Love, auntie Parables and prayers for sacred belonging
Book - 2024
"You are welcome here anytime. Where can we go when the world refuses to see us in our fullness? When culture reduces us to categories and stereotypes, and even our churches make us feel like we don't fit in? If we're blessed to have an Auntie-someone who, like Jesus, welcomes us wholly and calls us beloved-then we have glimpsed the liberation and divine affirmation of sacred belonging. Time and again, Aunties have offered a model for undoing, becoming, and embracing our identities and deepest beliefs. Auntie culture, particularly in Black spaces, is immediately recognizable as an embodied experience where nieces, nephews, and "niblings" feel safe, heard, and seen. Aunties, whether biological or simply beloved kin, ...welcome us in. In Love, Auntie, Shantell Hinton Hill, aka Reverend Auntie, offers tender testimonies to a flock of loved ones who have been led to believe they do not belong. Through modern-day parables, prayers, and prompts for reflection, she invites readers to sit alongside the wisdom-bearing of Black women, lovingly known as Aunties, as they carve out space for doubts, questions, and spiritual expression that honors intersecting identities of race, gender, and class. Because trust and believe, Aunties always know how to turn mess into miracles"--
- Subjects
- Published
-
Harrisonburg, Virginia :
Herald Press
[2024]
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- 255 pages ; 20 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references.
- ISBN
- 9781513814544
9781513814551
- Foreword
- Preface
- From My Front Porch: An Invitation to Sacred Belonging and a Word about Aunties
- Sacred Belonging Commitment #1. Truth-Telling Is Spiritual Discernment
- 1. To My Too Growns (People Who Have Sage Wisdom and Smart Mouths)
- 2. To My Hardheads (People Who Typically Learn the Hard Way)
- 3. To My Holy Rollers (People Struggling with Unhealthy Theological Ties)
- 4. To My Nephews (All Boys and Men)
- Porch Talk: "Call a Thing a Thing" and Other Lessons from Radical Subjectivity
- Sacred Belonging Commitment #2. Tribe Is Sanctuary
- 5. To My Babies and Fools (People Who Don't Know No Better)
- 6. To My Beloveds (People Who Show Us a Better Way to Do Faith and Community)
- 7. To My Blessed Hearts (People Who Have Been Harmed or Just Do Stupid Stuff)
- 8. To My Seasoned Saints (People Ranging from Gen X to Boomers and Beyond)
- Porch Talk: "We All We Got" and Other Lessons from Traditional Communalism
- Sacred Belonging Commitment #3. Tears Are Salvific Work
- 9. To My Sugas (People Who Are Fragile and Flamboyant, Awkward and Awesome-aka Neurodivergents)
- 10. To My Niblings (Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender-Fluid People)
- 11. To My Love-Makers (People, Typically Women, Who Are Stereotyped as Promiscuous but Are Truly Just Self-Possessed)
- 12. To My Brave and Brazens (Generational Curse and Toxic Relationship Breakers)
- Porch Tatk: "I Found God in Me" and Other Lessons from Redemptive Self-Love
- Sacred Belonging Commitment #4. Transfiguration Is Social Healing
- 13. To My Daughters and Deacons (People Who Pretend to Be, or Actually Are, Churchy)
- 14. To My Nieces (All Girls and Women)
- 15. To My Loud Cologne-Wearers (People Who Are Recovering Misogynists)
- 16. To My Whippers and Snappers (People Ranging from Gen Z to Millennial)
- Porch Talk: "Make It Make Sense" and Other Lessons on Critical Engagement
- A Benediction for My Sacred Belongings
- Glossary (on Auntie's Terms)
- Notes
- The Author