desire for freedom". The extent of suffering which the slaves endured could have altered their faith in God. However, the black slaves investigations of the absurdities of human existence was concrete, and it was done within the context of the community of faith. They did not wonder whether God is just and right, but instead whether the pain of the world would cause them to lose faith in the word of God. One of the major sorrows which the slaves went through was more of the loss of the community than the actual physical brutality of slavery. This is why most of the spirituals focused on "going home" to be reunited with their families which had been broken through slavery. Although black slaves feared death, regarding it as the opposite of life and therefore evil, they also accepted the inevitability of death, because they believed in Jesus resurrection and also that death was not ultimate. The author also conveys the fact that references to "heaven" not only referred to a "transcendent reality" beyond time, but also to earthly places that blacks regarded as lands of freedom. These places include Africa, Canada, and the northern United States. They believed that life did not end with death, because they thought that God would rectify the wrongs against black people and this hope in a radically new future was defined the spirituals in two distinct ways: language about heaven as a different sort of place after death and language about the "last days". In spirituals, heaven was the place for the mourner, the despised, the rejected, and most importantly, the black. The spirituals, however, were not the only types of songs which blacks adopted as a solution to the problem of black suffering. The blues represent the secular dimension of black experience, meaning they are "worldly" songs which tell us about the blacks suffering and surviving while being oppressed. They are secular in the sense that they "confine their attention solel...
