2022 Liberation Lectionary - Black Heritage Month

Black and Beautiful

Reflection: Black and Beautiful

There’s a Black haircare and beauty brand named Dark & Lovely. And the phrase “Dark and Lovely” comes from the Bible! You can find it in a few different translations of Song of Songs, also called Song of Solomon, in the first chapter. The reference to blackness in this passage is in the description of the woman admired by the king. She speaks of herself as dark and lovely, both attributed to her complexion and perhaps her person. In some translations, the phrase is written as “black and beautiful”. 

In the traditional church calendar, Epiphany season is continued in some way until Lent - the 40 days ahead of Easter, or Resurrection Day. Sundays after the Epiphany holiday are called the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, then 2nd, 3rd and so on until a new season occurs. In the Liberation Lectionary, we look at the church calendar through a Black Liberation lens, centering a Black feminist value. Black liberation history is about building Black power, so it’s fitting that the season centering Blackness happens right after a New Year’s celebration of light revealed. 

The realities of light and darkness as spoken of spiritually are not the same as the racial differences Black and white. In white-centered Christianity, scriptures that connect darkness and evil are used to teach hatred for Black people. Throughout history, white people elevate themselves using the sinful concept that melanin is a measure of God’s wisdom, holiness and power. In the world of whiteness, less melanin means more divinity. For both the willful and accidental racist, light means white, and Blackness is night.

But scripture gives a full picture of God’s ability to differentiate, and God has given this same ability to us. Psalm 91 speaks of threats by night and arrows by day, the Lord tells us to call upon Them whenever we are in trouble. Trouble ain’t nocturnal. 

The beauty of Blackness is on display in Song of Songs, an epic of a love song written as a dialogue between two people who love everything about each other. This book is often meditated on as a metaphor for God and the people they love. However it is read, the poetry is presented as the word of God for the people of God. The audacity of the hero in the story is to speak of herself as lovely, and to equate her comeliness with the fact that she is Black. Here, colorism is confronted. There is no question of Black being evil, or dark skinned people being dimmed in the mind. No. 

God is making things plain with the story of a king whose desires are for a dark skinned woman. Whether or not the king is to represent a divine figure, the central characters of this love story are people who embrace Blackness as beautiful. For their time, for our time and for all time, they are expressing revolutionary love. 

During Epiphany, we celebrate the light of the world coming into the world, being continually revealed as a sign of God’s presence, a guide to freedom. In Black Heritage Month, also called Black Futures Month, and Black History Month, we will focus on Blackness as a gift that comes from the Lord’s light. 

Jesus spoke the words “You are the light of the world” to a crowd of brown skinned people, as a brown skinned man. He told a brown skinned Samaritan woman that she needed living water, not bleaching cream. 

Throughout history, Blackness has borne fruit that only the light of the world could produce.

Dr. Nathie Arbury was a Black deaf educator whose ASL poetry shined light in spaces that ableism and misogynoir would shroud in stupidity.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a saxophonist from Columbus Ohio, was a Black blind man who played three saxophones at the same time. This is not a joke, this is not a drill. Look him up. Tell me that ain’t light. 

Stephanie Thomas is a designer and amputee who founded Cur8able, the Disability Fashion Styling System.

The brilliance of Baldwin, the beauty of Haben Girma, the bravery of Claudette Colvin and boldness of John Boyega. These are all the fruits born from God’s great tree of life. We are the fruits of liberation with nutrient rich skin. And our purpose is right here, right now, to flourish, amidst all drama and turmoil, like the beloved of a great king, adored and adorned. We are dark and lovely. Black and beautiful. We will not hide our light. Couldn’t block this brightness if we tried. This is the light of the world, coming into the world, to dismantle the systems that oppress the peoples of the world. The beauty of Blackness means being ready to change the world, so that everyone can be finally, fully free.

Songs: Black Heritage Month Playlist

Music from Marvin, Mahalia, Abbey Lincoln and more!

Daily Readings: Psalm 91

Sunday: Psalm 91.1 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 

Monday: Psalm 91.2 I will say of the Lord, “They are my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

Tuesday: Psalm 91.3-4 Surely the Lord will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. The Lord will cover you with their feathers, and under their wings you will find refuge; God’s  faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

Wednesday: Psalm 91.5-8  You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but this threat will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

Thursday: Psalm 91.9-10 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent.

Friday: Psalm 91.11-13 For The Lord will command angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; the angels will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

Saturday: Psalm 91.14-16 “Those who love me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue them; I will protect them, for them acknowledge my name. They will call on me, and I will answer; I will be with them in trouble, I will deliver and honor them. With long life I will satisfy, and show them my salvation.”

Prayer: Lift Every Voice & Sing

This month we are praying the poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, written by James Weldon Johnson, which was later put to music by his brother Rosamund Johnson, and popularized among many Black communities as the Black National Anthem.

Lift every voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty, Let our rejoicing rise - High as the listening skies. Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us! Facing the rising sun of our new day begun. Let us march on till victory is won

Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chastening rod ,Felt in the days when hope unborn had died. Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet Come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears has been watered. We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered. Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last

Where the [bright] gleam of our [black] star is cast!

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears; Thou who has brought us thus far on the way. Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee! Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand

True to our God. True to our native land.

About the Artist: Mildred Thompson

Mildred Thompson was a multimedia artist whose work in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography is renowned world-wide. Born in Jacksonville, FL in 1936, Thompson pursued rigorous, formal arts training at several schools and earned her BA from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1957. Her success as an artist could not distract her from the racial and gender segregation she faced in the US, so she spent most of the 60s and 70s in Germany. Thompson returned to the US in 1977 for a residence at Howard, but continued to teach and exhibit across the globe. She died in Atlanta in 2003.