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Remembering Dr. Barbara Holmes (Replay of 2016 Conversation)
00:58:24
"Dr. B was passionate about expanding our understanding of the Christian contemplative tradition, reminding us that contemplation isn’t the sole domain of those who can retreat to quiet places. She understood, from her own life and from the...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Contemplify where we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives of the world. I'm your host, Paul Swanson. This episode's a little different. Today we are remembering Dr. Barbara Holmes. Dr. B passed away this past week. Dr. B impacted so many of us through her writing, her teaching and presence. She was fearless in her integration of contemplative spiritualities, practicing wonder in the here and now with the seen and unseen. Dr. B taught us to be curious about the mysteries of the cosmos while grounding those implications in the everyday moments of life, be they moments of struggle or joy or both at the same time. Like all of Dr. B's friends and students, I will miss her. But I can already feel that her absence only pours fuel on the fire of her teaching that warmed us forward in a blaze all these years. So here's my conversation with Dr. B from 2016, when we focused on her book, Joy Unspeakable. I Recommend Checking out Dr. B's podcast with her co host, the great Donny Bryant, and also check out all of her books. They're beautiful, they're wise, they're deep. From Racing the Cosmos to Crisis Contemplation to Dreaming Liberation in the Cosmos.
- [01:39]
B
Check it out.
- [01:41]
A
So with heavy hearts, join me in raising a glass to Dr.
- [01:57]
B
My guest today is the author of five books and recently retired from her post as the president of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. My guest today is Dr. Barbara A. Holmes. Welcome, Dr. Holmes.
- [02:10]
C
Thank you. How are you today?
- [02:12]
B
I'm doing really well. Thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast. I first heard you speak about a year ago in Chicago at a seminary. I don't know if you call it convention. I guess it's called convergence. So. And you dropped in and then had to leave almost immediately after you. You shared a paper. And it was this kind of pinnacle, apex of the event for me because I thought you were able to bring such a grounded, contemplative, prophetic voice that hadn't been present yet to the weekend. And then when I went searching for you, you had already returned home. I think that next morning I was wondering, do you often do that? Do you often show up places and kind of blow people's minds and then disappear again?
- [03:03]
C
Well, as it happened, I was in the midst of the major responsibilities of supporting the school fundraising. And my love of speaking and preaching and talking with people made me add to the normal duties of that job, dropping in at conferences and preaching in places and talking to people. So my living Was long.
- [03:26]
B
I could only imagine. Thank you for being there and for all the speaking and writing engagements you do take on. Barbara, a question that I always bring to our guests early on is ask if the word contemplative, how that relates to them and their work. And one of the things I really enjoyed about your book, Joy Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, is you define contemplation in a variety of different ways, depending on different contexts. So I'm. I want to just kind of tweak this question for you. So when you hear the word contemplative, how does that moniker relate to you, your work, or your community?
- [04:06]
C
Well, it depends on whether I'm drawing from what I learned and was educated by through seminaries and PhD programs and what I actually saw in the experiences of the black church. If I think in terms of my educational view, I think the European perspective, which is a setting apart, coming away from preparing yourself for the receipt of or exchange of vision. But it's usually individual. It's usually alone. You think of monastics. You think of single people seeking divinity, wisdom, whatever you want to call it. What I experienced when I was writing Joy Unspeakable, I was trying to bring my taught ideas about contemplation into the reality of what I was looking at in a major black church, the largest African American church in the Disciples of Christ denomination, which is located in Memphis, Tennessee. And I was sitting there listening to them sing the song oh, Jesus. Those are the only words to the song. Okay, so really talented singers begin to moan oh, Jesus. And what goes on, it can go on sometimes for 20 or 30 minutes, punctuated only by the screams or the silent moans or the humming of the audience as they enter into that flow, that contemplative flow toward the very center of what is real. And so I thought to myself, this doesn't look like anything I learned. And I began to realize that in the upper room, if you're familiar with the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit descends on the group. Not an individual, but an assemblage of people who are on one accord and of one mind. And so, you know, although the black church has its performative aspects, where it looks like, you know, it could be sometimes a BET award show because the town is great and there's performance going on. It's all part of it. But then something happens. And for me, contemplation is what happens. Sometimes it happens in silence. Sometimes it happens in the midst of shouting. But it is the inward turn that the group makes. Together, we do not have words to describe it, but we know it when it's real.
- [06:50]
B
Well said. And one thing that you also talk about in your book is you talk about your own contemplative lineage and the lineage of family and elders. Can you share any stories that come to mind of a family member that you felt that you caught this contemplative spirit from rather than being taught in the seminary?
- [07:15]
C
Oh, yeah. This is my Aunt Lee, who was sort of Catholic and sort of not.
- [07:22]
B
The best kind of Catholics.
- [07:25]
C
Yeah. And she on my father's side. They were Gullah mystical women. It's usually the women. It's a matrilineal kind of lineage from Africa. And so it's always through the firstborn female child that the gifts of second sight appeared. You would be bored with the veil. It is a actual membrane of your face, which the midwives would say was the veil for second sight. And so people born with the veil in our family and in other African American families would have messages coming from beyond. They would be able to tell you about the ancestors on the other side. If someone in the family passed, they would carry messages back and forth. It was such a healing kind of gift that my Aunt Lee had. And when I realized that two of us. I come from a family of five children, two of the female children have the gift, I decided to let my sister play with that. And I would go the academic class because I was always freaked out when my Aunt Lee would call me and she'd say, how do you feel? And I'd start screaming for my dad to say, you can't leave. Something's going to happen to me. And he'd say, oh, go ahead and say, give me the phone. But I realized that this was a power that you really had to be attentive to. It was nothing to play with, and that you had to be very, very serious. And so the ways in which I have mediated my gift is through writing. I hear what I write before I write it. Sometimes I wake up and I hear the ancestors dictating a new Clark. And then I go, wait, wait, the computer isn't open. I mediate differently. My sister sees people on the other side, brings the messages back. I don't do that, but I do hear, and I write what I hear. And when I'm speaking to people who have questions, I don't make it dramatic and weird. I just say what I hear. And it is almost always right. So this Gullah understanding of the world, not ending at death, not beginning at birth, but being a complete cycle that you traverse, and that when you're on one side or the other, you're not cut off from the communication with that other side. So that was the gift that my Aunt Lee gave me. This knowledge coming from Gullah culture about the ability of life to be complete and not trusting it with birth and death.
- [10:20]
B
That reminds me of a story you tell in your book about a people group in Western Africa who go to the bottom of a river to meet with their ancestors. And I wonder if you could say a bit more about that, because there's this connection of what you're saying with your sister's gift and this practice.
- [10:42]
C
Yeah. This story came to me from Dr. Marcel Oyono, who I invited to teach with me whenever I taught African religious experience classroom. I didn't feel that even though that is my ancestry, that I have enough current knowledge of what's real and what's not to teach those classes alone. So I would invite him, and he tells us the story that he said will not stand up to Western belief systems. But once a year, there is a festival, and they go to a particular river. In this West African culture, they believe that when you die, you walk the river to the next realm. And so this is a particularly sacred spot where the particularly anointed folk or people who are going through rites of passage, dive into this river without diving equipment, stay under for long periods of time, and come back hour later, hour and a half later with gifts from the ancestors from the bottom. So, you know, I don't know what to do with that, with my Western mindset, But I have enough of Gullah in me to know that what I don't understand doesn't mean that because I don't understand it, it's not true. So I have a wide enough spectrum that I can put that in that and say I don't understand it. And it's fascinating when I read that.
- [12:13]
B
I just had to sit with it because it was just such an amazing image that came to my mind and myself also trained in this Western mindset and schooling, I just wanted to reject it as there's no way that's metaphorical, or there's got to be another explanation. But to push off those easy answers and just sit with it and say, this is the story that's being told, you know, and not. Not try to hide because I haven't experienced or witnessed it or can't rationally put it into a container that I know so well.
- [12:50]
C
Right. There is also a story of a gentleman whose father dies in the hospital and they're poor and they live in West Africa, and there's no way to get the body home. And so they get the talisman from the doctor, the medicine doctor, and they put it in the deceased hand and he's able to walk home. And the interesting part of the story is that they say it took many, many days because, of course, the dead walk slowly. And so, you know, there's this delightful richness that those stories bring to a religion that we've kind of flattened out so that we can handle it.
- [13:35]
B
Right, right.
- [13:38]
C
We invoke the Holy Spirit in places, but if the Holy Spirit actually showed up, we'd be scared out of our mind.
- [13:44]
B
That's right.
- [13:44]
C
You know, it's sort of like you want it, but only a little bit. Right. And I've always been fascinated by mystery, and I'm fully aware that contemplation is one of the ways we acknowledge that life is a mystery and that we are on a planet spinning through space, and we have no idea where we come from or where we're going. And our task during this brief journey is to connect to other knowledge, other wisdom, and one another.
- [14:18]
B
That's so well said. And one of the things as I. I have so many questions here, I know we're not going to get to them all, but it's. It's hard for me to even know where to jump in at points because there's just all these things popping up. But I guess the best place for me to start is where one of the things that really hit me right away and that was that the desert fathers and mothers were communities in Africa. And I know that sounds so simple and myself being theologically trained in a very white context, you know, there's a sense that that was. That was whitewashed to have those bishops and saints be imaged as white. And so my question is, what would Christianity regain as a whole and the black church particularly, if we recognize these saints and bishops as black Christians?
- [15:20]
C
Well, one thing the black Church would gain, historicity. And what I mean by that is that your life, religious life, your personal life, doesn't begin in slavery. That that break not knowing without DNA analysis who you are, where you come from, who your people are, is a very disruptive break in your life. To understand that historically Athanasius and many, many others, more African fathers, that your streamline in Christianity and in Judaism has African American progenitors in it is important. I mean, we're looking at young people looking at Barack Obama, saying, oh, wow, we finally have somebody who looks like that Susan Bout well, where do you find those same folks in our religious history? We don't. One of the things you're required to do when you have a break in your history is you have to be creative. You have to put together something that's real for you. A lot of Native Americans, American Indians have done that. They don't remember all of their ritual, but they've come together to have powwow, to create drum circles, to put a pastiche, I call it a patchwork of what's real and what's current for today. Thank you. So that would change that. I mean, in terms of the white church and it's really. Unfortunately we have to keep talking about white church and black church. But it still remains probably the most segreg hour on Sunday morning. And it's not necessarily for political reasons, it's by cultural choice. But what would be gained would be the understanding that there is more underpinning Christianity, Judaism and other of the monotheism than a Eurocentric view of what happened and how it happened. That there's a rich tribalness that, you know, I remember a cosmologist, Brian Swin, saying that in the beginning we all sat around tribal fires, all of us. And so how do we relegate some as more civilized than others? And you know, you need the richness of the tribe, of the civilization, you need all of it if you're going to have a religion that taps in and is relevant to everyone.
- [17:57]
B
And one thing that seems to be lost when Christian became so Eurocentric is the loss of the dancing, the drumming, the singing. As you point out in your book that you know, when Christian practice starts to become a very sit down, non embodied way of being in the world, that it loses part of its identity of incarnation. I wonder if you can speak to a bit about the importance of the drums, the dance. And I know you mentioned the Sufis as well as a part of this kind of broader African contemplative cosmology.
- [18:45]
C
Yes, there are ways into contemplative spaces that don't include silent meditation. Silence is often part of it. But there's something about drumming that is very, very evocative. There's something about allowing your body to respond in physical prayerful movement toward the center of your being. I don't know if the listeners are aware of Howard Thurman's work, African American mystic at the turn of the century. But there are ways inward that don't include silence. And you usually find in cultural conte that it is through dance that it's through drumming, that it's through song that you find these things. The problem is that we have an image of what that looks like that's been commodified. So back in the 70s and 80s, people no longer do that now, but they used to have an African American choir, always at the national conventions, Republican and Democratic. There was a sense of performance about it. And so people began to presume that everything that we did was performative. It's something that we did for fun. We danced around, we sing, we're joyful. That's all true. But there is another aspect of it, and it doesn't usually happen in front of cameras and it doesn't usually happen in public events. I've had the opportunity to inhabit many storefront churches because I've been so fascinated by the ways in which we enter contemplative spaces. And I have found that there, they don't do it on a Sunday when there will be strangers there. They conjure during the week. Prayer meetings on Wednesdays, meetings on Friday, and the music begins and people begin to dance and pray. And then there is a shift in the atmosphere. I have sat in those places and watched it happen where you are entering into sacred contemplative space that is evocative, it is healing. It stimulates you and prepares you for the work that must be done. And so there is this action, reflection, kind of response. It is not for the purpose of going deeper and deeper and withdrawing. It is to assess you, to give you insight, to bring wisdom from the other side that you are to use for the betterment of humankind.
- [21:29]
B
And Barbara, are there practices that you personally feel most connected to that help bring you to this contemplative stance in the world?
- [21:41]
C
Yes. For me, it is usually music and a particular practice that my home church in Memphis, Tennessee, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, once a year, and it was only once a year, this was a little bit out of the norm. They would invite African masked stilt dancers to church and they would dance the aisles on these stilts as African gods. And in African cosmologies, they believe in one God, but the attributes God are set forth in characters with names. So the goodness of God might be one person thing they call a God or the power of God, or the trickster element of God would be embodied in a personhood, but they really do believe in one overarching God. When those dancers would come down the aisle as tricksters, poking people, dancing, completely masked a whole congregation. It was unbelievable. The sense of connection to something lost, the sense of being seen by a God who was in Africa when our ancestors were there and who was with us. Then in this church, they threw juju dust, which the deacons didn't love very much, but, you know, everybody wanted the dust thrown on them. When it began to change, that was a very private, very Afrocentric, very healing moment. But then they decided that they needed to invite white churches to experience it too. And that was all right. They all sat together because they were afraid. And then the gods came down the island, still in black faces covered, throwing juju. The horror that they evinced in that congregation completely made it difficult for us to do what we had done in private. And so there was a sense of you have to act normal or they'll say you're a heathen and you're pagan. And so you have this double consciousness going on of I can't get into this because I'm being watched. And if I'm watched, then I have to perform as I'm expected to perform. And so that made it really, really difficult. And eventually they just ended the practice. So it's interesting what will take you inward, but when it's being observed, how that changes, how you're able to take that ride.
- [24:40]
B
Barbara, is this, this practice of the inclusion of these Africana contemplative practices, is this something that's being reclaimed throughout the black church? Or was your church kind of an anomaly in this attempt and successful attempt to bring it back in to the church?
- [25:04]
C
There are very few African American churches who are doing it. Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Absolutely. And the church in Memphis. But no, there is a sense of trying to assimilate that even though no one is there watching you, you were under the gaze of your usually larger white denomination or conservative African American denomination. And so reclamation of these kinds of things will be left, I think, to the next generation, people who are curious about why church is all the same for everybody. It wasn't all of us who are interested in their origins who begin to do DNA testing to find out where they're from. I mean, I happen to know my African origin just simply because of where we were left. The island that our ancestors grew up on. We knew that we were from Sierra Leone or Senegal right on the coast because they were called rice growing Negroes. After they sent the Native Americans in to pick rice in South Carolina and they all died of malaria and all kinds of other things, they decided that they would go to the coast where the rice growers were, and they brought in Africans from the rice growing, dropped them off in South Carolina, my people grew up on a Diesto island, and they were left pretty much themselves. So they maintained culture, they maintained language, they maintained a lot of rituals that have come through the ages to us.
- [26:52]
B
And do you see a younger generation currently picking up the mantle and desiring to build upon the linkage that you've created, not only through your life, but through your work?
- [27:07]
C
Yes. The reclamation of this DNA study thing that brings not just African Americans, but people who call themselves white. None of us has won anything. They're finding out through DNA that they have sub Saharan African in them, they have Asian in them. And so this coming together and the reclamation of practices and the creative development of new practices will come as people stop thinking of themselves as one thing. We call Barack Obama black, and that's fine with me, but he's not, because we're not going to go back to the one drop of black blood makes you black. He is biracial, and that's even a difficult term because there's only one race, human race. So race in this country is very, very difficult. And so I think young people and others, once they understand that they are part of many cultures, they will be curious about, want to reclaim and create new associations with the cultures of their origin. They are Bella, mystical women who are in white families because they have Gullah in them. And there, I mean, you know, you've seen the DNA programs on television with Henry Lewis Gates, and it's fascinating.
- [28:38]
B
Yeah.
- [28:39]
C
That's how we reconnect. We admit that we are not one thing and that the word white won't cover it and the word black won't cover it. Then we begin to work together towards contemplative practices that are deeply culturally grounded. Hmm.
- [28:57]
B
This reminds me a bit of the work of. I don't know if you're familiar with A.J. jacobs. He wrote that book, A Year of Living Biblically, and his most recent work is he. He held the world's largest family reunion, where through his. This DNA research and how we're all basically cousins to a certain extent. And he. He was able to. I mean, it was like, there's thousands of people all over the world who came to his family reunion because they were all able to say, you know, going back 12 generations, we are, you know, separated this many times by marriage and all this, but we're still family. And his wider purpose of this is just to show that we're so interconnected that the moment we start to forget that we, you know, think of ourselves as these individual silos where In a very playful manner, which is, I think his skill set is he shows we're all this big one family. And whenever we get together, he greets people as cousin. Apparently that's the first thing he said to Bill Clinton when he met Bill Clinton. He said, hey there, cousin. Because they're related, you know, through this fixture. But it points to, I think, what you're saying of that to only to reclaim the history of humanity and understand how we're all connected to this story and not just our individual. Sight line gets so focused on me and mine or who I think I'm a part of and who's not a part of me. And what I hear you saying is to make it broader and to be connected in a whole cross of communities so we don't get lost in thinking that there is another who we need to stay away from.
- [30:47]
C
Exactly. The other is us. My great grandfather was a full blooded Cherokee Indian. He was handed off when there was a removal of Indians. Someone handed this baby to someone in our family. And he didn't look like anybody, but he was just our grandfather. He had a long braid down his back. And they're just. There's always been a sense, or was in the past a sense an African American community, that whoever was in your neighborhood could also be your family if circumstances required it. And so the move, the contemplative move for me is not isolated. It's not radically individualistic. It is a way toward one another.
- [31:39]
B
That's what worries me a bit about the mindfulness movement. To me, it just seems like such an isolated call to reducing one's own personal stress, improving one's own personal well being. That there's not this sense of the collective.
- [32:00]
C
That's true. Yeah, it's true. I would turn to the work of Thomas Merton, who as a recluse was writing about the civil rights movement and about Martin Luther King and the need for activism. Some of us are called to be apart, but there has to be a connection to the world, whether it's writing or advising. Some of us are called to do the work in the streets. Some of us are called to the churches to serve formally. Others are called to work with another generation in very informal ways. Being able to respect each other's call means that we can come together and share our gifts, enter whatever contemplative spaces we need to enter. But realizing that the ultimate goal always is not to stay apart, but to connect in. Because there's too much work to be done for everybody to go into a corner and heal Their own nerves. It's too much work to be done.
- [33:06]
B
That's one of my favorite lines from your book. The world is the cloister of the contemplative. I feel like that puts it very succinctly, whether you're Thomas merton Or you're Dr. King, as you point out in your book. And to me, I feel like there really needs to be a call for more public contemplatives, more people in the world who are embracing that the contemplative path, as wide as that can be, as a way to stay themselves and ground themselves in all humility and richness of the divine as they go about their work in the world. And I think there are people out there who are doing this work, very much so. But I think there's not a public conversation about it.
- [33:57]
C
Nor do we identify public contemplative practices in that way. For instance, I was living in Minneapolis, where there were often many, many drum circles in powwow. The drum circles are extremely contemplative. I mean, I just. I have the same reaction there that I do when I'm watching the stilt walkers. But we don't identify that as contemplation. It's like cultural tourism. We go look at it, but we don't identify it as one of the paths inward. So it's the way in which we categorize. So what's contemplative? Well, drum, circle, song, Sufi dance is. There are so many ways inward, and the excitement is to be able to traverse a path that is different than your own. I try to do at least two different paths a year, depending on my time and my ability. But to dance with Sufis or to sit with Tibetan Buddhists and do mandala, do things that are contemplative even though they have not been specifically identified as the pathway inward.
- [35:14]
B
Yeah. Thanks for the other thing. Oh, go ahead, go ahead. No, no, no, no. You're on a roll. You keep going.
- [35:25]
C
The second edition Joy is coming out in 2017, and it's being amended to take into account the contemplative aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement and also the contemplative leadership style of President Obama. Wow. So all of that will, you know, these are realms. You don't think that the contemplatory. But that's what I'm working on right now.
- [35:54]
B
Fantastic. I will look forward to the anniversary issue and what you talking about.
- [36:05]
C
The art chapter is also going to be updated to include Beyonce's new appropriation of culture. What that kind of music means. So And Kendrick Lamar.
- [36:20]
B
Fantastic.
- [36:20]
C
Nothing more contemplative than the song We Gonna Be All Right.
- [36:23]
B
Right. And I imagine you, what, you saw his performance at the Grammys, I think.
- [36:28]
C
Which, oh, my goodness, blew my mind.
- [36:31]
B
That that was happening on a national scale and people weren't freaking out.
- [36:37]
C
Yeah, I was freaking out in my house. I preached that sermon in a very conservative church.
- [36:46]
B
Oh, yeah, Nice. How was the response to that?
- [36:52]
C
It was good because I knew how to put it into the cultural context so that it doesn't alarm people too much. What was exciting was that the young people got it. Most of the old people didn't even know who I was referring to, had never heard of Kendrick Lamont. But the young people rose to their feet and began dancing and calling back to me. And so I was preaching to them. And because the young people were so involved, the older people said, well, this must be good, because they know what she's talking about.
- [37:29]
B
I'd love to hear that sermon. That's what I would. The last chapter that you have, the one that you said you're going to update on the secular reclamation, about the. Really the distinction or this idea, there's a gulf between secular and sacred is such a fool's errand that we can kind of point and say, yes, this is spiritual. Yes, that's secular, and this is kind of what we've been talking about these past few minutes. How do you imagine that the, say, church communities 10 years, 20 years from now? We'll see. Do you think that distinction, people, will still be upheld, or do you think will allow the music of Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce to influence where church communities go?
- [38:18]
C
It would depend, because of the varieties of religious expression, which denominations, which groups decide that they're going to be relevant to another generation. I don't listen to the music of my father and my grandfather very often. Not because I don't want to. It's just not relevant to where I am and what I'm doing. The young people are voting with their feet. With regard to the way churches are currently organized. In order to be relevant, you have to turn some leadership over to another generation. We saw in the recent election that if you continue to honor the same things in the same way, people will not respond. So what you've got to do is you've got to allow another generation to say, this is our way toward the divine. This is the way in which we want to express it musically, liturgically, or not liturgically. Let us gather and decide how we're going to do this. Before I left Minneapolis I was working on a gathering of artists I've never met other than Sunday, to work out the relationship with the divine through their art, without liturgy that is traditional, without any of the traditions. But I mean, who connects to the divine more specifically than poets and artists and dancers, musicians? And so why should we impose upon them the ways in which they ought to do this work, reach this center? We ought to be listening to them. I mean, I think in Chronicles it says they put the choir ahead of the army and let the choir leave. So, you know, if you really want to do some inward journeying, then you've got to come up with ways to come together spiritually that is different than what we've always done. And I was not going to oppose anything. I was just going to bring them all together, ask them to present their art and to see where it took them.
- [40:29]
B
And you said this program was just getting started before you left, and has it continued to grow after you've departed?
- [40:38]
C
The chaplain who is there is very committed to it. And so I have no idea because, of course, when there's a new administration, there is no idea. But I know the chaplain is still there and is very committed to that kind of a program. I have been a friend of Kirk Whalems, the jazz musician from Memphis, Tennessee, and brought him to Minneapolis, and we packed out one of the largest churches downtown while he did testimony through his instrument, and it was breathtaking. And I did a spontaneous hip hop poem while he played. And, you know, it was just. It's a matter of trusting what is within you, not trying to script it, not trying to make certain that it fits within certain guidelines. But there is a spirituality within each of us that seeks expression. And it doesn't have to be the same way as your neighbor expresses.
- [41:47]
B
Right.
- [41:47]
C
Sometimes it's. We're seeking to be the purest expression of who God wants us to be. However you use that language doesn't have to be God, but even divine presence manifested in you. How are you living your divine reality? How are you doing that and going to work every day? Getting up, cooking dinner? Exactly. It has to be done. All this gotta be done. But where are you seeking that spark, that light that will bring you toward the center? You won't have to figure out which path to take. It's seated within you. So, you know, there's nothing about me that's going to be a brain surgeon that was good in me, not put in me at all. What was put in me had sought expression. And so part of the quiet part, I think in Terms of studies and work is that you are listening for the divine within so that you can hear what will give you that joy, that spark.
- [43:03]
B
Yeah, that attunement. One of my. The last guest on the show, he. His own spiritual path became awakened at a John Coltrane concert where he said it was an out of body experience. That the next time that he could even talk about that experience in similarity was when he met Ram Dass. And I love that he held these two things in tandem. You mentioned earlier about making room for younger folks in the leadership. I'm curious, are there any individual young contemplatives that you can point to as kind of picking up this mantle? You see their work, pushing this ball forward.
- [43:51]
C
I can't identify them any more than I could identify young politicians who will move us in the right direction because this generation has so dominated that there has been no room for them. I am. Because I don't see them coming, because I don't know who they are. I still have faith that they are there, that the old order is no longer working clearly. And so in spaces as we leave the scene and it's time for us to leave the scene, they will emerge. They will emerge. They will emerge because they are no longer happy with the way our society is working. They will emerge because the things that we thought were important, like mortgages and fancy stuff and consumerism don't satisfy that. And so a lot of the young people are seeking and the seeking is the pathway toward certain first you seek, you find, than you serve. So all of the people who are by the Pew Research Institute say they call them the nones, right? N o N E s who are not religious, not this, not that, but they are still seeking. And there is divine spark in them that seeks expression and if we get out of their way, they will express it. I think Kendrick lamari, for instance, is tantamount to Tupac in terms of the ways in which his appropriation of culture, his translation of it, leaves you stunned. When you agree with the way he puts it or his language or whatever, it leaves you stunned. That's what is required of us to do us uniquely, to listen, to find that source, that wellspring of joy and sustenance from within. We wouldn't shop so much if we did that. Something that isn't going to be bought.
- [46:05]
B
So it sounds like you have a lot of hope for this young generation that's coming up on the path that they'll carve for our culture and communities in the future.
- [46:17]
C
I do. I do. Even Though there are many folk who feel as if things have taken a terrible turn, sometimes they have to take a terrible turn. Whether you consider it terrible or not, sometimes they take a turn that you don't like. In order for there to be an awakening in the Black Lives Matter movement, they say, stay woke. Well, I'm not sure that anybody's awake. I'm sure that we haven't just settled in and presume that everything will be all right as we attend to our own garden. There is a need to come together, to seek the best good for all of us, to try to bring into fruition the beloved community. That doesn't mean we all have to be the same. It means we can disagree, but we have to respect one another and our humanity.
- [47:13]
B
Amen.
- [47:16]
C
One of the things that. I'm sorry.
- [47:18]
B
No, no, you go ahead.
- [47:22]
C
I was going to point out just one of the contemplative aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement, if that's of interest to you.
- [47:30]
B
Yeah, definitely.
- [47:33]
C
When I was in Minneapolis, of course, there were. It was the incident of the death of a young man in Minneapolis and the resulting uprising by Black Lives Matter. And I noticed they camped out by the police station for days and weeks. And I sent them wood for fires and other churches and food down there while they camped out to protest the death. I went to the funeral of the young man. And I noticed the divide between the young and the old in Black Church, I was definitely part of the old. I look like a black widow spider. I'm going to a funeral. I'm wearing black stock instead of black hat on, I got a black hat on. I got a black coat. I'm blacked down. And the millennials were all there, and they had on T shirts with a deceased picture on it, and they had cut off jeans on. And there was such a divide in the church. The preaching had nothing to do really with what had happened or comfort for the family. The young people spoke like they were at a rally and not at a funeral. And afterwards, my husband and I went over to the encampment to encourage them and just to say, you know, everything's going to be all right. And the funeral procession drove through the encampment, and I watched as family members and others leaped out of the car. They were playing hip hop music. They were carrying the body to its final resting place. And everybody began dancing. I mean, they were dancing not to gospel music. They were dancing to Kendrick. They were dancing to Beyonce. They were jumping out of the funeral cars and dancing like their lives depended on it. It reminded me of New Orleans, where, you know, you dance the dirge and then you go back. Well, these kids were dancing, and there were ministers there saying, what are they doing? There was so much grief. There was no way to get it out. The funeral hadn't done it hadn't helped. And they were dancing their grief. It was a contemplative moment. Later, I went to a service held by all the millennial young black people in Minneapolis outside. And while they preached in tandem, one preacher, the other took the mic and they preached like four, five preachers preaching at the same time in counterpoint. And afterwards, they started playing dance music. And people jumped from the pews, the makeshift pews, benches outside and dance. And I dance with them. And I felt like there would be joy in the morning that the issues of pain in the community could be resolved. It was below freezing. And I danced until my husband dragged me away because I didn't want to leave. Because at that moment, it was like when you were in a church service, a Christian church service, someone preaches and then someone. You respond with a hymn to the sermon, that, okay, we heard it. It was good. All right, fine. So they preached, and they responded with, we gonna be all right. And they just started dancing. And my husband said to me, you're the president of a seminary. Could you just stop? Thank you. So dignified. I said, no, but it's necessary. It's absolutely life saving. And so the connection between the senior people and the young people was welded as we danced together.
- [51:35]
B
That's an amazing story. And one thing that jumps out at me, Barbara, it seems like your work, and I mean, just the way you live and the work that you take on and pursue in life, and you don't seem to. You seem to have courage to just follow that wherever it takes you that, you know, I don't think I've ever seen the president of a college or university, let alone a seminary, dance at all. And you just kind of seem to follow the beat of your own drummer. And to me, that that's where your prophetic voice comes in and your attunement to what you spoke at the beginning of our convers of this is your gift, where you're just reciting what you're being told. Is that how you've always kind of lived your own academic and vocational life?
- [52:36]
C
Absolutely. I have been fearless about it, and often I've made wrong choices. I didn't figure out what I was going to be when I grew up for a very long time. I remember standing at graduation from a law school. And I'm standing there. I passed all my bar exams, I'm a lawyer, and I hear, this isn't it. And I think to myself, what? What do you mean, this isn't it? I have just passed two bar exams. I am graduating as an attorney. You just shut up, whoever you are. And so the next morning, because, you know, I heard it so clearly, I called the medical school. I said, what would it take? And I heard, that's not it. And so what I did was just settle down into the practice of law. But every day that I did it, I knew this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. And it wasn't until I was practicing law in Texas, and I walked into this mysterious little church in Dallas, Texas. I'd written an article about this. I mean, too strange to tell in the time we have left. But I. Here I am, a lawyer by day, and I walk into this very odd church, and when I walk in the door my first Sunday in Dallas, I don't know anybody. I just see the church and park. And when I walk in the doors, there are, like, 11 people there, 12 maybe. And the pastor says, she's here. Now, of course, that's enough to make you want to turn around and run out the door. Okay, all right, now, that's enough already. I don't know where I am. She's here. Who? What? He walked up to me, laid hands on me, and began to prophetically tell me things he had no way of knowing. I didn't know him, he didn't know me. And with specificity, and said, you were called to ministry, so you'll be here a year, and then you will move on. Wow. So sit and learn. And I did. I sat and I learned. So by day, I had the incongruous kind of connection of suited lawyer JCPenney. And then at night, wearing a long dress and sitting in a pew with people, watching things happen that defied the ordinary. And so I don't talk about it much. I haven't talked about it much. I have written a book that I have not published. It's laying on the floor in my office. I'm not sure I didn't want to publish it while I was still working, and I may publish it in a year or two that tells the story of that mystical journey that prepared me for what would come next.
- [55:39]
B
Wow. I would certainly love to read it.
- [55:44]
C
A lot of mysticism.
- [55:45]
B
Yeah. Wow. Barbara, as you said, I know we're running out of time here. I was curious what projects are on the horizon for you? I know you said that a new edition of Joy Unspeakable will be coming out. Are you putting more energy into writing at this point?
- [56:04]
C
Absolutely, I am. I will be writing. I will be lecturing, I'll be talking to people. I want my life. This was a quick decision, but I want my life to reflect the gifts I want to share at this point. I really do. I. I love running a school, but I think it's time to do something else. I think it's time to share, to talk with people who are on a similar path that I'm on, to write as much as I can and as often as I can and to keep connections with the mystics in all cultural communities.
- [56:46]
B
Well, to all of our listeners, we'll have links to all of Barbara's books on the Contemplify website. And is there anywhere else they should go, Barbara, to find out where you're teaching and what you're up to. Anywhere online that our listeners can connect to.
- [57:03]
C
Soon. And I will give you. I'll give you that as soon as it's up. We're preparing web and all of that.
- [57:09]
B
Perfect.
- [57:09]
C
But right now, we're in the process.
- [57:12]
B
Yeah. So we'll stay tuned on that one. And we always like to close our show by asking our guests if they want, if they were going to pair a drink, anything from water to whiskey, with this conversation. What drink would you recommend a listener enjoy while listening to you in this conversation?
- [57:32]
C
Coconut lemon water.
- [57:34]
B
Coconut lemon water.
- [57:36]
C
Sparkling.
- [57:38]
B
Sparkling. Oh, yes. I can get behind that. That sounds delicious.