|
 "Oh delicious Heavenly Father..." These were the opening words to a prayer that I heard from one of the Ugandans the other day at a graduation ceremony. I felt that the graduation ceremony itself exemplified wonderfully what I have learned about the culture here in the last seven months. Our teammate, Erika Pierson, has done a wonderful job training many men and women from surrounding villages to be preschool teachers, and on Saturday, May 7 was the much anticipated graduation ceremony. Each of the 18 graduates was draped in a black graduation gown and crowned with a black cap. Erika had organized a ceremony that was characterized by the formality and significance of an Ivy League commencement, set to start at precisely 5:30pm. Therefore, after everyone had arrived at around 6:15 the ceremony began with all of its African flare. There were four people, of whom I was one, sitting in folding chairs on the stage, two on each side of the wooden podium, which was garnered in balloons and bougainvillea branches. The director of the Busoga Bible (BBS) program rose from his seat on the stage and introduced the guests and graduates, and then Erika presented gifts of appreciation to those who had helped in various ways with the seminar and graduation. While this was happening, the BBS director's cell phone rang, he answered it and proceeded to have a conversation in full view of the graduates and guests. However, he was kind enough to step slightly off stage. During the speech of the guest speaker (me), one of the graduates on the front row was holding her child who was becoming quite restless, so she unzipped her gown and started to breast feed her child, all the while remaining perfectly attuned to the message from the front. I finished talking, the certificates were presented to the graduates, and Moses, one of the local leaders said a closing prayer. Almost done. One of the students asked to make a presentation of appreciation for the work that Erika had done on behalf of the students. He made the presentation and decided to close, once again, with a prayer, which began with these words, "Oh delicious Heavenly Father."
I will never know what he was trying to express. Perhaps it was exactly what he said, that God and God's love are absolutely delicious entrees in the meal of life here, where very rarely is there a choice of what to eat. There is work, there is sickness, there is sleep, there is family, but the best tasting of all is the love of God which effects the taste of everything else that enters the mouth. Perhaps he just couldn't find the right word, and "delicious" happened to be the only adjective with a positive connotation that he could think of at the moment to describe his Heavenly Father. That, I can understand well right now. When I go to the village and try to speak Lusoga I often wonder how my words are perceived. I know just enough to be dangerous. On top of that, many of the words sound the same. Let me invite you into a short Lusoga vocabulary lesson. The word for man is Omusada, the word for sunshine is Omusana, and the word for Malaria is Omusuda. The word for wife, or lady is Mukyaala (moo-chai-ah-lah), the word for visit is kyaala, and the word for village is Mukyaalo. The word for call is etta, but the word for kill is itta. The word for peace is Mirembe, and the word for Mango is Miembe. The word for know is idi but the word for come is ida. Are you seeing the potential problem here? For instance, I might try to tell someone in the village a sentence as simple as, "My wife will call the man," and with just a couple of misplaced vowels I might be saying, "My village will kill the sunshine" or "visit, he will kill the man." When I try to say, "The man wants to know peace" I could very well be saying, "Malaria wants to come, Mango." Trying to communicate right now is not exactly an easy enterprise, though when I hear sentences that begin with "Oh delicious Heavenly Father" I am reminded that English is not the easiest language to speak, either. Our language teacher, Ali, still gets the words "Chicken" and "Kitchen" mixed up. Even as I write this message I am not content with the content. I attempt to use allusions in order to help expose our illusions that influence comes from affluence and that peace is only a small piece of the puzzle that we are trying our very hardest to piece back together. But I am learning. I am learning that with our words everywhere, in America and in Uganda, on a world scale, in a village and from person to person we make decisions with the words that we use, and that those words can make incisions in relationships. These incisions can be handled with the precision of a surgeon, as in the case of hard honesty that hopes for healing, or too often times, with a careless derision that results in division. Then, as if communication with each other was not hard enough, we are invited to pick and choose words to talk about and to God. There have been many throughout history that have set off on this journey of Theology (words about God) that have chosen the "apophatic way" which is "a way of theological inquiry into the knowledge of God that proceeds by negations, or saying what God is not"*. But is that it? Is that all we can do? We cannot confine our language of God merely to what is seen and experienced, for we confess and are confident that there is so much more to the Creator and Sustainer of life. However, we also confess that God is truly present within creation, and not merely someone or something that we can connect with only in abstract, theoretical ideas. But in the midst of our confusion God becomes the Word that draws us into relationship. When we are left speechless, God creates the words that teach us complete dependence, submission, hope, and always (I hope) wonder. This is the Word that spoke creation into existence (Gen. 1) and it is this Word that became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). And so, when we want to speak the language of God we need not look further than the person of Jesus, who is both the Word that we are trying to speak and the Word of love that was spoken to us. He is the Great Translator. He intercedes for us and He is always taking us on journeys that lead to deeper meanings of the words we have become so familiar with- grace, hope, love, salvation, so that with full confidence we can stand at a microphone and address God as "Our delicious Heavenly Father." *Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms
|
