A Garden of Hope

Monday, January 24, 2022

Anne Spencer with her husband, Edward and two of their grandchildren (1930)

---

INVOCATION

Spirit, fill our lives with the gladness of hope. 

---

STORY

Throughout the 1910s, 20s, and 30s, Harlem, New York was a lighthouse for many Black people who felt bludgeoned by the steely wings of Jim Crow. Harlem beckoned Black imaginations to head north where there was (supposedly) hope and freedom. Many young brilliant minds answered its call and took flight. 

But the South would always be their home, simply because it was where most of their families—particularly their elderly parents and grandparents—remained. And so, at least once in a while, they would have to head down South and back into the open wings of Jim Crow’s tyranny. 

And though the South didn’t hold all the Black beauty and autonomy they had found in Harlem, there were some lighthouses there that welcomed them where whites-only hotels and lodgings wouldn’t. One of them belonged to a Black poet named Anne Spencer. Her garden home became a rest stop for many of Black Harlem’s best and brightest who were traveling in the South. It was an open door of hope along desolate roads for Black travelers passing through Lynchburg, Virginia. In fact, it was a portal to hope, much like a door at the back of a wardrobe was to the Pevensie children in The Chronicle of Narnia.

Sometimes, hope is a portal to freedom disguised as a charming home and garden. 

Taboo by Anne Spencer

Being a Negro Woman is the world's most exciting
game of taboo:

By hell there is nothing you can do
that you want to do and
by heaven you are going to do
it anyhow—

We do not climb into the jim crow galleries
of scenario houses;
we stay away and read.

I read garden and seed catalogs,
Browning, Housman, Whitman,
Saturday Evening Post, detective tales,
Atlantic Monthly, American Mercury,
Crisis, Opportunity, Vanity Fair,
Hibberts Journal,
oh, anything.

I can cook delicious things to eat. . .
we have a lovely home, one that
money did not buy—

it was born and evolved
slowly out of our passionate, 
poverty-stricken agony
to own our own home: Happiness.

---

BREATH PRAYER

INHALE
May Our Hope…

EXHALE
Be Our Freedom. 

---

A SONG OF PRAISE

I Woke Up This Mornin’ performed by Resitance Revival Chorus

Woke up this morning with my mind
Stayed on freedom
Woke up this morning with my mind
Stayed on freedom
Woke up this morning with my mind
Stayed on freedom
Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah.

Well, I’m walking and talking with my mind
stayed on freedom
I'm walking and talking with my mind
stayed on freedom
I'm walking and talking with my mind
stayed on freedom.

Well, there ain’t no harm with your mind
Stayed on freedom
Oh, there ain’t no harm with your mind
Stayed on freedom
There ain't no harm with your mind
Stayed on freedom
Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah.

---

BENEDICTION

Though the road is long and paved with despair, may the light of hope stretch miles and miles to greet us and usher us safely home. 

Amen