The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983 Page: 32
616 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
It was August, the dog days, hot, dry, and dusty, the time for pro-
tracted meetings in the country. It was a dull time, between the last
plow down a furrow and the first cotton sack down that same furrow.
People needed this time, for rest and for gathering together with their
neighbors. So they came, walking the road at dusk, meeting other
families, at times moving aside to let a car bound for the meeting go
by. I waited till there were no longer the sounds of people coming in-
of mumbling voices and shoes on hard-packed ground. Then I took a
seat on a back bench. The people around me had tired eyes, tired
faces, tired but not unfeeling. Like the faithful of their people who
had gone on before, they were looking up at the preacher, waiting for
him to bring the light and spread it among them. Only then would
their quietness give way; only then would they sound their own prayer
and praise.
Suddenly the preacher stopped talking and turned toward some fold-
ing chairs near the table that served as pulpit and altar. Silently half a
dozen deacons moved to them, their corner, and sat with heads bowed.
Men and women, the choir, took chairs on the other side. They had
neither songbooks nor musical instruments. The preacher opened his
songbook and said, "Bringing in the Sheaves." To me it was an old
song, ingrained in my memory from many nights like this. But it was
not a spiritual; it was too new, too much the work of a hymn maker to
be a spiritual. It was a good song for country revivals, carrying as it did
the double meaning of their work in cotton and corn fields and, season-
ally at least, their labor in the vineyard of the Lord. Giving neither
pitch nor beat the leader began singing. The choir and congregation
followed as well as they could:
Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing bringing in the sheaves.
Men and women in the congregation, more women than men, mum-
bled uncertainly through the words of the verse and then, as they
would have said, "showered down" on the refrain:
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing bringing in the sheaves;
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing bringing in the sheaves.
There was a period of testimony when older men and women, strong
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983, periodical, 1982/1983; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101209/m1/52/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.