MONDAY MEDITATION
Mindful Consumption as an Advent Practice of Becoming
MONDAY MEDITATION
Mindful Consumption as an Advent Practice of Becoming
“I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” — James Baldwin
“We consent to the theft of our own breath when we forget the undercommons.” — Fred Moten
“The dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.” — Toni Morrison
In the same way that I want love to become an intentional, everyday practice—a choreography of care, honesty, and repair—I also want mindful consumption to become an intentional practice of freedom. I have been taught, and now know in my bodymind, that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. But there can be mindful consumption. There can be attention. There can be a spiritual discipline of refusal. There can be a vow.
As a trans person of color on a vowed path, I have not always spent my money in mindful ways. I lived for years in a gap—the economic no-man’s-land of being working poor with a PhD. I moved through spaces I could not afford, eating food that outran my budget, breathing in rooms saturated with elite capture while denouncing the very waters I was swimming in.
I remember a beloved once telling me gently, “Stop taking photos of your cocktails at Attaboy.”
A call-in from the heart—an invitation toward presence, clarity, and sobriety.
The seduction of elite capture
As a Movement Theologian, I wasn’t practicing mindful consumption in my early days. I was being flown across continents, invited into green rooms and private dinners, caught in the dizzying swirl of conferences where funders whispered behind closed doors. I saw how money moved—quietly, covertly, with the soft violence of exclusivity.
bell hooks warned us that white supremacist capitalism thrives not only on extraction but also on seduction—on our willingness to be dazzled into forgetting ourselves. Consumption isn’t just about what we buy or eat; it’s about what we consent to, what we internalize, what we believe we need in order to matter. hooks teaches that the “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” requires our complicity; it thrives on our small and large acquiescences.
Morrison pushes even deeper: capitalism trains us into a “consuming self”—one who devours because we have been devoured. A self shaped by scarcity, terror, and the mythology of worthiness.
Coates reminds us that American capitalism is written on Black and Brown flesh—that consumption is never neutral in a racialized economy where bodies have always been commodities. Moten adds that the undercommons is the place where we learn to breathe again, where we learn that refusal is not a negation but a generative act, a collective octave of possibility.
Relational economies: my first pilgrimage
My academic partner and first ever collaborator, Dr. Thelathia “Nikki” Young, taught me what relational economies look like in practice—not as theory, but as embodied pedagogy. Collaboration was my first pilgrimage. It was the first place I tasted belonging. She modeled for me a life where relationships—not capital—dictate the flow of energy, commitment, and shared future.
Her teaching echoes Baldwin’s insistence that our actions reveal our truest commitments: “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
Mindful consumption is not about perfection; it is about alignment. It is about telling the truth with our lives.
Advent, the vow-path, and the politics of consumption
It is December 1, 2025. We are beginning Advent in both the Eastern and Western traditions. A season of waiting for the Light of Dawn, a season of radical expectation, a season that interrupts empire’s clocks.
This Advent, I am committing to mindful consumption as part of my vowed path.
I will not buy anything special for Christmas.
I will not use the season as an excuse for indulgence.
I will endeavor to be as ethical as possible with what I have—embracing what hooks calls the “practice of love as justice in action,” even in economics.
One way I am practicing this vow is through Meatless Mondays—a small pivot toward underconsumption. And here is where Moten helps me: underconsumption can itself be a fugitive act. It is a refusal to participate in the engine of overproduction. It is a way to rediscover abundance in the cracks, in the margins, in the communal table rather than the market’s seduction.
Underconsumption, in the spirit of abolition, is a way to say:
I withdraw my consent from the machine.
I redirect my energy toward the undercommons.
I choose interdependence over accumulation.
A communal invitation for Advent
Who wants to join me in a new practice this Advent?
A practice of mindful consumption, relational economy, and abolitionist abundance?
As we wait for the Light of Dawn, may we learn to refuse the seductions of a market built on our erasure. May we learn that another possible world is not only coming—it is already here, in every small act of attention.
We are already on the way.
Reflection Questions
Where in your life do you feel the seduction of consumption most strongly?
How has capitalism trained you to believe you must consume in order to belong?
What is one practice of underconsumption that feels liberatory rather than punitive?
How might mindful consumption become a communal, relational act—not just an individual choice?
A Field Guide for Mindful Consumption (Advent Edition)
1. Practice a weekly “Small Refusal.”
Skip one habitual purchase. Notice what emerges—desire? discomfort? relief? What story have you been told about needing this?
2. Honor the hyperlocal.
Buy, trade, barter, cook, and repair within your immediate community. Practice a relational economy that resists elite capture.
3. Tend to your attention.
Before purchasing anything, pause long enough to ask:
Does this align with my values, or am I outsourcing my longing?
4. Create a Vow of Redistribution.
Set aside a small weekly or monthly amount that moves directly into the undercommons—mutual aid, neighbor care, community meals, creative collectives.
A Closing Benediction
May your attention be a lantern in the long dark.
May your refusals become openings.
May your consumption become a practice of liberation.
May your Advent waiting teach you to recognize abundance where empire sees only scarcity.
Go gently.
Go mindfully.
Go as one already on the path of becoming.