Instead of living our lives trying to avoid grief, what would become possible if we instead embraced its inevitability? It would allow us to ask ourselves: what are the griefs we can live with, and what are the ones we cannot bear? In this talk, M.A. Miller considers an ethics of devotional witnessing that precedes political antagonisms in order to ask what becomes possible when we access our shared humanity in the face of difference without requiring those we share space with to become other than their selves.

Drawing on his work as the lead sponsor for the Black Prisoners’ Caucus at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center, Miller reflects on the challenges and possibilities of building a world in which incarcerated Black men are not treated as disposable or unredeemable, but as teachers, collaborators, and members of the broader Palouse community. The work requires confronting profound asymmetries of power—most visibly the fact that Miller can always leave the prison while the men he works alongside cannot. Yet the practice of sharing in circle creates a space where participants remain distinct while continually turning toward one another’s needs, dreams, and experiences.

Through these encounters, Miller theorizes a form of devotion grounded not in sameness but in the willingness to remain present to one another across difference. Sharing in the grief of others, he argues, can become a way of holding our own grief without being consumed by it.

April 20, 2026