The Impact of Ancestry

In 2004, I had the opportunity to go Kenya for three weeks to do mission work.  Our team focused on visiting as many orphanages as possible to play with the children, read to them, love on them, and make a sizeable monetary donations towards any needs they may have. It was an experience that made my soul much richer because as I sought to give the children some of the things they did not have in abundance, but they gave me so much more; they gave me purpose, love, and a deeper appreciation for humanity. 

One day while visiting an orphanage, we were greeted by another group of missionaries from Georgia.  These middle-aged women greeted us with numerous questions after informal introductions.  They commented that they assumed a few of us were native Kenyans, and that they hadn’t run into any missionaries like us before.  After exchanging small talk, one of the ladies asked, “Well, how many people have you all saved?” 

So taken aback was I by her question, I asked her what she meant. 

“You know, how many souls have you saved and brought to God? We have saved fifty-six souls since we got here, and we’ve been giving them these “Jesus Loves You Pencils”.  You know as a missionary it is up to us to bring God to this place.”

I found the comment of this well-intentioned lady problematic for various reasons.  I hated the idea that she was keeping “score” about the number of people she felt she’d brought to God, and more importantly I found her statement downright arrogant and self-aggrandizing.   

Troubled by her statement, I attempted to choose my words carefully, and I said, “Well, I haven’t been keeping count.  I feel I was sent here to demonstrate the love of Christ. I think it is very egotistical for any of us to assume that we are bringing God to our Kenyan brothers and sisters.  God is here, and has been here before the foundation of the earth, and I am sure that most Kenyans know that and know God better than you could possibly imagine”. 

 I am sure the unnamed lady in my story was perplexed by my answer and inability to hide my slight annoyance with her statement; I don’t think she understood what she was inferring was that the Africans lacked beliefs or spiritual roots, mostly because they were African and it was her Christian duty as a white woman to save their “dark souls”.  While, I hadn’t thought about that incident in Kenya for years because there were so many positive, life-altering events that happened within my three week visit, I did think about it as I read, The Spirituality of African Peoples because Dr. Paris articulated very profoundly what I attempted to articulate to the missionary nine summers ago:  long before coming in contact with Christianity, slave holders, or missionaries, Africans throughout the world have always believed in God as a supreme being.

As slavery ravaged the continent of Africa, many justified the capture of slaves as a part of God’s unique plan to introduce “heathen” souls to the true God and rid them of their “false gods” (Paris 22).  These assumptions were made because there was no clear understanding or study of African people and their religious practices which were embedded in their everyday lives. “Black religion has not identical with white religion”, and this is still an issue- black Jesus vs. white Christ (19). For the African, there was no way to separate “the African from his religion or his community”(28).  Spirituality and community were paramount in the lives of Africans through out the Diaspora, and Dr. Paris argues that they are still a part of our communities.  While, I believe a deep reverence for a supreme being and sense of oneness with family and community are a part of the cultural DNA of African Americans, I don’t know if I agree with Dr. Paris’ assessment that community and spirituality are still an important part of the lives of black folks in today’s contemporary society.  Perhaps this sentiment would have held true twenty to thirty years ago, but it seems in 2013, in the black community, the authentic African self is warring with the self that attempted to assimilate to Western ideals that are centered on a separation of religious and secular self and the notion of “oneness”.  Instead of thinking in terms of “I am because we are, many of us think in terms of Rene Descartes assertion, “I think, therefore I am”, which is not communal at all. It endorses isolation and selfishness that ultimately can wreak havoc in the community to which one belongs, but also in one’s spiritual self.

This weekend I attended a retreat, and I had to take a values inventory.  This was my first time taking one, so I was really eager to see the results.  Most of my scores were not surprising; I scored a fifteen for valuing privacy, a fourteen for commitment to family/ethnic group, and a thirteen for creativity; all of my scores were quire accurate. However, the score that intrigued me the most was my scoring regarding family.  Family has always been paramount for me. My formative years were spent in an intergenerational home where I lived with my grandparents and mother for the first four or five years of my life.  My grandmother, whom I affectionately called Momma because in essence she was my mother in addition to my biological mother, taught most of my early lessons in life.  Each morning when I woke up, I would head to our living room to see if my grandmother was seated in her favorite chair saying the rosary as she prepared for the long day ahead of her as a domestic, a job that attempted to strip her of dignity and humanity.  Usually, I would climb into her lap as she finished her prayers. From those moments, I learned the importance of prayer and spiritual life. 

Our home was never empty!  We had relatives and family friends over on weekends and for holidays, and my grandparents were very hospitable.  My grandparents were born and raised in Louisiana, but they moved to Houston after getting married in search of a better life and more lenient Jim Crow laws.  As I got older, my mother told me that my grandparents had allowed several relatives who wanted to migrant from Louisiana to Texas to live with them, until they were able to get jobs, and save enough money to get their own dwellings.  Even after they moved, these relatives would come over every Sunday to visit. My grandmother would send clothes to her sister-in-laws, nieces, and nephews  when they were struggling financially.  These were things my grandmother never spoke of perhaps because it was second nature for her to help people.

As I got older and heard more of these stories, I took great pride in them and thought they could be attributed to my Louisiana roots.  One day, I said, “Momma, people from Louisiana sure do stick together.  Look at our family.  Look at how close we are.”  Much to my surprise, she said, “It has nothing to do with being from Louisiana.  Black folks are supposed to stick together.  When I was coming up and when I moved here, we looked out for one another. People don’t do that anymore, which is why we are in the shape we are in now.”

When I got my first teaching job, I started to see that my grandmother was right in her assessment.  I worked in a predominantly African American and Latino district with more apartments than homes, and a serious gang problem.  There was no sense of community and many of the grandparents of the children I taught were sometimes in their thirties or early forties.  There was no one of age to pass down any wisdom, and the kids saw older people as more of a childlike burden plagued with senility that had nothing to offer in terms of life lessons.  The children and parents in the neighborhood where I taught had no sense of self or community, so there was no ownership of the neighborhood.

I often thought about my upbringing and I was thankful that I was taught to respect my elders, to listen to their wisdom, that family was a priority right under God, and that Sunday wasn’t the only time we took notice of God, it should be an everyday things. 

I wonder if this is what is lacking in the African American community.  I know I have touched on it before, but has integration given us a false sense of self and identity?  Black people for the most part have always been communal and in tune with God, but in an era where many say that the church is dead and irrelevant, is the church also serving as a symbol for the demise of us as a people. Perhaps this has happened because we have more options regarding where we can live, where we can do, and what we can do.  We’ve been afforded freedoms even my mother didn’t know, but have we put we have traded our freedom for another type of bondage, a loss identity.

I would love to do a study on intergenerational families throughout the Diaspora who live under one roof to see if it makes a difference in the set of values and belief those children have. I wonder if they have a deeper sense of self and history?  Are they learning the importance of caring for loved ones especially when they get sick?  Will this living arrangement impact what career choices they make?

Before I got ready to come to Nashville, I asked for my grandmother’s blessing to pursue my masters.  If she’d said it wasn’t a good idea, I wouldn’t be in Divinity School right now, but she did. She gave me her blessing and told me to never forget from whence I came.  I promised her that I wouldn’t.  I went home this summer after being summoned by grandmother; she died less than a week after I got home. She waited until I got there so we could say our goodbyes. 

Sitting with the dying round the clock has always been practiced, due to the widespread belief that none should die alone as well as to a strong belief that the dying are very close to the spiritual realm and hence, a special blessing might be received from them just as they cross over (Paris 95).

My grandmother had often spoken of her death of her mother and how they kept vigil until her mother transitioned over, and I knew that it was something she wanted for herself, so we stayed with her as well.  She transitioned with my mother there to hold her hand.  I do not have any children yet, and when I do have children, my only regret is that they never experienced the richness that my 88 year old grandmother brought to my life, but I am sure that my mother will give them a lasting legacy because she was taught by the best.

Episteme #2