Who I have come to be as a person cannot be divorced from my African and ordained Anglican identity. African identity is particularly charged from the outset as to whether negative, imposed identities—especially identities caught in the ambiguity of legitimate or illegitimate humanity—are to be accepted. To work against this ambiguity, there can be no concept of African and Anglican identities without full disclosure of their contingent, politically oppressed histories. In other words, to understand myself, I will also need to understand how one resists seeing me. Tutu helps me see this when he states, “Who you are affects and determines to a very large extent what you see and how you see it.”19 What I intend in my biography of Malcolm is to deepen my thought about the complexities of being human, especially in the midst of a hostile environment shaped by bad religion and colonialism.
The second aspect of the curse is in the toil of successfully presenting a spirituality from an oppressed people. The guiding idea behind my view of Malcolm is that he too toiled to present a spirituality of an oppressed people. For Malcolm, an extraordinary thing happened in that he both embodied an oppressed spirituality being gay and he chose an oppressed spirituality by identifying so profoundly with black people during the Civil Rights Movement. I am like Malcolm in such an embodiment and choice, but for me, my embodiment was being black and my choice was to be Anglican. Spirituality is needed to make both the embodied identity and the chosen identity toil synchronically toward the desired effect of reconciliation and transformation. Herein lies the salient task of my work on Malcolm, to expose to the world a profound life capable of synthesizing disparate identities.
Why Apocalyptic Four Horsemen?
As this book was being finalized, my editor wrote me that my apocalyptic theme kept him up at night. The haunting question was: why did I decide to use the images of the four horsemen (White Knight, Red Knight, Black Knight, and Green Knight) as an organizing principle rather than writing a more conventional, chronological bibliography? I shared this question with Malcolm, who wrote, “Regarding the four horsemen. They made me want to do the book with you! A conventional biography about me would almost be ‘missing the point.’ I am not conventional. Nothing about me is actually conventional. I am not a conventional priest or a conventional writer or a conventional gay person or a conventional civil rights worker! I am different, unique, I suppose one could say ‘queer.’ I believe the horsemen ‘form of organization’ does provide more insight into my life than a ‘mere conventional biography.’”20
A life capable of synthesis of disparate identities like the four horsemen is crucial for our world today, a synthesis that no longer measures a life through the typical dualisms (for example, black vs. white, male vs. female, rich vs. poor, Asian vs. globalism) that lead to competition and war. It is interesting how Malcolm’s life represented a struggle against such dualisms. Similar to Martin Luther King Jr., when one pursues civil rights for black people you can’t avoid how such work dovetails on issues like victims of the Vietnam War and other injustices. Many of Malcolm’s speaking engagements on college campuses focused upon helping young people make such connections—that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Malcolm prays, “You lost in Vietnam, didn’t you, Christ? Why do we say that we won?”21
Instead of a worldview of dualisms, Malcolm invites synthesis. As we measure Malcolm’s profound synthesis, we encounter the angst of havingto go beyond stereotype and routine. Mathematical teachers may assess the progress of their students by observing how well they reason-out a particular formula. In biology, a professor will see the results of a student’s lab. In spiritual disciplines, however, what results could ever satisfy the quest to know mutuality with the greatest of disparate identities, the creature and the Creator?
What do I mean by mutuality? Frederick Buechner helps me explain my meaning of mutuality through his definition of vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”22 The concept of vocation proposes a kind of mutuality in which teacher and student behaviors are congruent not only with words and ideas but also with commitments and practices. A spiritual teacher like Malcolm is one who readily admits the incongruence of words and ideas as a virtue and a form of deeper knowledge. In other words, the spiritual teacher sees the world differently by learning to see “what is not there.” By learning to see “what is not there,” we learn to see “what should be there.” For example, marginalized and minority identities have often not been there or, if they are, they are invisible.
As an African-American Christian theologian, I argue that how I continue to see “what is not there” is informed by my commitment to God’s communal image. From the perspective of God’s mutuality, I practice “what is not there” in many difficult places (for example, being the only black person in my school and church)—namely, my vocation of being African American and Christian. This leads me back to Buechner’s definition of vocation. Those who teach in a spiritual way have an opportunity to develop the world into “the place where your deep gladness feeds deep hunger.” By being mutual with Malcolm, I also facilitate the revelation of Buechner’s concept of vocation in my own complex persona. This revelation of vocation honors many others in their own complex journeys in which they innately know that mutuality can only be known through vulnerability. We cannot know mutuality through conflict and disorientation. We know mutuality by first knowing what it is not. Therefore, to teach the spiritual life well requires the ability to create mutuality in such a way that both teacher and student acknowledge the impossible task of knowing God outside of the miracle of mutuality.
How then do I understand myself as a spiritual teacher? One can synthesize an answer only through the mutual search for communal ways of knowing. In other words, my quest for the Spirit always leads me to diverse communities. Unfortunately, the normative course is intended for autonomous learning among individuals only or siloed communities (for example, white, black, gay, straight, poor, or middle-upper class). For example, many persons are often irritated with the question: how are we to design spiritual experiences inclusive of diverse communities?23 To answer this question demands a response to the assumption above in which Eurocentric educational design privileges the individual or competitive communities. Patricia Cranton illustrates this assumption:
I recently discussed the idea of being an authentic teacher with a seasoned science education professor—a man who was looking forward to retirement within the next year after thirty years of teaching practice. He was almost appalled at the notion of being oneself with students. “I don’t think I could go for that,” he said, startled by what he saw as my naiveté. “Who I am in the classroom and who I am outside of the classroom are two different people. Students don’t need to know me, they need to know how to teach science.” Perhaps my raising the topic provoked images of personal self-disclosure or an emotional sharing of feelings with students, things that had no place in his mind in science teaching, but more likely, he simply saw teaching as something he does rather than who he is.24
Malcolm invites us to embrace the cultivation of learning in community that does not delete difference. This is his profound contribution as a spiritual teacher. There is an emerging consensus that the repertoires of teaching strategies most effective and responsive in socially and culturally diverse settings can be the very same strategies that are identified as characteristic of teaching excellence for traditional students. For example, the creation of space conducive for learning remains an important strategy for multicultural courses. Jack Mezirow states, “The more reflective and open we are to the perspectives of others, the richer our imagination of alternative contexts for understanding will be.”25 Malcolm teaches me that I should be just as concerned about relational interaction and communication style as I am about the content. In fact, I do not see the two as separate. Students expect the instructor to
