Though admirable, I find my mother Xoli’s faith immensely exhausting at times. By no means do I say this in a critical way but as a person who is obsessed with controlling nearly every aspect of my life, having a problem where the only solution is “prayer” or “talking to God” is just not the action point I need.
This is often my mother’s advice and I just want to scream. Jokes and sarcasm aside, my mother navigates life with faith as her primary GPS. I honestly at times have no idea how and why she hasn’t run out of faith, particularly because life has dealt her, and us as a family, some terrible cards.
Yet her faith remains untethered – why?
Some of her greatest hits in terms of catchphrases, meant to reignite or re-evoke my faith when I seek advice, are “yazi mntanam, thandaza" and all of the answers you need will be presented to you by "uThixo nezihlwele” (My baby, pray and God and your guardians will advise you) or “tshisa impepho ubuze amaBhele” (burn sage with the intention of consulting the Bhele ancestors).
My favorite has to be “uzokhula ubone uba" stressing over things rather than giving them to God is nothing but futile” (you will grow up and understand the futility of stressing rather than giving your problems to God).
I think I would disregard these words from her if I didn’t see her faith in practice. Things have thoroughly fallen apart in her life and I have never – not once – seen her pursuing answers and affirmations from anywhere by God and her guardian angels.
When I trace the origins of my own faith against that of my mom’s, I see my grandmother as the one who we both emulate.
I find this ironic, especially in consideration to a recent conversation between my grandmother and I, where she said: “Yazi, uXoli (You know Xoli), have a different type of faith mntanam (my child)." When things are bottoms-up she remains encouraging and affirms that things will someday get better.
She rests in her faith. I often sit here and ask myself where she gets that from because there are times when I even throw in the towel and tell myself that I will not talk to a god that won’t listen.
I affirmed her faith indirectly by reminding her of the recurring alarm on her phone set for 5am. UMadlamini (granny) would wake up in the middle of the night throughout my childhood, light candles, read scripture, pray and sing Hosana to the Lord.
It was my responsibility to set the alarm on my granny’s phone every evening once she had returned from work. She would arrive at around 5pm, hoot and I’d run to open the gate for her.
She would then enter the driveway and idle the car far enough for me to be able to shut it and enter the car for a mini ride to the back of the house.
I would jump in next to her, give her a kiss and tell her how my day was. At around 6pm we would have a family prayer, where we would alternate on the reading and interpretation of scripture.
We would often go around the room and share what the scripture meant to us and we would sing, pray and worship daily.
My cousin, Akhona, was often tasked with ukuhlabela iculo (sing a hymn that we would all follow) and I was tasked with the fetching of water in glasses, where I would perform a water prayer after reading Revelation 22v1 or the like.
This was routine for us, so I find it comical that my granny doesn’t know where my mom’s faith comes from. Internally, I scream: “Ma’am, she is your legacy, can you not see that?”
I suppose my granny considers how this was her life and now she is lucky if she wakes up three times a week to make midnight prayers.
I often tell her that she is older, at 75-plus than she was then, so I am sure God understands. She laughs at this response while validating it.
I say this to her because I don’t want her feeling bad about her faith by comparing herself to my mom, a 49-year-old who is still able to wake up nightly.
My mom, to this day, carries my gran’s legacy of praying and talking to God at midnight.
I recently visited home and as I lit a candle in my grandmother’s bedroom (where I sleep when I’m home) at midnight, I heard my mom’s voice – at first I thought she was on the phone so I did what all kids would do, I stormed into her room to ask her who she was talking to at that hour.
To my surprise, she was reading scripture aloud, so I sat cross-legged and she read to me. We prayed and talked. In that moment I felt myself relocating my faith and my connection to praying and talking to God.
Although I was lighting a candle with the intention of praying, I had felt a little disconnected from my faith and I was trying to reconnect.
My impromptu prayer session with my mom was the reignition of the connection between me and my faith – that I didn’t know I needed.
My conversations with the baddies (how I jokingly refer to my mom and gran) on faith and its practice will always be a source for me to reconnect to my own faith once I find myself drifting.
I am grateful for Madlamini’s legacy because I am a sangoma today who navigates practice through faith.
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