In Tribute to Dr. Barbara Holmes

Dear Friends,

Below, please see the meditation provided by Richard Rohr's (CAC) website. Because this is far from their first tribute, it signals to me that they are also wrestling with this profound loss.

For those who have not heard, we lost a generous and gentle giant: Dr. Barbara Holmes. I met her many years ago, and felt privileged to have shared space with her. She generously shared of herself and mentored a young woman who was preparing to enter into doctoral studies. I think of people like Barbara when I mentor young women.

Earlier this week, I had the honor of sharing with two young women in South Africa. I shared my stories of mentorship regarding the women that I have the honor of mentoring. I've written the letters, given advice, created community to support them, and encouraged them. I give to them what was given to me. One of my greatest motivators is to ensure I help them avoid any pitfall or obstacle with which I've wrestled.

After my initial encounter with Barbara, I saw her again, years later. It was in California where she came to interview to be the president of one of the GTU seminaries. Barbara didn't take the position. I also left California to pursue an international expression of my vocational call as a Theologian and Ethicist.

I've lived in the UK for over five years. Last August, a local church pastor told me about Richard Rohr's daily meditations. I was surprised to hear this English minister mention someone whose work I knew because she's resisted going to seminary. That's where I learned about Rohr. When this minsiter and friend contined to speak, she mentioned the teachers of Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation. Among the names, was Barbara Holmes. I looked up quickly with great surprise. "That's my friend," I told her.

She was surprised and went to locate Barbara's picture - she didn't believe I knew her. I laughed and told her, 'If she's an African American teaching theology and/or ethics, there's only one Barbara Holmes."

I would then immediately subscribe to Rohr's meditations and listen for the voice of the friend that I treasured. I later learned of her podcast which I listened to and even shared on the website.

During my walks, where I listened carefully, I would learn more about Barbara's cosmological atunement. Many African Americans long to repair the severed ties to our ancestors through shared knowledge and religious practice. Hearing her reach to and embrace those understandings was something that pulled me in close.

I would listen to her while walking various wooded pathways in small English towns. I gobbled up her thoughts while strolling along a lake in St. Polten, Austria. I still remember sitting on a train, looking to my right and hearing her speak about connecting with her own roots and the spiritual gifts that existed within her family. And, when she interviewed various authors, they felt like drenching rain on a parched soul. I longed to read their every word and would buy their books. I might miss a couple of words in the podcast, so I'd rewind - annoyed with hearing more commercials before the podcast would finally replay the gems of wisdom I craved.

I later reached out to Barbara a few times. Knowing that so many people were blessed by her wisdom, from around the globe, makes me feel a bit more expansive. It gives me comfort with my very strange vocational call, a womanist sent to the far reaches of the globe. Yet, Barbara reached with her voice while staying at home, and periodically heading out to go fishing with her husband.

Being with people like Barbara made you love yourself more completely. She seemed so comfortable in her own skin. That self awareness made you touch and appreciate your own skin differently. I would not overstate that friendship as one of daily coffees or monthly connections. But I would not understate it either. Whenever I return to those podcasts, I now realize I am listening to the voice of someone from the ancestral realm.

When I saw her in California, years after our first meeting, I was so pleased to see someone who meant so much to me. And I am honored that, when she saw me coming, she greeted me with a big and generous smile of knowing. I considered her a friend.

I will miss you, Doc.

Dr. CL Nash

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Forty-Seven: Honoring Dr. Barbara Holmes

Contemplation and Acting for Justice

The authentic mystic can never flee from the world. He or she must resonate with the suffering and the agony that is the common legacy of humankind.… And active mystics who live in the hurly-burly enter into the same inner silence as those who live in the desert. 
—William Johnston, Mystical Theology: The Science of Love 

Dr. Barbara Holmes describes the contemplative foundations of the civil rights movement:    

The world is the cloister of the contemplative. There is no escape. Always the quest for justice draws one deeply into the heart of God. In this sacred interiority, contemplation becomes the language of prayer and the impetus for prophetic proclamation and action. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were classic contemplatives, deeply committed to silent witness, embodied and performative justice. The type of contemplative practices that emerged during the Civil Rights Movement became dramas that enacted a deep discontentment with things as they were. For years, the black church nurtured its members in the truth of their humanity and the potential for moral flourishing.   

The civil rights marches of the 1960s were contemplative—sometimes silent, sometimes drenched with song, but always contemplative. This may mean within the context of a desperate quest for justice that while weary feet traversed well-worn streets, hearts leaped into the lap of God. While children were escorted into schools by national guardsmen, the song “Jesus Loves Me” became an anthem of faith in the face of contradictory evidence. You cannot face German Shepherds and fire hoses with your own resources; there must be God and stillness at the very center of your being…. What saves you is the blessed merger of intuitive knowing with rationality, pain, and resolve.  

Like a spiritual earthquake, the resolve of the marchers affirmed the faith of foremothers and forefathers. Each step was a reclamation of the hope unborn. Each marcher embodied the communal affirmation of already/not yet sacred spaces…. The sacred act of walking together toward justice was usually preceded by a pre-march meeting that began with a prayer service, where preaching, singing, and exhortation prepared the people to move toward the hope they all held. This hope was carefully explicated by the leadership as a fulfillment of God’s promises. As a consequence, the movement that spilled from the churches to the streets was a ritual enactment of a communal faith journey toward the basileia [realm] of God.... 

The end result was that a purportedly Christian nation was forced to view its black citizens as a prototype of the suffering God, absorbing violence into their own bodies without retaliation. By contrast, stalwart defenders of the old order found themselves before God and their own reflective interiority with fire hoses, whips, and ropes in their hands. The crisis created by contemplative justice seeking guaranteed the eventual end of overt practices of domination, for domination could not withstand the steady gaze of the inner eye of thousands of awakened people.  

Read this meditation on cac.org.

Honoring Dr. Barbara Holmes

In honoring Dr. B, may we continue the struggle she so passionately embraced—the struggle for justice, the healing of the human spirit, and the call to radical creativity. Watch her speak about how death does not have the last word.