Beyond the SufferingEmbracing the Legacy of African American

Soul Care and Spiritual Direction

Hebrews 12:1-3“So Great a Cloud of Witnesses”

Session Two

Watered with Our Tears:Communal Comfort and Family Faithfulness

Sign Posts from the Past

Some Signs Are More Helpful Than Others

Some Signs Are More Helpful Than Others

Some Signs Are More Helpful Than Others

Some Sign Are More Helpful Than Others

Born Free

“We say that the slavers went to Africa to get the slaves, which is far from true.

The slavers went to Africa to get Africans to make them slaves”

(Nikki Giovanni).

Out of Africa

Kings, Queens, Merchants, Soldiers, Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters

Kings, Queens, Merchants, Soldiers, Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters

West African Home

James Bradley: “Soul-Destroyers”

“I think I was between two and three years old when the soul-destroyers

tore me from my mother’s arms, somewhere in Africa, far back from the sea.They carried me a long distance to a ship;

all the way I looked back and cried.”

Communal Comfort

Human Sustaining/ComfortDivine Healing/Consolation

Olaudah Equiano:From Victim to Victor

Equiano: Bathed in Tears

“The only comfort we had was in beingin one another’s arms all that night,

and bathing each other with our tears.”

Our hurting friends need oursilence, not our speeches.

Encountering Every Misery For You

“Happy should I have ever esteemed myselfto encounter every misery for you, and to

procure your freedom by the sacrifice of my own!”

Romans 9:2-3—Incarnational Suffering

Mingling Suffering and Sorrows

“Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Are the dearest friends and

relations still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of

slavery with the small comfort of being together, and mingling their sufferings and sorrows?”

The Power of Presence

Solomon Northrup

Kidnapping Free Blacks

Solomon Northrup and Eliza “The hope of years was blasted in a

moment. From the height of most exulting happiness to the utmost depths of

wretchedness, she had that day descended. No wonder that she wept, and filled the pen

with wailings and expressions of heart-rending woe.”

Solomon Northrup and Eliza

“We were thuslearning the history

of eachother’s wretchedness.”

Communal Comfort

Human Sustaining/ComfortDivine Healing/Consolation

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano

The Ear of Jehovah

“The deep sounding groans of 1000s,and the great sadness of

their misery and woe, are such as can only be distinctly

known to the ear of Jehovah Sabaoth.”

God Hears Our Cries

The Intention of Jehovah

“I may say with Joseph that whateverevil intentions and bad motives

those insidious robbers had in carrying meaway from my native country and

friends, I trust, was what the Lord intended for my good.”

God Is God Even When Life Is Bad

The Merciful Providence of God

“I acknowledge the mercies of Providencein every occurrence of my life”

(Equiano).

Trusting God’s Affectionate Sovereignty

Looking for the Hand of God

“I early accustomed myself to look at the hand of God in the minutest occurrence, and to

learn from it a lesson of morality and religion. After all, what makes any event important,unless by observation we become betterand wiser, and learn ‘to do justly, to lovemercy, and to walk humbly before God!’”

Family Life: Five Generations,

Beaufort, SC

Family Faithfulness: Leaving a Lasting Legacy

Family Worship:Enslaved Christian

Preaching

Honoring the African American Family

Harriet Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Mother

“They all spoke kindly of my dead mother, who had been a slave merely in name, but in nature was noble and womanly.”

Harriet Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Brother

“When he put his arms round my neck,and looked into my eyes,

as if to read there the troublesI dared not tell,

I felt that I still had something to love.”

Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Grandmother

“I tell you what, Dr. Flint, you ain’t got many years to live, and you’d better be saying

your prayers. It will take ‘em all, and more too, to wash the dirt off your soul.”

Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Grandmother

“Yes, I know very well who I am talking to!”

Pulling the Rope in Unison:Venture Smith

Pulling the Rope in Unison

He then explained the object lesson to his young bride.

“If we pull in life against each other we shall fail, but if we pull together we shall succeed.”

Tug-of-War or Pulling the Rope in Unison

Pulling the Rope in Unison

“If we pull in life against each other we shall fail, but if

we pull together we shall succeed.”

Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Model

“I loved my father. He was such a good man.

He was a good carpenter and could do anything. My mother just rejoiced in him. . . .

I sometimes think I learned more in my early childhood about how to live than I have learned since.”

Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Model

All he ever needed to learn, he learned in his enslaved home from a father

whose spirit was never enslaved.

Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Affection

“I can testify, from my own painful experience, to the

deep and fond affection which the slave cherishes in his

heart for his home and its dear ones. . . .

(Rev. Thomas Jones)

Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Affection

. . . We have no other tie to link us to the human family, but our

fervent love for those who are with us and of us in relations of

sympathy and devotedness,in wrongs and wretchedness”

(Reverend Thomas Jones of NC).

Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Affection

Hardships do notmake it too hard to love!

Honoring the African American Mother

Josiah Henson writes of his mother from whom he was

separated by slave sale only to be reunited by repurchaseafter he had fallen ill.

Speaking the Truth in Love

“She was a good mother to us, a woman of deep piety, anxious above all things to touch our hearts with a

sense of religion. Back with her, I was once more with my best friend on earth,

and under her care.”

A Mother’s Wisdom about the Father of the Fatherless

“When I was a child, my mother used to tell me tolook to Jesus,

and that He who protected the widow and the fatherless

would take care of me also”(Peter Randolph).

Painting Pictures of God

Enslaved African Americans survived bypainting pictures of God onto the

palettes of their life portraits.They viewed God as the Father of the Fatherless,

the God who collects their tears in His bottle, and as God the Just Judge.

Painting Pictures of God onto the Palettes of Their Life Portraits

“Then I lifted my hands to God.To the Almighty Father of us all.

I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up

against the burden of my troubles.”(Solomon Northrup)

Mother Wit

Mother Wit

MotherWit

Mother Wit

Proverbial Wisdom

Found in the Scriptures Cultivated in Community Applied to Daily Life

Wisdom for Life

Mother Wit

“I got Mother Wit instead of an education.Lots of Colored people in offices and school

don’t seem to know what Mother Wit is. Well, it’s like this: I got a wit to teach me what’s wrong. I

got a wit to not make me a mischief-maker. I got a wit to keep people’s trusts. No one has to tell me not to tell what they say to me in confidence, for I

respect what they say, and I never tell, I’m glad I had good raisin.”

“I tell you, child, religion is good anywhere—at the plow-handle, at the hoe-handle, anywhere.

If you are filled with the love of my Jesus you are happy.”

Charlotte Brooks’ Mother Wit

Brooks taught that trials make us God-dependent. “You see, my child, God will take care of his people. He will hear us when we cry. True,

we can’t get any thing to eat sometimes, but trials make us pray more.”

Mother Wit: Octavia Albert and Charlotte Brooks

Brooks also taught that the lack of trials can lead to a slackening of faith.

“I sometimes think my people don’t pray like they used to in slavery. You know when any child

of God gets trouble that’s the time to try their faith. Since freedom it seems my people don’t

trust the Lord as they used to. ‘Sin is growing bold,

and religion is growing cold.’”

Mother Wit: Octavia Albert and Charlotte Brooks

Following the North Star

We Are Never Alone!

Portal of GodPortal of God’s People

Portal of Self

Our Great a Cloud of Witnesses1. Embracing African American Communal

Comfort2. Embracing African American Divine

Consolation 3. Embracing African American Family

Empowering4. Embracing African American Male Mentoring5. Embracing African American Mother Wit

Beyond the SufferingEmbracing the Legacy of African American

Soul Care and Spiritual Direction

Hebrews 12:1-3“So Great a Cloud of Witnesses”