The ordinariness of God

...Probably my most vivid experience of this enthusiasm for celebration was the Easter vigil in a parish church in Zambia...

...Anyone who has had the experience of celebrating with a black community in the U.S...

...These issues have not been seriously faced by most African scholars...

...Furthermore, common ancient scriptures are nonexistent in the African tradition...

...For one thing, I was quite sure that I could never live again without a fairly intense community life...

...All three of these characteristics have their shadow side...

...The first characteristic of African spirituality is an unhesitating llJanuary1991:15 and unquestioning acceptance of the reality of the invisible world...

...I spoke to some younger missionaries who echoed the somewhat different concern of N. Onwu, an African writer: "The African situation is very painful...

...What can we learn from African spirituality...

...Our secular culture, so caught up in what we can touch and see, needs to experience the presence and the power of what we cannot see...

...I found this a much more difficult task than the earlier one, for reasons that will soon become apparent...

...There is a danger of offense to relatives and friends unless all the stops are pulled out for such special events...

...In addition, and seemingly much more important day-by-day, are the ancestors: all of the dead who can be remembered...

...But if we want to understand the working of traditional religious concepts in modem Africa, we cannot neglect seeing them, first of all, as a part of a political and social order which no longer exists in its earlier, pure form...

...4, 1988), or of Bunyoro spirituality, assisted by A.B.T...

...There were about forty uniforrnly dressed, young teenage girls who led the procession irrto the church, dancing and singing as they swayed down the aisle...

...nother, and greater, difficulty for the student of African spirituality, one which promises to become more acute with the passage of time, is that ATR as an independent reality is fast disappearing from the scene...

...The delight in celebration can become so inflated that it bankrupts families after a wedding, or religious communities after a vow celebration...

...hat I saw on a Sunday in Nairobi, probably the most "Westernized" of all African countries apart from South Africa, was tangible evidence of the pervasive religiousness of Africans...

...Each partner brings to it a unique and significant mode of communication...

...Not that tradition is nonexistent, but it is handed on orally, and, when it comes to spirituality, the living contact with ultimates is passed on more through chant and dance, through symbols and proverbs than through scriptures and systematic teaching or writing...

...Shorter has done just that through his years of living experience with the Kimbu in a small African community in Tanzania...

...Even though "traditional Africa" is now largely history, that does not mean it has disappeared...

...Toward the end of his time with them he came to realize that they had wrought significant changes in him: From many points of view I was a different person...

...Consequently, separate individual spiritual practice, such as we knox# in Buddhism, for example, or in Christianity, seems to be alien to African spirituality...

...Despite the difficulty of finding and understanding ATR in its pure, but fast-disappearing, forms, it continues to have a lively existence in new guises...

...E THE ORDINARINESS OF GOD AN AFRICAN SPIRITUALITY DANIEL J. O'HANLON bout fifteen years ago, during a sabbatical year, I spent thirteen months in India and the major Buddhist countries, in an effort to deepen my own Christian life through direct contact and involvement with Hindu and Buddhist spirituality...

...Passing a movie theater Sunday morning on Nairobi's main street, I was greeted by three smiling and friendly young people, two women and a man, inviting passersby into what becomes, on Sunday morning, a church...

...I had also come to appreciate a greater depth in human relationships...

...But African spirituality seems so closely bound to the ongoing, day-by-day life and personal relationships of the group that practical means for one as a non-African Christian to appropriate the resources of African spirituality are difficult to come by...

...It is multiple and various...

...can recognize that this is where it all came from...

...Historically, in Africa community has not been an optional extra, but, for the individual, a basic condition of survival...

...it is an intimate "primal" presence in all material things, indeed, in all of life, nature, soul, and body...

...But these are not, at least not yet, the dominant voices in the countries I visited...

...But the mode is less "systematic...

...Much of what is called indigenization or inculturation appears to them now as irrelevant antiquarianism...

...I found that I was positively in need of company most of the time...

...Furthermore, while the serious spiritual practice of Hindus or Buddhists does not seem to be threatened by the entrance of Christians or Muslims into their world, the same can hardly be said of African spirituality Over thirty years ago Spencer Trimingham wrote that as time passes it is clear that African religion has no future as an organized and formalized religion, and isolated attempts to update and formulate ATR have been academic and unsuccessful...

...With these weapons, the young "warriors" no longer respect the authority of the elders who formerly had the last word...

...First of all, it is dangerous to generalize about "African religion...

...One must look at this apparently disappearing tradition as it continues to exist among Christians and Muslims, if one wishes to understand modem Africa...

...At the end of the vigil, the young girls led the procession out before the entrance to the church, where the singing and dancing and ululating continued spontaneously on and on into the night...

...In the short time, for instance, since Bruni Nivelli prepared his study of the Karamajong, published in 1988, the acquisition of sophisticated modem weapons has significantly changed the patterns of life for this cattle-raiding, mobile ethnic group...

...Over a period of about five months I visited Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe...

...Once learned, these practices can carry much of the richness of the ancient, durable, and time-tested tradition, and can become integrated into Christian life, without the need of becoming a full-time member of some Hindu of Buddhist group...

...The large tent of a U.S...

...In a culture where we insist on choice in everything from supermarket cereals to the sex of unborn infants, it's unlikely we will ever return to the "brand-name loyalty" which rooted our politics in ongoing party commitments...

...Our overemphasis on what can be reasoned and calculated, our instinctive desire to master nature may learn something from the African sensitivity to being in tune with nature and the cosmos...

...and not only in church buildings, but in all kinds of public places...

...Scholars are divided on the issue of how far one can go in generalizing about African religion...

...Here are some of the reasons, which in themselves are instructive about the nature of African spirituality...

...This does not mean that Africans are tongue-tied, as anyone who has listened to an African preacher, either in Africa or elsewhere, can attest...

...Dance, drums, festivities, singing together--these group activities are omnipresent...

...Men, women, and children dressed in their Sunday best on the way to worship...

...Instead, energy has been spent on so-called indigenization" (Theology Digest, Summer, 1987...

...Everywhere one looks one sees the evidence of some form of worship...

...Two years ago the sabbatical came round once again and I decided to embark on a similar project...

...There will be differences of beliefs about the inhabitants of this "other" world, but its existence is a given and God is its supreme inhabitant...

...But to generalize about African spirituality is more problematical...

...The self-centered individualism and the impersonalism of our mass culture could learn something from Africa's strong sense of community and interpersonal intimacy, of the unfailing wonder and delight in human relationships which John Taylor writes of...

...Then there is the problem of where and how a Western Christian might experience and learn from African spirituality...

...I found the time enormously stimulating, and it was not too difficult to enrich my own life, especially, though certainly not exclusively, the life of prayer, through the experience...

...Shorter, in his Priest in the Village (Geoffrey Chapman, 1979), suggests that the most effective approach is for the non-African inquirer to immerse himself or herself in an African traditional community, rather than require systematic 14: Commonweal articulation from the African traditional person...

...Indeed, it may welt be that African Christian--and Muslim---communities will be the milieu in which this characteristic of African spirituality will be most effectively maintained, preserved, and brought to fulfillment...

...At frequent intervals the progress of the liturgy at the altar paused for a long stretch of singing and dancing...

...I was told by one missionary that in an African hospital where she works, even the hospital staff will not care for those who have been rejected by their own community...

...evangelist in an open field, crowded with listeners...

...Indeed, he sees this primal awareness, uncluttered by reflective thinking, as one of the most prized elements of African spirituality...

...My brief and limited experience suggests that, despite the hesitation of the specialized anthropologists, several common characteristics can be identified...

...An African professor of African religion at Nairobi University gave me an example to illustrate this easy acceptance of and familiarity with the invisible world that God inhabits...

...For dialogue is something more than the exchange of rational reflection...

...The strong sense of community can become a harmful tribalism that only with difficulty acknowledges the larger reality of the nation or the human family as a whole...

...The second characteristic, one which I met over and over again, is the strong sense of community...

...Most of Africa experiences tribalism, poverty, corruption, political instability, and economic crisis...

...Nevertheless, I do not believe it is impossible...

...Another larger group of older women sang with a volume which shook the roof...

...Three of them assumed special bodily positions---closed eyes, bowed beads--as they prayed...

...Yet, with this "ordinariness" of God, there is a sense of quiet reverence for this mystery which is beyond our understanding...

...16: Commonweal...

...And finally, perhaps most important of all, our workaholic inability to really play might be corrected by the African delight in simple, impractical, not cost-efficient celebration...

...The extent to which nature spoke to the Kimbu about unseen things was a revelation to me and imparted a growing unity to my own life ~experience....Aspects of Traditional African Religion, "seeds of the Gospel," had helped to deepen my own Christian faith, and had become a part of my own personal creed...

...I had also learned to feel some sort of continuity between my life and the rest of creation...

...These younger missionaries feel that some form of liberation theology is appropriate, adapted, of course, to the African situation...

...No doubt about it, for Africans the reality of the divine is unquestioned...

...They love it...

...Even the more distinctive and "unassimilated" traditional ethnic groups in more remote parts of Africa are rapidly changing...

...If one were to undertake a study of what might be learned from, say, Karamajong spirituality, with the help of such informed scholars as Bruno VitelIi (Aspects of Karamajong Ethnosociology, Verona, Museum Combonianum, No...

...When the traditional African loses this "primal" experience, we become losers in the dialogue...

...The prognosis is for continuing stalemate...

...At the beginning of a public gathering a Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim, and a traditional African elder bad been asked to give invocations...

...In dealing with Indian and Buddhist spirituality, it was not difficult to enter into certain practices, usually of a meditative character, without becoming a full participant member of a religious community...

...All through places like Kibera and Kangemi, huge squalid shantytowns on the fringes of Nairobi, sounds of drums, and singing, and loud praying from all directions...

...The third characteristic of African spirituality is its delight in celebration...

...When I asked an experienced missionary whether the monarchical position of the chief lessened the significance of community authority, I was corrected and informed that in the communities with which she is familiar, all voices were heard, and the chief was less an autocrat than a facilitator of community consensus after all had been heard...

...I came across nothing to compare with Hindu ashrams or Buddhist monasteries and meditation centers where a participant observer may in some way experience the inner reality of African spirituality...

...In order to understand and appropriate the best in African spirituality one would need to spend many years, having learned the local language (one of hundreds of languages in Africa), as a participant in the life of some traditional African religious group...

...Still, to the extent that Christian groups continue to embody this quality, persons like myself can to a degree experience this trait of African spirituality...

...Interdependence and interrelatedness are present as an operative reality for the African from the earliest years of life...

...Another thing the Kimbu had taught me was to integrate my mental life more fully, and to recognize the part which the unconscious played in my whole makeup...

...Indeed, an ATR person who acquires the habit Shorter commends, of systematic verbal expression, runs the danger of becoming alienated from the traditional community...

...For Aylward Shorter, whose writings have been most helpful in my search for African spirituality, the dialogue is hindered by the lack of direct shared experience of African Traditional Religion (henceforth ATR) on the part of the non-African inquirer, and the absence of a tradition and experience of systematic articulation on the part of the traditional African...

...Small groups gathered under trees, with a leader, book in hand...

...The professor pointed out that for the African, God is not in a special time or place, but part of everything, especially of nature...

...Because indigenous African religion is primarily local and ethnic...

...John Taylor (The Primal Vision, 1963) even asserts that Africa, if true to herself, remains stubbornly inarticulate, for myth can only be analyzed when it is dead or dying...

...Once again, I wanted to see how Christian spirituality, above all in my own life, could be enriched by direct contact with and participation in the spiritual life of another tradition, this time, Africa...

...The unquestioning acceptance of the invisible world needs continuing discrimination to preserve it from superstition and fear...

...I base this conclusion on my own direct observation and on what I have learned and confirmed in conversation with those who have lived many years in many parts of Africa, and from many African novels and scholarly studies...

...I lived in monasteries and ashrams, spending time with wise and holy teachers, and participated in sessions, meditation courses, and various kinds of "retreats," including time spent in Christian ashrams like Bede Griffiths's Shantivanam in South India and Enomiya Lassalle's Christian Zen Center in the mountains outside Tokyo...

...What then are the pervasive and abiding characteristics of ATR which survive in one form or another...

...Half-a-dozen men and women in procession, sometimes in white robes led by a flag-bearer and a drummer...

...No need to dragoon people for things like choir practice...

...For in Africa there are hundreds of distinct, different, and to a great extent unrelated tribes, or to use the more acceptable current expression, traditional ethnic groups...

...African religions generally do not proselytize, and, unlike Hinduism (though it is also, in a sense, an ethnic religion and, for the most part, does not proselytize), do not lay claim to universality...

...This African venture turned out to be much more difficult than the earlier Hindu-Buddhist one...

...There are thousands of these "independent churches" in Kenya, often tribal expressions of religious anticolonialism...

...But the elder stood in his normal way, eyes open, staff in hand, and spoke to God in a simple, offhand way, as to a familiar presence...

...Byarunhanga-Akiiki (Religion in Bunyoro, Kenya DANIEL J. O'HANLON, S.J., is professor emeritus at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California...

...But that does not mean that ATR can be ignored as unimportant in dealing with the current scene...

...Literature Bureau, 1982), that would be a different matter...

...One consequence of this, already noted, is that it is difficult for an outsider to enter into the style of African spirituality without becoming an ongoing and fully participating part of an African religious community...

...That is the first characteristic of African spirituality...