Even if the sky trades places with the earth, we pray every night before we sleep. As long as one roof grants us shelter, we convene to the living room where we let the desires of our heart be made manifest; it’s a rule my parents made before I had the gift of speech. There is an order to this nightly ritual, my baby sister prays first to compensate for the unfortunate tally she chose in heaven and the oldest, my father prays last as his wisdom will tie up our prayers in a pretty bow and grant it journey mercies to the ears of God. This had always been the most predictable part of my night, until a certain Thursday.
It had now become my mother’s turn to pray, she began as she always did, by breaking into song. Her voice full of emotion and strength rang throughout our living room. It never matters that we have a praise and worship session before we begin, my mother always sings. I know what comes next, it’s the Oriki. It went the same way for as long as I remember “Asoro kolu bi ogori gbibge, Oba lana Oba loni Oba titi aye, great in battle, mighty warrior, Jehovah is your name”. She had said this so many times I knew the order and sometimes I’d get carried away and say it with her, but today’s was different, there was an addendum. “Oba to wo kembe re bi ija”. I did not know when my father finished praying because all I could think was “what is Kembe now?”
When you are going to battle, your garment needs to be as close to your body as it can be. It needs to be comfortable and light to aid your movement and should be colored in a way that if you need to be camouflaged it’s easy. Kembe is the opposite of this. Except for the comfort department, it’s large, loose, and ceremonial. It’s a very heavy garb with embroidery and often comes brightly colored. It conveys a lack of seriousness that should be associated with combat, so this is not the ideal raiment for anyone about to go into battle with the intent of emerging as the victor. But that was the point. God did not need to go in with seriousness, He is God! The battle had been won before it even began. But this wasn’t all I took from it.
The white-bearded man whose face was always cleverly shielded behind clouds depicted in some of the Bible stories I had read as a child transformed before my eyes. Gone was the white flowing gown and halo of bright light. In that moment, before me was a black man. One who wore an abeti aja and wielded an irukere in one hand and a shekere in the other. Rather than beige feet bound by gladiator-looking sandals, his were bare save for the brightly colored akun anklets, and best of all, he was wearing a Kembe and he was dancing the bata! God was a Yoruba man. Even seeing Morgan Freeman’s performance as God in Bruce almighty had not opened my eyes to the possibility of seeing God as not white. With the enthusiastic eulogy my mother offered, the veil that stood before me and the divine was rent in twain, and behind it stood a mirror. I was made in God’s image! That knowledge was literalized and my relationship to the deity evolved.
It’s difficult to love a thing you cannot see, even if you are commanded to, and it’s even more difficult to cultivate a relationship with a being to whom you have no connection. The image of God as white and the angels as cherubs is one that seems harmless, idyllic, and even pristine. But beneath the porcelain exterior is a violent juxtaposition of light and dark, good and evil, day and night. If white is good and the Bible is full of metaphors that speak of the light driving away the darkness, the morning being praised for the joy it brings and the night scorned for the sorrow, terror, and pestilence it harbors, how then is one supposed to regard their blackness other than a curse that they will be rid of upon the rapture as they will be washed white as snow?
An amazing friend of mine shared a few pictures, they were taken in St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Benin city in Nigeria. Rather than the stained glass windows that are particular to the Roman Catholic and Anglican buildings I grew up seeing, there was a mural on the wall. It was a depiction of the Angels as the people from different Nigerian tribes in their traditional clothing, and more than that, these celestial beings were black, EVEN JESUS!. Those people get to see themselves in the divine unlike their forefathers before them who were deprived of the opportunity. When the Jesuits would reintroduce Christianity to China in the 16th and 17th century*, they would, after a series of trial and error, sinicize the image of Christ and use the pre-existing theology particular to the region to explain their religion. This kind of association helps the indigenes understand whatever foreign concept is being presented, and minimizes the damage that could be done in the outright bashing of the local culture.
Even though polygynous marriages, animal, sometimes human sacrifice, and wars exist in the Christian Bible, African tribes were colored as savages for having the exact same practices. This is not to legitimize the murder of people or rationalize the acquisition of women as property. It’s to help the ones, who like me could not hold the image of themselves as they are beside the one they hold of God and see nothing but the differences that lie between them. Everyone who chooses to believe in the existence of God should get to see God dance, be it the waltz, atilogwu, or maybe like in my case, the bata.
*https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/7/3/32/htm
What in the Black Jesus! The first thing that got me was the title. I love the tone of it. It's very picturesque. Come to think of it, it sounds like something that should be in a poetry.
You know I have been thinking a lot about God. I just had a conversation with someone about God's existence. I told them I do not have a religion but that I believe in God. They were puzzled as to my lack of religiosity sitting side by side with my faith in Oga God. ‘It is hard to love someone you don't see’ you say, and I couldn't agree more. Do you think God is multiple? That they are what a person want them to be?
Irawo!!!!!
I loveee this! ♥️