Bacci Blessings?: Faith and Culture in Creative Tension
Robert Seiple Thursday, 1 December 2005
A few years ago I led a delegation from the Institute for Global Engagement on a visit to the small village of Keng Kok, Savannahket Province, in southern Laos. In the late 1990s Keng Kok was the scene of some of the worst persecution of Christians in all of Laos.
We were greeted warmly by the district officials, given gifts, and, in an act of great cultural hospitality, were treated to a bacci ceremony. We were invited to join our hosts in a circle around a "tree" of chicken parts, rice wine, fruits, and some other objects designed to provide color, substance, and stability to this central icon. A key element of the ceremony involves bacci strings. We were given a number of short white strings and were requested to tie the strings around a neighbor's wrist, thereby conveying a blessing on those around us. Each string represented a new blessing. This part of the ceremony continued until all the strings were used up, by which time we had some 20 strings on our wrists as well as a number of very pleased, new friends. To maximize the blessings, we were encouraged to keep the strings on our wrists for three days.
While the bacci ceremony has religious origins, today it is largely a cultural expression designed to underscore the traditional Lao concepts of community and hospitality.
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