March 20

Saint Cuthbert and Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Author

David Barnhart
March 20, 2025

Today is the feast day of Saint Cuthbert, who died in 687. He represents the interesting mix of Celtic, Roman, and Danish traditions that formed early Anglo-Saxon Christianity. He was a bishop who longed to be a hermit. 

Today is also the birthday of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, in 1915. She is called “the Godmother of Rock & Roll,” because rock has its roots in her gospel music. She took her electric guitar into nightclubs and secular venues and sang about Jesus in a unique musical style. While her relationship with Marie Knight was an “open secret,” she was very public about her faith, and demonstrated what a confident, inclusive, liberatory Christianity could look like. 

Today also marks the beginning of the year on the Bahá’í calendar. The Bahá’í faith is a relatively new monotheistic religion that measures time from its founding in 1844.

Reflection:  

Alice Randall writes of Sister Rosetta Tharpe: 

…she inspires the blurring of certain lines. Rosetta always had her foot on some chalkline and was smearing it. She loved singing gospel songs in bars surrounded by chorines with few clothes. That wasn't something she tolerated — that was something she savored. Even when it was all mixed up with poverty and exploitation. She knew how to find and focus on the sugar in the chord, and the way she sang and strummed that focus inspired other women to find what sweet might be in the bitter of life.

Prayer: God, let me live an integrated life that makes music of contradictions, that smears the lines we draw between secular and sacred. Let us name the truth and find what is sweet in the bitter of life. Amen.