It’s the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost In some churches the Feast of Saint John Coltrane will be observed Today, July 17th. St. John's African Orthodox Church in San Francisco regards John Coltrane as its "patron saint." While this Day does not fall within the Episcopal Church Year calendar as a festival to be observed, the African Orthodox Church honors Saint John Coltrane. The African Orthodox Church owes its Episcopate and Apostolic Authority to the Syrian Church of Antioch where the disciples were first called Christians. St. Peter and St. Barnabas resided in Antioch before setting out on their great missionary journeys, and St. Peter was the first Bishop there. Saint John’s music provided a form of ecstasy or catharsis transcending the limitations, dreariness, and desperation of ordinary existence. “Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.”
(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Opening Address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival)
This week, on July 20th the Episcopal Church Year calendar, sets this day apart to honor four women among them; Sojourner Truth and Harriet Ross Tubman.
SOJOURNER TRUTH (26 NOV 1883)
Sojourner Truth, originally known as Isabella, was born a slave in New York in about 1798. In 1826 she escaped with the aid of Quaker abolitionists and became a street-corner evangelist and the founder of a shelter for homeless women. When she was traveling, and someone asked her name, she said "Sojourner," meaning that she was a citizen of heaven, and a wanderer on the earth. She then gave her surname as "Truth," on the grounds that God was her Father, and His name was Truth. She spoke at numerous church gatherings, both black and white, quoting the Bible extensively from memory, and speaking against slavery and for improved legal status for women. The speech for which she is best known is called, "Ain't I a Woman?" It was delivered in response to a male speaker who had been arguing that the refusal of votes for women was grounded in a wish to shelter women from the harsh realities of political life. She replied, with great effect, that she was a woman, and that society had not sheltered her. She became known as "the Miriam of the Latter Exodus." July 20
HARRIET ROSS TUBMAN (10 MAR 1913)
Harriet Ross was born in 1820 in Maryland. She was deeply impressed by the Bible narrative of God's deliverance of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and it became the basis of her belief that it was God's will to deliver slaves in America out of their bondage, and that it was her duty to help accomplish this. In 1844, she escaped to Canada but returned to help others escape. Working with other Abolitionists, chiefly white Quakers, she made at least nineteen excursions into Maryland in the 1850s, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom. During the War of 1861-5, she joined the Northern Army as a cook and a nurse and a spy, and on one occasion led a raid that freed over 750 slaves. After the war, she worked to shelter orphans and elderly poor persons and to advance the status of women and blacks. She became known as "the Moses of her People." July 20
