Sunday best: Dana Smith’s Thought for the week

‘My heart feels the unity of our worship.’

‘Did you wake up today? Then praise! Did you roll over and see the light? Then praise!’

The call and response ripples through the Baptist church of Mount Olive in Tidewater, Virginia. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jnr’s birthday. He would have been ninety-five. He was murdered at thirty-nine.

A red carpet rolls down to a small choir. A man riffs on the piano, unleashing bright chords. Outside a high wind moves the Chesapeake river. Our first reading comes from Proverbs: we are implored to speak for those who cannot speak. As the only white people here, we feel our privilege.

I’ve come home to Virginia to bury my father, a man who lived by the words that ‘all are created equal’. He often mused that the phrase took fewer words than the average social media post, yet it prompted the world’s second reformation. It inaugurated an adventure into truth.

Truth shines here. I glance around. The difference between Southern Baptist and Quaker styles of worship are obvious. There’s the red carpet, the choir, and the pulpit. There’s stained glass and handclapping. Folks sport their Sunday best. A warm Virginia breeze soothes us as we listen to a well-crafted sermon. Some words are brief birds of ministry, flitting though our midst. Heartfelt call-outs: ‘Sing it sister’; ‘Thank you brother’; ‘Amen’. Amen.

After the service, there’s laughter and welcoming chat. The woman I’m speaking with marched on Washington. She is inclusive and generous: ‘There were people there of every colour; we could not have done it alone.’

‘And did you hear Aretha sing?’ I ask, like a kid.

‘Yes,’ she says with a kind gaze. ‘I heard it all.’

At this point, the pastor joins in. ‘I went to King Sr’s church. We knew Coretta, and King‘s brother.’

These living witnesses answer questions playfully, as elder siblings might. I forget to ask if any of them knew Bayard Rustin, the Quaker who helped organise the march.

Back at my Meeting in the UK, my heart feels the unity of our worship. It is not strange that the similarities between us are greater than the differences. As William Penn noted, ‘The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear here makes them strangers.’

Charity, tenderness, perseverance; the golden thread that runs through all worship shines vibrantly. The love that wrestles with the world, that weeps with it, that manages on a good day to laugh even as it bears the world’s suffering, is palpable. The prophets are here. King himself said he had been to the mountaintop, while knowing he might not get there with us in his mortal life.

My new friends in Virginia are living witnesses to me in my Local Meeting. They remind me that I too might live out my part of what love requires.

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