You are the prayer – Nayyirah Waheed

“as you are.’ says the universe. ‘after…’ you answer. ‘as you are.’ says the universe. ‘before…’ you answer. ‘as you are.’ says the universe. ‘when…’ you answer. ‘as you are.’ says the universe. ‘how…’ you answer. ‘as you are.’ says the universe. ‘why…’ you answer. ‘because you are happening now. right now. right at this moment and your happening is beautiful. the thing that both keeps me alive and brings me to my knees. you don’t even know how breathtaking you are. as you are.’ says the universe through tears. — as you are | you are the prayer”

― Nayyirah Waheed, nejma

 

I’m looking into the ways that Black fiction shows Black queerness owning spirituality in radical and subversive ways. Nayyirah Waheed is a Black lesbian poet who does just that in her works. So much of the trouble of being Black and of being queer in the U.S.A. is that the default spirituality we are often taught is Christianity. Those bible lessons often come cloaked in whiteness and heterosexism until we are forced to either assimilate to those ideals or reject the only version of spirituality that has been introduced to us. The hope though, is that there are many other ways to be spiritual, practice spirituality, even to follow biblical principles – if that’s what we choose to do.

Nayyirah Waheed proposes, in this poem, that one way to approach spirituality, to approach divinity, to approach the universe is exactly. as. you. are. Spirituality is often portrayed to come with so many expectations for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are helpful and some of them are harmful. Either way, for many of us, one single expectation placed on us in the name of spirituality is one too many. Some of us have spent so long trying to build a worthy altar, trying to force our bodies into the “right” church clothes, trying to fit respectability politics into our mouths. Some of us have been trying to learn this or that theological terminology, read this or that author or spiritual text, trying to purify our bodies of colonization. And each of these tryings have somehow gathered to fill up a long list of “Things I Have to do Before God (whatever that means) Will Actually Hear Me”.

Here’s the power of this poem. The conversation that is happening between the speaker and the universe proves that the universe is already listening. We sometimes encounter divinity, hear the invitation that is offered to us and then try to convince God (whatever that means) that we are not yet worthy of the invitation. The invitation that has already been extended because the universe has already deemed us worthy. As we are. Where we are. When we are. How we are. Queer. Black. Sexually active or not. Heartbroken. Rejected. Proud. Whatever way we are happening, that happening alone deems us worthy. That happening alone deems us a gift to the universe. A breathtaking beautiful gift that breathes life into the rest of the universe around us just as we receive breath. One way we own our connection to divinity is by placing ourselves exactly in the middle of something we were told wasn’t for us. We march from the margins into the center of the picture and sit there listening as the universe says, “you are the prayer.” What if our name, our chosen name, our body, as it is, our sexuality and our emotion was exactly what we lifted up to divinity as our prayer? Our protection from the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical harm that comes from religious ostracization might just be to fight for ourselves and our people to live into a faith narrative in which the fact that we are happening right now is enough to bring the universe to tears on its knees begging us to come.