“Hope is a song in a weary throat. Give me a song of hope and world where I can sing it.”
- “Dark Testament: Verse 8” the Reverend Pauli Murray. Read the full text by clicking here or at the bottom of the page.
I first learned of Pauli Murray in seminary and since then she has been a hero of mine. I recently read an article about her life—I hope you will read it too.
By 1970 when she wrote the words above, she had already been the first woman to graduate from the Howard University School of Law and was working to dismantle the “separate but equal” legislation that was the law of the land at the time, enabling the passage of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. She had been arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus, two decades before the civil right movements of the 1960s. She had formed the National Organization for Women, in part out of a believe that civil rights were about the whole person. It was this same person, an advocate for civil rights of all kinds, especially racial and sex equality, that herself identified as what we now know to be transgender. As if that wasn’t enough, Murray was the first female African-American to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church in 1977, seven days after it was officially allowed in The Episcopal Church.
By the time Pauli Murray wrote those words in 1970, the songs she sang no doubt came from a weary throat but she kept singing. Pauli’s song was a song of hope, a song of justice and equality, a song that proclaimed the Kingdom of God drawn near. In these days in which weariness is abundant, Pauli’s words and life stand as a reminder that it is from exactly this place that hope rises and it is exactly in these places hope is to be found.
For me, hope is the thing that make the Christian story make sense. It is what compels me to give my life to following Jesus. It is the very thing that I believe can change this world. Because here’s the thing about hope: it is the equal and opposite to everything our world values, exalts, and holds dear. It is the thing that says each person matters regardless of where they were born or what they have done or who they love. It is the thing that says there’s no such thing as death in the end. In the end, there is only life. This is a promise I have and will stake my whole life on.
What Pauli Murray’s story stands as a reminder to me is that hope is real but hope doesn’t demand perfection or happiness. Hope doesn’t emerge from the ideal, hope isn’t only found when you get it all together, hope isn’t only promised when we get it all figured out and know the secret to life. Hope is living and moving in our midst, it is nearest in our pain and worry, it is closest when all seems lost. Hope is a song that is sung in a weary throat, it is a light shining from brokenness, it is a flower growing through the cracked sidewalk, it is life emerging form death. It is the empty tomb on the third day.
This hope that I write of, that Jesus’ life and resurrection promises isn’t a platitude that seeks to dismiss anxiety or uneasiness (“just have hope!”) but a promise that that worry and fear and pain isn’t the end, it isn’t the last thing. It is not an empty longing for a new possession or a wistful desire for things to change. It is the profound realization that in Jesus, what seems to be the end, what seems to be dead, what seems to be long gone isn’t. Despair or death or chaos aren’t the last word.
I’m so grateful for Pauli Murray’s weary throat that sang that song of hope. I’m so grateful for her life that shows just how true her words her. I pray for the grace to do the same with my own life even in this day.
Dark Testament: Verse 8 by Pauli Murray
Hope is a crushed stalk
Between clenched fingers
Hope is a bird’s wing
Broken by a stone.
Hope is a word in a tuneless ditty —
A word whispered with the wind,
A dream of forty acres and a mule,
A cabin of one’s own and a moment to rest,
A name and place for one’s children
And children’s children at last . . .
Hope is a song in a weary throat.
Give me a song of hope
And a world where I can sing it.
Give me a song of faith
And a people to believe in it.
Give me a song of kindliness
And a country where I can live it.
Give me a song of hope and love
And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.