Spirit Love: A Creative Praxis
By Daniel B. Coleman and Emanuel H. Brown
Daniel and I met each other at a Trans* pool party, divinely ordained we knew in just a few moments we were kin. Over the years, our relationship has allowed the space for authentic friendship, spiritual evolution, creativity, and deep laughter. As I was considering creating around the concept of Spirit Love, I knew I wanted to come from the relationships where I can easily say, “YES, that’s it!” Thank you, Daniel, for being a part of this journey!
What does Spirit Love mean to you?
Emanuel: Spirit Love is a gathering of myself. It is both the process of me unfolding to my own wholeness and sharing my authentic self with others. It is rooted in the rituals of healing, SOUL conversations, and sitting with trees. It is allowing my version of the Divine to have access to the whole of me. As a self-practice, Spirit Love has been about embracing my body, thoughts, and heart. Literally, allowing each to take up space in my life, and shift me.
In my relationships, it is about bringing my whole self to each moment, and giving voice to my desires. In this past year, I have been challenged to bring both my wholeness and my desires to romantic connections. This new practice ground for Spirit Love has been the most challenging, because it forces me to face the ways I’ve devalued romantic connections, and longed for them at the same time. The romantic realm has also challenged the limitations I have put on integration and opened me to trusting moments of magic and also heartbreak. What has been the most profound thing about Spirit Love has been the opening of third-space (or fourth or fifth): the energy that is created when myself and others are dedicated to the evolution of our love practices. This place of unknown is actually one that inspires me, draws in my creativity, and gives me permission to be my wildest self.
Daniel: Spirit Love has an organicity to it, for me. It’s a love that is never forced. It just is. It’s those moments of witness — that feeling of “oh, yes, hello, thank you for seeing me” and “I see pieces of myself in you,” and vice versa. The kind of love where you do not question your intuitive or energetic read of the person in front of you. A love where the energy of being in one another’s presence is affirming, regardless of whether words are being shared and always, when words are being shared.
That’s the thing about Blackness and Spirit Love together — there’s a knowing that does not require explanation. You can feel it and this feeling is all the information you need. When you are held in this kind of love, you do not have to justify yourself or explain where you are coming from because there is something shared that is ancestral (which is to say a socio-political affinity that is also spiritual). You can let down and be inside of a knowing, together. There’s really no greater freedom in being in shared space to me than Spirit Love. The last thing I’d say about this (for now) is that there is a deeply somatic element to it — body and Spirit are in constant conversation and relationship. Somatic knowing in this kind of love is that whole-bodied “yes” that ancestors like Audre Lorde have told us about.
Why creative praxis for exploring Spirit Love?
Emanuel: I only know Spirit Love from a creative lens. The first example of a Spirit-centered relationship came to me through the words of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. The relationship between Bankole and Lauren broke open my heart. As I read, I found myself drawn into what was an impossible epic tale: two people in the middle of the world ending, falling in love. It was the first time I saw–Black folks especially–not giving into the socially acceptable conditions of love, but just allowing love to mold them. As their story progresses in Parable of the Talents, you get more information about Bankole’s perspective of their love, of what it meant to share that love with people, and how their love was crucial to creating a new world. In a practical sense, I have modeled myself after both Lauren–with her boldness to see beyond the conditions of a world coming undone– and Bankole–with his steady centered hand in the face of calamity. It continues to be through stories, poetry, movies, and art that I learn more about what it means to take on Spirit Love as my path. It is my dreaming that helps me keep the faith that Spirit Love is possible.
Daniel: When I peer into the present conditions of the climate we are operating in — frankly, something I have to titrate in order to not live in bitterness or pessimism — I see an utter disconnection to creativity as life force. I do not believe my spirit will allow me to disconnect from creativity as the very source of all things good and beautiful about life. So, we need creative praxis to explore Spirit Love, because there are so few models for it. Instead, what we do see modeled oftentimes, is the result of a loss of spiritual imagination as creative praxis. What this looks like around us is lives lived to suit 9–5 cisheteronormative capitalism with a loss of play, art, beauty, curiosity, flexibility, and wonder. This affects the way we approach and construct relationships. We are surrounded by multiple crises of imagination as people forget that creativity is the meaning-making our species does as we construct our lives and relationships to one another. What better method than creativity to engage in a Spirit love praxis we do not see enough of? Creativity allows for that exploration, for the validation and affirmation of the intuitive, for energetic knowing, and for the play that arises from trusting spiritual resonance. Creativity is where life force exists and where we are presented with multiple opportunities to create what we want, need, and desire. Creativity breeds agency on our walk with Spirit Love and reminds us that everything we see in “nature” is also within us.
This creative offering is the product of a Spirit Love creative praxis which engaged bibliomancy, creative free writing and curation as practices of ritual and love.
A Journey of Spirit Love
We gave up competing with Black people for who has experienced more suffering.
We are retiring our jersey from the team of “It will always be a struggle.”
We are
throwing
in
the towel,
forfeiting the game,
and simply refusing to play.
We are ending the patterns of self-sabotage, abuse, and being the victim. We are no longer playing by the rules set for compromise, limitations, and selflessness.
We are
releasing
the empty promises.
We are not sure what the prize is if we win here.
This foolish game
has us
repeating the lie-
we are unlovable.
We are no longer chasing the shadow of love.
Love as an affirmation of our worthiness.
Love as proof of our desirability.
Love as something that might overcome the other ways we felt slighted by the world.
We have
made
this
a way of life,
maybe
out of fear of living,
or perhaps
because we were told
for so long
we weren’t even alive.
The legacy of agony begs for our attention, only to offer us doubt for our troubles.
We moved in and out of absolutes.
Promising ourselves
alone was favorable
if Spirit-compromise
was the only
other option.
But then we fell away from ourselves,
only to wake up lying next to someone
who could not feel the most sacred parts of us.
With each compromise,
our light was quieted
and a voice from within us
was patiently waiting.
We sought the places where Blackness, Spirit, and Love are found within.
We became the incarnation of our validation and the embodiment of our truths.
We stretched
ourselves
to be our
first
unconditional lovers.
At our altars,
we poured out unwanting
and received belonging.
Allowing ourselves
to traverse
the depths
of our hearts
and to set our light free.
We released
the limitations
of the body
and became vessels
for the Divine.
We allowed loving Blackness to be an expression of our Spirit.
We gave it room to flourish and cement our desires for freedom.
We found ourselves
in the stillness
being introduced
to new paths
called abundance,
intimacy,
care,
and ritual.
We experienced the sincerity of I am because you are.
We allowed
for unconditional love
to emerge
from agreements
woven from
receiving,
offering,
and surrender.
We are becoming the best lovers we can be.
We are
allowing
open hearts,
tenderness,
and wild imagination
to guide us.
We are breathing in holding, and unfolding.
We are
training in
pleasure,
joy,
compassion.
We are
beacons
for what
Is possible
when we love
ourselves,
the earth,
and each other deeply.
We are permitting love to bring us back to ourselves.
We are working our hearts until they are broken in,
and recapturing the faith that this kind of love is possible.
We are feeling the wholeness of being loved, and wholly loving.
Our love
is the deepest
source of
fulfillment
and purpose.
Our healing
a daily practice.
