Swing Low

I love negro spirituals.  Now, I know saying so may make me the Beta VCR or eight-track tape of young ministers, but I do.  There are few things more awe-inspiring or empowering than listening to an impromptu group of church mothers moan "I Got a Robe" or hear a choir belt out "Swing Low" just before a sermon.


This past Sunday, I was sitting in the pulpit of the church I attend and I was listening to the choir.  Naturally, because this is Black History Month, they were singing a number of negro spirituals.  As the choir sang, I reflected on how much strength I drew from negro spirituals in dark moments as an adult.  When things have been trying in my professional life, I have closed the door of my office and hummed a few lines of "Bye and Bye" or "O, Mary Don't You Weep."  When there have been rough patches in my personal life, a stanza of "Pass Me Not" has served me well.  In fact, many times when my sons were much younger, the only way I could get them back to sleep in the middle of the night, was to sing "Swing Low" to them as I patted them back to sleep.


When I was matriculating in high school, I was in a concert choir.  One day, the music teacher, a wonderful and kind woman, pulled out sheet music of a negro spiritual for the choir to sing.  After, I heard the choir rehearse the song a few times, I objected to the choir singing the song.  After some discussion about the song and my objections to the song, the teacher removed the it from the choir's repertoire. 


The teacher, among other things, asked me why I objected to the choir singing the song.  It was a fair question.  At the time, I told her that it was a negro spiritual that was not generally recognizable to most, that it was demeaning to people of color to have the choir mock the broken English of slaves and that there were other more acceptable songs for the choir to sing.  So, in essence, I didn't have very good reasons for not wanting the choir to sing the song. 


What bothered me then about the choir singing the negro spiritual, is that negro spirituals are hauntingly beautiful, but they are beautiful within a context.  Most negro spirituals were written by slaves who sung them to ease the pain of the oppression and marginalization they felt on plantations.  The songs were written to sound very simple, but were infused with several encoded messages to God and to a society that oppressed them.  The songs were sung in joy, in pain, in heartache, in the quiet moment--all for spiritual empowerment and transcendence. 


It bothered me that we were preparing to sing a negro spiritual without any explanation of that context, without any explanation of why the song was beautiful or the people who created.  It bothered me that when I heard the song sung by the choir outside of this context, it sounded uninformed and even rustic.  All of this bothered me, I just couldn't articulate it then.


Negro spirituals are beautiful and empowering and intelligent.  They are, however, even more so when listened to and sung within the context and spirit of liberation they were written.




 

Consider Your Spirit

                                                                                   Consider Your Spirit

We as human beings are all beings everything that has a life force is a being and as human beings we have two aspects to our being there is our physical flesh and there is our spiritual being!
As humans we have to realize that we have a spiritual being attached to all of the complexities that make us us.  Once you realize that we all have spirituality attached to the physical aspects of our being we ask ourselves where does this spiritual side come from?  We must first realize that God is the originator of everything so the source of our spirits originate with God.  God is a spiritual being and the ultimate and supreme spirit and works via the holy spirit.  So once we acknowledge that we all have a spirit and that God is where it originates and that God works via spirits we start to see a connection that compels us to further explore our spirit! 
as you begin to explore your spirit ask yourself these questions: Does your spirit fluctuate with your mood? Does your spirit affect your emotions? Has your spirit ever compelled your actions?
There are many examples in the bible where God compels someone to do something.  Is our spirit how God is able to work and invoke his will with every human? 
If you are looking for examples in the bible study the story of Joseph and the multi-colored coat.  All of Joseph's brothers become extremely jealous about this favor from their father and they were extremely jealous that God had been working through and with Joseph and it caused them to allow jealousy to fill their spirit!  As the sons of Jacob become jealous of Joseph they gang up and attack him!  We must really look analyze this these are sons of Jacob who are under the covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and their father Jacob and they themselves are supposed to be a part of a promise made directly from God himself but God didn't reveal exactly how everything would work but we go back to the story all these sons allow their spirit to have so much jealousy that they actually want to harm and even murder one of their own.  But God lightens the spirit of the oldest and most influential brother Judah and he convinces the group not to kill Joseph and of course Joseph lives and goes on to save many many lives including his father's and brothers' lives because of Gods work but what i want us to look at is how God manipulates the spirit and emotions of those who he is working and executing his will with.  So with this blog my purpose is to get the reader to explore their spirit and allow it to be open to Gods will and allow God to use you and your spirit to execute his will through you! Thanks for reading
                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                           -Tony-

Can You Feel Me?

As humans, we have a real desire, a need to be understood.  Everything we do is centered around our need to be understood by someone.  When we write, texts, or emails, or letters, or legal briefs, we do so with a certain about of clarity, we use certain words, so as to ensure that someone else understands what we are writing.

     When we are speaking, or singing, or preaching, we communicate in such a manner, use language in such a manner that allows the people listening to hear us.  If we are speaking to Spanish speakers who only speak Spanish, we speak to them in Spanish so that they understand us. 

When we are preaching in a Lutheran or Episcopal Church, we don’t preach about liberation and struggle the same way we do in an African Methodist Episcopal Church so they can understand us.

And when wives speak to their husbands, as partners of course, about things that must be completed around the house, they speak in a slow, and often times louder manner to ensure that the husbands understand them. 

At a deeper level, we need to be understood in our personal and inter-personal relationships.  We seek a connection with people.  Social scientist, Abraham Maslow, has stated in his now wildly famous “Hierarchy of Needs” that we need understanding in order to exist and before we can build self-esteem or self actualize and find our true calling on earth.  It is the porthole for the most important needs, the most evolved needs.

Specifically, he states that humans grow and develop like this: First, we get our basic needs met (food, water, clothing, shelter).  Then, we get our need for security met (bodily security, health, employment, etc.).  Then, we get our need for connection met (friendship, family, intimacy with a loved one). 

After that,  we begin to meet the need for self esteem and valuing others.  We also begin to define those things we are called to do; our purpose in life.  If we don’t get our need for understanding and connection met, we cannot build esteem or self actualize.

When we find that connection, that understanding from another person or people, we know it better than we can describe it.  When we met our partners, or children, or friends who are kindred spirits, we can feel it.  We say, “he gets me” or “she gets me.”  Better yet we say, “he feels me” or “she feels me.” 

R & B singer Anthony Hamilton skillfully articulates this need for understanding in his song, “Do you feel me?”

Wish I could see through

See deep into you

And know what you're thinking now

And if I'm what you needing

I need some kind of sign

Let me know cuz I can't read your mind

Are you in?

Or am I in this on my own?

I need some clue from you

Let me know babe

[CHORUS]

Do you feel me?

Do you read me?

Tell me am I gettin' through to you

I wanna know,

are you with me?

Are you listenin?

Baby, is my message gettin through?

Do you feel me baby, oh babe, cuz I can feel you

Jesus, while perfect, blameless, and sinless, was no different from us in that respect—He had a need and a desire to be felt.  Every action, every utterance in Jesus’ public ministry was designed to have people understand Him, for people to feel Him, to know who He was and what He was here to do.

  John 11:1-44 bears this out.  This scripture tells us of the story of Lazarus.  

Lazarus is introduced as not only a follower of Jesus but a “Dear friend”, who lives in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem. He is identified as the brother of the sisters Mary and Martha. The sisters send word to Jesus that Lazarus, "he whom you love," is ill. Instead of immediately traveling to Bethany, according to the narrator, Jesus intentionally remains where he is for two more days before beginning the journey.

When Jesus arrives in Bethany, he finds that Lazarus is dead and has already been in his tomb for four days. He meets first with Martha and Mary in turn. Martha laments that Jesus did not arrive soon enough to heal her brother and Jesus replies with the well-known statement, "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me shall live, even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die in eternity". Next encountering Mary, Jesus is moved by her sorrow. The narrator here gives the famous simple phrase, "Jesus wept".

In the presence of a crowd of Jewish mourners, Jesus comes to the tomb. Over the objections of Martha, Jesus has them roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb and says a prayer. He then calls Lazarus to come out and Lazarus does so, still wrapped in his grave-cloths. Jesus then calls for someone to remove the grave-cloths. The narrative ends with the statement that many of the witnesses to this event "believed in him." Others are said to report the events to the religious authorities in Jerusalem.

Jesus wanted someone to feel him.  How do we know this?  If we look at the pivotal passage John 11:35, we see that Jesus was looking for a connection on many levels.  “Jesus wept,” it says.  Now, how do we find that He was looking to be felt?

Why was Jesus weeping?  First, the scriptures suggest that Jesus was weeping for His friend Lazarus who had died.  Jesus was divine.  He was, however, divinity manifested in human form.  He was human and had human emotions.  Like the crucifixion when Jesus knew what He was doing and knew that He would rise again, He knew that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, but still wept for the connection.

Now, because Jesus knew that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, that couldn’t have been the only reason He was weeping.  The scriptures suggest that He was weeping also out of compassion and in solidarity for Mary, Martha and the others.  These are not people used to being in this situation.  In Luke 10, the Mary and Martha are characterized as emotionless, busy workers who were about business.  It moved Jesus to see women who were generally stern and solemn, cry.

Jesus also wept for humankind.  He said that He was the resurrection and the Life, but nobody understood that in the passage.  Everyone He talked with in the passage, said that if He had have only been there, Lazarus would not have died.  But, nobody could understand who Jesus really was, or Jesus’ true identity as savior of the world.  If they did, they wouldn’t have said those things. 

 Jesus wants us to feel Him.  We can do that a few ways.

Like the scripture suggests Jesus helped Lazarus, reestablished the connection with Lazarus by, when they led Jesus to where Lazarus was, first praying for him.  Then, Jesus provided encouragement to him.  And then, Jesus allowed Lazarus to help himself by letting him get up and walk.  Jesus provided prayer, support and encouragement, and Lazarus did his part.  When we are in the community, counseling, helping, in service, we must do likewise.

We must also work to understand the concerns of others and be compassionate and understanding their concerns.  We may not know everything that everyone is going through, but we can certainly have compassion for them.  Jesus had compassion on and for Mary, Martha and the crowd, even though He knew their brother was going to be raised from the dead.