He Who Has Ears

I changed the name of this blog.  I'll explain about that in the next entry because I feel that it's an important message in itself.  Here's the current post for now:

Sometimes we just need to shut up and listen.

Pasteur Ilunga, pastor of the mother church of
Pasteur Ezechiel's church, telling the good
news about Jesus at Pasteur Job's funeral.

Pastor Job was a well-loved upright professor at one of the Bible schools in Lubumbashi.  Unfortunately, after a lengthy struggle with cancer, he passed away.  We attended his funeral service.  After a moving address and poignant message about the need to repent of wrongdoing and trust in Jesus’ payment for our forgiveness, the hearse took off to a cemetery on the outskirts of the other side of town.  Once we arrived we had to wait our turn to enter the graveyard and have the burial conducted. 

As we waited with our Congolese friends outside the gate amidst the rural Katangan landscape, I noticed our Congolese friends’ foreboding tension.  Something about this was not normal. 

An unbelievably rapid series of events fulfilled that apprehension.  Gate opens.  Crowd moves to pavilion.  Hearse backs in.  Workers in construction clothes haul out coffin.  Minister orates short prayer and biography.  Workers carry coffin to gravesite.  Family and guests follow.  Family grieves as coffin is lowered.  Attendants hurry wailing family away.  Long line of guests quickly passes grave.  Group exits cemetery.

I took a complete guess off a faint memory
of the name of this cemetery and found its
website! It's called Rivière des Anges (River
of Angels). Here a group is entering the gate to
the cemetery. That van is the hearse. The speakers
on top are for blaring Christian worship music
through the streets during the procession.

Just before we left, we saw a white man who I assumed to be the funeral director.  Bill went over to talk to him, and what I overheard from their conversation shook the way I listened to others. 

The director said he was all about dignity and respect and he wanted to build gravesites that provided that.  Our Congolese friends interpreted his efforts much differently, though.  Pasteur Ezechiel rode with us on the way home and fumed about how he felt everything opposite of dignity and respect during the funeral.  The phrase he hammered over and over was “That’s now how the Congolese bury people.” 

Congolese customs and values that this European director trampled on surfaced many times during his diatribe.  Pasteur Ezechiel ranted about everything from the concreted-over grave parcels and the over-structured business-feel to the event, but what bothered him most was how the attendants flew through the service and even pulled away the mourning family from the grave to speed the line along for the next funeral.  He said that normally the Congolese cry for hours at burial ceremonies, but these guys hardly gave Pastor Job’s family 5 minutes to bemoan his interment.

Workers moving a casket from the pavilion

to a grave site.

I saw a spectacle that highlighted the contrast in cultural customs while walking home from the Ruashi church one day.  I looked up from gazing at the walkway to avoid tripping over a rock sticking out of the ground or stepping in a stream of water trickling out of an alley and noticed a tarp stretched across the avenue a ways down.  Many people were standing around and even a few cars were parked in the path.  Curious, I cautiously approached and soon recognized what was going on.  Whenever someone dies, usually family and friends will visit the bereaveds’ house during the days following.  After finding out that it was indeed a funeral, and I gave my consolations and continued home.

This is the area Pasteur Job was laid to rest in.

For six continuous days later there were still visitors mourning with the family.

Although the director may have had business reasons for running the whole procession in less than 30 minutes, there wasn’t much about it that communicated dignity and respect to Pasteur Ezekiel.  It didn’t matter what the director’s intentions were because his actions ignorant of Congolese traditions resulted in frustration. 

I thought about how Pasteur Ezechiel didn't
like how they concreted-over the graves and
wondered if they did that practically to prevent
graverobbing. Then I realized that the
Congolese already have their own system
to prevent that. These metal enclosures are
common in gravesites in Africa, but apparantly
this funeral director missed that.

Lesson for people seeking to serve others cross-culturally:  When interacting with those from other cultures, it’s important to be knowledgeable about their customs.  Understand that both yours and theirs are good and valid, but since you are there to serve them, you need to serve them on their terms.  So ask them.  Talk to them.  Humble yourself and adapt your preferences to theirs.

Lesson for anyone else:  Listen to others.  It’s so easy, especially in our American individualistic “speak my mind” culture, to blab first and not even consider listening to the other’s experiences later.  I’m sure guilty of it.  If that’s your confession too, it’s a good thing that the Holy Spirit develops in us the patience, compassion, and humility necessary to listen first.  Even though we may have constructive intentions, our ignorance of others’ situations greatly increases the chances of miscommunication and irritation.

“You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or with impressing the other, or are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or are debating about whether what is being said is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered.”
     --William Stringfield