“Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya …”
— Gullah spiritual song
When someone wants to accuse someone else of being naive in their dealings with others, they accuse them of thinking we should all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.”
I wonder if any of them even know what it means.
I was 11 years old and spending a week at Camp Templed Hills in southern Ohio the first time I heard the song. I remember the summer of 1961 pretty well. It was the only time I got two weeks of camp, one of them at Camp Kern, the YMCA camp, and the other at Templed Hills, the church camp.
At our evening campfires, we sang, and one of the songs we learned was “Kumbaya.” We were taught that it was an African tribal song, and that “Kumbaya” meant “come by here.” The song was intended to invite the presence of God among those singing it.
Of course Africa had little to do with the origin. The song actually came from the early 20th century Gullahs on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. It was revived in Angola, of all places, in the 1950s, and American folk singers like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and Peter Paul & Mary picked it up from there.
Here’s a particularly pretty version from 1993 by Australia’s Judith Durham and her group the Seekers.
Of course it’s ridiculously naive. Who would even imagine inviting God among us these days? Who would want God to see what they’re doing or how they’re behaving?
I hope you can tell I’m being sarcastic.
I know not everyone is religious, but I also know that every religion except Satanism — and I include secular humanism in this — involves the principle of reciprocity. You know, “do unto others …”
Now most of us follow a somewhat twisted version of that. With our guards firmly raised, we treat others the way we expect them to treat us.
But what if we didn’t? What if we did take a “kumbaya” attitude, if we made a decision that we would behave in a way that would make God … or our mother … or even ourselves proud of the way we had acted?
What if we behaved morally, not just legally?
Now before you write me off as hopelessly naive, I don’t mean smiling and holding out a hand of friendship to our enemies. Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden would still be on the “bad” list.
But what if we dealt with people who hadn’t shown themselves to be our enemies as if we hoped they would be our friends? Or at least that they would walk away from the encounter respecting us?
Just imagine what the world would be like if each one of us resolved to be proud of ourselves.
Kumbaya?
Absolutely.