Bliss – Part II

Thankfully, I had some time away from Congo to reflect on my impending final departure when our team visited Uganda for a week-long peacebuilding conference. 

I cannot adequately explain the magnitude of this gathering – if the leaders present live with a portion of the faith they professed in the time we shared together, the Great Lakes region cannot help but change.  I have, however, been burned in the past by people who say one thing in a spiritual setting, but prefer to speak ‘practically’ at other times.  To me, faith is practice.  Only faith can allow a mother, when lobbying for the return of a group of children from the Lord’s Resistance Army, to refuse the return of her daughter because it meant that other parents like her would have to continue to suffer.  Only faith would encourage a leader in a Kenyan university to return to Congo (with his wife – also now a PhD-holder – and their children) to begin a Christian university in an area wheremass killings are routine. 

The milk of human kindness sours quickly – it offers aid as long as there is no personal cost.

Love suffers, weeps, and dies personally to give life to others. 

These are convictions that cannot be controlled by society or changed by passing conversations.  This is a vision of a kingdom of a Priest-King, where we are in perfect relationship with each other and with our Creator.  Only a few live it in a few ways now, but we try to live and work in faith that it will come.

The above stories were set to the inspiration of the Ugandan martyrs – credited with the spread of Christianity in the country.  Of course, this sacrificial love is commemorated by (separate) Catholic and Protestant churches in different ways. 

I cannot deny that it was powerful to hear the story of how these men (some as young as 14 years old) were dragged on their backs to face weeks of torture before finally being burned to death rather than renouncing their faith in a Christian God for their earthly king (I’d like to add that this king’s sister, not recognised as a saint, was also murdered in the palace for her faith).  However, I will never be comfortable with the veneration of places, water, and people who – in the end – were only pointing to the God Most High.  Jesus himself said that his family were those who did the will of God, and that those people would all be blessed.  I’m not sure how many realise that we are meant to be in that number and whether we would be so ready to accept Christianity with his example of crucifixion (toward the goal of resurrection life) in mind. 

So when people climbed down to collect water from a rather mucky cistern wherein the torturers were said to have washed themselves and their weapons of the blood of the martyrs, I was… apathetic.  If I wasn’t ready to die for my God based on the example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (and I wouldn’t be willing to say I was until actually faced with this choice), possible traces of gore from my Ugandan brethren probably wouldn’t tip the scales. 

After hearing of the money and effort put into building the Protestant church there, just a short distance from the Catholic church that was also a memorial, I cynically wondered whether the torturers had rinsed their handkerchiefs into another nearby spring, or whether the burned Catholic bones were more comfortable in their cathedral.  While I certainly believe that the stories of the saints should be commemorated in order to inspire us in our personal relationships with God, I find it hard to believe that miracles, as one Catholic nun from our group said, are more likely to occur when asked of God on the site where the martyrs died. 

More practically, I had wonderful conversations throughout the week with South Sudanese Anglican reverends, a Rwandan romantic, inspired worship leaders, and many others who seem committed to bringing principles of restorative justice, peaceful existence with multi-faith communities, and community health into their daily lives in African contexts.  I was surrounded by a few MDiv students from Duke University and other intelligent professionals who teased that they could tell a Sudanese person by his colour and a Rwandan by their yard-long names. 

As an exception to the rule, I walked into a bathroom stall occupied by a poor unfortunate who hadn’t worked out how locks in public bathrooms work.  Sorry, White American – thank you for trying to make me feel less awkward by reminding and forgiving me of the incident again at lunchtime. 

I was joined in my Corner O’Shame by a friendly, older Ugandan man who tried to make conversation after breaktime one day…

“You know, they told us during the devotional that pastors should not meet alone with beautiful women.  In that case, you should never meet with a pastor alone because--”

“Actually, that was an error by the French translator – the original English speaker never said anything about ‘beautiful’ women, he just said that pastors shouldn’t put themselves in a situation where--”

It was at this point that I realised he’d just been trying to pay me a compliment. 

“--Oh, I see,” I called down from my soapbox.  “You were just trying to--  Right.”  Sorry for making this all awkward.

But wait, that was done when you managed to suggest both that beautiful women are more prone to being sexually abused (the silly girls!) and that I, myself, was somehow more likely to be sexually abused! 

Thank you?

I came home after 16 hours on two buses over the space of two days and two countries with an eye infection and fever a week in the making.  I am unsure as to why I, a person who hates personal attention, can now be voted Drama Queen for the second year in a row, but such is my life.  Now I face less than a month in Congo to get my stress and various infections under control and say my goodbyes in a sincere, joyful way rather than taking my usual route of offering sweets and then disappearing. 

I surprised a rat calmly sitting on our closed garbage can likely in contemplation of this very same issue:  Why me?