reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountain-top,
worrying about paying the light bill. But also the pain of those closer to the metaphorical summit: the middle-class
woman who seems to have all her worldly needs taken care of but whose husband is treating her like “the maid, the
household service, the jitney service, and the escort service all rolled into one”; the child whose wealthy parents worry
more about “the texture of hair on the outside of the head than the quality of education inside the head.”
“Isn’t that...the world that each of us stands on?”
“Yessuh!”
“Like Hannah, we have known bitter times! Daily, we face rejection and despair!”
“Say it!”
“And yet consider once again the painting before us. Hope! Like Hannah, that harpist is looking upwards, a few faint
notes floating upwards towards the heavens. She dares to hope.... She has the audacity...to make music...and praise
God...on the one string...she has left!”
People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up
into the rafters. As I watched and listened from my seat, I began to hear all the notes from the past three years swirl
about me. The courage and fear of Ruby and Will. The race pride and anger of men like Rafiq. The desire to let go, the
desire to escape, the desire to give oneself up to a God that could somehow put a floor on despair.
And in that single note-hope!-I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across
the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and
Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories-of survival, and freedom, and
hope-became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church,
on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger
world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our
journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shamed about,
memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish-and with
which we could start to rebuild. And if a part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes
simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill
its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the
possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.
“The audacity of hope! I still remember my grandmother, singing in the house, ‘There’s a bright side
somewhere...don’t rest till you find it....’”
“That’s right!”
“The audacity of hope! Times when we couldn’t pay the bills. Times when it looked like I wasn’t ever going to
amount to anything...at the age of fifteen, busted for grand larceny auto theft...and yet and still my momma and daddy
would break into a song...
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.