We've got our first listener question!

How did you make your writing practice feel like a spiritual practice?

I break down three ways I made the dissertation writing practice feel like a spiritual practice: thinking about writing as channeling, ritualizing the whole thing, and working in some collective accountability.

I've NEVER been motivated by the kind of disposition that says "get up and grind," "show you're the smartest," "dominate the field you are in," or "be the best." It works for some people, just not me. But what has always helped me tap into the kind of discipline I needed in this moment was seeing the task before me as a challenge for obtaining spiritual depth. You mean I’ll get to know myself better through this practice? Develop a deeper connection to my ancestors? Think about my work as part of a larger tradition? Now that I will get up and do every day.

Works referenced:

For my reference to "archival ancestors," see Ahmad Greene-Hayes Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

For my reference to "ancestrally responsible work," check out the amazing public, artistic, and scholarly work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, including Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Penguin, 2024).

For my note on getting started with ancestor veneration, I learned so much from Ehime Ora's Spiritu Come From Water: An Introduction to Ancestral Veneration and Reclaiming African Spiritual Practices (Hay House, 2025) and JuJu Bae's The Book of Juju: Africana Spirituality for Healing, Liberation, and Self-Discovery (Sterling Ethos, 2024).

What's the difference between religion and spirituality? This is the second most frequently asked question I get as a scholar of religion, next to “Oh, so you're a minister.” And to be honest, folks tend to be disappointed by my answer to both.

When it comes to the religion versus spirituality question, that is often because my answer focuses less on defining the terms and more on the question itself. I am fascinated by what is really going on in people’s thought worlds when they want me to distinguish between religion and spirituality in the first place.

This week, I'm thinking through my own experiences alongside Robert A. Orsi’s Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton University Press, 2005).

If you like the episode, don’t forget to share it with a friend and follow me @imanabdk on socials.

I have a very complex, sometimes maybe a little too intense, relationship I have had with time. One that left me extremely skeptical of the saying "we're our ancestors' wildest dreams" when I first heard it. I’m coming to this reflection during the cross-over episode that is Ramadan intersecting with Black History Month, which has got me thinking its time to heal my own relationship to time.

This week, I'm finding grounding in a beautiful concept written about by Alexis Pauline Gumbs: dream time. This idea really changed how I think about my responsibility to, as they say, use my time wisely.

Follow me @imanabdk on socials for more at the intersections of the spiritual and the intellectual!

--

I did the reading so you don't have to, but as always, I'd love to hear what you think about it too! Send me a DM or comment on the show directly on Spotify.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Prophecy in the Present Tense: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee Pilgrimage, and Dreams Coming True,” Meridians 12, no. 2 (2014): 142–152.