The funeral of Jesse Jackson

I wonder where the expression came from: "She never darkens the door....," a phrase that I associate with non-church-going people like me?

Except for the occasional wedding or funeral, I never "darken" the doors of organized religions.  But today I'm making up for a bunch of Sundays, watching the five-hour funeral service of Reverend Jesse Jackson. I'm on Hour Two, but I intend to watch it all the way to the getting-saved part if that's how it's going to end--which is typically the wrap-up of a good Baptist church event of any kind. 

Thousands of people attended the service in Chicago today--from choir members and soloists to preachers and speakers of all stripes and colors, to a handful of Democratic Presidents and dignitaries, Jackson's wife,  children and grandchildren on the front row.

As I was napping this afternoon, You Tube on, I woke up to the dynamic speech of Al Sharpton.  I'd never heard him deliver a sermon, I know him mainly as a host and guest on programs aired on MSNow.

But he rocked the congregation today, Martin Luther King style.  He got impassioned shout-outs and AMENs and applause from the people.  After hearing that, I decided to watch the entire service.  (The last one I watched similar to this one was the funeral of Mahalia Jackson.)

A cardinal, a rabbi and a Baptist preacher delivered poetic powerful prayers.  I copied a few lines from the prayer of the Baptist preacher, Otis Moss: 

Jessie Jackson was "a son of the South, a practitioner of good trouble, and an acolyte of holy mischief."

(Baptist preachers love threesomes, phrases with three parts!) 

"We come to honor a spiritual artist who painted upon the canvas of democracy with a rainbow coalition of colors that had been marginalized by antebellum myths that dismissed human dignity....

We honor the rhetorical genius of a man whose oral dexterity reshaped notions of what is possible.

The simple phrase 'I Am Somebody' when deployed by Rev. Jackson empowered a generation suffering from the lingering residue of confederate bacteria resting upon the unrealized constitutional promises in a space called America..." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQ2CD6UEZE