Odozor- “I am, because we are” This is a quote I heard on one of my videos from my recent course, Spirituality, Morality, and Ethics. Odozor is an African priest who talked about African Christians and how they differ from American Christians. He said they believe in a God that is more human to them, God is merciful, so they must be merciful, God is kind, so they must be kind. God is fully present to them and they celebrate with joy with less constraint, instead pure joy. He also talked about the sense of community that Africans have, that they are all in it together with a responsibility for one another. He said a common theme is, “I am because we are.” I can only imagine how different our society would be if this idea was true to our culture. If we believed we were in it to help, build up, and to love one another, only then could we build up ourselves. Instead we step on one another to get to the top, often times crushing others spirits in the process.
I can sincerely say, “I am because God is” but I know God wants us to live our lives by loving him through the most sincere action of, “I am because we are.” Can we do it? Do we want to?
love it…how about this story from memory…a man was visiting an African village and put a large basket of fruit out, gathering the children around him he said, “The first child that reaches the bowl can have the fruit…then he watched the children form a circle around the basket and they all reached down together and touched the basket…when the visitor asked them why they did that they said, “when one of us is happy, we are all happy, when one of us is sad, we are all sad.”