Throughout my childhood, my family took regular trips to a special family-style restaurant in the mountains of rural North Carolina. The restaurant had been a meeting place for my family in North and South Carolina for many decades, and to get there from my childhood home, we had to pass through the small town of Tryon, North Carolina. These days, Tryon is best known for its equestrian center, which draws horseback riders from across the country. In an earlier generation, Tryon was better known as the birthplace of blues singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone (1933-2003). I can recall stopping to see a statue of her during one of our brief stops along the small downtown Tryon street, learning about her legacy and imagining what her life might have been like growing up as a young Black musician in the Jim Crow South.
As I have read more about her life, I have learned that Simone’s life was indeed marked by the beautiful and painful experiences of African American communities of her context: she was raised around the inimitable musical sounds of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which shaped her early musicianship. And at her debut recital at the Tryon Library in 1943, Simone’s parents were forced to give up their seats to make room for white patrons.
We will hear an expressive recording on our January 12 program of Nina Simone singing the spiritual "Take Me to the Water." The recording closes out that program, which is a celebration of Baptism of Our Lord Sunday, the day in the liturgical year when we remember the promises of baptism. In Simone's voice, the text of the spiritual comes alive. She sings the traditional text, interspersed with her own vocalizations: "I’m going back home now to be baptized." That phrase leads into the spirited next song on her High Priestess of Soul album, "I’m Going Back Home."
I am struck by the theological truth that in the waters of baptism, we all find our home in God. Whether the homes of our youth are places of ease or struggle, hospitality or oppression, or all of those things all at once, we know that in God, we find a true resting place. In the words of St. Augustine, "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You."
Peace,
