Friday, March 2, 2012

So No, I don't want to come to your Bible study

Dear beloved readers,
Some future entries may include thoughts about religion and faith; living in a Christian nation, I have a lot.  I've decided to post a journal entry from quite a while ago, when I was feeling rather fiery, in the hopes that it might lend something to a better understanding of where my thoughts/feelings are, and where they've evolved from, in future entries. 

(excerpts from a journal entry dated 21 May, 2011, about 3-4 weeks after moving to the village)
Just came from church--Seventh Day Adventists.  I had already agreed to accompany [a fellow teacher at the school] to the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall tomorrow, but my family was insistent--it's Visitor's Day and they had a choir visiting from Senga.  Besides being gone Monday through Thursday [chaperoning a sports tournament], I was at Kaziwe School yesterday, an enormously productive visit--but that meant I really needed time to just be home.  So this morning I got water, swept outside, washed a big load of clothes, heated water, ate, and roasted imbalala [peanuts], swept and mopped the kitchen, cleaned my water filter and organized some food between 6:30 and 9:30am.  Then went to church, ate there.  Just got home a bit ago--at 14:00.  I've told the boys [at the school dorm] I'll come help them study, and the rest of my house needs a thorough sweeping and mopping.  I need to study Mambwe and crack open more Peace Corps manuals; my bike tire is flat and Tony's needs oiling (I used it yesterday); both could use a good washing.  And next weekend is the ceremony in Zombe so I think Babs and I are going.  Already I'm trying to figure out how to stay ahead of housework and Peace Corps stuff so I can be gone from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, my hand hurts and I've not even started what I meant to write.  The SDAs wanted me to stay for Bible study, and I read most of the "National Sunday Law" [which they gave me, as a visitor] in church--which is all the more terrifying as propaganda in part because the author seems to be smart and the data well-researched.  I feel a bit defensive because it attacks the Catholic Church (though it never says "Catholic," only "Papacy" and "Rome,") basically saying it's an instrument of the devil.  I don't mind going to church, but it's a little disingenuous of me.  How do I explain that I don't really care if the Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday, and I don't think God does either?  That I'm not all that tied to the idea of "Sabbath" anyway because "no work" depends on what you consider work, and it can be patriarchal.  (We ate lunch at church--wonder if the women who cooked it considered it "work.")  That though I am Christian, even Catholic (though I have bones of my own to pick with the Papacy and Catholic dogma), I also acknowledge that a big percentage of why I find truth in these beliefs probably is cultural (because I was born in a family/region/time where/when these were accepted as truth)?  That my experience of God is the sum total of many, many things, and not just one book or preacher or prayer, and that I read the Bible with a bucket of salt?  That I can only wonder how arrogant I would be to think I could navigate the labyrinthian contents of the Bible and come up with the TRUTH when hundreds, thousands of experts in theology, history, language, anthropology, etc. have done so and don't find agreement?

So no, I don't want to go to your Bible study; I do believe in God and I even enjoy the Bible but I probably won't agree with what you say and I can't begin to try to explain the simplicity (stemming from a maze of complexity) of my own belief to you, even in cizungu [English]--that God is love, God works in ways we can't imagine, truth is not singular.  That I think God sees beyond the narrow, dichotomous definitions we create--sin v. good, homo v. hetero, truth v. lie.  That I don't think paganism is wrong, though I don't really believe in juju [witchcraft] (and from my limited solstice-ritual experience, I'm not sure most pagans do either).  The idea that Harry Potter promotes the occult (whatever that is) seems laughable to me, and sure--maybe we did evolve from monkeys, but please don't ask me again to explain whether I agree with "scientists" (this unspecified, homogeneous mass of experts in total agreement) or whether I believe the Biblical Adam and Eve story.  My belief is--if I can say so without sounding pretentious--beyond that, over it, under it, through it--I don't worry about the details, in short.  I believe in forgiveness, kindness, sacrifice, harmony, kinship, respect, imagination, wonder, grace, mercy.  Aren't those enough?

Floor still needs cleaning, bikes repairing, pupils tutoring, so I'll close for now.  A toi, Jesu--Rose