Spirituality in Transition: Trouble Don’t Last Always

Excerpts from the book Trouble Don’t Last Always are reprinted by permission from The Liturgical Press.

Reality for Blacks in the U.S. has always been one of seeming paradox. Trouble always seems to be in our way, regardless of the form it takes, from forced migration, slavery, second-class citizenship, to the constant enervating struggle with proponents of racism and the lack of opportunity for education, decent health treatment and a life of dignity and happiness. Yet through it all, or perhaps it can be said, because of it all, we have been a people with our eyes fixed on God, a people for whom “trouble don’t last always.”

The spirituals, blues, and other forms of Black music that have emerged in the U.S. are the soul prayers of Black Americans. Forbidden to read or write, illiterate slaves wrote their transforming and liberating theologies in the books of their souls and transcribed them in the depths of their hearts, then passed them on, literally, from mouth to mouth, from ear to ear, down through the generations. This music – once thought to be based on hopes for an eventual, peaceful death and a pleasant life afterwards…are songs not of defeat or acquiescence, but of a constant, enduring, burning faith in a God who loves, a God who liberates, a God who acts in history, in the here-and-now of everyday life, to bring about relief from pain, hunger, and oppression.

My own life has enabled me to follow, at times unwillingly, the struggles of my people, and to experience the pain of being “different” in too many ways to make life in this world, with its stress on conformity, an unvarnished blessing.

I grew up the second child in a family of four girls. From the very beginning of my life, I was labeled “different” by a world that did not understand the thirst, the hunger for knowledge that resided within me. Having somehow learned to read by the time I was three years old, I was never satisfied with the arbitrary restrictions I felt placed on my life by my family’s poverty or the fact that I was both Black and female at a time when being either or both was seen as of little importance or value.

Yet I persevered in my efforts to be educated, devouring all the books in our neighborhood branch library by the time I was ten years old, then walking miles to the downtown library to tap into that seemingly endless source of literary wealth. I loved classical music as well, an interest that brought consternation to my sisters who were used to listening to rhythm and blues. I was deeply moved by the soulful strains of jazz, again, a taste no one else in my family seemed to have. I loved poetry of all kinds, by writers of all races. By the time I finished high school, I had read the Bible in its entirety in at least four or five different versions. I wanted to know more than many believed was good for me, a Black girlchild destined only to marry and have children.

My growing up years were ones split between bursts of athletic energy as I spent most of my time with the boys in my neighborhood playing every sport available to us as vigorously as we could and times of reflective quiet spent in bed reading while I recuperated from one illness or another. Paradoxically, it was those quiet times that always gave me the strength to go back out into the world again. God always seemed to come to me in those days of pain-filled darkness and disillusionment, to hold my hand, to counsel me, to prepare me to go forth renewed in spirit and body.

I left the AME Zion Church at fifteen years of age against the wishes of my parents and spent seventeen years in a search I was unaware I had embarked on.During those seventeen years, most of my time was spent in two ways, first furthering my education until finding myself as a lawyer for New York State. Second, it was spent in the mountains and forests of the many state and national parks around the Washington, D.C. and Albany areas, with occasional forays overseas.

It was especially on those weekends spent, not in a sterile, stone church, but in the living, spirit-filled wooden cathedrals of God’s creation that my faith was constantly reaffirmed and strengthened. I never lost sight of God’s all-powerful hand during those seventeen years of separation from any institutional form of church; rather, that hand seemed more apparent than ever, leading and guiding me on.

To my consternation and that of my family and friends I, an independent (some would say “uppity”) Black woman, found God in the Roman Catholic Church, a Church not known particularly for its welcoming attitude toward either Blacks or women. Yet I felt nurtured, loved, and desired by God within that Church and by the people who helped me become a part of that Church, most, but not all, of whom were themselves Roman Catholics.

It is here, during the process of my conversion to Catholicism and my return to graduate school to study theology, that my life began, for me, to truly reflect the soul-prayers expressed in Black religious music. For no sooner had I begun the study of theology than I was stricken with a degenerative disease in my knees that forced me to leave my beloved woods behind and learn the lesson that God is truly everywhere, supporting us on every leaning side.

The disease, chondromallatia, reduced me, in a few short months, to a pain-filled, grieving, angry woman, bed-ridden and questioning both her own sanity and that of God. I wrestled with God on my bed of pain, as I still do today. I do not and cannot take God’s love simply for granted, but must thrash it out until I can understand for myself where I am being led. I argue and shout and listen and pray and question and doubt and finally acquiesce only to move further down the path to another fork in the road where the struggle begins yet anew. Since that fateful day when first one and then the other knee suddenly swelled up and began to throb unbearably, I have not spent a day of my life without some form of pain, great or small, reminding me of my human frailty and, by extension, of the frailty of others.

Although in time I was able to move beyond braces and crutches to a cane, and sometimes to the freedom of walking unassisted once again, I have been made very much aware of God’s activity in my own life – an activity which, at times, has seemed paradoxical and unintelligible, but which, in time, has enabled me to take a further step along the path toward home. Over the past fifteen years, I have undergone major surgery four times, struggled through long periods of recuperation, and dealt with the reality of another chronic illness, rheumatoid arthritis, which I have finally realized and slowly begun to accept will never go away. Yet during those same fifteen years, I have successfully completed the pontifical program in theology, a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, and a Doctor of Sacred Theology (S.T.D.) degree. I have become an associate tenured professor at Georgetown University and have discovered the end toward which all of those years of reading had been preparing me: the life of a scholar and teacher, professions equally important to me.

I believe I have learned, because of my own struggles, how to see, hear, and feel the struggles of others, voiced and unvoiced. This has led me to explore theology and the role of the Christian Churches in the U.S. in a new and challenging way from the bottom up. I know what it is like to be poor, to be discriminated against because of my poverty, my race, my gender, and my disabilities. These many years of struggle and pain, which continue to this day, have forged me in the fiery furnace of God’s love. I firmly believe that I have been sent to be of service to those who, unlike myself, have not yet found their voices and been awakened to the graced but burdensome knowledge that, as children of a loving God, they are sent not to suffer, but to live a life free from oppression.

This story is not over and, hopefully, will not be over for many years to come. But my growth from anger and despair to acceptance and perseverance is one that I believe is repeated in the lives of many around me who struggle daily with pain, whether its form is physical, mental, or spiritual. And, as I have found, where one form exists, the others are usually close behind. The anger still bubbles to the surface at times; the despair creeps in unannounced and sideswipes me leaving me befuddled and confused, but the knowledge that through it all God is steadfastly present in my life sustains and strengthens me.

My life, a seeming paradox of contradictions and of twists and turns, has truly been one where troubles of many different forms have always been in my way. Yet I know now, deep within me, that “trouble don’t last always.” God is not through with me yet.