Sunday
We are born with an inner fire. I believe that this fire is the God within. It is an unquenchable, divine fire. It warms us, it encourages us, and occasionally asks us to dance.
—Barbara Holmes
Monday
There is some inexplicable connection between suffering and joy. One of the greatest graces of this existence is that we are able to experience joy in the midst of suffering.
—Christian Wiman
Tuesday
If you don’t know how to dance, don’t worry. Your soul knows the steps. Wherever life finds you, don’t forget to dance and sing with the God who dances like the whirlwind with you.
—Barbara Holmes
Wednesday
Whenever and however I join with the cosmic dance, it jogs my memory and gives me a kind of “second sight,” a glimpse of the harmony and unity that is much deeper and stronger than the forces of any warring nation or individual.
—Joyce Rupp
Thursday
No tragedy, no sorrow, no loss could stop the dance. Dancing was a place to meet God, a place to rehearse the freedom for which we prayed. Dancing with God as a partner was an act of prophetic resistance, a defiance of bondage, a tool for liberation.
—Jacqui Lewis
Friday
Seek joy in God and peace within; seek to rest in the good, the true, and the beautiful. It’s the only resting place that also allows us to hear and bear the darkness.
—Richard Rohr
Week Forty-One Practice
An Invitation to Joy
Dr. Barbara Holmes opens her book Joy Unspeakable by honoring God’s joyful presence in difficult times:
Joy Unspeakable
is not silent,
it moans, hums, and bends
to the rhythm of a dancing universe.
It is a fractal of transcendent hope,
a hologram of God’s heart,
a black hole of unknowing.
For our free African ancestors,
joy unspeakable is drum talk
that invites the spirits
to dance with us,
and tell tall tales by the fire.
For the desert Mothers and Fathers,
joy unspeakable is respite
from the maddening crowds,
and freedom from
“church” as usual.
For enslaved Africans during the
Middle Passage,
joy unspeakable is the surprise
of living one more day,
and the freeing embrace of death
chosen and imposed.
For Africans in bondage
in the Americas,
joy unspeakable is that moment of
mystical encounter
when God tiptoes into the hush arbor,
testifies about Divine suffering,
and whispers in our ears,
“Don’t forget,
I taught you how to fly
on a wing and a prayer,
when you’re ready
let’s go!”…
For the tap dancing, boogie woogie,
rap/rock/blues griots
who also hear God,
joy unspeakable is
that space/time/joy continuum thing
that dares us to play and pray
in the interstices of life,
it is the belief that the phrase
“the art of living”
means exactly what it says.
Joy Unspeakable
is
both FIRE AND CLOUD,
the unlikely merger of
trance and high tech lives
ecstatic songs and a jazz repertoire
Joy unspeakable is
a symphony of incongruities
of faces aglow and hearts
on fire
and the wonder of surviving together.
Reference:
Barbara A. Holmes, “Preface to the First Edition,” Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), xvii, xviii. Used with permission.
Image credit and inspiration: Nah, Untitled (detail), 2018, photo, Iran, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Dancing with a Divine Partner is an intuitive dance: step by step we learn when to take initiative and when to receive, when to sway, when to breathe, when to pause.
