Calling on That Sweet Spirit | June 7, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- Jun 7
- 5 min read
There's a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place,
And I know that it's the Spirit of the Lord;
There are sweet expressions on each face,
And I know they feel the presence of the Lord.
Refrain:
Sweet Holy Spirit, Sweet heavenly Dove,
Stay right here with us, filling us with Your love.
And for these blessings we lift our hearts in praise;
Without a doubt we'll know that we have been revived,
When we shall leave this place.
The opening lyrics to the song, Sweet, Sweet Spirit. It is a song that reminds me of a very difficult time in my life…a crisis. It resonates with our current reality…a difficult time for all. This song was written by Doris Akers of Los Angeles, California in 1962. It was apparently a song that sprung from her heart in a moment of inspiration. This is how it feels to me as well. It reminds me that there is something beyond what we can see that is operating below, above or beyond our awareness…it is something that we must all access in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other…to overcome our fears and sorrows…and to keep fresh before us the moment of our high resolve. Thurman says fresh. I think what he means by this is that it is a commitment that must constantly be renewed…we must be revived in light of our current circumstances, both our personal ones and the broader ones.
A teacher of mine, Wendell Berry, wrote: …there is no public crisis that is not also private. Berry, writing in 1970, was pointing out the connections between the civil rights movement, the so-called peace movement and the environmental movement. He says the separation of these three movements is artificial. He even said that he believed that the environmental crisis was perhaps the culmination of these movements. Further, he saw our personal responsibility…the private part of our experience, lying in our individual decisions made every day…what to buy, what to eat, how to treat each other, how to live. He did not discount the value of acting together…publicly, but highlighted the responsibility of each person to find this moment…the moment of our high resolve. Perhaps this is the moment that Akers was connecting to when she wrote that song…when she sensed the presence of that sweet, sweet spirit.
I want to call upon this spirit today in order to remind us of its presence deep within the heart of the universe and deep within our own souls. Thurman called it the sound of the genuine…that voice that we hear when we are able to quiet the internal and external voices to which we often fall prey. This sound is both internal and external…both public and private. And it is the private nature of this sound that Thurman spoke of. In what I see as a description of the nature of this sound and of what happens when we do violence to this sound. He wrote:
If in my private life I do violence to my own deep, surging, pulsing inner sense of what is true and right then I stumble in the darkness. If in my private life where my awareness of my own reality is as the awareness of God in me, if there I do violence then there comes surging up in my life that which one by one puts out the lights and I stumble in the darkness.
And that is what I was experiencing when I first heard the song Sweet, Sweet Spirit. I had been stumbling in the darkness of a life lived without the awareness of that voice. I was, in a sense, doing violence to my own inner sense of what is true and right. I am currently a witness to so many who are experiencing this stumbling in the darkness. It is humbling and challenging to witness this and to be looked upon as someone who might be able to help. I am being called on by the Spirit of Life to help others to get to this place that I may not have come to myself. This is, of course, the call for each one of us in our relationships with others. Thurman describes the place where these profound matters of the heart are worked out like this:
It is deep within myself where I am stripped to whatever there is in me that is basic, that bottoms my life.
He is speaking of the basic part of us…stripped to the literal substance of ourselves. He continues his consideration of this process between people:
There is something in every man that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in another man… as well as within myself.
And the searching question is: What am I doing now to drown out the sound of the genuine in myself?
This is the question with which we struggle. We are all doing things which drown out the sound of the Genuine…that sweet, sweet spirit. These are the decisions we make in everyday life of how to spend our time…those actions that reflect our commitments and high resolve. It would be a fruitful question to ask ourselves, since we, as human beings in our current reality…this society filled with distractions and profoundly lacking in that sense of peace needed to hear the sound of the genuine over the din of modern existence.
In the same consideration of the sound of the genuine, after telling the story of how a man paid to have his trunk sent to school when he was a boy. Many of you know that story…how he was at the end of his individual strength…alone in the train station when he saw this man. Thurman reflects on that moment and that man…
There is something in every man that waits in season and out of season.
—waits, waits—
to pick up the sound of the genuine in another man through his tears,
through his depression, through his need, through his raving,
through his temper, through his prejudice, through his fears,
through all the bitterness of his heart waiting
until the sound of the genuine in you awakens the sound of the genuine in him.
And it begins to stir working up from the bottom until at last these sounds flow together.
And the morning stars sing together and all the sons of God shout for joy.
The morning stars sing together and we shout for joy! Sounds like healing…a dance that can be awakened by the sensing of that sweet, sweet spirit wherever we are, whoever we are with. This is the power of that spirit…that genuine spirit of life present in each child of God.
This is the strength and the power needed to be in this moment…this crisis. And it is what is needed for us to help each other through. It is only through this attentiveness…this waiting, that we will be able, not only to survive but to access the creativity and audacity needed for both our private and our public lives. This ability to access the sound of the genuine includes our awareness that the Sweet, Sweet Spirit is present in the air we breathe, and in the beings with which we share the earth, our home. The spirit is a balm for our souls…as the authors of the spirituals knew. Taking the stories from the Bible, they found resonance in the words in the Book of Jeremiah in which the prophet expressed despair at his situation and asked “Is there not a balm in Gilead? Is no physician there?” In the book, Deep River, Thurman writes of this question:
This is a question raised by Jeremiah’s entire life. He is searching his own soul. He is stripped to the literal substance of himself, and is turned back on himself for an answer. Jeremiah is saying actually, “There must be a balm in Gilead; it cannot be that there is no balm in Gilead.”
This message of hope is what we are likely to find when we listen for the sound of that Sweet Spirit…the sound of the genuine. May we find the space and time in this time of crisis to listen for that sound.
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