Week 13: Sunday Service Announcements
If you think about what we were taught about church, we cultivated our own online church community using our language with no limitations to our voice.
One thing that I used to hear growing up was that church was not always the physical building but the intentional space you’ve carved out in your heart to have a relationship with the Divine, God, The Universe, Mother Earth, Jesus, whatever name feels good to you.
As we continue to expand our church community with new writers each week, I’ve noticed that we collected parts of the church that feel good to us, but one thing we come back each week for is the community engagement piece.
From sermons like Black Women are Scripture with
to New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down with , the community has come together in the comment section to share how our experiences are parallel. Black men and women are united in this space; we both feel safe, and we all challenge each other to grow.
From every free subscriber to paid subscriber to founding member, I thank each one of you personally because on September 19th,
will be three months old, we are less than 100 subscribers away from 1000, and the nonprofit magazine has officially entered into the curation phase with a paid team in place. I applied to Substack to work around the same time I started to curate BlackStack, and today, I can say I officially work for full-time.So again, THANK YOU!
But wait hold one minute now, before we get into the sermon, we have to make a quick announcement for the winners of the first
giveaway with the courtesy of . The winners were selected through a website called Rafflys, and it was super easy and took the pressure off me.Drumroll, please…
The winner of the
scarf is !The winner for a year subscription to
is !
Turn to your neighbor and say:
“Neighbor, when are you going to let that worry go and give it to Spirit?”
Nine Tuesdays.
In the Catholic faith, the Nine Tuesdays Novena to Saint Anthony is a devotion said on nine consecutive Tuesdays to ask for a miracle when all seems lost.
“Did you go up on The Mount?” asked my grandmother to my mother.
First Tuesday: Approach
At the beginning of every school term, my mother and grandmother would bundle me into mum’s white hatchback and take the winding drive up the mountainside to Mount St. Benedict, a monastery and Catholic Church that sits high in the mountains of Trinidad.
Once a safe sanctuary for monks who fled persecution in South America, it has now become a refuge for Catholics in Trinidad seeking protection, prayer, and peace.
Second Tuesday: Vision
There, we’d sit alongside the other families on the benches that lined the halls, patiently awaiting our turn with one of the priests.
“I hope it’s Father So-and-So today,” my grandmother would mutter to my mother. I wasn’t exactly sure what made a ‘good’ priest but my grandmother clearly did. The prayers seemed to work regardless.
Third Tuesday: Sharing
As we waited, my grandmother would extract a rosary from some unseen pocket in her oversized handbag and twist it around her wrist. Then she’d root around her bag, emerging with a handful of mints, sweets, or salt prunes which she’d pass around—first to me, then to the other kids who sat shifting restlessly in their seats.
Fourth Tuesday: Intercession
Soon, it would be our turn.
The three of us would shuffle into one of the bright, airy rooms where a priest greeted us with a smile from behind an old, wooden desk and motioned to the empty chairs across from him. As my mother and grandmother spoke, he would turn a page in a small notebook and begin to write in his scratchy, lilting handwriting first our names, then their prayer requests.
Fifth Tuesday: Grace
Bored, I would gaze out the open window at the expansive landscape beneath us. After a few of these visits, I made up a game for myself. I’d squint into the distance trying to find the coastline, then trying to identify landmarks and roadways. I’d wonder if this was how God saw us, and I figured He was much better at geography than I was.
Sixth Tuesday: Prayer
Then we would pray. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
Our Father.
Hail Mary.
Glory Be.
There would be other prayers too, but I didn’t know the words to those.
Seventh Tuesday: Gratitude
As we rose to leave, my mother would pass a folded-up $100 bill to the priest surreptitiously, in a way that always felt more like buying drugs in a dark alleyway than a thank you to a servant of God. I often wondered what the priests did with the money.
Before we left, we’d visit the church where my grandmother would light candles for our loved ones here and gone.
Eight Tuesday: Practice
Back then, I was more concerned about when we would leave so I could finally eat the sponge cake my mum had bought in the shop. I would never have imagined myself visiting The Mount voluntarily. Yet here I was, sitting in that same hallway, a rosary wound around my wrist and a purse full of mints for the ninth Tuesday in a row.
Ninth Tuesday: Miracles
Journeying down from the mountainside, butterflies flit around me as I drive, and a hawk calls from somewhere overhead. As I take the final corner, a light drizzle begins to fall. My phone rings—it’s my mum. I answer, and her voice sounds through the speakers:
“Did you go up on The Mount?”
Quick pause for a praise break.
Life will continue to life whether you like it or not.
Why do we resist certain life situations so much?
We say, for example, I would like a new red car, but when it starts coming in or even fully comes in, we resist and say “That’s not the car that I wanted”. God is like “Man, that’s the car you needed”.
Or even a life change…, we see the signs and synchronicities that are telling us things NEED to change but we ignore them and hope they go away, but they won’t. Some things just need to happen to move forward. In order for you to step into the next chapter of your life. That relationship needs to end, you need to move or you absolutely need to find another job.
Sometimes the tower needs to come down for a new one to be built, bigger and better.
I’m not going to beat around the bush.
FEAR.
That’s really why we resist right?
Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of success.
Fear controls so much of what we do and what we don’t. Fear will keep us stuck in our trauma. Fear can hold us back from doing what we love, being with who we love, and hold us back from being our true selves.
False
Emotions
Appearing
Real
I know there are some people who really don’t like change and are fixed in their routines, and are fearful of the unknown but you can’t expect to grow without change. Continuing to resist and ignore inevitable changes will only make the change and upheaval that more uncomfortable.
Your fears of moving forward and actually manifesting the things you desire are based on past experiences, that may have disappointed or traumatized us, and we carry those emotions with us into present situations, that sometimes have nothing to do with the matter at hand.
Remember: there is no place for your fears in the present.
I know things can feel chaotic when things are changing and life is lifeing the hell out of you, but the Universe is always moving things around in your favor. Chaos will eventually bring calm.
The more you resist, the more chaos will persist. Everyone’s journey here is different and I know some people are going through some real tragic shit right now. Try to allow yourself to go through the thing, feel the feels, understand and learn your lesson, and come out on the other side.
with love and gratitude
Martine
and
Affirmations to help you release the fear and step boldly into your potential.
These Blessed Hands
Whatever time you're reading this, I hope the time preceding had been lovely, and I hope the time after will be fruitful for you. I welcome you all to church and thank you for your attendance here.
This time of year— where the dark dares to reach for more, and the summer heat starts to falter . . . a time of planning, carefully anticipating the tempestuous bite of winter and yet also a time of intoxication, the transition from bright, sweltering life to dark, sensuous slumber— this is the time of the Harvest! Fields full of the results of careful labor, planning, tending of the year past, all covering zones of land, and getting ready to be harvested. This is my favorite time of year, actually— a time of promise! Every year, I just get this feeling right on September 1st! I always feel more creative, more daring, freer, and truly capable during these next two to three months. After patiently waiting and working toward this time of year, the fruits of fortune are just waiting for a supple touch— my touch— yours, ours— to come and pluck them.
Do y’all get this feeling too round this time too? Maybe some other time? The harvest season ain't the only time to reap the rewards of your labor, but really the whole point is that something must have been sowed some time prior. In order to harvest, we must plant. We must persist. We must tend. We have to start.
And it's so hard. Sometimes boring! Above all it's nerve-wracking. When we begin something new-- a project or a goal-- we till the land. Turn over soil to make it rich again with promise. Then we scatter the seeds, and there's no telling on that first day how many of those seeds will flourish. What did you whisper to those seeds as they fell from your tilted hand to the earth below? Did you think those dreams for them silently in your head, push all your hope and belief into the hands that held those precious dream seeds?
There is a give and take. Maybe you've felt like me, felt like this world is taking more than it gives— but the demands of those in power, those in the thrall of Greed, have nothing to do with the natural order of this world, this planet Earth. It might not be Equivalent Exchange, but it is give and take.
I believe that everyone in this church has given above and beyond what they once thought themselves capable of. I think you’ve done the very best you could under the circumstances. Sometimes it seems like the ones who have more resources to devote to their harvest get the very best of its produce, but . . . I’d like to think that isn’t completely the case. I think the intent, the soul, matters.
I see you all and I get this vision. I see you standing at the very beginning of the first furrow in your land, or standing just on the edge of the plot of your private garden— harvests don’t have to be all waving grains and scarecrows, it can be abundant vines and greens and rainbow blooms— and you’ve got a handful of seeds in each hand, carefully cupped and held apart as you looked curiously down at them. You wondered which is which— which of these seeds, varied in size and shape and color, is your dream of financial freedom? Which one is your goal of greater self-confidence? Which one holds the love, which one holds the power, which one which one which one?
It doesn’t matter in the end. You slowly closed your fingers over the seeds, gently rolled your fingertips into the heel of your palm to feel those seeds move around over your skin. You fisted your hands as tightly as you wished. Brought those fists up to your mouth and dusted a gentle kiss over your knuckles so that the love seeped through the cracks and gaps to coat each seed. You moved those fists up from mouth to forehead and kneaded your forehead. There’s a level of anxiety at the beginning of each harvest. Putting aside the seed metaphor for a minute, the very act of taking a thought from your head— your dream, your wish, your goal— is to take it from your imagination, one reality, and bring it out into the physical reality. Even if it’s not something that can be realized instantly, and requires actions to move towards it, guess what? It’s now in the world with you! It’s made its journey from the soul realm into the physical realm and that’s . . . that’s half the battle really. And as you move closer and closer to the goal it will reshape itself and enter new modes of reality until, with luck and careful action, it actualizes in the reality that you are also in, thereby becoming your new reality! Your achievement! Did that make sense? I think I confused myself. Back to the seed metaphor—
So now here we are. Here you are. And now it is time to take stock of your harvest. Look at the land you have cultivated, see it all stretched out before you. Look at how high it reaches the sky, how thicky it coils on the ground, how richly it is colored.
Are you satisfied?
Are you happy?
I hope you are. I hope what you will soon gather has been what you’ve worked towards. Even if it’s not! Even if the bounty is smaller than what you hoped, the seeds you most wanted to flourish didn’t, I hope that you recognize the blessing of the bounty you have received. I hope you thresh it with a smile, gather it and plan what you will do differently, or what successful practice you will increase, for the next season. Remember that a bounty cannot be diminished, or tarnished, by anything or anyone but yourself, so . . . be kind!
Be kind to yourself, your harvest, and your efforts. Please remember that no land, no man or woman, is an infinite resource of riches. There needs to be time to rest. Let your hands and eyes and ears and feet rest, and let your land fallow as you both recharge and recuperate, gather again the innate richness inside of yourselves to try again another harvest year. Don’t let this facade of the digital world fool you into burning yourself and your land into charred bits, because I guarantee that following another’s path and schedule will do you no good. Harvest on your own time, with your own heart. And blessed will be the hands that gather the riches of the field they tilled.
Sometimes, we experience Earth Angels, so be mindful and demure about hurting them. Heal yourself so you don’t hurt others the way they hurt you.
The Parable of Tobe Nwigwe.
Blessings to all in the congregation, and thank you for your attention.
Today I speak on a pox on our community, the second hand smoke of our life, the n-word, the deleterious effects it has had on one specific member of our culture, and how that works, moving forward.
Before the "it's not that big a deal" crowd feels inclined to chime in, shut up. My daughter was maybe four or five years old when we were getting in the car at a supermarket, only to have someone pull up playing (if memory serves) "Hot N****" so loud that my ribs vibrated. My perfect little girl looked up as I strapped her into the car seat and asked, "Baba, what's that word they keep saying?" That wasn't a conversation I really wanted to have with a kid that age, but there I was, hence "second hand smoke" … but we're getting off track.
A lot of people in my age group (I went to college in the 90s, to give you some context) are quick to decry "modern" music, mostly because they never look past a radio or a television and are therefore ignorant of the host of dazzling musicians working today. Lady Leshurr, Neelam and one I was particularly enamored with for a long time, Tobe Nwigwe.
When people came at me about "mumble rap" or "trap music" or whatever, I was very quick to put Tobe up front, who created his own Sunday Service in "#GetTwistedSundays," nearly weekly drops of lyricism that, in addition to being musically sound, almost never had curse words and for literal *years* never included the n-word (unless I missed it, and I thought I was pretty close to the work).
When Tobe appeared on Sway In The Morning, reciting so much flavor, stopping just before he was about to launch into the first verse of "Tabernacle," he impressed people who have seen it all. His forays into mixing in singing (props to Gemstones, formerly Gemini, from Chicago, who did it before a certain Canadian who prefers music in “A Minooooooooor”), we had straight laced TV types quoting, "try Jesus, not me." Personally, the spin off song "Shine" (which grew out of "Against The Grain") will always be a person anthem.
On top of that, his story was compelling. A Houston resident of Nigerian descent, he grew up with his mother telling him his musical dreams would come to nothing. He played college football but didn't take it to the land of concussions and endorsements. He developed a crystal clear aesthetic and style all his own that was visually compelling. He had spiritual underpinnings while never denigrating the street life that claimed so many. He made a very public showing of creating and committing to a relationship with a Black woman and making a Black family, in real time, while creating this musical legacy.
On top of all that, posting "#buymerchnotmusic," he was putting this heat out on YouTube for freaking free. Best of all? Fam can rhyme. Lemme put some "Tabernacle" on your mind just so you can see.
Then things started to change a little. He had an amazing song with Royce the 5'9" and Black Thought where they said it, but not him. I had to quickly cut it off when I saw my daughter walking around, but I have Garageband and Serato, I can make a clean mix of that easily enough. Then another VERY talented rapper on "Destruction" dropped a n-bomb, and that chafed a little. Then he got a role in a Transformers movie ... and after that for some reason, his “Sunday Service” got a little less family rated. More songs started to have that but no other curse words, like it was something he'd saved, like the last piece of turkey from a leftover plate.
It felt like an unspoken agreement between us was changed without explanation or buy in on my part. Parasocial much? Maybe, but people are always telling me to “feel my feelings,” so I did.
The last song I saw of his, something about healing, barely managed to get sixty seconds into the song before the literal worst word in the English language makes its appearance. I just clicked "unsubscribe," unfollowed him on IG and called it a day.
"Now Brother Hannibal," some might say. "You don't hold Black Thought to this kind of rigor, and that dude is on late night for millions of people! I don't see you coming at Sa Roc or Kendrick or Aceyalone this way!"
That's true. I didn't get used to something with them. Those cases are consistent in what they’ve delivered. In my advanced age, I've curated a life where I don't ever have to hear that word. Does that mean a lot of Kevin Ross and not so much Childish Gambino (that's the subject of another sermon)? Yes. Do I mind that? No, not really. Being very mindful has led to the music I hear being very demure, and when my kids are exposed to that vile term, it won't be from their father. As such, I’m not here to hear it from Tobe, despite my clear admiration for the brother and his work.
Am I saying Tobe is bad? Never. He's literally a genius. His rhymes are still top notch. His musical abilities are of very high quality. I'm not saying you or anybody else shouldn't nod your head to what he drops. For anybody who doesn't have my virulent reaction to that word, Tobe's one of the best in the market right now and will one million percent deliver when you listen.
All I'm saying is that I'm out. Not with animosity, not with accusation, just going a different way. I had a season with him, I continue to say he's an indicator of the quality that can come out of "this period" of music. Where he's going, however, I cannot follow, and that's all right.
The message today, family, is that we can want different things, we can even disagree on how to approach things and still consider the greatness in each other. We can stay in our lane (my lane, for example, is writing Dungeons and Dragons, genre fiction and comic books) and let others do the same. I still play "Make It Home" to center myself, I still would mix "Murder" out of Chaka Demus and Pliers if I got the chance when I'm DJing. I'm not going forward with his work, and I don't mind if others do, because them little mint-wearing kids gotta eat. I respect that.
From over here.
Tearing down what others do isn't necessary if we don't feel it. I'd still champion our brother's talent even if I'm not keeping up with his output. "Do you" is a blessing and releasing the burden of animosity.
If more of us can remember this, remember the piece of our own divinity that lives in the ones around us, maybe we can find a point down the road where differences can come into alignment. While that word was literally designed to attack us, it need not pit us against each other.
Amen. In the words of another brother who many considered rancorous and unwilling to work with others (if I'm remembering the quote correctly), "I pray god will bless you and everything you do," and again, thank you for your attention.
Hannibal Tabu is an award-winning writer of journalism, comic books, genre fiction, and tabletop role-playing games. His personal website can be found at hannibaltabu.com.
Prayer Hotline
I pray you recognize that what you viewed as rejection was a blessing.
I pray you when you feel fear creeping in you recognize it and face it.
I pray you look to the sky knowing your opportunities are limitless.
I pray you decide that you are worthy of everything you desire.
I pray you wake up this week with a new perspective of yourself.
I pray your faith is of a mustard seed that grows into abundance.
I pray you sow seeds and water your plants to nourish your dreams.
I pray you stay true to who you are no matter how much your environment changes.
In Jesus Name, we pray, Amen.
Amen.
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@MartineFelton I feel like your piece was for me specifically 😅 That first paragraph about asking for a car was the exact situation that happened when I manifested the vehicle I have now. Thank you for the reminder to recognise the blessings I receive for what they are and to place faith over fear.
Thank you brothers and sisters. You all gave me insight to consider and words of blessing. ♥️🙏🏽