Peibek (Part 2) "Refiner's Fire"

As Cheri was walking Bethany and Alice to school on one of the Monday immediately following the unfortunate death of a man from Barunga, they were met by three little indigenous kids walking AWAY from the school.

“There aren’t any children at the school today, because the blackbala is going to come and kill them all.”

Upon arriving at school, it was true. There was only a small handful of children at the school, and they were meeting in a different room than usual. In fact, under the circumstances, classes had effectually stopped, and the kids were just having time to interact with each other (play time) while the teachers met with the principal to discuss the situation.

The classrooms Alice and Bethany usually went to at school were not used for over a week after the death. Why? Because the man who had passed away had children who went to the pre-school and the crèche (nursery), and they needed to wait for the smoking ceremony to take place before children could return to the classrooms. No one was exactly sure when the “Smoking Ceremony” would take place, but until then, certain buildings at the school and in the community were closed.

The smoking ceremony was done by men from another community, in order to purify the buildings and keep the man’s spirit from entering those places again. The men came later that week, with the smoke, and one man(whom I met) playing the digeridoo while others chanted and others used rhythm sticks. The men started at the school, dancing, playing digeridoo, and smoking out the building, and continued on to each of the places where the man who had died had been.

Since the man worked at the clinic, they smoked out the clinic, and also asked all of the clinic workers to walk through the smoke to purify themselves. They then traveled to his family’s homes and did the same. After they had finished the ceremony, it was again acceptable to use those buildings, and to continue on with daily activities that had been halted as a result of the passing.

I talked with one man from the community, and he compared the smoking ceremony to what the Native Americans do in their tradition. He said, “The smoke purifies the air, don’t the Native Americans do that? We are the same as them in that way.”

We have a God who also uses fire to cleanse us and make us pure; a Refiner’s fire which He puts us through to make us able to be used.