Mother Claire's Sermons

“In his book, The Souls of Black Folk , W.E.B. Dubois discusses ‘sorrow songs,’ music created by African captives, exiled in America. The songs are laments, prayers sung to God as a form of protest and supplication, looking for justice from a righteous God. The original American music conveys ‘soul-hunger’ and ‘restlessness’, ‘unvoiced longing toward a truer world’. The music also carries ‘hope - a faith in the final justice of things’. In the sorrow songs we have a window into the identities of an oppressed people and their belief in a God who saw them and would remember them. In their music they wrestled with ‘good and evil, suffering and pain.’ Their laments, like those in the psalms, created sacred space, a sanctuary for the soul.” (Fentress-Williams, 144) The psalms are typically sorted into certain types or genres that reflect their usage in various contexts, especially in the worship life of ancient Israel. There are thanksgiving psalms, hymns, wisdom psalms, creation psalms, li...