Ecstatic Solidarity and Collective Joy

Rabia's devotional practice was marked by ecstasy—overwhelming moments of connection to the Divine that could move her to tears or laughter, transforming suffering into rapture. In diaspora found families, ecstatic experiences—dancing together, celebrating births and arrivals, mourning together with full body expression, creating art collaboratively—become acts of resistance. Neoliberal displacement systems require migrants to remain isolated, productive, and emotionally managed. Found families that practice collective joy resist this regime. When a Congolese community dances together after a successful visa application, when a queer found family celebrates a chosen member's wedding, when a poetry collective erupts in laughter and call-and-response—these moments of ecstasy reaffirm that their lives matter, that beauty and joy are possible within displacement. Rabia's model suggests that spiritual community requires regular ecstatic practice, not as escape but as affirmation of aliveness and worth. These joyful gatherings build emotional resources for the harder times ahead. They also transform found family identity from one defined purely by loss and survival into one that includes pleasure, beauty, and the capacity to feel fully human. Ecstatic solidarity becomes a form of spiritual and political sustenance.