Beyond the Suffering Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction

1. Beyond the Suffering Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction Hebrews 12:1-3 “So Great a Cloud of Witnesses”

2. Session Two Watered with Our Tears: Communal Comfort and Family Faithfulness

3. Sign Posts from the Past

4. Some Signs Are More Helpful Than Others

5. Some Signs Are More Helpful Than Others

6. Some Signs Are More Helpful Than Others

7. Some Sign Are More Helpful Than Others

8. Born Free “We say that the slavers went to Africa to get the slaves, which is far from true. The slavers went to Africa to get Africans to make them slaves” (Nikki Giovanni).

9. Out of Africa

10. Kings, Queens, Merchants, Soldiers, Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters

11. Kings, Queens, Merchants, Soldiers, Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters

12. West African Home

13. James Bradley: “Soul-Destroyers” “I think I was between two and three years old when the soul-destroyers tore me from my mother’s arms, somewhere in Africa, far back from the sea. They carried me a long distance to a ship; all the way I looked back and cried.”

14. Communal Comfort Human Sustaining/Comfort Divine Healing/Consolation

15. Olaudah Equiano:From Victim to Victor

16. Equiano: Bathed in Tears “The only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.” Our hurting friends need our silence, not our speeches.

17. Encountering Every Misery For You “Happy should I have ever esteemed myself to encounter every misery for you, and to procure your freedom by the sacrifice of my own!” Romans 9:2-3—Incarnational Suffering

18. Mingling Suffering and Sorrows “Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Are the dearest friends and relations still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery with the small comfort of being together, and mingling their sufferings and sorrows?” The Power of Presence

19. Solomon Northrup

20. Kidnapping Free Blacks

21. Solomon Northrup and Eliza “The hope of years was blasted in a moment. From the height of most exulting happiness to the utmost depths of wretchedness, she had that day descended. No wonder that she wept, and filled the pen with wailings and expressions of heart-rending woe.”

22. Solomon Northrup and Eliza “We were thus learning the history of each other’s wretchedness.”

23. Communal Comfort Human Sustaining/Comfort Divine Healing/Consolation

24. Quobna Ottobah Cugoano

25. The Ear of Jehovah “The deep sounding groans of 1000s, and the great sadness of their misery and woe, are such as can only be distinctly known to the ear of Jehovah Sabaoth.” God Hears Our Cries

26. The Intention of Jehovah “I may say with Joseph that whatever evil intentions and bad motives those insidious robbers had in carrying me away from my native country and friends, I trust, was what the Lord intended for my good.” God Is God Even When Life Is Bad

27. The Merciful Providence of God “I acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life” (Equiano). Trusting God’s Affectionate Sovereignty

28. Looking for the Hand of God “I early accustomed myself to look at the hand of God in the minutest occurrence, and to learn from it a lesson of morality and religion. After all, what makes any event important, unless by observation we become better and wiser, and learn ‘to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God!’”

29. Family Faithfulness: Leaving a Lasting Legacy Family Life: Five Generations, Beaufort, SC Family Worship: Enslaved Christian Preaching

30. Honoring the African American Family

31. Harriet Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Mother “They all spoke kindly of my dead mother, who had been a slavemerely in name, butin naturewas noble and womanly.”

32. Harriet Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Brother “When he put his arms round my neck, and looked into my eyes, as if to read there the troubles I dared not tell, I felt that I still had something to love.”

33. Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Grandmother “I tell you what, Dr. Flint, you ain’t got many years to live, and you’d better be saying your prayers. It will take ‘em all, and more too, to wash the dirt off your soul.”

34. Jacobs: It Takes a Family—Grandmother “Yes, I know very well who I am talking to!”

35. Pulling the Rope in Unison:Venture Smith

36. Pulling the Rope in Unison He then explained the object lesson to his young bride. “If we pull in life against each other we shall fail, but if we pull together we shall succeed.”

37. Tug-of-War or Pulling the Rope in Unison

38. Pulling the Rope in Unison “If we pull in life against each other we shall fail, but if we pull together we shall succeed.”

39. Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Model “I loved my father. He was such a good man. He was a good carpenter and could do anything. My mother just rejoiced in him. . . . I sometimes think I learned more in my early childhood about how to live than I have learned since.”

40. Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Model All he ever needed to learn, he learned in his enslaved home from a father whose spirit was never enslaved.

41. Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Affection “I can testify, from my own painful experience, to the deep and fond affection which the slave cherishes in his heart for his home and its dear ones. . . . (Rev. Thomas Jones)

42. Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Affection . . . We have no other tie to link us to the human family, but our fervent love for those who are with us and of us in relations of sympathy and devotedness, in wrongs and wretchedness” (Reverend Thomas Jones of NC).

43. Honoring the African American Father:A Father’s Affection Hardships do not make it too hard to love!

44. Honoring the African American Mother Josiah Henson writes of his mother from whom he was separated by slave sale only to be reunited by repurchase after he had fallen ill.

45. Speaking the Truth in Love “She was a good mother to us, a woman of deep piety, anxious above all things to touch our hearts with a sense of religion. Back with her, I was once more with my best friendon earth, and under her care.”

46. A Mother’s Wisdom about the Father of the Fatherless “When I was a child, my mother used to tell me to look to Jesus, and that He who protected the widow and the fatherless would take care of me also” (Peter Randolph).

47. Painting Pictures of God Enslaved African Americans survived by painting pictures of God onto the palettes of their life portraits. They viewed God as the Father of the Fatherless, the God who collects their tears in His bottle, and as God the Just Judge.

48. Painting Pictures of God onto the Palettes of Their Life Portraits “Then I lifted my hands to God. To the Almighty Father of us all. I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up against the burden of my troubles.” (Solomon Northrup)

49. Mother Wit

50. Mother Wit