Episode 12: In The Barney Bag
Greetings Earthlings.
So for January and February, I’ve been sitting with the media of my childhood specifically for these months. January is a month of new starts, and February is the month we intentionally honor Black Liberation. As an Afrofuturist, I felt a lot of synergy in these two months. New Starts, African Liberation across the diaspora...
It felt right to me to return to the media of my childhood as a theme for these two months. Here’s why. In the early 90’s there was a show called DonutMan. It was a Christian children’s show, with super problematic evangelical theology. (Of course, these are the only things readily available for children and that’s kind of what i'm trying to build against with this podcast). And basically every episode they’d sing songs, discuss real life scenarios™️ and reenact bible stories. They would take a donut at the end of the episode, and then fill it with a donut hole. So as the kids are filling the donut with the lil munchkin thing, they say what they learned that day.
Because “life without God’s love is like a donut cuz there’s a hole in the middle of your heart.” I know. The Christian supremacy. It was creepy. There was a whole song. It frequently is in my brain at night.
And as much as I think they got a lot of things wrong on the show, and as much as I KNOW the producers probably wouldn’t do much for ME as a queer Black feminist socialist except recommend Jackie Hill Perry books, they got ONE thing right.
People need opportunities to participate. Worship cannot be passive. Education cannot be a spectator sport. We may not all be able to do the same thing, but we can all do *something.* And rituals like those give people chances to do meaningful things. And lowkey, that’s where evangelicals have progressives beat. Because we do the whole “sage on a stage” thing. Q&A is not engagement. People need activities. Reflections. Journal prompts.
Now, I do not cook. But I might learn to make fish sandwiches for some videos at some point.
Anyhoo. That’s a peek under the hood.
At The Chopping Board
The World we deserve is not the one we have.
I am not imagining the ugliness of this world. I am also not silly to see its beauty.
I can imagine new ways to meet stubborn problems.
Every beautiful thing that exists had to be imagined. I will give myself space to dream.
Fish Sandwich
Matthew 4:23-5:12 NRSV
“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics and he cured them. And great crowds followed him…
He began to speak and taught them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of god. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
In The Barney Bag
I love Barney. If you follow me on social media (check out @FishSandwichHeaven on Instagram and @FishSandwichH on Twitter, and Fish Sandwich Heaven on Facebook) you will have seen my Barney feature prominently. I recently found my childhood barney, so he’s like 30 years old now. And when I tell you, hugging him brought back all these beautiful memories of fun little activities they would all do together. I will never forget the time they did this skit where they all ate crunchy things just to hear what it sounded like. Carrots, celery, chips, crackers. It was like Proto-ASMR and it features so prominently in my brain.
But on most episodes, the children would have an opportunity to dig into the barney bag. The barney bag was this infinite bag that had all kinds of doohickeys inside. They would usually do some sort of arts and crafts project. And of course, there was a song
Well, I've been looking in my Barney Bag
And I found a lot of things.
Gizmos and gadgets and odds and ends.
And even some old string.
So let's ask ourselves a question,
"What can we make today?"
With imagination and the Barney Bag
We'll see what we can make today
Yeah!
See what we can make today.
And they would dig down into that Barney bag and find all kinds of things. Somehow, a tissue box and some rubber bands and a paper towel roll became a guitar. Somehow, a paper plate and some construction paper became a mask. And the kids enjoyed it every time.
This image is something I want to sit with.
What do you have in your Barney bag? What do you have that was made for one purpose, that can be used for another?
I’m looking at what I have near me right now.
I turned a mug into a vase for my flowers.
I turned a scarf into a table cloth on my altar.
I turned an old talenti jar into a container for my shea butter.
And you might have been in your barney bag too.
I mean, historically, we’ve been in our bag.
Gumbo. Jazz. Basketball. Sampling music. Every genre of hip hop. Every way we use herbs as medicine. Black people know how to take what we have and figure out how to make use of it. I don’t want to glorify this or say this is how it ought be. We should have what we need. But I also think it’s worth saying that imagination can save lives. Perhaps not every life, but it can save Lives.
As my dad says, every life saving solution was sparked by the question, “What if…?”
Which is why, I submit to you today, that Barney is Black. His pedagogy, his commitment to dance and song as a way of teaching, his practices of imagination. He is Black and so is Baby Bop. The jury is out on BJ. My friend Yasim said “I don't like how he wears that hat backwards, it feels performative,” and lowkey, EXACTLY.
And yet, 2,000 years ago, I do think that Jesus saw something that he didn’t yet have in front of him. And that was a world in which people were well.
I think it’s important to say that dreamers often seem ridiculous to the rest of the world.
Fol-de-rol and fiddle dee dee and fiddley faddley foddle all the wishes in the world are poppycock and twaddle.
As much as I personally feel seen by the question of imagination, I also know that it is impossible to dream when you cannot sleep. When sleep is stolen from you. When you close your eyes and all you have are nightmares.
This passage is called the Beatitudes. I have great empathy for those who heard the Beatitudes who may have spent their last dime to get to see Jesus, the ones who got a sitter, or traveled with their kids, the ones who hobbled down to see Jesus.
Many people know the Beatitudes. I was just watching the Handmaid's Tale, and it was eerie how you can strip these stories from their context and twist them for terrible purposes. The words are the things we cling to when things get tough. The Sermon on the mount is perhaps one of the most easily identifiable biblical passages for people who are not Christian.
In my childhood, I remember seeing something called a Red Letter Bible. This Bible was one that had the words of Jesus in red ink. Doing so, my Sunday School teacher said, was a way of emphasizing the centrality and authority of Jesus’ words. Of course, we can put Jesus in red, and highlight his words NOW because he is not alive in flesh on earth. He is relatively safe, wherever he is.
But in the time that he lived, Jesus was not safe.
Jesus is a movement leader. His correspondence is likely being tapped, his sermons are likely being infiltrated by government infiltrators, and he's saying enough to get him killed. In circumstances like these, Jesus has to speak in code in order to keep safe and move to the next place. What is so odd about this sermon is that he’s speaking in shorter phrases. Rather than relying upon his go-to parables and stories, Jesus makes a move as a preacher to speak in shorter, tweetable bites. And they seem pretty… Cute. Don’t they?
But I can see in the distance, a woman in the crowd. Restless. She’s as real as she is imaginary. Stevie Wonder would say this is a woman whose “clothes are old, but never are they dirty!” This is a woman who put on her good shoes and brushed her hair just a little bit cuz she just KNEW she was seeing Jesus today. And if this were to take place today, this woman likely spent her last 5.50 cents in train fare just trying to see him. Because something told her, or someone told her, she’d get a good word.
I sympathize with this woman. Cuz I’ve been there. You probably have been too. I have been to conference, after conference, panel, after panel, zoom after zoom, to realize that the people speaking to me don’t have anything to offer me but empty dreams. I’ve sat in classrooms, in churches, in movie theaters, because I was promised that I would get something. I was promised that this word would heal me. That I would learn something. That something magical would happen. And some times, I’ve walked out unfulfilled. Angry. Unsatisfied.
And Jesus angers me. And he probably angers that woman in the distance. Jesus even says in verse 12, Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. Jesus says “Don’t fret, the prophets have gone through this before.” Jesus to me, sounds like the head-shakers who say “it’s all okay, people have been here before and you’ll get through it too.”
Beloveds. I am still processing the last four years of my life. So many people were tryna tell me not to worry because “we’ve been through worse.” And that’s simply not true. Not everyone made it. Not everyone who was with us four years ago is here now. Not everyone who was with us a year ago is here now.
As much as I honor that as a coping mechanism, we tell ourselves that it’s okay, that we’ll be alright, that our people survived worse... is there room to want more for myself? Will my grandchildren know the same horrors that I do? And where is the space to lament that White Supremacy and everything related to it just keeps STEALING my time?
Related, Stevie Wonder said he’s moving to Ghana for this very reason. FEEL you, uncle.
For the woman I’m imagining in Jesus' sermon, this REAL and imaginary woman, I weep. She cannot eat these feel-good messages.
She cannot use this blessing to buy medicine. She cannot use this word to help her daughter make sense of homework that has recently been overhauled by common core math logic. And she came all the way down here, from the Bronx to Union Square, to hear Jesus talk in cute fluffy sayings. I can hear that woman, somewhere pacing in the back of the crowd. I can hear her saying, “Jesus, Stop Playing. Don’t waste my time.”
So what exactly is Jesus saying? And why is he saying it?
What is this blessed word?
It depends on what we mean by the word “blessed”. Any time I hear of the word “blessed”, I immediately imagine phrases like “too blessed to be stressed” or “blessed and highly favored”. We use it as if we have any business blessing people or taking blessings away. But this word doesn’t mean what we think it means. This word here is “makarios”, which is the Greek word for blessing. And my mama helped me see this.
Makarios is the same word we see in Luke 1:45 and 48, where Mary says “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.”
Now, if you’ve been following along, you know me and Mary and the Magnificat got some fighting we do in the prayer closet. For more on Mary and her choice (or non choice) listen to the Body episode of the podcast.
This “blessed” word, in this context, makes me think of blessings you aren’t even expecting. It, as my mother would say, Jesus interrupts the course of our lives. He’s been interrupting things since he was in utero.
But as an adult, Jesus also interrupts things. His words ARE his actions.
He speaks life to the dead with a word.
He heals the sick with a word.
He literally defends a woman who we say is caught in adultery with a word.
In fact, that is why it is significant that Jesus says what he says.
He is without a home. He cannot read. He is unmarried. He is poor. His bloodline is suspicious. And generally most people just read him as strange.
So yes, he does get to stand and say, ““Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Because he’s not saying we should be persecuted. He’s saying, SINCE WE are persecuted, since that’s happening to us anyway, we WILL have the kingdom.
Or as Fred Hampton says,
“We ain’t gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we’re gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution. That’s what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.”
But be warned.
When people with power tell the powerless that they are “blessed,” it is BLASPHEMY. You know exactly who i'm talking about. I’m talking about the people who have no intention of interrupting the condition and systems of oppression that plague our communities. I’m talking about politicians who film themselves clapping for first responders, all while voting to give more money to police departments and less to education, less to healthcare, less to housing, less to arts.
I’m talking about the people who celebrate you with awards for “protecting the capitol” all while refusing to convict the man who incited that riot in the first place. And y’all know, if you’ve been listening long enough, I do not give any legitimacy to the system that makes these kinds of choices, but JESUS christ!
There are so many twitter accounts of White Christian Celebrities I have blocked because they tried to tell me that “suffering here and now brings me closer to god.”
Stop playing. Don’t waste my time.
In fact, the more and more I try to imagine this scene, I wonder If the people in the crowd actually understood what Jesus was saying. Why would the usually storytelling Jesus rely on shorter phrases? Were these, perhaps, protest chants? Did they notice that Jesus was riling them up? That this was a call to action? That this moment was a protest? That Jesus was perhaps the proto- Afro Futurist?
AfroFuturism is about engaging a world that is not yet here. It is dreaming beyond prisons, beyond corporately funded schools, beyond poisoned water, and beyond gentrification. Afrofuturism asks, “What would it look like if…” Jesus in all his wisdom wonders aloud, “what would it look like if the poor were blessed, if the hungry were filled, if the meek inherit the earth?”
I want to talk about some women who STAY in the Barney bag. Ashey Ellis and Quandisha German are wives, business partners, and friends. I met Ashley in seminary and I eventually met Quandisha not too long after. As long as I’d known Ashley, she had BEEN working with young people. She eventually got her Masters focusing on Youth Ministry at NYTS after transferring from Union. She and her spouse started a collective called The BREATHE Collective, which stands for Balanced, Restored, Empowered, Affirmed, Transformed, Healed, Embodied. It is a blessing to me.
In their own words, they are a collective of black and brown women and girls “committed to developing sacred connections and curating sacred space that allow us to BREATHE. Through the use of our experiences with restorative principles, peacemaking circles, mentorship, and food as a healing praxis, we co-create pathways for people, especially our sistas, to experience a liberating revolutionary love and Healing rooted in community.” They host Community Circles, Facilitate workshops/circles for groups in community, at conferences, summits, programs, churches, retreats. And they have been working at this juncture because children who are not cis boys are often left out of any support networks. Quandisha is the head of the kitchen with the Breathe Cafe.
Some time ago, I asked her what her rates were for catering a small program with Q Hailey’s FreeXone4Us. And this is what Quandisha told me.
“I let people tell me what they have. If you tell me what you have, I can make something happen. If you have $50, I can find a way to make a meal with that and make sure everyone gets something. No one is going to be left out.”
The Barney bag! SHE IS IN HER BAG!
I could say so much more about them both, but I think I’d like to have them on the podcast at some point. They’re incredible women and I'm so thankful that they exist. A few weeks ago, I was talking about wanting to see the dirt, the proof that you really been in the garden working? Well, both of them got bbq sauce on their hands. That’s not a metaphor. If you go to breathecafe.org, you will find spices and sauces that you can purchase, which directly support the work they’re up to.
I encourage you both to check them out on instagram @thebreathe_collective because they have a campaign going on right now where they are celebrating Black Girl Freedom week!
There are so many things that we need that simply don’t exist yet. And there are things that exist which could use your attention and care.
Where will you see God’s blessing?
Where will you allow yourself to support the disruption of the world that is, and help usher in the world to come? Will you release the captives? Will you seek other methods of conflict resolution besides calling police? Will you house someone seeking shelter? Will you text a friend a word of encouragement? Will you make sure that the programs at your church are not just full of cishet men? Will you donate to mutual aid networks? Will you pray for someone with their consent? Will you accompany a teenager to the doctor? Will you be an ear for a friend?
Jesus calls us to Disrupt.
Jesus calls us to get in our Barney Bag.
As a note, I think the barney theme song is really more radical than we give it credit.
Barney's friends are big and small
They come from lots of places
After school they meet to play
And sing with happy faces
Barney comes to play with us
Whenever we may need him
Barney can be your friend too
If you just make-believe him!
I wish “make believe” wasn’t so trite of an idea these days. Making believe is a sacred, holy thing.
Blessed are those who follow his example.
To Go Bag
So today we mentioned Fred Hampton, and I think a lot of people have been talking about him. I don’t want to baptize him in my own Christian waters, but I do see him in a tradition of people speaking to the needs of the day. Although, he was a lot more explicit than coded. You can listen on Apple or Spotify, or you can google transcripts. One of my favorite speeches is “Power Anywhere There’s People” for the simple fact that you can tell he has a pedagogy of asking questions.
As you’re listening, sit with this question: What is your reality right now? What do you need it to be? What are some concrete steps you can take from point a to point B? This can be a personal challenge, a challenge in your friendships or relationships, a challenge at work, a challenge for organizing collectives. We are all of those selves and then some when we show up for the revolution.