Perhaps nothing is more difficult for the proverbial “outsider” to comprehend than the deep and abiding religious faith that is to be found among black sharecroppers and white tenant farmers, among migrant farmers who, again, are white or black (or Mexican-American) and finally, among the mountain people of Appalachia. Someone like myself, trained in medicine and psychiatry and psychoanalysis, looks for rational and reasonable behavior or irrational and fearful behavior. When confronted with people who go into a virtual trance on Sunday mornings, when confronted with declarations of prayerful ecstasy and warnings of immediate and apocalyptic disaster, all tied to the Lord and His ways, the observer can do one of several things. He can declare himself just that, an observer, ready and willing to take notice of anything, however wild or frenzied or incoherent or senseless. He can insist upon his ability to understand the incomprehensible, to fathom the only apparently illogical—on the assumption that there is a psychological rationale to all behavior, however absurd or unreasonable it seems. Maybe most dangerous and mean-spirited of all possible maneuvers, he can protest compassion and pity for those poor, benighted people; he can see them as possessed by poverty and disease and powerlessness and so—why not?—also prey to fantasies and illusions and desperate efforts at self-deception.

I fear someone like me usually takes all of those various tacks. Most of all these days we are likely to talk about the “adaptive” value of religious faith—though we are less willing to talk in a similar vein about the dozens of secular ideologies that command from well-educated and well-to-do people compliance, belief and not uncommonly, real zealotry. For a long time I found myself in the midst of a service, say, in a Holiness church near a mountain hollow—thinking about the “context” of the passionate and fundamentalist faith being shouted and sung and affirmed: simply affirmed in the faces and the eyes of the parishioners; directly affirmed in their voices and words; and if it has to be said, affirmed by and large without anxiety or fear. At first I supplied that “context” for such devotion and faith by dwelling upon the satisfaction and the relief thereby afforded. Then I reminded myself how much sadness and desperation and terror had to be somehow dealt with by these far-from-confident and certainly vulnerable people. Finally I ended up turning on them in those churches: what they said is not what they meant; what they appeared to feel was not what they really have going on within themselves; indeed, what they conveyed, to look at them, was but a beginning of what might come across them, might be expressed by them—were I and my kind to find out what we keep on calling in anyone and everyone their “problems.”

Now, I am sure that migrant workers have “problems”; and sharecroppers, and the mountaineers of Kentucky and West Virginia and North Carolina, they all have problems, too. So do I, though. Generally I have problems because I am a human being, one who is capable of his own kind of proprietary and uncritical faith, his own reassuring beliefs, his own convictions that have an “adaptive” purpose and no doubt a “context” also.

I have the additional and more specific problem of coming to terms with the faith of “poor, wretched believers,” which is the way I once heard a sharecropper woman wishfully describe her family—and clearly the third word made the first two insignificant to her, if not to me. I am not sure I know how to do so, come to terms with something called “rural religion,” without making caricatures of individuals I have worked with, without turning them and millions like them, people with sincere opinions and passionate beliefs, into opiated and deluded victims, or into philosophically duped and neurotically afflicted patients. I will try, though; I will try to hint at—maybe this is the way to put it—the animated spirit of the Spirit, as one like me has happened to see and hear and feel that Spirit become active, become an event. It is an event: something happens, something takes place, someone in particular feels taken over, feels no longer a person who only talks about the Spirit, who only uses the word, but rather, one who at last is on the way, at last is set to do something, I would even say go somewhere, because in rural churches one is moved and transported, one is elevated and summoned, one uses the arms and the hands and the legs, one bends and straightens out and twists and turns, and yes, finally yes, gets there, arrives.

So, while I try to make sense of things, analyze them, demand perhaps that the ineffable become utterly concrete, or failing that, be made as nearly concrete, as manageably concrete as my various words can manage—well, a woman in Mississippi, a mother of a sharecropper’s five children, talks about those Sundays, and why she picks herself up to go to church, and where it takes her, the praying and more praying, the kneeling and sitting and standing and leaning and bowing and bending and finally the taking leave, the final bowing, the bowing out, the turning around and the returning, the going back from Him, from a moment with Him, to this bad, very bad, this cursed earth: 

“I wait all week for Sunday. That’s the day that counts, you know. It’s the only day of the week for me, the only one when we count, because then God is there, beckoning you, telling you it’s all right, just come on over and be with Me, be with Me for a few minutes, yes sir. If you do, if you go to Him, if you be with Him, then like He says, you’ll be all right. When you go back home, you’ll be good again.”

Those verbs—do, go, be—what are we to make of them, virtually marched out in formation one right after the other, and stated so easily and unselfconsciously and knowingly (it seems) by that thoroughly uneducated woman, no doubt rash about what she says, no doubt given to thoughtless conjectures stated as uncontrovertible facts, no doubt full of “illusions,” dozens of them, having to do, among other things, with her God-given dignity, in her words “my being a child of His, just like everyone else”? To her, the idea of a church, a Christian church, means exactly what she says: doing, going and being. Church does not mean sitting nearly inert and hearing and watching and maybe singing a hymn or two, and maybe reading (or more likely whispering, and even that with embarrassment) a few prayers. Church does not mean following orders, following a routine, doing what the printed program of the day tells one to do. Church does not mean going to a building, staying for an hour or so and then leaving. Church does not mean attending something, taking part in a service. The idea of service, of course, is rather familiar to that woman; she and her ancestors have been rendering “service” to people for generations, and no wonder she talks in quite another fashion about God’s intentions for her and her family:

“If you ask me, the Lord must be wanting us to be true to ourselves with Him, and not treat Him like the bossman over there in town, who comes out here and tells us we should do this now and the next thing later and something again in the afternoon. No sir, He wants the truth, like the man says, the minister; and He knows the truth when it’s before Him and He knows a lie when it’s before Him. I’ll be saying one thing to the bossman and under my breath another thing to myself; but in church I lets myself go, and Lord it all comes out, my faith in Him does, and I don’t hold back on it, no sir, because you do that all the time—you have to—and on Sunday comes the time for the truth, and He is there, listening and wanting you to be as honest as you can, because if you’ll be that way, He can trust you and you’ll go and be saved, yes you will, you’ll go and be saved from all the bad things going on in this world.”

She says that a time comes, a time of truth, a time when one goes to be saved, when faith does something. Oh, there is an orgiastic quality to her kind of worship, no one these days would care to deny that, least of all her—because not only twentieth-century doctors and social scientists know about the passion that faith can mask but also be. Freud always recognized the historical roots of his analytic formulations, versed as he was in classical literature and mythology, not to mention Shakespeare’s plays. He knew that the passions he described had been seen by others, lived by others, known to others, if by different words.

Theologians can also put their hands on book after book, each of them written hundreds of years ago, in which religious passions are unashamedly, indeed proudly, connected to man’s physical and psychological nature, his lusts and urges and wants and needs. Precisely what else are they to be connected to, those religious passions? Of course some of us agnostic ascetics or religious puritans want faith to be “pure”; or we take peculiar pleasure in finding faith “impure,” which means lusty and desperate and driven and sensual and physical in the sense of mediated through what each man is, after all: a particular body in possession of a mind and soul. For that woman in Mississippi a church is initially a destination, a place over there that requires the effort, one considerable effort, of attendance—which means hundreds and hundreds of steps taken.

The passion behind all those steps, the force of mind and heart that makes them possible, become obvious perhaps only when they are seen being taken, those many, many steps—down the Appalachian hollows, across the Delta’s mud, away from cabins in migrant labor camps to a nearby town or simply to an open field, this time not so that crops will be harvested, but so that legs can be bent, bodies made to kneel, kneel just like always, but kneel for a different purpose, too:

“I kneel all week long with the beans, but on Sunday I kneel to speak with God, and He makes my knees feel better, much better. I’ll be walking over to the field where he comes, the minister, and I’ll say to myself, Sally, you’re doing better today than yesterday, you’re feeling real better, and thank God for that. So I speed up and get myself there right in time for the first prayer. I’m ready to speak then, to speak my heart to my God.”

She is possessive, excessively possessive about God, not quite as ready to share Him as all other things are shared, must be shared: 

“All week I tries to be good, and do the picking and take care of the children, you know, and help us all stay in good shape for the next trip coming up. On Sundays I have to go thank Someone, thank Him for giving me the strength. He must want you, He must be thinking of you, not only everyone else, or how could I still be going, going as strong as I am?”

She is going all right—up and down the Atlantic seaboard, all the time harvesting those beans—and on Sundays she is still going, moving herself, “carrying” herself as she sometimes puts it, carrying herself over to a place, but much more than that, to a scene, or again, a location where an event unfolds, minute by minute, with her and others like her very much doing things and becoming.

Victory Won 

Afterwards, right afterwards, one can hear the sense of achievement, of victory at last grasped—because things that a woman like Sally senses deeply all week become spoken, finally, on Sunday: 

“I’ve got to go back, and we’ll be out in the fields this afternoon, because we’ve got to get the crops in by next week or else they’ll be gone, yes sir, on their way to being rotted. I’ve got myself rested and strong now, because God will refresh you, if you ask Him, if you only ask Him. I’ll be talking with the Lord, and all of a sudden I know He’s touched me and given me a little of His strength, so I can go on. That’s why I’ll say thank you, thank you to Him, for coming to us here, and recognizing us, yes sir, recognizing us, just like the others. When you’ve been recognized, you can feel up in spirits, way up, and you leave and go about your work, fall to doing what you’ve got to do.”

She means, naturally, by “fall to doing” something like “get to doing,” though one always wonders what she does mean, a woman like her, who does indeed, every day, fall to the ground in order to work, in order to pick at those bean plants. Ask her and she replies; she says she means she’ll “soon” be doing something when she “falls to doing” something. But she gets the irony, just like any proud, linguistically sensitive listener does: 

“I know what you mean. I’m always falling on my knees to go up and down those rows. I have the rubber pad, of course, and it protects you from the mud and the water and it makes it easier on your knees—but there’s just so easy it can be on your knees, with the kneeling all the time. The only time I feel really rested on my knees is when I’m on them praying. Then they feel real quiet-like and calm and they get stronger, they seem to, while I try hard to pray the best I can.”

How is one to make neuro-physiological (not to mention psychological) sense out of all that? Does she somehow virtually hypnotize herself? Is she what psychiatrists call an “hysteric,” that is someone who, among other things, massively ignores and forgets important facts and feelings, and accordingly seems indifferent or casual or even at rest and at peace—when in fact massive turmoil would be found, were one to look “underneath” or “deep-down” or wherever it is we hide or keep our emotions? And really, does she not know better, know that whistling in the dark is what she is actually doing?

Dozens of times I have asked myself questions like those, and I have given up looking for answers. How am I to look? What will I find? Ought I do a thorough medical examination on her, and especially a neurological and psychiatric “evaluation”? Ought I ask her, forcefully and squarely and right to the point, whether she sometimes doesn’t have her misgivings, her doubts about God and His churches and in fact the whole lot of them, those ministers who from time to time take so much money from poor migrant workers? Am I to assume I cannot ask her such a question—because she is almost illiterate and weak and fearful and superstitious and in need of whatever “support” she can find, however illusory and even laughable, however corrupt, yes that, too? Am I best advised to take a different line of reasoning, to see the wonder of it all, the miracle that occurs when devotion is brought into a building or a place, and is given expression, is rewarded by uplift? (And I mean by uplift a lot more than a moment of euphoria or self-satisfaction, more than a “shot-in-the-arm” or a temporary boost of self-confidence.)

“Uplift” is in fact what the woman I have just quoted talks about. She has obtained the word from a minister, who perhaps (to be grim and cynical and appropriately suspicious) teaches his parishioners to use the word as if it were a thing, a piece of property, for them to want and then to get and then gladly, proudly own. What is more, she talks about finding her “uplift” and keeping it, and those are words that are all too familiar to hungry, pagan, twentieth-century, materialist consumers, who want, want, want, and at least elsewhere in America, away from migrant camps and plantation-shares and mountain hollows, manage to get, get, get. She talks about a lot more, though; and I believe gives one like me, if not answers to what must finally be considered unanswerable questions, at least pause for thought, and I am talking about a kind of thought that asks why some of the questions just presented are in fact asked at all. Here is the lady—very much dressed up that day and neither like a mother nor a wife in appearance or manner—speaking a little before she is to walk over to church, which means walk some two miles under a hot, hot sun:

“I know it’ll be worth it, because it always is. I get tired, and my feet are aching bad the shoes, you know but once I’m there I can forget me and my feet and everything, because there’s Someone up there, and He’s bigger than all of us, and if you know that, once you do, then you’re on your way, and it won’t be long before every one of us will be there, meeting Him, and what He decides is what counts, and nothing else. I get discouraged a lot by things; there’ll be this to bother you, or something else again. (You’re not put here to have an easy time, I guess.) When I’m low, I’ll wonder if there’s any point—you know, to going on. But that’s only temporary. I’ll be sitting there and hearing the minister, and we’ll be singing, and all of a sudden there’s God talking to me, I know He is. It’s not that He’ll say anything special, no sir.  It’s just that I can feel the truth; it’s there, and it’s enough big that I can rely on the message.

“God’s message is that we should try to be patient. Maybe He means for us to be patient with Him. I don’t mean to be fresh, like it sounds. I mean, He is testing you, and if you don’t wait for Him to finish, then you’re rushing it, trying to be too fast for your own good. It’s like out in the field: on a wet morning, you have to let the beans dry, before you rush down the rows, trying to pick them. Sure, you’d like to get as much done as you can, before the sun is high and right over you, and beating down and drawing all your strength right out of your legs and your arms, and just weakening you all over. But you can’t forget the moisture on the plants; and so you’ve got to take your chances and hope that even with the sun you’ll get a good day’s picking done. Now, with God it’s us He’s got out here all over the world, and He can’t be rushed either, because there’s all the other people, and not just yourself, and if you come to Him and always say ‘look at me, look at me, and see what I want from You and see how I believe in You,’ well, He’s going to turn His back on you, yes He will. He’ll tell you, God will, that it’s not what He’s trying to do, give you a lollipop, like you do with the kids if they mind all you say and don’t get into trouble—and they’ll be telling you they’re good, the kids, so you get them the candy. But to me church isn’t where there’s candy, no it’s not.

“To me, church is where you meet God, where for a little while you find Him and keep Him, where He tells you that it’s all right, and it’s going to be all right, and no matter what, you’ll come out on His side—if you want to and sets it on your mind that you will. A lot of times I have to do something, and I’ll be tired, real tired, and I’ll wonder if there’s any use; it’s then that I say to myself that I will, I just will—I mean I will get to the end of the row, and I will get us ready to go on the road again. You see? But you get weak on a lot of days, and your head hurts and your feet, from the top to the bottom. Then you’re in trouble; because you start having bad thoughts, one after the other, until you’ve lost everything, all your belief in God, and you just want to go sit some place and fill yourself up with all the wine you can find, and steal some if you haven’t the money to buy it, and then you’re glad when you start going under and you get dizzy and if you go to sleep you hope it lasts and lasts. There have been times, no fooling, when the last thing I could recall was myself saying it would be nice if I slept and slept and never woke up. I ask you, can a person justify himself before God, doing that? The minister will tell you no, but I’ll let you in on a secret, it’s not him, the minister, who does the convincing of me. It’s God, and how He does it, I don’t know. I mean I won’t be so good on some of these Sundays, and I’ll go, but I’m not expecting much, and then I all of a sudden get the uplift. It’s not like you’ve made a good wage this week, and you’ve got yourself the best food there is, and eaten all you could possibly put down you. It’s not that someone has come along and promised to help you out. I guess if I had to say—it’s hard to say these things, you know—then I’d say it’s like you’re under a cloud, a real bad one and the sun is gone, and it’s raining, and maybe some thunder and lightning are there—but all quick like, you see the sky clear up, and not only is there the sun to see, but it’s cool too, at the same time, and you’ve got a nice friendly world around you—over you—protecting you and keeping you warm, but you don’t go and get too warm, and the crops, they’re growing like mad, and they’ll be easy to pick, because they’ll get nice and dried out. So, you feel good, and you know you’ve found a place; you’ve found your rest. And you look around and you see there’s others; they’ve been saved, too.

“I don’t know much about being saved, I mean if you’re saved every week, or if God makes up His mind only at the end, when you have to face Him; but there will be a little while on Sundays—not all Sundays, no, but some of them—when I feel real good. The uplift, it’s got me hoping. I’ll be hoping the week will be better, and I’ll not have the pains I get in my stomach; but mostly it’ll be I’ll have a better spirit about everything. ‘All things come to the one who waits,’ is what you learn from the Bible, and I’ll tell you something, either you know that or you don’t, and if you don’t, then you’re in more trouble than you’ll ever know, because you’ll go running all over, and getting cross at your husband and your children, and worse it is when you get cross at yourself. But if you can just remember to catch yourself and be patient with God, and if you know He’s coming upon your life, to look it over and do like that, then you won’t be killing yourself with the wine, and with shouting at everyone when the least little thing goes wrong. That’s how I think.”

What do I think about how she thinks? I can make some points about it, about the themes that she and others like her keep on coming back to, keep on spelling out. I can take note of, in the first place, her mixed feelings, her faith that turns to despair, her high hopes that become a grim, low-point, full of what some call nihilism, others depression, still others religious doubt. I can take note of her stubborn, quarrelsome spirit, which returns almost weekly to the struggle. I can also mention, even as she did in her own way, the various things that happen to her—I say again, the things that happen to her rather than the things that religious faith and attendance at church do for her.

The point is that she actively takes on something or Something when she goes to church; it almost seems to me, as I have watched her, been with her on those Sundays, that she is taking on all of her life and all of everyone’s life, all of life itself I perhaps mean, though believe me I am not sure, not one bit sure. I do know—I am fairly sure—that in all our talks, and in other talks with other migrants, and with sharecroppers and mountain people, I hear not about isolated episodes or scattered incidents but, again, about events, events that live on and on and have a very real continuity. To draw upon an Appalachian father this time: “A real time of it we have, and once it’s over, we know we’ve been through something, yes indeed we have, and that means we’ll be thinking of it, what we’ve been through, and remembering that we found God, and hope never to lose Him.” I presume that is what some of us from more “fortunate” backgrounds call an “experience.” I presume, also, that some of us miss, sorely miss, what that man and others quoted here have and describe, a conviction that we are not alone, that through constant effort and dedication we can find meanings that stick, that last longer than a moment or two, that will keep—meanings that will lead us to bigger meanings, to Meanings, if not to God.