Hey! It's Elæ. If you’re here, either we already know each other or someone you know sent you here, in which case, it's so very good to meet you!

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TL;DR: What is this fundraiser supporting?

Primarily, this is a fundraiser directly assisting me in covering my tuition costs for Seminary, costs which are not applicable for student loans or grants. You can learn more about the tuition levels for the program here.

It is a two-year program, and even with qualifying for a subsidized rate, I'm still going to owe between 8000-12000 dollars for the next two years of tuition -- before considering the costs of lost hours and other necessary materials, as well as the cost of the Solidarity Circles program.

I've set this fundraiser, initially, at what I feel is a modest level to support most of this year's seminary costs. But of course exceeding this would be a great relief, as the loss of side-hustle labor hours is going to be tricky to navigate as well.

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A little more about my story, and how I got here, asking you to be part of this moment with me:

I consider my work to be, in essence, co-creative transformational changemaking offered as radical welcome, across many spheres – and so even though this is a "fundraising call" to support this next stage of my journey, I like to think that it’s actually more of an invitation: to our journey, in service of the futures I’m inviting you to build with me.

As it turns out... I've spent decades answering a call to *ministry* by naming this commitment to service many things: “art” or “teaching” or “organizing," (and "hospitality" and "retail," tbh) and so on.

Language connected to “church” didn’t yet feel comfortable in my mouth or body, because let's face it (like for many queer, trans, politically active, social-justice oriented, academia-honed people) my relationship to the Christian church has been one of deep wounding, anger, and subsequent distancing.

But there’s a lot of other ways to be a minister – explicitly not as a representative of Christianity – and as I’ve worked my spirit medicine through other fields, wearing other hats, as well as undertaking many interfaith trainings and decades of Buddhist practice in particular the path led me back here, the call louder and louder until it was undeniable.

What has become clear is that naming not religion but faith – a faith in possibility, a belief in our need now more than ever to work the muscles of collective faith practice as a work of speculative solidarity – is not only critical but central to my work moving ahead. And maybe even that having not named it before was that missing link I could never quite put my finger on.

My work has always been driven by faith, drawing from every tradition I found wisdom in and a constant commitment to spiritual practice, contemplative devotional study and…awe. But for me, that faith -- that reverence -- is very much an awestruck love for and commitment to human (and other-than-human) beings' existence on this planet in timespace, and what we’re not only capable of, but already doing.

So, yes: now I'm in the process of naming that practice as inherently about a sort of collective human sense-making through faith as, well… a sort of technology.

Ok, I'm getting ahead of myself, but suffice it to say:

I’ve already dug deeply into a multi-year R+D project around this work, which I hope to get some funding for (grants have been submitted! Cross your fingers!) And – if you’ve been paying attention, this all draws on the multiple years of Speculative Solidarities public projects and research, as well as the From Survival to Sanctuary series I began this past year. All of the work of which I continue to offer as public tools and materials for free! Though I am honing it as a set of tools to bring into organizations, soon.

In the meantime, I'm thrilled and honored to have been asked to step into an "official" Ministry role this fall, as an interfaith community minister at Judson Memorial Church, while I also enter two years of interfaith Seminary training in preparation for ordination at One Spirit, a program whose justice-driven, future-facing ethos I cannot wait to dive into. At the same time, I’ll be doing a variety of other faith-adjacent social research and justice work, which I’ll get into the details of below – and writing about all of it for The Commons , the online magazine of APRIL (the Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life).

At the same time, I will be part of a number of other vital initiatives and groups that I am so excited about, including:

- the Solidarity Circles program through Vanderbilt University Divinity School's Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice,

- serving as a mentor for Queer youth seeking grounding in their faith for Beloved Arise ,

- serving on the Alumni Council for my beloved alma mater, Friends Seminary , thinking together with alumni, faculty, administrators, and adjacent members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) to consider how this historic, progressive, social justice and peace oriented school can continue to model and evolve into the community and education leader we, and our young people, so desperately need -- and continue to be dedicated to providing a nearly free, radically forward-thinking education to working class kids like myself who otherwise would never have the chance

And - yes - I’ll be doing all of this while continuing to work a full time load as an adjunct professor (criminally underpaid and with no benefits), though I'm looking ahead my term as a coordinator of my program at Pratt coming to an end in January (which will both be a relief and a huge financial hit).

So I’m lucky to be working, and not have to figure out how to pay all my bills while dedicating my life to this work, study, and research – but I am slammed with costs for the next few years. And: for the first time in my life (I’ve been working steadily since Junior High) I’d like to not have to scramble in every hour of every day simply to have enough to afford this next step of my life.

While I am grateful to have spent much of my life privilege adjacent, and enjoy the complex privileges of being well educated with access to specific (often non-fiscal) resources in many ways, this doesn’t translate to having family I can go to for money. For over two decades I've had a life dedicated to staying in academia as an adjunct, committed to community organizing and justice, committed to the arts, and often managing deeply disabling chronic illness -- all of which have left me without the resources to support these next two years, to be frank.

It's simply not possible for my body to add on the extra five restaurant shifts to that schedule, adding constant side hustles like I used to. But I'm also refusing to let this mean I don't answer this call.

I’ve gotten better at asking my community for help, and trusting that those who can will give what they can and that it is a gift of sorts to allow people to show you their care and love through this sort of action.

So: if you can give, literally anything, it adds up and means a lot to me. I love crowdfunding because it is honestly so radical and reminds us what we can do at scale. $5 from 20 people, 10 times? That’s a lot of money, and I know a lot of people -- as do my people.

The amount I'm asking for support in raising, "5,500" is ultimately a placeholder. As I laid out before, the full cost of tuition for this program (at a subsidized rate) for two years will be at least $8000-12000 for me, before any additional cost or lost funds from needing to dedicate time to these studies. But if I reach $5500 it would get me a lot of the way there, and I know a lot can change before next fall (like I said, prayers up for that big research grant!)

My life has always been dedicated to putting my time into creating open access resources, and not charging for these. Not charging fees, not charging for services, not charging for events – and I realize this has been a choice, but it is one I don’t regret, and I’ll keep doing it. I have to believe that for those of you who see what this work is, and believe in it, and me, that there’s a sort of exchange available here – that you see what you’re being invited to seed, with me. And that you know the invitations, for what’s to come, are only getting more exciting.

And: if you have invitations, want to bring me to your org or have an extra laptop laying around (bc repairing mine is about to cost as much as buying a new one), or have creative ways to support or engage in this work with me? Let's talk. This is an energetic calling-in, not a capitalist effort.

A different kind of seed funding. A they tried to bury us kind of seed funding. Let's grow this thing.

With immense gratitude,

In solidarity and possibility always,

Elæ