Learning to Come Home to Ourselves with Matthew Armstead

How do we begin to imagine futures not yet here? What can we do today to embody the liberation we want to see?

Matthew Armstead (they/them), an experiential facilitator and performance artist, asks how, right now, we can embody the worlds we want to create. Here, Matthew grounds in the past, present, and future, delving into Nichelle Nichols’s role on Star Trek and a transformative phone call from Martin Luther King, Jr., the current climate crisis, and performance pieces that have transformed their sense of what it means to come home to ourselves. 

This interview was recorded on Pendle Hill’s campus. The bell you hear in the background during the episode is the bell inviting people to the dining hall for each meal.

Read the transcript of this episode.

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Matthew Armstead (they/them) first learned about Pendle Hill when studying at Swarthmore College, and years later returned to Pendle Hill to co-develop then teach Radical Faithfulness in Action. Matthew is the Director of Culture Work Studios, where they accompany small, multiracial organizations committed to social justice through change processes to be who they say they want to be, with compassion, creativity, and complexity. At Culture Work Studios, Matthew also makes performance experiences for audiences that are reclaiming power to embody the futures we want to create. At the heart, Matthew helps us practice being the change we want to see. To learn more about Matthew's work, visit cultureworkstudios.com.

Watch Matthew's October 2023 First Monday Lecture, "Belonging in Unknown," on Pendle Hill's YouTube channel.

The transcript for this episode is available on https://pendlehillseed.buzzsprout.com/

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The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. We’re located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape people.

Follow us @pendlehillseed on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and subscribe to The Seed wherever you get your podcasts to get episodes in your library as they're released. To learn more, visit pendlehill.org/podcast.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. & Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund.

Transcript

Matthew Armstead  0:04 
I lean into those movies of comics and of science fiction ... what seems impossible getting to happen in front of us: I find that you nourishing for me, to get to practice stretching into that.

Dwight Dunston  0:30 
You're listening to The Seed: Conversations for Radical Hope, a Pendle Hill podcast where Quakers and other seekers come together to explore visions of the world that is growing up through the cracks of our broken systems.I'm your host, Dwight Dunston. This season, we're exploring the practices that enrich our connections to ourselves and to each other. How do we cultivate relationships and spiritual community? How do these relationships and practices support our work for liberation and justice and transform our sense of what is possible?

Our guest today is Matthew Armstead. Matthew first learned about Pendle Hill when studying at Swarthmore College and returned years later to co-develop and teach the radical faithfulness and Action Program. Matthew is the Director of Culture Work Studios, where they accompany organizations committed to social justice through change processes doing so with compassion, creativity, and complexity. At Culture Work Studios, Matthew also makes performance experiences for audience that are reclaiming power to embody the futures we want to create. Matthew helps us practice being the change we want to see.

Dwight Dunston  1:50 
Matthew, we're so excited you are joining us today and excited to be in conversation with you and want to slow it down with myself and with you by asking you: what's it like being you today?

Matthew Armstead  2:08 
A little effervescent, a little effervescent. There is bubbliness that keeps connecting with the trees outside. Noticing the shapes of the leaves, and the petals, and the plants, and shades of tones across the deer's back. So I'm feeling really grateful today to have that. And curious of, what are we going to talk about? I've also been staring at the sky a lot because the air has been on our minds, because there was a moment where the sky was orange and the sky was smoke.

Dwight Dunston  2:53 
What's been continuing to keep alive your vision of what's possible, your vision of transformation, your vision of a more healed whole world?

Matthew Armstead  3:04 
Spider-Man and spiritual circles is what comes to mind. When I think about that, there's something about getting to see worlds built around us that were dreams-- that sparks a lot. I got to watch Spider-Man; I lean into those movies of comics and of science fiction and of what seems impossible getting to happen in front of us. Because I find that nourishing for me to get to practice stretching into that. That's what I had to do even in my home at my garden. When I first moved in, we had to tend to the soil, remove six inches of poison ivy and rock and cement and mud and lead and then bring in six inches from the city. Thankfully our city provides that. And so I was able to shift the soil. So the soil felt first: I was primed to be able to now plant because I have the soil. Spider-Man is a soil-tending thing for me. And spiritual circles are also a way I tend my soil. Because as the Canadian wildfires have happened, I didn't go into distress in the way that so many around me were in distress. And I was with a group of people who I gather with weekly that Reverend Rhetta Morgan--one of the voices of the song at the beginning of The Seed--she and I were together. She holds this space. In the conversation we were all sharing about how so many of us were just with the reality--not afraid, not running. But with this is our present reality. Whether we feel like in spirit we have chosen to be here in this moment, or we open our eyes and say this is what is. Instead of running from what is, we had a relationship to it. And so I feel more brave saying, "The sky was orange. It's because of the wildfires." Climate change is a signal that we are out of alignment with the earth. And wow, that sherbert color is something that I won't forget. But to hold on to that not from fear. But to hold on it as a facet of this earth that we get to live on. That's part of our reality.

Dwight Dunston  5:24 
And that connects to the spiritual circle with Reverend Rhetta you talked about that you're a part of weekly. Because of that circle, when the fires in Canada, the smoke's coming down to where we are here in the Philadelphia area, you are able to approach it with an openness, inviting in the reality really being present with what is in community. What comes up for me is this question around grief, which I think is connected to fear maybe folks did feel when they saw the smokes come into their skyline, their view their vision.

Matthew Armstead  6:03 
I've been so grateful to have a relationship with Pendle Hill over time. I was back here, and I was facilitating, and I was joining a group that had gotten started and my co facilitator, just named where people were and said, "Well, when you come in, people have had a hard day." She named how useful it was when she acknowledged her day. And I just acknowledge where I was, and I had grief. I as a kid wanted a dog so badly. And I finally have a dog and my dog is older now, death is nearby, nearer than I felt even a year ago. And so I was grieving, and I named it there. I named grief. And then I got to name the sadness that was so alive in that grief. I got to feel that fully with them. And with the wildfires, the grief felt different, because there's so much that's out of my control. I feel gifted to have been taught that at a young age. So much beyond my control, climate among those things. And yeah, I'll work, I'll campaign, I'll support people to help us be more in right relationship with this home of ours. I can't change the storm tomorrow. How do I still live alongside it becomes my question. Sometimes that life is like it was with the wildfires, noticing this is our reality. How do I breathe and keep going in it? And sometimes that life is saying, I feel so overwhelmed that laying on my back in the grass or on my floor is all I need to do to be alive. I try to welcome both realities there. And to not say one is right or wrong: that for me is the heart of tending to that grief, is how do I not say 'I am right.' Or, 'I am wrong' or 'you are right' or 'you are wrong' in your feeling, but to honor each of us where we are. If the storms demobilize you, I wish you stillness so that you can tend to your parts, so that you can be yourself fully. Embody this moment as you are, fully.

Dwight Dunston  8:40 
I know that you mentioned Spider-Man earlier and know that you have a love of science fiction and Afrofuturism and want to hold some space as you are nourished by these, this genre that is all about imagining futures not yet here. Curious of how sci-fi or Afrofuturism nurtures your spiritual self.

Matthew Armstead  9:11 
'We're all made of stardust' is a phrase that just comes in and fills me up and overflows. And I'm so grateful for whoever said that. Thank you. I got born into sci-fi. Like, I didn't choose that. My dad was a Star Trek fan.

Dwight Dunston  9:28 
He was a Trekkie?

Matthew Armstead  9:29 
Yes, and. I will say. Because there's a world of Trekkies, and then there's a person who's like, I just really liked the stories and the science fiction and I'm gonna watch it because I love it. And I grew up when there was a Black man at lead of the story of Deep Space Nine. And so that was just an entry point into life was, 'oh, we get to see Black people in space.' So much of the work I feel called to do is how do we embody the worlds we want to create. That liberation isn't just something as a far off future, we get to embody liberation now. How do we bring that into our now? There are moments that I do that as a performer, as an artist, when I create performance experiences, co-create performance experiences. Oh, there's a world we want to go for. They get a chance to practice embodying that even for a moment, if that world is about grief and dealing with just how do I breathe and stay alive? Or if it's like what happened with Trump's inauguration where I was with four artists, we were creating a piece, and that piece just happened to be about what happened if all the oppressions we had were gone. And our venue was like, this is the weekend you have to do it. People came from the airports to this performance, or they got to go through for moments of being in a future where our oppressions were gone. It started off with a party. I did not expect this. It started off.

Matthew Armstead  11:02 
Have you ever imagined / Have you ever dared to dream that something more is possible? Yes, you can dream / For what you were told is plausible, is far less than what we can reach. So move toward the impossible, and see what the world can be.

Matthew Armstead  11:37 
We started there. And then, I'm just gonna take a moment. I was like that song is wonderful and all, but the words of one poet who was in that piece came down, and she came up with a song that was in the first room people came when they got there. She was great. She was like, "This is a song I sing to myself. This is my affirmation song, I sing it everyday to myself, and I'm gonna go out to a party celebrating that we won because we won, y'all. And so I want to invite you to sing it with me." And if they were shy, she'd be like, "Ah, ah ah, no, y'all, you got to sing with me, you actually get to sing with me." And that song: I love myself, I am smart. I do not have to be afraid. There ain't nothing wrong with me. I'm fine as I am. I love myself. To have a room of people call and responding to each other, echoing as you come from an airport where you say no, my neighbors will not be banned from this country, is a moment of getting to say yes, we all are right. We all get to live. We all deserve freedom. And so that work I get to do when I'm facilitating and helping them say, "Well, we said we want to be this" and they get to practice being who they say they want to be. "Be who you say you be," to borrow some words from Niyonu Spann, "who you say you be," let's practice that. I love the opportunities I have to guide multiracial groups are committed to justice to be in it together. To get to say that thing that you never said. To get to move from saying, "The boss is wrong and is ruining the organization" to "How do we change this together?" To have the boss who says, "Wow, I was really defensive there. And I didn't realize for years I've been defensive. And I don't have to be, because it's not about me." That's possible. Part of what for me is the practice--and I'm just giving words now, but there's a theme--of recognizing that the future. Mm, no, it's not about that. It's about the garden thing. You were mentioning the garden and tending to the garden, tending to the vision that you may not be able to notice. When I try to tend to that vision, one of the examples I think of is Nichelle Nichols, who was on Star Trek, she was the first Black woman on TV to have an interracial kiss. It was the very first season of Star Trek. It had horrible ratings. She was done. She was like, 'I don't want to continue.' And so she planned to leave the show. And then Martin Luther King got word that she was gonna leave the show, and so he calls her up. She's like, "Who, who's calling me?" He's like, "Your show is so important. I watch it with my family. I don't know if you know what you're doing for so many of us out here. Please don't leave that show." And she stayed. And she offered us in a vision of a multiracial world. A future of Black people in space alongside white people. A future that later a Black person General Charles Bolden, I want to say, was the first Black man who then got to go into space Charles Bolton Jr. Got to go into space. And then later Trayvon Martin got to go to space camp

Matthew Armstead  15:39 
Ain't spirit a thing.

Matthew Armstead  15:46 
We get to honor the lives of those who we've lost and dream. Because those dreams we can reach and we have. Sp I look out for the visionaries and say, "what do I need to do?"

Dwight Dunston  16:17 
There's a way that I feel you holding out possibility for me and, and our listeners. And how we can approach the uncertainty. That also reaching back you're doing. You've brought in stories now of your younger self, and ancestors, some of your ancestors or parts of history. The reaching back into history, these moments that shape the reality in the world that we see today. So I feel you truly grounding us in the present, in the past, and the future. One of the parts of you describing your theater piece, I heard something about belonging, this sense of belonging, creating belonging, affirming our own worthiness and sense of self. I'm curious for you, as you think about cultivating that sense of belonging in yourself, what that journey has been like for you.

Matthew Armstead  17:12 
The thing that came up was Harriet Tubman, who may have been a visionary, but so tactical a lot of time, like weaving together the different houses her with a shotgun, saying "you are not turning back." And that image of you belong in freedom. And to not other in those moments, but to say no, let's welcome more belonging. And so much of the work I do in the world now belonging is more and more the frame I use. If othering is one choice, how do we lean towards belonging? There's a wonderful research out of the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley, I want to say. I could be be wrong, but John Paul's work on othering and belonging that has now spread, that is so much about okay, let's practice belonging in our bodies. Let's practice belonging on the land. If we're virtual, how do we practice belonging, and dance on a zoom screen together? In art, how do we get to belong? For me, as a kid, I didn't grow up with tons of images of the range of gender that feels true in me and that I know in the world, did not grow up with the celebrated voices who have caramel and mocha colored skin. If I want to celebrate those images in the world, I have to find a way to celebrate myself. That practice of belonging these days has been like celebrating my love of sci-fi out loud, because I love it. There are many other ways that people might say, "Oh, Matthew must be practicing belonging in these ways." Whether that is about gender expression, or whether that is about weaving art into middle of a conflict, where I invite people to draw or sing, so that we can slow time down. That's less there. I'm more interested in the time travel and saying how do we time travel together? Because that's a piece of belonging for me that feels like it stretches across the generations, helps me respect my mom who had a deep love of W.E.B. Du Bois's work in her teaching. He wrote science fiction. I get to stretch into that as belonging.

Dwight Dunston  19:31 
Everything you do, what I hear you saying is, in everything you do, there's a sense of coming back to yourself. Of learning to cultivate, amplify that sense of belonging yourself.

Matthew Armstead  19:42 
Learning to come back to myself, just to emphasize what you just said there. There is a practice of learning to come home to myself. In a world that calls us out of ourselves so often, how do we get to come home?

Dwight Dunston  19:56 
Yeah. As we move to close, I'm curious if you have an offering or a practice that's been supportive for you, as you learn to come back home to yourself.

Matthew Armstead  20:09 
I have three quick practices. I didn't expect that. One I learned from Dr. Amanda Kemp: get your feet on the ground, on the earth, your bare feet on the ground, spend some time there. And just breathe. It's been a gift to get to do that. And just let your system recalibrate. Two, there is a practice from Dr. Resmaa Menakem that I do just about every day. I often call it looking out in four directions. And I go outside at the end of the night. And I slowly breathe and see everything to my left. And then breathe and slowly go and see everything to my right. What are the colors, the textures. Breathe and come back to center, and look up. What is above me the ceiling, the sky, the dust, and then look down and see what is there on the journey down to what is below me. Before coming back to center and looking forward and breathing and being present. And that's just a practice of helping our systems, our nervous systems as humans come back home and say we're safe, wherever we are. And so I do that every day. And then the last practice is share about what you love with someone else who may love it, too. When I got to share about Star Trek Discovery, season three, that was about collective trauma with a multiracial group or multigender group. I was like, This is so helpful. I'm energized. I'm excited. I'm getting to share about that and finding people who could do that back. So that I remember that I'm not alone in this.

Dwight Dunston  22:03 
Thank you so much, Matthew, for blessing us today. Blessing me. As we leave this conversation, I feel more rooted. I'm leaving here with more of myself. So thank you. Thank you for being here.

Matthew Armstead  22:20  
Thank you, Dwight. Thank you every witness to this moment across time, because we're time traveling y'all.

Dwight Dunston  22:39 
Asé

Matthew Armstead  22:39 
Asé

Dwight Dunston  22:39 
The Seed is a project of Pendle Hill, a Quaker center, open to all, for Spirit-led learning, retreat and community. We're located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, on the traditional territory of the Lenni Lenape people. 

Many of our guests are teachers, leaders, and speakers at Pendle Hill, and we host workshops, retreats and lectures all year round. For full list of these upcoming education opportunities, visit pendlehill.org/learn. 

This episode was produced and edited by Anna Hill, with production support and advising from Peterson Toscano. Our theme music is the I Rise Project by Reverend Rhetta Morgan and Bennet Kuhn, produced by Astronautical Records. 

This project was made possible by the generous support of the Thomas H. and Mary Williams Shoemaker Fund. 

Feel free to get in touch with us by emailing podcast@pendlehill.org. You can follow us @pendlehillseed on all social media platforms. 

If you're finding these conversations meaningful, you can support our work financially by heading over to pendlehill.org/donate. And we would love it if you can subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us to continue planting these seeds.