The Alienation and the Creator’s Call to Sacred Spaces
We’ve long neglected one vital aspect of theology: how our liturgical songs can alienate us from indigenous spiritual sources. Many fail to grasp the urgency of connecting to the Creator through ancestral practices. This isn’t their fault—centuries of displacement from sacred ancestral forests and cultural erasure have severed these ties.
Time and circumstance built barriers between us and our ancestral sacred territories. Yet, the Spirit of the Creator persistently draws us back. I feel it in ancient tunes, sacred tales, and even the whispers of our brothers and sisters (Umunne anyi), Anunu-ebe, Ogirisi, and Oji trees, birds, flies, rodents, mammals, rivers, and all creation —our more-than-human kin gather in response to this divine call. Their music reverberates in my bones: sacred, ancient, therapeutic, wild.
Lent, Liturgy, and the Suppression of Indigenous Expression, a time to decolonize our worship
As we enter Lent 2025, debates will resurface: “Ban this instrument.” “No dancing in church.” These arguments betray our land’s sacredness. Igbo musical instruments are not vain distractions—they’re conduits of ancestral memory. All these narratives force me to ask how we internalized the lie that solemnity requires rejecting indigenous spirituality.
We’ve swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, the myth that solemn worship must mirror the patterns of our Christianizers (forgive me—evangelizers). Most acted in innocence, ignorant of Igbo sensibilities. But why do we still equate solemnity with denying our roots?
I believe it is time to find an answer to these important questions:
- How can ancestral tunes reconnect us to the Creator and Ndiichie (ancestors)?
- Can we follow Jesus, our Elder Brother and Saviour, without honouring indigenous spiritual references?
Dancing with our Ancestors
In Igbo tradition, even the deceased dance to their graves, showing that solemnity isn’t silence—it’s harmony with the sacred. Imagine liturgies alive with ancestral drums and sacred wooden gungs, tunes of a time beyond the colonial erasure of the voices of our ancestors, stories, dirges, and other sacred rhythms that awaken our ancient souls.
