In His Arms, So Many Prayers ... So Many Prayers Rest

By Enuma Okoro, D'03
Author and Retreat Director
Raleigh, North Carolina

It is the week of Christ the King. This past Sunday marked the first in Advent. The last few days have found me ruminating on the dialogue between Pilate and Jesus found in John’s Gospel 18:33b-37. I read the gospel this week and for the first time in a very long while I can imagine myself as disbelieving as Pilate. Not because I’m at any crux of faith but simply because every now and then, by the mercy of God, I am struck anew by the incredibility of the incarnation. When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews,” I can almost hear how “cuckoo for coco puffs” that would have sounded to anyone, and envision the guards behind Pilate just rolling their eyes thinking, “Here goes another one.”

Yet, it is not lost on me that somehow God has enabled me to believe in the absurdity of it all. And while God’s kingdom is not of this world, it is in the very mundane parameters of this world that I find myself continually caught off guard by the wonder of Christ. He breaks in randomly in the midst of my planning and fretting and hoping and achieving, and reminds me of the reality of an incarnate God, a looming Spirit, a returning Christ.

The most recent inbreaking was while I was on the treadmill running to the music from my iPod. I had set it to shuffle mode and was running my last mile on the highs of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, the raunchy duets of Akon and Snoop, and the invigorating girl-power of Beyonce. Then my iPod shuffled to “Picture of Jesus” by Ben Harper and as I listened to the words and to the beautiful South African voices harmonizing in the background I was suddenly overwhelmed by the idea of a God who took on flesh for love of creation, and by a God who still cradles the disharmony of a broken world. After the song played out I pressed the back button and found myself practicing the ancient spiritual discipline of Lectio Divinia to a popular funk artist’s tribute to the Lord of heaven and earth. I listened to that song three times for 15 minutes.

A version of Harper's "Picture of Jesus" set to footage of a Brazilian favela.

The picture of Jesus is mirrored to us through the ordinary people and things of this world. Everywhere we look there is the possibility of catching iconic reflections of Christ. There is the possibility of seeing that God’s kingdom though not of this world, is coming. But we have to be willing to be interrupted. We have to be willing to be reminded that even faith and belief is by grace. And adoration, praise, hope, and expectation, those postures are willed responses.

Advent reminds us that God has always been present, even before the visitation. It reminds us that God is accustomed to having arms full of prayers. It reminds us that God does not force God’s self upon us.

During Advent we keep watch for the random inbreakings, for the absurd in the mundane, for the opportunities to remember that belief itself is not of this world, but this is the world in which God has chosen to make God’s self known.

Find some time over the next few days and download the song, “Picture of Jesus” by Ben Harper. Listen to it several times. You might be surprised where it leads you.

“So Let us say a prayer

For every living thing

Walking towards a light

From the cross of a king

We long to be a picture of Jesus

Of Jesus

In his arms

In his arms so many prayers rest

I long to be a picture of Jesus

With him we shall be forever blessed”

(Ben Harper, Picture of Jesus, track 13, Diamonds on the Inside Audio CD- 2003)

Enuma Okoro is a 2003 Duke Divinity School graduate. She is a writer and retreat leader living in Raleigh, NC. Visit her website at www.devoutmind.com and follow her blogs; http://onemoreblackwoman.blogspot.com and http://reluctantpilgrim.wordpress.com

Precious, Take Our Hand

By Amey Victoria Adkins, D'09

Research Assistant, Black Church Studies

Duke Divinity School

Let me be frank: Everyone should see the movie Precious.[1]

**Please note that the preview below may contain offensive language.**

I’ve talked about it, read about it, heard about it, prepared for it, and finally, after missing two sold-out showings, I’ve seen it. I sat in the unprecedented stillness of a full theatre as I watched “Precious,” the story of a battered but resilient young woman originally characterized in the novel “Push” by Sapphire. The movie postures us in the world of Claireece “Precious” Jones, a dark-skinned, overweight 16-year old black woman enduring physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuses unspeakable—she is already pregnant with a second child from episodes of serial rape by her own father.

What I have not loved, however, is the way that a story like Precious seems to be so easily escaping us. With so many advocacy groups jumping on board to promote their cause via the conduit of the movie, it is difficult to discern the ways in which making this movie a “call to action,” be it against child abuse or growing illiteracy rates, performs a reduction of what is most profoundly at hand—even though Precious is a fictitious character, the people who do identify with her circumstances can’t be reduced to causes. For others concerned with painted pathologies and “inside” conversations being hung out to dry, therein also lies a tired tactic of evasion. I think that this narrative has something deeper to teach, particularly to those who claim to be Christians.

I found it no coincidence that God is not found in the places one might think in this story. By my count, there are only two explicit references to the divine throughout (at least asserted by Precious herself). Once, Precious throws off on the idea that “God or whoever” is looking down from above. No surprise seeing that she hasn’t seen salvation from the frying pans that her mother throws unrelentingly at her head. The other overt and inherently Christian reference occurs in a moment of desperation.

At one of her lowest points, Precious and her newborn son Abdul (an interesting choice of an Arabic name, meaning something akin to “servant of God,” given that her daughter with Down’s Syndrome is named Mongoloid. “Mongo” for short.) have barely escaped a violent death at the hands of Precious’ mother. It is Christmas, and she is afraid, exposed and running for her life. Holding the tiny baby in the wintry cold, swaddled in the blanket covered in her own blood, Precious walks past a church mission. An unmistakable cross looms above her and she peers through the gated door. Looking through the window, a fleeting daydream transforms the gathering inside into a warm holiday choir scene, with she and her newborn fully robed and rejoicing in praise, her light-skinned-curly-haired husband looking adoringly over her shoulder. They are clean, every hair is in place, her makeup is beautifully done, and her imagined partner even holds a small pet dog in his arms. It is the perfect nativity, and yet, the falling snow transforms us again to the painful fragility of the moment: for Precious, there is no room at the inn. Even the doors of the church are only unlocked by her imagination.

And yet, there is an unmistakable salvific community for Precious—just not the kind of community most of us would imagination. Moved to an alternative school after her second pregnancy, Ms. Rain’s classroom becomes a kind of “church,” a place where she is affirmed and encouraged, a place where her gifts are stirred, a place where her promise is called out. It is a rather motley crew of outcasts who gather each day in the tiny classroom on the 11^th floor. Immigrants, teenage mothers, minority women facing the harsh realities of a world where they don’t quite fit, all led by an amazing teacher who happens to be black and lesbian. It is here that Precious finds worth, community, dignity, support, and most of all love.

After yet another unrelenting blow of tragedy, Precious sits in the classroom vacantly. She is at the end of her words; she has nothing left to write. Precious laments, “Nobody loves me.” She begs of her teacher, “Please don’t lie to me.” Everyone in her life who was supposed to love her failed. And only in that space, in that community, is Precious reminded of real love. And perhaps for the first time, someone she can trust has told her: “I love you, Precious.” When there was no where to go, when the doors of the church were locked, Precious went to school, and waited for her family—not that by birth or blood, but that by a deep kind of other bond—to come for her.

I think that this brings us closer to the point. In a conversation with beloved sister-theologians of color the other evening, we began to discuss the way that Katie Couric struggled to maintain her bearings while interviewing Sapphire a few weeks ago about the story. At one point, her worlds failing, she stutters “I just can’t imagine.”

I realized, in that moment, that Couric’s efforts represent our problem precisely . The Church maintains a tenuous theological imagination, one that often asks the wrong question. Because I don’t think that our deepest call is to finds ways to imagine ourselves inside of the horror, experiencing the trauma of Precious’ story. Far too many women and men already live inside of this intimate space of negotiation day in and day out—and there is too great a chasm that will either cheapen the very real experiences of so many people in the world, or further distance us away from one another. Imagination, in that instance, is a luxury.

But perhaps what is critical for us, is the question of whether or not we can imagine ourselves living with, journeying with, being present with, working with, and loving with someone who is marked by such intense suffering. I read an interview online where Lee Daniels, the brilliant director of the movie, stated that prior to this work he had a negative stereotype himself of fat black women. He was disgusted by it, but his confession was true. Precious was a mirror into his own thoughts. Precious challenged him. Perhaps, then, if Precious can challenge Lee Daniels, Precious should be challenging us in the same kinds of probing ways. And for the church, perhaps Precious can be a kind of mirror to who we say that we are. To who we say God is. And to how we live into the unimaginable grit of a tortured but risen Lord.

Do we see Precious? Can we imagine ourselves kissing her on the forehead? Cleaning the blood off of her young baby? Letting her stay in our homes? Not reducing her identity (read: her badgering school principal’s irresponsible teenage mother stereotype) to a problem of ethics? And for those of us who navigate the spaces of pain that remain far too often as silent realities in our midst, can we imagine facing the lies we’ve been told? Can we imagine the continued perseverance and grasping for hope even when it seems senseless?

I think so, but not if we are alone. Not if churches don’t see their need of the Precious living on their block. Not if we realize that our single garment of destiny has no hem without her. Not if we miss opportunities to have truth-telling break the demonic silences in our midst. This movie is one that bears theological weight upon the issue of real presence in the world, and the one scene featuring the inadequacy of the church-as-institution is one worth mulling over. For if we refuse Precious, have we not refused the gift of our Lord?

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[1] Caveats: This movie is too graphic for children and young teens. And, you shouldn’t go alone.

On the Significance of Pauli Murray (Part I)

***In honor of Pauli Murray's birthday this week (November 20), we are sharing the following reflections as well as local (Durham) information on activities honoring the occasion. Happy Birthday, Pauli!***

By Dr. Willie James Jennings

Associate Professor of Theology and Black Church Studies

Duke Divinity School

At the beginning of a seminary career, one of the best people to be introduced to is Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray. Born November 20, 1910 and died July 1, 1985, Pauli Murray was one of the most important Christian intellectuals of the last century. Poet, writer, activist, lawyer, and the first African American woman ordained an Episcopal Priest, Murray bequeathed to us a eloquent and powerful testimony of a Christian pilgrimage through some of the most troubled times in American history. If you have never read her novelistic account of her family in Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family or her autobiography, Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest and Poet you owe it to yourself to read these crucial texts.[i]

The Episcopal Church USA is considering elevating Murray to the status of saint and while these deliberations are going on, we thought that it would be a good thing to reflect on Pauli Murray’s life over the next several months. The basic contours of her story are as follows: Born in Baltimore, Maryland to William Murray and Agnes Fitzgerald Murray. Her father was a school principal and her mother a nurse. After their untimely deaths, Pauli moved to Durham, North Carolina. Her father suffered from mental illness due to the effects of typhoid fever and was killed by a guard at the Crownsville State Hospital. In Durham, she was raised by her grandparents Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald, and her aunts Pauline and Sallie. Pauli graduated from Hillside High school, Hunter College in New York, and Howard University Law School. She later received her JD from Yale Law School.

A number of “firsts” mark her life. She was the first African American attorney to work for the law firm she worked for in New York, the first African American woman to receive the Yale J.D., the first African American to serve as deputy attorney general for the state of California and most notably for theological educational concerns, she was the first African American woman ordained an Episcopal priest. This was after she had attended and graduated from General Theological Seminary in New York. In between, during, and after these events, Pauli Murray, was a professor, poet, writer, civil rights and women’s rights activist, founding member of NOW, astute public critic and intellectual, and always a deeply committed Christian.

One of the most important gifts a student can give herself as she moves through seminary or any kind of educational experience are models of people whose life paths illumines embodied wisdom. Pauli Murray is just such a person. We can learn so much from every aspect of her life, her struggles and victories, her frustrations and joys, her fears and her hopes. I would like to briefly consider an incident she recounts from her childhood in Durham. Murray’s brilliant text, Proud Shoes, examines the complex legacy of mixed race existence in America.

The very first chapter of that fine book introduces us to her grandmother Cornelia Fitzgerald who proudly proclaims that she is was

“a white man’s child. A fine white man at that. A southern aristocrat. If you want to know what I am, I’m an octoroon. I don’t have to mix in with good-for-nothing niggers if I don’t want to. I don’t like trashy folks whether they’re black, white, blue or yaller. If you mix with the dogs you’ll be bitten by the fleas.” (Proud Shoes, 16)

In this incident, the grandmother then goes on to hurl several racial invectives at her troublesome black neighbors who goat her on. One particular woman, Lucy Bergins, angers Cornelia so much that this elderly woman attempts to climb a fence to get at her. This is when the young Pauli intervenes, trying to keep her grandmother from beating the woman with a mattock.

Granma! Granma! I screamed. “Come down quick. I got something important to tell you.” “Lemme go, child!” Grandmother was doing her best to kick free and hold her balance. Her leg jerked backward like a cow’s hind leg at milking time. She dangled while I held on. “Granma, I tell you it’s important.” Grandmother tried to pull her leg up once more, then gave up and let it fall back, sending me tumbling to the ground. “What on earth do you want Baby?” she asked. However angry Grandmother was about other things she was never harsh with me… “Bend down, so’s I can tell you in your ear.” I didn’t want Lucy or the neighbors to hear me. Grandmother reluctantly climbed off the fence and bent down.

“Granma,” I whispered, “I know it ain’t Sunday but I got the big Bible on the front porch, the one Miss Mary Smith gave you. Come down to the house right now quick, and I’ll read to you in the Psalms. I’ll even try to read a little about ‘Zekiel in the valley of the dry bones and Dan’l in the lion’s den.” I had touched on Grandmother’s two favorite Bible selections. And she treasured that ragged old Bible Miss Mary Smith of Chapel Hill had given her more than any other article in the house. She said she got it when she was a little girl and was confirmed at the Chapel of the Cross. It was over one hundred years old.

It was the one book that Grandmother tried to read herself, peering through her glasses and spelling out the Psalms a word at a time. I had learned to read some of the Psalms by now and every Sunday evening I would read to Grandmother some of her favorite passages. She seemed so proud of having me read to her from the big Bible that I loved it as much as she did….I liked the sound of the words rolling off my tongue and I would let my voice rise and fall like a wailing wind just as I had heard Reverend Small chant the morning lesson at St. Titus on Sundays. Grandmother had utmost respect for the Holy Word.

She hesitated. “You sure got me where the hair is short, Baby,” she said. “Why would you want to read the Bible to me when I’m so vexed?” I could see she was weakening. “You said any time was a good time to read the Scripture, didn’t you? Please come on to the house…” Grandmother considered. The sweat was pouring down her face and her clothes were soaked with it. Her face was flushed and she was panting hard. I pulled her gently toward the house…Grandmother picked up the mattock and took a step toward home. “I’ve never been one to turn my back on the Word of God,” she said. (Proud Shoes, 20-22)

This is one story that offers us a glimpse of the complexity of Pauli’s life beginning with her grandmother. Here we are introduced to the legacy of mixed race existence and the color caste system endemic to it and the violence and self-hatred embedded inside it. But we are also introduced to the place of the scripture, the compelling place of scripture in the lives of African Americans. What stood between Pauli’s grandmother’s desire to inflict punishment through violence on this taunting neighbor was nothing less than her granddaughter invoking the scripture, scripture to be read, scripture to be remembered. Yet equally crucial for grasping Pauli’s rich life is the powerful joining in her grandmother’s love of the scripture and the sound of her young voice reading, speaking the word of God, just like the minister at St. Titus. Indeed it is precisely this rich soil of reading scripture aloud that holds the seeds that grow into voices heard strongly and callings heard clearly.

This was the case with Pauli Murray. It could be that if you reflect on your voice and your own sense of calling you might find a history marked by conflict, race, and the scriptures. Such things don’t point to bad beginnings, but important ones.

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[i] Pauli Murray, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest and Poet (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).

Happy Birthday, Pauli!

Dr. Joy J. Moore

Associate Dean for Black Church Studies and Church Relations

Duke Divinity School

As a key figure in our theological lineage, we invite you to join us in supporting and attending local Durham events that honor the legacy and accomplishments of Pauli Murray, sponsored by Duke University and the Pauli Murray Project. Happy Birthday, Pauli!!

PAULI MURRAY LECTURE WITH

DR. BEVERLY GUY-SHEFTALL

November 19, 2009 7:00 pm

Community, Family Life and Recreation Center at Lyon Park

Dr. Guy-Sheftall is the founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center and the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College. She is also the President of the National Women’s Studies Association.

PAULI MURRAY BIRTHDAY PARTY

November 22, 2009 3:00 pm

Community, Family Life and Recreation Center at Lyon Park

Cake, Celebration and Poetry with local artists and members of Pauli Murray’s family! Come out and celebrate the life and story of an amazing lawyer, activist, priest and poet.

Events Free and Open to the Public Community, Family Life and Recreation Center at Lyon Park, 1313 Halley Street at Kent Street

Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" and the Future of Theology: The Order of Disorder and the Politics of Confusion

By Dr. Brian Bantum, Divinity '03
Assistant Professor of Theology
Seattle Pacific University

Houston Baker discussed the power of the Harlem Renaissance and black artistic expression as the "mastery of form and the deformation of mastery." By this phrase Baker refers to the power of black artists to master the forms of European artistic expression and then turn them inside out to re-express notions of human freedom that were denied by the very same European forms that sought to oppress and enslave them.

Listening to John Coltrane's 1961 version of "My Favorite Things" I could not help but be reminded of Baker's analysis, but also being a theologian I began to imagine the possibilities for theological reflection.

The iconic "My Favorite Things" of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical "The Sound of Music" still reminds me of post-Christmas hot chocolate and the ideal of romping through the hills in familial bliss, leaving all of the nastiness of a Nazi regime far, far away.

But in Coltrane's rendition only 2 years later, the familial bliss remains within the horror. Coltrane's "favorite things" takes place not upon the placid hills of a neutral borderland, but within the torment of a violent America, and his own tortured soul.

The refrain recalling one's favorite things are not uttered in secure possibility. In this time everything the black man or woman wants or desires is punctuated by their refusal. They are thirsty, but there is a fountain they cannot drink from. They want a house, but there is always a house they can never have, they want to teach, to be a doctor, to travel… all of these possibilities are always punctuated by a declarative NO.

In the gaps of these refusals they still find joy, they still find one another. In this respect to speak of your favorite things is to confess both the joys, the small things that bring meaning to your life and comfort you in moments of fear or despair, but these things can never be spoken of in a tidy way. They are always bound to the death, the refusal, the dehumanization of the modern world upon dark bodies.

Coltrane moves within the piece at one moment stripping down the melody to its barest elements and then flows into addition, to filling out the melody in ways that one could not have thought possible. Both moments deepen and widen the significance of the melody. But here additions and the reductions account for the paradox of one’s desires in Coltrane’s time. Desires here were always met with refusals, hope with death, an ebb and flow of finding enough in the scarcity and making something out of nothing, and yet in this paradox of wanting what one could not have: they yet had, they desired, they found joy.

The stripping down and the reductions do not distort the song, they do not render the song irrational but in fact point to the paradox of our own lives as having what we ought not to want, and bending towards that which is not meant for us, while still refusing that which is intended for us.

Coltrane deepens our understanding of our condition by laying bare our desires and the refusal of these desires. Within the churchly space we do not meet God with our own order, but with being laid bare and being shown who we are. This encounter throws us into the dynamic range of God’s song where we must lament our own failures, confess our own misshapen desires. We must cry out for we are refused and oppressed and yet in the midst of this we also sing that sweet melody of hope, that refrain of God’s promise that never grows quiet in the wailing of our brothers and sisters or their quiet meditations.

In the dynamic movement of this song we find order, we find God. Order is our being misshapen, “de-ranged” and re-arranged. Sometimes it is not us but our neighbor who is confronted with their own powerlessness and must cry out. sometimes it is our neighbor who bears a quiet certainty that witnesses to God’s faithfulness. Perhaps the question is not how do we order these two seemingly disparate moments, but rather what is it that prevents us from binding these realities (and the people who so often exhibit them) from finding a home in the same space? Thus it is not a question of ordering music or art, or thoughts, but becoming undone by a new social arrangement.

It is this amalgamation of despair and possibility that I find so compelling within Coltrane's rendition. And while the song seemed rooted within a European ideal (or an American idealization of Europe), Coltrane's rendition speaks to its deepest possibility, mastering the form of its quiet longings but also wrapping those longings within the deep pain of the present. In this way, it spoke dramatically to its contemporary moment in a way that Hammerstein probably could not have imagined himself.

Is it possible for theologians to re-imagine themselves and their work within Coltrane's re-imagination of "My Favorite Things?" So many concerned for justice and mercy have found Christianity or at least its doctrine as the central culprit. But is it possible for us to utter this tune anew, to master the form so that we might deform the mastery? Is it necessary that we leave the central claims concerning our God? That the child in the manger was God? That the resurrection was not a symbol, but a real moment of liberation for now and a time to come? Is it possible to think of theological liberation apart from these claims? This is the possibility of theological reflection. Theology done "classically" is a theology that idealizes a past imaging a possibility for a future in a neutral land. But perhaps theology (and our Christian lives) might be able to imagine the claims of the Christian tradition anew, mastering its forms in order to unleash it for new work in a broken world whose masters have mistaken themselves for gods.

Can our theology utter dissonant tones and shrieking of righteous anger and yet still remind us of "our favorite thing" even when “when the bee stings, when the dogs bark…”

I hope this is the case. For my darker brothers and sisters who have and are having questions concerning the possibility of theology, of the claims of the church that have stretched so long... Coltrane can speak to us about the possibilities of these claims. We can sing this song and in a way that can remind creation of its calling in the midst of its unfaithfulness.

To those who so vehemently "defend" the faith, who uphold orthodoxy in the face of its attackers... is it possible that in our stripping down of the melody we have sung it truer? Perhaps the improvisational runs and dissonant chords of we, your darker brothers and sisters have spoken to a truth not visible within the neat logic of Western philosophy.

I do not know the answer to these questions, but I do believe Coltrane has something to teach us on the way.

When the Spirit says sing ...

Dr. Joy J. Moore

Associate Dean for Black Church Studies and Church Relations

Duke Divinity School

Article: When the Spirit says sing

Check out this feature on the Faith & Leadership blog on the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, where the group reflects on the deep African-American traditions that lace their songs and their spirits. It will certainly be worth your while. The video below is their popular "Ella's Song." Surely, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.