Suitcase Series: Chesna Riley

This is the first interview in a series about creative work. I dreamed this up in the beginning of 2023, and sat down with Chesna several months ago. It just took time for it to all fall together, so I have been waiting for so long, and am delighted to finally share this with you. Chesna is wearing a madder red linen Saturday Set, mixed and matched with some of her own favorite pieces.

AL: You recently graduated and got ordained. What has that change meant for your creative life?

Chesna: Some of it I can’t talk about publicly, ‘cause it’s not super public knowledge yet. In a lot of ways it doesn’t, and I think that’s the hard part. It’s not, I mean seminary gave me some new skills, but in general it’s not things like it’s changed how my day is scheduled or it’s changed how I write a sermon or a lesson in a practical way. It’s just changed, seminary changed how I think about all of it. And so like, the actual process has not really changed much, but how I process the process is very different. So I don’t know how to say it’s different. Like it’s clearly different. I can see it in a lot of things. But it’s not really different in how I actually do it, but more in how I engage with it, and maybe how I structure it over a long period of time, even if like today is not fundamentally different. And then ordination, I don’t know. I keep being told I was supposed to feel differently, and I’m like, that’s not what a single prayer does. That’s not how that works. If I feel any different it’s that I feel like I can get away with a little bit more, and I don’t know if that’s actually true. That’s kind of a sore spot because my calling didn’t really change or something just because other people affirmed it, but it is a big deal that other people affirmed it.

AL: For me, my church wanted to ordain me at the beginning of my time in seminary, but then by the end, I wasn’t sure if there were any churches that would want me to pastor.

Chesna: Yeah, I’m having some conversations about, if there’s a specific thing I have to offer as a pastor it’s the, we keep saying we have to do everything differently, and I actually have some ideas about how we can do it differently, and we all want to do it differently, but we don’t. So, for me to just say, in so many words, I know how we can change Sunday mornings to be completely different, it makes me very unappealing to most people, including myself, like I don’t love change, like that sort of thing. So I don’t know if the way it’s changed me is actually helpful immediately. I’m still not sure what to do with this. I think we should completely restructure how we do Sunday mornings and how we do Wednesdays, and not just programming wise, but like, fundamentally what we do in that time. Because as much as we all believe that’s true, we love what we do. It’s been good for us and helpful for us. We don’t want to just throw it all out.

AL: I’ve been thinking throughout y’all’s process, are there some sort of vows, like marriage vows that I took that I have abandoned?

Chesna: Yeah, that’s a hard one, because I don’t know that I ever get to move into full time ministry. I also know I can’t keep doing three jobs, so what does ordination mean for me in that. And I don’t have a great answer for it, and nobody else does either.

AL: So this is a generalization, probably each day is a lot different, When you wake up in the morning, how do you feel like you want to show up in the world? What are things that come up for you?

Chesna: Really want to be present in individual moments, mostly because I’m bad at it, so that’s something I want to be able to do, and I want to be more gentle in the world. Like, I want to have an effect, but I don’t want it to necessarily be the wrecking ball I feel like I usually am, so that when I am that wrecking ball there’s some like, padding around it. It’s not lethal. And so I want to be more of a gentle presence, that breaks everything, but in a way that is safe and inviting. And I think I have the wrecking ball part down, because it’s just more in my natural personality, but figuring out how to be less abrasive and just kind of rough and harsh. That’s kind of the part that I want to be the new creation.

AL: I think it says a lot about how you make people feel safe that people like Ann, are cool with letting you like preaching what you want to preach

Chesna: Or slipping up and forgetting that I need to change hell to heck. Yeah. I love that Kevin was the one who responded to that.

AL:What roles do you need your clothes to play for you?

Chesna: A huge part of being any kind of position of authority person is how you visibly present, and so much of what we call professional or authoritative, fundamentally has nothing to do with our physical bodies, right. And, so like, as a woman, I’m aware of that, just my femaleness, and because I’m curvy I am perceived very female, there’s nothing for me to do about that. I can’t, like, these don’t go away. I have boobs, they’re big, they’re there.I have a butt. It’s big and cute, and it’s there. There’s no getting away from that. And I feel like my clothes, there’s actually no way for me to dress professionally, and some of that’s by choice. I have tattoos and piercings, and in one job I have to either take them out or cover them up, which is infuriating, because, no, I got them in visible places for reasons. But then there’s parts of it that, like no, I just can’t change that that’s now my body is. Even when I lost all the weight because I broke the toe, so my body was burning all of the calories. I still had big boobs. That’s just s thing, and that’s not “professional” and that’s not seen as someone who can have authority, and yet here I am as a trained professional given a position of authority, and clothes don’t dress the fact that my body is what it is, and our cultural expectations around bodies are what they are.

AL: There’s a quote that I still kind of like, but I think of it differently, that was, “I want my outfit to say ‘Listen to me’ not ‘Look at me.’”

Chesna:Yeah

AL: I think that’s still true, but I think that being an issue— It was a women’s workwear company—The being an issue was because of misogyny, like that shouldn’t be…We don’t have less respect for an office man who’s like a CEO and wears a fuchsia shirt to work.

Chesna: Don’t we have more respect because he is conventionally attractive in a way that we would say I’m sexually attracted to him? Like in some ways that gives him more authority. But for me to present that way gives less. And I’m like, it annoys me because I think I’m attractive and I don’t think I should have to cover up or bind, and I can’t anyways. I think that’s the biggest frustration because not only do I not want to, because I think it’s just bullshit misogyny that I shouldn’t have to deal with, but also I can’t, like I could not change my body to play that game, even if I was willing.

AL: I was surprised when I graduated, at the number of women who were excited because now they could wear clerical robes to preach, because they didn’t have to think about their clothes, or what their body looked like.

Chesna: That is a thing.

AL: But it’s sad that it’s like, a tent is the solution to this.

Chesna: Even then. If I get the robes made for women, which mine is, and it’s a little bit small, I would need to size up, but that one was free, so that’s why I have it. Because they’re expensive, and they’re even more expensive, if you get the ones that are specifically for women. But as someone who has breasts and a butt, even in that, like I saw the pictures, there’s something inherently sexual about it. Because my body is shaped that way. And I don’t have a problem with that, like I’m an adult woman who’s attracted to a guy right now, it’s a thing, but again if it’s a male that is dressed in a way that draws attention to that we don’t judge him for that and we don’t question. We don’t ask any questions about his sex life attached to that. We just say, “I find that body attractive, and we will even give more power to it. So, even in robes, I can’t win.

AL: What contexts do you have in your day? You have very different contexts that you’re dressing for.

Chesna: I do. So early mornings life guarding, so I have to be ready to be in the water. But to be ready to do a lot of very physical things. Up here in the office, I actually get away with not doing full business casual, although some days I have to, but I’m dressed a little more casually to do some of the physical stuff up here, like on Wednesday nights I purposefully try to dress down. I’ve done that with youth since I started, because if they’re coming straight from basketball practice, I don’t want them to feel like they’re out of place, or if they’re going directly to something. If they are more dressed than me, in some ways that gives them more power and agency, and that’s great, but if they are coming from a sweaty mess, I’m a sweaty mess, and it’s fine. And then with tutoring, I’m actually having to do full business casual, and cover up the tattoos and take out the piercings, which is exhausting and infuriating, and my least favorite part of it. But then like, I play pool at a bar every Thursday night, and while I’m not necessarily, I mean I’m not trying to pick anyone up, I’m seeing someone I’m excited about, and so I’m not interested in getting that kind of attention. At the same time, I don’t want to show up and be a schlub. I’m competing in a sport in a specific place, so there’s a casualness there, you know I’m not Janette Lee, although I’ve met her and she’s incredible, but I still want to dress in a way that’s not intimidating, but it’s appropriate and it’s intimidating, because I’m not that great, and I need all the edge I can get in that game. And Sunday mornings; that one’s so weird. ‘Cause you don’t, I have this thing where, if people can’t see people who look and dress like them in leadership, then they, at least subconsciously feel like they can’t be in leadership. So I never want to dress to a point —it’s why I have a thing with robes— As much as I like them, I have this other thing of like, is that blocking clergy class of and making these positions unaccessible. At the same time, the Anns would struggle if I shoed up in running tights and a tank top. That would be a hurdle for them in the same way. So Sunday mornings are weird, and I kind of bounce between way overdressed and a little bit underdressed. If you come over enough weeks, maybe there’s a model there that you can participate in.

AL: What do you feel is your creative work right now? What is your creative energy going toward?

Chesna: I am learning how to Tunisian crochet. It’s going okay. I cannot get my tension right. But that’s a new thing for me, I have not tried that kind of crochet before. And so that is the big one. I really want to get back into sewing, and I just have not had the energy to clear out that corner of the roman take the old sewing machine out of the table and put the new one that doesn’t have to worked on in. So I’m primarily working with yarn and fiber right now. And I’m having a lot of fun with that. Not good at it, but I’m having a lot of fun.

AL: What are you reading right now?

Chesna: Nothing, I just haven’t had time start it, but on my list I’ve got On Repair and Repentance by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. I’m so excited about that book, and I just haven’t had the energy that I want to spend on it. I’m still working through A Hole in the World by Amanda Opelt, Rachel Held Evans’ sister, and just writing through grief and practices of grief culturally. And then fiction-wise the latest from C.S. Humble, the first is All These Subtle Deceits, and the next one, I haven’t started yet is All the Prospect Around us. It’s a horror series, which is not usually my genre, but he writes Christian Horror and it’s brilliant and beautiful, and he’s got this, it’s going to be a five book series, and he’s just an incredible writer, and does some really beautiful things, even within the genre of horror. And that’s the fiction that I’m carrying around with me and I know it’s going to be one of those things that rips me apart in all the right ways that you want fiction to do, and I just haven’t quite had the emotional energy for it, so I’m just carrying it around.

AL: What’s your favorite book?

Chesna: That’s hard. I will settle on. ’Til We have faces by C.S. Lewis, because I think it’s just one of those beautiful works of literature, but anything by Brandon Sanderson is also up there.

AL: Whose work gets your synapses firing?

Semler, right now, is making music that makes me want to make music, and it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to do that. They’re doing some really incredible things, especially like their arrangement of, I think it’s Psalm 62, that is just, they do without auditory sound, that’s redundant, but, what the text does, and that’s not easy to do, especially with the psalms of lament. And I mean it’s like a visceral thing.

I love how Nadia Bolz-Weber writes, and I would love to get in a process of writing often enough  to be able to do that just kind of day to day theology work, because I think I have the chops for that or could have the chops for that. And usually reading her, makes me just want to sit down and write as well.

I don’t know if there’s any yarn stuff I’m really excited about right now.

AL: What are you looking for in music to listen to while you work?

Chesna: I tend to lean into like instrumental. I say classical, but not as in the genre, because I actually hate the classical era. I prefer like, romantic or 20th century. I love that because I know enough about it that it helps me focus on something other than the chaos of my day. I can get into analyzing that while I work on something else, or I can ignore and there’s just pretty something in the background. It can be a focus point or just pleasant background noise. So I really love finding, especially piano, or cello, I can do orchestra or any of them, but that’s usually, I usually lean into romantic or 20th century instrumental. Especially for working music. I can’t have lyrics.

AL: Top three songs right now?

Chesna: Psalm 62 by Semler

I’m Never Going to Not Dance Again by P!nk

It’s fluff, but it’s exact right kind of, I have nothing in depth to say other than I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.

I’m still really hung up on the Canticle of Turnings, the Gentle Wolves arrangement. I have been for months.

AL: Who is someone you’ve been wishing you could collaborate with?

Chesna: Yeah, I’ve actually got a friend from seminary, his name is Mike Wallace, and he’s an incredible musician and I got to play piano for him at a chapel service this semester, and I just miss doing ensemble playing. I get to some with Downing every week, but I just miss, musically just spending time with one or a group of people, making music together, and he has the kind of classical training that I don’t get to use any more. He’s an organist, so I ‘d love to get to do either piano organ duets, or organ duets. That nerd is getting to play the organ in Israel right now for church services, and he’s singing. He sang Ave Maria in one of the big cathedrals. I would love to get to make music with him. He and I have talked hymnody together over the last semester, and we agree in a lot of ways, and we disagree in a lot of ways, so it makes that a really fun conversation to nerd out on and just get into like the weeds of hymnody and church music history That would be fun.

AL: What’s your favorite meal?

Chesna: I’ve been using Hello Fresh, because I don’t know how to grocery shop and I’m a terrible cook, and they give me like exact measurements of stuff. They have this lemon-y spaghetti with Brussels sprouts, and so it’s kind of a cream sauce, it’s not Alfredo, because I don’t like Alfredo, it’s kind of a cream sauce, but very lemony and roasted Brussels sprouts in with it, it’s so good.

AL: Do you have any practices that you would call rituals?

Chesna: I have a new one recently that’s a really weird one, but it’s usually I will take melatonin at night and I will read for a little while, and I’ve had to start reading on my phone because the cat wants to both of us get under the blanket like a tent, like she wants to be under there, but she won’t go under there if I don’t go head under the blanket with her for like five minutes first, so there’s been this weird feeling like a little kid every night crawling into bed and then curling up and she curls up right beside me and then if I stay under long enough and put everything away when I go out she’ll stay under and keep my feet warm, and it’s become this ritual because we’re doing it every night, and it’s just this beautiful, peaceful moment of this weird little creature has somehow trained me that this is what we do when it’s bed time. I probably have some serious ones, but that’s the one right now that I am deeply deeply amused by and loving.

AL: How do you show your body love and gratitude?

Chesna: Mmm. I’m so bad at it. So bad at it. Last weekend was really good for me. Being in a hot springs, and being still and going to the bath house. That was great. I’m trying to get back into swimming while my schedule, while it’s still chaos, it’s a little bit more my own. I always feel so strong in the water. That’s the place that physically I feel like I am capable, and I don’t ever question it very much, other than like, it’s harder to get up off the floor and stuff, but in the water I don’t feel that. In the water, I just feel capable, and so I love being able to do that. And remember that my body can do this really cool thing, like I can swim the butterfly, ya know, that’s incredible. I’m not good at it, but I can do it, and it looks right even if it’s slower than Christmas. Then I actually, over the summer I think, got one of those acupressure mats, and that’s been a really good thing of, it makes me very aware my body. You lay on that, and it hurts, but it kind of hurts in the way a tattoo hurts, which is a thing that I like, which is weird I know, but whatever, I’m not the only one, and it does make me, like you’re just very aware of your body when you have that many things being touched, and when I’m doing that consistently I tend to just be kinder to my body in general because I’m more aware of it.

AL: Who in your life makes you feel valued and appreciated?

Chesna: I’m not going to name him, but this guy that I’m seeing, he goes out of his way to do that. Penny and I have some practices of just appreciating each other, that I didn’t realize how much that just consistent reinforcement has mattered. My church people are great. Y’all are wonderful, and so encouraging and say thank you so often, and not just in church settings. That’s really helpful. And some of my ladies at the Y have been going out of their way to name the things that they see that we’re having to do to cover some things that are not being done, and it has been helpful to me to go, oh people do see it that we are doing these extra things and that it’s costing us something.

AL: Is there something you do that you have loved for a long time?

Chesna: Music. Strangely yarn. I learned how to crochet from a neighbor we had that was like the neighborhood grandparents, and one day I was watching her crochet. I was like 6 or 7, I mean, it was like when we first moved to plain view, so I would have been in first grade, and I was just fascinated by it, and she taught me how to do it. Even though I haven’t done it all my life it’s now of those things I learned early on and have gone back to enough different times that I just love working with fiber. It feels good, and it’s really cool to go, “I made this.” So yeah, music and playing with string.

AL:What parts of your work stretch and challenge your where do you want to grow?

I am not a non-anxious presence, and I’ve quit trying to be, because I’m not, but I am still in a field of work, and not just here, but also as a life guard where I’ve got to be some kind of presence to people who are in crisis, so if I’m not going to be non-anxious what can I bring to that and answering that is hard, because in some ways it’s super easy to go like, I’m the most wound up person you know, so if you go in the hospital, the dogs going to get fed, the kids are going to get showered. Those things I’m great at because I immediately see that and I just wind myself up to get that done, and that’s great. But what actually helps the person in crisis in the moment I’m there with them, and not just how do I help take care of that, and figuring out how to answer that; letting them be anxious and know they’re not alone and crazy in that, but also finding that balance of, it doesn’t help them if I drive their anxiety up. So I’m not a non-anxious presence, but how can my own anxiety be kind of that human connection and comfort without

AL: I think that’s valid like in work as a life guard for example, if you were a non-anxious presence because you’re oblivious…

Chesna: That.

AL: That’s not actually supportive to people.

Chesna: And there’s a point where intensity in that moment…if you really need my help, my intensity is a comfort, because you see, alright, there is someone not only responding, but responding with the appropriate fear for the situation is great, but at the same time, if I’m in full panic mode, you’re not going to feel better. So, what’s that line between.

AL: Before you go, what’s in your suitcase?

Chesna:

Rifle Paper Co. Travel Cup

A clip on bed fan

Lipstick, either Nyx Lingerie or Beauty Bakerie Lip Whip

Jewelry Box from my Sigma Alpha Iota sister

Travel Yarn, I always have a project that I keep in the car, just to work on while I’m traveling.