Yowza is tonight a time to sing my beautiful grief into the rafters.
The image comes from Toko-Pa Turner, who spoke to me in a writing circle agenda quote this evening: “There is a wild woman under our skin who wants nothing more than to dance until her feet are sore, sing her beautiful grief into the rafters, and offer the bottomless cup of her creativity as a way of life.” Tonight was such a time for me, for the weary wild-woman under my own skin, I guess.
I arrived into Birmingham Alabama Sunday late afternoon, to meet up with two Doctor of Ministry cohorts and two Masters students. Beloved Community pilgrimage here in the Fertile Crescent of civil rights, as one of our co-leaders, Dr. C. Anthony Hunt, names it. I myself have a problematic less poetic relationship with the South. I’ve avoided it most of my life. Disdained it. Judged it. Been embarrassed by it. Married to a Minnesotan whose prejudice against Southern whites is way worse than my own, we never had any reason to venture into this land.
But here’s the thing. The human beings who faced down the fire hoses, the dogs, the church bombings, the Klan…they lived in the South. The capacity to endure the nonviolent methods of the Civil Rights movement inspire, resonate deeply with what I’ve been shown in the last years of my own journey. Having been found by a forgiveness I was not seeking, I’m incredibly moved by the weighty elders I’m meeting on the way.
Joyce Nadine Parrish O’Neal, for instance. A foot-soldier of the Selma Voting Rights Movement, she was in her teens when Bloody Sunday unfolded near and then in her church, Brown’s Chapel (AME), September 15, 1963. She and her mom tended the wounded, pouring milk into the eyes and faces seared with tear gas. Now 78, she sat on a small wooden throne, sharing her story, leading us in freedom songs, being her little-girl and old-woman self, transparent and weighty, utterly feminine and mighty.
I’ve met her three times now, and every time, she takes my breath away. On the first encounter-visit, I sang to her outside the public library, a Red Tent song entitled Woman which we would sing to honor the courage of one of our sisters. (Woman…Woman… Thank you for showing up, thank you for sharing your sweet love and truth. We are so grateful, for your holy presence in all that you do…). The second time, the group of students seemed to pull it out of me as communal prayer after we heard and honored her stories. This time, singing didn’t feel necessary, or maybe I was just embarrassed to feel it all so deeply again. Tears were what came out this time, not the song, though Woman simmered in my cells the entire time she spoke.
I’m leery of the deep feeling I have for her, knowing her so very little, with no specific need to have her know of it, or see/hear me. It simply felt like this might be the last time I got to be in her presence, hear her stories, hear her laughter. My heart ached, broke, yearned, wondered...
She was standing at the doorway as everyone had left. I stood close to her, smiling, saying thank you. She paused, expectant I suppose. Then I just stopped speaking. I simply let the tears come and smiled at her for a while. She smiled back. I felt the familiar power of the gaze, knowing and feeling a lot between souls without any words necessary. She stayed in it with me.
I told her that after she passed over, once she was with the ancestors, I might still call on her as a weighty ancestor-elder. “Once you meet a weighty elder, you’d be foolish to let them go completely,” I said shyly. She hugged me. I walked down the steps, letting more tears come. It was hard to walk away.
But why?
Why does she feel so familiar?
Is there some part of me I’m not claiming or inhabiting, projected onto her? If so, I’d pray to pull it back, so to unburden her.
Does she recognize anything in me, or is this all Spirit’s signature for me alone?
What and/or how am I to receive, to offer, to honor, to release…?
So very curious…immersed in grace & gratitude.
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