Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church

by Barbara A. Holmes

All of these issues are hidden from plain sight so that few realize that there is unhealed brokenness in every pew and pulpit.

The myth of unreflective joy is reinforced by the use of black worship to sell commercial products. One sees black church choirs and hears gospel music at political conventions and public gatherings and in advertisements for cars and fast food.

These stories of a reality where healing became a tangible activity included their awareness not just of Aunt Becky’s herbal ministrations and the prayers of the community but also of the spirits of the ancestors and divine messengers. Thus, the community received spiritual witness to their beliefs about the multivalent aspects of reality and the multiple conduits to this transcendent space. In these small communities, contemplation was an everyday practice that included nurture of the body and the spirit.

In the black community, talking about the black church is rather like talking about your mother. You can do it, but folk wisdom protocols insist that it must be done carefully and with respect. For me, the respect is inherent, but this stance is punctuated by occasional instances of rage, chagrin, and incongruous optimism about the church and its practices.

When the word contemplation comes to my mind, I think of Thomas Merton and his lengthy and illuminating discourses about the practices that include complete dependence on God. But I also want to talk about Martin Luther King Jr. and his combination of interiority and activism, Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman and their inward journeys. I want to present Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Barbara Jordan, and the unknown black congregations that sustained whole communities without fanfare or notice.

the human task is threefold. First, the human spirit must connect to the Eternal by turning toward God’s immanence and ineffability with yearning. Second, each person must explore the inner reality of his or her humanity, facing unmet potential and catastrophic failure with unmitigated honesty and grace. Finally, each one of us must face the unlovable neighbor, the enemy outside of our embrace, and the shadow skulking in the recesses of our own hearts. Only then can we declare God’s perplexing and unlikely peace on earth.

Those caught up in this intimacy with God explain that the experience expands their knowledge, awakens a palpable and actionable love, and is either a profoundly restorative resting in divine presence or a “fire shut up in the bones” that inspires action. The action can be restorative of personal relationships or proactive for the needs of the community.

When Christianity began, it was small and intense, communal and set apart, until it found favor with the state. Those adherents who witnessed Rome’s public affirmation of Christianity in the fourth century realized that the contemplative aspects of the faith could not be nurtured under the largesse of the state. And so, in the fifth century, monasticism flourished in the desert as Christian converts retreated for respite and spiritual clarity.

In the effort to return power to the people, European Protestant reforms attempted to translate the mystical elements of contemplative life into issues of character, virtue, and a stalwart work ethic. In the process, some of the soul delight was lost.

William R. Jones refers to as a creative and adaptive form of “whiteanity.” Jones describes this religious legacy as a subliminal virulence that threatens the spirituality of Africans in the Americas.[26]

The key to contemplation in the black church seems to be its emergence as a communal practice. Although European mystics and contemplatives often lived in community, they tended to focus on the individual experience of encountering the divine presence. African American contemplatives turned the “inward journey” into a communal experience. In this ethnic context, the word contemplation includes but does not require silence or solitude. Instead, contemplative practices can be identified in public prayers, meditative dance movements, and musical cues that move the entire congregation toward a communal listening and entry into communion with a living God.

In the black church, the contemplative experience is sought as an intense melding of spirit and body that changes the life of the community and the individual. In a chapter that describes what contemplation is not, Keating lists most of the experiences that characterize contemplation in the black church.

Contemplation in Africana contexts is an act of communal reflection and reflexive engagement, with both knowable and unknowable occurrences.

The Africa that I turn to for the roots of indigenous contemplative practices is as much a construct of my diasporic imagination as it is the object of my historical interest. Few Africans in the Americas have visited Africa, and even when we do, we encounter the specifics of localized culture that only give us hints about the broader context. My visit to Kenya cannot help me to unravel the intricacies of Senegal. On a continent as ethnically and religiously diverse as Africa, there is little that can be generalized.

I am suggesting that these Africana worship experiences are contemplative because they create an atmosphere for communal listening and responsiveness to the manifestations of God, they impact the ethos and value system of a community, and they heal infected social and psychic wounds. The entry into contemplative practices usually begins with listening for God.

In the words of Thomas Merton, “faith incorporates the unknown into our everyday life in a living and dynamic manner. . . . The function of faith is not to reduce mystery to rational clarity, but to integrate the unknown and known together into a living whole, in which we are more and more able to transcend the limitations of our external self.”[3] Merton makes the point that we share the “unknowable” aspect that we attribute to God. Part of the imago Dei reflected in our lives is the opacity of human interiority. We may be transparent to God but not to one another.

Not unlike James KA Smith's later thoughts

Under ordinary circumstances, human beings are outer-directed, seldom considering their own interiority.

African American contemplative practices are hidden in plain sight. They are enfolded in familiar worship practices from the mourner’s bench to the baptismal font, from the church shut-ins to public sit-ins; each of the practices referenced below is grounded in the contemplative religious experiences of Africans in North America.

The activism that ignited the freedom movements had contemplative practices at its center. The very act of passive resistance can be described as stillness in the midst of turmoil, a willingness to subject the body to the chaos of abuse and social rejection while uniting the ultimate purposes of that resistance to the Holy Spirit. Incredibly, abuse loses its power when it confronts the unified resolve of a community and the personal commitment of its individuals.

The civil rights marches of the 1960s were contemplative—sometimes silent, sometimes drenched with song, but always contemplative. This may mean within the context of a desperate

Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons (and daughters), becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s sons (and daughters) we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens. —Ella Baker

Black people for too long have been forced to refine our message according to what is comfortable for the mainstream. We have made a distinctive choice not to do it. . . . Our goal is to be free and authentic, not to pacify others.[29]

have identified the four key characteristics of the contemplative leadership model evident in Obama’s presidency: (1) engaging the mysteries of the Spirit, (2) creative exchange between inner and outer realities, (3) world making, and (4) performance of the already/not yet.

What most of us must be involved in—whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do—not only has to make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world. —Michael Shank

Instead, hearers of the gospel inculturated and improvised on the main themes so as to tune the message for their own hearing. Given Christianity’s preferential option for the poor, the cross-pollination of jazz, blues, and tap with church music and practices could be considered the epitome of missional outreach and spiritual creativity.

It is joy unspeakable and full of glory, Full of glory, full of glory It is joy unspeakable and full of glory, Oh, the half has never yet been told. —Barney E. Warren, “Joy Unspeakable”