{"id":19803,"date":"2021-02-08T09:27:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T14:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19803"},"modified":"2021-02-08T09:27:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T14:27:07","slug":"black-song-is-sacred-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19803","title":{"rendered":"Black Song Is Sacred Song"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Thea Bowman (1937\u20131990), a\nFranciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, was a powerful communicator, deeply\npassionate about Jesus, the Catholic Church, and her African American heritage.\nI begin today with her words on the history and significance of what she\ncelebrates as Black sacred song.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zCVQysdybeI\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>From the African Mother Continent, African men\nand women, through the Middle Passage, throughout the Diaspora, to the\nAmericas, carried the African gift and treasure of sacred song. To the\nAmericas, African men and women brought sacred songs and chants that reminded\nthem of their homelands and that sustained them in separation and in captivity,\nsong to respond to all life situations, and the ability to create new songs to\nanswer new needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>African Americans in sacred song preserved the\nmemory of African religious rites and symbols, of a holistic African\nspirituality, of rhythms and tones and harmonics that communicated their\ndeepest feelings across barriers of region and language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>African Americans in fields and quarters, at\nwork, in secret meetings, in slave festivals, in churches, camp meets and\nrevivals, wherever they met or congregated, consoled and strengthened\nthemselves and one another with sacred song\u2014moans, chants, shouts, psalms,\nhymns, and jubilees, first African songs, then African American songs. In the\ncrucible of separation and suffering, African American sacred song was formed.\n. . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As early as 1691, slaves in colonial homes,\nslave galleries or separate pews participated in worship services with white\nslave holders. They learned to sing the traditional European psalms and hymns .\n. . which they loved and adapted to their own style and use. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Black sacred song is soulful song\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li><em>holistic:<\/em>&nbsp;challenging the full engagement of mind,\nimagination, memory, feeling, emotion, voice, and&nbsp;body;&nbsp;<\/li><li><em>participatory:<\/em>&nbsp;inviting the worshipping community to join in\ncontemplation, in celebration and in&nbsp;prayer;&nbsp;<\/li><li><em>real:<\/em>&nbsp;celebrating the immediate concrete reality of\nthe worshipping community\u2014grief or separation, struggle or oppression,\ndetermination or joy\u2014bringing that reality to prayer within the community\nof&nbsp;believers;&nbsp;<\/li><li><em>spirit-filled:<\/em>&nbsp;energetic, engrossing,&nbsp;intense;&nbsp;<\/li><li><em>life-giving:<\/em>&nbsp;refreshing, encouraging, consoling,\ninvigorating, sustaining.&nbsp;. . .<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Black sacred song celebrates our God, [God\u2019s]\ngoodness, [God\u2019s] promise, our faith and hope, our journey toward the promise.\nBlack sacred song carries melodies and tonalities, rhythms and harmonies;\nmetaphors, symbols and stories of faith that speak to our hearts; words,\nphrases and images that touch and move us. . . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Black sacred song has been at once a source\nand an expression of Black faith, spirituality and devotion. By song, our\npeople have called the Spirit into our hearts, homes, churches, and communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The music Sister Thea\ndescribes is the gift of a deeply incarnate faith. The people who allowed the\nspirituals to sing through them knew the presence of a God who existed within\nthemselves and in the difficult circumstances of their lives. In her final\nyears, my [Richard Rohr\u2019s] own mother listened to Thea preach and sing. She\nfound immense comfort through witnessing Sister Thea\u2019s love for God even while\nThea journeyed with cancer.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Christ Prays in Us and through Us<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">Although most Sunday church services don\u2019t foster it, the essential religious experience is that we are being \u201cknown through\u201d more than knowing anything by ourselves. An authentic encounter with God will feel like true knowing, not just in our heads but in our hearts and bodies as well. I call this way of knowing contemplation, nondualistic thinking, or even \u201cthird-eye\u201d seeing. It is quite unlike the intellectual \u201cknowing\u201d most of us have been taught to rely on. This kind of prayer and \u201cseeing,\u201d takes away our anxiety about figuring it all out fully for ourselves or needing to be right about our formulations. At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with us, and we are not afraid of making mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No wonder all of the great liturgical prayers of the churches end with\nthe same phrase: \u201cthrough Christ our Lord, Amen.\u201d <em>We do not pray <\/em>to<em>&nbsp;Christ;\nwe pray <\/em>through<em>&nbsp;Christ.\n<\/em>Or even more\nprecisely, <em>Christ prays\nthrough us<\/em>. This is a\nvery different experience! We are always and forever the conduits, the\ninstruments, the tuning forks, the receiver stations (Romans 8:26\u201327). To live\nin such a way is to live inside of an unexplainable hope, because our lives\nwill now feel much larger than our own. In fact, they are no longer merely our\nown lives and, yet, paradoxically, we are more ourselves than ever before. That\nis the constant and consistent experience of the mystics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is within this context that I offer this week\u2019s Daily Meditations on\nthe healing, liberating, and contemplative power embodied in the African\nAmerican spirituals of the last three centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of our Living School alums, Arthur C. Jones, is a scholar and performer\nof African American spirituals. In his book <em>Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the\nSpirituals<\/em>, he observes\nthat \u201cThere are many people today who have virtually no understanding of what\nthe spirituals are and why they are important.\u201d [1] He makes the case that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the legacy of\nthe spirituals is worth our continued attention <em>now<\/em>, not only as \u201cmuseum music\u201d (a phrase often\nused by the great jazz artist Miles Davis), but also as a broad-ranging\ncultural tradition that remains relevant to pressing present-day social\nrealities, not just for African Americans, but for people everywhere who are\nconcerned with issues of social justice, community bonding, deep spirituality\nand\u2014most importantly\u2014the healing of deep wounds surrounding the shameful\nhistory of American slavery. [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are\nconcerned, as I am, with the issues that Arthur Jones mentions\u2014social and\nracial justice, community bonding, and deep spirituality\u2014I hope we can engage\nwith this material with the \u201cears\u201d of our hearts attuned to what the Spirit has\nto teach us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thea Bowman (1937\u20131990), a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, was a powerful communicator, deeply passionate about Jesus, the Catholic Church, and her African American heritage. I begin today with her words on the history and significance of what she celebrates as Black sacred song. From the African Mother Continent, African men and women, through the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19803"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19804,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19803\/revisions\/19804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}