A Sorrowful JoyDescription: Albert Raboteau was born into a Catholic family in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, three months after his father was shot and killed by a white man. It was during the 1940s, when blacks couldn't swim at the same beach as whites, when the priest gave communion to white Catholics first and made others wait. In a moving account of his life, Raboteau tells how the boy grew into a man, married, became a success as a college administrator, then learned sorrow, lost his way and had to start over again. His is an American spiritual journey that is redolent of sacramental Christianity marking the sacredness of time, place, and community. The journey brought him to a conversation that reconciled him to his own past, including his religious heritage, his African roots, and his family members. In the end his spiritual quest became a journey home, to a human circle that opened to him and brought him to God. Endorsements: ""If you want to see why Albert Raboteau is among the most elegant writers now contemplating the most important things, begin with his brief spiritual autobiography, A Sorrowful Joy. Next read the epilogue A Fire in the Bones. Then return to Slave Religion, the book for which he is famous, and you will understand why it first moved you as deeply as it did."" --Jeffrey Stout, author of Blessed Are the Organized About the Contributor(s): Albert J. Raboteau is the Henry W. Putnam Professor of Religion at Princeton University. The text of this book was originally delivered as a Harold M. Wit Lecture at Harvard University Divinity School. |
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Popular passages
Page 2 - So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Page 7 - How can the invisible be depicted? How does one picture the inconceivable? How can one draw what is limitless, immeasurable, infinite? How can a form be given to the formless? How does one paint the bodiless? How can you describe what is a mystery?
Page 7 - When He Who is bodiless and without form, immeasurable in the boundlessness of His own nature, existing in the form of God, empties Himself and takes the form of a servant in substance and in stature and is found in a body of flesh then you may draw His image and show it to anyone willing to gaze upon it...
Page 3 - He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked — namely, the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree, they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise.
Page 7 - It is obvious that when you contemplate God becoming man then you may depict Him clothed in human form. When the invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you may then draw His likeness. When He who is bodiless and without form, immeasurable in the boundlessness of His own nature existing in the form of God, empties himself and takes the form of a servant in...
Page 7 - John of Damascus (First Apology Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images, 8).
Page 11 - Harold M. Wit Lectures on Living a Spiritual Life in the Contemporary Age.