Fr. Orobator SJ December 14th Talk at Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Encino benefitting Kibera Girls
Transcript
“It’s really about a group of people, young people in Nairobi, a place called Kibera. They are the ones who brought us together today, those girls in Kibera. It’s not easy to be a young person growing up on the continent of Africa right now. It is not easy and for many reasons. 

We still mourn the loss of the Chibok girls about whom nothing has been heard for close to two years now. And that’s what it is like sometimes to grow up as a young girl in parts of the continent. Kibera, of course, exemplifies that in very vivid terms, that is, in terms of the challenges and the struggles. In terms of the opportunities, which are so limited and, in some cases, non-existent. So, it’s important to keep that in mind. They are ones who have brought us together today, more than anything else.

So, we want to talk about spirituality, as well. It is important for to keep in mind that it is not something abstract that we are talking about. If we cannot relate to, and connect with, experiences such as what we see in the lives of these young people in Kibera, then it is questionable spirituality. It will lack credibility. That is why I am confident that whatever we define as African Spirituality has that integrity, has that credibility. 

If you ask me to give you one word that encapsulates and embodies and really exemplifies what this spirituality is about, it is LIFE. That’s it. One word. LIFE. 

Okay…I don’t want to talk about…I don’t speak for Africa. Let me be clear – I don’t speak for Africa. I don’t think anybody should every claim to speak for Africa because Africa is not one thing. Anybody who knows Africa knows that it is a collection of so many things.”


"It is not easy to be a young person growing up on the continent of Africa right now"

Fr. Orobator SJ December 14th Talk at Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Encino benefitting Kibera Girls
Transcript
So, there is nothing that is lifeless in my immediate environment. And, I was reading Laudato Si, the Pope’s recent encyclical, “On Care for Our Common Home,” and when I read this text on the 223rd paragraph and the Pope writes, “The universe unfolds in God who fills it completely hence there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dew drop, in a poor person’s face.” Now, that’s the kind of spirituality that I grew up practicing. That, there is a mystical meaning to be found in every single object, in every single person, in every single reality that constitutes this universe. That’s what I call Animism. That this universe is animated by spiritual realities. And, we can give a name to these spiritual realities however we choose to. That this universe is animated.

When I became a Jesuit I came across Gerald Manley Hopkins, the great poet. One of his, I believe, very famous poems is God’s Grandeur. 

Gerard Manly Hopkins writes, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. 

The world is charged with the Grandeur of God. And, for me, this just says it so profoundly, that it’s really about coming to discover that presence of God that is in the world, that is embodied in, that is enfleshed in, every single reality. 

And, becoming a Christian and coming to understand the reality of incarnation and realizing that, in fact, this this is what God is about. It’s about incarnation. It’s about becoming flesh – The Word becoming flesh. Becoming incarnated in that which we take for granted. For me, that has been such a critical confirmation of what I believe is at the core of the spirituality we call African.

So, you can imagine then that for me, as a Jesuit, I do theology and I am an ordained priest. I just can’t take this thing out of me. I can’t take it out. This is what I fed on for the first sixteen years of my life. This is what shaped my own consciousness of who God is. This is what gave me my own religious identity. It is this sense of being in a world that is completely animated, totally, continuously, animated. And, I use the world life.

The other thing you will find is that in my place, in my language, we do not have a word for religion. And, that will be true for several other instances on the continent. We don’t have a word for religion. What we would call religion would basically be a way of life. That’s how we would translate that word – a way of life. That’s what it is. It’s a way of life. It is never detached from life. It is never isolated, simply to be studied, and analyzed, and accepted in an abstract manner. It is not possible. It is always connected with life. 

I think part of the challenges that Christianity faces on the continent today is how to deal with this very deep and profound reality and that’s why Christianity in certain part of the continent, is really into exorcism, is really into deliverance, is into healing. Because it thinks that these things are still obstacles to be uprooted by exorcism, by deliverance, by healing because the people still believe strongly in that animation, in that, shall we say, that spiritually charged universe, and the people still believe that, and Christianity comes up against that and wants to uproot that because it is still too close to Animism.

WIND Kibera Girls