The behinds of 15 Malawian women covered in various chitenges moved with quite the force as I tried to back up in my chair from the encroaching dancers. I couldn’t help smiling at so much ass shaking in the front of a church on Palm Sunday no less. I was seated in a wooden chair sweating’ my own ass off as the dancers sang to Jesus how they were sinking. They sank with quite the motions that even in my sweaty and tired state was entertaining. Before I got up to give my sermon a child peed on the front of the platform, another child almost choked on a piece of glass, a dog rested against the hot brick walls and stayed there, and breasts were continually whipped out for the feeding of babies who needed more than just the spiritual food of Jesus. I usually get nervous before I get up to speak, but I didn’t this time. My site mate, Amazing A, had suggested I preach when I was complaining how I felt a lack of connection between my village and I, and how I felt I thought relationships were the key to change, but I didn’t have strong ones. So I decided she was right and maybe I wasn’t that nervous, not because I knew something they didn’t or I had that much insight on the bible or religion, but I decided to preach because I think relationships are important and crucial and that my way of building a community relationship could start or become stronger not with continuous projects, but with a recognition that I feel there is good in my community and that the good is among people and whatever they choose to call god. No need to be nervous, all I had to do was pick a theme, tie in Jesus, and tell them. Tell them I thought there was so much good, in them, around them, and between us. So I did.
“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” (Jeremiah 9:23-24)
Malawians practice kindness. So do Americans. But the kindness Americans practice is often practiced differently, not always, but often. I believe there is something to be learned from the Malawian way. Many Malawians will often talk with me about how they feel the United States is better than Malawi that America has more to offer. I disagree, as is true of any place; both the United States and Malawi have different points of beauty, as well as faults. There are many aspects in which the U.S. could learn from Malawi and where Malawi could learn from the United States. When I first got here I often ate at a women’s house in Bolero when I came to shop at the market.
She would feed me sima and dende and each time I would thank her. Soon she told me that if I kept thanking her, I was going to get tired. So I stopped, I didn’t need to thank her. I have eaten her sima, she has eaten my spaghetti. I have shared with her my ideas on development and she has shared hers. It has become our way to share, our way of kindness. Not an exchange but how we live with each other. We have activated kindness for each other.
I am starting to learn how to live out my kindness. When I have needed help with my garden the women who live near me help me. I always want to give them something, and they tell me that I don’t need to, that when they are in need and in my need they will find help in me or in others and that I will find help in that same community.
In the U.S. so much is based off exchange. I will give you something and expect something back. Kindness is practiced in America as an exchange and frequently it is not lived out. In Malawian culture kindness is more lived out. Its part of life and a culture and from here it becomes something that is a living vibrant ritual. A ritual that in different ways is told through all religions, a ritual that whether religious or not most want to practice and should practice it fully, a ritual that centers on taking care of your neighbors children, of lending money, lending a hand, and always lending a plate whether stranger or friend.
Jesus practiced kindness as a way to live. He lived out his life in kindness. Treating people the way he hoped to be treated. I believe that this was a core part of how he prayed and how I hope to pray. In a book about becoming Christian, the author talks about prayer and receives the piece of knowledge from a friend that: “Prayer’s not about getting the outcome you wish for.”
Though prayer may not be about getting what you wish for I do think there is a broader, perhaps indirect wish. I believe this wish can be in part achieved through kindness, through the praying that Jesus and many others have done to connect people by being kind, to enact out a wish of connection by loving and in turn by being saviors for each other, to be part of the prayer of kindness we all wish for.
Everyone wants to feel kindness, to receive it. But in order to feel it, to receive it most fully, it should be lived. People should live out their kindness. I have felt kindness being lived out by Malawians, you are, and we are, part of an active kindness. This is something people in the United States should learn, it is something we should all practice.
A living out of kindness that allows all of us to be part of a humanity that preserves itself, by preserving each other. The poet, Kahil Gibran, in his book “The Prophet,” notes that ‘When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”’
To move within the heart of God no matter what force, person, or being, God is, I believe you can only move with kindness, a kindness that is unprejudiced and that prompts all to forgive and love as part of a collective heart that will beat towards the “kindness, justice and righteousness” spoken of in Jeremiah 9:23-24, that will beat towards the type of world we all desire, wish, and want.
