Jo Angami
Kohima
I stand at the cusp of my mid-twenties. Between the ages 7-13, I hoped that I'd grow up quickly, overcome my vices: my short-temper, my unwillingness to share my stuff, to say ‘important’, witty, useful things and be heard and appreciated for them. To children, adulthood is a club they can't wait to join. And so, we play pretend as we wait. Ages 14-17, most teens find that the world of the adults is not ‘all that’; it's disappointing and disenchanting. You begin to read between the lines, there really isn't a lot of love around here. Ages 18-24, the disillusionment is not novel anymore, you hope you don't become one of them but…slowly, you feel as if you could compromise a little. ‘I wouldn't mind that job, Lord help me push my papers up the bureaucracy, my tithe is Yours forever. Amen.’, ‘I wouldn't want to say anything too controversial, you never know who's listening’. And you begin to think that kissing their feet even as you detest everything they stand for, censoring your distaste as you shake their hand isn’t the big betrayal you thought it was. The waves of the real world are at this moment threatening to erode at my values and so I must write about it, if only to remind myself that it is my soul at stake.
Far too many people have written about corruption, about people who sit right up front in Church and won't even so much as wince when they hear about the rich man and Lazarus. So I turn my focus on us: you and me, the ones who sit at the back and laugh at their hypocrisy.
A lot of cultures have coming-of-age ceremonies, the Jews have their Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah; the Spanish have their Quinceañera. It was the Morung for us I suppose, and I don't think the western school system was a proper inheritor of the tradition and I wonder often, if we haven't fully processed its loss yet. One imagines a world where the Morung system was adapted, and allowed to evolve organically into our present time, I wonder what sort of society it would have produced and whether that society is the rightful heir. What then is our claim to the Naga inheritance without the Morung? I’m inclined to believe that we were supposed to be more than our traditional attires and food, a mere display to the foreigners come wintertime. Somewhere, the Nagas have lost the plot (although I have observed that some villages seem to carry a whiff of that old and noble ‘something’). Or I’m entirely wrong and I just need to meet more people. But give me a moment if you think we might be on to something and perhaps we can be less cynical? If the western education system is the false heir, I believe that the Sunday School system can be made heir to the Morung. Just maybe not in her current form.
Scholars often talk about the segregation of present society, into the working class and the dependents: the working class as the actual, active, contributing members of the society with the children hidden away in schools and the old relegated to homes. They argue that other than the obvious generational divide it encourages, it disregards what the old and the young bring to society in the larger scheme of things. Add to this segregation the increasing after-school activities of children and isolation of the old, segregation continues in the household through our devices that are only getting better at keeping us ‘connected’ over the dinner table.
In this context, the Sunday School stands out like an oasis but not quite yet. Presently I can’t help but wonder if parents themselves do more to undo the years of work put in by the Sunday Schools simply by showing kids that there is a time and place for faith and the rest is all ‘real life’. Yes, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, be unselfish…but within reason of course. That the office and the church are both separate places of worship, one God easier to please than the other. That the child's value matters in relation to the adult, that abusing a child who isn't mine is permissible. That pornography isn’t adultery. All that established groundwork - discussions and lessons on faith, generosity, corruption, hell, heaven, honesty, deception, selflessness - only to pull the rug from under their feet and tell them that sin matters… in context. No surprise that a huge proportion of kids end up not attending church once they're old enough to leave Sunday School. The masks are off and they feel cheated. I wonder if sins like substance abuse or gluttony (of quantity not of quality) are more easily dealt with because their effects are visible but the more sinister sins always lie just below the polished surface, never confronting us but eat away at our souls, a constant demon on our shoulders even as we rise up to sing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ only to make fools of us on that Great and Terrible Day.
But all is not yet lost. If it is from the westerners that we inherited this establishment, it is from them that we learn again. Churches in many places are now turning to a more inclusive form of Sunday school. One where the whole church community is involved, and the child's faith is not relegated to a few trained teachers and only to be practiced when convenient. A rotating roster of church members (youths, deacons, parents) all guided by trained teachers to teach children: this is the great transmission of faith. We have sat, sagged on our pews and watched society rot for too long. Discomfort over reading and writing this only points to the next course of action. Children sniff out hypocrisy like hunting dogs, they have no place for compromise once they have tasted heaven. Imagine then, the community where children are not just taught faith but see it shared, transmitted and practiced in every single area of their lives by adults who now carry the responsibility of being mentors of faith. Of an active, living faith and not just of spoken words. The lines between the Sunday School and the Church at large gradually begin to fade and we rid society of one major segregation. What if the Morung was only preparing a way for the Church of Christ? Our warfare has changed and so has our enemy but we are still descendants of warriors. With the Church as our true Morung, may we prepare our children for the fight of their lives: the fight for their souls.
