reminders

July is a big month for Voodoo in Haiti, perhaps the biggest.  One of the largest and most wide-spread Voodoo celebrations ended last night in Plaine-du-Nord, a zone about 5 miles from us.  People from all over Haiti, the DR and even the States come for this week long experience, casting money and food into the mud of St. Jacques pool, bathing in it, sacrificing animals into the mud, and asking a major spirit for jobs or healing, for money or help. 


"St. Jacques is the Catholic personification of the African spirit Ogun. When slaves were brought to Haiti, they were baptized as Catholics and forbidden to practice their African religions. Yet they continued to do so in secret and incorporated Catholicism into their traditions. Most spirits in Vodou are represented with both an African and a Catholic name. Ogun, or St. Jacques, is the warrior spirit and is associated with fire, iron, politics and thunderbolts." says Frontline.  


"Every year, thousands of Vodou practitioners gather there in honor of St. Jacques, the warrior spirit. The ceremony is centered around sacred waters.


Water in the Vodou religion is multifaceted in significance and use. It is offered as refreshment and nourishment to the spirits and used for cleansing in ceremonies and initiations. Water is where certain spirits and ancestors reside, and its fluidity is thought to offer the lessons of change."


Over 10,000 people are said to have attended again this year, and last night we fell asleep yet again to strong drumming, an ever present reminder of Haiti's great need to be dedicated instead to a God that requires no pilgrimages, no sacrifices, no money and no rituals, yet offers to re-create us, offers New life, offers freedom from Satan and freedom from ourselves.  


There is much to be done in the world, not because we are missionaries, but because we are His. 

"Neither by the blood of goats or calves, but by his own blood he entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption FOR us.


How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the Spirit offered Himself to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" 


Hebrew 9:12,14