seven letters: one.

Hey,

To love anyone as you should is hard. It is hard because the heart has grown brutal, it is hard because you do not want to enter the death-clench of a changing heart, and it is hard because failure is necessary, as in all things, for success to be certain. The image of apotheosis is not man climbing up a mountain but one of man falling down to earth, human, broken, ready to be proclaimed. There is no easy way to say this: love will break your heart, it will kill you. It was always meant to.

You are never right when you love or rather you are never right enough. There is always something you are not doing well enough. It is like trying to sing one of those great operas we always hear are brilliant and dark and deep. It is like breaking into a rendition of “nessum dorma” with a broken voice and neither the head nor heart for singing in tune. It is the endless wish that is always beyond the grasp, the eternal stare into the bottomless pit.

I am not trying to make it sound impossible or unfathomable to love. There is really no option but to find it and keep it. It is not a dispute between us what love is and why we should love. Your question is how to do it without feeling tired, worn, used and alone. The question is what will be left of you when you forsake balance and jump into the redeeming well. Our faith raises the bar on existence: it says that to truly live you must forsake the tone and shape of the ordinary life; you must die to it and get the more of eternal life. Love is the highest ideal; the most conscious selflessness is more worthy than the most planned and easy protection of self.

You may think that there must be a palliative to this odd picture of a wound I am painting. That somehow you can be self sensible and love. You may think that her recent infidelities have scarred you, that by enduring them you have reached the limit of your love. You may even imagine that by letting her go you are giving her the freedom to be who she truly is. I do not share your optimism. I do not think she is better off without you than with you. I do not think that your obligation to love her, as best as you can, should end with one act or one hurt moment. I believe that there is more for both of you on this road to wholeness.

The betrayal between a man and a woman is a deep thing. There is no easy remedy for it. It is a hard road back to trust. It is not one you want to take. It is one you should. The hardening of the heart is never the path to take. It is never our best move. There is something larger at stake than hurt feelings and a broken heart. There is the person waiting in the wings, the man you were always meant to be. There is the reality of the God you serve and your love for Him. There is the man He wants to introduce to you, you on the other side. There is the woman she can become, the wife you always wanted. You heard of her in a rumour in your heart, the stop-start talk with Elyon. He is never wrong and our wrong cannot amend that.

I know I am giving you platitudes, easy sayings that do not connect with your present darkness. What else can I offer with mere words? It is not a conversation that can end with a single word of wisdom. It is a start. Our conversations never end. They will continue until He heals all wounds, answers all questions and is ever present in our fellowship.

Am I allowed to say one more thing? It may sound insensitive to the way you see things now-that glow in the dark, the non-gleaming sense of loss, the idle memories coming back to life and the distrust of everything you once hailed as certain. Am I allowed to say that the pain is a sign of life not an indication of the death of the soul? That it will get better or worse depending on what you choose?  That love is patient, kind, forgiving and always right? That whatever happens we will be alright? That the certainty we have is that there is an eternal stream of living that makes adverts on earth about the life beyond? That by your conduct in loving her through and through all as lover or friend is one of such adverts?

More than one thing but to one point: love her. Go beyond yourself. Let it kill your previous self. You could never have that forever. And if you give up your hurting self you will find, as the great Clive says, everything else thrown in. And yet brighter still…

finding my religion

It was not too long ago that I had no doubt in me about who I was or what that meant in terms of living. The morning roll out of bed led me to my knees and between the pages of the greatest article of my faith. Now, I just roll out of bed. There is something lost in the withering days, some precious part of myself that I cannot find in present worship. It is true the seed must go into the ground, mimicking death, before it rises to die again. Somewhere between these two illustrations may lie my true state.
It is a hard fall to make from your estimation of yourself. It is not easy to admit that you have been falling and not rising. For we are not more than misplaced egos, temples to our own greatness and constant preachers, believers in our own personal gospel. It is not easy to admit that you have lost your way after being found. Ask King David who discovered a separate purpose by staring down at a translucent figure springing up from a pool of water, basked in total beauty. There was adultery and conspiracy and murder. Yet the throne was quiet until the prophet came with the news of God’s anger at, even, royal sin from a lovely king. We are like the fallen king. We hate sin and sinner as long as we are not given any of those monikers. We are unable to give grace outside but willing to escape the guilt inside. Takers but not givers of love or grace. No one I have met is yet a perfect picture of the Christ himself. Isaiah chapter two tells us, in the first few verses, who we can be and, in the latter part, who we are now. The latter flourish does not paint a flattering picture. When we read this book we are reading from a book of prophecy so we must not forget that it speaks of present state in light of future destination. The world as a whole is not whole. From continent to continent there is much to worry about and much to criticize. We may have had some ‘progress’ in areas to do with comfort and political organization but for so many and even us there is the feeling and knowledge that we are not yet at our best, that the narrow way still holds much more than the scourge of present living and we still seem unable to break the everyday violence of life. There is nowhere on this planet where life, by itself, is full.
I wake up every day with a fierce desire in me. It is physical, seeking pleasure, and it is spiritual, seeking fulfillment. They are opposed desires, at first glance, but their battle will determine the destination of my soul. Desire has been at the epicenter of human advancement but to really be fruitful it must be going somewhere. It cannot be an endless journey. It, like everything else, must find a home.
I have found or been found by the idea that my home is God. I do not think there is anything to match true fellowship with the ultimate deity. My whole life, it seems, has been a quest for the true religion of living in God. Nothing else gets me really going, I run out of air. Nothing else stays, I get lost in any other river.
So now I seek to find that narrow path daily where both desires become one and I am no longer at war with myself. Failing at it has somehow made it more beautiful, lovelier, more there. Failure has corrected and will correct me. I hope to live and love and be ensconced in the great river beyond twin-desire, beyond failure, beyond self. When I was a child paradise was an orange sunrise, the taste of particular cereal, my mother’s arms. Now I know these things to be inklings of an even greater reality, the finding of home, the end of a quest.
The question has always been: how should we live? I believe that we are all part of the eternal story and while we must face the temporal episodes with boldness and grace we must never forget above all that is the reality of an incarnation, a virgin birth, a life of glory, an innocent death and a resurrection to the life forever. This is my religion and I hope to always be found within its holy pages.

a (brief) history of violence

There are many things wrong with our nation but none as imperative to the moment as the issue of violence. Violence has recently taken lives in Abuja, Jos and Maiduguri. It has been elevated into the national psyche by the ‘innovation’ of concealed bombs and drive-by shootings on a consistent level. These are the most common and recent symptoms but they are not the only pointers to the disease that threatens our community. We have all heard the tales of fathers killed, mothers threatened, sisters raped and brothers left with the unholy taste for vengeance in their mouths. The reality of these sad events creates a cycle of violence that can only assure the end of our society if carried through to its illogical conclusion.
Now, not later, is the time to address the question of violence in our society. We must provide answers to why it goes on untouched, sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of our experience, claiming more and more lives, stifling democracy, dashing hopes, creating fear and futility against the noble idea that a human life, any human life is sacred. For if we take value from any life we take from all and when we take it for granted when anyone is killed we may become accomplices to our own imminent murder.

How do we address this as individuals? For the role of the state is clear and I am sure commentator after commentator over the coming days and weeks will speak of how the government is failing and the political class is a mess. I am more concerned, here, in what the individual can and must do in reaction to such violence, especially that individual of the faith. When I speak to my friends on the issue of violence they usually, in the heat of the debate, quote from to bible and say, in effect: “the state does not hold the sword for nothing but as an instrument of God to administer justice upon the earth.” It is a fine quote from the New Testament. It seems to suggest that the state wield force for the sake of doing what is just and protecting that which is sacred. But what do you do when the state itself is unjust or incompetent? Could this verse apply to those in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe? What do we do in the face of a state that yields the sword for its own end?
Of course the scripture still applies because the apostle was talking to Christians under the imperial rule of Rome. Yet I think it is an ignorant and dangerous thing to isolate the reaction to violence to this singular verse which was spoken as a guide for Christians to follow the law of the land. In reaction to violence we have rich store of quotes: “blessed are the peacemakers…” “…and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.” “…shall study war no more.” “Love your enemies.” “We wrestle not against flesh or blood...”

If the earlier scripture seems to tell the state to be violent for justice sake the latter verses seem to tell the individual to be pacifist for holiness sake. In fact Christ was a victim of gross violence and he said: “those who live by the sword die by the sword.”
When I hear of violence across Nigeria and the world it scares me. I think of the people that I love and where they live. It is then I desire private militias and a storehouse of weapons for “protection.” I think of an eye for an eye modified to be a hand to my face so you cannot reach my eye.

I am not a pure pacifist but I believe that when violence becomes an option for the individual cooler heads will not prevail. I am afraid that when we claim it as permissible it will become necessary. I am convinced that all it will do is escalate the situation to the point where every home is a fortress and every street is a war zone. Violence is not the answer to violence.
For Nigeria to survive we must build a community of peace and justice. Peace ensures that violence is never a viable option; justice ensures that evil is always challenged and defeated. The church must be a leader toward the light of peace and justice in our society. We must never hate, never use violence as retaliation, and never reduce the battle between good and evil to one between religions. There are mad men of every faith.

The state must protect its citizens, sometimes with force, but the citizen must never take the role of the state in doing so. It is hard and many are hurting but if we are ruled by hate and revenge the history of violence will always be present and never past. We fight for democracy, for credible elections, for forthright leaders so we can transform our fractured state into a community of peace and justice. We do not fight in vain and if we are vigilant and endure through the dark night of doubt we will wake up to a morning where the violence we have so feared is a passing dream, part of a regrettable piece of history.

and still...

the fire of the sun still beats here
power to the son in me
truly the honey and the bee

warm-suckle it feeds
the hunger
just for a little bit
/the raging sunshine of her eyes
\her hands are a gift/unharmed by the beast

and still there is strenght in the beat
the old song gone
tell it to india, to the pradesh of pradeshes
tell it to the hindu
for the christian has no fear
and still there is the heat
on bloodied streets
i just run out of steam
and then i howl
but no one hears
or cares
water under the blasted bridge
and still there is

do not be twisted
happier alone than together
but missing the old years
of alone as one
no sense in hiding
can i say your name?
it is.....serendipity for my pain
asthma for my inhale
er
go home you darn european
i want to stay in africa-land

and still it beats
and still, and still
the stones, the shade, the whispering, the way,
the falling down
two hundred and thirteen

i have become a man-whore you see
a wolfman of little success
cause i only howl for you
such desperation in my voice
but peace in my heart
and still there is...
i believe
space in the juice
of the orange
where the lives are played out
in the shadow of the fair

gibberish, i know
but late at night
we talk again
and i want to qunatum leap
into that bus
and obey DEI again

and still there is. and still there is
only you
stupid, irreverent, unknown you
and still, all i want
is to be free
but all i want
all i want
is to not bleed
all i want
is you....
and i love the rain the most
in the shadows of some place only you know
when i used to be the truth
re:stacks on my heart
on my side, a pact
desire like none other
samson's hair screams: halleujah!
and then repents
go back to God
to find the long ride again
and say: baby i love you and i am sorry have and you have doubts and i will open the toilet door
it may be too late
back to my hut in the tent, fiona
but first,
nothing
i give up daily
and still...oh baby....still....
you.

why i am a Christian.

I fell in love when I was seventeen years old. It was not at first sight. In fact it had been a long, slow immersion into the true state. I did not even realize the process, the years it took were as ordinary as years come. But in the year of being seventeen I was ready to give in to love.
I did not fall in love with the shadow, as is my custom, I fell in love with the voice from the forest on fire, with the trumpet herald, the dove dropping from the sky to crown one head, the dragon-slayer, the lion, the lamb. The greatest story and storyteller had me eager to enter the tale; in short I fell in love with God.
It is important to clarify that this does not mean I had a strong emotional response to God. Regrettably I am much too bland for that. What I really mean is that in this year I decided to obey God. This is what is meant in scripture by loving God. And this was my attempt in surrendering my indifference and fear for light and grace.
There is a history to this. Through my move from Anglican to celestial to Anglican to Pentecostal systems of worship I did not need the cosmological or ontological arguments for or against deity. Like a true African I took it for granted that there was indeed someone much bigger than me. Years of filling out the word “Christian” on forms made it clear to me that I owed some allegiance to Christ and that three could indeed be one. But I did these things because I was told I must believe or go to hell. What does a child know of hell but that you did not want to go there? There was no concept of a loving God and so I could not love Him. He was frankly a bit of a killjoy and I just said the prayers and tried not to upset him.
All this does not explain why I am a Christian but why I was not until that year.
I became one in the year where my life came apart and then came back together. It was not altruistic or deep. I did it for survival. It made sense and my Pentecostal background told me this was the way to get things from God. And I needed many, many things. I made deals with God and I intended to break my part of this great bargain. He did not. So I found my life led more and more by Him and my flaws became more important. I became different. Somehow less self conscious but more selfish, strangely quieter but falsely louder. I became inconsistent because I finally made a stand but I was so full of falling. I had taken in the bread of life but I was hungrier. Things did not get better inside, they seemed to when it was novel. Once that wore I was in an even worse hole. I knew myself and I knew what was wrong. And I knew I could not fix myself.
My life has come apart recently. In a good way. I have seen promise fade and lovers leave and books unsold and habits reappear. I have had this curious experience, curious enough, where I could hear myself talk and know I was lying. I have found out the shallow beneath the shallow is just me, posing as wise in foolish clothes. A beggar looking for a palace, a drunken man in the gutter ringing for a butler in the snow.
Christianity is the only thing I know that is for the down and out. For me. Looking at us Christians you would not think so. We want to be centre spread in gloss and top of the food chain. We want to be the serpent that swallowed the dove that pecked the lamb to death. There is more to us than turning the other cheek. We are the great re-visionists of our own sacred history. Disciples lived in beach houses, Jesus wore a Versace robe, give to caeser till you can overthrow him, nine coins better than one and the poor you have with you because somebody did not follow the laws of prosperity. All lies, all excuses for our own demise.
Am I painting a grim picture? I do not mean to. I want to show a real one. For it is at ground zero, with that pesky mustard seed, that the Christ-thing begins to grow. When you come to the bottom of the matter, the place of mirrors without pretense and face yourself whole, this is where Christ comes. He is no stranger to being naked, to shame, to pain, to alienation, to being lost.
And this is why I am a Christian. In the end I am looking for people to relate to, somewhere to belong. A place where I do not have to be together but I am getting better merely by being there. I find it in love with God and I cannot relate to God outside the reality of Christ. It is not a placebo for the soul; it will not make you feel good overnight. It is true, though. As true as I have ever known. There is no room for shadows. Slowly the light will get you. I had this letter from an old girlfriend that always moved me to tears. I thought it was the great missing that got me all Maxwell but it was not. It was the way she laid herself bare in words of such beauty. I realize Christianity is always like that. The promise of it is always there, the carte blanche to be bare, to show your true colours and then much more, to see those colours change in slow, painful but true ways that resound into the boundless world to come.
This is why I am a Christian.

the bida trip.

I just got back from a fantastic trip to bida. I drove down from Abuja with two friends and spent two days on the road (to and from) and one night in a hotel where we were the only occupants. It was fun, it was crazy, it was familiar and new all at once.

We went over there to chase a woman. More accurately I went girl-chasing and they followed like faithful friends. I’ve been dating this girl for three months and for the last month we have fought and been on the precipice of the end of the relationship. I consider myself a pretty lousy boyfriend. Too much clumsy romance and not enough love. So I went off to bida to prove my stuttering attempts had some form in something real and immediate and useful.

We had other reasons. The trip through Niger state, the photographs waiting for our eager clicks, the love of the road trip. But I went for the woman, mostly

We set out late on Saturday. Kalat overslept, Steve needed to stop by the office, and I had a hangover from a night of purely mental bingeing with Bukar and then Nakama. We left Abuja at noon. The first thing to be known about driving to Niger state is the bad roads. The potholes are the real danger. I felt sorry for the car. We did not know our way but we did fairly well. We stayed within the country.

At minna we stopped over to spend a few minutes at the university. Kalat‘s cousins are in their final year there and the female of the two is very, very easy on the eye. My protests about the stop-time were very, very mild.

45 minutes from bida and I had to face my own reasons for being there. My friends chatted on about the road and the landmarks and the distance and the closeness of the clouds to our patch of earth. I was worried because my love interest had moved from a thousand texts a day to one word replies to five hundred previous texts from me. It was the great unloving. It was all too familiar. My relationships seem to blow hot and cold. Perhaps on both sides but I am from that part of the gene pool that wants something the more it is out of reach. I think.

I thought of the last time I broke up, the sudden drawing away, the discomfort in even the most innocent physical contact. I thought about this because I fully expected to be dumped. I could almost see her refusing to hold my hand, deciding that since I am a man and men do not listen then she must rude as well as firm, to be strong and not give in to the desperate pleading of the about to be discarded. I was not excited. I was numb or steeling myself with numbness.

When we arrived we waited for her at a petrol station and while my friends took in the sights and bought sugar cane I scanned the arrival of doom. Doom arrived looking beautiful. I do not know what principle this follows but it always seems that women grow more beautiful at the moment they start becoming the grass on the other side.

She gave me one of those side hugs you give an untrustworthy boy you suspect of trying to feel you up. I am not a hugger but a holder so I did not mind. I did mind that she covered Steve in a full embrace and that he winked at me over her shoulders. I think.

As we drove to the hotel where three of us would spend the night I held her hand and this was different. She held me back. I played with her hand and she played with mine. It was not the perfect scene. I could feel the tension in her fingers and she was on the phone a bit, ordering a life that did not have me in it.

At the hotel we had a debate with the manager so we could share a double room and not have to get a spare room. This was a financial not an ethical decision.

As the evening drew closer to the night she said the words that signal, always, the end of the affair:

“I have to go home soon.”

My friends went looking for fish. I pulled her close and she came. I had much to say but my words left me. I was closed up and so I just held her and asked her to explain why we had to end. She talked and I talked and we got nowhere new. I gave her gifts: a c.s. Lewis devotional, a night gown, a cake from kalat and some candy she liked. She gave me gifts: boxers. This was not a good sign. This was a good sign. It was not a good sign because my last girlfriend bought me clothing before she pulled the proverbial plug and my last semi-girlfriend bought me a bottle of perfume. “It is about what I lack.” I thought.

When she left I was more conflicted. All the body language was the old love but her words were the same: I want to end this. I talked it over with kalat and tried to pray. I slept in that haze. The next day was no better. She could only spend two hours, I was at a loss for words and she was quiet and sad and we kept kissing and saying we were breaking up. we promised to pray about it.

She left. I stood on the road with kalat and Steve. She told me to stop being cold and to be her friend. I did not want to. I wanted to let her be and seek a new adventure. A little ambivalence will follow and then a few months of pining and then some other arms. But it did not seem right, for once.

As we left bida I was really numb. I have been listening to the audio book of “blue like jazz” by Donald Miller. A good book, a perfect book gets under your skin and heart and tells you, shouts at you how much more you have to travel to the real you.

It was on this trip: reading, listening, sleeping getting angry at Steve for blasting the radio and insisting on Christian music over my tuface idibia album. On the way back I saw my own folly, this need for my own way, to be desired and praised and respected and full of love.

I saw that Steve was playing and having fun and being himself and I was just offended. I saw that the woman I claimed to love was struggling with many doubts and fears and all I wanted to know was why she didn’t close her eyes anymore when we kissed.

I am selfish through and through and in need of God in every second.

From bad roads to bad heart, this is the legacy of a wonderful trip to bida.

I am growing.

Amen.

prayer nation: from abstract nation to real people.

I recently begun, along with a community of friends, a commitment to pray a whole year for Nigeria in hopes of aligning the divine will with our own intentions for this young nation and then to pray along the lines of her destiny and not merely the wishful think of her potential.
It has been a unique challenge. For one, praying daily outside the scope of your immediate concerns is always a task. The pressure of work, the depression of urban life and the fun of living or just the haziness of rest, all contribute to days of imperfection where I could barely utter a sentence of prayer.
The problem, I realized, was that I was praying in abstract, for things I could not feel or issues I had no life-experience about. The solution is this: to pray for real lives and not an abstract nation, to locate the national problem within the individual struggle. Part of the golden rule is: “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” It is far more useful, I find, to start your prayers at the most intimate level of your own troubles and then to realize that around the country, maybe even just around the corner, there are those with similar burdens to bear. It will spread out like this: the private prayers becoming of pubic relevance, the individual bonding within the community, fighting a battle to save others like him, knowing that he is just a step ahead or step behind similar dangers.
This is how we can move from an abstract notion of a nation bedeviled by differences to the full notion of a nation of “people like us”. This is our future. Limited by common problems we will find uncommon solutions, bearing each other’s burdens we will find the load lighter and shared. Is this utopia? Yes it is. But if you do not believe in utopia, the very kingdom of God, then you probably should not consider yourself a person of faith or with faith. The very end and the startling beginning of the Christian story is about utopia. Are we not to seek that kingdom? Is this not the good news?
I ask you to care about yourself deeply. And then spread that care to others. Start with these prayers. Pray for everyone facing what you are facing today. This is the very essence of the people we are to be and the nation we are to build.
Amen.