess spiritual community, so all the people in that
community are I don't understand why it's called God is a
Black Woman, why isn't is called Goddess is a Black Woman,
and I'm like because you're not the target audience for my
42
book. My target audience is people who would never even be
in this space, you know what I mean? Like, no one is going
to read a book called Goddess is a Black Woman. Not no one,
but like only people who are further along on their journey
than the people I'm hoping to reach, right? So sometimes,
too, it's just an element of who is my target audience and
how can I move them along and be honest about that, you
know?
LK: Yes.
CC: I was like laughing, like, literally nobody
would buy that book at Barnes & Noble. Like you and your
weird bead, beaded friends who dresses like, you know, she
buys all her clothes at Whole Foods, you know what I mean?
Like, you guys would buy it; that's it.
LK: I'm like, Christena, I would buy it.
CC: I know. It's like people who have already been
invested to a certain level --
LK: Right.
CC: -- into divine feminine spirituality, but
that's just a small group of people. There's all of America
that's dealing with whitemalegod, so, yeah, it's totally
funny. But I'm like I can picture the people would buy it,
though.
LK: Oh, I love it.
CC: Stereotypes. Goddess spirituality stereotype.
43
LK: Yeah. Well, I want to respect your time, but I
have one more question that I really wanted to ask you,
because I just loved this language of sacred imagination. I
don't know why, I just wanted to come back to that. That
felt like such a beautiful way to close.
I wonder -- that's what I have. I'm like, What's my
question? I don't know, can you reflect on that?
CC: You know, a few years ago before I really went
on this intentional journey, I would say about ten years
ago, I was reading a lot of liberation theology, which was
new to me ten years ago. I was reading a lot of Latin
America liberation theology, I was reading a lot of Black
liberation theology, I was reading a lot of like Korean
feminist liberation theology and a lot of Palestinian
liberation theology, all mostly within a Christian paradigm.
But sharing stories about who God is particularly from the
Christian biblical perspective, but looking through an
entirely different lens that fused what was in the text with
also this person's imagination.
I was reading a book by Naim Ateek, who is a
Palestinian liberation theologian, and he talks about how
Samson in the Bible -- who for listeners who might not know,
Samson had long hair, but if it was cut off, he would lose
his power, like his strength; he's almost like a super hero.
And he actually ended up killing a bunch of people,
44
supposedly in the name of God, to -- by, like, basically
pure strength, he would knock down a building, essentially.
What's interesting about that is that Naim Ateek was
saying Samson was the first suicide bomber. Here's how we
see the humanity of suicide bombers by looking at scripture.
So when I think of sacred imagination, that's what I think
of, like how can we reclaim our humanity even with texts
that have -- that are steeped in problems, patriarchy,
classism, anti-Blackness, right? I mean, here we have a
Palestinian Christian liberation theologian who is helping
us see through the Bible the humanity, the authenticity, the
faithfulness of suicide bombers, Palestinian suicide bomber.
That reading -- I used to read liberation theology
like an hour every night before I went to bed; it was like a
lullabye, and I didn't know why it felt good to me. I
didn't necessarily agree with all the interpretations, but
there was something about it that set me free to have my own
perspective, and I think I could not have gone on the
journey I ended up going on five, six years later with the
Black Madonnas and basically going up to each Black Madonna
and being like, Okay, like, let's deal. Like, what do you
have to say to me? What's happening?
Someone who read the book recently said, you know,
it's interesting because you share a little bit of the
history from the Black Madonnas, but really it's just about
45
like your interaction with them and what you felt, you know.
I don't think I could have done that if I hadn't been
coached and literally put to bed every night by liberation
theologians who were doing that themselves.
And so, when I think of sacred imagination, it's
like we have the power to cocreat the God space. That's our
contribution. That's our unique, precious, sacred,
invaluable contribution. Every single person has that as
their birthright. What's happening in the divine realm,
what's happening in the sacred realm, what's happening in
the God space, we get to cocreate that through our
imagination, and we can dream as big as we want to and we
can make it as applied as we need to for ourselves so that
it expands us to make it apply to others. And it's a
beautiful thing. It's poetry and it's art and it's endless,
and I love that.
LK: I love that, too. That's so beautiful.
And, you know, I just want to bring it back to the
embodiment, it feels good. Like my whole body is like
"Aaahhh" when you say that; it feels really, really good in
the body.
CC: It's like I'm sacred, too. You're sacred, too.
Everyone listening, we're all sacred, too. Our contribution
is sacred and it's like people don't have to agree.
LK: And I was going to say and now we're out of
46
time.
For my white listeners, in particular, go buy this
book. You can also read the part about ontological
expansiveness, because this doesn't mean you need to go and
create a new program around this as a white person.
CC: Yeah, I know. My editor -- my lead editor --
there was a multiracial editorial team for this book, but my
lead editor is a white woman at Harper, and it was funny
because I had written the book before this, and she was, I
would love for you to write something specifically to white
women, and I was like, all right, you know, I wrote that
"whitemalegod" chapter about white women, I don't think that
was necessarily what she was saying, but I was like, if I'm
going to say something, this is what I'm going to say. So,
white women, yes, there is an an entire chapter devoted to
you and about you; please read that one.
LK: It's a good read. The whole book is fantastic.
CC: With love. With love, yes. With love and
truth.
LK: Well, Christena, thank you so much for your
time. This is such a great way to kickoff 2022. Thank you
for being here.
CC: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited for
this community to engage this work and to keep talking and
doing and being amongst yourselves. It's nice to be a
47
conversation partner.
LK: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
So Christena's book is God is a Black Woman. You
can buy it everywhere. You can preorder it -- no, wait, by
the time you hear this, you can buy it everywhere. So go
and buy it.
Your website, christenacleveland.com, that's
correct? Did I get that right?
CC: Yes, christenacleveland.com.
LK: I'll put all of this in the show notes so you
can find out more including where you can find her on social
media and a link to Christena's Patreon if you would like to
support her work beyond the book.
Thank you, Christena, for being here. And thank you
all for listening. I'm happy to be back with you and I will
be back with you again soon.
Just a reminder that if you like the show, do me a
favor, leave ita good review, tell somebody about it,
subscribe. You can do all those things.
And until next time, take care.
48