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Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes 9/9/1943 - 10/15/2024 |
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81507551772
Meeting ID: 815 0755 1772
To connect by phone dial: 1-301-715-8592
OPENING PRAYER
Beloved Holy One, we give thanks for our spiritual visionary, Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes, who lived during our age and perceived far beyond what mysticism, community, justice, activism, liberation, and contemplation mean for us today. Shake us to our core with her insights, explanations, and energies to overcome the complex questions we struggle with today. Dr. Holmes, you are our beloved spiritual mother, professor, confessor, and interconnector to each other’s efforts on the journey. We appreciate assistance in our lives, Holy Mystery, as we seek support and encouragement. With the cosmic gratitude of Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes, we thank you for giving us a mirror mystic view of her life and works into the interconnectedness of all life. So be it.
VIDEO 1 What is Contemplation? Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBCs5pOEqwI Center for Action and Contemplation
REFLECTION 1 The Mystical Identity of Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes
In essence, Holmes’ central teaching is that justice, healing, and transformation are possible only when we see ourselves as part of a sacred, interconnected cosmos, guided by contemplative wisdom and rooted in community. (Patheos) Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes was a mystical scholar and spiritual visionary for the 21st century. She left our world in 2024, and her memory is fresh in her many teaching videos, written works, lectures, homilies and letters. Her life’s work bridged mysticism, activism, and ecology, showing the sacred found in everyday life. Our often short-sighted, culturally impoverished, white, European history and interpretations of mystical Christianity have been rattled, as she brilliantly and gently shows us how to live out the Word of Jesus in our times in a significantly more diverse and inclusive way. She did not see time and space as limitations, but pushed us to find answers and inspiration beyond mental boundaries we have built for ourselves.
She taught: “Every person has had a mystical experience. Maybe the seas have not parted, maybe they haven’t walked on water, but there have nevertheless been amazing miracles in our lives. We just haven’t shared them in community, so we don’t feel comfortable sharing them as individuals. I will tell you the basis of my personal mysticism so that you will consider yours….”
Dr. Barbara Holmes’ life arcs from learning from past family ancestors, through her own diverse educational experiences, being an educator herself, and off into the future guided by her understanding of contemporary cosmic consciousness. We will briefly view her teaching from three sources. First, she ensures we understand her ancestral underpinnings in her foundational study of African American contemplative mysticism, “Joy Unspeakable,” by way of her poetry. Second, Dr. Holmes shares with us inspiration on following the “Prophetic Path” to bring about our own and our community’s spiritual growth by healing the wounded village with crisis contemplation. Mystical contemplation is really God’s presence experienced, whether alone or in community. Third, in “Race and the Cosmos” we reflect on how her spiritual and intellectual maturity gave her a wider, deeper view that enriches our searching lives.
JOY UNSPEAKABLE A profound exploration of the mystical, contemplative spirituality deeply rooted in the African American church tradition and its far-reaching societal impact.
“Today’s wilderness can be found in bustling suburban and urban centers, on death row, in homeless shelters in the middle of the night, in the eyes of a hospice patient, and in the desperation of AIDS orphans in Africa and around the world. Perhaps these are the postmodern desert mothers and fathers. Perhaps contemplative spaces can be found wherever people skirt the margins of inclusion. Perhaps those whom we value least have the most to teach.” p. 111
POEM 1 Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes
Joy Unspeakable
is not silent,
it moans, hums, and bends
to the rhythm of a dancing universe.
It is a fractal of transcendent hope,
a hologram of God’s heart,
a black hole of unknowing.
For our free African ancestors,
Joy Unspeakable is drum talk
that invites the spirits
to dance with us,
and tell tall tales by the fire.
For the desert Mothers and Fathers,
Joy Unspeakable is respite
from the maddening crowds,
and freedom from
“church” as usual.
For enslaved Africans during the
Middle Passage,
Joy Unspeakable is the surprise
of living one more day,
and the freeing embrace of death
chosen and imposed.
For Africans in bondage
in the Americas,
Joy Unspeakable is that moment of
mystical encounter
when God tiptoes into the hush arbor,
testifies about Divine suffering,
and whispers in our ears,
“Don’t forget,
I taught you how to fly
on a wing and a prayer,
when you’re ready,
let’s go!”
Joy Unspeakable is humming
“How I got over”
after swimming safely
to the other shore of a swollen Ohio river
when you know that you can’t swim.
It is the blessed assurance
that Canada is far,
but not that far.
For Africana members of the
“Invisible institution,” the
emerging black church,
Joy Unspeakable is
practicing freedom
while chains still chafe,
singing deliverance
while Jim Crow stalks,
trusting God’s healing
and home remedies,
prayers, kerosene,
and cow patty tea.
For the tap dancing, boogie woogie,
rap/rock/blues griots
who also hear God,
Joy Unspeakable is
that space/time/joy continuum thing
that dares us to play and pray
in the interstices of life,
it is the belief that the phrase
“The art of living”
means exactly what it says.
Griots, musical historians who preserve and transmit the oral traditions,
history, and cultural values of their communities
“Given where we are, contemplative practices must do more than offer respite and space for retreat. We need healing practices and transformative responses to issues that continue to divide our society. The world is the cloister of the contemplative. There is no escape. Always the quest for justice draws one deeply into the heart of God. In this sacred interiority, contemplation becomes the language of prayer and the impetus for prophetic proclamation and action.” Dr. BAH
VIDEO 2 Walking the Prophetic Path
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMMf7dcWnZ4
REFLECTION 2
Our world is exploding in crises of such proportions that we find ourselves at a loss in how to be healers. Instead of succumbing to overwhelming personal, cultural and national crises, Dr. Holmes reminds us that the Holy One is with us, “even unto the end of the age.” It is by taking the risks necessary to follow the “Prophetic Path” that we are called to pursue. She teaches that through crisis contemplation we receive the strength to walk on the troubled waters of our time, buoyed by the Spirit who descended on the Upper Room. She said: My scriptural context for immersing in crisis contemplation in community is we read in Scripture that in the Upper Room, the Spirit descended on the group, not just a single person.” 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 where we draw our strength. Barbara A. Holmes
REFLECTION 3
Race and the Cosmos, one of the last of Dr. Holmes’ gifts, can rearrange our idea that:
“Liberation is cosmic, interconnected, and embodied; contemplation is active and inclusive; joy is a spiritual and cultural force; and the integration of science, theology, and activism can transform both personal and collective life.”
“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 individualism, 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.”
VIDEO 3 Race and the Cosmos: A Meditation Dr. Barbara Holmes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCnrGjqZf4
FROM DR. HOLMES, A FINAL WORD
On the need for spiritual companionship
https://youtu.be/lys4v7TjV1A?si=2XrcV7pbWqxrBqPx
CLOSING PRAYER by Dr. Barbara Ann Holmes
For the Crises, the disruption of order,
And the plunge into contemplation,
We are grateful.
For the Welcoming Darkness
And the wounds that bring us
To a place of unknowing,
We thank God!
For the nurture of our many villages
Of belonging, we are grateful,
For healing that comes in unexpected ways,
And the imaginative pathways
Of futurism and cosmic rebirth,
Thanks be. Page 138 Crisis Contemplation
REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
Holmes, B. A. (2017). Joy unspeakable: contemplative practices of the black church. (2nd edition). Fortress Press.
Holmes, B. A. (2020). Race and the cosmos : an invitation to view the world differently. Cac Publishing.
Holmes, B.A. (2021). Crisis contemplation: healing the wounded village. Cac Publishing, Center For Action And Contemplation.
Holmes, B. A. (2023). Liberation and the Cosmos. Fortress Press.
Holmes, B. A. (2024). Walking with Our Ancestors. Fortress Press.
Holmes, B.A. (2000). A private woman in public spaces : Barbara Jordan’s speeches on ethics, public religion, and law. Trinity Press International.
Prieto, P. (2025). Unity and Harmony. Orbis Books.
Thorner, I. (1965). Prophetic and Mystic Experience: Comparison and Consequences. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5(1), 82. https://doi.org/10.2307/1384258
Weisenfeld, J. (1997). African American women and Christian activism: New York’s Black YWCA, 1905-1945. Harvard University Press.
Misogynoir to Mishpat (M2M) Research Network Uplifting African Descended Women in Religious Scholarship https://misogynoir2mishpat.wordpress.com/about/
VIDEO
Experiencing God in the Thin Places with Barbara Holmes | CONSPIRE 2021 | Day One
https://youtu.be/fVkXNjj7YNI?si=ckxOhU5bl0inv7PI
A History of the Griot In African Society
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