Of Surviving Together

Christ House commemorated the start of Black History Month with a special service of story and song. Created by Dr. Asa Lee while he was at Wesley Theological Seminary, the service pairs readings from American history, starting on the slave ship and continuing to the present day, with spirituals and other hymns. While parts of the service can be difficult to listen to, the stories are important and need to be heard. Ultimately the service helps us to continue the struggle, inspired by how others have struggled, and points to the inherent dignity within all of us.

This year, Christ House’s chaplain, Reverend Charles Anderson-Gray, invited Dr. Beverly Mitchell to give the griot, a West African tradition that preserves a groups culture and history. Dr. Mitchell is a Professor of Systematic Theology and Church History, and the C. C. Goen & Douglas R. Chandler Church History Chair at Wesley Theological Seminary. She teaches courses in theology; church history, including African American religious history; and human rights. She also regularly co-teaches a course on domestic and global poverty. Dr. Mitchell has authored two books and numerous journal articles, and has had featured chapters in several books. Her current scholarship focuses on challenges to human dignity in the face of white supremacy.

In her griot, Dr. Mitchell pointed to a joy that sustained Black people throughout the horrors experienced through the present day. She reminded us that we can’t just focus on the pain, abuse, and injustice, but we also need to highlight and celebrate the joy because that is an important part of the story as well. She closed her talk by sharing a poem, Joy Unspeakable, by Barbara Holmes. In the poem, Holmes identifies Joy Unspeakable as present in the very beginning of creation as:

“a fractal of transcendent hope,
a hologram of God’s heart,
a black hole of unknowing.”

She continued by cataloguing how that joy sustaining communities from African ancestors around a drum to the present day as:

“a symphony of incongruities
of faces aglow and hearts
on fire
and the wonder of surviving together.”

You can read the full poem here. The community was deeply moved and inspired by Dr. Mitchell’s griot. May Black History Month, and each month of the year, continue to be a time of reflection, awareness, and growth.