Tag: Restoration and Liberation

“Grind culture is a collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism. It views our divine bodies as machines. Our worth is not connected to how much we produce. We ignore our bodies’ need to rest and in doing so, we lose touch with Spirit. Our bodies are a tool agents for change. A site of liberation. The time to rest is now. Our collective rest will change the world because our rest resides in a Spirit of refusal and disruption. Resist is our protest. Resit is resistance. Rest is reparations.” p. 12

1. Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. 
2. Our bodies are a site of liberation
3. Naps provide a portal to imagine, invent and heal
4. Our DreamSpace has been stolen and we want it back. We will reclaim it via rest p. 13

“Embrace knowing that you have been manipulated and scammed by a violent system as powerful evidence. Now with this knowledge you can grieve, repair, rest, and heal.” p. 17

Grind culture has traumatized us and then begin the lifelong process of healing from this trauma. This work is about more than simply naps and sleep, it is a full unraveling from the grips of our toxic understanding of our self-worth as divine human beings. Grieving in this culture is not done and is seen as a waste of time because grieving is a powerful place of reverence and liberation.” p. 28

“Once we know and remember we are divine, we will no participate and allow anything into our hearts and minds that is not loving and caring. We would treat ourselves and each other like the tender and powerful beings we are.” p. 29 Goodness and Mercy

“When I say sleep helps you wake up—it helps you wake up to the turret of who and what you are. And the system doesn’t want that. It would crumple und the weigh to this power.” p. 29 

“We can bend time when we rest and I’m grateful for the slowness and the embodied work of refusal. The way taking your time and disrupting the dominant culture’s need to rush is liberation. To just be, to just depend what already is and can never be taken from us is the praxis.” p. 32

“I want you to firmly plant yourself inside your imagination Take refuge in the beauty and power of community care and our daydreaming…Rest is a portal. Silence is a pillow. Sabbath our lifeline. Pausing our compass. Get your healing. Push back. Slow down. take a nap.” p. 32

“I want you to firmly plant yourself inside your imagination Take refuge in the beauty and power of community care and our daydreaming…Rest is a portal. Silence is a pillow. Sabbath our lifeline. Pausing our compass. Get your healing. Push back. Slow down. take a nap.” p. 32

“We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so. That is it! Rest is this proclamation for a moment.” p. 62 Reclamation 

“As a person totally focused on our Spirits, souls, minds and bodies, I am worried about the road the Metaverse will play in an already sleep-deprived and disconnected world. There are too many ways to ignore the deep inner knowing, intuition, and divine wisdom that exists in us from birth already. To exists daily over time in a space of increased virtual experiences will have lasting effect on our ability to push back against capitalism and white supremacy.” p. 70

“My freedom from grind culture is intimately tied up in the healing and liberation of all those around me. Community care and full communal unraveling is the ultimate goal for any justice world, because without this we will be left vulnerable to the lie of toxic individualism.” p. 76

bell hooks all about love “‘mutual giving strengthens community’ Mutual and collective rest disrupts, interrupts, and heals. Our collective resting coordinated with traveling deep within our hearts begins the process of dismantling capitalism, white supremacy, racism, homophobia, ableism, and patriarchy.” p. 78 Rest Interrupts

“True liberation to me is to not be constantly attempting to prove our worth and ticking off to-do lists. To just be”. p. 80

 “You can begin to create a ‘Not-TO-Do List’ as you gain the energy to maintain healthy boundaries. Our opportunity test and re-imagine rest is endless. There is always time to rest when we reimagine.” p. 83

Emile Townes Womanist theologian “Liberation is a process. Freedom is a temporary state of being. Liberation is dynamic. It never ends.” p. 98

“Imagine a life outside of grind culture right now. You can create it because you are more powerful than you believe. We are more powerful than we belie. What liberations can you craft outside your grind culture.” p. 137

“The illusion of living within grind culture offers the myth of control. many of us are on automated, robot machine mode and there is not room here for the magic of mystery and Spirit to move in your life.” p. 140

Do not let your credit score, man-made poverty, and/or racism define your extreme power. Your body is a site of liberation.” p. 148

“You can rest. You can shift. You can heal. You can resist. You can lay down right now. If you are in a safe space that would allow for you to lay down, please do so as you read. If it’s not safe to recline. just slow down your breathing. Visualize your favorite place to slumber and relax. Go there in your mind. May these rest moments multiply as you integrate more into your daily practice.”  p. 148

Ideas to dream into p. 151-152: Safe surfaces to nap, silence as a sound, baths, stretching, detox from social media, experiment with naps, read poetry, meditate, journal

“You don’t have to be always be creating, doing, and contributing to the world. Your birth grants you rest and leisure as well.” p. 152

“Resting is not a state of inactivity or a waste of time. Rest is a generative space. When you are resting your body, it is in its most connected state. Your organs are regenerating. Your brain is processing new information. Your connecting with a spiritual practice. You are honoring your body. You are being present. All these thing are so foundational for liberation and healing to take root.” p. 153

“Your bodies don’t belong to capitalism, to white supremacy, or to the patriarchy. Your body is a divine temple and a place of generative imagination. A place of healing and freedom.” p. 153

“I believe any work that is rooted in wellness and justice and doesn’t include the collective, without a framework about dismantling and decolonizing, is incomplete work” p. 154

“I am forever inspired by bell hooks and Octavia Butler for believing in and teaching us about imagination as a tool of our greatest liberation.” p. 159

Meditation 159 to steal back time

“I believe specifically that my Ancestors, those enslaved on plantations, had their DreamSpace stolen. A theft. The space to just be replaced with racial terror and violent terror.” p. 160

“How would our justice work look different if all involved were not sleep-deprived?” 160

“What transmissions would we receive in our dreams that guide us to our liberation?” p. 160

“There is rest for the weary. For those working two or three jobs and still unable to pay rent consistently. For those parenting, working, and going to school, there is rest available to you. For the body that is unable to labor the long hours grind culture requires, rest is a refuge to you.” p. 161

“I am not overlooking the blatant reality of poverty, low wages, late-stage capitalism, corporations generation billions of dollars while the worker isn’t offered a living wage and all other trickery and abuse that make it feel impossible to thrive.” p. 161

“Rest is an imagination tool because it makes space to simply be. To be a human being is an ancient miracle that we overlook when we work so hard to prove our worth via exhaustion.” p. 161

Discernment Journal

1. What do I feel called to do?
2. How can I create space for me and my community to heal? What needs healing in me?
3. Can the idea of unplugging and resting for a whole month be reimagined by creating smaller moment daily, weekly?
4. What does intentional rest and care look like to you? Sketch a map out a visual.
5. How is your heart?
6. Who are you being?
7. What are you Holding?
8. What story are you telling yourself? What is a more liberating Story you can tell?
9. How can you create rest in this moment?
10. Are you ready to change?

p. 163

Go on Social Media rest to create space p. 163-168

“The Nap Ministry is a commitment to an ideal that may seem unattainable. This makes it revolutionary because it creates space to imagine and hope. Both are keys to our liberation. p. 174

“In Afrofuturism, there is a future where all current problems are solved. the future is now.” p. 177 We need to remember to imagine together

“Between growing up in the Black Church, watching what the Spirit can do for and to a person during embodied worship, paired with my obsession with Afrofuturism, it is easy for me to connect the dots to rest as a portal for healing.” p. 181

“I am very comfortable with embodiment and the idea of trusting deeply what is happening behind the scenes. Things essays and ears can’t see and hear.” p. 182

“Rest on a somatic level is a small resurrection. I have always been interested in the concept of community resurrection…A resurrection is a waking up into a new thing. It’s life, insight, breathing, refusing, think and a movement that is alive and made new. Rest is resurrection. A literal raising form the dead. Grind culture is a spiritual death.” p. 182-183

Meditations for rest

1. I deserve to rest now
2. I am worthy of rest
3. I am not lazy. How could I be lazy? My Ancestors are too brilliant for that.
4. Capitalism wants my body to be a machine. I am not a machine.
5. I am a magical and divine human being.
6. I have the right to resist grind culture. 
7. I do not have to earn rest.
8. Do less, watch how I thrive.
9. Rest is my birthright.
10. I will rest. 

p. 192-193