from Sorrow Songs—the Ground of Hope
(part nine, conclusion)

It is in order to raise the same question about heaven that was raised previously about the Judgment. Are we dealing here with a matter of literal truth? Or are we once again dealing with necessary symbolism growing out of literal truth? In other words, what is the intrinsic meaning attached to or to be drawn out of the concept of heaven? Is this mere drama or some crude art form? Certain facts are quite evident in the picture given. Heaven was specific! An orderly series of events was thought to take place. The human spirit rests—the fulfillment of the exhausted. A crown, a personal crown is given—a fulfillment for those who strive without the realization of their strivings. There is a room of one's own—the fulfillment of life in terms of the healing balm of privacy. There are mansions—the fulfillment of life in terms of living with a high quality of dignity. There are robes, slippers—the fulfillment of life in terms of the restoration of self-respect. The idea at the core of the literal truth in the concept of heaven is this—life is totally right, structurally dependable, good essentially as contrasted with the moral concepts of good and evil. It affirms that the contradictions of human experience are not ultimate. The profoundest desires of man are of God, and therefore they cannot be denied ultimately.

Our ship is on the ocean but
We'll anchor by and by

To use the oft-quoted phrase of Augustine, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless till they find their rest in thee.” There is an order, a moral order in which men participate, that gathers up run into itself, dimensional fulfillment, limitless in its creativity and design. Whatever may be the pressures to which one is subjected, the snares, the buffetings, one must not for a moment think that there is not an ultimate value always at stake. It is this ultimate value at stake in all experience that is the final incentive to decency, to courage. Human life, even the life of a slave, must be lived worthily of so grand an undertaking. At every moment a crown is placed over his head that he must constantly grow tall enough to wear. Only of that which is possessed of infinite potentials can an infinite demand be required. The unfulfilled, the undeveloped only has a future; the fulfilled, the rounded out, the finished can only have a past. The human spirit participates in both past and future in what it regards as the present but it is independent of both.

We may dismiss, then, the symbolism of these works as touching life and death as if we understand the literal truth with which they have to do. The moment we accept the literal truth, we are once again faced with the urgency of a vehicular symbolism. The cycle is indeed vicious To be led astray by the crassness, the materialistic character of the symbolism so that in the end we reject the literal truth, is to deny life itself of its dignity and man the right or necessity of dimensional fulfillment. In such a view the present moment is all there is—man is no longer a time binder but becomes a prisoner in a tight world of momentary events—no more and no less. His tragedy would be that nothing beyond the moment could happen to him and all of his life could be encompassed within the boundary of a time-space fragment. For these slave singers such a view was completely unsatisfactory and it is therefore thoroughly and decisively rejected. And this is the miracle of their achievement causing them to take their place alongside the great creative religious thinkers of the human race. They made a worthless life, the life of chattel property, a mere thing, a body, worth living! They yielded with abiding enthusiasm to a view of life which included all the events of their experience without exhausting themselves in these experiences. To them this quality of life was insistent fact because of that which deep within them, they discovered of God, and his far-flung purposes. God was not through with them. And he was not, nor could he be exhausted by, any single experience or any series of experiences. To know him was to live a life worthy of the lost loftiest meaning of life. Men in all ages and climes, slave or free, trained or untutored, who have sensed the same values, are their fellow-pilgrims who journey together with them in increasing self-realization in the quest for the city that hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 221-223
Originally published in The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death)

This line struck me, both in my “speech to text” reading of the chapter last night and in my devotional reading of what is published above this morning: At every moment a crown is placed over his head that he must constantly grow tall enough to wear. There is great comfort in this notion for me.

I somethimes tell the story of a “power shuffle” I participated in decades ago in an exercise that was supposed to help us imagine the diversity of my seminary class. The facilitator would invite all people who met a certain criterion to go to one end of the room and the ones who did not met the criterion would go to the other. Some things felt readily known by observation and in the storytelling we had used to introduce ourselves. “All who identify as male shall go to that end of the room . . . all who consider themselves Baptists . . . all who have had a prior career” . . . etc. Others wer more nuanced and interior.

The shuffle that struck me and remained with me was “All who have lived on some form of public assistance.” I had lived with food stamps at a number of times in my life, so I took the walk to the far end of the room. There I met only a very few of us, perhaps seven or eight of a workshop of seventy. I can’t say that I was able, in that moment, even to see who the others were. I never looked up at the room. I stared at the floor, I felt my face redden and my breathing become shallow. I tolerated the twenty or so seconds of what was a kind of exposure. Only after it was over was I able to state, “I could only look at the floor.”

There is a hymn that was a favorite of the Senior Minister at the Old South Church in Boston. It was usually sung as a recessional after a sermon that asked us to engage one societal problem or another. The hymn tune was ORA LABORA and the text by Jane Borthwick included:

Come, labor on.
Claim the high calling angels cannot share;
to young and old the gospel gladness bear.
Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.
The night draws nigh.

In this verse, I always had the sense that our work was, indeed, to live into the life of our potential. It was to become as powerful as we had been created. It may have felt, to me, that a person who had been “reduced” by the need for public assistance—even food stamps—was an indicator of a “less than” state. But the call of the gospel (and its gladness) was to live into a high calling that angels cannot share. There was something in asserting a capacity there that might be akin to growing tall to wear a crown.

As I conclude “Sorrow Songs—the Ground of Hope,” I am singing songs that assure me that my work—professional work, personal work, spiritual work—is done in community. While I may have personal challenges and responsibilities, I exist in a complex of relations and interconnection. As we, all of us, I think, are learning to live tall, up to the crown that is ours.

A little song with my friend James Houston of First Unitarian Church of Baltimore.