“Through The Eyes Of Titans” with Danjuma Gibson

Show Notes:

What can the writings, speeches, and actions of historical figures teach us? How do we actually learn from them, instead of merely idolizing and romanticizing them? Dr. Danjuma Gibson gives us some clarity on that often difficult task, with his newest book, Through the Eyes of Titans.

Dr. Gibson is professor of pastoral theology, care, and counseling at Calvin Theological Seminary. He is a licensed, practicing psychotherapist, and served for 16 years as the senior pastor of a church in Chicago. Through the Eyes of Titans takes the lives of four people crucial to the civil rights movement--Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Benjamin Mays, and Martin Luther King, Jr.--and offers their experiences as a way for us to really live into our own stories. These four people, despite their incredible accomplishments, were normal people. They weren’t superhuman or superheroes, even though we often think about them in those terms. They were normal people who grasped onto the imagination of living into a better world, despite their circumstances, and they used that imagination to propel them forward, even through moments of terror. 

Dr. Gibson talks Eddie and Chris through this process, and offers each of us something difficult and profound to think about: “We just can't sit back and think about courage. How can we become more courageous in our own environment? You have to go towards that thing that you fear.”

Resources:

Buy Through the Eyes of Titans

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:01 And I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:02 Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:03

Today we have Dr. Danjuma Gibson with us. He is a professor of pastoral care, theology, and counseling at Calvin Theological Seminary. And today he's with us to talk about his book, "Through the Eyes of Titans."

Chris McAlilly 00:18

The book is a reading of some historical figures that you would recognize from the history of kind of race relations, especially in the American South. Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Benjamin Mays, who was one of the presidents of Morehouse College, and Martin Luther King, Jr. And the book kind of reads these historical figures, but not as a romanticized picture of heroes of the past, but he wants to offer their stories as a lens through which we might come to understand our stories better.

Eddie Rester 00:57

He reads their stories so we can read our stories. It's one of the things I took away from the conversation today. And one of the things I really took from the conversation that, just as he talked I kept coming back to it, is imagination, the importance of what's shaping imagination. And for each of the titans, worship was important to shaping their imaginations, their friendships, their families all helped shape their imagination, not just of what the US could be, but of who they could be in their own stories.

Chris McAlilly 01:31

One of the things that is being thought through is this idea of what the conditions might look like for a person to find and live into their true identity and purpose and calling, and how to do that in a situation where there's trauma, where there are traumatic experiences. One of our recent episodes talks about preaching in the midst of trauma, and I was thinking back to that as we were talking the episode with Kim Wagner. In that episode, we talked about fractured ground, you know, the way in which narratives and stories can fracture. And in this conversation, we really get the lens of a clinical therapist, who is helping people reconstruct their stories and find what he says, the phrase was really interesting, narrating and re-narrating your story until a new story can take root in the soul structure of your life. It's a really powerful idea. And then from there, as you begin to ground, maybe, a new identity and put the pieces of your story back together, then he kind of talks you through how to find your way to your voice, to your calling.

Eddie Rester 02:45

I'm so thankful we got to talk with him today. So many things that I've taken away from it, I'm going to continue to think about, but also I think just someone whose writings I want to dig into, as well. He is thoughtful about race and racial imagination and its impact not just on African Americans, but on all of us as well. And he really does a deep dive into the lives of these folks who are worth all of us knowing and feeling and sensing what's good and true in their stories.

Chris McAlilly 03:16
I also think there's something here for someone who is a practitioner of...

Eddie Rester 03:20 Correct.

Chris McAlilly 03:21

A counselor or a therapist, there's some... If you're a manager of a business, you're trying to put a team together and try to help folks work towards their their best life and work. Or if you're parenting, you're just trying to be a good friend. There's a lot of great stuff here. So we're glad that you're with us today, as we continue the conversation on The Weight. [INTRO] The truth is, the world is growing more angry, more bitter, and more cynical. People don't trust one another, and we feel disconnected.

Eddie Rester 03:53

The way forward is not more tribalism. It's more curiosity that challenges what we believe, how we live, and how we treat one another. It's more conversation that inspires wisdom, healing, and hope.

Chris McAlilly 04:05

So we launched The Weight podcast as a space to cultivate sacred conversations with a wide range of voices at the intersection of culture and theology, art and technology, science and mental health. And we want you to be a part of it.

Eddie Rester 04:20
Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 04:29
We're here today with Dr. Danjuma Gibson, and we're so grateful that you've taken the time to be with us today.

Danjuma Gibson 04:36 Thank you for having me.

Eddie Rester 04:38

You're a professor at Calvin Theological Seminary. You were saying that before we jumped on and started recording that you have a very different route that got you there. Help us know a little bit about you. Share a little bit about that strange journey into the theological world.

Danjuma Gibson 04:56

Sure, well, I did my undergraduate work in finance, business administration at Morehouse College. And out of school, I went directly into financial services and commercial banking. I thought I would be Mr. Corporate America for life, but always was actively involved in the church. And eventually, you know, I was ordained and still bi-vocational. I was a banker by day, pastor by night. And during that time, I did my MBA and went back to seminary and did a few master's degrees. And then in the financial debacle of 2008, I ultimately ended up exiting banking, and I had just been accepted to a PhD program at Garrett-Evangelical in Evanston, Illinois. And yeah, the story is, you know, that led to where I am today, basically.

Chris McAlilly 06:01
What would you say is perhaps the impetus for your study? Clearly, you're a lifelong learner, but what were some of the driving questions that led you to deeper research?

Danjuma Gibson 06:15

You know, I was a pastor for 16 and a half years, just under 17 years, and I think, you know, perhaps just about anyone who goes back and pursues doctoral work, it's because I was asking questions where I found simply no answers in the prevailing literature. And in particular, I think my questions were more in terms of our psychological well-being our interior world, just was not a match for me, when you talk about sort of religious nomenclature, being able to heal everything. You can have faith and still have trauma. You can have faith and still suffer from grief and loss, things of this nature. And so that led me into my doctoral studies in pastoral theology, and I'll just say clinical psychology, or clinical counseling.

Eddie Rester 07:26
And you maintain a practice as well. So you're working.

Danjuma Gibson 07:29
Yes, I'm licensed here in Michigan, and I have a private practice in addition to the work that I do at the seminary.

Chris McAlilly 07:37

One of the things that you do in your research and in your writing is to think about the stories of individuals as offering... I mean, it seems to me a bit of a map for how one might think about their psychological well-being their psychological trauma. You have written on Frederick Douglass. Talk about that. How's a public figure, a figure from history giving you a lens for thinking about rethinking our subjective experiences? How did you come to that way of doing research and ultimately writing?

Danjuma Gibson 08:22

Sure, thank you for that. I have to say I came to it by mistake, initially. I was studying for my qualifying PhD exams. And as a break, you know, you could watch a movie, doing anything. And I came across an autobiography of Frederick Douglass, his first autobiography. And then after completing that, I discovered, wow, he wrote a second. And then after completing that in the interim, wow, he wrote a third one. And then after that, wow, he wrote a fourth one, and I just got lost. I got lost in his life. And if you look at his work, there were two autobiographies before the Civil War, two autobiographies after. And it dawned on me, Frederick Douglass is no more than a client sitting in front of me, telling me their life story. Where you have to ask yourself, why does a person write four autobiographies? Why do they need to do that? He's telling the story similar to how we would do in therapy, but he's emphasizing, he has different emphasis throughout the various life cycle stages. And I thought, you know, Frederick Douglass, he really predates--well, not really, he does--he predates Freud, and sort of the beginnings of how we began to talk about in our understandings of psychology. And so that fascinated me, wanting to study and examine his life, and instead of your typical autobiography or cycle biography where you will take a psychological lens and read someone's life through it, here, I started with Frederick Douglass' life, and I tried to read psychology through it. Because my question was, where did he come from? Contemporary trauma theory especially would suggest, if you were born and raised and lived in the slavocracy, you wouldn't emerge to be the figure that we know Frederick Douglass was in the 19th century. And so that really piqued my imagination, and then on into my ongoing work into the second text, "Through the Eyes of Titans."

Chris McAlilly 10:41

So did you find, I mean, I have not read the Douglass book. And I wonder, what was your finding? I mean, did you find that Frederick Douglass' story transcended psychological categories? Or did you find that psychological categories were helpful in making sense of his identity formation, his sense of personhood? Just, what were some of your discoveries?

Danjuma Gibson 11:09

Sure, so it's mixed. Um, there were areas where I thought psychodynamic theory did provide some interpretive value. But then there were other areas. And I would say, primarily this: the lion's share of psychodynamic theory, from Freud on to today begins with the family. It begins, it's our source of what it means to be human. Our subjectivity emerges out of the family unit. The family unit was destroyed in the slavocracy. I mean, it was turned on its head. So it made me consider, where did his subjectivity come from? And eventually, after a lot of analysis, you know, I end with this idea of the force of being, that all of us are born with this sense of, or this desire to, experience our own humanity. And this is how I understood his actions, his words. It was always a struggle against the narrative of slavocracy. He sought to experience himself as something other than an enslaved human being.

Eddie Rester 12:31

I want to use that kind of as a bridge to this most recent book, "Through the Eyes of Titans," where you take a look not just at one figure, but if four distinct figures: Ida B. Wells, Benjamin Mays, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King, Jr. How did you pick those four? And I want to talk after that what it is, what you're doing as you lift those four up. But how did you choose those four?

Danjuma Gibson 12:57

So there are a couple of things. One is just happenstance, I would say, but then the other is a research methodology. You know, so I would say about the past four or five years here at Calvin Seminary, Calvin University, we have the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Myself, along with my colleague, John Witvliet, we began to have this summer seminar, a week -ong seminar where we basically invite people and we read the autobiographies of various African American historical figures, sort of the religious autobiographies. And a few of those names, we were studying those. But then, as I looked at the material, I started to think, okay, how... And so my colleague, John, encouraged me, well, maybe you should write a manuscript about what we're doing here in the summer. And as you know, you start out one way thinking about how you're going to write a book. And then six years later, three years after its past due, you come up with something that's totally different. And when you are talking about psychobiography, the first question is what primary source documents, written in the first person, do you have available to you? How much data and is there enough data where I can analyze it as if this is a person sitting in front of me in my therapy office? How can I code and analyze their narratives, their stories, their thinking, all of it? I mean, that's why they call us talk therapist. If you keep talking, we're going to figure it out. And so basically, you know, you put all of that together. It was these four, at least for now, these four figures and the abundance of information I had at my disposal, primary source documents, first person, that just became intriguing, fascinating.

Eddie Rester 15:17

And your work is really not to lionize them, but to humanize them. You know, in Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Ida B. Wells are part of the story of our state. Chris and I are both located in Oxford, Mississippi. And they can take on a larger than life. They did amazing things. They changed the trajectory of a nation, these four in particular. But your job with them, or you what your hope is not to continue adding to the accolades of them. You want us to see them differently. Say a little bit about that.

Danjuma Gibson 15:56

I want us to see ourselves in them. You know, a couple of things in academia, higher education, I think we have a habit of idealizing people. I mean, in this country we do. You look at certain television channels in the month of February, everyone has commercials about Black history, and I think to myself, but the values that these people stood for and what they died for, you care nothing about. But you know, we will just parade their pictures on sports channels and things of that nature. And I thought, de-mythologizing them-- that somehow, Fannie Lou Hamer just wanted to suffer that night in prison, that she just was just fine with that, that she went there fearlessly, or that Ida B. Wells had no fear at all, as she was going throughout Mississippi and the South, doing something incredibly radical, and that is dispelling this myth that lynching was related to Black males raping white women and white children. I don't think we realize even to this day, a lot of her words are, they're incredible, even today, if you were to read them. And for her to do that during that time, it was incredible. So I'm asking myself, how did you do that? How does... We know Martin Luther King had courage. How did you find it?

Eddie Rester 17:41

Because I think, as I think about what you're writing, is that really, they are not different than we are. I think that's what you're trying to help people understand. They're not these people who are born superhuman with extra courage and the ability to speak well, and this willingness to go challenge people for what they believed and the evil of that they were perpetuating. There was something else that was driving them besides some superhuman ability.

Danjuma Gibson 18:16 Absolutely.Absolutely.

Chris McAlilly 18:17 I find...

Danjuma Gibson 18:18 And...

Chris McAlilly 18:19 Go for it.

Danjuma Gibson 18:19 Go ahead.

Chris McAlilly 18:20

No, I just find it interesting that one of the through lines that you find in I guess both kind of an underlying resilience or hope or power comes from worship. You kind of point in the direction of worship, as this powerful source of hope and resilience. And I just wonder if you would speak to that, I guess. It's... How did that... Was that something that emerged through the research or kind of just at what point did you realize, you know, I think this is really the source?

Danjuma Gibson 19:01

You know, so in the final chapter, I talk a little bit about worship. I talk about this idea of pulling down barriers. And, you know, you look at the work of, whether it is Martin Luther King or Fannie Lou Hamer, and you look at their worship practices. You look at the rituals. And I thought to myself, this was not religiosity for the sake of religiosity. Worship spaces have the capacity--they're like, experimental workshops. They have the capacity for you to imagine, for you to imagine something, to cultivate the imagination, for you to imagine things that are not yet present. I found the same thing with Frederick Douglass. Where does he get the idea to run or to escape the bonds of slavery? He doesn't get it from reading something or talking to someone. He's sitting on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, and he sees ships going by. And he's looking at how their sails are blowing freely in the wind, and he resolves in himself, I'm going to be as free as those boats that are passing by. So it's this idea of, you know, in some respects, no matter what's going on, no matter the oppression, if we lose our imagination, we're done. We're done. Worship can cultivate that, especially when it involves what, in my own work, I call Pentecostal worship. And that is not the Pentecostal denomination, but it's what we see on the day of Pentecost, where the Divine is using voices from every nation under the sun. That then is an incredible worship.

Chris McAlilly 20:54

So when you think about imagination in counseling, in a counseling practice? And so I want to come back away from the historical study and come back to kind of the clinical application of some of your insights. How do you think about that? If someone is doing talk therapy, and they are working their way through their story, and maybe there are the places in the story that are breaking down, or that are kind of fracturing because of trauma or traumatic experiences, how do you help someone use the tools of imagination to work through and maybe beyond some of those fissures in their story?

Danjuma Gibson 21:44

You know, when we think about talk therapy, psychotherapy, there's this idea, a couple of things, of corrective emotional experience, where it's not necessarily about some sophisticated interpretation that I offer up. But by and large, it is about a space being created for the care seeker, where they can tell that story, or create that story, or narrate it fifty, a hundred times over, before it begins to take root in their self structure. And they can reimagine themselves as something or someone other than perhaps the weakened self that sought out therapy in the first place.

Chris McAlilly 22:36 That's so fascinating.

Danjuma Gibson 22:37 So I believe that... Go ahead.

Chris McAlilly 22:39

No, that's so fascinating. I mean, just several things that you said. One was, you're creating, the way that you think of your practice is you're creating space for the care seeker. That's a phrase I've never heard before. I've never heard somebody described as a care seeker. But I think that's such a beautiful way of articulating a person's path towards therapy. And then I heard you say, that part of the goal is to create the space for someone to narrate their story fifty, a hundred, a hundred fifty times, however long it takes for their new kind of identity, or the new story to take root in their self structure, so that they can imagine themselves as something other than the weakened self that came into therapy, but rather, now is kind of emerging as a resilient, empowered and stronger individual that is capable of withstanding and going beyond future situations where they may be confronted with adversity, or trauma. That is so powerful as a way of framing. I've never heard somebody say it quite that way. That's so helpful to me. Thank you. Thank you for that insight.

Danjuma Gibson 24:00 Thank you.

Eddie Rester 24:03

One of the things that I think I shared with you before we came, started recording, is that of the four, Benjamin Mays is the one that, I'm sorry to say, I didn't know who he was. In the book, you talk about him being actively involved in his own life project. Again, the imagination for me goes in so many ways with that. Do a couple of things for us. Give us, for those who might not have heard of Benjamin Mays, give us a full thumbnail sketch of him. But then also, what did you mean by that, "actively involved in his own life project?"

Danjuma Gibson 24:42

Sure. And so Benjamin Mays, perhaps, is one of the most well-known, if not the most well- known, president of Morehouse College. And some would argue really put the college on the map. I know there will be others that may disagree with me. In terms of just the professors that he brought to campus and really putting, you know, moving Morehouse forward in terms of higher education, a college education, its endowment, I mean, you name it.

Eddie Rester 25:17
It was about to collapse before he got there. I mean, it really had fallen into shambles.

Danjuma Gibson 25:21

It suffered. It suffered. And that is not a... And that's a story that is not uncommon among HBCUs, and the struggle to survive and to maintain itself. But, you know, it was also the thought life. He was a lifelong educator. And, you know, he was most well known for always referring to this poem, "God's Minute." And I thought to myself, what is it? What is it about this guy? What is he doing in his interaction, when he talks about his own life, his own upbringing in the south, and then what is he trying to relay to these young men at Morehouse? And that's where I come up with this idea of doing your work, or your life project, which is something radically different than perhaps going to work or your career. And Mays knew, I believe he had a lot of insight in this area. Your life can't be totally defined by resisting various forms of oppression, whether that's racial terror, racial oppression, your identity being defined by that. I believe he understood that if you are involved in your life project, or doing your work ,that inherently is resistive to the racial imagination. Doing your work in your life project, it's an inherent form, it's an intrinsic form of self care. Now, we have a lot of books, and I have read a lot of great books out today about self care, doing self work, you know, taking time out to take care of your body, breathing, medication. But what I like about these figures and what they talk about to me, a lot of individuals don't have the luxury to take time out from an oppressive structure. They can't choose a different life. So how then do they choose to exist within, when they don't have an alternative? How do they choose to exist within those structures, and how is that, then, a form of self care, these robust subjectivities? Doing your work is one example.

Chris McAlilly 28:01
So do you have "God's Minute" there before you? It's a short poem. I wonder if you wouldn't be willing to just read it for those listening. I think it's a really nice poem.

Danjuma Gibson 28:13

I've said it so much at Morehouse I've memorized but it's: "I have only just a minute. Only 60 seconds in it. Forced upon me, can't refuse it. Didn't seek it, didn't choose it. But it's up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it. Give an account if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it."

Chris McAlilly 28:48

That's powerful. You say in the book that Dr. Mays was credited with authoring the poem, but he also would use it, the word you use is he instilled that into the student body, especially the freshman cohort. Why do you think that was so important for him?

Danjuma Gibson 29:11

I think he wanted to impress upon them the weight of every minute of their existence, in a world that simply didn't, that couldn't recognize, didn't have the capacity to recognize their humanity. I think he wanted to lay the... He wanted them to understand, it's not about you. It's about them. Now, how do you live into your life project? Or how do you do your work in a way that maximizes your subjectivity, which is an affront to racial animosity?

Chris McAlilly 29:53

So... No, no, no, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I'm just thinking about space and time. So one of the things I heard you say that in the counseling practice that you're trying to do is you're trying to create space. And then what I'm hearing you say is that for a person whose space, the spaces that that person finds themselves moving around in, may be pressurized, or oppressive, maybe, in whatever way constrained, one of the things I hear you saying that Dr. Mays would do is he would press upon folks the importance of time as being an area where subjectivity can be expressed, even if spaces may happen to be oppressive or constrained.

Danjuma Gibson 29:55 Go ahead.

Chris McAlilly 30:42

And just playing around with those two dimensions of our existence... I mean, I think that's a really interesting way of thinking about empowering a person, empowering a person to utilize their time, even if their space is constrained. I haven't ever thought about it quite in those terms. Am I getting the concept you think that he was trying to impress upon the student?

Danjuma Gibson 31:08

I think you are. I think that is... Doing your work is a divine call. And I'm not referring to a call about religious organizations or a local church. What have you been placed here to do? And that, in and of itself, can be a form of self care and resilience, while you are existing in spaces that are not conducive to understanding or recognizing your humanity.

Chris McAlilly 31:46

Yeah, you can use your time in such a way that you are affirming your humanity, and creative constructive ways in which others might find their own humanity, even if the spaces may be deeply constraining or even distorting of that humanity.

Eddie Rester 32:09
It allows you to claim that minute, that time, that moment that you have that no one can really take away from you in the world, in the imagination that you have grappled with.

Danjuma Gibson 32:22

So for example, this is what, in part, how we can define what Fannie Lou Hamer was doing. I mean, the number of speeches and talks that she gave, I don't think people are aware of it. It's just, it's off the charts and the, in the work, the grassroots work that she was involved with, for Black and white people, but poor people there in Mississippi. Ida B. Wells wrote an incredible amount. It was her work. And she had to work through the disappointment that if she revealed this thing to people, she thought they would change their mind about lynching, and it didn't work. Frederick Douglass' work was writing.

Eddie Rester 33:09
They were doing the thing that they only could do. And the imagination given to them by worship, by their communities, allowed them to take hold of what they could do, not what they worship, by their communities, allowed them to take hold of what they could do, not what they couldn't do, not what the world said that they weren't, but what they could do. Of the four that you lift up, if someone listening was going to... If you said, take a deep dive in this one of the four. Which of those four, would you say, this is the one I would have you lean into, and maybe even a resource beyond your book to say, this is where you can find the writings of Ida B. Wells. This is where you can hear the speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer.

Danjuma Gibson 34:02

I would turn to Ida B. Wells. You know, there are several, I think, editions out there of her autobiography, her writing about her experiences. Ida B. Wells, I love her. She's incredible. She educated Frederick Douglass on the myths surrounding lynching. She... I mean, the the courage that she demonstrated. I believe people like... I don't think she's given the credit for how she really, in her writing, you see the beginnings of sociological research. And I don't think she's given credit for that. W. E. B. Du Bois is given more credit for that, in the things and what he wrote in terms of Black life and sociology. But the research that Ida B. Wells was involved in, and the extent to which she went to get it in the deep South, to expose the lies of lynching. It was incredible. And she was cut out of the in group. So I just think there are so many things about her life that your average person can relate to. Having to do your work and not being recognized, not being a part of the in group, whether that's the in group based on gender being a male, whether that's based on class, whether that's based on work, I mean, on race. You see, her work comes out in the voluminous writings that she does and how she defends people in this Jim Crow era, on lynching.

Chris McAlilly 36:04
So what were the turning points for her, in finding her journalistic voice? I mean, were there particular moments in her story that you would point someone to?

Danjuma Gibson 36:15

Yeah, so as if a client is in my office, what I started coming across was disappointments. And what were these disappointments? When her idealizations of her heroes or her ideas were ruptured, like all of us. Growing up, there's someone we idealize. There may be an institution we idealize. There may be a person we idealize as our hero. And then we see a fault line. There's a moral failure, there's an ethical failure, or we see that they are not as strong as they are, and then disappointment. Our idealization is ruptured. This is a part of human development. But then what's the beauty after that? You begin to fall back on what? Your own ideas, your own genius. And I think there were certain areas in her life where she was disappointed by culture, by her mentor Frederick Douglass, by individuals in the church, not only the white church, but the Black church. And each time, she worked through that disappointment, as opposed to repressing it, which I believe a lot of us do today. We are encouraged, forget about it, just repress it.

Eddie Rester 37:37 Just move on.

Danjuma Gibson 37:37

Move on, that's a sign of maturity, move on. I think the intensity that you see in her writing reflects what I'm encouraging people to do in their therapy. Talk about it in its raw form, in its authentic form. And she ends up falling back on her own genius.

Chris McAlilly 37:57

That's so fascinating to think about. The thing that I think about, I just think about your being with individuals, and you're trying to use some of the insights that you're finding from these narratives, these historical narratives. And that's a key insight. So if you're, you know, a counselor, if you're someone who's communicating, I think about in a management position, and you're trying to get the best out of your people, or if you're parenting your children, you know, and you're trying to figure out how to, or you're trying to in a in a friendship context. What are some of the other questions that you find really helpful to unlock, to help someone unlock these kinds of difficult dimensions of their life, to find their way into a deeper level of resilience or a deeper empowerment towards their true identity or calling? Are there any other questions that have emerged from this research that you use in your practice that are particularly helpful?

Danjuma Gibson 38:58

I mean, all of it turns to your interior world and being faithful to what is going on and authentic to what is happening in the interior world, that interior space. You know, I think Socrates says it. I think Martin Luther King repeats him. It's the unexamined. The unexamined life is not worth living. And when you look at the proliferation of literature we have today, whether it's anti-race, DEI literature, which you see what's happening with that around the country, you see what's happening in what books that are being banned, anti-racist literature. I think there's a lot of great material out there. But I also asked myself, what is out here today that scholars haven't written about 50 years ago? So is the issue today that we're seeing sort of this racial reckoning, a lot of the backlash, is that because of the absence of information, or perhaps there's another method that we should engage in? And that's really what I'm getting at in this text. It's not that we haven't talked about racism. But how have you talked about it? Let's look at it in the interior world, in the racial imagination. Let's look at how Martin Luther King faced courage in his interior world, when he thought they were taking him out to the woods as opposed to prison to lynch him. And I argue, I think that started the process, to the famous kitchen event, where it says, you know, he brought, he was contemplating the fear of something happening, and God gave him strength. Or Ida B. Wells, when your exterior props are not conducive to your humanity, how can you tap into what's happening in the interior world? And its questions around the interior world, I will say I am biased because I am by training, I'm a psychotherapist. I believe when you make the unconscious conscious, that's more than half the battle.

Eddie Rester 41:21
One of our guests we had on this season, a couple of weeks ago, was a writer and he just calls on people to write. He said, "You need to be writing your story." And I feel like some of that is what you're talking about. We have to get this. We have to put it into words, whether that's spoken or written, because if we don't, we miss out on the lessons, the strength, maybe. I've loved the conversation today about imagination, because I'm sitting here thinking about what's giving our kids and our young adults and the next generation imagination. It's got to be more than TikTok out there. I mean, what's shaping the imagination? So I just think that one of the threads from so many folks we've talked to this year is that self work to become. And that's really, I think something that the book talks about, this sense of becoming, leaving behind and becoming something more. What are some of the things you learned as you dug into these stories, the autobiographies, about how they continued to progress and be calm. I know the minute poem, writings, but any any other insights that you discovered?

Danjuma Gibson 42:44

It's anxiety provoking work. It is not easy. There is a reason why repression is such a well-used defensive mechanism. Because to dissociate, to repress... I think this is how I open up the text, it would be easy to sit back and just go along, and that everything will eventually work itself out. Because when you engage in that sort of self work, where you are asking yourself, okay, what's really going to happen here if I don't step into this space? What's going to be the cost for my children? What is the cost for posterity? Sometimes I'll joke with clients and I say the goal of our work is not to have a good session. You know, they'll come and engage in the same habits of denial and repression that they've been engaging in for the last fifty years. This is what I'm trying to get in with the racial imagination, how that can affect all of us. But then, we just can't sit back and think about courage. How can we become more courageous in our own environment? You have to go towards that thing that you fear. And unless you practice it, you can't doit. It's not going to happen. The illusion of idealization is if I read about it, now I think I'm like that person. That's what idealization and romanticizing history does for us. If I watch a documentary, I emotionally merge with it, and now I think I've done the work.

Chris McAlilly 44:52

Yeah, so, you know, where the book ends, again is with this concept of Pentecostal worship. And we've talked about imagination and creativity, kind of a constructive offering, whatever that looks like, whether it's journalism, whether it's institution building, in the case of Mays, whether that's a kind of activism and voters rights activism in the frame of Fannie Lou Hamer. All of those, you know, represent--or even counseling and clinical practice--those can all be what you describe as liminal spaces where imagination and play can collide, "in the midst of a broken, cruel war-torn world, people can take time away from the realities of domination and oppression, hatred, animus and can dare to imagine a new world, a new Jerusalem, a beloved community." And so, in some ways that might be the place to set it down would be, to begin thinking about where are the spaces in a person's life. Where can you find that? For some people that will look like going to worship and finding a community of people to be with and to create the time and space to imagine a different future that God is working with us to create. For others, it would look like maybe seeking out a counselor, maybe actually finding a space where you can narrate your story a hundred and fifty times until you begin to understand the fractures and mend the broken places in your story and find a new self structure. For another person that might look like actually moving into a creative offering that might actually help someone else. I don't know. For Eddie or or Dr. Gibson, for you guys, where do you find that space? Where have you found... You know, not just what you're offering to other people. Where do you find the space?

Danjuma Gibson 46:57 In my personal life?

Chris McAlilly 46:59
Yeah. Yeah, the question is just kind of where have you found that to be helpful for yourself?

Danjuma Gibson 47:05

I think it's less about a particular geographic space or location or activity, and it's more about the right space that radically recognizes who you are at your core and affirms it, and allows you to practice that kind of authenticity. Sometimes, you know, in my past life, I would tell, when I was pastoring, a church. They knew this about me. I would say before I preach on Sunday morning, before I'm done with the sermon, the final is not a rereading of it. I have to go run. There was something about a liminal space in the isolation of running that allowed me to finalize the sermon. Before I defended my dissertation, the morning of it, I ran, before I left the house to defend my dissertation. So it's less about an activity. It's less about a particular space and more about being aware of those healthy spaces that cultivate your inner world and who you are. And, you know, I'll close with this. Sometimes we talk about we need people who are advocates or people in our lives that have our back. But I heard one young lady, youth, talked about it in this way. She says, you need accomplices in your life. And I liked that word. An accomplice that will be complicit in helping you be that person that transgresses what the system says you should be or that narrative of what you should be.

Eddie Rester 49:09

Thank you. I love that word. accomplice. I'm going to think some more about that. Thank you for your witness. Thank you for your work. This is really amazing stuff. The book is "Through the Eyes of Titans." Dr. Gibson, thank you for your time today. We just appreciate your willingness to share and to teach us and to lead us today.

Danjuma Gibson 49:30 Thank you for having me.

Eddie Rester 49:31

[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 49:39

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]