Testify
I was listening to Mahalia Jackson this morning while getting ready for work. The recording was all old and crackly and sounded like it had been cut live on location in a southern baptist church in the ’50s or something. She had a full back-up choir, and a rickety sounding organ wheezed in the background while her miraculous voice shook the rafters and made congregants scream out in seizures of spiritual revelation. I know I shouldn’t have religion envy, but sometimes it doesn’t seem fair that when it comes time for me to “pray,” I’m just expected to rattle off from memory some phonetically memorized sounds in a language I don’t know, while people lucky enough to see Mahalia Jackson actually had the experience of feeling as if they had been saved by her songs. She sings with such absolute conviction and authority, it makes me want to believe that she’s right, and that all the glory she predicted for herself has actually come to pass. In a perfect universe, Mahalia is in a sweet cotton candy heaven right now, with Jesus riding shotgun beside her in her great big pink cadillac.