c. 2005 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ The soloist paused, closing her eyes to let the spirit of the hymn sink in as the 40-voice choir took its turn asking God to “Order my steps in your word.”

In rhythm with the thunderous voices of a choir nearing the end of the hymn, she broke in with intermittent cries of “C’mon, Jesus,” “Yeah” and “Thank you, Lord,” willing the singers forward as she prepared for her finale.

Then, her cane resting nearby, she lifted her face to the heavens and slowly enunciated each word in a crackling soprano that brought the singing prayer to a crescendo of praise: “Order … my … steps … in … your … word … dear … Lord.”

Every word, every note was important. This was only a rehearsal, but the combined choirs of Mount Gillion and New Jerusalem Baptist churches erupted in applause.

At age 97, Mother Mary Bryant still can deliver.

Gospel lovers squeezed into every crevice of the spacious Mount Gillion Church here _ in folding chairs lined up on both sides of all the aisles, standing along the back walls or sitting on any open space in the altar area _ before ushers finally had to turn people away for the recent concert by the living legend of Cleveland gospel music. Her two children, Marie Kinzer, 78, of Nashville, Tenn., and Thelma Johnson, 75, of Cleveland, attended the performance celebrating her lifelong joy of singing.

Mother Mary has run a long race from growing up poor in the Deep South to approaching the century mark with a vigor that allows her to continue working as a housekeeper and spend eight hours every Sunday in church.

Each step of the way, at home, at work or in church, a spiritual song is never far from her lips.

“I sing all the time. I sing and I whistle,” she said. “I just call it a gift from God. That’s all I call it, a gift from God.”

In her 98th year, her race is not over.

“She’s not at the finish line yet,” said the Rev. Bobby Ward, her pastor at New Jerusalem. “She’s got the spirit in her.”

“Just a closer walk with thee _ Grant it Jesus, if you please; Daily walking close to thee _ Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.”

The sound of gospel music permeated the brick walls and traveled down the steep steps outside New Jerusalem Baptist Church into the below-zero wind chill on a recent weeknight.

The people inside were singing “He is worthy to be praised” with a fervor that would have sent choir directors in many Protestant and Catholic churches into shock waves of pleasure.

But not Dr. James Houston, music minister at New Jerusalem.

“Is he worthy? Is he worthy? Is he worthy?” Houston, a dentist by day, kept shouting at the choir. “If you don’t mean it, don’t sing it.”

Talk about someone who takes pride in the music. This was just a song the choir was singing as part of the worship before rehearsal.

Mother Mary smiled. She has been working with Houston for decades and has heard it all before. Gospel music is serious business in the Baptist church, and it is not something Mother Mary has ever taken lightly.

“When you sing, you are asking God to help you,” she said. “I take it seriously, very, very, very seriously.”

They call her Mother Mary as a sign of respect _ she is the spiritual “mother” of the church.

Her own mother taught her to sing, and “even as a little child, I thought I was the best singer in the world,” she said.

Not that life was ever easy, particularly for a black child growing up in Nashville at the beginning of the century.

The white children had good schools, she remembers, but Mother Mary attended a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher for grades one through eight. She had to quit school after the eighth grade because “my mom got sick, and I had to take care of my mother.”

But she says she did it gladly. “I went through it with a smile. I never complained one time.”

Instead, she talked to God in song.

“Just say for instance something goes wrong and it kind of worries you. Get a song and sing that song, and it will kind of lighten it,” she said.

In 1947 she moved north with her husband, Lee, who had taken a job as a maintenance worker with the Cleveland Board of Education. She worked as a presser at a clothing company.

And she joined New Jerusalem Baptist Church, taking her place in the choir.

Musical styles changed. The a cappella, metronomic singing of hymns from earlier in the century was energized with a blues and jazz feel after World War II by gospel-music pioneers such as Thomas Dorsey.

Today, drums and guitars have been added in many black Baptist churches for a more contemporary sound.

What has not changed is the tradition handed down over generations of singing from a place not found on any sheet of music.

When gospel-music lovers come to hear Mother Mary, they hear the real thing, a soul-stirring experience that seamlessly weaves music and faith and life, say members of both Mount Gillion and New Jerusalem.

“She has what we call an anointing. An anointing enables and empowers you,” Houston said of Mother Mary. A lot of people can sing, Houston said, “but they don’t touch anybody.”

Mother Mary does.

“She’s going to give from her heart every time she sings,” Houston said.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

“Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee: How great thou art, how great thou art.”

The faded red carpet is repaired by visible strips of duct tape in several places. The central feature of the small church with functional wooden pews is a proclamation inscribed above the center of the altar announcing “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

As rehearsal began, Mother Mary stood near the back, snapping her fingers. When the song called for dance moves, with choir members bowing and then raising and waving their arms in fluid motions, she was right in time.

After the singing stopped for a spirit-led, stream-of-consciousness prayer, New Jerusalem trustee Lillie Torrence praised the congregation’s respected elder: “We thank you for Ma Bryant, Lord. We lift her up to you, a singing angel.”

Even as the recent concert celebrated Mother Mary’s extraordinary ability to still sing at her age, it was also a celebration of an everywoman in the black Baptist church, a woman who remained true to her faith, her friends and her church.

“She’s just been an example of the Christian woman,” Torrence said. “She’s been a blessing in more ways than I can explain.”

Bryant said she never thought of moving to a larger church. “I don’t like big churches. I can be who I am” at New Jerusalem, she said.

In winter and summer, she climbs the steep steps into New Jerusalem for Sunday worship that begins with two hours of Bible study and ends with evening worship.

In concert, when she sings “How Great Thou Art” or “I Must Tell Jesus,” she is singing the same songs she and others sang through the depths of the Depression, through the tribulations of separate and unequal schools and economic opportunities, through the loss of parents and spouse, into a future where she believes she will join her friends one day in a New Jerusalem.

They are songs that members of the black Baptist church have related to for generations, and still speak powerfully today to someone such as Houston, who recently lost both a son and a father but still is a man with a mission in his choral direction.

And to someone such as Ward, the pastor who has had a kidney transplant.

Mother Mary “is an inspiration to all of us. And lets us know that God is able,” Ward said. “She’s an amazing woman.”

For the women in the church and in the choir, there is something in Mother Mary’s music that speaks directly to the soul.

Arlene Goodman, 67, of Mount Gillion scrunched up her face and placed her hands over her heart as she imagined Mother Mary in song.

“It just sends chills up your spine when you look and she’s singing,” Goodman said. “I can just feel it, feel her and it, just makes you feel so good inside.”

“I must tell Jesus all of my trials, that I cannot bear these burdens alone.”

“Eternal … eternal … eternal …” At rehearsal, Mother Mary took the word “eternal” from the song “Only a Look at Jesus” and repeated it, softly at first and then building up to a volume that filled the sanctuary.

As she finished her part in the song that she made her own, Mother Mary Bryant looked up, wrapping her hands in prayer around the microphone.

No two performances at a gospel-music concert can ever be the same.

“It’s all going to take us where the spirit is,” Houston warned the combined choirs for the concert after some missed a prompt at the rehearsal. “It depends on where the spirit is, where Mama is, where we go.”

Sunday afternoon, although she has sung some of the songs thousands of times, Mother Mary could be sure of one thing: “I still get nervous,” she said, her impish smile widening at the thought.

But she knows where to turn.

“Without God’s help, I wouldn’t be able to do it,” she says. “I always put him in front, behind me, and all around me.”

There are no thoughts of retiring from the choir.

Not at age 100. “I’ve got three more years. If they want me up there, I’ll be up there.”

Not even if she would live to be 200.

“If I go two, I’ll be right there,” she said.

“As long as I’m able, if I’m in a wheelchair … I’m going to do it.”

MO/PH RNS END

(David Briggs write about religion for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland)