Delights of an Enspirited Sojourn

This enspirited sojourn that was “Rûah-driven” (RD), was a welcomed journey to Juba and Wau in South Sudan (Nov 28-Dec 4, 2023), Addis Ababa, Abra Minch, Soddo, and Hosanna in Ethiopia (Dec 4-19, 2023). It was a sojourn punctuated by moments of delightful consolations, under the plural inspirations of Rûah Elohim. 

The surging power of the Rûah of resilience amidst a sea of lingering, melancholic hopelessness is palpably felt as I stepped on the volatile ground of Juba and Wau in South Sudan, a land torn asunder by belligerent tribalism, with periodic lethal eruptions.

I imbibed the indefatigable sense of resilience and hope in the sentiments of the Jesuits who lived in their preferential option for the poor in Wau, particularly in the extended family members of a Jesuit scholastic.

Such resilience is confirmed in the moving narrative of JB Musiitwa SJ: “Tears of joy flowed out of my eyes when, for the first time, I met people in South Sudan dressed in hope. People of all tribes were walking together waving the South Sudanese flag. This is what I had been waiting for, and finally, it happened in my lifetime in South Sudan. For once, people overcame their differences and celebrated being South Sudanese.”   

The surging power of the Rûah of cultural resilience is also felt in Ethiopia, albeit in plural forms, amidst the violence in Tigray and Amhara, in the ancient land of the Queen of Seba, Emperor Haile Selassie, and Menelik II. 

Led and moved by the Rûah of cultural resilience, with fellow sojourners, we performed the ritual of thanksgiving in Lake Hora (Hora Harsedi) on a boat. We raised our hearts and hands in gratitude to Waaga for the gift of creation and the interconnectedness of life in creation, for the graces, blessings, and mercies received from the Creator-Waaqa who manifested the divine self as Ayyaana (Spirit), the Spirit who creates, protects or destroy as commanded by Waaqa. 

The Rûah of cultural resilience moved us to retrieve the religio-cultural wisdom of the indigenous religion of Oromo known as Waaqeffanna (WR) which teaches that each creature has a unique spirit. Ayyaana is also an intermediary between humans and God by communicating the problems humans are facing to God while bestowing protection to the Oromo communities and misfortune upon the persons unwilling to comply with the traditions of the society. We then sprinkled the water of the sacred lake on ourselves, expressing our solidarity with the pilgrims of the annual Ireecha/Thanksgiving day of the Oromo people of Ethiopia. 

In the sacred springs of Arba Minch in the Nechisar National Park, with the charming bubbles from the bosom of mother earth, and the enchanting splendor of the forests dotting “God’s bridge” that conjoins Lake Chamo and Abaya, the Rûah of cultural resilience led us to raise our hearts and hands in praise of the Wolaitta Creator, Saluwa Tossa or sky God whose presence as the medhaga (Eternal creator) of alame (world) is felt as ayana (spirit) in communion with the Wolaitta ancestors, present as ayana animating the animals, the forests, the mountains, the plants, the trees, the water and our alame (world). 

Rûah Elohim always inspired humor, humility, reciprocity, and simplicity of heart as witnessed in the conversation with and request for blessing from +H. Em. Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Mullah and +H. Em. Cardinal Berhaneyesus Souraphiel, in our request for the blessings of Spiritan Provincial of Arba Minh, Abba Kilimpe C.S.Sp, Vicar General of Hosanna Apostolic Vicariate, Abba Immanuel Joseph, Abba Abinet Abebe,  +H.E. Bishop of Seyoum Fransuswa, +H.E Tsegaya Keneni, +H.E. Musie (Emdebir Epharchy), and the apostolic nuncio, +H.E. Archbishop Camilleri. The kneeling gesture is a sign of submission to God and to fulfill God’s will amongst God’s people and creation. 

In all the onsite encounters with the CLC and IMCS, the Rûah of synodality disposes and places us to “do what God desires for God’s people” in our conversation with the cardinal of South Sudan and Ethiopia, seeking their blessings for fundraising for the Nairobi IMCS Training Center.

In our dialogue with the IMCS students in Arba Minh, Soddo and Hosanna, as we open our hearts to hear the voice of God’s Spirit in the spirit of synodality by listening discerningly to the students’ voices on what is IMCS to them and what they expect of IMCS, we realize that the IMCS students desire to be (a) formed in their faith in relation to the Catholic Social and Papal Teachings with the help of the alumni/seniors who enable students to understand the interrelation between professional competence and faith; (b) engage in income-generation in the face of job insecurities, assisted by the alumni; (c) engage in social actions in partnership with JRS (Jesuit Refugee Service) and JP II Vocational Learning College; (d) connect with other the IMCS national coordinator, empower the national IMCS Leaders and entrust with the power of decision-making; (e) connect with other IMCS in the region, nation and other parts of the world; (f) gather together in a National youth Congress in preparation for the 2027 World Youth Day.  

The Rûah of simplicity has prompted a personal delight in eating the “coker” (fried bread), riding on the “ye aheya gari” (cart pulled by a donkey), and pushing the “gari” (a cart for transporting goods) as these are symbols of preferential solidarity with the ordinary people of Ethiopia who eke a daily living through hard labor.

This is integral to our Jesuit identity as moved by God’s Rûah of solidarity in imbibing the second UAP (Universal Apostolic Preferences) of identification with the excluded, the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice. 

The Rûah of resilience and synodality is the earthly manifestation of the God who is the cosmic Rûah (John 4:24), the Divine/Sacred Rûah who “represents the presence of God, which is throughout the whole creation (Ps139:7), and the mighty involvement of God in earthly affairs (Isa 63:10-14; Job 26:12-13).” This is the Spirit that “gives life (2 Cor 3:6) and is represented by the elements necessary for life: air, fire and water.” 

This omnipresent and cosmic Rûah Elohim, alive and active in creation and all creatures im-planeted on this planetary Earth-home, is the pneumatic basis which undergirds the overarching tenet of Laudato Si’ that “We are all interconnected” and we are one for “Everything in this world and every creature is connected” (LS §§16, 70b, 73, 91, 111, 117, 138). This interconnectivity of everything further alerts us that we are “part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it” (LS §139).

This matrix of interrelation makes us realize that “other living beings have a value of their own in God’s eyes” (LS §69) and humans “must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things” (CCC339) (LS §69) since “each distinct species has a value in itself.” (QA 54) This inherent value is derived from the fact that God’s Spirit is indwelling in each created lifeform, akin to what Querida Amazonia avers to as the “various beings” (QA#42) referred to by indigenous wisdom (QA§51) and mysticism (QA§73) that make possible buen vivir  (“good living” QA§8, §26, §71). 

The omnipresent indwelling power of Rûah Elohim constitutes what Grim calls the “spiritual powers” that sustain the earth and all life forms. Thus indigenous spirituality posits that creation and the earth are “enspirited or divine”, according to J. Baird Callicott. 

As early as 1969, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, a Jesuit paleontologist exhorted the scientific community with this plea to recognize the cosmos as enspirited.   

Besides the phenomenon of heat, light, and the rest studied by physics, there is, just as real and natural, the phenomenon of spirit … [that] has rightly attracted human attention more than any other. We are coincidental with it. We feel it within. It is the very thread of which the other phenomena are woven for us. It is the thing we know best in the world since we are ourselves, and it is for us everything (Chardin, 1969, p. 93, O’ Murchu 2012, 59).

For Chardin, matter that constitutes the cosmos is unmistakably spirit. Twenty-two years (22) later, Professor Tu Wei-Ming (1991:2) of the Harvard School posits “matter as the embodiment of the spirit” when he decried the crisis of modernity as this inability to recognize such divine embodiment. 

The contemporary community of astrophysics (Schrijver 2015) has looped us back to the wonders of the spirit in the cosmos when they discovered that the minutest particles (nutrinos, fermions, quarks, photino, bosons, gluons, wino and zino) in the cosmos have “a preferred sense of direction” and “a kind of homing instinct engaging in processes of complexification and self-organization. Such “preferred sense of direction” and homing instinct” can be construed as the activities of God’s Cosmic Spirit indwelling in all the particles of our cosmos.

The cosmic indwelling of Rûah Elohim in all the particles of planet Earth is indeed a Chardinian “phenomenon of spirit” which the community of renowned indigenous shamans, sages, mystics, wo/men elders has insightfully and wisely attributed nature as spirited, recognizing the spirit of the animals (tiger), birds, forest, water (oceans, seas, rivers) to denote life (vitality) and sacredness (God’s Spirit-indwelling). 

Therefore creation/earth is truly spirited, always divine/sacred, and needs to be considered, in Amaladoss’ opinion, “‘a subject’ energized by the Spirit.” According to Felix Wilfred, the God who is revealed in the created world, is the God who is “present ‘in all things’ (Col. 3.11) and “there is an invisible dimension in all things visible, a “beyond” to everything material” so much so that “all creation is a palpable mystery, an immense ‘incarnation’ of cosmic proportion.” A. Orabator has insightfully pronounced, “the earth is a footrest of the divine. Nature is a privileged focus for encountering the gods, goddesses, deities, and ancestral spirits.”

Likewise Karl Caspar, a Filipino anthropologist-theologian posits, “The world of the Lumad is a world of meaning embodied in the very gentle system of beliefs that encompass forests and spirits, mountains and goodness, rivers and nymphs, caves, communities, and ancestors. All these give reason to sustain and nourish creation for the sake of generations still to come.” Yangkahao Vashum, a tribal theologian of northeast India avers, “The tribal belief in spirit, the spirit who pervades and controls the whole universe, might be applied to interpret an understanding of the Holy Spirit from a tribal perspective.”

This ancient civilizational wisdom of indigenous communities articulates with Chardin’s postulation that we (humans, earth, and the cosmos) are part of the phenomenon of spirit, sharing in the creative power of Rûah Elohim. This Divine/Sacred “Spirit represents the presence of God, which is throughout the whole creation (Ps139:7), and the mighty involvement of God in earthly affairs (Isa 63:10-14; Job 26:12-13).” This is the Spirit that “gives life (2 Cor 3:6) and is represented by the elements necessary for life: air, fire and water.” 

On the whole, this sojourn has deepened the urgency of promoting the “enspiritedness” of matter, the material world, and the earth cosmos that connects us to the experience of the “sacred power” of Rûah Elohim in creation. Hence all things material that made up the ritual paraphanalia for access to spirit guide & spirit world are “the many elements proper to the experience of indigenous peoples in their contact with nature, and respect native forms of expression in song, dance, rituals, gestures and symbols” (OA§82) that ought to be honored.

Therefore, the resources of the earth are not mere resources to be financialized but their beinghood or inherent value calls for respect (CCC§339; LS §69; QA§42; QA§54). More importantly, integral ecology demands that “genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice, and faithfulness to others” (LS§70), especially those who eke their living out of the land through hard labor. 

Awash in the delights of this enspirited sojourn, there is a need to imbibe, embody and promote the wisdom of Pope Francis in Laudate Deum: “We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it”, and thus “we [do] not look at the world from without but from within” (LD §25) since “human life, intelligence, and freedom are elements of the nature that enriches our planet, part of its internal workings and its equilibrium” (LD §26).

Fr. Jojo M. Fung S.J. is a board member of Sacred Springs: Dialogue Institute of Spirituality and Sustainability and a member of Laudato Si’ Asia-Coalition of Culture of Care, Resilience and Ecological Justice (LASIA-CAREJ) in partnership with Asian Sacred Wisdom (ASW). He is an associate professor of systematic theology at the Loyola School of Theology, Manila.