Today I listened to an episode of Speaking of Faith while purging my wardrobe. I really like NPR's Speaking of Faith program, so I've decided to download every podcast that interests me. Today I heard Isabel Mukonyora interviewed about a religious movement of her Shona people, the Masowe Apostles. It's a tradition that mixes Christian tradition with other ancient African traditions. It's inspired by the idea of going into the wilderness, John the Baptist style. I will stop there, because even after the show, I don't think I could do justice to explaining the movement.
What I would like to talk about is my emotional response to listening to this articulate African woman talk about her faith. She went to a Catholic boarding school run by the missionaries. She also had a grandmother who refused to give up her African understanding of God when the colonialists came to Zimbabwe. And she grew up with a lot of questions about God. Questions I also ask.
-What is heaven?
-Why is God is impervious to human suffering?
These are more my own questions:
-Why the missionary god and not the grandmother's god?
-Why is suffering so key to Christianity? Why is it good to worship a God who demands the blood sacrifice of His own son? Why such violence?
-Why is the key to understanding the salvation message agreeing to see myself as fundamentally so putrid that eternal torture and damnation is the only thing I'm worthy of? And how does one not hate themselves if they accept this message? How does the message of Jesus's love your neighbor as you love yourself work in this system?
I have the Christian answers to these questions echoing around in my head. I was a star Evangelist at some point in my life after all. I've read C.S. Lewis. I've practiced defending the faith. I've lived with the missionaries. But today, listening to this woman's process of exploration and the freedom and richness she finds in the wilderness, I just wanted to have that same freedom. It's like those clothes that I have in my closest. They are faded, I haven't worn them in over a year, but I feel guilty for throwing them out. I don't have anything to replace them yet. I don't know what I want next. I don't know what I want to look like. I don't know what I want to tell the world about myself. I just know I don't want to put the old clothes back on.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hey Wild Gal.
I hadn't thought of a cool comment for the last post, when I saw this one today. I am used to posting silly little quips, but this doesn't seem the forum for silly or little or quips.
I like that you wrote this. This is really good. Sounds a lot like what someone else we know is thinking through. But... I don't know what to say. Just that I like it.
That's all.
Post a Comment