Here he traces the close relationship between African-American spirituality and the struggle for both freedom and redemption in a racist land. In the course of this discussion, he raises questions which clearly transcend the concerns of a particular people. And in the course of wrestling with such questions, he has much to say about prayer itself. Under its sacred canopy, an oratory of hope echoes the vast but immediate distances between who we are and who we want to be. This peculiar trek sentences its devotees to an arduous discipline.
Prayer demands focus and obedience, as well as intimacy and faithful nurture.
A certain civility is inherent in this transaction. The book itself reflects the various shades and hues of such civility, certainly, and the passion, poetry, pain and beauty of the life of prayer as well. Just two examples. Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in white, and so delightful to the eyes of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.