But then there’s the intruding dark reality that this 40-day journey brings. It will be fraught with all sorts of temptations already set to derail the trek up the mountain. It’s during this time we pause to recall our own mortality. For it is from dust that we came and it is to dust we shall return. (Gen. 3:19)  And in remembering, we repent and realize our dependence on Christ.

So while I anticipate landing that first step on another journey God-ward, I already lament the tawdry temptations and erratic failures that await to trip me up. The coffee aromas that speak to me and ask what will one cup hurt. The time crunches that push prayer to later o’clock. The irritable interruptions that will detract from my goal of peaceful days. And the weighted-eyelids that will shut at hours I’m usually awake, simply because I said I would spend the hour praying.  I know it’s not wise to declare defeat at the outset, but I’ve been this way before. To be sure, I’ll do my very best to honor my commitments but, like the prodigal child on his way home to his father, I am already rehearsing my forgiveness prayers just in case.

I haven’t settled on my list of do’s and don’t’s yet, but they’ll likely include giving up some television, meat, sweets, breads, coffee and chocolate. (I know chocolate is a sweet but it is worthy of its own food group in my mind.) Although some would argue otherwise, to me letting go of things is an important part of the process.  It proves how easily I replace my dependency on God with things that distract me from Him. During Lent, when cravings roar to be filled, I’ll swap their noisy emptiness with the Bread of Life and with attention to Christ’s unfailing sufficiency.  

But the 40 days are never just about letting go. It’s also about drawing near. So in addition to pulling away, I will also add to the season more dedicated devotional time, more prayerful considerations that make me fully present throughout the day, and a daily hour of more disciplined prayer. Why so much prayer? I read somewhere that we do everything else more than we pray. I’m guilty. The article said we even give better than we pray. I’m guilty there too.

So, I’ll start the trek with these words: Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. My frailty is ever before me. My weaknesses torture and mock me. And yet, I press pass the failures, because the victory is not in my perfection; the victory is in the One who stands with open arms to receive me in whatever condition I find myself when I finally arrive. So in the words of one who eagerly awaits, “Let’s go!”

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During Lent, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia T. Turner, pastor of the Dayspring Community Church in Lanham, MD, will write about the “Righteous Mind” on the Soul Rhythms blog. Click here to read other pieces by Rev. Turner.

Related posts:

1. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
2. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
3. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner

Surely she had to scream during slavery when some slimy creepy body climbed on her belly to use her as a receptacle. I know she screamed then but not out loud. Or when she – in the name of survival – had to give her breast to nourish somebody else’s child, while her child lay home thirsty, craving her warmth.

Or when she busily moved around in the kitchen, keeping her back to her children so they could not see the leaky tears burn her face or hear her groan in prayer. They were unaware as they sat at the table chattering that the stove was cold, the ice box warm and the cupboards bare.  

Scream she did, but not out loud. Romans 8:26 says the Spirit intercedes for us with groans words cannot express.  

Thankfully, these horrific moments are bits of second-hand history for many of us. Our lives are generations removed from those oppressive days. But on the scream-worthiness scale, we’re right there. Today’s Black woman, like her internally screaming ancestor, has much for which to scream. Like when she begins remembering at 25 what happened to her at 5, when her uncle used candy to entice her to come near. She kept it at bay for two decades, but now the specter of the memories won’t go away and she’s afraid for every little girl she sees near any grown man. Not only does she try to re-suppress the memory, which she’s not even sure is true since it was so long ago, she now also tries to quell the scream.

Or when in the courtroom she sees her teenage son or daughter, whom she put to bed each night with thoughts of Morehouse and Spelman on her mind, now standing before the judge with hands and feet chain-linked between some other mothers’ children over something stupid. No more Morehouse, now the big house. She can’t scream in the courtroom, lest they haul her away, too, or think it’s her fault that her child turned out this way. So she holds it.

Or when she  arrives home early and finds her man in bed – her bed – with another man and he declares before her eyes it’s not what it looks like.  Her intention is to scream out loud, but nothing comes out.

As bad as it gets sometimes, rarely do we get to scream out loud. Throughout history, our survival and the survival of those around us have hinged on our postponing, camouflaging or suppressing the out-loud scream. No wonder we major in heart disease. This inward shout to human ears sounds like groans. Our saving grace has been in knowing that the Spirit speaks our language of groans and translates them into prayers according to God’s will. Our hope is in knowing that there’s always a groan – an inward shout – before the glory.

So when can a Black woman scream out loud?

Is it at 20-something when her childhood friend’s father blindsides her with a proposition now that she’s all grown up? Or is it when she has the dream career, dream house, dream car and dream appearance at 30-something, but wakes up to realize that the dream duped and deluded her by not measuring up to all that? Or how about when she looks around at 40-something and realizes her chances of ever marrying, experiencing childbirth, or even having a lasting committed relationship have faded with last year’s underbrush?

Can she please scream then? Or how about this: when she realizes she no longer has a clue who the man beside her in bed is, even though she has laid with him under the same blankets for nearly two decades. He’s a stranger to her and her to him. Or is it when her son starts acting like her daughter and her daughter starts acting like her son? Though she loves them just the same, can she scream out loud then? Or when she suddenly realizes the reflection in the mirror resembles her, but that person is 30, 40, 50 or 100 pounds heavier than she ever thought she’d be. Please, can she scream now!

These are glimpses into the real-life stories some Black women share.

And yes, there surely are those whose charmed lives may never have experienced such tragedy. Even now someone is standing up in protest to declare that all her days have been good days and all her decisions have been right. I’m not mad at you. Work it. But work it realizing that what the old preacher used to say is still true: “If tragedy has not visited you yet, keep on living, daughter.” All I ask is that you have compassion. Realize that if you scratch just beneath the surface of many of your sisters, there’s an ear-piercing, eye-squeezing scream waiting to get out.

I once heard a poet say “every woman needs a day.” I agree. So here’s what I suggest. Once a year, we take a day for a Black woman to scream. B-W-S-D. Black Woman Scream Day. Rather than sleep the pain away, we’ll scream. It’s a day to fill up your lungs, stretch wide open your mouth, shake your head side to side in fury, and let out a loud noise that shakes the very foundations of the earth.  

One woman screaming is plenty, but just imagine if we all got together in an abdomen-tightening fellowshipping exercise, like the wailing women of the Bible, and just let it all out. And I don’t mean to be exclusionary, so I invite all of our Latina and Asian sisters, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist; White, Pacific Islanders, American-, East- and West-Indian; gay, straight and bi-sisters to join in. (I’m not changing the name, though. We unapologetically and unashamedly must take ownership of this.) Take the day off and scream. Scream for yourself and for the woman who cannot scream.

We don’t scream because we are weak or because we have lost it or because any of this has gotten the best of us. We scream in protest because we know that this is not how life is supposed to be. We scream because we have the strength yet left in us to do so. Because we have not been defeated. Our screams are not in despair, rather they push out new life, new hope. They declare these dry bones still do live and they cry out not just with breath, they cry out with a loud screeching ear-piercing noise to say to the world “though you thought I could not, or would not, today – maybe just for today – I can and I will scream, because if I don’t I think I’ll lose my mind.”

And afterward, at sunset or perhaps the day after BWSD, we will do like we always did: Begin weaving together the frazzled remnants of our sanity, gathering up the tiny pieces again, and putting it all back together so everybody and everything can be all right.

Can I get an amen?

  ²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. – Romans 8

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The Rev. Dr. Cynthia T. Turner, pastor of the Dayspring Community Church in Lanham, MD, writes occasionally about the “Righteous Mind” on the Soul Rhythms blog.

Related posts:

1. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
2. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
3. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner

Life can become like that – a bunch of half-empty efforts that appear and feel like a whole lot, but when truly measured, when the substance is weighed, it’s pretty unimpressive. Could it be all that busy-ness is an effort to fool not only others – but myself too – into believing that there’s a lot more going on than there really is. While they look good on paper, these titles, memberships, affiliations and meetings, are great camouflages – and poor excuses – for progress. They make good fronts, because they appear that something is happening, but actually, more often than not, like those bottles, they are just occupying space.

But there’s another factor here that hits close to home. How willing we are to accept the bottle and its meager contents? This became clear to me when I noticed on a particular Sunday how many parishioners were strolling into worship service 20, 30 or 40 minutes late. Considering the entire service is only 90 or at best 120 minutes, they are consistently missing out on a full third or nearly half the service. It’s the half-empty bottle syndrome. As long as they get some of the service, it’s appears to be enough. But is it really? 

I confess, as a preacher and preaching aficionado, when I visit other services, I’m guilty of plotting my timing so that I can show up at worship in time for the sermon. But can I call that worship? Can I say I’ve dined sufficiently when I show up at a seven-course meal just in time for the entrée and bail out just after the dessert? Can I say I’ve seen the whole movie when I missed the first 40 minutes? Can I say I’ve visited a certain city when all I did was sit around on a two-hour layover at the airport?

King David in his 27^th Psalm expresses a “one thing” mindset. While he had much to be thankful for, much to question God about, and no doubt much to petition God for, he declares that there’s really only one thing he desires. I don’t need 27 bottles of shampoos, conditioners and cleansers, I really only need one of each. And I don’t need a bunch of things to do, meetings to attend and titles to hold, I really need to weigh them against the rule of substance and when they come up empty, I need to let them go.

Now that I’ve tackled the bathroom cabinets, on to the closets. Do I really need 23 pairs of shoes and a wardrobe of three sizes? Ugh!

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The Rev. Dr. Cynthia T. Turner, pastor of the Dayspring Community Church in Lanham, MD,  writes occasionally about the “Righteous Mind” on the Soul Rhythms blog.

Related posts:

1. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
2. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
3. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner

Amani, my 5-year-old niece, whenever she sees me, will show me her scars from a fall at school, an injury at the park, or an incident from a week ago. The wound may be nearly healed and show no evidence of present pain. It may be covered over with hard crusty scab that has all but faded. But she wants me to see the wound and to see where she was hurt so that I can somehow empathize with her and feel her pain. And I do. I kiss it. I caress it. I put my hand where it happened as a way to share in the incident, even though I was not there, did not commit it, nor can I actually feel it.

What she’s saying, without even knowing it, is that she survived a bad thing and lived to tell about it. She’s showing that she fell down, but got up again. I hope I can remind her of that. That this thing is an example that even though you go down, you can get up again. And even though you have the scars to show it, they are not testimonies of defeat, rather they are testimonies of your survival despite the injury. Praise be to God that the scars don’t mean that it’s over, they mean I have survived.

That’s what Christ did. The resurrected Christ kept His scars. They were His identifiers, His markers that proved to the disciples, and Thomas specifically, that He was who He said He was and that He had been through what they heard He went through – and get this – He lived to tell about it. That’s what scars do.

Perhaps the most dangerous of scars are those we cannot see. The ones that hurt the heart, that strike the soul and that cripple the spirit. There’s no Mercurochrome, no bandage, and no boo-boo kiss that heals them away. In fact, their real peril lies in the fact that they are inconspicuous to the average eye; they require real discernment. And because they can be so easily camouflaged, they often go unattended.

Today I’m going to take time to tend to those internal scars, because they too help define the me I have become.

Lord, I have to thank you today for keeping the scars. When you revealed yourself to those disciples, you showed them the scars and that’s how they recognized you. You bared the scars. That’s where we nailed you. That’s where we pierced you. That’s where we attempted to do you in once and for all. And as we were doing that, you were all the while praying for us and making a way for us so that we would not be left to make our way to hell. All the while we were piercing you, you were going away to prepare a place for us to be with you. All the while we were slamming you, you were opening it up for us. And you have the scars to show it.

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Rev. Dr. Cynthia T. Turner, pastor of the Dayspring Community Church in Lanham, MD,  occasionally writes about the “Righteous Mind” on the Soul Rhythms blog. Click here to read other pieces by Rev. Turner.

Related posts:

1. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
2. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
3. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner

It’s supposed to hold her  at all times so as to give the illusion that no obstacle is too big, no hurdle too high and no stairs too steep to ascend. That’s the sales pitch. But that’s all it is, because the reality is it’s broken and of no use until the repairman can fit taking a look at it into his overloaded schedule next week . 

I hate when things break. Especially me. I need to hold it all together at all times, not just for me but for the generations who preceded me and withstood far more hardship than I’ve known. And for the generations following who seem to cower under the slightest weight and discomfort. They need to see how I can hold up under real strain.

Also for the congregants I serve who secretly wonder at times if God is real. For those millions of nameless women whose backs are bent under the strain of trying to house, feed, educate and clothe an entire family for under $2.50 a day.  For the women whose bodies were violently entered and whose minds and hearts were raped of the hope that anybody cared.

And for the little children who can’t afford for the grownups to break. Especially for my 5-year-old great niece who believes I am invincible. I can’t break, because if I do who will lift all those folks?

Yeah, right. All those fine noble reasons aside, I don’t want to break because breaking hurts. And I hate that. But I also fear the fact that broken things aren’t of much use. They get put up on a shelf for later fiddling. They get wheeled in front of a TV until the next meal. They get left behind. They get swept up and thrown away. And even if they are glued back together, one wrong move or a bit of close scrutiny will reveal their cracks. Don’t believe the hype. Everything is not necessarily stronger in the broken places.

Truth be told, I have been broken, am breaking now, and most assuredly will endure breaks in the future. I’m publicly whole and privately fragile. I could never live up to always being the strong, independent woman I was raised to be, who refuses to crack under pressure, no matter how forceful. While I may still resist it, I no longer believe breaking – excruciatingly painful as it is – is the worst thing. It demands new ways of seeing the same old situation and it rejects the need for me to hold on to the got-it-all-together facade.

It’s the prequisite to Resurrection. And if what rises after the break is less heroic, less prideful, more authentic, more Christ-like and less self-centered than who I am now, then by all means, I will take the break. Bring it on.

Each Friday during Lent, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia T. Turner, pastor of the Dayspring Community Church in Lanham, MD, will write about the “Righteous Mind” on the Soul Rhythms blog. Click here to read other pieces by Rev. Turner.

Related posts:

1. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
2. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
3. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner

And it’s true. What we believe determines what we do. Believing you can’t means you won’t. Believing it’s impossible means it is, at least to you. Believing the marriage cannot be salvaged, or the child is incorrigible, or the student is unteachable, or the job is unworkable is already a confession and admission of defeat.

But it does not have to be that way. Nothing can so get us through a crisis and set us on the path toward triumph better than a fresh perspective based on truth and righteousness. Like the time when Gail Devers determined in 1990, despite bad medical diagnoses, that she would run again. Less than 17 months after the doctors had considered amputating her feet, she went on to win her first gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, in 1992, and was named the fastest woman in the world. She later said: “But I wasn’t going to give up. The word ‘quit’ has never been a part of my vocabulary. With lots of hard work, determination, perseverance and faith in God, I was able to resume training and regain my health.”

Each crisis brings with it a call to new understandings. It requires that we protest and dig deeper, way past the easy answers we publicly accept to unearth deep-set truths that lets us know that what looks like the end does not necessarily have to be.

A righteous mind does not mean we have all the answers; it means we recognize that these lives we live are wholly unintelligible without a belief that sees life through the lens of a Savior who came, lived, died and rose again to show us that that every ending has the potential for new beginning.

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Each Friday during Lent, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia T. Turner, pastor of the Dayspring Community Church in Lanham, MD, will write about the “Righteous Mind” on the Soul Rhythms blog. Click here to read other pieces by Rev. Turner.

Related posts:

1. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
2. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner
3. Righteous Mind with Rev. Cynthia T. Turner