Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times

by Otis Moss III

A “deeply spiritual and socially radical” (Dr. Obery Hendricks, PhD) guide to uplift our spirits as we work for justice in these politically turbulent times—from Reverend Otis Moss, III, Senior Pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ and one of the country’s most renowned and beloved spiritual and civil rights leaders.

Once again, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. first observed in the 1960s, it is midnight in America—a dark time of division and anxiety, with threats of violence looming in the shadows. In 2008, the Trinity United Church in Chicago received threats when one of its parishioners, Senator Barack Obama, ran for president. “ We’re going to kill you ” rang in Reverend Otis Moss’s ears when he suddenly heard a noise in the middle of the night. He grabbed a baseball bat to confront the intruder in his home. When he opened the door to his daughter’s room, he found that the source of the noise was his own little girl, dancing. She was simply practicing for her ballet recital.

At that moment, Pastor Moss saw that the real intruder was within him. Caught in a cycle of worry and anger, he had allowed the darkness inside. But seeing his daughter evoked Pslam 30: “You have turned my mourning into dancing.” He set out to write the sermon that became this inspiring and transformative book.

Dancing in the Darkness is a “life-affirming” (Dr. Teresa L. Fry Brown) guide to the practical, political, and spiritual challenges of our day. Drawing on the teachings of Dr. King, Howard Thurman, sacred scripture, southern wisdom, global spiritual traditions, Black culture, and his own personal experiences, Dr. Moss instructs you on how to practice spiritual resistance by combining justice and love. This collection helps us tap into the spiritual reserves we all possess but too often overlook, so we can slay our personal demons, confront our civic challenges, and reach our highest goals.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Theology, Christian, Christianity, Race

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 3, 2023

About the author

Otis Moss III (1970–) is the pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.

He is a graduate of Morehouse College (1992) and Yale Divinity School (1995).

Reviews

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

’To my daughter, Makayla,
who taught her father how to Dance in the Dark’


The author, Otis Moss, III, is a Senior Pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. In addition to being a spiritual leader, he is a civil right leader, as well. While there are messages, scriptures, included in this beautifully composed book, at its heart is a message of overcoming injustice with love.

Despite repeated threats to the church where he serves as Senior Pastor, this is not a condemnation of the increasing threats of violence against this church, the community it serves, and the targeted communities throughout our country. It is an invitation to learn what it means to confront and combat the violence through extending love, compassion and grace. Included in these pages are examples of when he, along with members of his congregation extended these offerings of grace to those who most would consider ‘unworthy’ of being offered any grace.

While the author is a pastor, and there are moments based on his religious beliefs, this is less a book about religion itself, it is based more on the basic things we were taught. Be kind to others. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To love your enemies, and do good, to lend a hand to those in need, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great. This is a ‘religion’ that doesn’t really require much, except being kind, and offering compassion. Extending an offering of forgiveness, of love, a powerful antidote to hate and injustice, or - to borrow from Huey Lewis, love is a “curious thing” that can “change a hawk to a little white dove.”

There’s a moment in this that really moved me, when he wakes at three in the morning to find his daughter awake in her room, dancing. Irritated at and exhausted, he tells her to go to bed. But then, another voice inside him tells him to listen to her, to look at her. Her joy, so free from all of his dark thoughts that night, her joy so apparent despite the apparent darkness from both the night sky and those who would mean harm. And it changes him. The way he saw how his concerns, his worrying over legitimate issues caused him to focus only on those issues, and to lose sight of those moments of joy, of good, of love.

This is a treatise to “'Love your neighbor as yourself'" even for those who are not religiously inclined, these are wise words on how to live a life that you can look back on without being haunted by regret. Be kind to others…it all boils down to just those simple words.


Pub Date: Jan 3 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Simon & Schuster

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books to read in what has seemed like a dark year. Rev. Otis Moss III teaches us in several chapters/sermons that we can turn the negativity into good even when it seems like no light is peaking through. It's an encouraging book. It has taught me that heroes and villains come from similar humble beginnings and that the only difference between the two is the choices that they made. Moss teaches that forgiveness is not just for absolution, but it has a larger purpose. Finally, this book allows the reader to tap into the quiet strength within each of us by drowning out the noise that tries to harm us mentally and spiritually.

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of this book on one of my favorite podcasts, Pass the Mic, and I am glad I decided to pick this up. This book is encouraging, inspiring, insightful, powerful. The story from which the book takes its title is especially poignant. I want to read, listen, (and watch!) more by Dr. Moss.

[Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one that is perfect for starting the year or restarting the year. In these trying times, this book is the balm that we all need. The book nicely frames a hopeful perspective from lived experience and through the lens of civil rights and social justice. For anyone who reads the news, follows social media and feels overwhelmed by these times, this book offers a prescription for us to dance in the darkness. I highly recommend this book and hope that it leaves the reader as inspired and hopeful as it left me.

[Sharon Dene · Rating 5 out of 5]

When an amazing book it was really interesting and very light alignment to a lot of stuff going on in the black world. Otis Had a lot of great ideas and I love how How he was raising his children. Give me a lot of good points too like look at every situation And analyze them and see how the outcome comes. I thought it was funny when the children had painted all over the house and the dog too but he wasn't mad he thought it was OK they still got punished but he didn't really love me manner he wasn't yelling at them or screaming at them I like how the chapters explained Different things in his life and how we look at things in a very enlightened way. Explain what In the Charleston Baptist church And how he looked At the situation in a very intelligent way and he brought up some really good points about that too. The boy had no education and he was always on hateful Websites and he had no Nobody to explain things to him. When he thought somebody was in their house that time He explained My daughter was still up And wanted to dance in the dark. Especially like how the slavery came to America that was very interesting too. I did not know about that history behind all that How the Jim Crow Laws were effective after the Civil War it was very interesting How these people We're free from slavery but these Laws attract Then in very hard way. I think this Books should be read in schools Because it shows how Become In a meaningful way how to address problems

[Lisa]

This is both tragic and hopeful. It is rooted in history and the Bible and Moss’s own ministry and life experience. The title seems to come from an amazing time when he was being threatened for making a stand
and receiving death threats. He woke in the night to hear noise and was scared and when he went to investigate it was his little daughter dancing in the moonlight in her room. And he chose to see the beauty of that moment rather than the fear that was all around. That’s the vibe of the book. For those feeling angry or scared, this is a book and spiritual resources.

[Stephanie Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offered helpful insights for confronting and overcoming obstacles in our lives through love and compassion as well as some facts about Black history in the United States that I didn't know before.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much in the tradition of MLK, a work from a leader in the Black Church that brings pop culture, current challenges, and personal stories together with theology and deep spiritual grounding.

[Kathleen]

We read and discussed this book for our summer church book group. It's not exactly what I expected (what did I expect, not sure...), but I liked it.

Quoted on p.61/62, The Journey, a poem by Mary Oliver. It's in her book, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. I looked it up in my ebook and I had bookmarked the poem/page many years ago!

Some miscellaneous notes on the book:
Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times by Otis Moss III with Gregory Lichtenberg and Foreword by Michael Eric Dyson


Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, IL

(August 12 - Big Mama's House Sewing Ministry - from the Church's website!)

Chapter 1 - Link Love and Justice: Learn to Slay Your Spiritual Dragons.

Howard Thurman - Jesus and the Disinherited.

From Wikipedia:
Jesus and the Disinherited is a 1949 book by African-American minister, theologian, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman. In the book, Thurman interprets the teachings of Jesus through the experience of the oppressed and discusses nonviolent responses to oppression. The book developed out of a series of lectures that Thurman presented at Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas, during April 1948."

The ideas encapsulated in the book had been developing for a number of years. In February 1932, Thurman gave an address in Atlanta on “The Kind of Religion the Negro Needs in Times Like These,” which was an early version of what would become “Good News for the Underprivileged.” In the summer of 1935, he delivered “Good News for the Underprivileged” at the Annual Convocation Lecture on Preaching at Boston University. The address was printed in the summer 1935 issue of Religion and Life, and forms the basis of Jesus and the Disinherited. He would deliver “Christianity and the Underprivileged” again in February 1937 at Union Church in Berea, Kentucky, and at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. On December 10, 1937, Thurman delivered the address “The Significance of Jesus to the Disinherited” as the leader of Religious Emphasis Week at A&T College of North Carolina in Greensboro. A number of other addresses on the theme would take place in 1938, 1939, 1942, and 1947, with the lectures that became the book occurring April 11–16, 1948 as the Mary L. Smith Memorial Lectures at Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas.

Thurman continued to speak on the theme, delivering addresses in 1949, 1951, 1952, 1957, and in 1959 delivered a 12-part sermon series in the Boston University's Marsh Chapel on "Jesus and the Disinherited."

In his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., Lerone Bennett Jr. notes that King studied Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited during the Montgomery bus boycott


G.K. Chesterton said, “Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” (p. 13)

analogy to basketball and hockey - penalties; helping or hurting the team

The NEED for both love and justice.

Love Ethic of Jesus - that you must preach love not by what you say in the pulpit but by what you do… (p.16)

When Dr. King published a book of his most requested sermons in 1963, he had to choose one sermon to provide the title of the book and speak for all the rest. He chose “Strength to Love,” because he believed that love was the most difficult virtue to love. The question each of us must ask about love—deep, spiritual, agape love—is whether we have the strength of commitment that is required to link love to justice.

Chapter 2: Consecrate Your Chaos: Pause to Discover Possibility

Chaos breeds cynicism and despair. It pushes us toward withdrawal, inaction….Their only remaining tactic for advancing their agenda of injustice is to enforce silence. They conjure the demon chaos, trying to use its power to provoke the other side to despair and give up their struggle. This is chaos as an intentional political and spiritual strategy. We might lament that “the system is broken,” but that is incorrect. In this cae, the system is not broken. The system works by breaking people. (p. 22)

HOW DO WE FIGHT CHAOS?

When you take on the confusion and the violence and you refine them, purify them into something new, you are doing what in the vocabulary of faith we call consecrating your chaos.

Black Lives Matter started in 2013

Dr. King’s final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

Two influences on Dr. King, Howard Thurman and Thomas Merton, both spoke of the quiet of the inner life as an altar where we connect with both ourselves and the divine…. The silence that consecrates chaos is what prayer if for. ((p. 30/31)

Chapter 3: Redirect Your Rage: Harness Your Power

See Eyes on the Prize, consultant - Vincent Harding, a professor of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology

Malcolm X

Funeral of George Floyd - Professor Cornel West was interviewed. “What is it about those Black people?” he asked. “So thoroughly subjugated, but they want freedom for everybody.” He continued, “I’m not saying we don’t have Black thughs and gangsters. I’m talking about the best of our tradition… why face with the Ku Klux, Black Americans did not create their own Black Clan. There could have been “a civil war in every genration with terror cells in every ‘hood.” After millions of our people were enslaved, the world might have understood if African Americans had set out, one they got the chance, to destory their enslavers, burn it all down. (p. 43)

Chapter 4: Beat Bias: Practice Liberation Listening

Chapter 5: Rework Your Origin Story: Become a Spiritual Hero

KEY WORD - personal transformation

Superheroes

Donna Hammond - member of the church; studying in seminary. HORRIBLE past. Pastor Jeremiah Wright

Marilynne Robinson - Constitution of the USA - the world’s greatest works of fiction.

Poetry - “The Journey” by Mary Oliver.

Martin Luther King Jr. - transformation - the strict structure of Atlanta society; influenced by three influential men - Alonso Herndon (successful business man) Rev. William Holmes Borders (Wheat Street Baptist Church)


Chapter 6: Practice Prophetic Grief: Forgive to Build Spiritual Resistance

Mother Emmanuel Church (SC) - June 2015

p. 69 - Roxanne Gay

Forgiveness/Mercy/Grace Revenge/Retribution

p.74 - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Spiritual Resistance > Forgiveness = Freedom

As Dr. King reminded us even during the triumphs of the freedom movement in the 1960s, “The pant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower.”…. the work of spiritual resistance is far from done.

Chapter 7: Pardon Our Dust: Meet Failings with Grace

Chapter 8: Dance in the Darkness: Face Your Fears with Love

[Phoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been an excellent read. During times when you are unsure and upside down, you need some words to help you move forward, this book is good for that. The chapter ‘Rework Your Origin’ is an excellent reminder that your past doesn’t dictate your future.

[Melissa Sternhagen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book! It's a book with lessons for us all! This will not be the last time I read this or revisit this work. Thank you, Rev. Otis Moss III!

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not often do I listen to an audiobook and then go out and buy the physical book because I know I want to eventually read it again!

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short book consists of a collection of related essays on the topic of maintaining hope and growing spiritually in challenging times. It is especially, but not exclusively, aimed at Black people and relies heavily on the experiences of Black people and of the civil rights movement for examples and moral grounding. The author quotes extensively from Martin Luther King and Howard Thurman.

I wish these essays had been a little longer and gone a little deeper. I liked the messages, but I felt that they were fairly superficial and predictable. No new ground broken here.

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Author of
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[LilyRose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dancing in the Darkness by Otis Moss III is an uplifting and life-affirming spiritual guide. Reverend Otis Moss, III is the Senior Pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ and one of America’s beloved spiritual and civil rights leaders. Inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., scripture, Howard Thurman, Black culture and his own experiences this book is a guide on how to confront prejudice, civic challenges and our own fears. It is a beautifully constructed and engaging read filled with chapters that address life issues with poetic elegance and truthful clarity. In a time of division, isolation and anger this novel is an essential read that offers guidance and leadership. Insightful and moving his writing shows the strength in vulnerability and the power in connection. 4.5 Stars ✨.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for a review copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no one word I can come up with other than "powerful" to describe this book, one rooted in a letter Dr. Moss wrote to his son and in his witnessing his daughter dancing in her room in the middle of the night (hence the title). In a world that continues to become increasingly divided, and in a time when segments of the family of God are still being held/pushed down, this book is a powerful call to acting, listening, and being prophetic in both feeling and action. I've highlighted a lot, and there's most definitely much to go back and review again and again.

[Shannan Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading the first chapter, i became a little concerned about reading further, although I'm aware of the church history as well as it's previous leaders. But as I kept reading, come to find out it wasn't going the way I originally thought it would. Using several personal examples, Rev. Moss gives us encouragement for when we find ourselves in troubled circumstances. It was an incredibly profound and informative read.

[Ron at Rockhaven · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read as a reminder, or primer, on how a gospel liberation oriented faith can be a balm for personal and social crises and hurts. Uplifting, easy and short read, great anecdotes and revealing history on our civic struggles from 1619 to now, and how to apply the lessons learned from those historic turbulences to our own personal ones when immersed in chaos, grief, fear, anger, despair, helplessness, injustice, and privilege too. One of the best things I can say about a book: "It helps."

[James Klagge · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are using this for an adult Sunday School class at our church. It has been good at provoking discussion. The most interesting part was his description in Chapter 8 of how his church (Trinity UCC in Chicago) responded to an unexpected visit by protesters from the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so very glad I read this book. it is rich in metaphor, story, and wise counsel. The preacher from Trinity in Chicago spins moving, I would call them sermons, about our calling as people of faith, Christian faith, human faith, to be a part of the world around us. He slides and rides, dances and spins with his daughter around the midnight rooms of our lives. And he invites us to join in.

[Francis Hendricks, · Rating 5 out of 5]

The chapter about his little daughter dancing in the darkness of the wee hours of a morning was the piece that grabbed my interest. We live in chaotic times, scary times. So a message of hope in the middle of this long night of discontent in our country is a welcome message. Dr. Moss offers words of encouragement and wonder during trying times.

[Kathie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a prescription for what ails our society and provides lots of background on the Black Lives Matter movement among other cultural happenings. Mr Moss should go on the road with this message.

[Ginger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book EVERYONE should read.

[Jacob Musselman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful reminder of all that we need and can learn from the Black Tradition.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book discussion at OCBC. Excellent writer, powerful perspective of Black church ministry, inspiring.

[Eric Riddle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Consecrate the chaos!

[Donna Church]

A beautiful reflection on how to remain faithful to Christ while living in difficult times. Moss uses sermons, history, and personal experiences to show how love and light can overcome the darkness.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Personal: authentic fulfillment of the self
Communal: social engagement & responsibility
Spiritual: sacred kinship & connection with all creation

[Beth Lorow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many nuggets of wisdom about justice, love, and reckoning with hate in this slim book.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much inspiring and well put, stories and phrases that linger. Well suited for group discussion.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely beautiful and eminently useful spiritual reflection for finding and sustaining joy and energy for the long struggle towards justice. Accessible even for a rabbi ☺️