"Elizabeth’s delivery is personal. Not only does she sing for the love and loss of her late husband years ago, but for all of the many who that have gone on before her. I Got a Love is a testament to the many years Elizabeth has spent honing her craft and patiently waiting for her moment."

I Got a Love: Elizabeth King
​
​

It's an album informed by her love of God and the rich blessings of her family life — 15 children, 58 grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren — that has motivated King to continue to spread the Good News...That's what the song is about — to show love in all conditions and give people the opportunity to show love and not hate."

- Bruce Warren, NPR, World Cafe, April 20, 2022: 

​Lezlie Harrison interviews
Elizabeth King on her new album

 "I Got A Love"
​
a process appreciation

Need a sermon? Something that can remind you what stamina and gratitude look like when they are combined? Try Elizabeth King's "I Got a Love."  And want to think about how the connections we have with friends and family can bring us the Love we've got from Heaven?  Again, try "I Got A Love."

What is the source of this Love? For Elizabeth King, it is Heaven and God and Jesus, rolled up into one. The source if not an It but rather a You - a Someone - who is more than us yet embracing us in nurturant love.

Process theology provides one way of thinking about this nurturant You.  We are not deists who think of God as starting the universe in motion and then sitting back and watching from afar. And we are not classical theists who think that everything is pre-determined by God, such that nothing happens which is not willed by God.  We are pan-en-theists, a word which literally means everything-in-God. The idea comes from the book of Acts (17:28) in which Paul says that we "live and move and have our being" in God. We panentheists think of God on the analogy of a cosmic womb in whose love the whole universe, and we ourselves. God is the Mother of this womb or, if you prefer, the Father.

Where does Jesus fit into this? For Elizabeth King, Jesus is not different from God. He is God on Earth and also God in Heaven. This may bother liberal Christians who want to separate Jesus and God and who think of Jesus in exclusively human terms. But for Elizabeth King as for me, there is something about Jesus that is very much alive today, in a living and responsive way. When we we say "Thank you, Jesus," we believe that Someone is listening: namely the resurrected Christ, one of God's deepest faces. 

What might it mean, then, to feel and know the resurrected Christ in the nitty-gritty of life? Elizabeth King's I Got a Love shows us in its images, music, words, and, of course, in her voice. To feel and know the resurrected Christ - the living Jesus - is to live with stamina and gratitude, and to enjoy rich connections with friends and family, living and departed.

King trusts that those who are departed likewise live in God-Jesus-Heaven in some way and that she will join them:“As I go from door to door, loved ones gone, I won’t see ‘em down here no more. That makes me feel like flying away, to be at rest.”  

Is there a place to which souls fly away? Process theologians like me are influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, who imagined the universe as consisting of multiple dimensions, not just three. Yes, there is the three-dimensional world we see with our eyes. Streets and neighborhoods, people and buildings - all are real. But there are other dimensions as well, in which, quite possibly, departed souls continue in their journey. Moreover, it is imaginable that souls on earth "fly away" to these other places, where God-Jesus-Heaven is also present in a loving way.

Some of these places - them levels of heaven - may be more transparent to divine Love than we are, not spatially but existentially. The hearts of the departed souls in these other levels may be more open to knowing God's love and sharing it than are we in our finite ways.  They may "rest" in the Love.  And would it not be good to be reunited with them and join them in that Love?

Yes, it would. 

One thing for sure. Elizabeth King knows and feels the Gospel and allows the good news to enter our hearts with her music. With her help we, too, might be able to say, each in our own way, "I Got a Love."

​- Jay McDaniel, 6/8/22

​I Need the Lord

I Got a Love: The Album

​released on June 24, 2022

The true concept of sacred soul can be found in earnest on tracks like “I Need The Lord” and “My Robe,” which find King and company weaving that historic Memphis Soul Sound within the gospel framework, always keen on delivering the sacred message. The real gem however, can be found within the two and a half minute acapella performance of “Give Me Wings.”

King, accompanied by her daughters in the round sing the words “As I go from door to door, loved ones gone, I won’t see ‘em down here no more. That makes me feel like flying away, to be at rest.” Elizabeth’s delivery is personal. Not only does she sing for the love and loss of her late husband years ago, but for all of the many who that have gone on before her. I Got a Love is a testament to the many years Elizabeth has spent honing her craft and patiently waiting for her moment. 

​- Bandcamp

The Practice of Gratitude
​

"The spiritual practice of gratitude has been called a state of mind and a way of life. But we prefer to think of it as a grammar — an underlying structure that helps us construct and make sense out of our lives. The rules of this grammar cover all our activities. Its syntax reveals a system of relationships linking us to the divine and to every other part of the creation.
​
To learn the grammar of gratitude, practice saying "thank you" for happy and challenging experiences, for people, animals, things, art, memories, dreams. Count your blessings, and praise God. Utter blessings, and express your appreciation to everything and everyone you encounter. By blessing, we are blessed."

- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice