Playing our part in the global symphony of faith
Taken from Canadian Mennonite, Volume 11, No. 09, April 30, 2007 http://www.canadianmennonite.org/vol11-2007/11-09/upclose.php
-Tanzania
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On a recent trip back to Tanzania, Hinke reunited with her childhood friend, Amina, and got to hold Amina’s daughter. |
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“Aaaiii, Hinke!” yelled Amina as she bounded out to hug my brother and me during a recent visit to her home. Amina and I had last seen each other 13 years ago, but for much of our childhood we grew up together in Tanzania. Her father, Juma, had worked for my family and had been like a second father to me.
Quickly the entire family gathered and we caught up on 13 years of family news. Several hours later we were all sitting down to a meal of ugali (a paste made of maize meal and water) and mchicha (Tanzanian greens), as well as a few celebratory bottles of pop. We sat on wooden stools in the dirt yard and ate from a communal dish.
“Hinke, my sister, why aren’t you eating?” asked Juma’s son, Athumani, in Swahili, after I had eaten a few handfuls of food.
I grinned at him and answered, “I am eating, but I’m also listening.” It was the same response I had given to the same question when I was a child. I gave him a look of mock annoyance and we both felt a distinct sense of home.
Like that of most transient, world-travelling young adults, my faith has been shaped by numerous voices. It is only when I consciously stop and listen, that I hear each cultural melodic strain that together compose the symphony of my faith.
My experience of revisiting Tanzania makes me realize that the voice of Africa has silently influenced my decision-making, principles and faith. Hardship and daily struggle for the most basic of needs in Africa makes simplicity a reality that cannot be avoided and should not be romanticized.
Anabaptism tells me to live simply and with honesty, but Mennonites today have yet to honestly face the reality of a cultural and global paradigm that is already silently informing future Mennonite generations. The church often pays the price in youths and young adults who leave as the gap between church and their culture leaves them feeling apathetic or frustrated.
Because of Christ, I can see the examples of his life and the stories of the Anabaptists and Africa come together to form a terrible and beautiful symphony of faith. The end goal must be to live out our faith in a way that is meaningful as a community that owes its existence and purpose to God.
At last year’s North American Young Adult Fellowship, I met others who find themselves similarly inundated by a diverse collection of faith melodies. These young adults spoke about how their faith interacts with the church. In essence, they described church as living out our Christian faith every day, leaving no room for a dichotomy between faith and social action, finances and work.
In the summer of 2006, North American young adults took part in a bike tour that visited more than 19 congregations across the northern part of the United States. It sought to transform those many voices into one unified experience of intentional community while initiating and inviting conversation about the church.
Experiences like these empower us to listen intentionally to those individual melodies that inform our faith, to take ownership of them, celebrate them, and, with God’s help, to weave them into an integrated whole.
In today’s world we are not all raised in one geographic location or by a distinct faith community. As Mennonites, we cannot assume that other Mennonites have been shaped in the same cultural or faith environment. My generation—and the generations following me—receive information and values from a rich variety of geographic, philosophical and theological sources, and our culture expects that we listen to each source with respect.
To a large extent, the stories of previous generations still define our current Mennonite Church and faith culture in Canada. But we have new stories and new beautiful melodies that must be written into the greater story of our Anabaptist faith history. With God’s guidance, we can filter through the many voices informing us. Slowly and carefully we form an understanding of Anabaptism and what it means to be Mennonite in our world today. We may not be of the world, but we are definitely in it. I have faith that we—as a young generation of Anabaptists—will, by the grace of God, realize our own communal symphony of faith and give this as a gift to a world that is crying out for us to play our part.
