On this, the holiest of days—it’s Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah, Kwanza starts tomorrow and the solstice was just four days earlier—I’m thinking about blessings. And I’m thinking about how holiness may mean something different to me than it means to you. I’m thinking about what we do to find holiness, how we cultivate it, nurture it, deepen our relationship with it like a sentient thing. And I’m thinking about what happens when we don’t.
I’m not a Chance the Rapper fan, per se. Don’t know any of his other songs. But I read an essay about him by Hanif Abdurraqib and I was intrigued.
Hanif said, “I haven’t been to church in years but I am of a people who know how to preach. Chance the Rapper has probably been to church more recently than I have, or at least he understands the gospel better than I ever will. By which I mean the gospel is, in many ways, whatever gets people into the door to receive what ever blessings you have to offer.”
The song Sunday Candy, by Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment, with gorgeousness from Chance the Rapper and Jamilia Woods on vocals, is a tribute to Chance the Rapper’s grandma. It feels like a pocket-sized gem with nonstop joy-movements and old timey sets and clothes that were beamed in from the best of times. Then all that is compacted hard and sparkly as a diamond, all squeezed into less than four minutes. The rapping and theatrics land in my throat like happy-crying, like the taste of being lit up from inside.
And then Jamilia sings
You gotta move it slowly
Take it in my body like it's holy
I've been waiting for you for the whole week
I've been praying for you, you're my Sunday candy
and this song, this video, these words are my religion right now. It is everything and anything, all that nourishes the neglected dry patches in me, call it what you want. Needless to say, it’s worth a watch.
And that is what I want for you all. To have your Sunday Candy today, and every day you show up for it. To take every gorgeous little lovely, loving, genuine thing into your body like it’s holy. And to tribute the hell out of all the hand made, pan fried, sun dried
South side, beat-the-devil-by-a-landslide grandmas out there.