Body Becoming is not about providing a specific map or set of guidelines on how to become. Henderson-Espinoza has not filled the pages with long and complex quotes of theoretical ideas. There is not a single, linear approach to liberation, embodiment, or becoming in these pages; the author does not seem to have intended to provide one. The brilliance of Henderson-Espinoza’s book stems from the way they can entangle some theoretical analyses with experience and personal vulnerability.

I sat drinking coffee with Doris in Puerto Rico during the summer of 2022. We caught up with each other talking about academia, BPFNA, the island, and family. This was the first time I heard about Jason. I remember Doris and I talking about doing an interview with Jason. I think Jason had some sort of the same idea because he emailed me a week later to meet via Zoom and chat. He took the time to ask insightful questions and talk honestly about goals and projects for our organization. It was a conversation I valued and treasured a lot. I told him I would email him some questions so that our constituency could see many of the great aspects of his personality and leadership.

Our 2021 Summer Conference was again virtual. Although we thought that perhaps, more than one year after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, everything would be better, that we could meet face to face, the reality was different. We continued with this uncertainty of not knowing what the future would bring us. However, what we did know is that we wanted to celebrate again in community, yes, virtual, but a community that accompanies, and has accompanied one another in difficult times.

“Are they really stereotypes?” That this question is disturbing to me, yet legitimate in query, and that I felt compelled to address it, align answer cautiously, is alone a testament to the degree of brainwashing and indoctrination across strata and culture regarding the idea and placement of the Black woman, man and child in the American psyche

My first encounter with the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America was in 1994, when I went to the Summer Conference (aka “Peace Camp”) in Granville, OH. Ken Sehested had been after me to attend ever since I began as the editor for Seeds of Hope three years before.1 He lured me to Peace Camp by asking me to join Jackie Saxon in leading the youth. Ken knew me; he knew that one conference would be all it would take for me to fall in love with BPFNA.

Daily life in the 21st century is textured and complex, jammed with a vast array of events, opportunities, people, actions, choices and challenges. Among the complexities we face are competing claims about what is true. Numerous times each day, someone urges us to believe his version of reality, to accept her statement about what is true.

Often when these conversations about gender and sexuality occur in churches, they are happening among the adults. But children are also important members of the church community, and they pick up on a lot more than adults give them credit for. Also, children have much to teach their grownups—and all of us—about how to treat people compassionately, inclusively and equitably.

It is perhaps one of the most discussed topics within the churches. It produces strong emotions, subject clashes and opposing clashes between different people. I am referring, of course, to the issue of sexuality and gender identity constantly discussed in theological spheres these days.