Dear Substack Community: Before I sit down to write my sermon for tomorrow, I want to get this out to y’all, quickly! As promised, I’m sending out my notes and my keynote. The audio ONLY contains my keynote and many of the notes below. I forgot to record me reading the myth of the phoenix with which I started my Keynote time. I hope you enjoy this! It was great being back on stage and sharing my story and inviting folks into the work of the people, liturgy, for another possible world!
Paz, —RCE+
LSTC Keynote 2025
The Phoenix:
In ancient times, there was a bird of fire, the phoenix, who soared across the heavens. Its feathers blazed with the colors of the setting sun, and its song was both a lullaby and a call to action, echoing through the ages. Yet, like all creatures, the phoenix too was destined to die.
But death was not an end—it was merely a moment of transformation. The phoenix would fall to ashes, its body consumed by flames. And from those ashes, a new phoenix would rise, reborn and radiant, carrying with it all the wisdom and resilience of the ages.
In its rise, the phoenix teaches us that joy is not the absence of suffering, but the strength to endure, to rise again even after we have been broken. The resilience of the phoenix is a reminder that we are always becoming, always rising, always filled with the possibility of renewal—even in the darkest of moments.
Explain the Visual Liturgy (below)
🌿 The Five Looping Visual Themes:
1. Fugitivity – Already created: shadowed forest, glowing path, spectral kin.
2. Hope is a Discipline – The daily, sacred work of tending light in the dark.
3. Queer Joy as Resistance – Wild, vibrant, intergenerational, unapologetic delight.
4. Re-membering – Threads, bodies, altars; collective sacred mending.
5. The Benediction of Becoming – Cosmic expansion, resurrection vibes, ascent.
🔁 Recommended Visual Loop Structure: Five Total
Why five?
Because five lets you build an arc. A rising and falling rhythm, much like a liturgy or a breath cycle. It mirrors:
• The five sections of your keynote
• The five elements (earth, water, fire, air, spirit)
• The five wounds of Christ (in a radical re-membering of liberation)
• The five stages of emergence in adrienne maree brown’s frameworks
⸻
Consider this visual liturgy as a meditation as I offer these few words to y’all.
Later, there will be a movement element led by folks in the room.
Feel free to look around and move your body to take in the movement and the space as you wish. No need to sit still.
When you see the last slide that you are welcome and encouraged to join, you can participate in any of the ways that are listed, if you like!
Say something about your shirt & Palestine.
Queer Joy & Queer Resilience in an Age of Erasure
By Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza
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“Kindness eases change.
Love quiets fear.
And a sweet and powerful
Positive obsession -
Blunts pain,
Diverts rage,
And engages each of us
In the greatest,
The most intense
Of our chosen struggles.” 💜Octavia Butler
I have spent my entire life studying theology. My undergraduate degree is in theology, I have a graduate degree in Theological Ethics from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and I have a PhD in Constructive Philosophical Theology and Philosophical Ethics. Deep in the pandemic, I went back to school to earn a Doctor of Ministry, because I was really interested in connecting to the story of theology, the story of the traditions we have inherited and the story of another possible world, the kingdom of heaven, or the beloved community.
I wanted to connect to story because…
Storytellers are the most powerful people in the world.
The reason why storytellers wield so much power is anchored in the reality that narrative drives behavior. The stories we're told build powerful narratives, which in turn shape our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us.
We are story creatures, and every problem we face starts as a story problem.
Every leadership challenge you’re facing right now?
Every pattern you keep repeating in life?
Every marketing message that just won’t land?
Storytelling problems.
When we learn to tell the truth of our stories, we learn to narrate our lived experience in better ways.
I just celebrated my 10 year anniversary of completing my PhD. I have lived through 6 or 7 years of targeted harassment; I have to keep my phone on Do Not Disturb because I was doxxed during the pandemic and Neo Nazis have my phone number, along with other folks who harass me.
My story is a story of erasure & a story of becoming!
Tell my story…
My story centers on the recurring theme of building community in different contexts, each time creating a space of gathering and resistance. From seminary apartments during a time of crisis, to coffee shops and bars in Denver and Nashville, and now to our table in Alfred, each setting is a chapter in a larger narrative of intentional community-building.
Character and Identity: I am the central figure of my story, embodying a bridge between traditional institutions and innovative, grassroots spaces. My role as a pastor and community-builder shows how sacred and secular spaces can intersect to foster deeper connections and resilience.
Conflict and Challenge: Each move—whether from Chicago to Denver to Nashville, and now to Alfred—brought unique challenges: adapting to new communities, balancing institutional roles, and maintaining the intimacy of these gatherings. Yet, each challenge was met with a commitment to creating authentic spaces for connection and resistance.
Themes of Resistance and Community: The table as a site of resistance symbolizes a return to the fundamentals of community: shared meals, open dialogue, and collective reflection. This consistent thread of hospitality and intentionality shows how resistance can be woven into everyday life, transforming ordinary gatherings into acts of community resilience.
Resolution and Future Vision: In Alfred, this practice finds a new home. As the pastor of an institutional church, I’m merging these intimate, resistant gatherings with larger congregational life, envisioning a future where the sacred and the communal seamlessly blend.
Narrative Arc: My journey is a continuous narrative of adaptation and transformation, where each chapter builds on the last, and the table remains a central, unifying motif. It’s a story of how intimate acts of gathering can transform communities and how a pastor’s role can transcend traditional boundaries.
We are living in the Age of Erasure.
Where identity is legislated.
Where memory is mined and rewritten.
Where care is commodified.
Where the margins are crowded with those who have been written out—
not because they didn’t matter,
but because they were dangerous to the dominant story.
But we are the story that refuses to die.
We are the footnotes that grow louder than the text.
We are the grammar of survival,
the punctuation of persistence,
the poetry of queer becoming.
As adrienne maree brown teaches us,
“We are in an imagination battle.”
And what we dare to imagine shapes what we are willing to resist,
what we are brave enough to build.
⸻
I. The Machinery of Forgetting
This world—this empire—feeds on forgetting.
Forget your ancestors.
Forget your pronouns.
Forget your sacred flesh.
Forget your right to be whole.
But we, we are remembering machines.
Not mechanical—but mycelial.
Interconnected, resilient, fungal in our flourishing.
Fred Moten reminds us that fugitivity is not escape—it is the refusal to comply with the normative.
To be fugitive is to inhabit the undercommons of reality—
to live otherwise, to be otherwise.
We do not simply resist empire.
We compost it.
And from the decay, we plant dreams.
Dreams that shimmer with trans futures.
Dreams that hold nonbinary ecologies.
Dreams braided with lineage and longing.
⸻
II. Hope is a Discipline
Toni Cade Bambara said,
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”
She also said: Hope is a discipline.
And in this age of erasure, discipline is not austerity—
it is devotion.
A daily return to the sacred practices of care,
of curiosity,
of courage.
Hope does not arrive as a feeling.
It arrives as practice:
Writing the story down.
Cooking the meal.
Calling each other in.
Creating rituals that resist silence.
This is not soft work.
This is rigorous.
Spiritual.
Strategic.
⸻
III. Queer Joy as Resistance
In a world obsessed with legislating grief,
joy is defiance.
Not the sanitized joy of rainbow capitalism,
but the unruly joy of queer kinship—
joy that twerks in church,
joy that weeps in drag,
joy that makes family where blood has failed.
Our joy is not distraction—it is interruption.
A rupture in the expected narrative.
A holy no to despair.
We dance not because we forget the violence,
but because we refuse to let it be the final word.
As we gather in this shared breath,
know this:
your joy is prophetic.
Your joy is theology.
Your joy is an act of theological rebellion against the erasure of your soul.
⸻
IV. Re-membering: A Politics of Presence
We are not only resisting.
We are re-membering.
Re-membering our bodies,
our ancestors,
our sacred texts,
our collective breath.
This is what adrienne maree brown calls emergence.
Not top-down salvation, but deep-down relational unfolding.
We are shaping the future not by force, but by frequency.
By vibration.
By touch.
By witness.
In the wisdom economy of the Spirit,
we trade in presence.
We measure wealth in love.
We invest in liberation.
⸻
V. Benediction for the Era of Becoming
So I offer this benediction—not as an end,
but as a beginning.
May your story be a sanctuary.
May your gender be a galaxy.
May your hope be disciplined,
like breath.
Like prayer.
Like the daily practice of staying alive on purpose.
May your joy interrupt every attempt to erase you.
And may you remember—deep in your bones—
that you are not a problem to be solved.
You are a prophecy to be fulfilled.
We are still becoming.
We are not finished.
We are the unfinished ascent.
Thank you.
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