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.

the thing you will not lose.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
-Jim Elliot.
It has occurred to me recently how empty my Christian claims have become. I have a natural aversion for ceremony and so I struggle through any series of events designed under a program. My church attendance has always been abysmal. So when I felt the dryness I linked it to being in direct violation of the book of Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 25. It seemed that a loss of community made my individual effort to reach or to be reached by God less real. So I looked for a church that was not too Pentecostal and not too orthodox, the centre, where all goodness lies. This did not help much. It was useful because I am quite sure that I will continue to seek regular church attendance and participation but apart from the expected glints of light I was the same.
My mind remained unfocused, my days stretched on in grim hope and I felt far from any sort of presence capable of shaping my life in anyway.
Yet life does not slow down for introspection. All was still dull inside so I clobbered to a halt outside. Criticism and cynicism crept into the soul of my mind as the only escape. And, the scary part, this seemed to be going on for years. Inch by inch my soul was slipping into inertia, then atrophy and then demise, all wearing the mask of goodness and smiles. The inherent absurdity of the unfettered life weighed my mind down to the point that minutes moved into days and I felt nothing from the wind or the water or the sound.
And quite without effort or expectation something changed recently. A sort of stirring had begun within the dead embers of the extinguished wood of self. My mind had begun its rebellion against the rebel of absurdity and my heart had begun to know the future shape of things. Pushed, I began to look again and to find solace in the foundational principles that govern the living.
Pushed and pushed again, I surrendered over a three day period, listening to an audio version of C.S. Lewis’ ecumenical defense “Mere Christianity”. The book is no stranger to my reading eye but we make a mistake when we think truth can be consumed in one swallow. The vital lessons come over and over again until we are mastered by them perfectly. Until they move from being merely real to being living reality.
My lesson here was simple and simply put. It is the sort of lesson a Christian must learn every day, the one strand of clarity that simplifies what we have made, by living outside the ark, more complex. It is also the thing we fear the most and unreasonably so because it is the fear that cannot help. It is fear of losing the very thing you have already lost.
I am referring to that place where your pride lies, where you can say, if the sun falls into the sea and all of nature rebels against reason, “at least I still have this”. Your consolation and fortress against the triumph of others over you. A little box of prepared victories that say you are worth something in the fluid nature of what is valuable and what is not. There is no need to specify. We all carry little boxes of instant relief around. You know the colour of your fake rainbow and I know the colour of mine. It may even be God but as deadening drug not awakening spirit.
Recently part of mine was divided into three un-whole parts: one woman, another and yet another. It was also writing. It was also cynicism. It was also God.
The problem with the “at least…” is much of the problem with modern Christianity as practiced: the pursuit for the consolatory prize when the real jewel is within your sights and already paid for. If you are first on the podium you cannot also be second. We have life, open and full but we prefer the weakness of the un-life. At anyone who has tasted of the real juice knows everything else is second best. This is at the very core of becoming a Christian, at the end, nothing else will do. It commands you to be hot, cold or spat out. There is no place for anything less than the best of heaven even if it means meddling through the worst of earth. You have reached, by becoming a Christian, the most unsafe place in this universe, and the next, for any trace of dark or inferior light. It is really all or nothing.
The all is hard. It is difficult to leave yourself vulnerable to only one source of delight. It is suicide to say: “God and all He gives and nothing else.” It is impossible. Sometimes we need to hear and heaven is silent. Sometimes we need to feel we are active and getting on in the world and heaven is strangely uninterested in motion or ambition.
Yet what is really hard is what our “at least…” feeds that must now go hungry. What fights tooth, nail and bone against the necessary surrender is the ego. The need to please your self is the greatest hindrance to saving you. God is interested in being the very real captain of your ship and master of your fate. There cannot be another one in charge of the sail and the boat. “Invictus” is fine poem, written at a time of physical ailment and personal doubt, a defiant and, perhaps noble, stand, but it is not the word of God. There is nothing wrong with being strong willed except that it is not the perfect will. Dying like Christ means exactly what you fear it means. It is going to interfere with all your dreams and hopes and ambitions though not to kill them but to test them and make them pure.
No doubt you have heard this all before but it is one of those lessons that I spoke of earlier. The one that is needed again and again. But it is what you truly need to get to the bottom of who you truly are. It is like a painting. The artist is the creator and what he paints is the created. The created does not know who he is outside the mind of the creator. He does not even exist outside the creator’s mind.
This is the kind of myth Christianity stands for except that it is absolutely true. It is the ongoing saga of love conquering self and self dying so love can enthrone itself in hearts and minds. If no one told you this before you signed on then I am sorry. They should have. This thing will kill the you that you have always known until you become a new creature. It is surgery and you have to consent to it. If you do you will live forever in an abundance unimaginable that has nothing to do with money. If you do not you will have your way in this life but that is all you will have.
In the end the faith is a gradual slide into the endlessness of God. It is as conscious as anything you know and more so. You will feel everything happening to you. If you choose it you will move from honesty to truth. His voice will become clearer in the steps and your heart will unfurl into His naked peace. Like Christ you will become. He gave it all and his disciples followed suit. Not many of us are called to die in violent ways in defense of Christianity. Yet this is the crux of the matter. The thing we will not give up. We take it in patches, swallows that cannot feed us.
The lives of those early dissidents of the impure order of things were laid forfeit as they followed a man to his bloody cross. Yet, here were men that lived and knew why they lived. Their lives were full because they gave up something important to gain something vital. Our lives are empty when we refuse to do the same.

let us pray.....

Father,

These are trying times. I am looking through the window of a bus, at a policeman holding a gun outward through an open window. Many things could go wrong with this scene. He may have forgotten to put the safety on; he may playfully finger the trigger of his gun while the squad car goes over a bump. A shot could be fired, an innocent killed. This is the state of our nation. There are many acts heading toward full combustion. For years and years we seem finely perched on the edge. Yet we desire to live away from the brink of disaster. We want to live in the safety of a country that works.

Many say and believe that we are an unwieldy contraption, a mistake of man. We believe that we are born of divine inspiration, a city of God. So, before we embark on one of those doomed exercises of the flesh, before we enthrone ourselves as better than other men, before we become full of disastrous self-right because we know a little of the truth without knowing how to use it-we come to you.

We ask that you enlighten us. That you teach us how to pray, and from that, relying on you, become worthy ambassadors of your will. It is your will that is good for all; it is your will that separates the darkness from the light.

We have no illusions about the task ahead but we know that we cannot afford to lose the tiny battles of the earth and lose the war over our own souls. The end, to you, could never justify the means. The means are smaller parts of the end that come together, finally, in the end. Only what is sown can be reaped, help us to sow the right seed.

In essence, lord, we are asking for forgiveness. A realignment of the past with present/eternal truth and future glory. Make us a people of a prayer before you make us a nation of action. Help us to dwell forever in the light.

Amen.

RFK on violence.

On the Mindless Menace of Violence
City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, OhioApril 5, 1968
This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.
I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

song of songs: the fray's "you found me"

“I found GodOn the corner of First and AmistadWhere the westWas all but wonAll aloneSmoking his last cigaretteI said, "Where you been?"He said, "Ask anything".Where were youwhen everything was falling apart?All my dayswere spent by the telephoneit never rangand all I needed was a callit never cameto the corner of First and Amistad”

It is said that God is big enough to absorb everything into Him-self. It is said that He can swallow our dark moments with His light. Why does He not swallow all our dark moments with light? This is the question anyone who is walking in present darkness, in stopping grief, in stumbling fear, in pain, hurt, ache, and despair has asked. It is the question the song asks: Where is God at our desperate moments?
The dark always seems to thrive beyond the light. It seems that when you are in the thick of it the light is off somewhere, probably flaming God’s cigarette. This is the brilliance of the song. It is honest enough to imagine that deity is not concerned with the problem at hand. That God is somewhere doing something for himself while we call and call and call in vain: “Eli, Eli lema sabathchani...”
The songwriter goes further in this to imagine a whole play, a short one, where face to face with the light you are allowed to ask your questions. In one real sense the whole song is the soliloquy that the other character, the one that is not God in the dock, is allowed to embark on. It is the interrogation of God. Before you go off on a rant about how one cannot question God remember “come let us reason together…” I doubt God is afraid of our misplaced rants. The ‘reasoning’ can only end one way.

The first question asked is the most vital to the human experience and the modern impression of God; “where you been?”

“Everyone ends up aloneLosing herThe only one who's ever knownWho I amWho I'm not, who I wanna beNo way to knowHow long she will be next to me”
The idea of God missing has been persistent for a while. Can’t you hear Nietzsche declaring “God is dead...for we have killed him”, Pacino, in character, calling him: “absentee landlord” or your own beating heart doubting the relevance of God in the high age of so-called enlightenment?
Perhaps that is too head. Let’s go heart. Does it not seem like you face the reality of your dim moments alone? Is it not in isolation that you grapple with the effects of life turning on you? Sure friends and family “defend the silver lining”. They do what they can. But they cannot share in physical pain, understand your most stifling fears or live with your deepest shame. They cannot live for you. “In the end everyone ends up alone.”

“Early morningThe city breaksI've been callin'For years and years and years and yearsAnd you never left me no messagesYa never send me no lettersYou got some kinda nerveTaking all I want”
And finally we get to the point of why we are angry at God. For those who have sought, even for a moment, to build a life around a belief in the right, in goodness, in love must have hit the heavy wall of reality a few times. Some right intentions have wrong consequences. Goodness does not win. Love can walk away.
It is not the event that bothers you as much as what it means. It indicts God as the watcher and not the doer. He gave no warning signals, he sent no sacred text messages, he let you delight in futility then he let you fall down.
I have asked so many times for the same thing: show me how to live, show me what to do, tell me the way to go. “Leave me a message, send me a letter” show me the way to live without the cross and its weight. “Is there any other way?”

“Lost and insecureYou found me, you found meLyin' on the floorWhere were you? Where were you?Lost and insecureYou found me, you found meLyin' on the floorSurrounded, surroundedWhy'd you have to wait?Where were you? Where were you?Just a little lateYou found me, you found meWhy'd you have to wait?To find me, to find me”

But it is the chorus that speaks to me. It is here that the song really takes off. These are the words that have not left my head for weeks. Before now it has been an interrogation of God. Here, finally we find an affirmation of His presence.

We have been warned before that “rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous”. Sometimes it is good, pleasant, cuddle-ready rain. Other times it is a raging storm that shakes every house on the street to its foundation. We know that faith must be tested, the world is full of cruelty, and our hearts carry limited glory. We know we should expect the worst but we hope for the best. And even when we hope we know by experience that pain is inevitable. We will face it and it may kill us.
Now, pain is not a badge of honour and the cross is a symbol of human weakness not strength. We fall down because we live in a falling and fallen world. We are lost because darkness has reached its summit. We are in the midnight of the creation experience. Man is at his/her ugliest hour.
We see evidence of this every day. The world is in an uproar. Poverty, disease, war are the prominent kings of our day. There is something amiss with the collective and individual human soul.
If you intend to be part of the solution you must feel the pain of the problem. If you want to be a light you must first be put into where the light is most needed: the dark. The proverbial seed first goes into the dark of the soil before it begins to grow out under the sunlight. It is said that Christ descended into hell.

All of this cannot answer the individual question of pain. I am not trying to. What I am saying and the thought I must end with is fairly simple: the pain has a reason. It builds us so we can build on. It is allowed so we may be prepared for the end of pain. It helps us toward that end. Our dissatisfaction with the darkness leads us toward the light. It is at this place, when we are finally fallen, broken and in need that He finds us. Pain, whatever its initial intentions, leaves us needing to be found.
If you will, go back to the first verse of the song with me. You must notice that the same place where the actor in our play called for God (“the corner of first and Amistad”) was the same place he found God. He had been found without even knowing it. The place where His tragedy had left Him was the same place God found Him. I believe it is the same for all of us. We are found at the point of our need.
Perhaps all we have to do is stand up and accept it. Perhaps the answer is to accept that you are no longer missing. Perhaps the trick is to start by singing a hymn. I suggest you sing one called “you found me”. It’s by a band called “the fray.” It is a song of songs.

the dog in the lion's den.

A bitch and her two pups made and lost their way into the desert not far from their home. A sudden sandstorm had erupted from nowhere and blown them off course till the mother did not know where to find, again, the secret path they had taken to leave home. It soon became terrifying. The boy-dog was the first to state their predicament. It was his personal custom to state the obvious. He said:
-we are lost.
His tail was wagging as he said this. The fear had not yet touched the tail/tale of the adventure in his head. The girl-dog was wiser. She had heard the stories of the lions in the desert. She stayed close to her mother not simply out of fear, because she was quite resolved, but to breathe in the familiar smell of home.
The sandstorm passed duly but now everything was sand. The mother-dog could no longer make her way toward freedom or toward the boundary of home.
She sighed, guessed the old distance and began to walk slowly toward a barely understood concept she had heard called “east”. Her children followed her in unquestioning trust.


(For the sake of keeping the story short and sweet we may travel through their time faster than they have, not suffering the sweat, sun, agony of what they endured for hours….we meet up with them as they encounter the peculiar situation that is at the centre of this whole narration…….)
It was not long, in our time, but hideously long for them, before they ran into trouble. The mother-dog could see that a pride of lions had begun to encircle them. She found a tactful way to pull her children close to her, to shield them from the knowledge of danger. We are told that it is not in the nature of such creatures to think this way, to ward off mental as well as physical danger. We are told that it is not the way of the dog to do this yet it is the way of this dog. For, in her heart, she hoped to give her pups a little peace before the impending dark plunged them into a violent death.

The pride was slow to attack. The prey had no way to escape. They had cut off, slowly, any route of useless attempts to do so. They did not want to run.
Soon they were visible to each other; the predator and the prey. Three lionesses came forward and looked down at three measly dogs. The meat for the evening.
The mother-dog stood in front of her scared brood. Her own hind legs shook terribly. She forced herself to look at the killers. She forced herself to bark against their roar. She made herself brave. And in that stance, she waited for the darkness to come.
But the darkness did not come. A hint of recognition won the day. For in the face of the lioness that stood at the head of the hunting pack she did not see slayer, killer or predator. She saw the face of an old friend.

Three dogs walk in the midst of desert-lions into a canyon of broken trees and forgotten wells. It is the only semi-shade in all the heat and the recognized face, now revealed as the queen of the pack, has declared it to be cool at night. It is already fading day.
The queen-lion and the mother-dog go to the head of a large boulder and talk under its unique shade. The boy-dog is intrigued by the size of the cubs and grabs his sister to go and explore these magnificent creatures of smaller stature. They all begin to play.
The mothers talk.
-I did not think you would survive running into the desert.
-I surprised myself.
-all these years and now you are a queen.
-by precedence not by achievement.
-Still...all this time...we are old, we have fresh-ones of our own.
-where is your male?
-which one? There are many. I have had many pups that have grown. My present male...he comes and goes. Your king?
- He comes here at night. He is probably hunting some female...not to eat as meat. I am not sad (laughs) male is male and female is female. It is the way of the species. It is the way of all nature.

-I always wondered why you left the commune.
-my heart wanted the wild, the open spaces, to be free of rules that contradict my nature. To be free.
-they say you murdered some chickens (glances uneasily at her children playing with the cubs).
-your pups are safe. I have ordered it so. I did eat those chickens. To eat meat is in my heart. I cannot fight it. It is my nature. But you are not meat. You are a friend. It seems the commune had some effect on me after all. I cannot eat a friend.
The mother-dog allows herself to relax under the powerful eyes of her friend. The sand is cooler here. She is weary from walking and talking and protecting. She falls asleep.
The boy-dog was playing with the girl-cub when he first heard that they would be eaten. He had beaten her to a third race around the canyon. She had a fond look on her face when she said:
-I will be sorry when we have to eat you, fast-one.
Her tone was cool. She had no frills about him being both friend and meat.

The boy-dog runs to his mother and begins to bark out this new revelation of their fate. He does not know that the queen-lion still remembers the bark-language apart from the common tongue of all creatures. His mother could not tell him to be quiet fast enough. He read it in his mother’s first look. He knew they were doomed.

-so this is the end for us?
-I am sorry.
-is there no other way?
-this is the only way, the way of nature. One day I will die and the vulture will be my predator. It is the way it is, the very real circle of life.

-it will be easier if you do not fight it. I will make the death fast for all of you.
- This was all a trap.
-I did not want to hunt you. This is better.
-for you!
-it was always going to end this way. Deceiving you was an act of mercy. My sisters-in-marriage can be vicious. I spared you their torture. Can’t you see? Once you fell into our path your lives were forfeit. This is the best way. It will be quick. I promise.

-what happened to you in the desert?
-I became who I truly am.
- A liar, a killer, an eater of friends!!
-a lion, a beast, a predator.
The queen says this with a roar and the canyon shakes. The other eaters tense, expecting the feast is almost at hand. But she goes silent again. The shadow of impending death leaves her eyes. For the moment…
The mother-dog knows it is only a temporary calm. For all her bold talk there is no hope left in her. She knows she will die here, with her children, her efforts at freedom ending in bloody failure.

-you were running away, weren’t you?
-Yes.
-why?
-to be free.
-where is freedom possible?
-I heard there is a place beyond the desert…a place….
-…flowing with milk and honey. I heard it too. Where the lion lies with the lamb and the heart is no longer hungry. It was the first rumour I heard of life beyond the commune. The rumour of my own heart was stronger.
-so you gave up?
- I settled for reality not some dream land. Do you know how many pilgrims to this utopia lie in my belly?
-I think you are one of those victims..
-silence! Once my husband comes we will feast.
-and this is your freedom; hunter for an absent male.
-no, this is my freedom; not trying to be more than I am. That will only kill you.
-it has killed me already.

The queen-lion thinks of these words long after her friend has gone silent. They twirl in her head like that first rush of courage that drove her into the desert. The early-morning joy, the first jolt, the risk before the let down. This was a letdown. She was free but empty. Freedom was nothing by itself. Once it saved you from the chains you were in: what next? Her next moment had never come.
Now she was stuck. She could not kill her friend. She knew it the moment she began the hunt. She had been altered by the mere possibility of leaving at peace with others. She was not a killer; she only pretended to be one, to fit in with her kind, to please her male, to hide herself. Every hunt had numbed her but none had cured her of the conscience of knowing there was something more. Something more.
The more was beyond her now but she made her final decision in worship of it. She arrived at that place of milk and honey without ever stepping on the land that held its promise.

The dog walked away, slowly, trying to hide the joy of escape. She was not going back to where she had come from. That would not be possible. She had travelled too far. Her pups stayed close to her side. Together they walked toward the promise of a new home.
The queen-lion watched the dogs fade with the day, out of sight. She knew what would happen next. Her orders had been firm and would be followed. The dogs were safe. She was not so sure of herself. She could already see, in her mind’s eye, the shadows gathering around her. The ancient code had to be appeased. New meat must be found. Someone else would die.
Still, as the shadows came, closer and closer, almost real, she had the vague rustling of that old joy. She felt like herself when she was young and fearless and ready to be different. She felt like she had defeated her own nature by betraying it. She felt like she was on her way home.