The Power Of Gathering with Alex WIlliams

"Religion provides spaces for people to come together and feel welcomed. If we're humanists and want to find a space where we can do that, I think the answer is cultural spaces." — Alex Williams

Alex Williams is a poet, teacher, playwright, jazz singer, and LGBT advocate. Performing as Tiger Jazz and hosting The Dial Up open mic in Watford, Alex creates cultural spaces where people can gather, celebrate creativity, and build community without requiring shared religious belief.

This episode is about building humanist spaces that welcome the whole person, not just the rational mind. About recognizing that people leaving religion need places to gather on a Sunday that don't require a ticket or a degree in philosophy. And about how creativity can bridge the gap between religious community and secular freedom.

🎙️ In this episode

• Why cultural spaces, not just debate forums, are essential for humanist community
• The Dial Up: creating the friendliest open mic in Watford through active inclusion
• How open mics celebrate LGBT History Month and Black History Month as humanist events
• AI's risks to human connection, creativity, and critical thinking
• The Watford Humanists Arts and Music Festival (WHAM) 
• Why Black humanists face unique challenges leaving religion within tight-knit families
• How religious language and rituals stay with us even after we stop believing
• Rewriting the Lord's Prayer as a secular tribute to his earthly father
• Books, performance, and creative work as archival records of human imagination

🎙️ Alex Williams performs

• "What's a Humanist?"
• "The Scientific Mind"
• "The Happy Humanist"
• "My Father" 

🔗 Connect with Alex Williams at: thedialup.blogspot.com

📚 Alex's Books

• Secular Verses — poetry exploring the world from a humanist perspective
• Black Iris — poetry collection from two years living in Jordan
• His Hidden Wings — LGBT coming-of-age novel for young adults
• Wendy the Whale — children's book about humans living in harmony with nature

All available via thedialup.blogspot.com or Amazon.

Thanks for listening to the Secular Sankofa Podcast, produced by the Association of Black Humanists (ABH). If you enjoy the show, please follow, rate, and review — it helps more people discover Black humanist voices.

Stay connected with us:

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Learn more about our work and community at abhumanists.org

🎙️ Podcast produced by Humanise Live a podcast production agency based in London, serving charities, companies, and individuals across the globe.

.Learn more at www.humanise.live or hello@humanise.live

🎶 Music: Icy by Jeff Kaale

Transcript

Welcome and Meet Alex Willams

Audrey Simmons 0:04

Welcome to Secular Sankha, the podcast of the Association of Black Humanists, a space where we speak boldly, think freely, and live consciously. Here we have honest and unapologetic conversations about race, belief, power, liberation from a black and godless point of view. My name is Woodie Simmons, and I'll be your host today. We have named today's show The Power of Gathering. And to help us explore this theme, we are joined by the multi-talented Alex Williams. For those of you who don't know Alex, let me fill you in. He is a poet, a teacher, a playwright, and an author. He is also a wicked jazz singer and pianist, a champion of LGBT rights, and luckily enough for us, he is also a humanist. So welcome Alex to Secular Sankova. We are so glad to have you here on the show today. Thank you so much for welcoming me. It's a real pleasure to be here with you. It's always a pleasure. As I said, Alex is a poet, so um I'm going to ask Alex to share one or two of his poems today, which I can testify will be a real treat. That's

Poem: What is a Humanist?

Audrey Simmons 1:22

very kind of you.

Alex Williams 1:23

You're building me up, and I hope I don't knock the reputation down. But let's open, shall we, with one of my poems, which actually ties in with many of the things you mentioned. It ties in with my passionate belief in humanism, it ties in with my dedication to teaching, and it ties into my love of creativity. It's called What's a Humanist? And this is a poem I often use when I'm doing um school speaker sessions with young people or group sessions with people who are being introduced to the idea of humanism for the first time. And it's a poem which attempts to catalogue or list lots of the different traits and characteristics which might help somebody decide whether they are a humanist. One of the things which I find really fascinating is how a smaller percentage of the population is confident in self-identifying as a humanist. But when you talk to them about what humanism is, they inevitably say, Oh, that sounds like me. And so this poem is designed to address that very idea. What's a humanist? They trust in methodologies objective and specific. They describe observed phenomena in a manner scientific. They reject all explanations couched in ghosts or ghouls or spirits. They circumscribe their arguments with naturalistic limits. They ask to see the evidence before they reach conclusions. They prefer to confess ignorance than make up false solutions. They try to meet all human beings with kindness and compassion, and to treat all other animals in corresponding fashion. They've no evidence of afterlife, so reasonably deduce that this is the one life that we have of any earthly use. They put aside the magical claims of many an ancient text, and instead use moral judgment to decide what to do next. So, in answer to your question, having thought the whole thing through, I'd say that sounds a lot like me. Would you say it's like you?

Audrey Simmons 3:18

See, I told you we were in for a retreat. Thank you so much. And I think it really does set the groundwork and set the foundation on what humanism

Culture As A Secular Place To Belong

Audrey Simmons 3:27

is. But I want to take it to another aspect. In the poem, we talk about logic and we talk about scientific and all of those good stuff. But I want to focus on today because when we think of humanism, we think of discussions and science and all of that good stuff. And when we meet as humanists, we meet in the context of having a discussion. But as black humanists and as humanists from the sort of African diaspora and that aspect of things, I also think of Umbuntu. I also think about the collective. And so let's talk about the creativity of humanism from a black and humanist perspective. And what does that look like in terms of us as humanists and how we gather? What would that humanist space look like if we were to gather as black humanists and discuss or be creative in that space?

Alex Williams 4:16

That's a really good question, but I think it's a bit outside my mission because I use creativity to bring all people together. I think that religion is one of those, one of the things that religion does really well is provide spaces for people to come together and feel welcomed and feel supported and loved and part of a community. They feel they belong. Now, it doesn't matter what the color of their skin is, they just have to share that religious belief. Now, if we're humanists or even secularists and want to find a space where we can do that, where we can gather together, I think the answer is cultural spaces. I'm passionate about the arts and creativity because I think they are the spaces that allow us to come together in celebration and to help push towards human flourishing without having to believe in a whole set of myths or ancient stories or fairy tales. So for that reason, I dedicate a lot of my time to creative endeavours. I'm a trustee of a local theater and I do a lot of work there to bring people in through various events. The most close to my heart are the dial-up events. The dial-up is an open mic, but rather than encouraging people to arrive with their own little clique, perform a song with a pint in their hand, and then leave again, the dial-up's about creating a new community, a community of people who want to network and become friends, collaborate and support each other. We call ourselves the friendliest open mic in Watford because it's really important to us that you can arrive alone, but you will be introduced, actively introduced to other people, and you will leave having made new friends. The whole philosophy of the dialog is celebrating community and creativity in equal measure. And I think that is a really humanist trait. It's a magical thing because it also means we can celebrate diversity, equality, and inclusion. We meet on the first Sunday of every month in the Pump House Theatre, but on special months, we celebrate certain aspects of diversity. So every February we have an LGBT special, which is a much bigger celebration than our usual gathering, and people may have a shorter slot, but that's because there are lots more people in the room, and we all make a point of celebrating inclusion and allyship. And then every October we do the same thing for Black History Month. And I really enjoy that because it creates such a wonderful um sense of um welcome and belonging and inclusion in that room. A lot of the people on stage performing, of course, do come from black backgrounds, but there are as many people from white backgrounds or Asian backgrounds. It is an inclusive space. It's not about saying this is a celebration of black history for black people. This is about saying it's a celebration of human history for humans. We've just got an angle tonight where we're celebrating a particular group within that collective. It's such a wonderful thing. And I think that's where humanism needs perhaps to step up a little. Very often the gatherings are, as you described, they are intellectual and academic. They are rigorous debates around philosophy and social policy. Now, for some people, that's terrific. But many people want to gather in a space where they're not being tested on their IQ or did they do the homework reading. They want to gather in a space with friends for fellowship and entertainment, friendship and love. And that's very different to a lecture or um table debate or a kind of formal interview conversation. So that's what I'm trying to provide. Those creative spaces that allow people to feel that they're part of a community and that they belong.

Audrey Simmons 7:46

Wonderful stuff. That sounds like a great space. I've only been to Watford once to see you. And I do, I will promise I will. Oh, you were so kind for coming up.

Alex Williams 7:53

Now that I remember that day perfectly, and that's a perfect example of what we're talking about. So I have a one-man musical called Love in Slough, which I pull out every year and do at various fringe festivals. In fact, this year I'll be doing it at the Chesham Fringe Festival in May. But you came to see its world premiere at the Watford Pump House, and it was so lovely to see you there. And it made me it made our friendship bond that much stronger. We weren't gathering to talk about a philosophical nuance or a political tract. We were there to enjoy something cultural and artistic, and that made my heart sore seeing you in the audience that night. Thank you so much for coming all the way up, wending your way to Windy Watford. It was much appreciated.

Audrey Simmons 8:39

It was a pleasure, I have to say, and I really did enjoy that you know, the one-man show. I always think that is just such an amazing thing, just for you on the stage doing your thing. And if you ever get the chance to see Alex, do you know I do recommend him 100%? He's an amazing performer. And having said that, I just want to think about Alex and what has inspired you, and who has inspired you to be the Alex that we know, the creative person that we know.

Family And Art As Early Fuel

Audrey Simmons 9:09

That journey must have started somewhere, and maybe there were a group of people that have sort of helped you along your way. Who will those people be?

Alex Williams 9:16

Rather than kind of give the distant heroes the kind of role models you never meet, the true inspirations in my life have been very close to me. It's my family, really. My parents, my brother, and my sister are such a close-knit unit. Um, we still meet kind of every Sunday for Sunday dinners together. Um, we're we're there for each other, we check in with each other, and having that support made me feel that I can be confident in pursuing a creative life. It takes a lot of courage and confidence to write something or to learn a song or a monologue and decide that you're actually going to put it out into the world for people to see and potentially knock down and criticize when you've poured so much love and attention and heart into it. But when you know you've got a solid foundation like that, you can have that confidence because they're there to hold you up and pick you back up. And also, it was a household filled with music. My parents love music. There was always Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Luther Van Dross playing on the radio, and we wouldn't just listen, we would sing together. I remember long car journeys where we would be fighting over what CD would go into the CD player because you knew that for that journey it was going to be the same CD going round and round and round, so you'd better enjoy it. And we'd all sing along and have the most wonderful time. So, yeah, I would say my most important inspiration is my family. They've given me that foundation of love. But then beyond that, it is about literature. I'm hugely passionate about the classics. I'm an English teacher, that's my bread and butter. And it's a job I really enjoy because being in the classroom, talking to kids about world-famous plays, novels that have stood the test of time, poetry that reaches across the generations and still touches and moves us, it's a daily reminder of how important words and stories and characters can be. And we know in a religious context, people take these stories as true, which they're perfectly entitled to do. But from my point of view, I love going to those stories and finding the moral message. And I don't need to believe they're true, to find truth inside them. Truth which gives me a direction, a purpose, a sense of meaning. So literature is hugely important to me. Um, and then musical theatre and jazz. Those are the things which make my heart thump. Musical theatre came first. I've always enjoyed going to see, you know, shows full of great songs which tell a story and bring characters to life. Huge fan of Lloyd Weber of Sondheim. There are some great musicals coming out from new writers as well. It's such a wonderful world of energetic performance musical theatre. And when I was in my late teens, I kind of discovered that a lot of those classic tunes from Hollywood Broadway and Tinpan Alley, which I knew through musical theatre, were reinterpreted in innovative, exciting, original ways by a whole bevy of jazz singers. And that's what moved me into jazz. I loved Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Louis Armstrong, Julie London. I would listen to them for ages and try and emulate their singing. Cleo Lane, a huge heroine of mine, I got to see her perform three times while she was still with us. And it was honestly a blissful experience. I loved her voice. And that encouraged me to pursue jazz singing. So now I sing under the name Tiger Jazz, bringing you the great American songbook with a roar. Perfect performances, I hope. Um I've been singing mostly in Watford and London, but I try to spread myself as wide as I can across fringe theatres around the country. And a couple of years back I was lucky enough to feature on Channel 4's popular show, The Piano, where I went to Heathrow Airport and sat at one of the street pianos there. Claudia Winkleman did a little interview with me, and I got to have a chat with wonderful pianist performer Mika, an amazing jazz pianist John Baptiste. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful day. That's also given me a lot of encouragement to spur myself on and keep going with it. It's hard being a jobbing musician. There's so much competition out there, there aren't as many opportunities as there used to be because you know people use recorded music now. If you want some music for your party, you just bung on your self-selected playlist or an AI-generated one on your laptop and off you go. It takes a special occasion now for live performers really to be needed. But when they are and when I'm called upon, it's always a pleasure to be there. I take Tiger Jazz out as frequently as I can. He doesn't like being caged, Audrey.

Audrey Simmons 13:54

I remember watching you on the piano and I remember texting my friends going, I know him, I know Alex. I can't play the piano. I mean, but I do love to sing. I think we were

AI And The Risks To Human Life

Audrey Simmons 14:09

talking about AI, and I think this is we're in this sort of in-between world about now, where um, you know, we've got creative people who are doing their thing. And I'm a pl I'm I write store short stories, and in the creative world, right about now, music and literature, everyone's panicking because the art of being of creating was the personal with, which is why we have, you know, Hemingwei or, you know, Benjamin Jeff and I, all of these people, they were there because it was from their spirit, their their thought process. And now we have this, this um, I don't know to say if he's the infiltration, maybe the negative way, but this kind of other entity of creating. Do you see AI as something positive, negative? Is it a tool? How are you feeling about the kind of insertion of AI?

Alex Williams 15:00

Yeah, mixed feelings. Certainly, it is a tool. It's a technology that we've created, and it could be used for good, it could be used for bad. So the outcomes are going to be very dependent on human action, human activity, and human choice, how we legislate around it, how we allow it to permeate into our everyday lives. The risks that I see are huge because I don't think we are thinking far enough ahead, and I don't think we yet have clear enough legislation which is managing the growth and infiltration of AI into our everyday lives. We already know the dangers around AI making decisions based on flawed human data, which is in itself prejudicial often. And so AI is making decisions in the world of justice and law around who will be given a fine, who will be given a custodial sentence. And if the data set on which is making those decisions is already biased because of human prejudice, then a lot of those outcomes can be prejudicial as well, particularly against maybe age and race and gender. So there's a danger there. There's the danger in education where AI is churning out reams of material which people are looking at and thinking, oh, doesn't that sound professional? But it's riddled with errors because it's using the internet as its data set. And the internet is full of error, full of mistake, full of misinformation and disinformation. We still need human filtering. We need to have our critical faculties overriding this and seeing AI capture people's attention. We have an attention deficit economy at the moment where people are not able to focus on what I consider the real world because they're hyper-focused on the virtual world and they're building relationships with AI chatbots. This can sometimes be beneficial when people are feeling lonely and that gives them an outlet and a sense of companionship. But it can also be really dangerous, especially if those chatbots aren't being monitored and are giving dangerous or unhealthy advice. There is so much risk around AI. I think we need to slow it down and be careful about it. But there are also so many possible benefits, and I can see the advantages, and I can see how much labour and work AI could take over. And if we allow that to then give human beings more leisure time instead of creating even wider inequality between the haves and have nots, then that that could allow a lot of space for human flourishing, especially artistically. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens. But I really want to put pressure on legislators to look carefully at AI and the rules and laws we're going to have in place around it.

Rebuilding Connection Through Live Events

Audrey Simmons 17:38

Thank you for that. I think this is a really interesting point. And then as to our theme about gathering, once we put in sort of non-human mechanisms to connect, we then we've seen this with young people today and how they connect as human beings. I remember working in a job center and one of the claimants said, Well, you can't ring me because I don't know how to answer the phone to people I don't know. It has to be someone I know. So you have to tell me when I'm ringing your ringing so that I know that it's you because I can't do small talk. And I remember thinking, you can't do small talk. It's to say hello. We have a standard way of answering the phone. But the anxiety of not being able to connect means that we're gonna have to start creating spaces where people can gather and build connections. And I think those spaces, like the ones that you're creating, are gonna be even more vital in the future. Is that something you would agree with?

Alex Williams 18:36

I totally agree. I'm vice chair of Watford Humanists. And our chair, Panas Felos, this year has decided to create the inaugural, the first Watford Humanists Art and Music Festival, precisely to tackle some of these issues we're discussing. The idea of disconnection, the idea of separation, isolation, marginalization. We want to create a festival day that can bring everybody together in a space of celebration and creativity. So we're calling it Wham, the Watford Humanists Arts and Music Festival. It's going to take place on Saturday, the 11th of July, as part of the Watford Fringe Festival, which runs throughout July. It's an entirely free event, and this is an open invitation to all of your listeners to turn up, come and enjoy the day. I'll be hosting as Tiger Jazz all the way from our opening at 4 pm to our close at around 9 pm. We've got a wonderful list of amazing musical artists and poets lined up. So it should be a fantastic, fantastic day. If you want any more information about that, you can head to my blog, thedialup.blogspot.com, or just search for Wham Arts and Musical Festival in Facebook and the event will come up and you'll have all the details. We'd love to welcome you. But it's precisely about bringing together people together in a place of celebration so that they can start those conversations and make new network connections and networks and link up. It's I'm really excited about it. I think it's going to be a brilliant addition to the Watford calendar. And if it goes well, which I'm sure it will, hopefully an annual edition.

Audrey Simmons 20:08

That's great. I've got it in my diary and I put it in ages ago and I couldn't remember what it was. I've got in WAM and I've got this. And I'm like, what is it? And I'm like, What is that? What is it? It's in my diary, and I'm in. Because I stick everything in my diary to make sure that I've got all these dates. So I remember I was talking to Clive, another association, and we're going, What is this? And goes, I don't remember. I'm I'm now speaking to somebody about it, but I can't remember what it is. So thank you for reminding me. My pleasure.

Alex Williams 20:37

My pleasure.

Watford Fringe And Archiving Creativity

Alex Williams 20:38

In fact, Watford, Watford is going to be bubbling with creativity throughout July because it is our Watford Fringe Month. And we are an official partner with Edinburgh Festival. We have a lot of shows who come and do their pre-Edinburgh show work throughs. So we're kind of like a test audience for them before they head north of the border. So we get some really world-class artists coming to Watford in July, as well as lots of local performers doing world-class stuff. Um, I'm not going to be performing in the Watford Fringe this year, but I will have my normal hat on as kind of journalist and reviewer. So I run my own podcast called What's on Watford. And each month we interview somebody from our town who's making a big artistic, cultural, or creative contribution. And then we do a kind of rapid roundup at the end, letting everybody know what's happening in the town across that month. Because my goodness, we need shop windows. Even though it's so easy now to access Facebook or Instagram or whatever, there's so much noise about what's happening, and so it's so hard to find the things that you want to go and see. So you need a kind of curated little five minute synopsis of what's happening. And that's what I offer on the What's on Watford podcast alongside those interviews. And I also do reviews. This is something I love to do because often, especially in Watford, you get great performances, whether it's a play, opera, Musical theatre, jazz night, dance, whatever it might be. And once it's done, it's vanished. It goes into the air. Um, and that's both one of the magical things, but also one of the saddest things about live performance. And in capturing it in a review, I hope that I'm providing kind of an archival record for those performers and creatives so that they can go back and remember that performance. But also it's starting that conversation in a different way, enabling people to have a kind of report which they can read and agree with or disagree with and bounce off and begin their own kind of critical appraisal. So doing those reviews is something I I really enjoy. And I do see that as a humanist act because I think it's about engaging on a very human level with people who are sharing with you their imagination, their perspective, their view on the world in a creative way.

Audrey Simmons 22:50

Wow. Listeners, didn't I say that Alex was going to be a treat? He is, you know, he is a spokesperson for actually trying to keep that human connection. And I think this is one of the things that I personally fear. Um, just sort of moving around the world today. I spend a lot of my time on Facebook and various other platforms. And as you say, I get a lot of information from that. But I still like to have that face-to-face interaction because I do think as human beings, that is what we are sort of, you know, this is what we're here. We're we're peck animals, as it were, we want to get away. Yes, we are, aren't we?

Alex Williams 23:26

We need to be around people.

Poem: The Scientific Mind

Audrey Simmons 23:28

I'm gonna offer you the opportunity now, Alex, to read one or two of your poems again, just to keep that momentum going. So um, I'm gonna leave it to you to choose which ones that you'd like to read for the listeners.

Alex Williams 23:39

Thank you. Well, I've got two in mind. I'm gonna start with one called the scientific mind, which again, for me, is a way of sharing with people new to the idea of humanism one of the important aspects of what it is we believe. And I like this one because it's it's quite wordy. And as I mentioned before, I love words. So when they fall into happy patterns of rhythm and rhyme, it makes me smile. The scientific mind. Testable, reliable, robust, and falsifiable. No fact will be admitted till the evidence permits. Replicating carefully to leave a lasting legacy, we walk through theory cheerfully, progress in spurts and fits. No answers for eternity, just notions for modernity, within the range of certainty the measurements allow. Willing, should the data choose, to overturn our current views and throw them out as mere fake news we soundly disavow. Zoologist or heaven gazer, fossil finder or trailblazer, we teeter all on Occam's razor, naturalists at heart. No more Noma, our claims and yours are bound by the selfsame natural laws. God did it is not an acceptable cause for our discourse to impart. We're burdened with providing proof, or lacking that evidence of truth, sufficient not to appear uncouth in adult conversation. We crave criticism. Help us adore this bounteous universe we explore, with curiosity, wonder, and what's more, with joyous celebration. So that's the scientific mind. A bit of a tongue twister, but I do

Poem: The Happy Humanist

Alex Williams 25:13

love it. This next poem is called The Happy Humanist, which is of course a reference to our humanist logo, the happy human, but is also dedicated to faith to faithless and the wonderful work they do in helping people leave um highly coercive religions and find their own space to be free and walk their own path. It's about how humanists often step out of their comfort zone with kindness and courage to help others who are looking for a way to escape what can be a highly oppressive religious context. The Happy Humanist. She wears her happy humanist badge with evangelical pride. The t-shirt reads, Good without God, in letters bold and wide. She carries over her shoulder a vintage BHA tote, stuffed with postcards, each emblazoned with a Bertrand Russell quote. She never utters bless you, when Gusundheit will suffice, and finds the term spiritual well-being worryingly imprecise. And that is why she's here today among the anxious crowd of people who left their religions when leaving wasn't allowed. The apostates huddle meekly over coffee, tea, and cake, some staring at the ceiling, some counting breaths as their hands shake. They're here to tell their stories and to feel they're not alone, having changed their minds on an issue that has cost them heart and home. Here at least it's not a crime, but still there is some danger, stigma, violence, prejudice from family, friend, and stranger. Everyone deserves the right to have faith and believe, but equally must be allowed to doubt, reject, and leave. And so she serves them coffee, reaching out a steady hand to the other happy humans who have come to understand.

How Creative Spaces Create Safe Community

Audrey Simmons 27:11

Thank you. And I think that really does sum up some of the issues that we and you know, Association of Black Humanists, that is one of the reasons that we're here, is to fill that space. Anyone who's been part of a a conservative religion knows that it takes up every moment of your day. And then once you leave that, you've got seven days to fill that would normally be filled with religious things. So again, this idea of being creative also gives you a space where you're not the focus, but where you can then project who you are, your inner self, in a creative way, where but the spotlight itself isn't on you. I think this is one of the other things that you know these creative spaces can actually give people who are leaving religion from the backgrounds and faith-to-faith lists. I used to be part of the board there many moons ago when it was just starting out. So I understand the work that they are doing and you know, moving on. And Terry Sullivan is now the chair as far as I remember. So yeah, that work actually it all ties in when we're thinking about humanism, when we're thinking about leaving religion, and we're thinking about the creativity of that. You know what I mean? It's about how do we get people to transition into a space and and be comfortable with that idea of just being yourself without religion. And I think that poem really does suck that a whole lot. So thank you for that.

Alex Williams 28:34

Well, thank you. And if anyone has enjoyed the poems I've shared today, then do have a look for my collection. It's called Secular Verses. It's available from my blog, thedial up.blogspot.com, or direct on Amazon, and it contains a whole series of poems which explore the world from my point of view as a secularist, an atheist, and a humanist. And if there's time,

Poem: My Father

Alex Williams 28:58

I'd actually like to share just one other. Because you spoke about that challenge of moving away from religion, which was my own experience. I was raised Catholic and I did my first Holy Communion, I did my confirmation, I knew the prayers I needed to know by heart and can still rattle them off. And I wanted to use some of that, which is it's innate within me now. It's it's it's still part of how I see the world, even though I have moved away from those beliefs. Those words and rhythms still sail within me. And I wanted to transition them, I wanted to change them into something which suited my new humanistic worldview. So I rewrote the Lord's Prayer, Our Father, as a prayer to my own earthly father, my dad. And so I called this poem My Father, and it attempts to use the cadence and rhythm and melody of that much known and much memorized Christian prayer, but to reshape it into a heartfelt and personal message or memo to my dad about why he's important to me. So this is called my father. My father who walked on earth, I thank you for my name. The home you made was strong and sure, and set me on my path. You gave me each day my daily bread, and forgave me my trespasses, teaching me to forgive those who trespass against me, and leading me away from temptation towards a true course for happiness. For your arms were full of kindness, your mind full of wisdom, and your heart overflowing with love.

Audrey Simmons 30:35

Amazing.

Leaving Religion Without Losing Family

Audrey Simmons 30:36

And I think this is the thing. You mentioned something there that, you know, we've grown up in religious households, whether that be a Christian one, an Islamic one, or whatever. And those things don't leave us. And I think one thing as humanists, we realise that this is part of who we are as well. So it's it's about unlearning, but also reshaping. We can't un you know, we can't just get rid of and pretend that, you know, the life we have were born into suddenly doesn't exist.

Alex Williams 31:04

But it's how we And I think this is something which is very special for black humanists in particular, because I have a wide circle of friends, and I know that it's largely within the black community that religion has such a pervasive and universal impact on your upbringing. I still every birthday and Christmas receive loving and thoughtful cards from aunts and uncles and cousins, which always end with, God bless you, or Jesus is watching over you, and we'll pray for you, and all of those sorts of messages, which I know come from a place of kindness, and I appreciate them on that regard. But the family is imbued with this religiosity. And that is not necessarily the case with lots of people within the world of humanism who come from a white background, because they may come from upbringings which are far more agnostic or perhaps atheistic. As I say, I'm not necessarily humanistic, not as many people as I would like accept or self-identify with that term, but they're agnostic or atheistic, or simply apathetic in outlook. They're like, why does religion even matter? Who cares these days? Which, of course, is a luxurious point of view. It's a point of view you can only really have if you've not been brought up in that religion and had to fight to make your way out. So I think black humanists, by and large, do have that extra thing that they share, which is having had to move away from a religious context which isn't just about the belief in a set of stories, fairy tales, or myths which you come to struggle to believe in. It's also about moving away from a sense of belonging to the family, because the family have this shared set of customs and rituals, ways that they might use language or express themselves, which reflect that Christian tradition. And in rejecting the Christian tradition, it can also feel like you're rejecting them. And that can be a really difficult conflict to manage.

Audrey Simmons 33:04

Thank you for that. And that is you've just summed up Association of Black Humanists in in one sentence and then it is that transition. We uh when we travel across Africa or the Caribbean, everything they do has a sense of religion in it, and even the the most gangster of gangsters still believes in God. So it's so ingrained. And so when you're moving away, it's not just not going to church, that building, and not turning up on a Sunday or whatever. It's also, as you say, withdrawing from a family. And so when we're looking at, you know, humanism from the black perspective, we then have to think about how do we then transition and create spaces and what those spaces look like. I think. And I think as black people, we are, I wouldn't say innately, but creativity, music, and all of those things are part of that tradition as well. If we think of gospel music and jazz and all of those things, we're innately black. And so when we think of creating those spaces, creativity has to be a part of that as well. And so um Alice, is there anything finally as we bring this show to a close, is there anything that you finally want to say to the listeners about what you've been doing, or just a message that you wanted to give out at this

Books, Invitations, And Final Thanks

Audrey Simmons 34:22

point?

Alex Williams 34:22

Yeah, well, thank you for this opportunity. It's been such fun talking with you, and it's been a real pleasure having this title, The Power of Gathering, because it really does speak to the heart of why I think creativity is so important. Alongside my poetry collection, Secular Verses, I've written other books. A poetry collection called Black Iris, which explores and charts my two years spent living and working in Jordan in the Middle East. A young adult novel called His Hidden Wings, which is about a boy called Aidan, who was on his 16th birthday, painfully, magically, mysteriously grows a tiny but perfect pair of blue butterfly wings and just has to deal with them, is a kind of LGBT writes of passage story with a very happy ending. And then there's a children's book as well called Wendy the Whale, which looks at um a whale who got beached on the coast of Hermenus, which is a small fishing town in South Africa, and is re-released back into the water by all the townspeople. So it's a story for young people about how humans can live in harmony with nature. If you're interested in any of those books, please do head to my blog, thedialup.blogspot.com, where you can find all the details. They're also available on Amazon. And I would love to see some of you lovely listeners. You all have an open invitation to my hometown of Watford, whether you want to come and enjoy what the Pump House Theatre is putting on, the Watford Humanists Arts and Music Festival, or my dial up open mic. I'm here ready to receive you with open arms.

Audrey Simmons 35:45

Thank you, Alex. That was amazing. I want to thank you for sharing your insight. I want to thank you for sharing your creativity today. I would also like to thank those behind the scenes who are helping putting this show together. And I want to thank you, the listeners, for taking your time to listen to Alex today. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. And if you've enjoyed today's episode, please follow us on wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to share and tell your friends. And following the Association of Black Humanists, we are on Meetup. You'll find out exactly what we're up to and the activities that we've got going on. And we end Secular Sankofa with our affirmation. This has been Secular Sankofa. Until we meet next time, speak boldly, think freely, and live consciously.