Formed by History, Chiseled by Choice

The sculptor Michelangelo is quoted as having said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

I think this is beautiful imagery for what it means to become. Marble is made of limestone, which is considered a “soft stone” because of its composition. Limestone is pressed into marble by a process called metamorphism. Metamorphism is the process of heat, pressure, and longevity that presses the limestone until it becomes something else entirely, in our case, marble.

We are shaped similarly. The environments we exist in and our visible identities are our longevity. The difficulties we endure and our invisible identities act as pressure. The things we value as a result are the heat. We are born, then formed.

Then there is a secondary process of becoming. This is when we chip into the block of ourselves. Our choices, our chosen community, our chosen family, our lived experiences, media, and society inform us and start to chisel away at this fully formed block of ourselves, revealing more and more of us.

I was formed as a Black woman in the United States of America, raised in a two-parent household and covered extensively by my grandparents – my highly motivated and driven grandma and my veteran grandpa, both of whom survived the Jim Crow South. I was raised largely Baptist and later on very evangelical.

Once I got to college, I began to chisel.

I learned about American imperialism when I visited Guatemala and saw the extent of their exploitation – chip.

I learned that my experience as a Black Woman in the USA wasn’t all in my head and that it pointed to larger systems of power imbalance and prejudice – chip.

I learned about the sacredness of queerness – chip.

I learned that not everyone who professes Christ is invested in sharing His love and that sometimes US Christianity grants people systemic power – chip.

I learned about how the Gospel liberates us instead of entrapping us as some kind of gotcha – chip.

I imagined a world free from systemic oppression – chip.

I learned from my neighbor what it looks like to love them for real – chip

I learned that I have biases and prejudices of my own and researched how I got there and how to reshape my perspectives – chip, chip, chisel.

And while I am not done being formed, I gotta confess that I feel lighter and freer. I feel like I understand the heart of God better than I ever have.

So, please accept this blog post as an invitation to chip, chip, chip away, and also remain. After Michelangelo freed the angel, the angel didn’t cease to be granite. Michelangelo didn’t throw the whole block away. Your becoming doesn’t remove who you are, it just reveals the best and somehow simultaneously most rough pieces of you. You are already a work of art, so imagine as you chisel how much more beauty can be revealed.

Besides, how 0/10 would it be if we were all just blocks? Can you imagine?

No baby, you are art.

Belonging shapes us. Becoming saves us.

-J