Friends,

Each February there is a societal turn toward acknowledging the contributions made by Black folks within the American context. The ways this acknowledgement plays out range from the sincere to the obligatory. What I want to ask us to consider is the longevity of such recovery work, namely the potential to carry this excavation and integration beyond this one prescribed month. I encourage us to stay with the voices of our Black brothers and sisters because surely there is more to learn than is possible in one month (and the shortest month at that).

We will build this year’s contributions on top of the ones we shared previously. So if you scroll to the bottom of this page, you will find some items we shared in the recent past. Some of you are new to our community, so these will be new resources to you. But even if you engaged this page last year, there is value in revisiting the wisdom previously shared. This year we will share this page each week as our pastors add their own contributions. First is a reflection from Pastor John Jay. Happy February.

(Banner image disclaimer: Years ago I visited the Broad Museum and saw the work of Kara Walker, which is in the background of the image above. Her work is powerful and painful. But people kept taking selfies in front of the piece like it was a some normal part of consumer culture. I found the entire experience unnerving. So I took pictures of the people taking pictures of the art that was meant to unsettle us.)

Pastor Leslie reflects on Gospel music + power of communal singing

In 2003 I attended a conference as a junior in college, a prelude to my call to ministerial vocation. My understanding of God’s kingdom became this expansive cornucopia of celebration as 19,000+ of us gathered to worship. Twenty years later, the refrain that I continue to hold from that life-changing experience is the beloved image of God that is reflected in all people and cultures, especially in our singing.

A huge part of my growth edge in music ministry is deepening my understanding of Gospel Music and Black Spirituals; its roots, how the style is defined and shaped, and how it can transform our image of God. In my own experience of Gospel Music, I have found a through line of honesty in suffering and a response of resilience that bolsters my own faith and expands my understanding of worship.

This past Sunday as Bill Douglas was singing Precious Lord, Take My Hand, it piqued my interest to learn of the song’s origin and story. Precious Lord, Take My Hand was written by Thomas Andrew Dorsey, also known as the “Father of Black Gospel Music.” Here is an account of how he wrote the song (you can read more on Dorsey in the link below):

“Back in 1932 I was 32 years old and a fairly new husband. My wife, Nettie and I were living in a little apartment on Chicago’s Southside. One hot August afternoon I had to go to St. Louis, where I was to be the featured soloist at a large revival meeting. I didn’t want to go. Nettie was in the last month of pregnancy with our first child. But a lot of people were expecting me in St. Louis. . . .

“. . . In the steaming St. Louis heat, the crowd called on me to sing again and again. When I finally sat down, a messenger boy ran up with a Western Union telegram. I ripped open the envelope. Pasted on the yellow sheet were the words: YOUR WIFE JUST DIED. . . .

“When I got back, I learned that Nettie had given birth to a boy. I swung between grief and joy. Yet that night, the baby died. I buried Nettie and our little boy together, in the same casket. Then I fell apart. For days I closeted myself. I felt that God had done me an injustice. I didn’t want to serve Him any more or write gospel songs. I just wanted to go back to that jazz world I once knew so well. . .

“But still I was lost in grief. Everyone was kind to me, especially a friend, Professor Frye, who seemed to know what I needed. On the following Saturday evening he took me up to Malone’s Poro College, a neighborhood music school. It was quiet; the late evening sun crept through the curtained windows. I sat down at the piano, and my hands began to browse over the keys.”

I invite you to listen and receive this song again. Come honestly with your heartache and burdens, and may you find yourself in the arms of our resilient, sturdy God.

Pastor Chip reflects on Southern food and unity

As I share the following story with you, I want to give you a head’s up that it is about the food from my hometown Athens, GA and has literally shaped me into the person I am today. To fully appreciate the impact of southern soul food you should stop reading, go out and find a “Meat & 3” restaurant, then come back and finish reading this while enjoying meatloaf & mashed potatoes, greens & cornbread, or black-eyed peas & stewed tomatoes. At the very least, go to your nearest Popeyes and get a biscuit (skip that chicken, though!).

I am not exaggerating when I say that soul food restaurants in the South are on every corner. Everyone has their favorite spot for pork chops, fried chicken, and all those amazing vegetables (a loose translation of a side dish that has been loaded down with cream-of-something soup and cheese). So when I talk about the impact that Weaver D’s restaurant has had on my life, the food is only a part of it.

Weaver D’s is the domain of Dexter Weaver. It opened in 1986 and has enjoyed prosperous times and endured difficult times. The high point was when the band R.E.M. used the proprietor’s iconic phrase, “Automatic for the People” as the name of one of their albums. The low point came in 2012 when the restaurant was nearly foreclosed on by their creditor and Mr. Weaver had to talk a representative from a utility company into leaving their gas on. You can hear more about the legend of Weaver D’s in the short video below.

For me, Weaver D’s was an amazing place of connection. It represented freedom for me and my friends as one of the first places that we found when we won our driver’s licenses and so earned the right to explore Athens on our own. More than that, though, Weaver D’s was a meeting ground where politics and ideology were discarded in order to enjoy an amazing meal seated shoulder to shoulder in a tiny dining room. It didn’t matter what your background was, Weaver D’s was common ground. Every type of economic and social group was represented: hourly wage workers, business suit-wearing executives, gay, straight, townies, and suburbanites, all came together to break cornbread with one another and comment on the banana pudding.

At the heart of all of this was Dexter Weaver himself. With a booming southern drawl he would simultaneously welcome guests into his realm and yell back orders of “more mac & cheese!” to the kitchen. Mr. Weaver has a way of making everyone not only feel welcome but accepted. My entire range of conversation with him involves placing orders at meals, but I consider him a distant friend more than a business owner. He has been part of the landscape of Athens, GA for more than 40 years and has done as much to inspire community as any church in the city. As this article is being written, I imagine that he is moving about in his Sanctuary-dining room, checking on customers, calling for more food, and bringing people together every time the door opens.

Pastor Lindsay reflects on parenting and justice

Right now one main focus of my own growing edge is parenting and all the ways that it informs my understanding of people, how God created and sees us, and what it means for our collective body to embody compassion, kindness, and a heart for justice. In the work of liberation and restoration, parenting plays no small role. How we parent our children is part of the way we impact the world and participate in the Kingdom Jesus invites us to live into. Our parenting styles either reinforce the larger systems of oppression or they show us another way. Enter Mr. Chazz, who has been a source of deep practical wisdom in the realm of parenting. As we have centered our own teaching and worship at FBCP around embodied practices of faith, I have been deeply grateful for the way Mr. Chazz's approach to parenting is also formed by an understanding of the way our bodies work. Take, for example, our constant return to breath as a form of prayer and practice. Outside of the sanctuary and our individual prayer lives, breath is also part of how we help our kids and ourselves to regulate and connect in the ways we crave. Mr. Chazz provides accessible explanations of how our emotions and bodies are intricately tied together and what that means for our role as parents, educators, and leaders. When our kids exhibit certain behaviors, what is happening beneath that? What transpires in our own bodies when we struggle with our kids' behaviors? What do we as parents and our kids need in order to regulate so that we can become more whole? These are at the core of his teachings and speak to our experience as people, not just parents and children. So if you're not a parent, then consider Mr. Chazz a worthy source of information about how we relate to one another and ourselves. His knowledge of generational trauma and breaking unhealthy cycles is a gift to those who want to parent and lead in a different way than was modeled for them. Enjoy his podcast linked below (and don't be afraid to sing some of his songs next time you see me!)

On a related note, I want to highlight Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her work We Should All Be Feminists, which has also shaped me as a parent (and a reader of stories like Dinah and Tamar in the Bible). Here's a taste: "Gender matters everywhere in the world. And I would like today to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently."

And one more for those who, like me, love literature and find fiction to be a great teacher of truth. If you have not read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, then head back to Octavia’s Bookshelf and get a copy. Talk about creating worlds with words! I used to teach that novel with high school students, and each time I got to live in that novel, it shaped me in new and profound ways. The history of Zora Neale Hurston and that novel are also worth a deep dive. In addition to reading the text on the page, I highly encourage you to listen to the audiobook version read by Ruby Dee—an absolutely gorgeous and fully embodied read.

Here are a few lines to chew on:

“But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate.”

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”

“Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking.  The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”

Pastor John Jay reflects on new embodiment teachers

As a leader in our community, it is tempting to only share things I feel I have mastered (an apt word choice for the subject matter). But I want to shift and talk about where I am in process, learning at the edge of my competency. Those of you know me and have received my teaching/preaching over the last couple of years know that “embodiment” has been an important focus of my pastoral life. We did a whole teaching series on the body. My personal formational practices have been focused on the body as a locus of knowledge.

Breath.
Presence.
Awareness of how open/closed my body is in a given moment.

I was talking with my friend John Williams (of cfrjustice.org) a few months back about these ideas. I shared about how a focus on the body might be fruitful in the formational work he was facilitating around racial justice. My contention was that in religious circles there is so much of a focus on “right thinking,” which privileges the mind over against the body as the domain of change. The thinking goes that if people can think differently, hold the right convictions, then we can advance the cause of racial justice. I wanted to explore how the racial narratives we are surrounded by inhabit our bodies, and how the knowledge inherent in our bodies might illuminate the way forward towards honest reckoning, and possible integration and healing. He recommended I read My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem. I ran to Octavia’s Bookshelf in town and grabbed their last copy. (Side note, go visit this amazing bookstore as soon as you can. It is a treasure, and their curation is brilliant. The other book I grabbed from their shelves was Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde.)

This book along with Lorde’s had been in my reading queue for a little bit, but now they live in my bag and beside my couch as my daily reading. It is important to share not only what has formed me in the past but also what is currently forming me as a human. Below are two links to short introductions to both Lorde’s and Menakem’s work. If you want to read along, then grab your own copy from Octavia’s and dive deeper.

2023 reflections

Let’s start with the poetry of nayyirah waheed, a poet whose concise power is rarely experienced. I do not remember where I found her works, since she is self-published and famously reclusive. I don’t know what she looks like, and her collection that sits on my desk, Salt, is as bare a cover as I have ever seen. Her work is the point, and her words gifts of water and light. For instance, look at this reading from her poem titled “therapy.” Even the way it is set on the page is a kindness.

Let’s go to the world of sound next. Some of you know that I have been exploring this creative medium lately, particularly the less-known world of modular synthesis. I came across an artist that has really pushed me into a posture of deep listening. Robert Aubrey Aiki Lowe is best known for his film scores, contributing heavily to one of my favorite soundtracks from the movie Arrival. He uses his voice as a textured instrument and has a very organic and improvisational nature to his recorded personal work. Most recently he was tasked with scoring the horror remake of Candyman, and the results are stunning. I have not seen the movie because horror is usually too much for my sensitive system, but this album stands on its own.

In the world of theological education, Dr. Willie Jennings stands above the fray. We overlapped at Duke Divinity School, although I was not able to take a class with him. He now teaches at Yale, where his particular blend of theological methods continues to expand. If you are one for denser reading, Jennings will change you. I want to share a recording of his from the days after George Floyd was murdered. His tone conveys his theological heart in a powerful way.

I have to end with a book that is never far from my reach. Howard Thurman’s slim volume Jesus and the Disinherited is a constant guide for my study. Thurman’s impact on Martin Luther King’s work is significant, with King carrying Jesus and the Disinherited on his person especially during the Montgomery bus boycotts. Every Christian should know this work as intimately as they do the works of other theological classics, and its accessibility and reach demand a broad response from people of faith. Look at this quote for a sense of Thurman’s project:

I do not ignore the theological and metaphysical interpretation of the Christian doctrine of salvation. But the underprivileged everywhere have long since abandoned any hope that this type of salvation deals with the crucial issues by which their days are turned into despair without consolation. The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.

This is simply the path I am carving in the days ahead as I continue to receive the wisdom of a people whose experience is indelible and rich beyond measure. The recognition that we each know only in part necessitates this kind of formation, and it is good to be reminded that often the only way to reach beyond the familiar is to strain with intention. My own background demands a particular context and need for such straining, just as each of your stories informs your celebration and practices around Black History Month. A couple of weeks ago Tyler shared her own reflection on spiritual formation within Black History Month in her Call to Worship, which you can listen to below.

In the same way, I would love to know the voices you are reading and hearing, the art you are engagig, the stories you are telling, and the experiences you are creating. If you would like to share how you are being shaped in these ways, you can do so using the button below. Our ability to share in these moments is one of the great gifts of community, that we may be formed by the richness of our diversity and the ways we are each growing and becoming. In my own learning and growth, I remain…

less without you,

Pastor John Jay