Have Praise House Will Travel

I am not entirely sure that this is true but I would wager a guess that any doctor would say that it is physically impossible for the heart to expand at the same time you are gasping for breath. But I am here to tell you it is possible, not an entirely comfortable or peaceful state, but telling in its own way.

Not that long ago I went to the 60th birthday celebration of my beloved Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir. Specializing in the soul survival music of the African diaspora in the Americas—I’ve seen the choir perform many, many times in their 18 years (most memorably at my 50th birthday celebration last year—one of the greatest nights of my life). A “riff whisperer” with an encyclopedic knowledge of her material, Linda and the CHC always have the effect of expanding the collective heart in the room, raising it up and leaving you gasping for breath at the same time.

On this particular evening Linda spoke about the African-derived Gullah culture of South Carolina and the Georgia Sea Islands and the praise house tradition. Slaves working inhumane hours on the plantations visited praise houses, usually in the middle of the week. Once there, they would sing and shout using their hands and feet as instruments working themselves in to an ecstatic state of praise to a point of transcendence, leaving behind the bone tired state of their physical reality. This was the act of soul survival.

I’ve become obsessed with this concept and the seeking of transcendence in challenging times. In my informal research it seems that music always plays a crucial role. Recently I attended San Geronimo Day at Taos Pueblo (a heart spot of mine) in which a man (usually young) climbs a sacred pole, perhaps six stories high to release the harvest offerings at the top to the people below. (My interpretation in no way based on any true knowledge of the celebration.) For reasons unknown to me, when reaching the top he will often stand on a space maybe 18 inches in diameter and look to the sky as if to fly to the heavens. But this year, that did not happen. This year he sat on the top with legs dangling and sang. It was a Tiwa song, or maybe several songs, plaintive and celebratory at the same time—the sound of an expanded heart. I can’t speak for the man on the pole, but I know that simply in the listening with my whole body, I transcended my own physical state—if only for a concentrated moment in time. But there is no time where transcendence is concerned. Time becomes irrelevant, no time, all time, it is of no consequence.

So I realize while my heart is so full and painfully open AND I am gasping for breath, that we all seek and find transcendence in our own ways. Stomping and shouting in the praise house, doing the “Ranky Tanky” with the CHC, singing to the heavens while standing practically in the sky, and in more mundane fashions. Tonight, I am playing one particular song (a little known song, “The Spell You’re Under” by the duo Lowen and Navarro ) at top volume on automatic repeat, dancing and singing Dervish-like, alone under the New Mexico night sky. Here there is no time, “Soon” is in the ecstasy, the way of release, and easy breathing comes to the heart once again. Who cares what the neighbors think, this is my transcendence after all, and it’s kind of glorious!

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