Growing up we never ate dinner before “saying grace.” I distinctly remember my parents giving me “the look” if I tried to sneak a bite early, warning me I better not think about it. This is why I was so confused one night when we were out at a restaurant, and we didn’t “say grace.” Quickly I learned that you didn’t “say grace” when you were eating in public places, and I remember that the contradiction confused me.
I have started reading Immaculée Ilibagiza’s third book, Our Lady of Kibeho (which I will get to later) and I started to realize why I love her writing so much. Not only is she a miraculously holy person, but she relays her faith through the perspective of a life and culture completely different from that of my own. For whatever reason, that seems to make it more pure and meaningful to me.
One of the biggest differences that stands out to me when Immaculée describes her Rwandan upbringing, is how normalized it was to outwardly praise God. Immaculée and her family constantly expressed gratitude to God in a genuine and unassuming way. Not to say that we don’t praise God in America, but it feels more private, solemn, and reserved for church. Thankfulness to God just doesn’t seem to come up in day-to-day small talk with my friends and family.
Immaculée describes a childhood in which play and prayer overlapped. Such as when she invented the game “Pictures in Heaven.” This was a strike-a-pose type game in which children pretended God was taking pictures of them during the flashes of the meteor showers. As a girl, after learning about the 1917 miracle in Fatima, Immaculée led a series of reenactments with her friends on a mountaintop to try and lure the Virgin Mary to her village of Mataba. I just played with Barbies growing up, although we did pretend we were priests giving the Eucharist when we ate satellite wafers, so there’s that.
I guess life is a tradeoff. As I used to feel sorry for people living in emerging villages, with no running water or electricity, but when I hear Immaculée speak of her childhood I feel a sense of jealousy for what I fear our society could never emulate. With no television or phone to distract them, her family spent the evenings in prayer together or partaking in a tradition known as Igitaramo. This consisted of a gathering around a large communal fire, with people singing and dancing to traditional songs and speakers relaying news or telling stories of tribal legends. How nice does that sound?
In her previous book, Immaculée describes meeting the woman who would buy her wedding dress under the pretense that they were sisters. A fellow Rwandan Tutsi survivor who shared her love of the Virgin Mary. How were they sisters you ask? The generous woman insisted that since Mary was both of their mothers, then they were sisters, and therefore she could pay for Immaculée’s dress because sisters take care of each other.
I feel like when I listen to Immaculée’s voice on Audible her piety is that much more accentuated. After a few days walking around the house with my AirPods in, I felt myself wanting to talk like her and copycat her phrases. Then I would stop and remind myself that people don’t talk like that around here. Although maybe we should. Seriously though, can you imagine a society in which no one had electronic distractions? What would happen if kids just stayed home at night praying with their families? Can you fathom overhearing a conversation in which two strangers instantly become sisters on the logic that the Virgin Mary is their mother?
Although I think it’s time to mainstream these wholesome antics without fear of appearing weird or attention-seeking. We’ve all heard the expression less is more, and it seems universal throughout history that those with less have exponentially richer spiritual lives. Afterall, it all started with a stable, a manger and a baby.