In this episode, we unpack the importance of embracing human complexity and the practice of truth-telling in spirituality. From Lauryn Hill to Kendrick Lamar, see how a cultural mixtape can guide one's spiritual journey. Don't miss insights on how spiritual seekers can curate a personalized connection to the divine through grounded traditions and ethical practices.
Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Amazon / YouTube
Our guest is Tamice Spencer-Helms, a theologian, public speaker, curriculum developer, and consultant with over two decades of experience in young adult leadership, spiritual innovation, and social change. Tamice brings a deep well of wisdom to their work.
Episode Notes:
Explore more about the R.E.S.T. Mixtape. Inspired by hip-hop, hush harbors and womanist theology, R.E.S.T. is a framework that weaves together cultural traditions, spirituality, storytelling, and philosophical inquiry, offering a new wineskin for a post-Christian age.
Tamice consistently hosts online events in addition to coaching services and ongoing classes. Plus they wrote a book and blog! Check out TamiceNamaeSpeaks.com for more.
In this episode:
(00:00) Spiritual Mix Taping with Tamice
(03:31) Mixtapes as connectors of faith
(07:36) The mixtape as Black Cultural Expression
(10:07) Rethinking perfection and ethical relativity
(17:48) Find spiritual awe in the modern world
(20:25) Overcoming fear through music
(27:20) Faith and identity in Black America
(31:33) Hush harbors in the modern day
(34:08) Closing
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This episode posted on March 5, 2025
Episode Transcript:
Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Compass, finding spirituality in the everyday. My name is Ryan Dunn. Today, we're joined by Tamice Spencer Helms, a thinker and innovator in the realm of spirituality and faith. This episode is all about spiritual mix taping, which is pulling together the intricate tapestry of faith, culture, and personal identity. Tamice shares with us their unique metaphor of the rest mix tape, which is a fusion of radical, ethical, spiritual, and tethered practices that serve as a guide for navigating our increasingly complex world. Tamice also takes us back to the historical roots of Hush Harbors, which offer fresh insights on creating safe, inclusive spaces in today's communities of faith. Timmy Spencer Helms is a theologian, public speaker, curriculum developer, and consultant with over two decades of experience in young adult leadership, spiritual innovation, and social change, and Timmy's brings a deep well of wisdom to their work. So join us as we uncover how embracing human complexity, reexamining traditional narratives, and stitching together the valuable parts of the past can can lead to a richer, more holistic spiritual life.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:15]:
Whether you're questioning faith, exploring spiritual intersections, or seeking a contemporary lens through which to view ancient wisdom, this episode of Compass is guiding you towards a spiritual grounding and growth. Let's go.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:36]:
Tamice, we're so glad to have you on the Compass podcast. How goes it with your soul today?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:01:40]:
My soul is well. It is looking back and remembering right now.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:45]:
Ah.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:01:45]:
So there
Ryan Dunn [00:01:47]:
Well, we're gonna get into all of that. We're gonna talk about things like hush harbors and R. E. S. T. And both R. E. S.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:56]:
T. And the acronym R. E. S. T. And mix tapes, which, for me is something looking back or nostalgic as being a Gen Xer. Mix tapes were a big part of at least my formulative years. It's a way that my friends and I communicated with each other.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:11]:
Whenever I was putting together a mixtape, I was thinking about sharing these with other people. So with that in mind, before we even get into the metaphor that you're using mix tapes for now in the current context, like, what would be on your mix tape if we're sharing something of yourself with our audience? What are you putting on it for?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:02:34]:
Okay. So there's always gonna be some Lauryn Hill. Alright. Alright. My miseducation. There'll be a couple of tracks from that. There will always be Kendrick. There will always be something from Frankie Beverly, because I just really connects me to my family and my parents and kind of cookout culture.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:02:53]:
Yeah. So it'll be a little
Ryan Dunn [00:02:54]:
bit of feel good, a little bit of angst, a little bit of God, a little bit
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:02:58]:
of truth telling, all wrapped up in one. So I think that's beyond it, but definitely x factor from from miseducation is gonna be on there.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:07]:
Okay. Right. I'm well, bringing it forward to today, you're working in kind of an online program, online community called rest mixtape. Rest is an acronym and mixtape. Talk to us a little bit about the mixtape aspect. Like, why is that kind of the organizing metaphor or the ideal that you're bringing into this community?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:03:31]:
It's a really good question. I think, really, I think part of what I experienced in sort of the my upbringing in in Western faith constructs was a real sense of outsourced intuition. And so when I was seeking to kind of recover that and recover my own intuition, recover agency when it came to faith and and the ways that I was naming divine reality. The mixtape just popped up because it's such an intuitive curation. I don't ask questions when I'm creating a mixtape, whether or not the selections are good, whether or not people should hear the the song. I think they should. There's that, there's a real, cool thing when you're curating something like a mixtape that kind of helps you to kind of bypass the typical self doubt. And I think using a mixtape as a methodology for what we do about an increasingly post Christian world, is a helpful way for people to not feel so, daunted by the task of figuring out what we do now, or or, you know, intimidated by that task, but really thinking about how do we mix tape the best things, the things that we wanna keep, the things that we want to remember, the things that we want to bring in.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:04:43]:
How do we curate that, from our wisdom traditions and from, the things that move us? And so I don't know. I just felt like when I was working on my doctorate, I had come up with sort of, what I've started calling these, like, sort of beautiful boundary lines that have fallen to me in pleasant places. And that kind of came of this acronym that was also kind of manifesting in my life as rest. And so it kind of was like, well, how did I get here? The way I got here was a sort of a mixtape methodology. And so I just started to kind of talk about it as the rest
Ryan Dunn [00:05:15]:
mix tape.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:15]:
Tell me a little bit about what you mean by outsourced intuition. Because I feel like a lot of us feel that in spaces of faith. So I'd love for you to put some flesh onto that.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:05:27]:
Yeah. I mean, I think it's it's a it's a real, well, when someone's, intuition is outsourced, you can get them to a lot, because they don't have a a reference point for truth that is within themselves. And so I think that really, probably the most I don't wanna say controversial. I I mean, I hope it's not controversial. I think it's I think it's you and Gallion, but, I hope it's not controversial. But one of the things that I am troubling with the mixtape is the notion of depravity. Because the notion of depravity is what leads someone to outsource their knowing. And, I think that that's what's happening in in the origin stories, that kind of set the stage for the rest of Christianity.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:06:07]:
And so I feel like we have to go back there. Right? Go back to the garden and figure out what is really being asked here and what is really happening in the story. I know that for me, particularly, Genesis three was used to, identify my sin nature, that this was the fall of sin and that my nature was sinful and it's because of what happened in this garden. But, you know, in my excavation process, I go back and look and sin is nowhere in the garden. Sin doesn't come until Cain and Abel. So something else is happening here. And that's what started to make me think about what are the questions being asked, what are the answers and the actions that are happening in this story, and and what else might we see here, that could help us? Because I've I've looked at sort of the fruit of what people believing in their own depravity does, And it it really causes people to act depraved. Right? Like,
Ryan Dunn [00:06:59]:
there's no, you don't have an option.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:07:01]:
You know, it's it's an identity that has been conferred onto you, and you have no choice about that. And so that that's troubling, I think, for people. And so how do you navigate the world when yourself is not trustworthy? You have to outsource. But then that means that you're being led by something. And what the rest of theixtape does is say, what is the something, and do you want that to be leading you?
Ryan Dunn [00:07:25]:
Yeah. Okay. And the idea of depravity is is simply this idea that, like, human beings at our core were just, like, dirty sinful beings. Okay.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:07:36]:
Right. And I think one of the things that I I think makes the mixtape process so cool is that, I grounded in black cultural creativity, as a sacred text because you're dealing with a lived a lived experience of people who had an identity conferred onto them, who confounded everybody, who conferred that in that identity onto them. I mean, to be an objection, to be told that you are not human, to be told that you are an animal, and to create the black church and music and art and poetry and families and food and culture, that is confounding to the logic. And I think that, that what we need right now is to learn from people who have like, kind sense of self that was wretched, right. In order for Black people to do anything in this country. And so I think, you know, I get the permission, right. I get the permission to trouble these texts, from people who who proved, the interpretation of those texts incorrect.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:43]:
Do you think with a mix set mindset mix tape mindset, sorry, that in a way we're we're able I don't know if it's fair to say that we're able to redeem some voices from the past, but we're able to, like, lift out the valuable, while still recognizing the negative. Because I gotta admit, like, you know, there are a lot of people that had some ideas that I might find valuable today, but also, said some repulsive or heinous things. Yeah. Like And I
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:09:16]:
think that's the best way. Right? Like, I think, you know, with my lived experience of a person who, is constantly feeling like I'm living on the edge of institutions because of just who I am as a person, it's a really interesting thing to think about. Like, even that impulse, the either or impulse, the, the binary impulse is not natural to me. What's natural to me is to think about what can work. Is there a third way? What can we keep? You know, sometimes people are, are amazing and also jerks in the same day, you know? And, and so we need ethical framing, and, and, and religious containers that hold space for human complexity. But when you're either good or bad, either saved or lost, you really don't give room for people to think about their own human complexity. And so then you don't give people the opportunity to change. And that creates shame.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:10:07]:
Right? Like, and I I think about how this plays out, not just in, like, Christian circles, but in cancel culture, right? Like you, you know, what is the nature of perfection? Which again, takes us back to that garden scene. What do you even mean by perfect? What does God mean when God says be perfect, design perfect? We need to re ask these questions using a logic that doesn't come from binary thinking because we all see that nothing is this or that. A lot of times things are both and, or yes and, or no not yet, you know, that's life. And so we need constructs that make sense of life, which is what the e in the rest mix tape does. The ethical relationality there tries to think about ethics that are based in sort of a non duality, a sense of like life is complicated and liminal. And so our ethical choices need to take that into account. And what that does is it really, it makes it so that people believe other people can change, right? You live in the world with an orientation that people are not depraved and most people, if given the right opportunities and given the right information are willing to change. And I've been testing this in my travels, and when I've been in scenarios with people that I would typically not talk to, I will test this and it works.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:22]:
Okay. The idea of perfection is scintillating to me, just because I I I maybe I have some perfectionist tendencies. It's like I always want things to be just right. And in fact, a lot of times I'll I'll keep myself from doing things because, you know, my anticipated outcome is not gonna be that of perfection. So, for people like me, how are you thinking about perfection these days?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:11:50]:
Oh, man. I'm thinking about perfection as a process. Yeah. And so that automatically takes a lot of pressure off. And so when we think about perfection in scripture, you know Matthew five forty eight be perfect as I am perfect. Some other people I think Peter might render it you know be holy as I'm holy. We've got to ask what does God mean by holy? So we would hear the question. We would hear the response.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:12:17]:
Holy means different, set apart, unlike what you see. Okay. So what do you see about Jesus that makes him different from the people he sees? He's present to the moment. He goes with the flow. He's there. Raw incarnate presence. Fully there. Fully there.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:12:36]:
I mean, present, not dissociated. Here. Presence and perfection are one in the same to me. To be fully present, flaws and all, but willing to change is perfect. I can I need to be on the edge of becoming? That's what perfection is. It's it's an acknowledgment that I'm fully here and I'm okay right here, and also there is more, and I'm open to that. It's a it's a it's a way to stand and live in the world, that makes you different from, folks who are who are buying into the logic of caste and empire, who are believing this logic, who are and though most of those people are angry, they they kinda feel like I keep picturing that woman in the scriptures who's, like, bent over for all those years. Right? That kind of a logic and that kind of a framing of perfection, leads to despondency.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:13:27]:
And and it's odd to me that, as we think about our our social landscape right now, like, the despondency and the despair from people who say they've been perfected in God. How does that work? So again, we you know, it's not to throw the things out. It's to reexamine them. This word is living. This word was said to be living. So that means it it moves, it grows, it breathes. And I think that we just need what the rest mixtape is is a container for the living word, to go with us into into these new frontiers of faith. And, you know, you and I talk a lot about technology and, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:14:10]:
So that's what I do.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:12]:
Yeah. I feel like we're we're ready to talk about rest, and not not just rest in in terms of, like, Sabbath or taking it easy for a little bit, but the the acronym that you've looked it up as part of your practice. Can you can can you give us what that acronym stands for and a little bit about those those principles?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:14:31]:
Yeah. Thank you for asking. Yeah. So the r e s t, rest, it stands for radical, ethical, spirituality that is tethered. And, what I mean by radical there is naming what's real, telling the truth. For someone who, was given, a vision of a Christ who held no space for my lived experience, there wasn't a lot of truth telling in the foundation of my faith. And so it disappointed me. So I put that back into the way I do my faith.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:15:03]:
It has to tell the truth, tell the truth about the world I'm really living in. Right. And tell the truth about who I really am. Like, hey. There's some ways I need to come up in this area. Right? So we we gotta start with truth telling. It can't just be the truth about out there and also needs to be about what am I contributing to what's out there. Right? From there, we go to ethical.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:15:22]:
Ethical. Right? So radical ethics is about non duality that, you know, I've I've I've this came by way of the East. Right? And by way of of of ancestral understandings of Ubuntu and utter nonseparateness that comes from people like, you you know, that comes from like Advada Vedanta and people like Roman Panikkar who talks about, cosmotheandric spirituality, this reality that all things are one. And I get the permission to add this from Christian scriptures. In first Corinthians 15, it's 28, Paul is laying out. So we say, we would say that, you know, Christians believe the thing that makes you a Christian is what you believe about resurrection. Right? You believe that Christ is risen from the dead. And so resurrection is a key component of any kind of conversations we have about Christianity.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:16:12]:
So let's have them, right? And so in the chapter about resurrection, you have Paul in, in, in verse 28 who says, and then comes the end. He paints this picture of of, you know, these kingdoms being sort of submitted and surrendered to the father. And then it says, and the last enemy to be defeated is death. Once that enemy is defeated, the son is made submissive to the father and and then the kingdom is made submissive to the father and God is all in all. What Paul is describing here is some sort of enfolding, and coming back into oneness that I only see reflected in Eastern traditions. I've never heard anybody from Christianity talk about this passage, but if the last enemy to be defeated in first Corinthians 28 is death, that means that the end of Christianity is not heaven. Revelation ends with death, right? Paul is going the end of Christianity is not actually heaven. It's this utter nonsense, it's first Corinthians 15, it's God is all in all.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:17:10]:
That's where this thing is actually going. God is all in all. Now that puts us in a different starting point for thinking about how we share about our faith, how we communicate our faith, how defensive we are about our faith. If that's where it's going, why don't Christians start there and work backwards? We don't have to advocate Jesus. We don't have to advocate anything. What we do let go of is supremacy, exclusivism, which is colonial, not Christian. Right? So, so that's the ethics. The spirituality piece is sacred smallness, right? This idea that like, small in a good way.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:17:48]:
Like I've been made to feel small in religious spaces, not that kind of small. I mean small in a good way and the only way I could describe it was when we were in San Francisco and I told you about it when we were at the Presidio that I walked up to this tree and it literally took my breath away. And the reality of it was I didn't, it was unmediated, it was uncontrollable. And I'm like, oh, that was worship. That the beauty and the majesty and the ancient nature of this tree, the fact that it is still here, that it is seen in thousands of years of history. It is here and it is standing and it is vast. And I, I looked at that and I was like, oh, this is what they meant. This is what they mean by awe and wonder and worship.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:18:33]:
It pulled it out of me. It wasn't everybody lift your hands now, we're going to worship, lift your hands to the Lord. It wasn't compulsory. It wasn't give him what you got because you owe him or, you know, he's worthy of it. Give him the glory because you you better. It was like, woah. What is that? That is beautiful. You can't do anything but fall face down.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:18:54]:
Now, anybody that I've seen encounter God in scripture has that reaction, typically. And so it was like, oh, this is what is meant by spirituality. Now what I call it is the T. What I call it is tradition. The tradition is the language that we get that connect us to place and ancestry and story of survival and resistance. Language is important. On the one hand, when you think about spirituality, it can coexist, right? Like if God is all in all, then everything is language. It's It's just what you call it.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:19:25]:
And on the other hand, traditionally, it matters what you call it because it connects you to a people in a place and that can be very anchoring. So in between the radical truth telling and the tethering to wisdom and place and tradition is this ethical spirituality that gets to get worked out because times change, and we change. And that's kind of it in a nutshell. And like the mixtape portion again is me bringing in film and scripture and stories, to kind of demonstrate ways of doing this, ways we can trouble some of the way some of the logic we've inherited, and then some paths forward as well, examples of how people are walking this out. That's it in a nutshell.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:04]:
Yeah. When you're talking about troubling some of the things that we've inherited, as you've started this program, you're working with some people and almost in like a coaching or mentoring relationship. What are some of the issues that, that you run up against consistently? Like, what needs troubling?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:20:25]:
I think, you know, honestly, Ryan, what's troubling is the fear of, embracing other ways of knowing and being. So I think for me as someone who's pastoral, I am trying to think of ways to get people across that threshold of invulnerability and fear, because that threshold in and of itself is the threshold to God. And so I think for me working with young people, it really is about how do I not repeat what happened to me, in terms of, like, feeling like I had was forced to believe to belong. How do I not repeat what happened to me in other ways, which was, like, what I did believe was seen as stupid or, archaic or silly. The best way I've found doing it has been the music. So what we do is we will do circles and they'll they'll everybody will submit a playlist and, you know, I'll have a prompt. So the most recent one we did, I I had a prompt and the prompt was, you know, put a song in the playlist that sums you up. And they did.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:21:34]:
And, we played them and people had to guess, you know, whose whose song was what. So So then the person would reveal themselves and talk about why and how. And then we would talk about we borrow from Dory Baker's, Live to Tell model. And so then we would kind of do that storytelling. It's a little bit different, but it borrows from that. And then they would start to talk about what the song means and where it comes from. And then you know as the pastor I do the part of like where do you see something radical here? Where do you see something ethical here? What from your tradition does this remind you of? What what does this, you know, what does this have to say about God and the spirit? And in that way, they're having spiritual conversations that feel tethered because it's their music. They pick the track.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:22:17]:
Right? And it's a really beautiful way to not only excavate, like, how are people naming God right now? Because me with more experience and degrees, I go, oh, that's epistemological frameworks or, oh, you know, that's you're, oh, that's so symbiosis.
Ryan Dunn [00:22:32]:
And they're like, yes, of course. And,
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:22:33]:
yeah. You know, I mean, I can translate it back. I will never force the language on them, because that's not how it works. Language has to be conjured if God wants to be remembered. And so I really think that that's a good way to get around that is like, how do we identify, right? When we're talking to young people, our job is not to make them say what we want them to say. Our job is to find out how, what they're saying is what we want them to say. Right? Our job is to do the translation work. Our job as shepherds is to think about how do we lead to green pasture? How do we make lie down? Not how do we make confess certain doctrinal truths? And I think my work at subculture was a response to that because it was like working in campus ministry was all about counting conversions, but my students, I wanted more than that for them.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:23:26]:
I wanted them to self actualize. I wanted them to name God, like give God a name, like Hagar, you know, like, that's gonna be important for you. Is it just the God of my campus minister? Is it the God who sees me? That's gonna change how you live your day to day, whether you gave God the name or somebody else did. You know? So I think, you know, thinking about young people in that regard and letting them name God, it's okay. If God is all in all, there is no name that's wrong. And we see that trajectory from Genesis 11 to Acts two. Right? DEI is a divine agenda, not a left one. Okay?
Ryan Dunn [00:24:07]:
When folks are are joining into the, the rest mixtape, do they have, are they able to name for themselves, like, a desired outcome? Are they joining for a specific reason?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:24:21]:
Yeah. So the people who join the mixtape right now are subculture fellows, because we're we're, you know, we're piloting it. Yeah. But, yeah, for the most part, they joined the fellows because they wanted robust support as they try to navigate college. And so what the fellows program does is they get they get a savings account, they get a monthly living expense stipend, they get a well of wisdom which is a person that is in their 60s or so that they track with, they get a success coach, but then they also get access to like going through the mixtape every week. So we do weekly, like gatherings, we do retreats together, learning journeys. So they're signing up for that. And I think, you know, what I love about subcultures programming is that it thinks about self actualization.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:25:02]:
It inverts the pyramid. And it says, well, if we prioritize that, what are the things we need to build so that they can actually sit in a room and think about who is God to me? And and how do I walk out a radical ethical spirituality that's still tethered to my tradition? So I don't feel lost out here in the waves. I mean, 2025 is wild. Mhmm. They're gonna need anchoring. And I think, you know, what I'm offering comes from a perspective of somebody who had to create an anchor. Because I think there are people who are Finnish, who are, you know, spiritual and not religious, but a lot of times those people haven't, done the radical truth telling part. So they haven't excavated the colonial impulse to just abandon tradition.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:25:41]:
That's actually what colonization is. It is an abandonment of tradition to just take, take, take, take, take, and leave things in the wake. That's not what people of color do. We keep things to remember, that remind us of place. And so to be spiritual and not religious can sometimes be very ambient and ethereal and, like, not anchored. But if it's not anchored, it really can't lead well. And we're in times right now. We need people who can lead us who are anchored somewhere.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:26:11]:
I think that's just important to say. This is not a time to not say that.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:16]:
You know? Yeah. Mhmm.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:26:18]:
Lisa said.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:20]:
Are are people coming because, well, are they coming from a, like, a traditional Christian background and they're looking for something different? Or
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:26:30]:
Yeah. That's a great question. So for the folks that went through the focus group, and that was all, practitioners. So practitioners, you know, from the new evangelicals to, like, people doing church work in rural America, to people who are, you know, to Starlet who's doing raceless gospel. Right? We've got people who were who are doing, trips. My sister-in-law, Alyssa Ann Travels, is doing trips. I mean, there was a bunch of different types of perspectives on this call because I wanted to know, like, how do we how does this sound? How is this landing? Those folks were coming in with with Christian, leadership perspective, I would say. Right? So the conversation in that class is different than the conversation I have with my student my Black black students.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:27:20]:
My black students, I'm not gonna mess I'm not gonna trouble much, because it's not helpful. That's gonna be dysregulating for them. What I'm going to do is just ask them some questions, like, questions essentially like Jesus asked, which is, what did the scripture say? How do you read them? And then we go from there. Right? And so for them, it's not so much about them not be wanting to get rid of their Christianity for people of color, like, you know, especially, you know, Black people in America, Christianity is a survival mechanism. It's a harder thing to let go of, because so much identity formation took place in the Black church and affirmation took place in the Black Black church. Yes, wounding. But there's but it's a comp a more complicated conversation. And so I wouldn't have that conversation with in that context, like I would with like leaders and practitioners who are thinking about the future of faith.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:28:14]:
Right? So it just depends on who's gathered, like, how deeply we go into each of the elements.
Ryan Dunn [00:28:20]:
Okay. In speaking with you, well, through our many conversations, something that you you consistently bring up to me is the idea of hush harbors. Yes. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? And specifically, like, the place of hush harbors in today's society and, like, how communities of faith can start to live into that kind of safe environment.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:28:47]:
Yes. I just I'm I'm feeling so much deep gratitude for, the ancient black spiritual technology of the Harbor. I think that that technology can be mapped onto other things. I'm trying to do an app right now that is, like, actually encoding a Hush Harbor. But I think deeply about what is the nerve that drove these people to carve out a clearing. Mhmm. Amidst of all of that literal darkness, I mean, they would they would when you think about what this thing was, it's profound. These people from all of these different tribes in Africa who had been trafficked, sold a lie, trafficked, put on boats with people they didn't know, who didn't speak their language.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:29:39]:
I mean, locked up together with people you never met before. That that would be like somebody coming to your house and throwing you into a van with a neighbor you've never talked to who speaks a different language and made y'all made 15 of y'all get into a sedan. Okay? So that's what I want you to feel. So these people are brought together in trauma and trafficking and they come to this land. They don't know the land. The people who do know the land have been pushed out of it. And they come here, they're forced to work, ripped from their families, violently treated, dehumanized, and somehow somehow they follow what Aoife calls the feeling. You know? We could call it the spirit.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:30:25]:
Everybody calls it something different. They follow this impulse to get free. It's a it's an impulse. It's an orientation to life. It's an impulse towards freedom. And and so what they did, the way that it manifested was they would sneak out in the middle of the night and you just had to know where to go. You had to follow the feeling. And they would come upon this, a lot of times it was like a marsh area where it would be wooded and swampy and dark, and they would go out there and they would chant in their language.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:30:58]:
They would dance. They would and sing. They would prophesy. They would preach. In, Toni Morrison's book, Beloved, Baby Silves Holy, she says, you know, love your hands, lift them up. You know, she is declaring you are good, you are not depraved. And in that space of fugitivity, they carved out a name for God. They carved out a culture.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:31:28]:
Out of all of these different tribes came Black culture,
Ryan Dunn [00:31:33]:
out
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:31:33]:
of this spiritual fugitivity. Now the Hush Harbor started first. After that, you know, as they get more and more proximity to to learning the like they learn to read by leading the reading the Bible and things like that. So of course, now you begin to institutionalize. Right? And so the hush harbor though, it needs to be said is the foundation for the Black church. And that matters for people like me with queer identity because the Black church is not always welcoming to people like me. So I needed a deeper root, that let me keep the Black spiritual technology that has all my grandparents' stories connected to it and all my ancestors' stories connected to it, but didn't require me to show up in fractions. And so the Hush Armor would be a really beautiful technology, I think, for today, as we think about fugitivity and carving out a clearing, where we can be free.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:32:25]:
The spirit of God is an orientation to freedom. It is an orientation to life. That is why the message of God is resurrection. You can't kill life. And, and that is a witness that takes place in every sphere, whether it is a dying star to a tree, to to the skin on when we get a cut. Resurrection is a fact of life. Jesus embodies that as a first century Jewish rabbi, but it's it's not unique to him. It's everywhere.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:32:52]:
What is first what is, for Romans one say? What can be known about god is seen in the cosmos and in nature? So the story of resurrection is a fact. That's what gives us courage. That's what gives Jesus courage to be nonviolent. You can't kill life.
Ryan Dunn [00:33:10]:
Well, we're coming to the close of our time, Tamice. But, for people who want to learn more about, either who you are or some of the programs that you're involved in, where's a good spot to catch up with you?
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:33:24]:
You can find me at tamise namay speaks dot com. That's like, I think the the distillery, I guess. I'm showing up in a couple of different ways, and you can find them all in that that space.
Ryan Dunn [00:33:35]:
Awesome. Well, Tamice, thank you so much for sharing your program with us, your ideas, and, and, you know, for the invitation to show up in some spaces, without that sense of fractionalization, like, that's gonna stick with me for a little bit.
Tamice Spencer-Helms [00:33:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm starting I meant to tell you this. I am there's a course just went live on my site, and it's called the Faith Unleavened Seminar. And it will start on March. And it's a it's a class. It's a real class to kinda do this gently and to do it well with people who are wanting to do it in a safe environment, with someone who who, has figured out an anchor.
Ryan Dunn [00:34:08]:
Well, that brings us to the end of another enlightening episode of Compass, finding spirituality in the everyday. A big thank you again to our guest, Denise Spencer Helms, for sharing your insights on the rest mix tape and the transformative power of spiritual technology. And And for our listeners, if you want to dive deeper into today's conversation or explore more episodes, be sure to visit our website at umc.org/compass. There you'll find episode notes and just a treasure trove of meaningful discussions to to guide your spiritual journey. We're grateful to the dedicated team at United Methodist communications for making this podcast possible. And we appreciate all their hard work behind the scenes. Before we go, we'd like to invite you to subscribe to our podcast if you haven't already. It's a great way to stay connected and to ensure that you don't miss any of our future episodes.
Ryan Dunn [00:35:00]:
Also, if you could take a moment to rate and review us, it would really help us to reach more people with Compass. So thank you for spending this time with us today. Until next time, journey well and find the sacred. I need you every day. Peace.
