Baby Suggs Preaching Quotes

The day Stamp Paid saw the two backs through the window and then hurried down the steps, he believed the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead. Very few had died in bed, like Baby Suggs, and none that he knew of, including Baby, had lived a livable life. Even the educated colored: the long-school people, the doctors, the teachers, the paper-writers and businessmen had a hard row to hoe. In addition to having to use their heads to get ahead, they had the weight of the whole race sitting there. You needed two heads for that. Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. ~ Toni Morrison

Kneeling in the keeping room where she usually went to talk-think it was clear why Baby Suggs was so starved for color. There was't any except for two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout. The walls of the room were slate-colored, the floor earth-brown, the wooden dresser the color of itself, curtains white, and the dominating feature, the quilt over an iron cot, was made up of scraps of blue serge, black, brown and gray wool–the full range of the dark and the muted that thrift and modesty allowed. In that sober field, two patches of orange looked wild–like life in the raw. ~ Toni Morrison

But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house.
[ ... ]
A man ain't nothing but a man,' said Baby Suggs. 'But a son? Well now, that's somebody. ~ Toni Morrison

In historical terms women, black people in general, were very attracted to very bright-colored clothing. Most people are frightened by color anyway...They just are. In this culture quiet colors are considered elegant. Civilized Western people wouldn't buy bloodred sheets or dishes. There may be something more to it than what I am suggesting. But the slave population had no access even to what color there was, because they wore slave clothes, hand-me-downs, work clothes made out of burlap and sacking. For them a colored dress would be luxurious; it wouldn't matter whether it was rich or poor cloth . . . just to have a red or a yellow dress. I stripped Beloved of color so that there are only the small moments when Sethe runs amok buying ribbons and bows, enjoying herself the way children enjoy that kind of color. The whole business of color was why slavery was able to last such a long time. It wasn't as though you had a class of convicts who could dress themselves up and pass themselves off. No, these were people marked because of their skin color, as well as other features. So color is a signifying mark. Baby Suggs dreams of color and says, "Bring me a little lavender." It is a kind of luxury. We are so inundated with color and visuals. I just wanted to pull it back so that one could feel that hunger and that delight. ~ Toni Morrison

When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees.

After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, 'Let the children come!' and they ran from the trees toward her.

Let your mothers hear you laugh,' she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling.

Then 'Let the grown men come,' she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees.

Let your wives and your children see you dance,' she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet.

Finally she called the women to her. 'Cry,' she told them. 'For the living and the dead. Just cry.' And without covering their eyes the women let loose.

It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and ~ Toni Morrison

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people goin' by I see friends shaking hands saying, "How do you do" They're really saying "I love you." I hear babies cry, I watch then grow They'll learn much more than I'll ever know; And I think to myself, What a wonderful world; Yes, I think to myself, What a wonderful world. Oh yeah! ~ Louis Armstrong

One of my great goals in life is to live long enough to where I am in the pulpit, preaching my heart out, and I die on the spot, my chin hits the pulpit - boom! - and I'm down and out. What a way to die! ~ Charles R. Swindoll

I love you, Half-Pint. Love that little baby. You understand where I'm at with all of that?" ( ... ) "I know you aren't on the same page as me just yet, Cora, and for right now I'm happy enough we're reading the same book. Eventually you have to turn the page, though, you got me? ~ Jay Crownover

In Hollywood, whenever you do anything, it seems like there's going to be 30 of them. When I did 'Look Who's Talking,' people went: 'Oh but there's going to be this baby movie and that baby movie.' I can't worry about that. I can only do what I want to do. ~ Amy Heckerling

Pushing through some viney branches, she comes into a clearing andfinds a sight that makes her hush
and not just her voice but every part of her, like feeling silence in her deep guts ...
It's something she can feel in the back of her throat, her dislike of the scene
as though what she's looking upon is unholy, the conjunction of chaos and order in a forced fit where everything is stretched and bent in the wrong way like those baby legs. ~ Alden Bell

It's also vital to limit the amount of sugary foods your baby eats, especially drinks on which she may suck for a long time. ~ Colin Cooper

Other people
grandparents, sisters and brothers, the mother's best friend, the next-door neighbor
get to be familiar to the baby. If the mother communicates her trust in these people, the baby will regard them as delicious novelties. Anybody the mother trusts whom the baby sees often enough partakes a bit of the presence of the mother. ~ Louise J. Kaplan

I work mornings only. I go out to lunch. Afternoons I play with the baby, walk with my husband, or shovel mail. ~ Annie Dillard

Sleep, baby, sleep. Our promises we'll keep. Be the miracle you are, a wish come true on a shooting star. Sleep, baby, sleep. ~ Maryann Cusimano Love

Think about this. The God of the universe became a wiggling baby in order to get close to you. ~ Timothy Keller

I hate babies with trendy names like Tiffany and Britney and Heather and Noah and Blake and Justin. I'm sick of Olivia and Chloe and Eva and Madison. I hope Aiden and Jayden and Braden and Graden all suffer minor head injuries while reading Dr. Seuss. Enough already with the cutesy-poo baby names. What happened to John and Dave and Sue? Babies with trendy names grow up to be adults with ridiculous names. "This is our CEO, Micah." "You know what, Micah? I want my money back. I'm closing my portfolio. I'm going with Michael. He's a grown-up." One day all of these trendy-named children will grow up and become parents and then grandparents, and it's all wrong. Grandma Tori? Zayda Jared? Nana Savannah? ~ Joan Rivers

MAR1.14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, MAR1.15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. ~ Anonymous

I wish BET did more to represent the full spectrum of black experiences in a balanced manner. If you watch BET, you get the sense that the only way black people succeed is through professional sports, music, or marrying/fucking/being a baby mama of someone who is involved with professional sports or music. ~ Roxane Gay

I don't mind a chase, baby. Whether it's a sprint or a marathon makes no difference to me. I'll reach the finish line eventually. I don't know what you're running from, but I don't give up easy. I'll be seeing you soon. ~ Aidan Willows

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. ~ Mark Twain

Annabeth Thalia and I hadn't seen each other in months but between
the blizzard and the thought of what we were about to do we were too nervous to talk much.
Except for my mom. She talks more when she's nervous. By the time we finally got to Westover Hall it was getting dark and she'd told Annabeth and Thalia every embarrassing baby story there was to tell about me. ~ Rick Riordan

Where's the baby?"
"I just fed and changed him," Haven said.
Hardy lifted Luke's carrier and gave it to Jack, who took it with his free hand.
"Thank you." I gave Haven a woeful glance as she handed me the diaper bag. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For falling asleep like that."
Haven smiled and reached out to hug me. "There's nothing to be sorry about. What's a little narcolepsy among friends?"
Her body was slim and strong, one small hand patting my back. The gesture surprised me in its naturalness and ease.
I returned the embrace awkwardly. Haven said over my shoulder, "I like this one, Jack."
Jack didn't answer, only nudged me out into the hallway.
I trudged forward, nearly blind with exhaustion, staggering with it.
It took extreme focus to keep one foot in front of the other. "I don't know why I'm so tired tonight," I said. "It's all caught up with me, I guess."
I felt Jack's hand descend to the center of my back, guiding me forward. I decided to talk to keep myself awake. "You know, chronic sleep deper . . . dep . . ."
"Deprivation?"
"Yes." I shook my head to clear it. "It gives you memory problems and raises your blood pressure. And it results in occupational hazards. It's lucky I can't get hurt doing my job. Unless I fall forward and hit my head on the keyboard. If you ever see QWERTY imprinted on my forehead, you'll know what happened."
"Here we go," Jack said, loading me onto the elev ~ Lisa Kleypas

Thank you. There were three of us kids, all right together. I'm the oldest, she was the knee-baby, and my brother Henry came last. Funny, I miss her all the time, but I miss her most when I'm reading Austen. We'd been fans since we were in the seventh and eighth grade, two Creole girls gigglin' about marriage proposals gone bad. Our daddy teased us about reading each other passages during a Fourth of July crawfish boil, so he named the biggest one Mr. Darcy and threw him in the pot." She looked up, a smile fighting the tears in her eyes. "We refused to eat him. ~ Mary Jane Hathaway

I want to have and adopt. I always have; ever since I was 18, I wanted a baby, and I wanted to have and adopt because there are a lot of kids. I want to adopt an American baby though, you know what I mean, no offense. Just because there are so many kids here that need our help. ~ Queen Latifah

Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad is summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns. ~ Marge Piercy

She raised her hand, bony fingers spread. "Don't worry. She is supposed to cry. Her life will never be the same. You can't give her everything."

I realized what Rajima meant. Until that moment, I had been almost exclusively providing everything Krishna could want or need. I was her sole succor and haven. But her needs were changing. She would now need sustenance from the earth, from Mother Nature, from the world, or at least Whole Foods. She would need more than what I could give her from my own body. We ~ Padma Lakshmi

In 2017, I was invited to lead a mindfulness workshop and guide a live meditation on Mingus Mountain, Arizona, to over 100 men and women at a recovery retreat. On the eve of my workshop, I had the opportunity to join in a men's twelve-step meeting, which took place by the campfire in Prescott National Park Forest, with at least 40 men recovering from childhood grief and trauma. The meeting grounded us in what was a large retreat with many unfamiliar faces. I was the only mixed-race Brit, surrounded by mostly white middle-class American men (baby boomers and Generation X), yet our common bond of validating each other's wounds in recovery utterly transcended any differences of nationality, race and heritage. We shared our pain and hope in a non-shaming environment, listening and allowing every man to have his say without interruption. At the end of the meeting we stood up in a large circle and recited the serenity prayer:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me".

After the meeting closed, I felt that I belonged and I was enthusiastic about the retreat, even though I was thousands of miles away from England. ~ Christopher Dines

I don't have any desire to retire in the sense of not doing anything. As long as the Lord gives me strength I want to keep writing and keep preaching. ~ Max Lucado

I've seen a baby born. And, ahem, I know what made it. But I'm not telling, you'd never believe me. ~ N.D. Wilson

You've seen those pictures of couples kissing in front of a Christmas tree, or clasping hands on their wedding day, or holding a newborn baby between them-a snapshot of joy. But what do you really know about them? Just that at the second the shutter clicked, they loved each other. You have no idea what trials came before, or after. You don't know if one of them cheated, if they grew apart, if a divorce loomed on the horizon. You simply see that in one static moment, they were happy. ~ Jodi Picoult

I couldn't move. Never been hit by anything that powerful.

Overwhelmed.

Lost.

Falling.

My chest heaved. I shook. I pulled Kabe hard against me, turned my face into his chest. My eyes burned, my chest seized and I bawled like a baby. ~ James Buchanan

Can you gather your vital breath and yet be tender like a newborn baby? ~ Laozi

The Bears are front-runners. Quitters. They are not a second-half team, just a bunch of cry-babies. ~ George Preston Marshall

I've been wanting to have a baby since I was 2 years old - I'm destined to be a mother. ~ Alicia Silverstone

Give me one good reason why I shouldn't chop him into worthless-bastard-themed confetti.
Isabelle Lightwood ~ Cassandra Clare

Usha is Kavita's choice alone, a secret name for her secret daughter. The thought brings a smile to her face. That one day she spent with her daughter was precious. Though she was exhausted, she would not sleep. She didn't want to miss a single moment. Kavita held her baby close, watched her small body rise and fall with breath, traced her delicate eyebrows and the folds of her tender skin. She nursed her when she cried, and in those few moments when Usha was awake, Kavita saw herself unmistakably in the distinctive gold-flecked eyes, more beautiful on her child than on herself. She could hardly believe this lovely creature was hers. She didn't allow herself to think beyond that day.At least this baby girl will be allowed to live - a chance to grow up, go to school, maybe even marry and have children. Kavita knows, along with her daughter, she is forsaking any hope of helping her along the path of life. Usha will never know her parents, but she has a chance at life, and that will have to be enough. Kavita slides one of the two thin silver bangles she always wears from her own frail wrist and slips it onto Usha's ankle.
"I'm sorry I cannot give you more, beti," she whispers into her downy head. ~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Preaching the whole council of God involves man's environment and physical being as well as his soul. There is no doubt that the church is in danger of getting off the main track and getting lost. ~ Billy Graham

I'm the oldest of six children and I had my own first baby when I was 23. So I've always been interested in babies, and I had lots of opportunities to watch them. ~ Alison Gopnik

Do you think just having a baby automatically makes you love it?'
'I'm not sure ... you might have to learn to love it, like any other person. ~ Judy Blume

They say that people should be free to do as they like. That's what I think. But if they start preaching at me, they can go to hell. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some. ~ D.A. Botta

The way you treat me baby
Cheat and tell me lies
I guess I shouldn't care at all
But still I sympathize
'cause you got heart trouble
Coming on
Yeah you got heart trouble coming on
Well you think that you don't need me baby
But you're gonna miss me when I'm gone ~ Martina Mcbride