I love calendars–the way they tell me what to do and how to prepare, the way they break down the future (and the past) into easily digestible segments. They are, of course, part mirror and part mirage, an interesting blend of fact and fiction in the story of our individual and communal lives.
I was in my twenties before I found myself in congregations anchored by the rhythms of the so-called church calendar. Perhaps in keeping with my developmental stage, it came as a surprise to me that God could be found in something so rote.
I grew up in two denominational traditions that looked down on seasons like Advent and Epiphany for reasons that now escape me. Maybe they were in their own sophomoric phases, certain that religion only works if it is bombastic and hyper-individualized. Maybe it felt important for them to be against anyone who claimed to have another path to God.
When I was 29, I moved to West Texas to write and, more specifically, to reflect on the impact of race on my family over the last few generations. My great-great-grandfather Gus watched his mother sold as property on the journey from Arkansas to Texas. My great-great-grandmother was enslaved and impregnated, and her baby (my grandmother’s mother) was given to two white women in town.
The burden of these stories hanging in my brain and body made for a sorrowful and solitary time out west. I grieved how little I had learned about Black history in my home, school and church environments. So, it was a great gift to be in a church community that offered me a season like Advent that made space for the weight and ache of all the unrealized salvation in my life and throughout history.
This was a grace I did not know I had been needing. It offered my body a balm for all the years I was only given Christmas and Easter, and the expectation to make my reality align with these magnanimous moments of uninterrogatable merriment.
Now, after decades of Advent seasons, I am able to bring its truth and hope into other sections of the church calendar, too. Sometimes, I’m feeling “adventy” during Ordinary Time, and sometimes, my life is going so well during those dark, wintry months that I get to just practice remembering and sitting with those for whom the waiting, the not knowing and the bleak midwinter is their only perceivable reality.
I like setting aside time. I like intentionality. I like integration, too.
As a Black woman and a person with the word “diversity” in her job title, people sometimes wonder about my thoughts on Black History Month. I understand the distaste that some of my contemporaries have for identity-based celebration months. It is a legitimate fear that marking anything as exceptional (Black History, Black Church, Black Art) suggests that it is not normal.
I would love for the histories of Black individuals and communities to be infused all year long in all the settings where stories are being told and humans are being shaped. I would love to feel that people like me are as considered and as centered in education, media and religion as anyone with lighter skin and straighter hair. But I also know that two things can be true, especially when it comes to calendaring.
Isn’t it true that I celebrate resurrection each day when I see unexpected glimpses of hope in the midst of seemingly unredeemable situations and seasons? I also celebrate it most Sundays when I join with siblings across the globe, taking time out to intentionally remember and reset our lives against the backdrop of a God who defeats what seems undefeatable.
And then, even after all that remembering, I still want, need and benefit from the annual Easter season dressed with fresh blooms popping up from the ground and the warble of birds in the background who are back from wherever they have been all winter.
I think Black History Month can be a beautiful albeit limited tradition. It should not serve as the one time of year that churches, schools or any other institution consider the lives and experiences of those of us who are Black.
Our lives–our bodies–should be honored and treated at all times as the beautiful reflections of God that we are. It should not be a time to virtue signal, tokenize or continue institutional legacies of using black bodies to make money or to gain power.
At times, February has been used in all of these unholy ways. But I like the hope of what it could be and often is—a moment of reflection and recommitment to remembering the past and reimagining the future we aim to build together:
Day after day.
Week after week.
This year and ever after.
Aspirational? Yes.
And also, possible.
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Kerri Fisher is Clinical Associate Professor and the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Baylor University’s Diana R. Garland School of Social Work.
