Sermon Recording and Remembering Nikki Giovanni

I was sad to hear of the death of Nikki Giovanni.  The Washington Post has a great article celebrating her life;  you can read it here, and this link should be the gift article link that gets you behind the paywall.  Even if you know the outline of her life, it's worth a read, because she's had such a rich and varied life.

I have had a fondness for Nikki Giovanni for most of my adult life.  She's one of the first living poets I ever read, one of the first poets I discovered on my own.  It was the summer after my first year at college, where I was a counselor at Congaree Girl Scout Camp.  We had a staff cabin which had a small bookshelf, and it was there that I found a copy of Giovanni's My House.  I read it, and because it was in the staff cabin, I came back to it several times throughout the summer.

I had been experimenting with writing my own poetry for several years before reading Giovanni, and others who were part of her generation, like Marge Piercy, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, and so many others.  It was that Giovanni book that made me want to do more with my poetry, which was fairly simple and short.

Those were the days when poets could be visiting poets on campus and make a decent chunk of money; those days are long gone.  I knew that Giovanni had been at Virginia Tech for a long time, and I wonder if her students had any idea who was leading their classroom.  From everything I've read, she was the kind of professor that anyone would want to have.  She's an inspiration.

I'd love to spend the day rereading her work, but I have a noon deadline for a project for my seminary class, Race, Gender, and Religious Imagination.  Part of that project involves recording a sermon, and it's a sermon that's supposed to be part of an event that I would create (if I had money, time, place, support) in response to my critical reflection paper.  Yesterday, I did that part of the project, the video sermon.

I had written about the event, a retreat on the nameless women who helped shape the ministry of Jesus, a retreat to remind us that if nameless women can have this kind of influence, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss our own agency and power.

Since I live at a retreat center, I thought about all the places where I might record my sermon.  Yesterday was fairly warm for December, and the rain had held off, so I decided that an outdoor location wasn't an issue.  Plus I knew I wouldn't be in the way, as I might if I tried to use one of the indoor spaces around camp.  My spouse was willing to be the controller of the camera.

We went over to the lake, where there's a gorgeous outdoor space, and it's fairly quiet.  We experimented with filming several sentences, a few times, and then we made the recording.  You can view it here.

I thought about doing several more takes, but I know that this attempt is probably as good as some of the other attempts we might make.  I don't have fancy editing software or the knowledge of how to take the best bits and pieces of recordings to make a seamless whole.

Once I uploaded the video to my YouTube channel, I uploaded the video to the dropbox for my class.  And now I need to make the final polishings to my paper.  I am to the point where I need to do some final revisions and call it done.  I've been immersed in this project for days, and I'm probably not able to see it clearly, at least not before the noon due date.

I am always aware that I might be able to create something better, but my experiences as a writer, or as any kind of creative, reminds me that it's always the case.  And what else is always the case:  even if it could be better, my efforts are likely good enough.

Seeing the trajectory of a life like Nikki Giovanni's reminds me of this point.  Our best work in one year will not be the best work in a different year.  The important thing is to keep doing the work.