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Book Reviews
599
Diana L. Hayes, No Crystal Stair: Womanist Spirituality(Maryknoll,NY: Obis Press,
2016). vii + 140 pp. $23.00 paperback.
No Crystal Stair: Womanist Spirituality draws upon Diana Hayes’ twenty-five years of reflections on spirituality. The collection of essays, prayers, and med- itations draft a praxis-oriented foundation for womanist spirituality from a Catholic perspective. For her, spirituality is more than a thinking enterprise; it is lived worship. This book is a seminal work of both the fruit of long mat- uration; it is full of possibilities for new ways to integrate a deeply personal spirituality and theology. Although Hayes’ faith journey began in herAMEZion upbringing, she explains that the voice of the Spirit guided her to the Catholic church and then to theological scholarship.
Hayes’ methodology has profound implications for practical theology and spirituality. First of all, she draws attention to autobiographic hermeneutics in spirituality. She creatively locates her autobiography within the context of the broader black experience with particular emphasis on the unique sto- ries of black women. Secondly, Hayes makes important connections between experience-based spirituality and the work of the Holy Spirit. For her, the Holy Spirit was at work in the African American experience forming spiritual con- nectedness with its antecedent African heritage. This transatlantic connected- ness as facilitated by the Holy Spirit “forged the strength which enabled them to ‘move on up a little higher’” (xvi).
Neither black theology nor womanist theology has connected black spiri- tuality to the work of the Holy Spirit more clearly than Hayes. She dedicates one of the ten chapters of the book to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in black spirituality, “Slain in the Spirit: Black Americans and the Holy Spirit.” As a black Pentecostal theologian, I appreciate that without reservation, Hayes identifies the Holy Spirit as the often “unnamed spirit,” a presence in the black experience, particularly in black women’s lives. It was the Spirit that brought them through life’s unprecedented trials. Drawing from black women’s stories such as that of Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Terrell, Mary Elizabeth Lang, Henriette de Lille, Anna Julia Cooper, Dorothy Height, Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Maya Angelou and importantly, Hayes’ mother, god-mother, and aunts, she describes the Holy Spirit as a common “something within” that calls one out of oneself and into a world of possibility.
Hayes further explains that the “Spirit-grounded strength” of black ances- tors was both a defiant spirit that refused to accept slavery as God’s will and a hopeful spirit that enlivened eschatological hope for the slaves (17). Draw- ing upon the works of W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin, Hayes elucidates the
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ways in which human tenacity that is empowered by Spirit-built communities and fortified leadership that has not always been humanly authorized reflected the irresistible authority of the Spirit in the lives of marginalized people. Wom- anist spirituality, moreover, draws upon this rich spiritual heritage of strength to inspire hopeful spirituality in the contemporary situation of black America. Hayes says, “the Spirit is still with black Americans in their state of oppression and marginalization in the United States … in the midst of apparent fragmen- tation (26).”
In conclusion, this book may form a hermeneutical bridge between Catholic womanist spirituality and black Pentecostal spirituality. While there has not been a lot of academic work between these worlds, those who are interested in building blocks for such a bridge must take Hayes’ work seriously. First, the praxis-oriented, reflexive nature of No Crystal Stair, moving back and forth from black history and personal stories to crediting the Holy Spirit as mediating presence amid it all reminds one of the hermeneutical reservoir in Pentecostal spirituality.Inthechapter“WhoDoYou,God,SaythatWeAre?”Hayesbemoans the current state of humanity saying, “We have truly lost our own way in the world.We have turned against each other … And this point is critical … How can we seek out God while ignoring God’s presence in our very midst” (76)? Discov- ering God, according to Hayes, is interwoven in the ways in which all of human- ity relates to God: “We are [God’s] children, lost and wandering in a confusing and confused world, but never abandoned, never forsaken, never alone” (79).
Secondly, this volume is a rich guide in the journey of rediscovering self, community, hope and human vitality. Importantly, this book challenges con- temporary Catholic and Protestant Churches to strive for purpose that is renewed through deeply rooted spirituality, one that, when taken seriously, has the capacity to transform people and the institutions that claim to nurture and support them (i.e., congregations).
Thirdly, Hayes expresses the empowered and relentless character in her ver- sion of spirituality, associating it with the spirit of words in the later part of the second and the final line of Langston Hughes’Mother to Son: “Well, son, I’ll tell you; Life for me ain’t been ‘no crystal stair.’” For Hayes, these words frame the epitome of womanist fortitude to follow God’s destiny, despite life’s vicissi- tudes.
Finally, No Crystal Stair proffers a womanist spirituality that does more than merely offer a theological resource for self-reflection; it, more profoundly, draws upon womanist “God Talk” (108) to corral all people from the margins to a solidarity of confrontation against status quo systems of power through a greater spiritual power, the power of the Spirit, that insists upon change (108).
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For these reasons, I recommend that Hayes’ work be placed in Pentecostal discourse on the work and life of the Holy Spirit. “Womanist” language may be a distraction to some theologians who only want to dialogue among their “own;” yet, I contend that it is prudent to engage the “other.” After all, isn’t hear- ing and interpreting the voice of the “other” a Pentecostal distinctive? Perhaps, the Spirit has something to say to Pentecostal theologians about the life and work of the Spirit from this esteemed Catholic womanist theologian.
Antipas L. Harris
Urban Renewal Center, Norfolk, Virginia antipas@theurcnorfolk.com
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