Mike in Nantes: Some thoughts on my year in africa

Mike in Nantes: Some thoughts on my year in africa: "I set off in search of a phenomenon. I wanted to witness, observe, explore and participate in the living theology in “African” Christianity. Grasping at the literature available, I assembled my categories from the surface level aspects of liturgy to the seemingly burgeoning African Christology, which promises a more fundamental shift in Christianity. What began to happen over the year, however, is that the parts became a whole. Piece by piece, I began to understand the limits of my own categories, as inculturation, the subject of my research led me to medicine, education, justice, dialogue and prayer. These were not simply pieces of the puzzle, to be “Africanized”; they were intermeshed interdependent aspects of an experience that is betwixt and between identities. Moreover, as the year progressed, I found this same seamless fabric working in my life, often more in my failures than my successes, as the gap of objectivity that I placed between myself and my work instigated my own brokenness; a sign I took to be of a failure to integrate the parts into whole in my own life."