Dear Members and Friends,
As the weather warms in Chicago and Fairfield County, the ice melts, the snow disappears, and mud can get tracked into the house! There’s a definite shift reminding us that spring is around the corner. Is there a similar movement in your own spirit?
May you find ways to tend to yourselves and one another. And if you are able, make or renew connections with others, knowing that the fabric of our community is built on relationships.
On Sunday, I shared my passion for the history of Al-Andalus, or Andalusia, from 750 to the 1400s, when a tolerant Muslim-led civilization made space for Jewish and Christian scholars and leaders to collaborate in scientific, philosophical, astronomical, and agricultural advances. Many of you asked for references—my favorite is The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal.
With Ramadan beginning this Friday, I encourage you to keep your Muslim neighbors in your thoughts, as they begin a month of taking additional time to pray and fast, put more effort into instilling self-control and self-restraint, and to foster compassion and empathy for those who are less fortunate. If you have a favorite poem or passage from a Muslim or Sufi writer, I would love to receive it as I put together readings for next week.
This week, I share poems from two of my favorite African American authors: Maya Angelou and Howard Thurman. Howard Thurman was a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. and sometimes called the spiritual mystic of the civil rights movement. During my first course in seminary, I took a course on the work of Howard Thurman, and he remains the most influential theologian on my own thinking.
On Wednesday at 11:00 AM, you are welcome to join me online for Poetry for the Spirit: Let Your Life Speak. We will reflect on these poems and the movements of your own spirit. Click HERE.
This Sunday we have guests from Make the Road and Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants (CIRI) sharing with us during our worship service. I will join you remotely.
I will be in Westport March 6-11 and March 15-19. If you would like to meet with me via Zoom prior, or if you would like to schedule a time when I am in town, please let me know. You can respond to this letter.
Warmly,
Alan
from Howard Thurman’s 1980 commencement address at Spellman College
There is in you something that waits and listens
for the sound of the genuine,
and sometimes there is so much traffic
going on in your minds,
so many different kinds of signals,
so many vast impulses floating through your organism
that go back thousands of generations,
long before you were even a thought in the mind of creation,
and you are buffeted by these,
and in the midst of all of this you have got to find out…..
Who you are…
How the sound of the genuine comes through to you…
For the sound of the genuine is flowing through you.
Don’t be deceived and thrown off
by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams, your ambitions,
so that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you,
because that is the only true guide that you will ever have,
and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing.
“I Rise” by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
from For the Inward Journey by Howard Thurman
At times when the strain is heaviest upon us,
And our tired nerves cry out in many-tongued pain
Because the flow of love is choked far below the deep recesses of the heart,
We seek with cravings firm and hard
The strength to break the dam
That we may live again in love’s warm stream.
We want more love; and more and more
Until at last, we are restored and made anew!
Or so it seems.
But when we are closer drawn to [the source of our love], God’s great light,
And in its radiance stand revealed,
The meaning of our need informs our minds.
“More love,” we cried; as if love could be weighted, measured, bundled, tied.
As if with perfect wisdom we could say—to one, a little love; to another, an added portion;
And on and on until all debts were paid
With no one left behind.
We can see the tragic blunder of our cry
Not for more love our hungry cravings seek
But more power to love.
