Saturday, September 28, 2013

Giving Ourselves Greatly in the Rituals of Life in our Communities


JJ and daughter Zadie doing the Virginia Reel at our square dance last weekend.



I am surprised to feel a bit unmotivated this week to put up a post, especially since the last week has some very newsworthy events (at least in our lives here) worth reporting.

It has been a week since my last update on the eve of my return from a 5 day trip to Kigali last Friday, and I wanted to be able to report on that before jumping into the following week which began (on Saturday) with a party!

Yes it was time once again for our tri-yearly folk and line dance party.  It is kind of a back-to-school gathering, a time to take stock of who is still here from last year and who are the new arrivals.  We try to schedule it toward the end of the first month back from vacation so people have a chance to get settled.

The biggest challenge with regard to preparation is getting the house ready before the big day.  Rebecca and I prepare food and other parts of the house as well.  Being in Rwanda until Friday made this a bit of a challenge, especially with yoga on Saturday morning.  But by early afternoon we had the house ready—all the furniture out of the living room and moved onto the porch, the music plugged into the back up power system, food and beverages prepared, and guests started arriving after 4. 

I have noticed that the number of people coming to these events has tended to increase over the years, and I would say that at the height of the party there were at least 70 counting children.

Besides the excitement of having so many people here and the chance to celebrate the beginning of our last year, there is a ritual significance that these gatherings take on for me that I have spoken of before.  I expect we will have a total of 3 such events this year—one now, one at Christmas, and one toward the end of the year.  Dancing together, especially the figures of square dancing, is a symbol--an affirmation of our community, our interdependence, our support of each other.  I believe these dances had this intention historically—a symbol of social and cultural cohesion.  In this cross-cultural context I see even more value in this.  In some ways it seems a bit ironic to be reading more and more about the lack of social cohesion in our country at the level of our legislators, and yet finding here that differences in political ideology are not causes for culture wars in this community where Americans are a small minority.

There continue to be a larger and larger group of US citizens with families in Burundi, and this has been evident over the years in these gatherings.  It certainly feels like a big change for us as I remember being able to count the US families on one hand when we arrived in 2008 (3).

Whether the additional families is making the dancing any better is debatable, but we did have fun doing several line dances, a hora, a cotillion, and ending with the Virginia Reel before dinner.

The last Reel had particular meaning for me because among the guests was the Withrow family, American missionaries that have been in the process of leaving for a while but symied by issues of visas for 2 adopted children.  Finally Astrid (the mother) and 4 of the 5 girls will be able to leave for the US while Travis and Divine (last adopted daughter) stay to finish her visa process.  Saying goodbye to Astrid and the girls is a mixed blessing.  We are thrilled that they have been able to get this far in terms of completing this process, but sad to see them leave.

Watching Travis and Astrid do their final ‘sashees’ down the line reminded me fondly of the many times they and their family have celebrated this rite with us in the past 5 years.

After our dinner, we did have a time of prayer with their family with those of us who knew them gathering around them in a circle and praying for God’s guidance and protection over them as Astrid and the girls leave, and for a rapid completion of the work left to let Travis and Divine leave as well.

The Withrows
The dinner was great and for any who did not feast on the first round, there was at least as many desserts as their were main courses.  The kids had a blast playing, watching movies and jumping on the trampoline.  (I did take a peak in at the trampoline once or twice and was a bit shocked by the wildness of the little kids bouncing around.)  I am thankful that the large enclosing safety net keeps them all on top of the trampoline mat.  We also have mattresses against the walls that are close to the tramp. 

Among the newcomers to our gathering were several families of doctors who have moved here to staff a training hospital upcountry.  There are more than 20 counting children and it was great to meet several of them at our dance this year.  I am encouraged to see their sacrificial desire to live and work upcountry to improve the Burundi health care system through better training of doctors at the clinical level.

The celebration ended a bit after 8:30 pm and the clean up took about an hour.  I actually like the work of methodically putting everything back the way it was—putting all the furniture back into the living room.  Preparing the house is an interesting transformation made possible by the fact that the large living room has large doors out to the large porch allowing us to move the furniture between the spaces easily.  The capacity to transform our living room into a dance hall is one of my favorite features of the house we live in.

I was grateful for small things.  It is rainy season and it did rain some, but since the wind was not too strong the water did not come in onto the porch.  Also, the power went off 5 times during the party, but thanks to our back-up power system (solar and battery) no one even noticed a glitch as it switched back and forth between battery and main power several times during our dances.  I was thankful that none of these things were an impediment to us being able to dance together last Saturday.

Rebecca and I went to bed a little after 10pm.  We enjoyed sitting briefly in our clean living room when we had finished and marveled at the way things went.  There is a sense of relief in giving oneself greatly in something worthwhile and seeing it come to fruition.  We are definitely getting better at doing it efficiently and with less planning.  This round we did not really begin preparations prior to the night before and were done 24 hours later.  We did have help from friends with dishes at the end thank Tim and Jeanette our South African friends for hanging around a bit longer at the end to help with that.


Sunday morning was also to be an unusual day for me as I had agreed, after much coaxing, to go to visit again, one of the local “Mennonite Brethren’ churches in Bujumbura.  I have mentioned before the complex relationship MCC has with these churches as they are started by independent pastors who want to be affiliated with the Mennonite church for complicated reasons, but financial assistance being high on the list.  None of these churches was started under any authority of an existing Mennonite Church polity.  They are registered with the Burundi as 'mennonite' but have no official status with the World Mennonite Conference.

We seem to have the opposite problem of some of our Evangelical missionary friends.  While they are working to bring people here into a relationship with the Lord, we, at MCC are doing what we can to politely push away churches that are forming themselves and claiming to be Mennonite.  (Self-Evangelism?)  Definitely a problem of the modern age!

But in fairness, when I go to one of these churches for a visit, as I am often invited to do, I am always pleased by the enthusiasm of the worship within.  The congregation, whether they embrace Anabaptist theology or not, are always lively and vibrant in their worship and sing beautifully.

The reason for my attendance this week was the opening of a new church.  My appearance there was important to the ‘bishop’ of the MB church here as a sign of blessing from what I think they imagine to be the ‘great white church patrons.’

child outside the church 
As usual, I arrived at 9 for the 9am service which began at 10.  There were many logistics that were planned at the last minute, like renting a generator, and then getting gas for it (separate trips) when it was found that the power was off in the neighborhood. 

When it finally did start, though, I did really enjoy listening to and watching the 6 choirs that comprise that church of about 100 people. Each choir had prepared songs and dances and the worship time was really beautiful.

intercessor
There was a very intense time for prayer intercessors, a group of old men and women that gathered around 2 men playing drums furiously while they sang and dance with abandon.  At the end several women were prophesying in a kind of trance. I felt moved to dance around wildly as well and had a funny thought about the quote in the book of Samuel “Is Saul among the prophets?” at the thought of what the spectacle of me participating in the ritual would have looked like.   Very charismatic group!

The service ended about 4 hours later and I was thankful that I was not asked to share a meal with them.  I was able to join Rebecca and the kids in the late afternoon at Club du Lac Tanganyika before our small group in the afternoon.

The pastor insisted that I take a photo of the congregation gathered outside with me in front of the new building.  I put it here and turning it black and white to capture the feeling I had about doing it.  I really did not like being put on display and even asked to pose as a ‘great white missionary’ bringing the Gospel to the savage heart of Africa.  That is not what Burundi is now and there are plenty of Burundian Christians who are capable of sharing the Gospel and planting churches in this mostly Christian country.  But I am learning more and more that when we come, we inhabit roles and identities here that we are put into, even if they are stale and unsupportable.  This is the way that I am supposed to look to those who invited me.—The Great White Hope-- bringing the Good News... and other more tangible benefits.



I am happy to say I had another experience this week that stands in stark contrast to the experience in the church on Sunday.  It was the opportunity to go with Rebecca to a gathering of leaders of all the major Burundian protestant churches as well as representatives from the UN human rights office to talk about a mechanism for the ‘Church’ to have a voice in the CVR (truth and reconciliation commission) that is being formed.  This is a very delicate political issue and one that will affect most Burundians.  How does one bring healing and reconciliation by righting past wrongs?  By exposing to the light of truth, the crimes of the past—particularly the atrocities of the past 14 years.

The problem is immense and one of the biggest complicating factors is that the govt, currently in power was one of the rebel groups in the past who were accused of many of the atrocities.  Can we expect such a govt. to allow this process to go forward?  And what is the role of the church in this?  Can Christians bring a unified voice into how this happens?  What is the role of justice and grace in all of this? 

These are important questions and ones the church has not been prepared to answer because historically the church in Burundi has not been very involved in politics as an institution.   There was much debate during the meeting and a recognition that church leaders themselves need education about the issues at hand.  Most know the Bible for instance, but have no idea what is in the Arusha accords.

One of the highlights of the event was listening to Rebecca deliver a meditation on what conflict resolution and restorative justice look like in the Bible.  She used the passage in Matthew about Jesus’ instruction on how to restore one’s brother to the church when he is wrong.

To me, the most interesting point that came out of the debate was the recognition, that unlike other institutions of justice, the Church does have a responsibility to minster to the offender as well as the victim.  I think it is true that we look at justice more from the point of view of the victim’s rights.  But the church has the ministry of seeking and saving the LOST.  The importance of restoring the offender as well as the victim has interesting ramifications in a transitional justice process.

I would say that outside those highlights the rest of the week is a bit of a blur, but that is not entirely true.  I did have one bad and particularly memorable event.  I was inspecting our roof for leaks and climbed the homemade ladder fashioned out of eucalyptus branches hammered together by a local carpenter a couple year ago.  I climbed it, and about 10 feet up it snapped in half.  I fell to the ground suddenly almost pulling the rain gutter with me.  Surprisingly I landed on my feet but had scraped much of the front of my body.  I am not in terrible pain, but it was a shock and reminder of the hazards we have here that we take for granted at home as being safe.  (ladders that do not snap in half)

We were all affected here by the reports of the Al Shabaab attack in Nairobi.  Although I do feel relatively safe here, I think many of us here live with some fear of something like that happening like that.  In truth, I think we face greater risks driving our cars upcountry from oncoming traffic, but the situation in Nairobi leaves a deeper psychological anxiety for us living here as ex-pats.  (I will add that we were relieved to hear that all MCC staff in Nairobi were safe although the MCC office is just a few blocks from the shopping Mall.  It is a place we frequent when we are in Nairobi ourselves.)

Ernie, center with fellow Kairos brothers.
I end with a tribute to a friend and mentor, a fellow missionary who was working with the Lummi Indian Nation in Washington State.  Ernie Shultis was a friend and co-worker in the Kairos prison ministry.  We worked together in a prison in Upstate New York for many years.  This was probably one of the most important preparations I had for the work I am doing here as I learned deeply what it means to be obedient to the cross under his guidance and leadership.  He died suddenly of lung cancer with about 2 weeks between diagnosis and death.  I know he is with the Lord now and many will miss him greatly.   “Precious in the sight of the Lord are the death of his saints.”

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