REFLECTION
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Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1903. She died in 1960. She was a novelist, folklorist, anthropologist, sister, and artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Daughter of the rural black South, her artistic and cultural achievements reflect her commitment to Black heritage,
Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mules and Men, and Dust Tracks On A Road: An Autobiography.
Those are just a few of her many books that beautifully collect the richness and strength of Black folklore, culture and art. Through folklore collections, anthropological work, literary art, and theater. Hurston explored the ways in which Voodoo, or Hoodoo, music, and stories sustained the hearts and souls of the African Diaspora, slaves in a strange new white world. Zora Neale Hurston was a literary artist, educated scientist, and woman of color, genius, and feminist.
She was one of the first- male or female, to confront and challenge the oppression of capitalism, gender roles, sexism, and racism in academia. She exposed it all- as the uninformed disinterest in multiculturalism by the middle class.
A graduate of Barnard, Hurston studied cultural anthropology, exploring the folklore and religion of Black culture. As a folklorist and anthropologist, Hurston's journeys took her to Haiti in the winter of 1936, and a year later she was granted a Guggenheim Foundation renewal to study Hoodoo more thoroughly in Haiti. Hurston took seriously herself and her career,
She did not see herself as a radical progressive- she was simply and profoundly a person trying to be all of herself as a lover, an academic, an artist- a woman.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston, created Janie, in the texture and shape of her own identity.
"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.”
Hurston acted independently, with an intelligence that brought Black culture from the margins to the center. Despite the numerous barriers she encountered, Hurston strived toward multiculturalism,
"The Anglo-Saxon's lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples...above the class of unskilled labor. As long as the majority cannot conceive of a Negro or Jew feeling and reacting inside just as they do, the majority will keep right on believing that people who do not look like them cannot possibly feel as they do."
Hurston lived most of her life in obscurity and in poverty despite her education and tremendous creative drive. She refused to stop creating and writing, repeatedly confronting and dismantling sexism and racism with her relentless determination to be known. She promoted equality and justice through her joy and power as an individual. Her person hood was so overwhelming, that she was in fact the Harlem Renaissance's most effective advocate for racial equality Hurston put it best when she said, "Most times I have no race, I am Me."
On January 16. 1959 suffering from the effects of a stroke and writing painfully in longhand Zora Neale Hurston composed a letter to the "editorial dept." of Harper & Brothers inquiring if they would be interested in seeing "the book I am laboring upon at present- a life of Herod the Great." Her offer was rejected. One year and twelve days later, Zora Neale Hurston died, a resident of the St. Lucie County, Florida Welfare Home without the funds to pay for a burial.
In August 1973, Alice Walker walked, in memoriam, to the cemetery in which Zora Neale Hurston, her hero, lay in an unmarked grave. She commemorated the gift of Zora Neale Hurston's literary works and presence because Zora Neale Hurston had given Alice Walker another generation’s daughter of the rural black South, her voice. By living and loving her life and affirming the richness of the ancestry from whom she descended, Hurston had freed Alice Walker's soul. In return- Alice Walker resurrected Zora Neale Hurston from obscurity- told the world her story.... and had "Genius of the South: Novelist, Folklorist and Anthropologist" carved on a gravestone.
It is not easy to be a fulfilled human being.
The seemingly harsh realities of our lives can threaten our ability to be present- to be gracious, generous at peace. The challenges or expectations we face daily wear on us- eroding away our confidence, security and trust. It takes tremendous perseverance and courage to discover and hold onto our senses of self in the face of society's expectations, prejudices, familial demands, and our own fears.
In that tension and pressure lies our life’s sacred work- to create and sustain a grounded sense of our personhood strong and enduring enough discover and experience the meaning and beauty in all of existence. Zora Neale Hurston knew this truth. Alice Walker writes:
"Hurston was before her time.... Like Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith, she followed her own road, believed in her own gods, pursued her own dreams, and refused to separate herself from 'common' people.... She was a cultural revolutionary simply because she was always herself. On the day that we love ourselves and believe that we deserve our own love we become as free as any earth beings can ever be. And we begin to see that though our forms may differ as an oak differs from a pine we are in fact the same. Zora is us.
As I researched this sermon, I uncovered countless web pages, articles and notations from young writers, students, scholars and academics sharing their gratitude and praise for Zora' Hurston’s courage and creativity that "made manifest the Glory of God within them. "
By letting her light shine she gave other people permission to do the same. Liberated from her own fear, her presence liberated others. "Love and justice and truth are the only monuments that generate ever widening circles of energy and life. Love and justice and truth are the only monuments that endure though trashed and trampled generation after generation." –Alice Walker
Zora's spirit was ground to ash by the trials of life. Yet her ash became precious diamond dust
That blew about this planet dusting lives with its brilliance and delight.
We all need to have such heroes... and we need to have the tenacity to be such heroes for one another.
We need to live authentically and courageously who we are. Gay, straight, black, white, man, woman, each a child of God. A miracle.
We are ignited, we are ablaze, burning with the fire of life. We are invited to this place, to step into the circle of light. We are carriers of the light, come to shatter the darkness.
Claim your voice. Move out from under any shadow of fear- protects and celebrate those around you who do the same.
The bold beautiful unfolding of this world, this life and all the brilliance it offers, depends on it.
CLOSING HYMN: Glory Glory Hallelujah #201
(This is traditional African American call and response hymn. Be prepared to leave your hymnals in the pews to facilitate clapping and swaying.)
BENEDICTION
As we leave this space we give thanks for the courage of authors, family, friends, people who have inspired our being through their bold and bodacious living. May our own lives be so passionate, that we pass on to others the power to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous, releasing this world from its shackles of smallness, fear and envy. So may it be.