I FIRST BECAME aware of Tricia Hersey’s work through social media (@TheNapMinistry on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook), and I suspect many others have as well. Yet, Hersey is hardly your run-of-the-mill social media influencer and indeed can be brutally critical of the effects that social media culture has on our bodies and souls. Hersey is a performance artist, activist, theologian, and, perhaps most importantly, a daydreamer. Her work is centered on Black liberation, and particularly liberation from the present-day grind culture of capitalism that is driven largely by social media. In her first book, Rest Is Resistance, she aims to recover the divinity — that is, the image of God — in every human. Grind culture, she notes, “has made us all human machines, willing and ready to donate our lives to a capitalist system that thrives by placing profits over people.” She elaborates further: “We are grind culture. Grind culture is our everyday behaviors, expectations, and engagements with each other and the world around us ... In order for a capitalist system to thrive, our false beliefs in productivity and labor must remain.”
Rest Is Resistance is a stunning call to a slower, richer life of faith. Hersey’s writing seems animated by concerns such as those articulated by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his classic book The Sabbath. While humanity may live and work in a technological society, both writers argue, we do not have to be subservient to our technological tools. Our technological victories “have come to resemble defeats,” writes Heschel. “In spite of our triumphs,” he continues, “we have fallen victims to the work of our hands; it is as if the forces we had conquered have conquered us.”
Rest reminds us that we were created for something more than a life in service to technology. Of course, Heschel and Hersey are writing for different audiences in different eras (Hersey, for instance, does not argue for the practice of the Judaic Sabbath), but both are driven by similar convictions about the divine, the human, and the destructive nature of late-modern, technological capitalism. Both books are ultimately hopeful, and their authors articulate an enthralling vision of who we were created to be as humans and of the divine economy of abundance, in which every creature has more than enough to live and thrive.
While Hersey is adamant in her conviction that rest can liberate us from grind culture, she is also refreshingly realistic about how that liberation will come about: “How do I unravel? How do I deprogram?” she asks. “The answer is you do it slowly. You do it with intention. ... You do it by simply believing that you deserve to rest.”
This journey of learning to rest will go in fits and starts; we should extend ourselves grace. Like Heschel before her, Hersey offers a way of being in the world. She intentionally resists quick solutions and step-by-step lists. Rather, the journey of learning to rest is immensely personal. Rest Is Resistance is a guidebook of hope for this journey.
C. Christopher Smith is senior editor of The Englewood Review of Books, co-author of Slow Church, and author of How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!
