Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church by Barbara A. Holmes (Augsburg Fortress Publishers) This book focuses on the aspects of the black church that point beyond particular congregational gatherings toward a mystical and communal spirituality not within the exclusive domain of any denomination. This mystical aspect of the black church is deeply implicated in the well-being of African American people but is not the focus of their intentional reflection. Moreover, its tradi­tions are deeply ensconced within the historical memory of the wider society and can be found in Coltrane's riffs and Malcolm's exhortations, in the Step Brothers' dance routines and the forti­tude of Thurgood Marshall.

Today increasing numbers of young people believe that the black church exists in a time warp, with slavery as its originating marker and civil rights as its culminating goal. Their history lessons have taught them that the black church is situated in a particular historical framework, but they also know that its tradi­tions seldom include the concerns of a generation suckled on hip hop, "terror," and economic instability. Nevertheless, there is a timelessness at the center of black church practices that exceeds its history and deserves further exploration. I am speaking of a shared religious imagination that manifests as the communal intent to sustain one another and journey together toward joy despite oppressive conditions.

This book at first appeared to be a major change in the focus of my work. For the last few years I have been thinking about the cosmos and our place in it. From black holes to dark matter, I considered the cosmological aspects of Africana identity that were masked by discrete social and racial categories. Given the magnitude of these concerns and the work that is yet to be done,

I wondered why this new book was shifting my focus from the universe to the pew, from the galaxies to the hush arbors.

As the writing progressed, I realized that I was grappling with yet another piece of the identity puzzle. Although the context in this book is congregational, the questions I bring to the task are familiar. Each of my books focuses on a taken-for-granted element of Africana life that has the potential to promote the flourishing of the immediate community and the extended family of God.

My first book was a study of prophetic proclamation in the speeches of Barbara Jordan, whose pragmatic discourses inte­grated religion, ethics, and law. Her willingness to "speak truth to power" from the liminal stance of black, female, segregated per­sonhood elucidated the power of ordinary people to discursively carve hope from static and oppressive conditions. In Race and the Cosmos, I suggested that the languages of theoretical physics and cosmology could expand limited social constructions of iden­tity, power, and race. In this book I am bringing contemplation into focus as an important taken-for-granted worship legacy in the historical black church.

I am also identifying the sacred territory of inner cosmologies and the spiritual locus of past microcosms of protection and com­munal formation. Those who study contemplation as a practice or religious experience soon find that they are engaging geospiritual spaces that have the potential to ease postmodernity's striving and disassociation. Perhaps through this retrieval of the contemplative practices of the black church, the trans-racial and diversity-based community-called-beloved will come into view.

The historical black church is the necessary matrix for this work. I am aware that the phrase "historical black church" can be problematic when it is used to gloss over complex and multifac­eted worship choices. Accordingly, I am using the phrase as a cultural reference point that may illuminate or impinge upon a historical trajectory but is not limited to those disciplinary boundaries.

This book is a reflective turn toward practices that emerge out of the collective imagination of the worshipping community. I've named these practices "contemplative" (for lack of a better word) because they create intersections between inner cosmolo­gies and the interpretive life of a community. The task is to reclaim the powerful interiority ensconced in the memories and practices of the historical black church, in the narratives of daily life, and in the vibrancy of Africana aesthetics. This is a legacy for future generations that must be identified before it can be bequeathed.

Communal contemplative practices in Africana contexts have been hidden from view by the exigencies of struggle, survival, and sustenance. As a consequence, there have been scant oppor­tunities to reflect on the journey. But the time for reflection has come. What makes our future together possible is our ability to contemplate, to consider events and their meaning in narrative, cosmological, and historical contexts. I am suggesting that ensconced within the framework of vibrant religious practices are tangible reminders that our lives are communal liturgies.

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 individual-ism, 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 important they describe a cosmos that is interwoven with mystery.

Unfortunately, we have few devices to handle the eruption of spiritual events into our ordinary lives. When they occur we are forced to reassess our taken-for-granted presumptions about the world. However, our assessments can further marginalize the events and those who claim to have them. If you listen to testimonies of immediate and personal spiritual experiences, you will inevitably hear "spectator" language that describes disruptive spiritual exotica. The presumption is that these moments cannot

be easily interrogated and that they are not subject to the type of reflection that yields enlightenment or insight. Moreover, the impact of these ineffable moments on individual seekers further privatizes the religious experience in ways that undermine the interpretive power of a community.

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.

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 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 detail and communal wisdom. I am offering an under-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.

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