Goedgedacht

It seemed too indulgent, to stop. To be allowed the space and opportunity to meander into the lesser trod paths of activism and advocacy, to stillness, to rest, to simply be…and to be held and received with a gentle, gracious and often delicious hospitality. For LGBT+ people, activists, organizers, and advocates working for recognition and inclusion, rest, an open warm welcome and hospitality aren’t often found. Yet for two and half day, at the end of the ILGA World Conference (end of November 2024), 2 hours drive outside Cape Town in the organic Olive Farm of Goedgedaaght, myself and about 20 other queer holy boundary stretching, Christ followers, found the space and time to stop, to rest, to find each other, and find ourselves.
OneBodyOneFaith, along with Inclusive and Affirming Ministries (IAM), a Christian faith advocacy non-governmental organizstion working in South Africa and the on the African continent, collaborated in creating a nurturing space for LGBT+ Christians from the diverse regions of Africa and South Africa to retreat together. Through body work, art, music, worship, play, food and frivolity we were invited to share our journeys, our frustrations, our hopes and joys both in our lives and in our work. It was such a gift.
Rest with each other, in community and care of each other, in community are such revolutionary acts. The act of abiding with and in each other, in the simplicity and the complexity of doing “nothing much-in-particular”, is so countercultural, such a taboo that it is pathologized as ‘laziness’, ‘self-indulgence’, ‘snow-flaky’ or the wasting of time, resources and opportunity. Even as we work for the rights and inclusion of LGBT+ Christ-followers, within a faith tradition that upholds the concept of sabbath in its theology and spirituality, the practice of rest, recreation and the cultivating of communities and practices of care and rest is still considered indulgent, perhaps even unrealistic.
The indulgence is even more unrealistic for people of colour, for women, for sexual and gender minorities, for people who are differently abled or neuro divergent. Rest, for us must be earned. It is allowed to us when the tasks allocated to us have been successfully completed to the standard imposed on us, by the systems, structures and frames that reject us. It is hard to come by. It is fleeting and is often met with blind exhaustion. So, simply being invited into pausing, resting, listening, breathing, is so rare and unexpected, that being expected to do nothing, to do no-thing… to simply be, is jarring. Painful. Nerve-wrecking… initially.
And that is why we need each other, revolutionary communities of rest and care, holding the spaces of nurture, the practices of slow and gentle nourishment, to remind us that even us, we too are called to just be…to rest, to breathe. I was grateful for the community. I was grateful for the opportunity to stop, for the initial jarring moments, for the rest, as it finally seeped into my being.
I am grateful for the courage it takes to see that the opportunity of doing no-thing is also an important and vital aspect to the continued activism and advocacy for LGBT+ rights and inclusion.
Lauren Matthew, Patron