Walking with Sorrow -
Suffering Servant Songs

Kirkridge Retreat September 2008
Introduction: Liz McAlister

THEY that walked in darkness sang Sorrow Songs—for they were weary at heart. And so we have haunting echos in songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke. They are strangely stirring.(1) They came out of a South unknown to us. Then in Nashville a great temple was built of these songs. Jubilee Hall seemed made of them; its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil. Out of them rose melodies, full of the voices of brothers and sisters, full of the voices of the past.

America has given little of beauty to the world save what our creator stamped on her; the human spirit in this new world expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so the rhythmic cry of the slave stands as a beautiful expression of humanness. It has been neglected, half despised, persistently misunderstood; but it remains a singular spiritual heritage of the nation and a priceless gift of people of color.

Back in the eighteen thirties the melody of these slave songs stirred the nation, but the songs were soon half forgotten. Then in war-time came the singular Port Royal experiment after the capture of Hilton Head, and perhaps for the first time the North met the Southern slave face to face and heart to heart.

A blacksmith's son, born at Cadiz, New York, formed a Sunday-school class of black children in 1866, and sang with them and taught them to sing. And then they taught him to sing, and when the glory of the Jubilee songs passed into his soul, he knew his life-work was to let those Negroes sing to the world as they had sung to him. So in 1871 the pilgrimage of the Fisk Jubilee Singers began. Four half-clothed black boys and five girl-women,—led by a man with a purpose rode north. They stopped at Wilberforce, the oldest of Negro schools, where a black bishop blessed them. Then they went north, fighting cold and starvation, shut out of hotels, and sneered at; and the magic of their song thrilled hearts, until a burst of applause in the Congregational Council at Oberlin revealed them to the world. They came to New York and Henry Ward Beecher dared to welcome them. Their songs conquered till they sang before Queen and Kaiser, in Scotland and Ireland, Holland and Switzerland. Seven years they sang, and brought back a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to found Fisk University.

What are these songs, and what do they mean? I know little of music or the experience of the people, but these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world - the music of children of disappointment; of death and suffering and their otherwise unvoiced longing toward a truer world. The music is far more ancient than the words. It is distinctly sorrowful; it tells of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding; it gropes toward some unseen power and sighs for rest in the End.

Through all these Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is that sometime, somewhere, people will judge each other by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?

Through all the Songs of the Suffering Servant there breathes a basic faith in the ultimate justice of things. The cadences of despair interchange with triumph and confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes assurance of boundless justice. And still we ask: is such hope justified? Do these Sorrow Songs sing true?

Brutal regimes - beginning with our own - deflect anger and stridency every day. But walking with sorrow is a good beginning because no brutal regime can long survive it. (2) Our broken hearts enable us to sow the seeds of nonviolence. "Blessed are those who mourn" precedes "Blessed are the Peacemakers." Peacemaking begins with mourning - the dead of Baghdad, Gaza, Kabul, Bogotá, Port au Prince, Darfur. Mourn the loss of every sister and brother, of every species and iceberg, of every aspect of ruined climate on planet earth. Mourn the loss of creatures and creation itself. Expand mourning, offer love and compassion to everyone. Teach nonviolence. Pursue a culture where guns, bombs, poverty, weapons and war are unwelcome. Walking with our sorrow is the human response to an inhuman time

" Walking With Our Sorrow." I thought of it as news trickled in of the Virginia Tech massacre. It left me horrified and heartbroken. But given our culture of violence, it failed to surprise me. I marvel that rampages explode as infrequently as they do.

Columbine, the Amish schoolhouse and Virginia Tech make headlines but killings go on every day: 30,000 die each year in the U.S. by handguns. Some 300,000 assaults each year are gun-related. Nearly half of all U.S. households have guns. There are some 200 million privately owned firearms. And if those numbers aren't morose enough, suicide rates are highest in those states where guns are easiest to get.

Of course, the solution defies glib policy changes; change will come, as Merton said, only through a profound metanoia among us as a people. It will entail making the connections among all types of violence -- road rage, workplace intrigues, bloody cathartic movies, domestic violence, child abuse, murder, contingency war plans, military adventurism, nuclear weapons. Metanoia entails seeing how they're connected, how one leads to the other. And it entails taking on the long haul of dismantling all our weapons and the turning toward a culture of nonviolence.

The terror of Virginia Tech is part and parcel of the daily terror inflicted on innocent human beings everywhere in the world -- Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Colombia, Darfur and so many other tragic places. The terror of Virginia Tech is part and parcel of America's ultimate terror -- our idolatrous nuclear arsenal .

Such connections are officially forbidden, and few dare to make them. The disconnect is evident in the president's words of condolence: " No one can explain such suffering and violence." At the same time he perpetrates massive suffering and violence in Iraq and elsewhere. His condolences pale in light of his massacres abroad. (3)

Iraqis are, as far as America is concerned, without names, stories, faces. Not long ago, but many deaths ago, we were told that 70 women students were killed at an Iraqi university Jan. 16. The day after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, some 230 people died in Baghdad. "Collateral damage," in the too well-worn phrase.

The massacre in Iraq goes on as do preparations for future massacres. Another round of missiles, bombers, lasers, depleted uranium, F16s, Trident Submarines. Another generation of nuclear weapons. What can they portend but more rounds of massacres?

I've read people like Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Dr. King, the Dalai Lama, John XXIII, Thich Nhat Hanh, John Paul II, Daniel Berrigan and Thomas Merton -- I hear all of them calling for personal, national and global conversion to nonviolence. That means a ban on all weapons. What do we do? For starters, we learn the methodology and practice of personal, interpersonal and global nonviolence. We help build new institutions of nonviolence. We teach nonviolence to one another. Important people aren't going to do this. We have to do it ourselves.

And we must explore our inner violence, pursue inner disarmament and healing. And we must lift up the alternative of nonviolence across the country. Our burden, if we can credit our Gospel, is to teach and practice nonviolence. I believe only communities of faith and conscience can offer a clear vision of nonviolence. So we have to educate one another in this Gospel mandate.

How overwhelming it all is -- the Virginia Tech massacre and America's massacres of Iraq and Afghanistan. How overwhelming is the poverty and violence of the world. But ignoring things, numbing ourselves, finding refuge in denial -- helps no one, including ourselves. It certainly doesn't make us safer.

Sorrow is a good beginning. Grieve. Hold the sorrow. Personal, national and global healing may follow. And amidst the tears take heart. Our tears authorize each of us to play a part in that global transformation. Our broken hearts enable us to sow the seeds of nonviolence.

(1)The Sorrow Songs W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963).  The Souls of Black Folk.  1903.

(2) That is a major insight of Walter Bruggerman

(3) On April 20, 1999, a Colorado student watched his sister and two friends shot to death by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine High School. Before the sun began to set, Klebold and Harris killed ten others before killing themselves. President Clinton felt the need to speak out against the Columbine violence, which had shipwrecked the nation. Traveling to a public high school in Alexandria, Virginia, he addressed the students, saying: "We must do more to reach out to our children and teach them to express their anger and resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons." After this speech, Clinton returned to the White House and, before turning in for bed, gave the order to resume bombing in Serbia. That day in Belgrade, US military planes dropped 500-pound bombs into the homes and towns of innocent people.