Benjamin West, “Joshua Passing the Jordan”
Spiritual Sunday
Today’s Old Testament lectionary reading is a passage that African American slaves found tremendously significant. They worked it into their spirituals and from there it made it into the work of later African American poets. This realization is prompting me to rethink some of Lucille Clifton poems.
Here’s the passage from Joshua 3:
When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan.
For American slaves, the Jordan River functioned both as a symbol of crossing over to freedom and returning home. The Ohio River, dividing the slave state Kentucky and the free state Ohio, functioned as the Jordan River, as did the U.S.-Canadian border. So did dying and returning to God if no other means of escape presented themselves.
The Jordan River is the river in the well known spiritual “Michael, row the boat ashore”:
Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelujah
Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelujah
Sister help to trim the sails, Hallelujah
Sister help to trim the sails, Hallelujah
Jordan’s River is deep and wide, Hallelujah
And I’ve got a home on the other side, Hallelujah
Jordan’s River is chilly and cold, Hallelujah
Chills the body but not the soul, Hallelujah
Michael’s boat is a music boat, Hallelujah
Michael’s boat is a music boat, Hallelujah
Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelujah
Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelujah
The trumpets sound the jubilee, Hallelujah
The trumpets sound for you and me, Hallelujah
When one connects those Clifton poems that mention rivers with this tradition, their power increases considerably. Take, for instance, her “blessing the boats (at st. mary’s),” which was written while looking out over the St. Mary’s River and imagining 16th century British vessels setting off for an unknown world. It’s already a poem about letting go of the familiar and taking risks, but when joined to the freedom journey, it takes on special resonance. (You can go here to read the poem and my account of how we use it in our commencement ceremonies to send our students on their way.)
The freedom journey also plays in the background of Clifton’s “poem in praise of menstruation.” Thinking of the monthly visitation as a powerful and liberating river already shifts how we see it. If we link this river also with the Jordan River—“if there is in the universe such a river”—then the beauty and the pain, the faithfulness and the wildness, take on new potency. We pray to a new connection beyond ourselves and no longer feel chained down by our biology, along with the social stigma that has been historically attached.
poem in praise of menstruation
By Lucille Clifton
if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta if there
is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain if there is
a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel if there is in
the universe such a river if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water
pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave