Oh, how I wish I had been African last month, when I really needed some help dealing with the loss of our family’s good friend. Unlike Confucianism or Taoism, which offer very little comfort to someone who’s in mourning, African traditional religions seem to focus a lot more on death. And I mean that in a good way.
Although there are probably more varieties of African religion than I could hope to count, most of them have something in common: a belief that, after death, some people—the good ones, those who lived and died well—go to some type of heaven, where they exist as ancestral spirits and remain part of the lives of the people they loved.
As writer Ogbu U. Kalu explains, “Death is a mere passage from the human world to the spirit world. The passage enhances the spiritual powers so that one could now operate in the human environment and especially in the human family as a guardian, protective spirit/power/influence.”
I like that. It’s nice to be able to think (even if I don’t really believe it deep down, necessarily) that I might have someone I love looking out for me. I can use all the help I can get.
Yeah, African religion definitely has a lot to offer someone who’s grieving. Poet Birago Diop wrote this poem about death and grief in Africa. I just wish I had read it last month:
Those who are dead are never gone:
They are there in the thickening shadow.
The dead are not under the earth:
They are in the tree that rustles,
They are in the wood that groans;
Those who are dead are never gone:
They are in the breast of the woman,
They are in the child who is wailing
And in the firebrand that flames.
The dead are not under the earth:
They are in the forest,
They are in the house.
The dead are not dead.
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