My mother often reminded us that Papa Joe’s father had owned one of those hills, but white folks had found a way to take it from him. She said that another great-grandfather had also owned hundreds of acres in the area, and his property, too, had been taken from him by white folks.
The sad irony of it all was that some of those hills were now dotted with oil rigs and others covered in farmed trees, reaping wealth for their owners, and we had to drive through them on our way to church so that we could pray that we would have enough to eat and make do.
Soon we were pulling into the church parking lot. Shiloh Baptist stood at a fork in the road. It was a humble, wood-framed building elevated on brick pedestals, and the earth had settled and shifted beneath it in a way that left the church slightly warped.
It was a bit tattered, but exactly right: an imperfect outside made perfect by virtue of what was happening inside. It was the kind of building that remembered things, deep-down things, things that rode tears into the world, telling them back to anyone old enough or wise enough to know how to listen with their eyes.
Ushers with taut faces and white gloves held the doors like angels at heaven’s gate, directing us at the proper time—and only then—to an open pew, the ends of which had been polished to a shine by generations of hands using them for support.
The deacon board was arrayed to the right of the simple wooden pulpit, and the mother board was to the left. These places were reserved for the church elders—men with flour-sack bellies lapping straining belts, women with chestnut-colored stockings rolling down pecan-colored shins—most well past their allotted three score and ten. They were our counsels and conscience, having seen the world in all its majesty and cruelty.
The creaky center aisle was where bodies moved forward to be transformed. It’s where fathers gave away young brides, where caskets gave cover for the dead, and where sinners gave over weary souls.
Women in long dresses and big hats waved paper fans that looked like a rabble of butterflies set down on a patch of flowers. Little boys scratched at itchy suits. Little girls dug hard candy from their mothers’ purses. A small table rested in front of the pulpit, where members handed over their meager offerings and the deacons opened the service with prayer and song.
The deacons shouted those songs and sang the prayers, all with the cadence and volume of field workers—kneeling on one knee, eyes closed, heads bowing, swaying, craning, punctuating the words as they erupted from their bodies.
The song was always the same:
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah!
Pilgrim through this barren land!
The congregation trailed with the same verse, only in a protracted fusion of singing and moaning, dripping slow and thick like syrup.
The sound vibrated in the mouth and stirred the soul. It was a purging—burdens flowing out of us and into Him. The song proclaimed that the time had come for all who heard it to be still so that the spirit could move.
This was a time before men wore crayon-colored suits, when choirs focused more on dirges than dancing, and sermons were more about piety than earthly increase.
Our pastor, Reverend Brown, was a decent man with a good reputation. Not every congregation was so lucky. Preaching was a profession dotted with the supposedly repentant who touted their checkered pasts as a testimony to God’s grace—“Ef He can save a wratch like me . . . Hallelujah! Thank ya, JEE-suss!”
I, for one, was fascinated by Reverend Brown and his sermons, the way he played on opposites—reward and punishment, angels and demons, a gentle Savior and a vengeful God—flipping back and forth like a cook using a two-page recipe.
At our church, we came late and left early because my mother tired easily of the prolonged orchestration of it all. For her, anything over an hour was too long. “It don’t take the Lord two hours to
The sad irony of it all was that some of those hills were now dotted with oil rigs and others covered in farmed trees, reaping wealth for their owners, and we had to drive through them on our way to church so that we could pray that we would have enough to eat and make do.
Soon we were pulling into the church parking lot. Shiloh Baptist stood at a fork in the road. It was a humble, wood-framed building elevated on brick pedestals, and the earth had settled and shifted beneath it in a way that left the church slightly warped.
It was a bit tattered, but exactly right: an imperfect outside made perfect by virtue of what was happening inside. It was the kind of building that remembered things, deep-down things, things that rode tears into the world, telling them back to anyone old enough or wise enough to know how to listen with their eyes.
Ushers with taut faces and white gloves held the doors like angels at heaven’s gate, directing us at the proper time—and only then—to an open pew, the ends of which had been polished to a shine by generations of hands using them for support.
The deacon board was arrayed to the right of the simple wooden pulpit, and the mother board was to the left. These places were reserved for the church elders—men with flour-sack bellies lapping straining belts, women with chestnut-colored stockings rolling down pecan-colored shins—most well past their allotted three score and ten. They were our counsels and conscience, having seen the world in all its majesty and cruelty.
The creaky center aisle was where bodies moved forward to be transformed. It’s where fathers gave away young brides, where caskets gave cover for the dead, and where sinners gave over weary souls.
Women in long dresses and big hats waved paper fans that looked like a rabble of butterflies set down on a patch of flowers. Little boys scratched at itchy suits. Little girls dug hard candy from their mothers’ purses. A small table rested in front of the pulpit, where members handed over their meager offerings and the deacons opened the service with prayer and song.
The deacons shouted those songs and sang the prayers, all with the cadence and volume of field workers—kneeling on one knee, eyes closed, heads bowing, swaying, craning, punctuating the words as they erupted from their bodies.
The song was always the same:
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah!
Pilgrim through this barren land!
The congregation trailed with the same verse, only in a protracted fusion of singing and moaning, dripping slow and thick like syrup.
The sound vibrated in the mouth and stirred the soul. It was a purging—burdens flowing out of us and into Him. The song proclaimed that the time had come for all who heard it to be still so that the spirit could move.
This was a time before men wore crayon-colored suits, when choirs focused more on dirges than dancing, and sermons were more about piety than earthly increase.
Our pastor, Reverend Brown, was a decent man with a good reputation. Not every congregation was so lucky. Preaching was a profession dotted with the supposedly repentant who touted their checkered pasts as a testimony to God’s grace—“Ef He can save a wratch like me . . . Hallelujah! Thank ya, JEE-suss!”
I, for one, was fascinated by Reverend Brown and his sermons, the way he played on opposites—reward and punishment, angels and demons, a gentle Savior and a vengeful God—flipping back and forth like a cook using a two-page recipe.
At our church, we came late and left early because my mother tired easily of the prolonged orchestration of it all. For her, anything over an hour was too long. “It don’t take the Lord two hours to
Similar Books
