The spiritual “Kum Ba Yah” has, like the phrase “thoughts and prayers,” come in for nonpartisan scorn of late. Vice President J. D. Vance in a recent fiery speech said, “This is no ‘kum ba yah’ moment,” I guess meaning that this is no time for platitudes about unity or calls to join hands and sing meaningless cliches like, presumably, “kum ba yah.” But to my mind, we need it more than ever.
“Kum ba yah,” is associated with the Gullah culture of the islands off South Carolina and Georgia. It means “Come By Here.” We sang it a lot around church youth group campfires when I was a teenager. “Someone’s praying, Lord, kum ba yah,” “Someone’s crying, Lord, kum ba yah.” “Someone’s singing, Lord, kum ba yah.” I liked it. It was, back then, heartfelt.
I guess it has become a cliché, something to be derided. Apparently we’re too edgy or on edge for that sort of thing now. And sure it can be, maybe has been, overused and sentimentalized, but personally I’d say we sure as hell do need God, holy power, and divine love to come by here and do it right this very moment.
That we dismiss and scorn such sentiments may be more a sign of our hardheartedness and cynicism than of our realism or authenticity or whatever it is the deriders have in mind. Part of our anger-all-the-time, culture of outrage. Speaking of which, I now understand I will never be “an online influencer.” I read that to be an influencer and command a big following you have to do “outrage.” Just as well. I kind of hate the term “influencer.”
“Thoughts and prayers” has suffered a similar fate. The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan addressed that in a column writing,
During recent national traumas we’ve heard the side argument over “thoughts and prayers.” Something terrible happens, someone sends thoughts and prayers, someone else snaps, “We don’t need your prayers, we need action.” They denounce the phrase only because they don’t understand it, and give unwitting offense. (I always hope it is unwitting.)
“Prayer,” continues Noonan
is action. It’s effort. It takes time. Christians believe God is an actual participant in history. He’s here, every day, in the trenches. God didn’t create the universe and disappear into the mists; his creation is an on-going event. He is here in the world with you. When something terrible happens you talk to him, that’s what prayer is …
Again, I get that people and politicians can use the phrase “thoughts and prayers” insincerely or in a clichéd way, but I think most people mean it when they say it. Maybe it doesn’t mean as much as we’d like, but it may be all we’ve got at a terrible moment; and scorning it, as Noonan suggests, seems gratuitous. Later in that column she talks about prayer as “concentrated attention” requiring effort on our part, which seems to me true, and a good reminder.
Along these lines another favorite song of mine is “Needed Time,” as in “Now is the needed time … Lord, won’t you come by here.” The instrumental lead-on goes on for a while before Bibb begins to sing. It might not be on your Spotify recommendations list, but it’s definitely worth it.
I’m not sure if there is ever a time that is not the “Needed Time,” but I am sure that right now is a needed time for me, maybe for you, and surely for the nation.
Jesus warns against long pious prayers to get attention or parade your piety. But prayer, while of intrinsic value, can also be a way of preparing to do things. During the Civil Rights Movement, long prayerful worship services preceded every demonstration or act of civil disobedience.
And sometimes prayer, even our stammered and incoherent words, is all we’ve got. And when that’s true, such prayer is, we have been promised, pleasing in God’s sight — even if not all that refined, poetic, articulate, or theologically correct. So Kum Ba Yah, Come by here, Lord. We need you. Right Now.
