Whirling

M'e Mpho's funeral was held today in Lesotho. I took a long walk by the river in the morning fog, trying to imagine being there. It's summer there, so butterflies and high clouds in a vivid blue sky. Bright sun. Nothing could have been further from the atmosphere that surrounded me. I hummed her favorite song as I walked. Music. There will have been singing at her funeral. And rhythmic, whirling dance.

The Zion church, now the fastest-growing form of Christianity in southern Africa, developed from worship introduced by Christian African-American missionaries of the AME Zion church who went to South Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. Their worship services, usually conducted in someone's home or in an open field, begin on Saturday afternoon and continue into Sunday. Practitioners sing and dance all night in circles, similar to the dances of the dervishes, achieving an altered state in which many experience union with divinity. M'e Mpho had heard of this in Lesotho, but she had not experienced their worship till we were in South Africa. She was so moved by it that she left the Roman Catholic church and became a singing, dancing, whirling Zionist (no ideological relation to Jewish Zionism).

When I left South Africa and she returned to her little house in Lesotho, she converted her home into a center for this form of worship, and she told me that the dancing and singing allowed her to forget her troubles and feel close to the ancestors, known and unknown, who give guidance to the living. She adopted the white head-scarf associated with believers, and the practice of her faith gave her deep pleasure.

Her favorite hymn, the one I have been humming all day, is Kabelo ea ka ntle. I couldn't find a Sesotho version of it on Youtube, but there is a Zulu version of it, sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir, here.

There's a video of a large Zionist choir singing and dancing (though they don't get to the ecstatic level) here.

I chose this image because the fog seems to swirl over the river, almost like a whirling dance. The runner-up for today's blip is this one of ducks flying very close to the water in deep fog. A few other mono shots of Portland in fog are on my Flickr stream. No need to click on any of this. I post it as much for myself as for anyone else.

This post is already too long, but let me add two great joys. Last night my almost-two-year-old granddaughter Bella visited me for several hours while her parents went to a movie, and we had a rip-roaring good time. I hadn't seen her since Christmas, and we laughed, as we always do, for hours. Second, my almost-fourteen-year-old feline companion Taiga, who had been failing and fading away, suddenly staged a comeback yesterday. He's eating, drinking, and seems much more alert and alive today. I think maybe he plans to stick around a while longer.