I spent most of the holiday season in Orlando with family. Some cousins and distant cousins I had not seen for years were there. Though it was not intended as such, it took on the feel of a mini-family reunion.
I even saw people from my home town that I had not heard from for more than 20 years. Some had been rumored dead from AIDS, crack or prison fights. In each case, however, quite the opposite was true. They are all alive and living very, very well indeed!
So my holidays were fantastic. I spent New Year's Eve in church, where I prayed harder than I ever knew I could during a Night Watch Service, an age-old tradition in many black congregations. Instead of sitting in front of the television and watching Dick Clark as the ball drops in Times Square, or popping bottles of champagne and firing off pistols and fireworks, I prayed at a small church, packed to capacity with what must have been hundreds of people.
I had accepted a dear friend's invitation to go to church with her and, though I really did not feel up to it at 10 p.m., I dragged myself up off the sofa and headed out the door.
As I drove the distance from my house to the church, I recalled the excitement and thrill of going to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve at Our Lady of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church nearly 40 years earlier, when what seemed like the entire parish would attend to sing and pray, and it struck me then that my family was usually the only black family there. Now here I was, on my way to an all-black church, where the only white people we might see would be the police, the unlucky few who had to try to keep the rest of the city safe from what they perceive as crackheads, junkies, gangsters and thugs who live down there and need to be kept in their place, in their own neighborhood.
I have been to a lot of churches in my life, from huge cathedrals and temples to former liquor dives converted into storefront evangelical nickel-and-dime collection centers. But this New Year's Eve was something all together different. While the rest of America was on Security Level Orange lockdown, just one notch below martial law, I was on my way to another one of those crossroads we inevitably come to in life.
I never in my life saw so many people getting down like they were in that church that night! The building was literally rocking from side to side.
I saw 200-pound women jump three feet straight up in the air and come back down on the exact spot they had launched from. The Holy Spirit was at work in there and I could see in their faces that all of the pain and suffering that they had ever suffered, every humiliation and deprivation, every promise ever broken, as well as every sin they may have ever committed, was all being forgiven, released, redeemed. There was not a person sitting down. It was impossible not to be physically moved by the enormous energy in that room.
The preacher was hollering and barking the gospel as he sang his heart out, while the little drummer boy banged with all his might on a bass drum nearly as big as he was, while everybody else clapped and shouted in pure rapture and joy!
It was POWERFUL! But I could not hear a thing for hours after we left there around 1 a.m. My eardrums were knocked out of service for a while, but I'm alright now.
The pastor, a real down-to-earth gentleman with a BIG VOICE by the name of Elder Jimmy Hicks, and his choir, The Voices of Integrity, are great performers. They have several successful CDs making the gospel radio circuit right now.
Their current hit single off the newest release is called "Blessed Like That." They also scored a hit with "Turn It Around" two years ago and last year's CD, "Cross Roads," hit the charts with the single, "Babylon." Their soulful, passionate, well-trained and rehearsed voices are the result of Hicks' unrelenting drive for perfection, combined with his ear for the talent that comes directly from the streets and the hearts and souls of south Florida.
His little church, the Apostolic Church of Jesus, sits smack-dab in the middle of the "hood." This is gangland turf, where rival crack and heroin merchants fight and die for every inch of their territory. This is a war zone. Gunfire pierces the night. Every night, not just on New Year's Eve.
The smell of urine and hard liquor scent the night, but the church sits like an oasis where weary souls can gather to feast on the Word, a sacred space where all who gather are protected from the danger that lurks just across the street, just around the corner, where another world, ruled by another set of commandments, carries on.
The church moves against the tide, one soul at a time. But Elder Hicks does not stand alone against the odds. He carries some clout, too, as the "Over Seer" for the East Coast of Florida for the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.
Brought up in the Catholic religion, we did not learn to pray like that. I'm glad I got the chance to learn another way to pray, but I am also convinced that it is neither the decibel level nor the language that defines the true essence of prayer, but the sincerity and faith of those who pray for God's blessings that matter.
God hears us when we whisper. Even when we just think a prayer without even moving our lips, God hears us. It matters not which church we are in, what language we speak, or what names we call God, Jehovah, Allah or our "Higher Power." I know one thing for sure, God hears us and God answers us.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | January 13 2004 |