Roots: A Communal Journal

Morgan Harper Nichols I saw myself in the mirror and for a brief moment, I loved what I saw. Then instantly I corrected. No, don't like it, don't accept it. You need to eat healthier. You need to workout. Then, x pounds later, you can like it. I loved my body, then instantly doubted that love. "Don't love that, then you won't take care of it." Why was that my natural narrative? Why do I expect that loving my body means I won't do what's best for it? I'm all for discipline and doing the hard but good things in order to be healthy. But I'm not even a little bit for letting hatred, dislike, disappointment be how I'm supposed to feel toward my body. I'm calling that moment of love a miracle. I loved my body in its ordinary, everyday state. This body of mine, that carries my pain, my fears, my shame. This female body--so often hated in word and deed. It's a miracle for a woman to love her body, given the history of harassm...

I'm frustrated. In the past days, I have been reading Slavery By Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon. The book enumerates the crimes committed by Southern states, planters, and industry that effectively re-enslaved newly emancipated black Americans in the decades following the Civil War. A substantial portion of the book communicates the key defense used by attorneys representing white men who participated in this slave trade: that while the 13th amendment declared all slaves free, it did not make it illegal to hold slaves. The implication was clear: the federal government has no jurisdiction to punish anyone for holding individuals in a state of involuntary servitude. Queue the "Civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights" argument. Can everyone who believes the state of Alabama in the late 19th and early 20th century would actively prosecute wealthy white men for holding slaves please raise their hand? Anyone? Anyone at all...? In the past...

Around noon, my father would pick me up. It may have been any day of the week but in my memory its a Friday. In all of professional sports, there is nothing more iconic (and a bit controversial) than the Friday day game at Wrigley Field. You can fight me on this. Friday nights represent a tremendous opportunity for sports teams to sell boatloads of tickets. Due to some archaic rules governed by the neighborhood in which they reside, however, my hometown team cannot legally host baseball games at night on Fridays. Thus, every Friday that the Chicago Cubs play at home they play in the afternoon. This forms the backdrop for some of my dearest childhood memories at the ballpark: Marveling at how hard Greg Maddux could throw. My brother excitedly commenting "Just wait until Kerry Wood comes out if you think Maddux throws hard." My father, an avid drinker of Diet Pepsi, noting that "Pepsi and hot dogs are pretty disgusting things, but somehow Pepsi and a hot dog at th...

This has been a season of doubt. I recognize the title of this post and the first sentence alone has probably caused some of you to wonder if I’ve gone down the wayward path, or gone off the deep end, or whether I still identify as a Christian. My answer is yes, to all of the above. The last couple of months have been scary, and I haven’t been sure who I can talk to about it. I’ve felt a deep loss and yearning for my former, (slightly) less curious churchgoing self, who took Scripture for granted, who jumped headfirst into most of Sunday School and church with a widely-accepted joyful, but vulnerable posture that communicated “I have it together — but only in the sense that I am deeply aware of my brokenness.” I miss that girl. I miss all the questions she didn’t think to ask. I don’t know how to explain what happened. I started the year with this deep thirst to know God and to know Christianity — I wanted to hear the history of the church; I wanted to know when and where and w...