"The line, “God don’t make junk” might sound trite, but think what it might mean to a person who has been treated as “junk/trash” all her/his life."
My mind immediately drew parallels with themes from Janelle Monàe's Dirty Computer. As Paper Magazine 2019 Pride Month profile of the artist noted, the album "itself was an honoring of the 'other,' full of anthems for the ostracized." For yours truly, the album already had some personal resonance in that I'm a Black woman with a variation of sexual development. As a person of the Catholic faith, it called me to a deeper solidarity with those considered "other" or "junk" in different ways than myself-in particular, LGBTQ.
The best description of the experience is encapsulated in the quote by the Paper article's author that "With this album she extended an open hand". That hand was creating a space in which there is conversation in what it means to be a person of marginalized sexual or gender identity. As Christian ethics professor Marcus Mescher noted in "The Problem of Indifference ", when the hand of the 'other's reaches out, we as Catholics can't be indifferent. We have to find ways to "be willing to move our feet, being willing to enter the ditch [a reference to the Parable of the Good Samaritan] and take that vantage point as our own". "Dirty Computer, for me, inspired me to lean into that
For that, I owe a debt of gratitude.
