Someone recently texted me to ask how I would describe what makes my kid’s (Title I, Black-majority, 2 out of 10 on GreatSchools.org) school special. I shot something back about diversity and teacher retention and joy, but after I hit send, I was left with an inchoate feeling that I’d missed something. The description was wide-ranging, but lacking some deeper truth I couldn’t put my finger on in the middle of a busy workday.
I didn’t realize just what it was until I was listening to this Nadia Bolz-Weber sermon and she said, referring to Psalm 23 (something I know nothing about but she called it, and I quote, “a real bangar”)… “The shepherd never holds auditions.”
And I realized that this, above all else, above the garden program and the Black History Month showcase and the growth scores on reading, was what is most striking to me about my kids’ school. There are no auditions. It is a place where the assumption of worthiness is so deeply felt that is goes without mention. It is the crystal clear water we swim in.
The quality of “no auditions” is true of the spaces that have changed my life most profoundly, particularly in recent years.
My cohousing community is one of them. People often ask how we “got in.” It was founded 21 years ago and we moved in 12 years in. It’s hard not to laugh a little when people ask about the “application process.” I usually answer: “We had to come to a common meal and not be complete assholes.”
But I suspect that even if we were sort of assholes (and who knows, we may have been?!), people would have shrugged a graceful shrug and said, “Let’s give them a chance.” The community was founded on the premise of “radical hospitality”—another way to say “no auditions”—and it has churned along like this blackberry season after blackberry season, through droughts and fire, through pandemics and courtyard dance parties.
My women’s group is like this, too. On a given Wednesday night you’ll find a spread of everything from cookies made of homemade acorn flour (a wildly laborious and sophisticated process) to Trader Jo’s cheese and crackers. You’ll also find a bunch of people with very impressive titles who almost never talk about their jobs, but mostly their existential questions, and pain, and the way they’re stretching into new awareness that deserves witness. Some of us don’t even know what others of us do for money, and we’ve had some of the most vulnerable conversations for nearly seven years. No auditions.
Mother’s Day just passed. Mostly I was struck by what a thin acknowledgment it is of such a thick art. Mothering, I realize, is an art of no auditions. I meet my children a little bit more every single day. I learn and unlearn them. I wrestle with my own desires for how they show up and then revel in their stubborn refusal. Praise be their refusal to audition! Praise be my dominant mode—punctuated by temporary moments of projection, craving, and bullshit—which is to surround them with the wisdom that they don’t have to.
There are so many spaces in contemporary life that are filthy with—sometimes explicit, sometimes just insecurity-inducing smog—proving one’s worthiness. I used to be drawn toward many of them—eager to prove that even a girl from a middle class family from Colorado Springs could be special, an artist, a bonafide author. And I tricked many an elite gatekeeper into letting me slip thru. I walked hallowed halls. I stood on fancy stages. I shook hands with other chosen people while they looked over my shoulder for someone better.
The older I get, the more out of love I fall with these spaces and the more obsessed I become with the alternative: communities where you can count on a welcome, a carton of milk or a glass of wine, a chair and an open-ended question no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, no matter what else you’ve done or who you’ve been. Many people associate this with certain kinds of religious institutions, or at least the kind that actually walk the talk; that hasn’t been my journey, but I’ve still managed to sniff out the equivalent of beloved communities.
No auditions doesn’t mean no accountability, by the way. To the contrary, when you are creating a space where anyone is welcomed, everyone must be taken care of. That means lines are drawn, boundaries are respected, apology and repair are expected. But it’s all in the spirit of welcome, too, welcoming the best selves inside even the most wounded people. No auditions also means no cancelling. The ecosystem, not the bad apple, is the thing.
I want to live and learn and work and mother in these spaces. I want to create them and maintain them for other people. I want to praise them privately in my own odd little version of prayer and in sequined megaphones. If our politics looked more like these spaces, imagine how transformed we would be.
If there is anything at all I do for my children, or for our children for that matter, I hope it is this: no auditions on your humanity. Never. Not one. Come on in. Take a seat or find your spot on the dance floor. Have a slice of pizza or a fancy drink.
You are worthy. You are worthy. You are worthy.
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