Movement in Faith
Resipiscence Lenten Devotional
This Lent, we invite you to be part of the RESIPISCENCE community. Vahisha Hasan and Nichola Torbett have gathered here a wide-ranging collection of daily reflections from a very diverse group of contributors—diverse in identities, theologies, and experiences—and every one of them has something to say about how we dismantle white supremacy and all the institutions, laws, policies, habits, and ideologies that perpetuate it.
The 2020 Resipiscence is on its way!! This third and final year of this project follows the Lenten lectionary for Year A. The book is organized by week, and each section contains seven reflections on the scriptures for the following Sunday. It is a collaborative project of Movement in Faith, Seminary of the Street, and Transform Network. There is also a daily podcast with the author of each daily devotional on the Transform Network Podcast.
Through authentic connection and direct action, Movement in Faith strives to support communities of faith in identifying their intersection of faith and social justice to be a positive faithful presence in justice work.
So often faith communities are immobilized by aspects of justice that they perceive as being at odds with their faith, but faith can actually inform their place and role in justice work.The current justice movement is a people’s movement, and it will take the faith community actively organizing and mobilizing with marginalized communities. Movement In Faith will provide training, organizing, infrastructure, resources, and long-term support for faith community-led efforts in justice work. This would be a people’s model that affirms the people’s power to self-actualize. Faith leaders are welcome to participate but the movement would largely come from members of the faith community that have skills, passions, and talents that are essential in furthering justice work in America. This is Kingdom building for justice work.
Short-term goals include assisting faith communities in finding themselves in justice movement and designing active methods to organize, mobilize, resist, impact policy, and begin to self-determine resources.
Mid-range goals include connecting faith communities to established people and organizations already doing great work in their identified areas of social change and/or creating and sustaining infrastructure for new or customized approaches to social change.
Long-range goals include broadening the faith community’s concept of community through authentic connection and direct action. Organizing and mobilizing with community members outside of their faith tradition or house of faith will produce authentic connections and forge lasting community by being human and vulnerable and together in direct action. This will make it harder for division to be used by institutions that seek to maintain oppressive power.
Rev. Vahisha Hasan “Wellness Tips” video on measured breath. Produced by Christ Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Gina M. Stewart.
Leadership
Movement In Faith was founded by Rev. Vahisha Hasan, a faith-rooted organizer moving at the intersections of faith, social justice, and mental health. She is a powerful public speaker, transformative facilitator, social justice trainer, minister, and writer with a deeply prophetic voice and imagination for how faith communities can be an active part of healing and collective liberation.
She is the Director of the SEAL Initiatives at American Baptist College in Nashville, TN (Social Justice, Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership). Vahisha is also a core team member of TRACC4Movements (Trauma Response and Crisis Care) providing supportive tools for wellness for those who labor in freedom and liberation. She also serves as an associate minister at Christ Missionary Baptist Church, under Rev. Dr. Gina Stewart, Senior Pastor, where she was licensed and ordained June 23, 2019.
Vahisha holds a dual Master’s of Divinity and Master’s of Mental Health Counseling with an Education Specialist Certification from Gardner-Webb University and a bachelor’s degree in Communications with a concentration in Interpersonal Organization from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In addition to penning book reviews, journal articles, online publications, and writing a bachelor’s curriculum in Applied Psychology, she has curated and co-edited three editions of Resipiscence: A Lenten Devotional for Dismantling White Supremacy, 2018-2020.
Vahisha is her best self in community and is deeply grateful for her biological, chosen, and movement family. You can find her moving to the end of her own rainbow in the US South and on IG and Twitter @VHasanMIF.
Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.
Vahisha Hasan will be teaching an online course in Implicit Bias: Racial Awareness Training. Get on the Transform email list to be notified when registration opens for the Implicit Bias online course
Want to learn more about the Southern Movement Blueprint: A Plan of Action in a Time of Crisis? Vahisha Hasan is available to teach/train your group
miles of melanin
miles of melanin is a travel grant for artists and activists to attend social justice conferences, symposiums, workshops, organizing intensives, and retreats.
It is modeled after the benefactors that funded the artists and activists of the Harlem Renaissance era, such as Zora Neale Hurston. Their funding made it possible for artists and activists of that era to take anthropological journeys that nourished their work.
miles of melanin is a project conceived by Rev. Vahisha Hasan, Xan West, and Yvette Blair Lavallais.
Do you have airline miles you would like to donate? Please contact Vahisha Hasan.
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Follow #milesofmelanin on Instagram
