Season 4: Ep.7 Queering Orishas

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to our seven neighbors, season four, diversifying the narrative, immigration and religion in America, brought to you by the Interreligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary. I am Kim Schultz, Director of Interreligious Engagement and Public Projects at CTS and Producer of this podcast. And this is our final episode unbelievable. We made it all the way through. This is episode seven. The end, we are thrilled with this season. We are thrilled with the conversations that we've had through an interreligious lens of Latine voices to have explored the intersections of immigration, mass migration, colonization and how diverse faith traditions do affect the story. We tell, we hear, we experience. We hope you have enjoyed this season. And I'm very excited to welcome back, Dr. Morales, our host. - Welcome back, Dr. Morales. We are very excited for our final episode today of our seven neighbors diversifying the narrative. - Yeah, I'm so excited. The last episode we talked to one of my dear friends, Dr. Weichage. And we sort of ended on some conversation on the arts, particularly around hip hop and the power of hip hop to build coalition and to support and strengthen activism. And so in this last episode, we continue with some of this conversation around the arts. But this time we have Dr. Aureli Strankoso, who's gonna talk to us about Santeria and Afro-Caribbean religious expressions and the arts. And so it's really exciting to have this conversation. Today, because I think it's gonna be a great tie-in from last week, but I think it's also gonna bring us into new terrain and also help us to end, I think, with the right kind of note for this season. So I'm so excited for this next and final conversation. - Great, let's get into it. - Thank you, Kim. Our guest for this episode is Dr. Aureli Strankoso, who is the 2024-25 Miriam Jimenez-Roman Fellow at the Latinx Project NYU. Their fields of study are situated in the intersections of race, gender, queer sexuality, Afro-Latinidad in the Caribbean and in the United States, black feminist theory, queer and trans theory, and Afro-Caribbean religions. Their current scholarship focuses on the transnational experiences of women, femme, and LGBTQ+ practitioners of Santeria and Espiritismo in Puerto Rico. And how these practitioners negotiate race, nationality, queerness, and transness within sacred spaces. Their work extends to Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, a writer, educator, and curator. Dr. Strankoso is a scholar practitioner committed to centering blackness, queerness, and spirituality in a larger effort to advance Afro-Latinx studies, queer and trans studies, and religious studies. If you've been paying attention for the last few minutes, you probably know just how excited I am to have Dr. Dr. Strankoso with us today. Dr. Welcome to our episode today. - Thank you so much, Dr. Morales, and I also just wanna thank our 70-verse podcast and the team there can show everyone truly for it. Reaching out now only to Latinx projects, but specifically to me for this opportunity, I'm so, so related for this conversation today. - Yeah, me too. Well, let's jump right in. I would actually love to start on a personal end and kind of just hear your own story, your faith, your work, and your calling if I may use that term as a scholar, art curator, and help us to see how your story fits within the kind of larger diaspora story in the United States. - Absolutely. So my parents are from the Dominican Republic, so I consider myself a Black Dominican first generation. They originally migrated to Venezuela, and then eventually to the United States, when they landed, of course, in New York City, first in Washington Heights, just for a few, and then in the Bronx. So I'm very much, very proud, Bronx, Black Dominican, individual who really brings, now only my youth organizing efforts that I did, while I lived in the Bronx when I was a teenager, but also my passion for education, teaching this idea of each one teach one, this reciprocal understanding of mutual aid and of community efforts that definitely inspire and guide my work as a Black Dominican person, it was really important for me to not only honor those that come before me, but specifically the spiritual traditions that are so alive and well in Dominican culture. So for me, that it's inherently reflected in my work as also a queer Dominican person, not only with the issues that go on in Dominican Republic, with anti-hationism and anti-blackness, and also anti-LJPTQ laws that are passed often, sadly. But for me, also as a Santeria practitioner, it was very important, right? So part of me becoming an initiate in Santeria, I'm almost jungle, (speaks in foreign language) for me, it was really important to consider the ways, like this multi-transnational aspect of not only people that live within the diaspora, but also people that live within the Caribbean, and Latin America. And for me, I grew up around so many Puerto Ricans, I grew up around so many also people from Central America, from Mexico, Guatemala. And so when it came down to considering my own spiritual work, for me, I was going through this like, like this transformation of like, well, I need to unlearn, right? Like you get into your like, about organization, right? As an activist and then you're, you start thinking about all the aspects that you wanna unlearn, or things that you wanna learn more about. And for me, spirituality, I was always a very spiritual person. It didn't matter if you could put me in a Catholic church, a Christian church, I felt spirit. I felt energy. And with that said, it felt very important to me to continue that work and also ask the questions of like, well, if I'm doing this type of work, this political organizing, classical organizing work, and I was 15, we're talking about 15, 16 years old, that's wrong. - Oh wow. - Yeah, so it'd be more specific. I was like, well, what does that look like for me spiritually? And you can imagine that in a traditional Dominican household, the type of questions, it's a, how do I say, eyebrows raise that were happening, but for me, it was extremely important at the core that I also looked at with that man as a black Dominican person. And so, as much as there were bodegas and liquor stores on every other corner where I live in the Bronx, there were also bodanigas, right? And bodanigas have a very beautiful way of reflecting the demographics around them. And to be more specific, bodanigas are basically spiritual stores that sell candles, different tools that are reflective of different Afro-Disportic religions. So you might find sage, or you might find tobacco, dry tobacco, you might find different herbs in big refrigerators that have spiritual properties and spiritual uses. So anyway, with that said, if I really important for me to tap into my ancestral roots in that way, and the matriarch of my family, my great-great grandmother was also considered as someone who was very well-knowledge in what came down to spiritual remedies, medicinal herbs. Doctors would come knocking on her door and asking what she was giving the children of the neighborhood. This is specifically in a seawile in Mocha and the northern part of the Dominican Republic. So I think part of this ongoing work and commitment for me, if not only transformative justice and storytelling, is also thinking about my own lineage and how do I honor that as well. So eventually, I became a practitioner some day, and I'm still very much happy and proud that I also get to do this amount of doctoral work. And now, in my hopefully upcoming book, "Queering Orishas." Yeah. - That's great. Well, I mean, actually, I want to stay there. And before I stay there, I want to just say, have a weird moment because my parents, in their migration journey, first start in Venezuela after I was born in Puerto Rico and then came to the Continental United States. So I was like, "Whoa, okay." So that's another concern. - I love that connection. - Yeah, absolutely. I was like, "Whoa, that's crazy." But you just mentioned scholarship. But at the same time, you mentioned this wonderfully rich history of migrations, of diasporas. And now you work in scholarship in the arts. Talk to me about how your diasporic experience, your immigration experience informs shapes and is embodied by your aesthetic, your artistic vision, and the way you do scholarship in, particularly scholarship in Afro-Caribbean religiosity. - Absolutely. This is a question that really gets me excited because for me, Santeria is a very communal religion. It's not meant to be practice and isolation. So when we think about kinship, when we think about what N Fadiqa Kaster calls Transnational Special Networks, I think that that is something that is key here. I guess part of it. So I'll start with one of the first exhibitions that I curated, co-curated, which was actually in Laona Cua in 2015. That was for the Biennale. We actually did, we as in the arenis de Tavur Calderón, along with Mina Pedrondixon, who are two black Cuban feminists, lesbian organizers in Cuba. And we ended up collaborating together on this exhibition called Adimu Family, which in Europe Adimu, we translate to basically saying like offering. And usually it refers to a food offering, to the Odisha or to Ego, which are ancestors. So Adimu Family was more of like a reciprocal understanding of what the relationship between ancestors and yourself is. There is a reciprocity that occurs in African influence and also indigenous influence spiritual practices. There is this mutual understanding, just like there's a column response, in church, which we know has African influences as well. Well, same thing happens when it comes to the type of relationship that you build in these practices, these spiritual practices. So Adimu Family was really a response to the Biennale in Laona, not including black artists in the exhibition. Right, there was a lot of international artists and the artists that were from Cuba, a lot of them were white Cubans, who already had resources and access, right? In public recognition. So we had about five artists join us from different parts of Cuba, really, who were all identified as black, an undeniably black artist who really wanted to do with Adimu Family, we wanted to create not only a communal experience, because at the end we were all somehow practitioners of Santería, but we wanted to also shed light to what really black Cuba looks like. And from their perspective, what is their relationship with Africa, right? So this idea of being part of the African diaspora, we wanted to really create an understanding of what that meant through art. And what was beautiful about this exhibition the year before I was working at the Cochal Center of African diaspora Institute. So Gadi, who the founder is Dr. Mata Morano Vega, fellow Afro-Portarican reviewers, and who is now being led by Melerica Volte, who was my supervisor back then, and is an amazing brilliant person, also part of the family of Dr. Mata Morano Vega. And both of them are practitioners. And as an intern, what I was doing there, I was actually helping organize. One of my last things that I did at Gadi was actually help organize a trip, an international trip that Dr. Vega wanted to do with artists from New York City, from the African diaspora, but they were based in New York City, to La Biennale of Havana, that year, 2015. So it was a really beautiful experience because I just ended up contacting Dr. Vega. And I was like, hey, I'm actually doing this exhibition. We'll love to maybe collaborate, speaking of community and how art can transform. I want to collaborate. Maybe we can do a mural between my artists and the artists that you bring onto this trip. And we did that. They actually ended up stepping out of the Biennale and they ended up going to, it was a gallery in San Lasso, in Central Alana, and we ended up doing this beautiful mural in this gallery space, that normally will be discounted as a space for artistic practice within the mainstream. So when it comes to my work and how it embodies not only migration and immigration, but I think about it in the larger context of what is the black Atlantic. And so for me, that was really important. And I think that as an art curator, that is something that will always be at the center, especially as a practitioner as well, Santeria, is like, how do we bring community, how do we emphasize not only transnational community, but also kinship and belonging, which also it's part of my actual research as a scholar practitioner. - No, that's awesome. So let's stay with this research because I would love to talk. You mentioned this wonderful phrase, "queering Mauritius." I would love to hear, this is your current work. What do you mean by queering Mauritius? And what are you hoping to do with your research here? - Yes, it is a buzzing word. Anything queering is always buzzing. - Yeah, yeah. - So queering Mauritius, you know, quite honestly, anytime I'm speaking to someone about my work and they're like, "Oh, queering Mauritius." And I'm like, "Yeah, it's actually redundant, right?" And I'll say more why? Because for me, Mauritius already exists outside of the gender binary that we know today, right? That is a product very much of Western colonization and it's reflective, right? Even how do I say Anglo Christianity, right? And so for me, queering Mauritius is an offering, is an intervention. It really is highlighting what is already existed and especially LGBTQ practitioners and friends and not being already know as practitioners themselves. What probably brings them to be attracted to the religion in the first place is the non-binary or ageonist aspects of Odisha as in deities of the Europe-influenced religion, right? Which is in specifically, you know, in the Caribbean, Latin America, certain places, is Lona Santería in Brazil, it's Ganguele, right? In Trinidad and Tobago is also known as the Shango, Shangoism. So I think that for me, it was really important to reflect that and to also look at the experiences specifically of LGBTQ practitioners in the religion because the reality is that there also is a lot of prejudice, right? You know, this religion has survived, like transatlantic slavery and colonialism. And with that, you undoubtedly will have certain prejudices that come with colonization. So it was really important for me to focus on, especially in this day and age, right, with the political scheme that we currently dealing with, right? We are in for another ride, you know? And so for me, it was really important as trans rights are being attacked, as queer rights are being attacked. I mean, gay marriage is like, you know, there's so much that right now is borderline, you know, we are living in very, very dangerous times. And so for me, this work is really about, how can the queering of Odisha as the, an example, not only of community and belonging, but also of a liberatory practice, of a decolonial spiritual practice in itself. And so I think that through the experiences that I was able to collect with ethnographic feel work that I did specifically in Puerto Rico. And the reason I chose Puerto Rico is because oftentimes when we talk about Santería, we talk about Cuba, right? We don't really talk about Puerto Rico. We have scholars who had, way before me, I'm saying 10, 20 years before I'm, then, you know, 20 years ago, we're writing about the experiences of maybe queer practitioners, but specifically, and let's say more lesbian and gay because there were other terms back then. Back then, I wasn't, you know, not so long ago, but in the sense of like queer and assault is a term that we have reclaimed in the last few years. It wasn't always welcomed in our community as like something that we would use to describe ourselves. So for me, when it comes down to that, they did have, right? There is research out there, but the research is really based on diaspora Puerto Ricans. So New York, Florida, California, even Chicago. But when it comes to thinking about Puerto Rico and the experiences of queer and trans practitioners on the island, I really wanted to bring that into the fold into the conversation, the very multifaceted conversation that we're having today. So I'm really just joining a whole bunch of scholar practitioners who are doing amazing brilliant work. And this was just my offering to hopefully include and make the conversation even richer. And I will continue this work in Cuba, in Dominican Republic. So it'll be even more transnational than what it already is. - That's great. And I do think that your work really is touching on so many pressure points. I mean, you mentioned trans rights, queer rights, generally anti-blackness. You mentioned the prejudice, you know, in the spirit of full disclosure, I grew up panacostal, we were told certain things about Santería. And I believed them early on. I mean, they were just really bad stuff. And I'm glad that over the years, I threw friends and scholarship and just lived experience. I got to see Santería and, in fact, the whole Afro Caribbean tradition in a new light and recognized the ways in which those assessments that were given to me were not theological or spiritual. Sometimes they were rooted in just good old fashion, racism and anti-blackness. And they were cloaked in kind of theological, biblical language, but they were really coming from the white missionary enterprise of which we were a product. And so just to confess that for me, I think that's why your work is so important because it touches on that. But it also touches on the anti-blackness, on the transphobia and these other ways in which we need to speak to those issues. You mentioned liberative practice and just your last kind of answer conversation. We often imagine justice work as being kind of auditory or textual. We kind of think of the prophets kind of speak. But so far you've shown me the ways in which the visual arts and the way kind of non-verbal arts also speak and also kind of denounce injustice. There's clearly a deep kind of relationship between the arts and justice between art and politics and it seems to be. - Absolutely, absolutely. And I think one of the things that is really important to consider here is that one of the people that I am in love with their work is M. Jackie Alexander. Dr. M. Jackie Alexander's work. Pedagogy's a crossing to me is one of my scholarly Bibles. In a lot of ways to say that, right? And I think that the work that Dr. Alexander is doing in that book is very important when in moments where I needed to find language for my own experiences as a queer lesbian practitioner and someone who also cares so deeply about justice and equity. And I think that there is such buzzing words, such as querying, such as the colonial, right? That is often thrown around. And for me, there are so many people from elders to multi-generational, right? Who already embody a decolonial practice without even knowing the language, right? Like I have one of my elders, my godparent, Luis Pedro Soto Longo in Santería, Nimo Salaco, and Yuzo Sanona Sarawanda. He's from Guiness. What's from Guiness, my yareke, right outside La Havana, Cuba? And she recently passed away, he died. And for me, we started off as friends before he even became my godparent and we had such beautiful philosophical conversations. - Yeah. - But what was even more beautiful is that off the back, I already had came out. It was just like unapologetic as a matter of fact. This, yeah, you know, what can menoria, right? So like just saying that in Spanish is very much, it's not like me, but anyhow, or like whatever, like Spanish a little more difficult in terms of the sense of gender neutral. So he just embraced me with so much love. And I think for me, that's part of also my research is that, and you know, we're talking about a middle age Caribbean man who very much could fall into all the stereotypes of like, you know, the prejudices and you know, the machismo and things like that. And I'm not saying he was perfect because no one is, but he part of honoring his memory and even having these conversations in my research is also about how do you lead with love, right? I think oftentimes we end up leading, and I say this both across organizations, political organization, grassroots efforts, and also within religion, right? We end up leading with ego and not from the place of love and acceptance and I just feel so blessed that I had and still have because he is still with me in spirit, but just to have that example. And I didn't have to give him a book to read. He was just like, yeah, I love you. And so that to me, I think is the ultimate example of how you can coexist and just really show a different alternative to what is so, especially these days where there's so much hate. What if we just show love? And I know that sounds like very cliche, but truly, what if we did just choose love, right? And what if we did choose to just try to understand people and leave from a place of kinship and compassion and understanding? And so when it comes to a decolonial proxies or even a libertarian proxies, I think that is really important that we are able to do that from a place of love and from a place of kinship. So for me, when it comes to the arts, when it comes to justice, when it comes to even art and politics, I think that politics in itself is very complicated. That's a more complicated conversation, but I think that when it comes to these Afro diasporic religions or even indigenous practices, community is already at the center and forefront. It's actually at the cores, that's one of the pillars that sustains these practices. So I think not only is it important to think about libertarian practices in this way, but also accountability and reciprocity, which I think oftentimes grassroots organizing teaches us. - Yeah, absolutely. You talked about, if we start with love being cliche, I'm not sure it's cliche anymore. I mean, I think we're living in really other times where people are picking just straight up meanness and ruthlessness at sort of their Monday, Monday's operandi. And so yeah, it's really sad. So I wanna actually, it's sort of kind of the last question around the topic, talk to you about the resistance and how to resist. And I wanted to ask about the art, but I think I can ask about particularly Santeria in the arts, because as I see Santeria is very tactile, very aesthetic religion in the sense that there's a lot of things you see and do. And so I would love to hear the ways in which the arts, or in your case, the arts as express through your religious commitments, your spiritual commitments, can nurture and act and reinforce modes of resistance, or to phrase differently, talk to me about kind of aesthetic dimensions of resistance, especially in the day and age that we're living in. - That's a very great question. Thank you for that, Dr. Morales. So yes, Santeria from the Ilequist, right? The beaded consecrated necruses that we were around our necks to the Idee, right? The bracelets, speed of braces, consecrated as well, that we wear the bangles that we wear as well. All of these things go through rituals, or they should, right? Some people just go inside a wadani guy and get it and that's not the correct way of doing things or at least in terms of tradition and protocol, but hey, everyone does what they do. But I think for me personally, as a practitioner, or someone who is crowned, it's really important that things are actually go through the rituals and consecration, right, that's necessary. And so even the beads, they're a very visual, as you're saying, very tactile aspect of the religion, even the way that we offer, the actual foods that we offer Odisha, right? Like you think about Odya and Odya is an Odisha that we offer eggplant, right? And in the colors that Odya is presented as, there's, you know, she's multicolor, but one of her colors is purple, maroon as well, right? And so you'll see that in the offerings, you'll see that reflected in the type of food that we offer the Odisha. And there's like a feminine and masculine energy aspect here, right, Robert Ferris-Thamson spoke about the aesthetic of cool, right, the coolness of the head, even the water, water is essential for how we begin and ceremonies. So there's a ritual, a prayer, really, that we say is called Omidutu. And Omid means water in Yoruba. And tutu is like cooling, right? So Omidutu, so that's like a cooling water and then Omidutuana tutu tutuile. So cooling of the home, cooling of the road, right? And all these, this particular opening ritual, practitioners oftentimes do it like every morning, right? Just to start off their morning. Just like we made brew coffee in the morning and that's itself, it's like virtual, right? There's like this piece that we feel when we smell the coffee. - Absolutely. - Right, from Nagreka, you know? - Absolutely. - That's it, right? There are different types of rituals. Now, all of them have to be consecrated in the ways that we think. And so for me, I think that even the dress attire that practitioners use in ceremonies, right? There is like the big skirts, long skirts that are used to actually one year dancing to the Odisha Otrun, who is the Odisha of sensuality, the maninity, love, and she is patient of the rivers, right? Or like the sweet waters. So there's this way that we dance and the skirt moves in a particular way to mimic the currents of the river, right? So, and same thing happens with Yamaya, mother of all, right? Who lives in the ocean. So there are these ways that we do even aesthetically when we think about dance, when we think about this virtual possession that occurs, there is so many layers of aesthetics and embodiment that happens. And actually speaking of virtual possession, and even what happens within ceremonies, one of the terms that I coined in my research is sacred embodied archive. And what sacred embodied archive does is that it moves through thinking of spiritual possession while also gender performance, expand even to like braven culture in Puerto Rico, queer braven culture, Puerto Rico, and the resemblance of not only community, but performance of masculinity and femininity, and tapping into a multi-generational archive of knowledge and wisdom, right? So through this embodiment, right? We tap into the sacred. I was speaking before of Dr. Alexander, and part of the work that Alexander does is thinking about the body as a site of memory, right? So what do we do when we expand it to not only thinking about the body, right? But when we think about specifically in ritual and ceremonies, and also more in galleries and like art galleries, right? When we're communing, art itself, a piece of art, right, has its own energy, right? The person who is working on that piece of art is also putting in their energy, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Some argue that I check. So that energy that is going into the piece, right? It also mixes with the rest of the energy that's in the gallery space, right? And so energy, my godfather, you can say, that's all about energy. And program I then adhere, right? So the problem is really about energy. When we get to energy, right? And we all have energy, right? And how we choose to tap into it and to think of it through a form of resistance. If we were all to tap into the power that we have within, which in something, yeah, we say the ori, right? The ori that we all have ori, right? Ori is the soul, like, it really exists, you know, here in the actual head, ori, ori, ori. So it's really important that we think about our own power, right, and what the potential that that has when we actually connect with each other and build that type of kinship, right, across differences. So I think that all these things are very much connected. From connecting with spirit, connecting with our own high self and like our own spiritual power and connecting with each other, right? There's a transnational kinship that can occur and that's very powerful when we allow ourselves to actually lead from a place of love and from a place of kinship. - Absolutely, thank you so much. You spoke about cooling waters and I'll tell you right now, this conversation has been a refreshing conversation for me, particularly in the time that we're living in, with so many people who are the target of this ruthlessness that I mentioned to you. So thank you for the cooling waters. I want to give you the last word and just kind of share with us any kind of current or forthcoming scholarship, projects, initiatives, art, curation, activism that you're currently doing. - Yes, yes, thank you. So actually with the DSL, the Esper Saladarities Lab that you mentioned at the beginning, which is co-led by Dr. Joe Maida, Figueroa Vasquez and Jessica Marie Johnson. We are actually working specifically the lab that I co-lead is Afro-Latinx Lab. And Afro-Latinx Lab, you can find us on Instagram. There's two branches of the work that we do. So there is a art curation aspect and then there is a digital archive that we are creating that is specifically focused on gender-based violence, both in Dominican Republic in Puerto Rico, Haiti, and its respective diasporas. So we're actually building right now the archive, the digital archive is called las nariz bolsas, so the butterflies. And it's an honor of La Semana Miraval in Dominican Republic who were assassinated at the state violence of the dictatorship of Rafael. Trujillo, so it's really important that we continue to build this archive, so that's something that we're working on right now. So definitely, if you go to Afro-Latinx Lab on Instagram, you'll see once we start working on the actual archive itself and making certain interviews available. And then the other part that we're doing, we have an upcoming exhibition that's going to be happening at Michigan State University, but we will also have a link that kind of like an online gallery space, and that's going to be done through Abel Eyes. So we will also post that link. That exhibition is really-- and this is along with a dear friend of mine and colleague, Maribana, along with-- it's actually her vision. Just happy to be co-curated with her. And dream means together, which I love to do with people. And we need that, and that's necessary. We need to dream together. And also with Melanie Rodriguez, who's also part of Afro-Latinx Lab. And so this exhibition is going to be touching based on black femininity in the Afro-Latinx diaspora. So notions of black femininity and also how black femininity and aesthetics challenge Eurocentric ideas of beauty. And so we have artists that are going to be specifically from Haiti, to American public, Brazil, and Colombia, hopefully. We're still working with the artists. But that's happening in March at MSU, and we'll make also an online link available for you to just be able to prove through the gallery space as well. So yeah, and also hopefully, I'll be-- I'm also going to be part of the second edition of the Afro-Latinx orbiter, which is a huge honor, especially the medium-humanist Román fellow NYU this year. So there's going to be more juicy stuff coming. I'm really excited for other blessings and opportunities that are coming my way. And I look forward to also feature collaborations with you, Dr. Morales. Me as well. Yeah, so if you are as excited as I was hearing what's coming up for Dr. Trancoso, fear not, we'll put a bunch of links on the episode description so that you can tap into the wonderful work, scholarship, arts that is part of Dr. Trancoso's witness in the world. Dr. Trancoso, thank you so much for this time. This has been truly a blessing and an honor for me. Thank you. Thank you all. I'm so excited to continue this conversation another time, truly. Thank you. OK, well, that was fantastic. Dr. Morales. That was seriously, I couldn't think of a better way to end this season than with just this wonderful conversation with Dr. Trancoso. Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. There's just several things that I thought were just outstanding that you both brought up into conversation, and I thought maybe you would want to reflect on that or bring it to your own. I mean, speaking of the African diasporic traditions that often get ignored and the power of ending our season here, I mean, I just think that was a really powerful moment. Yeah, absolutely. I think that two things I want to highlight. One is, obviously, there's a sort of African or Blacky racer, unfortunately, in the telling of Latin American Caribbean history and religious history. And so this is a great way to end to talk about this resilient, religious spiritual voice and resistance as part of our story. And Dr. Trancoso embodies it, does wonderful work around that and lives it, and ties it so strongly to the work of justice. So I think that's the first thing that it's important. And so to end on this, it's a great way to end the season because it leaves that taste in our mouth. With that sort of, there, I say, the nonciation of the ways in which we've erased the African elements of our story. The other thing has to do with the arts. The Santeria and other Afro-Desporeic religious traditions are very kind of aesthetic and very tactile. And so to be able to also end with the arts, and really end with the arts, the last two episodes, because the last episode where we had Dr. White Hodge, and we talked about hip hop, the same kind of eyes. And I think one of the powers of art and the arts is that sometimes for some people when religion is lacking, they find what they were wanting to find in religion in the arts. And so this is also a great way to tap into those folks who may not claim a religion per se, but who have thoroughly religious spiritual experiences when they engage in art. So I think in this sense, this is another great way to end the season. - Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And also this idea that they brought up in terms of the power to tap into our own energy for resistance. And I thought it was really powerful that this idea of using energy, especially at this time where we are post-election, the power of our collective energies. - Absolutely a collective, communal and embodied energies. Dr. Tronkoso reminded us of our bodies as sort of a site for resistance. And I think we heard that throughout this season, several folks bringing up kind of the embodied dimensions of faith, the embodied dimensions of activism, the embodied dimensions of the ways in which we can live differently in the world and push for a better world. So I think that that was so refreshing and empowering to hear. - Yeah, I mean, we're done. This is the end of the season, Dr. Murrell. - It's been great, it's been great journeying with you. - Such a great season, so complex. I think the way that you have held these conversations, looking at all the dynamics at play, I thought has just been really powerful. - Thank you, thank you, I've had a blast. And I've learned so much and have grown and been challenged. So I hope that you, the listener, can also say you've been challenged, have been stretched and have been blessed for lack of a better world, blessed by this season. - We certainly have and we thank you for hosting and we thank you all for listening. This has been season four of our seven neighbors. If you've missed an episode, please go back and listen. There are many conversations, well, seven in fact, for you to listen to. We are so grateful we hope you'll join us again in the future, be safe and be well, everybody. - Muchas gracias.