Weird things can happen when you’re just trying to walk into the post office. I was simply trying to mail a couple of packages when I saw a woman – white, perhaps in her 40’s or early 50’s – struggling to get through the door of our local P.O. She was trying to maneuver one of those small four-wheeled carts that people use to transport groceries without a car. Seeing that she was having trouble, I instinctively moved to hold the door for her. When I reached to hold the door, my hand lightly brushed past one of her fingers. At which point, she started screeching: “Don’t touch me!” I was stunned, but I managed to say I was simply trying to help. Her screeching got louder: “Get off my fingernails!” Through gritted teeth, I responded: “Don’t be an idiot!” (Any adjective you want to insert before the word idiot is probably the one I used.) We both walked up to the clerks’ counter and transacted our separate business as if nothing had happened seconds before. But it didn’t end there for me. I went back to my car seething. My heart was beating faster, and I felt sharp pangs shooting through my chest. For several moments, I sat watching and waiting in my car. For what I don’t know. Eventually, the woman walked out with her cart, but this time smiling pleasantly and talking with another white woman who ostensibly knew nothing about the earlier skirmish. Of course, when I felt calm enough to drive home, I told my family about this bizarre incident. My body was still unsettled, as was my mind. Somehow, the retelling of the encounter shifted to “coulda-woulda-shoulda” responses in an almost call and response pattern. Pretty soon jokes started bubbling up and before it was over, we were doubled over with laughter. I am telling this not to make light of this vicious and painful interaction. No amount of “but what if” speculation can make this encounter about anything other than race. Racial animosity can erupt and escalate at any time, and it is not a joking matter. But in the shared retelling and witnessing with my husband and son, we created sanctuary where healing laughter and joy could emerge.
I have never heard a more poignant description of healing laughter than one offered in a poem written by another family member, my sister-in-law Peg Larkin.
Laughter,
To temper the armor
Fastened over the heart,
And worn out into this ravaged world.
Laughter,
So the body that must
Contain itself,
Can expand.
.
In this poem, my Irish-Italian sister-in-law captured the essence of Black joy. It is a joy that enlivens, as it brings the ravages of white supremacist world into sharp relief. We are living in racially treacherous times. The elected leader of this nation knows one thing for sure: that his quest for total dominion over the planet is most expeditiously achieved through the evocation of racial distrust and rage. It doesn’t matter that he is a scandal-ridden, convicted felon so long as he affirms the notion that white is right. It does not matter that he is a serial grifter, and by most measures a complete dimwit when it comes to intellectual, entrepreneurial, or common sense matters. He consolidates power by delivering death and destruction to black and brown people. He exploits the transgenerational and rage-filled yearnings of folks deceived by the false promises of white supremacy. The one thing he knows for sure is that race baiting is a winning strategy, so long as he gives so-called “good people” plausible deniability. Black joy offers neither false assurances or emotional bypasses. It focuses the mind, body, and spirit as we navigate these racially perilous waters. Black joy is why I experience the raspy voice of Rev. James Cleveland as a soulful balm when he sings:
The tempest is raging, the billows are high
The sky is overshadowed with blackness; no shelter or help is nigh
It seems that each moment is threatening a grave in the angry deep…
The winds and the waves obey Your will,
Peace, Be still!
My relationship with old-school gospel music is deep and enduring – this in spite of the fact that the didactics of the catechism and biblical literalism don’t work for me. The music and the rhythms touch me wholly; they allow me to glimpse the holy. When my body hears Mahalia Jackson sing Precious Lord, Take My Hand, I am connected to the Source that sustained my ancestors and gave them joy inside their tears.
What has any of this to do with our racially ravaged world? The music helps me to know that we who believe in justice and human dignity are made for this moment. Our joy cannot be squelched. This joy is transformational. How can we not marvel at the sacred irony that the same scriptures that were weaponized to create a slavocracy spurred righteous uprisings against slavery and oppression? From the days of Richard Allen and Harriet Tubman to the church women and men who nurtured Black freedom movements up to the 21st century, scriptural wisdom and soul-stirring music (along with well-seasoned food) have been integral to resistance, courage, and joy. But here’s the thing: Joy is an affront to oppressors or “wanna-be” dominators, and they hasten to stifle it. This sense of threat may be traceable to the same biblical malpractice that was used to subdue black-skinned peoples and steal gold from their African mines. For example, pro-slavery minister Benjamin Morgan Palmer and biblical commentators have pointed to the mocking laughter of Noah’s son as the justification for eternal enslavement of black-skinned people. But something different happens when scriptures are put in the hands of the oppressed. The poet Paul Laurence Dunbar put it this way:
An’ you’ enemies may ‘sail you
In de back an’ in de front;
But de Lawd is all aroun’ you,
Fu’ to ba’ de battle’s brunt.
Dey kin fo’ge yo’chains an’ shackles
F’om de mountains to de sea;
But de Lawd will sen’ some Moses
Fu’ to set his chilun free.
This poem never fails to evoke laughter, but it is a serious misreading to dismiss it as minstrelsy. This poem liberates joy inside the tears. It exemplifies the subtlety and life-saving dissemblance underlying the courage essential to any freedom movement. The same scriptures that Christian Nationalists use to justify subjugation, incarceration, and annihilation spark liberation and transformational joy. The Crouch and Winan rendition of Let the Church Say Amen reminds us: Despair is not an option; deliverance is on the way.
Even in the valley, or
Standing at your Red Sea…
Help is on the way.
Deliverance is not passive, nor does it happen through fantasy-filled hope for rescue. Some proverbs have described this activism as faith with feet. For example, the scriptural wisdom that sustained my ancestors contained stories about the Prince of Peace flipping tables and raising a little bit of hell in the Temple; in other words, rejecting and resisting the authoritarianism of accepted rules and regulations. Nor did he whisper sweet nothings in order to “respect both sides”. I think there was some reference to grifters – or maybe thieves and robbers.
Satan wears many faces!
As the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir warns in Order My Steps, “Satan is busy!” By some definitions, Satan is an entity that entices people into falsehoods or evil inclinations and acts – then flips and punishes them! My point is this: Satan has many faces. It is completely misguided to reduce to some mythological creature who exacts vengeance in the not-so-sweet by and by. Satan lives in the here and now whenever and wherever lies are the currency of power. In this world, cities that support the human dignity of immigrants are labeled as anti-American. Cities with black leadership or a majority black population are placed under armed occupation or the threat of military intervention. Meanwhile, according to FBI data, 10 majority white cities are more dangerous than Washington, DC. The White House felon, who doesn’t know the back of the Bible from the front, beguiles his Christian Nationalist followers by claiming that racism is Christian values in action. When I hear “Satan is busy”, I see the face of border czar Tom Homan. His chilling malevolence was on full display when he threatened to detain and deport whole families if they don’t want to be separated. In this white supremacist travesty of justice, we haven’t heard one word about undocumented Albanians, Afrikaners, Slovenians, or any Europeans being rounded up en masse in supermarket or church parking lots. (Oops, my bad: the Afrikaners got their documents handed to them by the White House Felon.) Other faces? How about those so-called “center-left” think tanks that propose abandoning words like “unhoused” – a word that might imply systemic dysfunction; one center suggested using “homeless” instead, a label that diminishes a person into an object of pity or scorn. Of course, sometimes the faces of Satan are all gathered around a table in the White House. They call these faces a Cabinet meeting, where sycophants and shameless emissaries of evil spew lies and distortions in order to gain favor with their idol god.
I just want to walk worthy!‘
“Show me how to walk in Your Word
Show me how to talk in Your Word
When I need a brand new song to sing
Show me how to make Your praises ring.!
I was completely surprised when the Spotify algorithm informed me that Order My Steps was my favorite song. I like to think that I (not AI) get to decide what my favorite song is, but if the frequency with which I play this song is any indication, the algorithm is telling a certain kind of truth. Although theosophy is well beyond the limits of my competence, I started to ponder why I find solace and joy in gospel music. To be totally honest, I take the lyrics seriously, but not literally. Listening to music is how I meditate and how I feel most wholly in prayer. Bill (my husband) suggested that perhaps I am “being prayed” in body, mind, and spirit when I listen to music; he also invited me to read Romans 8:26. Sometimes words fail, and our hearts can only be expressed in moans and groans and movement. What I learned is that I feel joy not through my own willful and solitary effort but through alignment with lineages of ancestors, blessings, and grace. It is during those times that I am “being prayed”. What I learned is that black joy is a communal gift that we experience when we surrender to that alignment and walk worthy.
“Walking worthy” is something we do in community, both human and material as well as beyond human and ethereal. It is leaning into the evidence of things not yet seen. Walking worthy is to be anchored in what is and also aligned with possibility. In other words, the steps have no predetermined path or outcome. Sometimes the steps start with pauses of gratitude. My son Walker witnessed such a pause in Washington, DC (where Satan is busy!) During an early morning stroll, he witnessed a circle of unhoused people holding hands and praying for the grace to make a “good day a better day”. He experienced their prayer as not only a personal blessing but also an offering of blessings to the world.
Peace, Be still!
I want to walk worthy- unapologetically, anchored, and aligned. It is clear to me that Black joy is not the same as the pursuit of happiness. Sometimes Black joy leads us to build bridges; at other times, it means knowing when to burn them. Black joy means learning to savor the small delights that overflow with abundant grace: hummingbirds flitting at my backyard feeder, the open abundance of a hibiscus or a hollyhock in bloom, the burst of flavor from the first bite of a cold sweet watermelon, the intelligences and humor of my first grandchild who navigates life on neural pathways shaped by autism.
In a recent conversation with Dr. Gloria Burgess, I was reminded that we can live Black joy in what she calls “the new church”: town halls, playgrounds, book clubs, school rooms – crucibles of learning and intentional community. Our conversation reminded me of Harriet Tubman, my favorite gun-toting saint who embodied “faith with feet”. Her steps led her from the lethal cruelties of enslavement on a Maryland plantation through snake-infested swamps and finally to a home in upstate New York where she cared for the elderly and infirm of all races. Undeterred by systemic betrayals and personal heartbreak, her journey led her to emancipate herself and others from the enslavers’ plantation and to exorcise any vestiges of plantation enslavement in her heart. Like Harriet, I want to walk worthy in this racially ravaged world. This desire draws me back to the joy expressed in the poem that my beloved Peg wrote in celebration of my birthday.
Laughter
that breaks the barrel apart
That spills out over
The rusted nails,
And gnarled boards.
All our broken pieces.
Where we turn toward the crystalline, tinkling
Laughter song,
And shout:
So, this is what Love sounds like!
Not
Constrained
Not
Contained
Never
Bent over a barrel
But bursting out and filling over
Every furrowed scowl in the earth,
A giddy drink for the tender green tendrils
Poking through.
Born again.
So let the church say Amen!
