Stewarding My Cultures

Stewarding My Culture across Cultural Boundaries.

I love my songs. It is the biggest part of Nigerian culture that I have. I love to sing them. When I am happy, there are songs for that. When I am sad, there are songs for that too. When I’m in love, I have got to write a few. I know enough about high-life rhythms to create one.

As I matriculated through Covenant Seminary there was always a temptation to show off. There are days when I wanted to make myself feel better than others by simply being different. Thankfully, I was often too shy about things I get very emotional about, like music, psychology, social ethics, and theology to do so casually.

There were times when I did do something Igbo/Nigerian. I wore some of the clothes to church. I made or brought back to the dorm a certain food (Mom’s meat-pie is presently calling me). I sang one of our songs or danced one of our dances inchurch. I made sure I had a good reason why.

Sometimes, I wore the clothes because it was hot and humid. These clothes were designed for that weather. Sometimes I wore the clothes because it was Independence Day. I knew that many Nigerian people were doing the same. Once, I sang an old song in Igbo to honor a young man from the Congo who was about to get married. When I ate Nigerian food, it was because… it was food…that tasted good (duh).

It is not until today, a full week after graduating that I get it. Culture serves its people. Certain songs, certain ways of gathering, certain clothes are part of traditions that guide us through grieving the dead, the end of relationships, the birth of a child, the commitment of marriage, the coming of age of boys to men and girls to women, and a myriad of other situations. The culture of my folks and the culture of this land, interestingly enough, have different traditions surrounding the same events. These traditions touch our need to be human better than others in certain places.  Some traditions are better geared towards including the community in individual grief. Other social traditions are more clear in nurturing individual achievement and self control. I love the variety.

However, I do hate whenever tradition becomes entertainment. When a sad song is sung just to demonstrate it, when a dance of grief becomes something to show-off at a party, I do not think that is right.

The children of Israel faced a question that was very much like the ones we, bi- and tri-cultural people face today. After they were taken captive by Babylon, they, in their torment and grief, were asked to sing songs of joy (Psalm 137:3). They wondered, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” (137:4 NIV) It seems that they concluded that to sing their songs inappropriately is to forget where they came from (Psalm 137:5-6). Then they went on to sing a song appropriate to their situation. They sang grief, anger, and cries for vengeance (137:7-9). They stewarded their culture well.

I have not always stewarded my cultures well. I still got a ways to go. However, I am thankful that the Lord has already provided help, through the Scriptures, for that.

The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith Wallerstein

The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee

I have two close friends. I love them deeply and they are children of divorce. I knew some of what they went through. I just assumed that that was life and they were taking the curveballs of life just like everyone else. I was determined to be there for their sake. Just as often, they were determined to be there for mine. Wallerstien has shown me much of what they went through, how their hearts were shaped, the battles that they are fighting, things that I see but just don’t get. I am thankful to have read this book. I hope, now that I know better, that I will be better able to love them. Their battle to trust in others and to believe that their lives and marriages will be better than that of their parents astounds me. I stand in awe of their strength.

If you are or know someone who has been through a divorce, and chances are you do, this book is for you.

Wallerstien and her colleagues started to study the children of divorce in 1971. They interviewed and assessed the children that were a part of their study for a number of years afterward. “But as time progressed, I [Wallerstien] became increasingly worried that divorce is a long-term crisis that was affecting the psychological profile of an entire generation.” (xxvii) As she continued to interview children she found,“Whether the final outcome is good or bad, the whole trajectory of individual’s life is profoundly altered by the divorce experience.” (xxvii)

She wrote stories about children, who they were, what they looked like. These stories followed each child into their teenage years, early adulthood, and adulthood (30s). These stories are conglomerations of many other stories. The events are real but the names, dates and places were changed to protect privacy. The pain, loss, fear, rage, brokenness, sorrow, and triumph in each story was palpable. To her, it becomes “…clear that thousands of parents and children in divorced families, it’s clear that we’ve created a new kind of society never before seen in human culture. Silently and unconsciously, we have created a culture of divorce.” (295) It became clear that “The effects of divorce are cumulative on children. It affects the more they grow up, not less. “In adulthood it affects personality, the ability to trust, expectations about relationships, and ability to cope with change.” (298)

Some of my aforementioned friends are married. Some are not. I never knew what they were fighting to even trust another person. I am grateful for this book. The implications of her study are limited in scope, by the demographics of her participants and in power, (since most of her data is anecdotal); Dr. Wallerstein and her colleagues spoke up for children. They suggested practical ways to protect children from the ravages of divorce and help them to flourish as human beings. I think their aims and mode executing it glorifies God.

Appendix: Research sample 317

 This section gives a look at the study’s demographics, design, methodology, and data analysis. 

Madness: A Bipolar Life by Mary Hornbacher

I want to own this book. I feel at home with this woman through it. Her pain shocks me and her sweet sense of survival brings me to tears. Hornbacher does an amazing feat of writing from a first person stream of consciousness at the age of ten. She then writes from her childhood up to her womanhood days.

She communicates her life to us by episodes. Each episode is colored by sadness, depression, anger, euphoria, boredom, quiet joy, fear, anxiety, romance, and mania. Some chapters are short, some are long. It makes the book feel more like a journal than it does a novel. Her powers of phrasing and sentence structure amplify her content as she effectively communicates her states of mind to the reader. She does not mediate her experiences with her opinion, rather the reader is left to encounter for her- or his- self. Her honesty about her self and the world she sees is raw. Whether she is communicating her self focused reasons for falling in love with her second husband or strong fears of being left alone when depressed, the reader is left feeling that Hornbacher held nothing back in her telling.

Hornbacher’s ability to communicate without pulling punches satisfies the purpose of her book. She humanizes herself to her reader. She presents herself in all her beauty, strength, weakness, madness, and complexity and not as another case study. Her strong use of emotion and empathy in her episodes not only humanizes her but humanizes those who suffer along with her. The fear, pain, and compassion of her parents, her friends, her husbands, and her mental health counselors are evident in their care and communication with her. Her bipolar sickness is also demystified. It becomes less a capricious malady and more a disease with quirks and rhythms all its own. In short, Hornbacher, becomes less a woman who suffers and more a woman with a full, rich, deep life that is well worth living.

Madness: A Bipolar Life is 280 pages. It has appendices at the end that counter balance the narrative heavy story with Bipolar Facts, Useful Websites¸ and a Bibliography. She ends the book with a series of acknowledgements to those who supported her in this endeavor. This book is a wonderful resource to those seeking to understand and love those who suffer from Bipolar 1 disorder.

Book Review of There Was A Country by Chinua Achebe

Where the Rain Began to Beat Us

“A man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body” (Achebe, 1). The next generation wants to bring Nigeria forward, we want to progress in healing the wounds of this nation and making it healthier, peaceful place. We need to know where the rain first began to beat our people, before we can begin to dry our people. According to Achebe, the rain first began to beat Africa when Europe “discovered” the continent (Achebe, 1). The problems faced by this present generation, some of them have their beginning during Chinua Achebe’s early. Achebe tells his story as a way of informing the next generation where to begin to heal our hurts.

His book seeks to act as a Genesis story to the joys and problems of Nigeria. He tells personal stories of his experiences of Nigeria as a freshly-minted country. He creates complex characters with comedic anecdotes and tragic endings and is careful to place them as well as himself with the historical framework of Nigeria’s short political history. He is careful to give both sides of each story a hearing and to include the world’s response to Nigerian events. His book is full of references, he is careful to point out to his audience that his memories are not misremembered or conjured up; rather his memories are based carefully researched historical fact. These facts include the many layered relationships and ruptures that led up to the Biafran war and the textured response to the subjugated Igbo people that included both mercies and continued injustices.

“There Was a Country” does not seek to answer specific questions of Nigeria’s often bemoaned political state. It does provide a place for those with questions to begin searching for answers. He seeks to place Nigeria’s pains and impediments in relation to the socio-political history of itself and of the world. He is careful to include inter tribal and intra tribal political considerations that went into the sometimes atrocious actions of communities. As a diplomat Biafra Achebe considers the response of Western nations. However, his writing is never academic. He always uses personal stories that portray the very human people that he worked with.

Chinua Achebe has many features that deepened my understanding and respect for his material. He started each chapter with one of his poems in order to further communicate the “particular tension of war” (Achebe, 2). He also includes two appendices. One praises the servant-leadership of Nelson Mandela. The other provides a full transcript of the Brigadier Banjo’s, the leading ground officer Nigeria’s invading force, first inaugural radio transmission to the conquered Midwest. He provides a full bibliography of his references to historical events and an index of terms.   

There Was a Country seeks to give a personal history of an event that changed the course of a nation. It bemoans the loss of the innocence of a nation and the bitter coming of age of a people. This book is also hopeful. The author believes that the problems that plague Africa in general and Nigeria especially can be healed. He believes healing can begin with treating the root causes of African discomfort and then working towards the symptoms. Truest of all, There Was a Country communicates his deep love for Nigeria. 

Dear Worker,

"Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, And not hold the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit togethery, increaseth with the increase of God."
Colossians 2:18-19

This verse, and it's chapter, reminded me to view work, not in just a biblical way, but in a way that holds specifically to Christ.

Dear Worker,

You are called to work. You were made to work. Yet, work is fallen. Thorns and thistles, frustration and loss mark and mar your efforts and successes. There is beauty in your work, but no perfection. There is joy, but fleeting contentment. You were made, from the ground up, for this world. Yet, this world is not as it should be and neither are you. The sighs, the groans, the draping fears, and helpless tears, I know them. They are universal. Your work answers your questions about who you are and how much you are worth. Continually you answer, "not much," according to your proven inability to make your dreams come true. Yet, it defies what you are meant to see. You cry for perfection, for fearlessly fulfilled dreams, and for permanence most of all. You hang your heart on what you have already done, like your portrait on a wall. Only to find that wall both moving and crumbling. All that you would hang your hat on, base your self-value is still crumbling. Every peice of evidence against the accusations of unworthiness falls to pieces. it seems that the accuasations are the eternal things in our souls. The honest, god-less and hopeless soberly face that they will always be measuring up and that that is life.

Yet, that is not life.
Jesus, alone, is life.

He was perfect and worked perfectly. He came, put on imperfection, and worked in imperfection. He came into our need for self-worth measured by work. he came into our need for permanence. Jesus satisfies us. He gave us promises of eternal life. Through his apostles, he promises perfect, fearless, and joyful working. He came and he proved that the score-cards we kept for our self-worth were never authoritative. The score-card of our worth is kept by God and God alone. To Him, through Christ, we are always worthy of His love and goodness. Our worth is and remains based on the creating of God alone. Dear worker, you are worthy, you are permanent, and your work is good because of what Christ has done for you.


I hope you are encouraged.



Book Review: Father Elijah

Father Elijah

By Michael D O’Brien

1996

I loved this book and would love to remember it. The book is an apocalypse in much the same way the Left Behind series is an apocalypse. Both stories, tell about normal people living in at abnormal times. What makes this both stories so powerful is the obviously outstanding pictures used by John the apostle to communicate the revelation given him.

Father Elijah is a catholic priest who lives as a monk in the monastery of Mt. Carmel. The Catholic Church calls him to a secret mission. An extremely popular man has risen through the ranks of power, is uniting the world, and is very much against the believing church. They want Father Elijah to offer this man the gospel. Father Elijah, a Jew by birth, escaped the atrocities of World War Two, he fought for the survival of Israel as part of the Jewish Haganah, and as a lawyer was rising to fame as a prosecutor of Nazi war criminals. Yet, he aborted his own rise. He walked away from fame, fortune, and power to become a very quiet monk. Father Elijah accepts the challenge and with an unlikely cadre of friends engages his journey.

His friends and allies begin one dimensionally, but most of them take on history and complexity as the story goes on. There is a satifying element of pluck, mystery, and interior consideration in each one. The author allows the character of each one to be in-flux and to be, at times, unwilling participants in Father Elijah's story. At the heart of each character, even the bit-players, lies a decision to or not to trust in God. Humanity of the men and women who pass through Father Elijah's story, add immensely to its depth and definite power to its climax.

Father Elijah is a man of many gifts and talents. He loves archeology and theology. He gained a few skills and street smarts in his time with the Haganah. His skills as a lawyer remain undimmed. Yet, his call to offer another the gospel plays not to his strengths but to his weaknesses. So much is unknown to him and to the Church that calls him. He fights with the weapons available to him, yet he continues to suffer losses and setbacks along with his victories. His enemy mystifies him. His God mystifies him. Even as they face life and death, Father Elijah and his team often find themselves facing fear and doubt. So his response of faith is especially heartening. Father Elijah is often reminded to and often reminds others to go and pray. There in prayer, he and others find peace and meet with a God who directs, inspires, strengthens, and stretches his servants. Prayer is Father Elijah’s main redeeming quality.

God is painted as a present, powerful, and unknowable character in this story. He does not answer every prayer immediately. He does not help or deliver from death everyone who believes in him. He calls his people precisely into the things that they would want to avoid. He uses his people for his own ends with no warning or preamble. The characters simply act as the characters they are, full of intellect and instinct. Through and with them, God accomplishes his work. This portrayal of God, if sometimes dark and distant, is utterly believable.

The book is long and exciting. It is well paced, full of humorous one-liners, in short a gem in the genre of Christian fiction. Though I cannot agree on the degree of veneration given to the Virgin Mary and other theological points and habits intrinsic to the Roman Catholic faith, I can agree with a dependence on a God who is not at all tame, but very, patient, and very, very good.

Merry Christmas!

Today, this world remembers that Jesus was born today. He gave the greatest gift of his life. The first thing he did was become what we needed, a man-child. I am glad he trusted his Father so much. It has changed our lives whether we like it or not. 

Merry Christmas!