On Spiritual Technologies

lessons from dancing in the street

substack #47

Hi, I’m Bianca — Artist, Professor, & Creative Strategist in Los Angeles. In case you are new here or if a reminder could help, this newsletter began as an exploration of figuring things out, one day at a time. Upgrade to a paid subscription to make sure you never miss out on the really good stuff.

---

An elder stepped into the intersection.

Eyes closed, dressed in suspenders, he bobbed his “JESUS LOVES YOU” sign to what I imagine was a melodious beat in his headphones.

I don’t know if I believe in religion, but as I glided towards the stoplight at the end of the 2 Freeway this last Sunday, I was reminded that I fully believe in the power of rituals.

Typically, I dismiss people who feel compelled to set up street corner sermons, but as the sunset ushered in the first night of Ramadan I couldn’t help but notice the huge smile on this man’s face.

I inched by in my Corolla and imagined this older man putting his outfit together, gathering his Jesus sign, and picking out just the right music to dance to on Glendale Blvd.

Maybe this is his spiritual hygiene ritual?

I’ve been working through Phillip Butler’s Black Transhuman Liberation Theology. In chapter three, he reviews brain activity connected to Black spiritual practices like cooking, cleansing, fasting, dancing, and prayer.

The point of Philip Butler’s work is not to prove that spiritual rituals are powerful technologies. Instead of focusing on causality, Butler asks us to consider intentionality.

Last week my students and I discussed science fiction's “necessary” elements. At its most basic definition, science fiction is a story about the future that centers science and technology as part of its plot, setting, or theme.

Sci-fi technology usually evokes visions of chrome spaceships and someone like Tom Cruise peering at a touchscreen interface.

But after reading Philip Butler, I asked my students:

How should we define technology?

For example, Butler pushes us to, “acknowledge rioting as a form of spirituality and validate its place in history and in the fight against overarching forms of everyday oppression.”

With this new framing, my students and I reviewed designs that might embody spiritual technologies - everything from jingle dresses to the Nap Ministry hotline.

Our ancestors did not need to see brain scans to know that ceremony can be powerful, world-shifting medicine. But what if we used spiritual technologies as intentionally as they did? As seriously as we revere “man-made” technologies, like our iPhones?

*tbh I dream of the day when I can throw my phone into the ocean*

Butler also asks that we decenter places of worship as sources of spiritual experiences and instead calls us towards our individual and collective bodies. Reminding us that spiritual technologies can be accessed anywhere, even in the middle of Glendale Blvd.

During Ramadan, we are called to slow down, reflect, and connect through rituals. Whether you are fasting, marching, singing, cooking, or as Audre Lorde put it in Uses of The Erotic, “writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love” — deliberately holding space be present and connect, especially in our world that asks us to reach for more constantly, can be a radical spiritual act.

Last week I mentioned that this Ramadan, I’m thinking about the ways we cultivate faith for ourselves and lend it to one another.

I think the lesson I am revisiting, is that while I’m never truly sure where I stand with religion, I often forget that I can always trust ritual. When I am unsure of the way forward I turn to the spiritual technologies that have been used by many before me and will continue to be used once I am gone.

I place my faith in rituals, a communal iftar, a morning meditation, joining riots against Raytheon, or sometimes even dancing in the street.

Until next week,
Bianca xo

---

📚 Black Transhuman Liberation Theology
💌 Uses of The Erotic
☎️ The Nap Ministry Hotline
🔥 Dabke + Jingle Dancing @ Alcatraz

---