DID THE TRAVELER who saw me asleep on the floor of an airport prayer room think I was dead? I wore black leggings, a black hooded dress, and black socks. My black shoes were tucked neatly beside me. My puffy black jacket served as a pillow atop my black backpack. My scarf was a blanket over my face. Perhaps I looked like a shrouded portrait of death. But I was and am very alive, just tired. After a red-eye flight with a long layover, I came seeking rest.
I sought the hidden upper room, described on the airport’s website as “a calm respite before and after flights,” to restore my soul on a Sunday morning. After sitting, then kneeling, I finally curled up in a fetal position and drifted off to sleep until an employee entered the immaculate space. The keys on her hips jangled as she wiped and rearranged the holy books and beads on the altar. As she refolded prayer mats, I silently prayed for her. The jangling got closer as she announced that she needed to vacuum. I asked if I could remain in the room. She told me the room was not for napping and that a person had opened the door earlier, saw me, thought I was dead, and walked out. Dear traveler, dear prayer-room cleaner, if you are reading this, if you thought I might have been dead, why didn’t you first say, “Are you OK?”
“Jesus provides rest to the weary,” I responded, offering a gentle theological defense for resting in a sanctuary. Having read the work of Tricia Hersey, who proclaims rest as resistance through The Nap Ministry, I claimed my God-given right to pray without ceasing, even in sleep. I moved to a chair while the worker plugged in the vacuum. People are always trying to nap in here, she complained. There was no sign saying that sleep was forbidden. “I pray while I rest,” I insisted. She was white, I am Black. I felt shamed and surveilled. I gathered my things and walked out. Our interaction haunted me. What would I do if I thought I saw a corpse in a place of worship?
The artist Kehinde Wiley explores questions about bodies in repose in the touring exhibition “An Archaeology of Silence.” Wiley’s portraits and sculptures of Black men and women reclining in luminous spaces evoke feelings of horror and vulnerability. Inspired by the 16th-century painting “The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb” by Hans Holbein the Younger, Wiley’s vividly human figures take on mythical, god-like status as they float, fall, and writhe in postures that could be construed as agony or ecstasy. Wide-eyed and sleeping in hooded sweatshirts, ripped jeans, and sneakers, a world of fallen soldiers and rising goddesses challenges viewers to think about what it means for Black bodies to find rest in a violent world. I felt swept out of the airport prayer room, but in Wiley’s work, I am fully seen. I hope we seek Jesus in one another’s bodies and curate spaces of restorative rest.
Josina Guess is a Sojourners associate editor and a contributor to Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic.
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