A Christian wiseman among the Muslims of New York City

 

 

New Yorkers often get their smarts from somewhere else before honing them on our streets. So, it was the case with Chris Clayman as he recounted recently in his wise and interesting memoir God’s Superplan.

“I landed in… Mali…one month after 9/11. Osama Bin Laden stickers were plastered on every public transport vehicle,” he writes. It would seem that the signs were telling the Baptist missionary, ‘Danger! Go home!” But he didn’t and found the people friendly.

Clayman even talked religion and politics with village leaders. As an American, he always avoided these topics, but the villagers wanted to talk about them all the time. They were particularly interested in America.

The young man recalled his feelings during the conversations. “A week earlier, at the age of 23, I made the village of Bandogo my home.” The people there were a tribe of Wassoulou. Since all were Muslims of a sorts, Clayman was self-conscious as “the first follower of Jesus to ever visit there.” He saw himself as part of a great story of God’s crafting. He was excited and had a real knack for picking up the language.

Originally from Georgetown, Texas, Clayman started his journey in the “sun season” of Mali. He found the weather more forbidding than the Al Qaeda stickers on the taxi cabs.

“Once on a canoe trip to Timbuktu, the fabled Saharan city in Mali, I measured the temperature at 138 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun and a cool 108 degrees in the shade.” The heat made for desperate comic measures to avoid it.

Since the kufi (skull caps) of the men offered limited shade from the sun, “…when the sun moved, … the old men shuffled chairs chasing the shifting shade. On this particular day, one of the four village elders commenced the shuffle game by grumbling, ‘The sun is large today.’ Then, grabbing the arms of his chair, he shuffled several feet to his right to catch the shade.” The rest of the conversation circle moved with him. And on and on it went until sunset.

Proverbs were a favorite way to move along conversations in Bandogo. In the daily kibitzing, the arguments would last through several rounds of chair shuffling until someone came out with a proverbial thunderbolt that just seemed to sum up the wisdom about the situation. Then, everyone would murmur to each other, “Ahhh, now you see. There is nothing more to say.” And onto the next debate. All the while, Clayman was picking up the proverbial smarts of the village elders. He was taking notes.

 

 

The villagers adhered to Islam, but their version, as it often is in North Africa, was also interlaced with the wisdom and workings of wizards. There were nine in his village. In fact, next door was one of the six “good wizards,” who were facing off against three bad ones. So, Clayman was pretty well situated, magically-social speaking.

Yet, his body was not used to all of the germs and diseases that floated through Mali. Eventually, his body gave out, testing his faith and spirit. In a bitter disappointment, he had to leave Mali, and it took him some time to recover. Evidently, he had not just one problem with malaria, but a whole bevy of biological attackers that caused a body shutdown.

Still, his heart remained in Malian hands. He yearned to go back and returned to the country too quickly, sliding back to America again into poor health. A saving grace was that he now met Nicole, the woman of his dreams who wanted to be a missionary to Africa.

She had written a thesis on the Maninka people of West Africa. Clayman thought, I have visited Maninka villages! He just knew that God was leading them toward each other. He prepared for the inevitable.

He had a ring engraved with a Malian proverb, “May God make our campfire last,” and gave it to her. The saying means that no matter how busy you are, if the marriage is strong and lasting you can talk over the day with each other at the campfire before going to bed.

Getting married is pretty disruptive to the best laid plans. What if they had an interest in different parts of Africa? Or their second languages were mutually obscure? Clayman was so single-minded that the question became if he could share his mind-space with another person.

The couple found that they were adjusting into a single mindset. So maybe, God’s call was not to a specific country but to each other first. After sorting out their somewhat different enthusiasms, they got married.

While Clayman studied in seminary and tried to recover his strength from the illnesses that he had contracted in Africa, his wife Nicole turned out to be the cheerleader and provider for the family. They prayed for a return to the mission field, if not Africa maybe somewhere in Asia.

The most foreign land that they never considered was New York City. Nicole had never been to the city, and Clayman’s memory of his one day in the city was vivid with a drunk driver and immense crowds.

Then, a friend contacted them about all of the Africans moving into the Bronx and other boroughs. This fact moved the Claymans to reconsider that maybe they had New York City all wrong. Perhaps, it could be God’s destination for them here on earth! After all they reasoned, it was like going to a far off land — as far as many southerners were concerned. Upon arrival, they soon found out that African adventurers had indeed come before the cautious missionaries.

On the trip to the city, Clayman and his wife Nicole had an unlikely meeting with a fellow named Musa, who was a Wassoulou speaker and a Christian too. There were probably only a handful, at most, Wassoulou-speaking Christians in the world. The Wassoulou, who lived on the borderlands of Mali, Guinea, and Cote d”Ivoire, were feared for their powerful sorcerers. The Claymans were stunned to stumble on someone from Mali and a Christian also in New York City. Was God was telling them something?

Maybe, God had set up New York City itself as a sign about their future. In their eyes, the city started to change from a forbidding place to a land of milk and honey. Musa himself was also in the city due to a supernatural revelation.

“I went into a coma two times over [a] couple of weeks. At some point during the second coma, I had a vivid dream,” Musa told the Claymans.

I saw a large valley, and nothing was in the valley but bones, like the passage I later found in Ezekiel 37 [of the Old Testament]. They were my bones. I was dead but conscious of what was taking place.

 

 

Then, a man’s figure appeared among the bones, and he was shining with a bright light. He called me by name.

‘Musa, do you want to be healed?’

‘Of course I want to be healed,’ I replied. ‘But what about these bones? These are not signs of healing but death!’

‘You will not die; you will live,’ he said. ‘If you follow me, you will live. Even if you face death on earth, you will live forever in paradise.’

‘Follow you? Who are you?’

‘I am Isa [Jesus],’ he replied.”

Musa thinks about it and accepts. Then, “Isa disappeared, the bones left with him, and the dream ended.” His grandfather and a doctor called him crazy. His father was fearful about the social outcome; his mother angry with fear. The local imam cursed him; the village elders promise to beat him. He became homeless, and the object of assassins, sometimes relatives. Musa fled to New York City where he heard that there was religious freedom.

The Claymans realized that in New York City they could still remain in contact with Malians as well as many other African immigrant groups. Because the Africans kept close relations with their hometowns, they could carry the stories of Jesus into the talking circles more effectively than an outsider.

The Claymans’ story about coming from Texas to discover that New York City is a world stage for religious and personal narratives reminds me of what I had heard in my early years in Texas.

I remember one time in San Antonio, Texas when I inquired if my acquaintance Jimmy Hendricks was coming back into town. The club owner said, “Jimmy isn’t coming back anymore. He has made it in Neuw Yawk City.” I thought, so that’s where the excitement is.

For a time, Clayman actually lived in my childhood hometown. I didn’t know him, however. At that time, I followed the surf prophet Mike Doyle (may he rest in peace) while Clayman was on the Jesus trail. On different journeys, we both ended up in New York where we discovered that our paths had crossed long ago. Now, Clayman easily moves in and out of Muslim masjids where he is seen as the odd Christian who more resembles a Malian wiseman with valuable proverbial advice.

He has promoted one of the more interesting Christian operations in the country, not in Texas, but in the new Bible Belt of “Neuw Yawk City.” Check it out.

 

 

*Chris Clayman. superplan. A journey into God’s story. 2018. Monument, Colorado: WigTake Resources.

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