My wife mentioned that Thea Bowman did a parish mission at the church where we met, many years before I arrived there. I wonder if she mentioned there her description of Black sacred song she put into words for the first edition of GIA’s Lead Me, Guide Me:
- holistic: challenging the full engagement of mind, imagination, memory, feeling, emotion, voice, and body;
- participatory: inviting the worshiping community to join in contemplation, in celebration and in prayer;
- real: celebrating the immediate concrete reality of the worshiping community – grief or separation, struggle or oppression, determination or joy – bringing that reality to prayer within the community of believers;
- spirit-filled: energetic, engrossing, intense;
- life-giving: refreshing, encouraging, consoling, invigorating, sustaining.
Catholic Sensibility 