Never Turn Back

This weekend I attended a choral concert of old “negro” spirituals at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. The church, which sits austerely on the corner overlooking a city park, was built in 1858 by members of the Third African Baptist Church. In 1864 the church obtained its first black pastor and in 1866 the first Richmond public school for black children commenced in the church’s basement. It is a landmark location, abundant with history and power.

One Voice Chorus chose the site for its concert entitled, “Never Turn Back”. And on a warm night, the first day of spring, fans a’ fluttering in lady’s hands, they began with the spiritual written by Hall Johnson, I’ll Never Turn Back No Mo’. As they sang those words, each section of the chorus twittering or roaring on cue with the deep melancholic hope of spiritual song, I felt tears rise in my eyes for I knew that it’s true:

Once you start down the path of the journey of faith, you can never turn back.

Because even when we falter; even when the world turns dark and cold again just when we thought we were finally safe; even when uncertainty rears its chimera head, we can’t undo the Seed that grows warm, moist, loved in the sun of our hearts.

The concert's program offered a chance for recognition of shared history. Of slavery. Of Freedom. Of personal salvation. We went down to Deep River and attempted to Wade in the Water. We heard The Old Ship of Zion there. We remembered Daniel being saved from the lion, and that when you have nothing in life at all but faith, offer what you have, So I’ll Sing with My Voice.

One Voice Chorus exists to promote diversity and racial harmony. Their mission is to work “toward healing and racial reconciliation between Americans of African and European descent.” And that night they beamed a beautiful gradation of color and voice in the old church of red velvet curtains, balconies, shining wood pews holding hymnals in pockets. I’m grateful to my brother for finding his way to the bass section up in the back of the choral tiers so that I too have been welcomed and I too have been able to openly praise with hymns sung by my historic ancestors, who are surely as deeply a part of me as anything this country has handed down.

Patience

"Patience is not something to have on principle. It's not a skill we learn just to get what we want later on in life. Patience is a word that we should use to express an intimate, loving, and personal relationship with time. Patience is a word we should use to talk about the inherent trust we have that life is moving (through time) in the right direction, always."

--Adam Elenbaas, author of Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest, forthcoming in July from Penguin.

More Paris: Medieval Revelations

Saint Francis of Assisi endures today as the patron saint of animals and the environment due to a reputation for his ultra-sensitive ability to communicate with animals and birds, and his praise for nature, especially noted in his poem, Song of the Sun.

In the remarkable Musée De Cluny in Paris, a museum of the Middle Ages housed in a 15^th century mini-castle, are many relics such as this bronze engraving of "the stigmata" of St. Francis. He stands with his arms upraised toward the amazing depiction of an angel: a bony skeleton wrapped in rainbow-colored feathers. Four brightly budded trees mimic the four points of the cross as the two figures share the stigmata associated with the Christian-lauded Crucifixion.

St. Francis, or Francesco Bernardone, spent his early years as a troubadour of the French (Provençal) tradition, wandering playfully in bright costumes, singing and reciting poetry. Troubadours apparently originate from the Saracenic tribes from Syria and Arabia. Both the lute and poetry were tools used by the Sufis for spiritual development. Sufis today are associated by many as the esoteric sect of Islam, even as this is not perfectly accurate. (There are many Western Sufi Orders, in particular, whose traditions stem from Arabic origins but are not officially associated with Islam.) The Sufis themselves go by no real name (Sufi is simply a title for convenience) and claim no allegiance to any particular religion. This is part of their enduring tradition, and as Islam stemmed from Judaism and then Christianity, Sufism was also once thought by some to be the esoteric desert tradition of the Christians! Some time after Francesco embraced Christianity, he went to Pope Innocent III requesting permission to start a new monastic order, “The Lesser Bretheren” (Order of Friars Minor). In The Sufis, by Indries Shah, the connection is made between the Lesser Bretheren and an order of Sufis contemporary with St. Francis called “the Greater Brothers,” whose founding teacher, Najmuddin Kubra “The Greater,” had had an “uncanny influence over animals”.

Interestingly, St. Francis set out toward Syria in his early thirties, but returned to Italy for financial reasons. He tried again later, heading to Morocco by way of Spain, but returned home (1214) before reaching his destination due to illness. It should be recalled here that “Moorish Spain” existed until the 1490s, a gateway for Arabic and Muslim (and related) traditions into Europe that is much ignored today.

In 1224, St. Francis wrote the aforementioned Song of the Sun, a praise poem, considered to be the first Italian poem. An excerpt:

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

The beloved Sufi poet, Rumi (1207-1273), also wrote many poems to “the sun”, as excerpted here*:

We are cast like sunlight upon the earth.

And our light, passing through your body

as if it were an open window to our Source,

returns, purified, to you.

Whoever sees that sun says, “He is alive,”

and whoever sees only the window says, “He is dying.”

The Sufis, Shah, Indries. Anchor Books, 1964. Pgs 257-264.

*The Rumi Collection, ed. Heminski, Kabir. Shambhala, 1998.

Renewed Statement of Purpose

The meditations, essays, and reviews in this blog are meant to foster community, contemplation, and vigorous faith; extrapolating inspiration and guidance among the arts, sciences, current affairs, religions,…history, geography, etc. —and to celebrate what unifies us while honoring our differences as testament to the infinite variety of Creative Genius.

(Photo: Taramaso Photo)