​
​Barbara A. Holmes:
​A Mentor for our Times 

Interview, Videos, and Quotations
 
for use in classrooms and study groups *
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Barbara A. Holmes is president emerita of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She also served as V.P. of Academic Affairs/Dean of Memphis Theological Seminary. Her Fortress Press books include Liberation and the Cosmos: Conversations with the Elders (2008) and Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church (2004, 2017)
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I. Quotation: In the Beginning There is Darkness

II. Poem: Joy Unspeakable (the poem)

III. Tap Dancing as a Contemplative Practice

IV. Videos: Preaching with Power, I am an Artist at Heart, Rethinking Seminary Education

V. Podcast Interview: About her life and perspective *

VI. Description of Race and the Cosmos
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VII. Excerpts from Joy Unspeakable on contemplation, cosmology, rap and hip hop.

Addendum: Barbara Holmes and Process Theology (Eight Points)

In the beginning is the Darkness
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In the beginning there is darkness. It is the womb out of which we are born. Darkness may be the blessed dimming of ego-driven striving, a destination and condition of safety and repose. In this state of trusting refuge, the light of divine revelation, which pierces but does not castigate the darkness, may finally be seen. This is a mothering darkness that nurses its offspring. (Barbara Holmes) 

​Joy Unspeakable

              is not silent,
it moans, hums, and bends
to the rhythm of a dancing universe.
It is a fractal of transcendent hope,
a hologram of God’s heart,
a black hole of unknowing.
For our free African ancestors,
joy unspeakable is drum talk
that invites the spirits
to dance with us,
and tell tall tales by the fire.
For the desert Mothers and Fathers,
joy unspeakable is respite
from the maddening crowds,
And freedom from
             “church” as usual.
For enslaved Africans during the
Middle Passage,
joy unspeakable is the surprise
of living one more day,
and the freeing embrace of death
            chosen and imposed.
For Africans in bondage
in the Americas,
joy unspeakable is that moment of
mystical encounter
when God tiptoes into the hush arbor,
testifies about Divine suffering,
and whispers in our ears,
            “Don’t forget,
            I taught you how to fly
            on a wing and a prayer,
                        when you’re ready
                                    let’s go!”
Joy Unspeakable is humming
“how I got over”
after swimming safely
to the other shore of a swollen Ohio river
when you know that you can’t swim.
It is the blessed assurance
            that Canada is far,
            but not that far.
For Africana members of the
“invisible institution,” the
emerging black church,
joy unspeakable is
practicing freedom
while chains still chafe,
singing deliverance
            while Jim Crow stalks,
trusting God’s healing
            and home remedies,
            prayers, kerosene,
                        and cow patty tea.
For the tap dancing, boogie woogie,
            rap/rock/blues griots
            who also hear God,
joy unspeakable is
that space/time/joy continuum thing
            that dares us to play and pray
            in the interstices of life,
it is the belief that the phrase
            “the art of living”
            means exactly what it says.
             Joy Unspeakable
                         is
both FIRE AND CLOUD,
the unlikely merger of
            trance and high tech lives
            ecstatic songs and a jazz repertoire
                        Joy unspeakable is
                        a symphony of incongruities
                                    of faces aglow and hearts
                                    on fire
                                                and the wonder of surviving together. [1]

Tap Dancing as a Contemplative Practice
Occupying a Space of Your Own in Community with Others

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​"Tap dance as a secular contemplative practice came into my view at an Atlanta showing of the Broadway show Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk. The show was a tap-dancing re-creation of the journey of the black community from Africa through the present day. In this show, Savion Glover created a contemplative moment with his feet, not unlike the ring-shout dancers of coastal Georgia. Glover is a wild and insubordinate tap dancer. I don’t know what it means to have insubordinate feet, but he has them. Glover offers a defiant stomping—a wacky, counterintuitive, revolutionary/integrationist reverie. 

​It is a dance that will not compromise with the struggles of life. There are no words; the silence is filled with the sound of his feet and the voluntary surrender of the audience to the contemplative moment. The clack of heel and toe against wood brought us back to another time, when hush harbors held the hopes and entreaties of a desperate people. In the dance that was like what I imagine David might have danced, where one sheds inhibitions rather than clothes, there was a suspension of the ordinary that exceeded the theatrical moment. On stage, Glover is introspective, according to writer Joan Acocella: “He is simply occupying a space of his own, which is different from ours. . . . Perhaps tap is meant to be this way, not a lot of things but just one thing, a product of deep and private thought.” Refusing to “skin or grin” in the style of minstrel performers who sullied the art for some African Americans, Glover simply puts it down, then taps the questions that have no answers, inviting us into the hypnotic rhythms that move us inward. After all is said and done, the objective, rational thinking aspect of our human life is balanced by a rhythmic breathing and pulsating interiority." 

-- Barbara Holmes, Joy Unspeakable

Videos
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Rethinking Seminary Education

I am an Artist at Heart

Preaching with Power

Interview

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Interview with Barbara Holmes
on website Contemplify
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Questions addressed in interview

• How does the word ‘contemplative’ relate to you, your work or your community?
• Can you share any stories of your own contemplative lineage?
• Story about a Western African practice of meeting with ancestors at the bottom of the river
• What would Christianity regain from owning that the Desert Fathers and Mothers were Africans?
• What contemplative practices do you feel most connected to?
• Are younger people reclaiming their cultures of origin?
• How do you imagine future generations of church communities will reconcile the sacred and the secular?
• What young contemplatives leaders do you see?
• Hope for the future and the contemplative aspects of Black Lives Matter
• Have you always lived courageously and to the beat of your own drummer?
• What projects are on the horizon for you?
• Drink Recommendation

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Beyond Fixed Identity
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Description of Race and the Cosmos
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"​In Race and the Cosmos, Barbara Holmes boldly suggests that theoretical physics and cosmology have the power to break through our stalled and difficult discussions about race. At the intersection of ethics, cosmology, and physics, a new view of human life is emerging—a view not neatly divided along lines of race, ethnicity, class, or sexual orientation. Human life at cosmic and quantum levels has a unity independent of external social categories such as science and religion.  The ways that modern culture defines us can no longer provide spiritual connections, Holmes says. Quantum and cosmic metaphors about self, society, and God point to origins, mysteries, and ultimate things. The worlds of cosmology and quantum mechanics offer us the resonance and rhetoric of a multi-dimensional universe, and give us new ways to talk about the individual and communal quest for moral fulfillment. The language of cosmology can replace older ways of thinking and talking about race and ethnicity. This new language unifies rather than divides, in a cosmic universe that is both staggering and healing in its human/divine scope."

Words of Wisdom from Barbara Holmes

Excerpts from Joy Unspeakable (Second Edition)
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Beyond Eurocentric approaches

By contrast, the communal contemplative practices of the black church provide an interpretive grid that synthesizes inner and outer cosmologies. It is the community and not the individual monastic that becomes the concern. The spiritual practices become public theology through acts of shared liturgical discernment. These acts of shared contemplation move individual mystical events from the personal and private toward the public and pragmatic. Accordingly, the inward journey transcends the private imagination to become an expanded communal testimony.

-- Barbara A. Holmes. Joy Unspeakable ​

An interconnected universe that invites and requires communal contemplation
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We respond to a deeply interdependent and responsive universe through shared experiences. This means that despite signs of postmodern fragmentation and the rise of radical individualism, we cannot carve out shared destinies in isolation. We are born not only into a wondrous and mysterious life space but also into communities of interpersonal reliance. These communities of care and crisis lend meaning and congruence to our lives and help to shape our collective stories. These stories and learned practices disclose the pitfalls and potential for human fulfillment, but more importantly, they describe a cosmos that is interwoven with mystery.

-- Barbara A. Holmes. Joy Unspeakable ​

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Jazz and the Blues as catalysts for communal contemplation

Like the familiar laments in Psalms, blues artists forthrightly engaged the issues in life that the church would not discuss—such as sexuality, theodicy, and the unabated despair of the people. The lyrics were straightforward and sometimes raunchy, but they captured the life experiences of the listeners. While gospel music promised peace in the hereafter and the promise of God’s presence, the blues became public theology, communal inquiry, and a critique of the church. . . .
The contemplative moment comes as the cause of the blues is considered within the broader context of God’s inexplicable absence or startling intervention. Under every stanza is the silent and unspoken question, “How long, oh Lord, how long will your people continue to suffer?” . . .

No one thinks for one moment that when B. B. King sang, he was saying all that there was to be said about the subject. . . . One or two lines hold the portal open for listeners to mentally supply the rest. This is the contemplative turn. . . . Smoky nightclubs and juke joints become the spaces for contemplation that attends to the details of daily life and the potential for its enrichment and ultimate fulfillment. . . .
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Jazz is a way of being in the world, a willingness to break away from rhetorical comfort zones and language hierarchies. When you know that you are “between a rock and a hard place,” then you must respond creatively to the situation. Jazz is the musical version of the communal response to displacement. This is not a black thing; the majority of Americans today are displaced in one way or another. However, the displacement of the African diaspora was sealed by skin color as a permanent social exile. Some amelioration of that exile has only now begun, but only because of the genius of the community for creativity and improvisation upon the main themes of oppression and marginalization.
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The improvisational motif in jazz music refers to the spontaneous creation of melodic innovations that diverge and meld with the main tune. . . . When the contributions of the individual improvisations soar, the contemplative potential increases. For in the midst of unthinkable rhythmic and tonal combinations, we also hear the impossible being brought within our reach.
When Miles Davis blows the cacophony that can barely be contained by the word song, we come closest to the unimaginable, the potential of the future, and the source of our being.

-- Barbara A. Holmes. Joy Unspeakable ​

Tupac

Tupac Shakur's love song to his mother is unmatched in its honesty about her failings, yet there is an anabashed declaration of love....Clearly 'thug' life does not interfere with filial attachment or communal commtment...In fact, in the film Tupac: A Resurrection, we are told that Pac that he has to offer something positive to all of the 'underclass' who now revere him. Using 'creative reversion techniques he redefines 'thug life' as self-empowerment.  He encourages fans to invert the definition of 'thug' through moral acts that prioritize the well-being of the community and the self-respect of the individual.

​​-- Barbara A. Holmes. Joy Unspeakable

The communal contemplative gaze in the historic Black Church

I am contending that communal contemplation is richer than the immediacy of personal experience because the experience, the story, the event is subjected to the gaze of both the individual and the community.

In Africana and other indigenous cultures, this unique orientation sight toward the sacred elements of life begins at a very young age.  Children soon learn that when events surprise, frighten, or mystify them, they can face the unknown with a discerning community.

It has only taken a few generations to lose sight of this integral aspect of Africana community life. Such losses can result from inclusion/integration into dominant cultural paradigms. The price for full acceptance is often cultural and spiritual amnesia.

Moreover, communal contemplation takes focus, centering, energy, and concentration. These are orientations that tend to be displaced in the struggle for upward mobility. The price of inclusion turns out to be the loss of the communal reflective gaze, the interpretive moment, the pause for a fresh wind of the Spirit.

It is this collective contemplative gaze in Africana contexts, worship, and community life that is the focus of this book. The contemplative practices of the black church are steeped in the stories of transcendence and transformation that have the potential to reinvigorate community life and to flesh out the character of black humanity with phenomenological nological detail and communal wisdom. I am offering an understanding standing of contemplation that depends upon an intense mutuality, shared religious imagination, and the free flow of interpretation within the context of a vibrant and lived theology. Lived theology is a contextual and dialogical process that is always enhanced by a responsive and collegial community.

-- Barbara A. Holmes. Joy Unspeakable 

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• Kendrick Lamar
• For another generation, Kendrick Lamar offers To Pimp a Butterfly, a political reply to police violence and the inherent power within the community to resist, redefine, and defeat racism, against all odds. Lamar seems to be saying that the power of survival is in our tongues. What he offers is more powerful than the songs of overcoming or reward in heaven. He says, “we gonna be alright.” The refrain is repeated in a hard rhythm that reassures until the anthem becomes “aaaaaaaaaawwww . . . ite.” This is a promise of “alrightness” enunciated in the language of the ancestors and abiding spirits.
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• Lamar’s musical reassurance, rhythms and lyrics are grounded in twenty-first-century culture and in the hymnal legacy of the black church, Blessed Assurance Jesus is Mine, I Surrender All. The message is clear: do your part, work while it is yet day, knowing that we may not see the victory over oppression, but victory will come, and in the meantime, we gonna be alright. The ancestors must be laughing: How could we have forgotten so easily that prophets like Lamar and Tupac arise in every generation? While we recognized this truism in the past, we didn’t expect a contemplative artistic revolution to arise from within the ranks of the millennials.  Most of them grew up in the era of “opportunity,” when Jim Crow was either dead or on life support. But with the rise of police and vigilante killings of black men and women came the art and performance of resistance from the millennial generation.  The rappers are our twenty-first-century griots, telling the stories that need to be told, reminding the community of its history and potential, while chanting desperation and hope. Jon Michael Spencer calls rap messages “the insurrection of subjugated knowledges.”
• But where did they receive this knowledge? These children grew up watching television and the clear class divisions depicted there, but they also watched their parents try to assimilate or integrate. They watched despair increase in the “under-class” as the black middle class eschewed communal values in favor of inclusion in oppressive systems.. Those of means and those without resented the choices made and used poetry and music to call the black community back to its purposes. But what is contemplative about their message?
• One could argue that they have been cloistered all of their lives right in the midst of the community. They do not have to retreat to an isolated area like the desert mothers or fathers to consider their lives; instead they are isolated by boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexuality. They find no comfort in churches focused on upward mobility, college degrees, and suburban homes.

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Rap offers an inverted reality structure that redefines what is naughty and what is nice.  Like blues and jazz musicians before them, rappers speak of sex casually but value family connections.

​-- Barbara A. Holmes. Joy Unspeakable ​

Barbara Holmes and Process Theology

Eight (among many) reasons for process theologians
to appreciate and learn from the work of Barbara Holmes

1. Barbara Holmes is an artist-at-heart in the theopoetic tradition.  She synthesizes inner and outer cosmologies, social justice and arts, contemplation and action – guided by wisdom from African and African-American life and culture.  She presents the cosmos as a vast network of multi-dimensional inter-becoming and reminds us that we humans carry within our lives the myriad influences of such becoming: some visible (people, animals, and the earth) and some invisible (the voices of ancestors and spirits).  She believes that the divine mystery within and beyond creation is also a living spirit within creation, present everywhere, in "secular" as well as "sacred" settings.  develops a theology of contemplative liberation from this vision, centered in a sense of mystery.
2. Barbara Holmes gives life to core themes in process theology.  Barbara Holmes does not identify herself a process theologian, but her understanding of the universe deepens and enriches the worldview of process theology.  In Whitehead's language, the multiple influences are present in the moments of our lives, consciously and unconsciously, as part of what make us up.  And this means that the idea of an isolated, individual self is an illusion. We are one and we are also many.  In Whitehead's language, we are the many becoming one, again and again.  And amid our ongoing process of gathering the many into one, moment by moment, we are inwardly animated and potentially inspired by a living spirit that can be felt as well as known, and that can come to us in many ways, including dreams and voices.
3. Barbara Holmes takes the spirit of process theology beyond its Eurocentric ambience.  Process theology has been overwhelmingly white and Eurocentric in its approach to life and theology.  It has been inordinately preoccupied with rational discourse (often about God) at the expense of narrative, dreams, and what she calls "rhythmic breathing and pulsating interiority."  True, process theology has been "relational."  But Holmes' work offers new eyes for relationality.  Process theology can help her further affirm, along with African and African-American traditions, that such breathing and interiority dwell within all actualities: hills and rivers, trees and stars.  
4. Barbara Holmes knows that life comes to us whole: a symphony of incongruities.  We encounter the multiple presences of the universe, at home and in the workplace, of course, but also in dreams, in memory, in imagination, in stories. They come in sounds as well as words, feelings as well as ideas, movements of the body as well as act of the mind.  We can talk about them, and we can also dance to them, and with them, and from them.  Some of what we dance to is delightful and exuberant, some is painful and soul-denying.
5. Barbara Holmes moves past a dichotomy between secular and sacred.  The spirit is not in church alone, God is also in BB King, Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and tap dancing.  From her perspective,  the presence of the spirit in life includes the secular and the sacred, and the very dichotomy is deceptive, because the living spirit is like the wind, blowing wherever it will.  It is also like fire and like a cloud:
6. Barbara Holmes offers a fresh and more relational way of understanding the contemplative side of religious life.  In our expression of the many in our lives, we simultaneously awaken to our own inner reality (or our "subjective immediacy," to use Whitehead's phrase) that is who we are, as many becoming one.  This awakening, however momentary, is a moment of what Barbara Holmes would call "contemplation."  Barbara Holmes is keenly aware of the fact that, for many in Eurocentric traditions, contemplation tends to be a solitary spiritual activity that a person does "alone" in some deep way and amid "silence."  She does not reject this.  But she also shows that contemplative can emerge in, and indeed be, a communal activity, in which we are, in her words, "occupying a space of your own in community with others."
7. Barbara Holmes challenges any homogenizing and essentializing understandings of identity, including racial identity.  And as we live out our ever-evolving identities, those identities are never reducible to any of the voices, or to our own sense of “identity.”  We are always more than we imagine.  In some occasions of our lives, we come to understand and feel this more-ness.  We realize that we ourselves are not simply individuals but also communal selves.  
8. Barbara Holmes shows how pain becomes hope: "making a way of no way." She shows how creative transformation invites and often requires a "ritual reversion" of the past, including past traumas, into fresh possibilities for the future.  "What has been an instrument of physical and psychic abuse is not the call to worship, a beckoning to the ancestors who have sprawled under the lash, a reminder that 'trouble doesn't last always.' (Joy Unspeakable.)

-- Jay McDaniel (editor, Open Horizons)

* This page is used in a course offered in Claremont, California, June 4-8, 2018 at the Process Summer Institute.  The course is called Intimacy and Transcendence in the Thick of Life: Process Theology and Popular Music.  I offer the [age on Open Horizons so that others might learn from Barbara Holmes, too.

If the ideas developed by Barbara Holmes interest you, you might also be interested in some other articles in Open Horizons: Polyrythmic Theology: The Universe as Drum Circle and The Metaphysics and Justice: Moor Mother and Black Quantum Futurism and Howard Thurman: Theologian for the 21st Century.

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