“A Sweet Spirit”

Last night a sweet Spirit descended upon All Saints Church…. not so much sweet, but powerful and pervasive and moving. Last night we hosted the Jackson State Concert Chorale from Jackson State University, an historically Black university in Jackson Mississippi. It all happened by accident really. Carl Cunningham, a professor at Coastal Community College and alumnus of Jackson State… and an Episcopalian, called us a few weeks ago and asked if we would host the Chorale. The director had specifically asked to be hosted by an Episcopal Church because of our reputation for being inclusive, and as she put it, “they love good music, and they usually have good acoustics.”

I think it is safe to say that we, at least us All Saints folks, were taken by utter surprise. We had over a hundred people show up… a good number from All Saints, and a good number of Jackson State friends and alumni. The choir was brimming with talent; they were impeccably well prepared and trained. The music they presented included classical sacred music as well as work songs from the days of slavery, Gospel music, traditional spirituals. and African drumming and dance, “music from the Motherland” as the graduate assistant conductor put it. I realized after they had begun the concert that they weren’t performing; they were worshiping… and it was so very authentic, bearing the richness and resonance of a culture that has been so abused and scapegoated over our nation’s history; and yet the nave of All Saints Church was electrified with profound joy.

I’m still processing the experience, but here are several thoughts: We white folks are missing something that people of color have…. an uninhibited sense of gratitude, perhaps? a joie de vivre? It is so evident that they have a reverence for community and connectedness… and passion; They lack the smug self-sufficiency that many of us white people comport; they’ve got, dare I say….”soul.”

I lay in bed last night, too energized to sleep, thinking of the troubled and storied history of the African American in our midst. They were bought and sold as property not all that long ago, right here in Mobile. Their rights as citizens have been persistently stunted by the racist powers that be; they have been consigned to intractable disadvantage socially, economically and politically; they have been riddled with the stinging arrows of shame and indignity for over four hundred years… and yet they bear an enduring and contagious Spirit… and I think that Spirit is Love. There could be no other explanation.

And then I thought of our current political climate: the war on the immigrant; the normalizing of white supremacy; our increasingly regressive tax structure… We are becoming ‘loveless’ in this country. And then I thought that perhaps, just perhaps, people of color may well be our salvation. Martin Luther King, Jr. thought as much: that the Civil Rights movement was as much for the good of white people as it was for the good of blacks. Wouldn’t it be a supreme irony to learn what Love means from our black brothers and sisters among us. What a Sweet Spirit that would be…. but not so much sweet, but a Spirit powerful, pervasive and moving.