Spirituality as Apprenticeship

Vodou takes the idea of learning as a lifetime skill very seriously. Even my time in academia, under the infamous “publish or perish” dictate, wasn’t this serious about the idea that if you breathin’, you supposed to be learning.

My mentor says, dryly, that he finds it hilarious people take one look at the ATRs (African traditional religions) and immediately assume that study is out the window. It’s the shamanism, the lack of a book that does it for people. How could something be rigorous, be worth respecting if it isn’t set down in a book for nerds to argue about interpretation?

You can reliably neuter any idea if you let people argue academically about it for a generation or two. Just ask any political or economic theorist of note (say, Marx and Engels…)

The period after one initiates as priest is intended to be an apprenticeship. One shows up to learn about being a priest from a priest as one does priest things.

I’m looking forward to the summer season precisely because it will allow me to assist in whatever. Mop, wash dishes and clothes, get supplies, take notes, make food. I don’t care. I’d do all these things anyway and have to help get a spiritual party moving, to help someone focus on the work they were doing. Vodou is communal, which means that it’s magical and practical.

You can find me changing diapers or lives with equal enthusiasm—they are often the same thing.