The Beloved Community: Coincidence or Divine Design?
Introduction
Listening to Rev. Otis Moss III discuss the mystic theologian Howard Thurman on the On Being podcast with Krista Tippett last week has me contemplating the relation between music and spirituality, mysticism and leadership, and weird happenings that make you wonder if coincidence or divine design is at play.
I hope Moss’s closing riff, about seeing Dr. King’s beloved community at a Black Lives Matter protest, where unexpected allies from communities outside of the South Side of Chicago joined in force, is sufficient for you to listen to the podcast for yourself:
And that moment, that clarion call, just that moment, and I use this term often, reminded me of the ethic that Black religiosity, Black spirituality, has been trying to bring to America for quite some time, and usually embodied in the music, especially the music of jazz, because jazz is about the beloved community and democracy, taking elements that are not supposed to play together, music that comes out of Africanity but then connects with the Indigenous community and those who are French and German in the place called New Orleans, that literally is a gumbo pot of culture. And the instruments in jazz are not supposed to play together. Saxophones are from marching bands. Trap drum sets are not to play with pianos. And basses are supposed to use bows, not your finger. And yet, they all play together, and everyone in the jazz band is given the right to solo, meaning that I can bring my own cultural narrative to the table. And in that march, I could hear America’s jam session going on. And I got a glimpse of the beloved community. And maybe — maybe, just maybe — if we listen to Thurman, and maybe also listen to Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, maybe America can be saved.
—Rev. Otis Moss III
Yes, yes: maybe, just maybe.
Meeting Jewel, Divine Design
When I first met Jewel in 1987, I was working with the broadcast journalist Tony Brown, host of the decades-long Black public affairs show, Tony Brown’s Journal. Brown was a fiercely intelligent journalist-businessman committed to the liberation of the minds of Americans. He influenced my own decision to take a similar career path, with like intent and methods. I’d watch him every Saturday morning at 11 am on Channel 13 PBS in New York. His interviews, short documentaries and dramatic renditions, editorials and coverage of issues of concern to Black Americans and the nation also inspired me to dig more into my social and cultural history and to strive to be as well-spoken as he. (My other Black male models of distinction for broadcast journalism were Ed Bradley, Gil Noble, and Bryant Gumbel.)
I was the National Sales Director of Brown’s Buy Freedom campaign, which endeavored to leverage the consumer buying power of Black folks in the United States to support Black-owned businesses, so dollars would circulate several times within the community before leaving it—just as other ethnic groups do on the path of building group wealth. By working closely with him for a few years I came to realize that along with his professional credentials, Brown had a side that only certain people saw. I discovered that he was something of a mystic too, who charted horoscopes as a hobby. But his most mystical influence was exposing me to thinkers in an American spiritual tradition of New Thought, Ageless Wisdom that today is perhaps best maintained by Rev. Michael Beckwith of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles. The author that Brown would always urge people to read was Florence Scovel Shinn (1871-1940).
In my mid-20s, Shinn’s The Game of Life and How to Play It and Your Word is Your Wand supplemented works such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Earl Nightingale’s spoken word classic, The Strangest Secret, and books and audio by Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, and Tony Robbins in my self-help library. One of Shinn’s favorite expressions, which I’ve carried with me to this day, is “divine design.” Here’s one of her most quoted affirmations:
Infinite Spirit, open the way for the Divine Design of my life to manifest; let the genius within me now be released; let me see clearly the perfect plan.
So, when certain things happen with a strange inner-outer alignment, I ask: Divine Design or Coincidence? I’ll give you an example of what I mean below. But for a moment let’s go back to Howard Thurman.
One of the things I loved about Jewel early on, when we re-connected after losing touch for a decade, was her warm spirit and rich contralto voice. When we’d speak on the phone, I’d close my eyes as she’d paint scenes with a literary sensibility and a vocabulary that to a wordsmith such as myself was a turn on. After several years of building a friendship in the late 1990s, we evolved the relationship, ya dig, extending and enacting that friendship into an embedded and embodied love supreme. That’s when I found out that she was a big time reader, just like me.
In her library were works by Howard Thurman such as Disciplines of the Spirit, The Creative Encounter, and The Inward Journey. As the spiritual advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the nation’s second revolution in the 1950s and ‘60s, Rev. Thurman’s inner work and teachings helped transform this nation into a closer version of its creed. His own momentous meeting with Ghandi in 1935 laid the foundation for the non-violent Civil Rights movement and his classic, Jesus and the Disinherited, a work that Dr. King reportedly carried around along with the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. When Jewel and I spent Dec. 26, 2018 - Jan. 1, 2019 participating a silent meditation experience at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center led by contemporary mystic, Rev. Michael Beckwith, he’d read passages from Thurman’s work and recalled encountering Thurman as a student at Morehouse College, the same institution of higher learning from which Thurman had graduated as valedictorian in 1923.
Lord knows there’s a long way to go still, but if we get there before destroying ourselves and the environment it will be due to wisdom-in-action by those whose inner work has external impact.
The Decision to Sculpt Your Life
Ten days after the silent meditation retreat ended, January 11, 2019. I began filling out a workbook for practical philosopher Brian Johnson’s Master Class, “Greatest Year Ever!” I went through the same process in 2018, as a member of Johnson’s Optimize tribe, resulting in an awesome year for me, my family, and our business, the Jazz Leadership Project.
Brian always lays out 10 Big Ideas to frame the content of his master classes. While discussing his second big idea he referred to the famous sculpture of the biblical David by Michelangelo:
“We’re going to take that composition of you and go into Michelangelo’s studio. Imagine that you are sitting there with Michelangelo, and he’s about ready to sculpt his David, but he’s not sculpting David—he’s sculpting you. And the two of you are going to do it. You recall the story . . . that Michelangelo saw the best version of David in that marble, and he just chipped away the things that were in the way.
“Well, we need to see the best version of you in that marble, and then just chip away. It’s all there. Your soul is already perfect. That’s not the issue. The issue is you letting things get in the way, and chipping away at that so your essence, that divine spark, can come through more consistently.
“One of the themes to remember is which moment he chose to sculpt of David. Michelangelo did not sculpt David in his moment of celebration. He didn’t sculpt him the moment after he defeated Goliath. He sculpted the moment of decision, the moment David decided that he was going to step up and be heroic, to do what he felt called to do. That’s the moment of decision that we want to bring to life in the context of the work we’re doing. And not just on a macro level—yes, I’m going to step forward and answer the heroic call to adventure, and to give my gifts and talents in service of the world—but embodied moment to moment to moment, all day, every day.”
—Brian Johnson, Optimize Enterprises
Here’s where the unexpected but welcome happened: within a half hour of filling out that portion of the master class workbook, I opened Day 9 of Beckwith’s 40 Day Mind Fast Soul Feast: A Guide to Soul Awakening and Inner Fulfillment. The title of that day’s passage? “Claim Your Divine Dominion.”
Here’s what I saw and read:
In the book The Agony and the Ecstasy, Michelangelo was contemplating David’s nature. I imagine that his thoughts might have gone along these lines: What was the most important moment in David’s life? Was it his slingshot practice? Was it the moment he slew Goliath? No! Michelangelo realized the pivotal moment in David’s life was when he knew in his mind and heart that he could slay Goliath. It was the moment in his heart when the decision was made, when David turned to the inner authority principle within his own mind. That moment changed the course of his destiny.
—Rev. Michael Beckwith
Rev. Beckwith, Jewel, and me at the Agape International Spiritual Center’s silent meditation retreat in Joshua Tree, CA
Coincidence or divine design? Have you ever had such things happen to you as did to me above when you’re working on growing and improving yourself? The timing and the synchronicity were just . . . uncanny. In this Infinite game of life, I choose to believe that there is divine Love-Intelligence within me from Source, which is, as Beckwith says, not an anthropomorphic God in the sky, but rather a “Presence without an Absence.” I’ve come to see that if I chip away at the hardened marble-like thoughts and habits of my small, egoic self, what John Vervaeke calls a “sacred second self”—my soul—will provide guidance and coherent direction.
May the mystical messages within inspire your own sojourn—soul journey—so our cultural narratives become a beloved community.