Pantheon of Elders

The man pictured above is Rahim Buford of Unheard Voices Outreach. He’s a philosopher, a scholar, an activist, and a survivor of Tennessee’s for-profit prison system. He’s also our third guest speaker, following Anthony Ray Hinton and Justin Jones, in our Transformative Justice Series at Belmont. You’re invited to join us on October 7th at 10AM in the Massey Performing Arts Center.

We met in a classroom in which we read and discussed Wendell Berry, Jeanette Winterson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Plato. I believe it was in the middle of an exchange concerning The Dispossessed that Rahim remarked that he felt schooled by something Le Guin had set down and that she now had an honored place in his bandwidth. She would now join Tupac Shakur, he said, in his “pantheon of elders.”

I took that phrase and ran with it, repeating it, I suspect, to hundreds of people in a wide variety of contexts. It’s a helpful way of elaborating upon something Ralph Ellison said about our influences. We’re stuck with our relatives, but we get to choose our ancestors. We can switch up, rearrange, and converse with our pantheon of elders, living or dead, at any time. Rahim’s been numbered among mine ever since we met.

And recently, he’s entered into a profound dialogue with Rod Roddenberry on the subject of his work and the formative role Star Trek: The Next Generation plays in his understanding of self, others, and the systems that, left unchecked, trick us into cutting ourselves down to the size of other people’s fears. Listen here.

The night Rahim and I met, I’d asked everyone to join me in a name game and gone through my long-rehearsed introductions and was preparing to announce a break, when he raised his hand. He expressed appreciation for all I’d said and admiration for the fact of my teaching experience in a prison setting, but I could tell he was setting me up for a real doozy of a question. He had divined that my understanding of our time together was clearly influenced by the Bible, and he was curious on this point: “Are you one of those Matthew 25 Christians?”

It was indeed a doozy. I was stymied. To speak truthfully and to also buy a little time, I told him that he’d given me a real gift by putting this question to me and that I’d need a moment to answer it to my own satisfaction. So I took another technical question or two and we moved on to other things, but before class was over I saw that his question had given rise to a phrase I’d needed for some time.

Rahim’s inquiry helped me address a pose or posture I very much wanted (and want) to disavow. I’m not one who presumes I’m bringing illumination, assistance, or even education to the classroom situation. Instead, I think of reading and writing and talking and asking questions as an opportunity to enter into a community of mentors, a group of people from whom I have much to learn, individuals who are each a library of wisdom, experience, and insight who, if I’m attentive, will transform me in righteous ways.

Rahim’s role as a mentor in my life is ongoing, but I’m especially honored to be able to engage him in a public exchange on the subject of transformative justice. He is among our most candid and compelling exemplars of what it looks like. Please consider coming out.