Soul Care in African American Practice

When Intervarsity Press kindly sent me a review copy of Soul Care in African American Practice by Spiritual Director Barbara Peacock, I joyfully read a paragraph in the Preface describing the author’s upbringing, which reflected my own nurturing home and the deeply held convictions that grew from that love. As Dr. Peacock said:

“I thank God for his faithfulness toward my siblings and me in that he blessed us with an environment of a loving, caring, and nurturing community, including our parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, and cousins. Such a foundation in my Christian journey allows me to seek ways to love unconditionally. Consequently I emphatically embrace the theology of love. I believe that love covers all kinds of sin. I believe what the world needs more is love. And is love not the greatest commandment? This is the greatest call: to love.”

Indeed, the certainty that God is love sets every troubling thing into perspective and enables us to discern the responses God wants from us as we ask, “What is the loving thing to do?”

Sadly, many people from every culture and country lack the loving care and encouragement needed to be all they’re meant to be, but thankfully, our spiritual growth doesn’t rely on love received from the human race but from God’s grace. Often, the greater the obstacles, the greater God graces us with His powerful presence.

As Dr. Peacock points out in the introductory chapter “African American Spirituality”:

“While in chains, many slaves expressed great faith in God, the only one who could deliver them from such inhumane circumstances.”

Therefore,

“It was on those slave ships making the Middle Passage that we find the origins of African American spiritual direction and soul care.”

However, “Many make the assumption that all Africans first heard about Christ when they came to America. This is far from true.”

“In fact, the African church fathers contributed to the formative years of Christianity. St. Augustine of Hippo as well as Egyptian and North African scholars such as Clement, Origen, Tertullian, and Athanasius are widely recognized as fathers of the church.”

Later, slavery sorely challenged Christian beliefs, but stories of faith and spiritual hymns provided strength. As the author explains:

“The wording, the verbiage, and the tone of slave narratives and spiritual songs in the African American tradition tell the journey as a story. Such songs lifted the heart and affirmed hope for a better day. The central relational focus of the spirituals was God. He was and remains the hope, the deliverer, and friend.”

In the following chapters, Dr. Peacock focuses on African American leaders who “have been tenacious in pursuing a relationship with Yahweh.” One seemingly unlikely person was Dr. Frederick Douglass, better known as an abolitionist, reformer, and former slave, whose master’s wife read the Bible to him and helped him learn to read.

“From memory, he began to speak words he heard her say while they read together. The way they read the Bible together resembles the Latin reading process called lectio divina, a slow, thoughtful reading of the text with God’s presence in mind.”

After explaining this ancient spiritual practice, the author provides “Questions For Reflection” to help us engage more fully. That section, included in subsequent chapters, too, additionally provides spiritual direction in talking with God, hearing from God, visually reflecting on the Lord, and praying.

“As a result of learning to read the Bible, Douglass became a well-known intellectual in his community and beyond. Reading was the fundamental skill that prepared him to live a life that transformed not only himself but also others. For him reading was not merely glancing over a text but meditating on what he heard, which eventually equipped him to impact millions.”

The next chapter, “Spiritual Direction and Prayer,” highlights the soul care of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose “life of contemplative prayer made him an effective spiritual leader.” The author goes on to say:

“It would have been impossible for Dr. King to fulfill the mandate on his life without the assurance of God’s unconditional love for himself and all humanity…. Thus, as a leader, he was called by God to lead in a movement for freedom that was centered in love – that is, Christ-centered love. Such love is the kind Dr. King allowed the Spirit to form in him amid racial discord. With such love, he loved God and his people to the extent he was willing to die for what he believed.”

In the chapter “Meditation and Contemplation,” we learn of the “conscientious decision to speak silently for her civil rights” that Mrs. Rosa Parks made before getting on that Montgomery bus. Having been brought up in a Christian home, she spent much time seeking God and developing the soul care needed to equip her for the task at hand.

“During the civil rights movement, Mrs. Parks needed the supernatural peace of God as she led the people God called her to serve. She understood the cost of developing and nurturing God’s peace within her that would equip her as a spiritual leader. Because of her faithfulness, God graciously provided her peace in the midst of adversity. In order to maintain and abide in this peace, Mrs. Park’s challenge was to keep her mind fixed on God.”

Throughout this enlightening book, Dr. Barbara Peacock focuses on the practices of ten African American leaders, whose companionship with God enabled them to do the work to which they had been called. By tending their own souls through prayer, meditation on God’s Word, and reliance on the Holy Spirit, they could then provide spiritual direction to others.

In “Conclusion,” the author calls us to re-call:

“The journey of all people (regardless of color or ethnicity) began in Genesis. The inclusivity of the Spirit of God is seen in the divine entity of life and the breath that all humanity shares…. All creatures, whether black, white, brown, red, or yellow, are communicative beings designed for the glory of God. All peoples are created to worship and to be in holy communion with our Creator.”

May we all enter into this intimate relationship with the Lord and express God’s love to others in Jesus’ Name.

 

Mary Harwell Sayler, ©2020, poet-writer, and lifelong lover of God’s people and God’s Word

 

…

 

 

Classic poetry from a faith perspective

This anthology of beautifully-written poetry from the perspective of faith is a must-read for Christian poets and poetry lovers of hope: The Soul in Paraphrase.

You'll not only have an excellent collection of literary poems to study and enjoy, you'll have the benefit of notes and comments by the prolific writer and long-time English Professor Leland Ryken - an expert in the field of literature and the Bible. I've appreciated his work for years and keep many of his books beside my desk for quick reference!

For a review of the book, click onto the current post on my Poetry Editor and Poetry blog.


The Soul in Paraphrase, hardback



...

Joy to the world!

Oh, come! Let us celebrate
the birth of the Christ-Child
Who rejoices at our rebirth.

The Holy Infant Jesus –
dependent
on us for His care –
shows us
how we must
come to Him
like trusting children.

Hold Him on your lap
with love,
and let Him hug you,
heal you,
and hum a lullaby.

by Mary Harwell Sayler, ©2017, from the poetry book PRAISE!

Jesus Christ is Risen indeed!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Christ our Lord
is risen
in each of us each day,
and neither gravity
nor a cruel grave
can keep us down.

by Mary Harwell Sayler, © 2017, from her book of prayers, poems, and contemporary psalms, PRAISE! published by Cladach Publishing
…

Dancing on the Head of a Pen: book review

The enticing title, Dancing on the Head of a Pen: The Practice of a Writing Life by Robert Benson, drew me to request a review copy from Blogging for Books – a site that provides review copies of a variety of books in exchange for an honest assessment. Fortunately, that's what I aim to provide, whether I'm discussing a new edition of the Bible or reviewing a traditionally published poetry book or a book about the writing life in general, as happens here.

Published by Waterbrook Press, this particular book also appealed to me because the author knows how to write! That might seem to be an obvious prerequisite, but I’ve discovered a new world of newbie writers who blog about writing and sometimes pass along assumptions, rather than reliable information. Conversely, Robert Benson has written many books and knows the in’s and out’s of writing and publishing. So, believe him when he says: “Most of the time, writing a book more closely resembles digging a ditch than participating in some transcendent creative experience.”

How we go about “digging” depends on what we dig. As Benson says, “Any of us – writer, designer, potter, painter, sculptor, architect, and on and on – wisely studies the habits practiced by the artists who inspire us in the first place. Those habits can guide us as we try to learn to do the work ourselves.”

For each of us, the work and surrounding habits will differ, not only from one another but also our own earlier selves as we experiment, pick up ideas, and find workable ways to write and continually improve our work. Most of us, though, will do well to heed Benson’s call to be quiet.

As he explains, “Solitude is likely necessary to be in touch with the things deep inside you. Silence may be required for you to hear what those things are saying to you. Do not be afraid to be quiet. Never be afraid to be alone./ Wandering around in wide-open spaces, especially spaces offered by a blank page, may be the key to making some art of those things found in the silence and the solitude.”

By now, you may be wondering if this book provides a devotional guide or tips on writing or suggestions for establishing your own routine or more than the sum of those parts, and to all, the answer is: Yes!

Once we’ve heard ourselves think enough to know what we’re to write next, we have to decide what type of writer we want to be. Like Benson, “I want to write. I may even need to write. But I want to be read as well.”

Knowing this about ourselves helps us to know whether we want to write for publication. If so, we need to have some type of reader in mind and some idea of whether anyone else might be interested in our chosen topic.

The author says, “When I begin to write a book, I ask myself some questions. Who do I think might read the writing I am about to do? Who do I expect to be interested in the stories I am trying to tell? Who do I hope will discover and enjoy and be moved by them?” And always, “Write for those you love.”

As Benson also says, “A writer has three jobs. Write the work. Make the work as good as possible. Find the work a home and a crowd of folks to love it.”

More than this, however, Robert Benson tells us, “I spend most of my time, metaphorically speaking, as a kind of explorer, out wandering around in the philosophical dark, lost in the spiritual words, searching for a deep something I often cannot even name, following trails leading to dead ends and darkness as often as not.” But then, “The spiritual life is not so much about answers as it is about better questions. Writing can be the same.”


©2014, Mary Harwell Sayler, reviewer, authored 26 books in all genres, primarily for Christian and educational markets, before writing the Christian Writer’s Guide e-book on Kindle.


Dancing on the Head of a Pen, hardcover



…

Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully

What pressed me to request a review copy of this highly recommended book from Crossway was the title, Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully, which expresses my yearning for poetry – both yours and mine.

If you have searched and searched, as I have, for Christian poet-mentors to study, you know how difficult it can be to find one who does not see beauty as saccharine and who does not write unrealistic poems that tap-tap their iambic feet onto paper from Miss Goody's two shoes! And so this slender hardback comes to our rescue, featuring three poets, writers, and pray-ers worth emulating: George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C.S. Lewis.

Although each of these writers makes use of different genres to address their honest doubts, worries, and concerns, they all keep searching for God until they find, see, and express the beauty that's bound to blossom with fresh words and refreshed faith and hope.

As the sixth book in The Swans Are Not Silent series by John Piper, this book was most likely written with Christian educators and pastors in mind, rather than poets and writers. Regardless, the book speaks clearly to any communicator for Christ, exhorting us to consider the poetic effort in the poetry of Herbert, preaching of Whitefield, and creative writings of Lewis.

The Introduction defines that premise by saying, “This effort was the God-dependent intention and exertion to find striking, penetrating, imaginative, and awakening ways of expressing the excellencies they saw. My thesis is that this effort to say beautifully is, perhaps surprisingly, a way of seeing and savoring beauty.”

Whether in writing or speaking, we choose our words and how we use them – hesitantly, softly, boldly, accusingly, or beautifully. We want to move people to hear and heed, which “may be one reason why the Bible is filled with every manner of literary device to add natural impact: acrostics, alliteration, analogies, anthropomorphism, assonance, cadence, chiasmus, consonance, dialogue, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, meter, onomatopoeia, paradox, parallelism, repetition, rhyme, satire, simile…and more.”

Anglican pastor, George Herbert (1593-1633) “called his poems the record of his conflict with God,” and yet “his skill in the use of language has earned him the high praises in the twentieth century from T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop, and Seamus Heaney.” Never aiming for “art for art’s sake,” Herbert consecrated his poems to God’s glory, aiming to “feel the love of God and to engrave it in the steel of human language for others to see and feel.” In this role as the secretary of God’s praise, “Herbert discovered… that the poetic effort to speak the riches of God’s greatness gave him deeper sight into that greatness.” In other words, “this effort to see and savor the glory of Christ was the effort to say it as it had never been said before.”

Oh, how great such an aim with no thought of a brand or platform!

Similarly, in the 18th century, George Whitefield’s sermons became “a phenomenon not just of his age but in the entire two-thousand-year history of Christian preaching. There has been nothing like the combination of his preaching pace and geographic extent and auditory scope and attention-holding effect and converting power.”

“Whitfield’s poetic effort focused on the making of sermons” where “specific biblical passages and doctrines were chosen, and specific words, sequences, consonances, assonances, cadences, images, narratives, characters, tones, pathoses, gestures, movements, facial expressions – all combined for an astonishing impact on believer and unbeliever alike.” In other words, his “poetic effort to speak and act in suitable ways wakened in him the reality he wanted to communicate. For him the truths of the gospel were so real – so wonderfully, terrifyingly, magnificently real – that he could not and would not preach them as though they were unreal or merely interesting.”

Closer to our time, C.S. Lewis came to Christ through logic and reason, which “led him to see that truth and beauty and justice and science would have no validity at all if there were no transcendent God in whom they were all rooted.” However, he reasoned that “if the key to the deepest meaning of this world lies outside this world then the world will probably be illumined most deeply not simply by describing the world as what it is but by likening the world to what it is not.” By using “metaphor, analogy, illustration, simile, poetry, story, myth – all of these are ways of likening aspects of reality to what it is not, for the sake of showing more deeply what it is.”

So, how does this affect us in our writing and speaking endeavors? As series author John Piper says, “Groping for awakening words in the darkness of our own dullness can suddenly flip a switch and shed light all around what it is that we are trying to describe – and feel. Taking hold of a fresh word for old truth can become a fresh grasp of the truth itself. Telling of beauty in new words becomes a way of tasting more of the beauty itself.”

Sometimes this simply means praying before we speak or write, giving our work to God, and giving God and the work the time needed to speak beautifully to us and others. As one of my favorite Bible verses says it, “With You (God) is the fountain of life, and in Your light we see light” (Psalm 36:9.) Amen!

© 2014, Mary Harwell Sayler, reviewer and poet-author of Living in the Nature Poem and the Bible-based poetry book, Outside Eden


Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully, hardcover



…