Hannah Curtis: A Soulful Revolutionary
A conversation on radical parenting, liberating theologies, and de-centering whiteness
My guest today — and the first Soulful Revolutionary in a new monthly series of podcasted interviews! — is my dear friend Hannah Curtis. The below excerpts are just a few of the highlights of our inspiring conversation. I hope you’ll give the podcast a listen.
Hannah, whose pronouns are she/her, is a mother, spouse, lifelong learner, and Jesus enthusiast who resides en la frontera of El Paso, Texas. She never passes up a chance to discuss theology, abolition, musical theatre, radical parenting, Lucille Clifton’s poetry, and myriad other topics that point her toward awe, wonder, curiosity, and possibility. Hannah is currently a seminarian, studying remotely at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and this year she will also serve as her children’s elementary school PTA President. Hannah is on Instagram as @awwdacity.
Lauren Grubaugh Thomas: What does it mean for you to be a soulful revolutionary?
Hannah Curtis: The name choice is so apt. I think this moment in history asks us to be both. We need to be both. We don’t get very far in this time focusing on our own spiritual well-being exclusively. I think we need soul connection within ourselves, within our communities. But increasingly, we have to be focused on revolution. It has to be a radical reimagining of everything we’ve taken for granted. We have a chance to be sincere in our questioning of what works as humans, what works as societies. And each of those ideas inform the other.
Radical change change without a purpose, without grounding in spirituality, in our actual spirits, is not going to get us very far. Movements without purpose don’t go anywhere. If we want to make effective change, we have to do it with a strong “why” behind it.
Lauren: Tell me more about your “why.”
Hannah: The older I get — I’m 35 — I realize I’m most effective with the people closest to me, I’m most with those with whom I’m in relationship. I can advocate at the national scale — which I do, and highly recommend — I can agitate for political and social change, but the ways in which I can make the biggest difference is with the people I encounter every day, the ones I learn from and learn alongside, and that includes my children. My kids are six and almost nine, and the longer I’m a parent, the more I realize the difference you can make in someone’s life. Not just being by being a parent, but by being a trusted adult in children’s lives. That is everything….
That is a radical act to me, in a time where people are too quick to write people off, to say that things aren’t worth their time. It’s a radical act to connect with a human. Especially a human that can’t give you an immediate benefit. It’s not an exchange of “what can you do for me.” It’s “you can offer me absolutely nothing and I am choosing to care about you because it matters to me to care about people.”
Lauren: What a radically anti-capitalist approach.
Hannah: Why do we feel so transactional in our relationships? A huge part of it is capitalism, that tells us that we are only worth as much as we can produce, we are only interested in people for what they can offer us, how they can benefit us. So it does feel radical and subversive to me to actively resist that in ways as small as relationships. And of course by small I mean, small and of course, quite grand.
Lauren: It makes me think about the scale and monetization of social media. We get these dopamine hits and we feel a sense of validation when we post something that gets lots of likes, that lots of people respond to. And if it gets enough likes, if it gets enough feedback, it also becomes monetized, because advertisers latch onto it. When we’re talking about our children, there isn’t a scalability or a monetization to our children — they cost a lot! Children are expensive! My daycare costs are more expensive than my mortgage! So when we’re talking about our children, the kinds of value that we talk about in our society are not ascribed to kids.
And, it makes me think about when adrienne maree brown talks about this work of social change being fractal — that the work we do on an individual level, is expressed at the interpersonal level, is expressed at the communal level, is expressed at the societal level, is expressed at the universal level. So the work we do with our children…. it matters profoundly.
Hannah: (brown’s) Emergent Strategy (is) one of the most important books. When she talks about the interconnectedness of all living beings in the universe, I was like, wow, that makes so much more sense than all the narratives we are fed, about individualism, American exceptionalism. We don’t get very far by ourselves. That’s by design. If the pandemic showed us anything it was that we are frustratingly, confusingly bound to each other. We don’t exist as individuals. We exist as a community, as a collective.
It’s a rallying cry: we’re all connected.
Lauren: What were some of the transition points (from the religion of your childhood) to this more interdependent view?
Hannah: I grew up Southern Baptist, even though my family is not religious. I got very used to church looking one way, being one thing. I felt a sincere sense that we were putting God into one very distinct shaped box. It looked one way, and there were no questions beyond that. Anything beyond that one very specific expression was not unacceptable but just completely beyond understanding. Like, why would you want God to look any other way? Why would you question? Where would that come from? What would be the purpose?
There were roots seeking more in my understanding and in my spirituality. I can trace it back: I have a background in musical theater, and I felt the Divine in such a special, sincere way that I think the arts point us to: authenticity and connection and awe. I felt God in that way, and it didn’t feel manipulative, it didn’t feel prescribed, it felt right….
The people I came to know in progressive Christian traditions were deeply informed by their faith. It was such a revelation to (realize): we have work to do!
I don’t spend inordinate amounts of time focused on my own shame, on self-flagellation. That’s an easy place to stay. The work of the Spirit is the hard work of: Can you look beyond yourself? Can you use what you’ve learned about and through yourself and your experiences to inform other people, to better other people’s lives? It was, are we looking at the structures we’ve built up as a society and how those do or don’t work for building the kingdom of God?
We are already living in a kingdom: a kingdom of exploitation and capitalism and production and money, and we don’t have to do that. We can change it.
Lauren: Living in El Paso — this in-between place, standing in the breach — what does that mean for you as a white woman, as a Christian person (given the ways Christianity has been used to colonize, to exploit, to cause harm) — how are you subverting those identities, how are you reckoning with those identities in your community?
Hannah: Living here has changed me, fundamentally as a person, for the better. As a white woman it is so illuminating. Living here you realize how superficial division is, how manmade borders are. Juarez is the sister city here. We have friends who live on one side and have family on the other, you have people who work on one side, live on the other, it’s continuous. It’s not cross-cultural — it is the culture here. We are all here in this place together.
When we talk about being repairers of the breach, these are cultural, racial, ethnic tears that we have made in our society that we need to heal. There is so much waiting for us on the other side of our fear, our uncertainty, our hesitation. And it requires an amount of humility that I don’t know that a lot of people are ready to walk into.
Lauren: How do curiosity and humility play out for you in your community, as you find yourself navigating your neighborhood?
Hannah: The danger of white supremacy is such that even as a racial minority here — as a white person…I remember early on in our time in El Paso, feeling a little prickle of “Wait! There are conversations going on around me and I can’t understand them?!” That idea that there is a hierarchy here, and as a white person, I have been used to being the dominant racial majority. And it is so challenging, even as a progressive, leftist, white person, to be like, “I am actively entering into spaces where I want to give that up.”
Lauren: That assumption of normalcy? Of comfort?
Hannah: Exactly. But when you live outside of what is comfortable to you, it is uncomfortable. And white supremacy teaches us that we are not supposed to be uncomfortable.
And then you move to a place like (El Paso) where that is a ludicrous idea. The idea that you would want to be in an all-white or majority white space for your own comfort? I look around now at what beautiful culture, experience, relationship, community exists on the other side of that. It has not been easy — it has asked me to interrogate a lot of my biases.
There’s so much waiting for us.
Learn more about the Rio Grande Borderland Ministries Hannah talks about on the podcast and support the good work that org is doing in solidarity with migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers at www.riograndeborderland.org.