Fragments

The strength of moments

The power in a single breath

When we look and hold

When we walk and lay still

Could it ever be

That while we were trecking

When we were hidden in our past

We still walked a common road

To hold your eyes

The softness of your gaze

To laugh with you

In the midst of a soft anger

To be where you are

And to know there

Is the reward

When we listen again

When we try to paint

We shall see for sure

That this joy we share

Was writing off our hearts

And a seed carried in our journeys

Now a journey

The Lane

The construction of a history of any given society has always been an interesting process. A group of people have always seemed to be holding the ladder for a select group to the top of societal order. Those that seemed unbothered by the holding of such a ladder were either in support of those that did or slain by such climbing.

Then

History is decorated with leaders that set out to achieve great things, they had intentions and ambitions, they travelled far and they reached deep into the hearts of the people they touched, deep, whether for good or not. We have seen how the course of an entire nation’s history was defined by the interests and ambitions of a single individual.

When you think about it all, we have all been part of that individual, we have seen them rise and we have supported them. On many occasions we have even resisted those that stood to oppose them well knowing that we are doing the right thing.

Today

We are also aware of leaders that owned the groups of people that they set out to lead. They owned the land upon which they stood. These men consumed with the great desire to serve did many unthinkable things in the name of service. They set out sacrificed not only themselves but also the people that they led or sought to lead.

In this era we still see this. Men and women that have not only owned us, or the resources we all should jointly own, but also the power that we handed them, the power that we as the groups led, should own. These men have taken everything and they have owned it to themselves.

The question then would be what causes that. Seeing things from the top gives a wide perspective of what things ought to be. Sometimes the diversion takes the intentions of the leader far from what they had intended. The greater good then seems greater than it was before and we all know that the greater the good, the bigger the sacrifice.

When we don’t set a desired destination together, it becomes had to know when one of us has deviated, harder still is bringing the deviated to accountability since from the beginning we left them with the liberty to choose as they want and we basically told them that we shall not be as concerned as long as we get a small fraction of their thinking and ambition and interests.

So when they tell us that they have the best of our interests at heart, we are supposed to simply believe them and follow.

Tomorrow;

W e take heart in the fact that we are not the first generation of people to experience this. People have come, they have plundered, they have owned, they have done well and yet they left. For those of us that have been given the privilege to watch, let us keep our eyes open.

Leadership is a collective responsibility even when it is done behind closed doors. We are all responsible for the direction our nations or small groups take. To sit and blame our state on the deeds or misdeeds of a small group of people is an injustice that will see even our children crippled. Even in the days of Hitler, Mussolini, Nebuchadnezzar and the Nero, some few, totally unrelated to the leaders managed to succeed. And even in the days of Jesus, some died of disease even when they lived in his neighborhood.

The point is, “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy." Revelations 22:11

The Going

My computer broke down today and as would be expected I have to borrow time and keep sitting here. Writing is one of my passions but I would love to do this when the time is right and not during company time.

The Right Time;

we have been known to wait for the perfect moment, to set that moment in place and to simulate that. I think that time and nature have been designed to avail that moment. The nine months after pregnancy, the walk back home, or even the job opening at the end of the year. We may invest a life time to create the right moment, we may travel miles to have the first child and yet all that done could be the very road leading away form the right moment.

I see people loosing happiness to get happiness, dying a lot to live a little. The beginning ought to be the color of what the whole journey has got to yield. The entrepreneur that makes a sacrifice to start a business does so not with a bleeding heart but with one of hope and love. That beginning then is the expression of what he ought to get, his hope and his love. The young woman that says yes to a young man, does so with the hope that many years later she will still have that yes and that she would have received many in return.

The Interruptions;

Then after we have made the beautiful beginnings, we realize that we are to encounter interruptions. A broken car engine at the beginning of the journey, a broken heart at the beginning of a marriage and a lost relationship with one loved. Each journey is started with the anticipation that we are doing the right thing, or that we hope to eventually do that. Even one that is started to cause pain and evil is started with the wicked knowing that they are doing what is right in their interest.

To uncover the true intentions of the heart is a process that baffles many of us. When we tell ourselves that we want to marry, what reason do we usually give? Most of us say that we are marrying for love and that we are truly in love with the one we are getting married to. But do we really understand for what reason Love wants us to get married! Many times we do not, when we give when we walk away, when we do the things we do, do we ever take the time to understand why? That is the ever present interruption, one that will always be there and yet whose effect has tendencies to bite suddenly. When we fail to know why, we have created the ever present interruption.

The Correction;

Love is the greatest cause of all time, but even Love has His own logic and intentions. The parent who educates their child only because they want them to have a brighter future may not notice when the brighter future arrives, the man who marries because he loves the girl may not see when he needs to be loved, may not realize what love is and may be dissuaded from that cause when more attractive options avail themselves.

When have closed our eyes to what we are looking for and, we have closed out the help we wanted and even when we got what we were looking for, we kept searching, uncertain of how long we were going to have it.

The End;

Live each day knowing that every good gift comes from God, He is Love and every time we see a glimpse of good, we see bits of Him. Hold the ones you Love knowing that there is little you could do to get them more, knowing that the gift given, is one that will teach you how to love it, and that the fear of loss is unwarranted. Take time to know why and to look at each day as a moment to learn better.

And finally remember that there is no end, we walk each day closer to it, and yet it gets further with time. So let your endurance be seasoned with love and let all your struggles be in accordance to what Love would want us to do.

The Ugly Affection;

The Meeting;

Seated at the bar counter, she entered and even though she was a distance off, I felt my heart leap, a leap into death;

We all are familiar with the day we first encountered the death the keeps glaring at us, eating pieces of us while feeding us with just enough to keep us alive for the next day’s meal. We subject ourselves to that fatal destiny, to be prey to what has attracted us from a distance. The corrupting politician and the cheating spouse, the student that will not earn their points and the lecturer that will not let them go; we all had a moment of first seeing.

The journey from where we are safely seated to where she dangerously stands can be very short. The plight of our society is not that we have corrupt leaders or prostituted by the road side. Our plight is that the parenting system has been broken. That has been the short distance from where we were safely seated as a nation to where she stood at the entrance of the bar. And when you think of it that was our mistake, to assume that we can just seat and leave our doors open for all that wanted to take a look. Our children have been taught to conquer but not to defend, that which they have conquered.

For decades we prided in our heritage, of how strong our roots were and how long they would preserve us. That pride is not so today, from the day we met the evils that attracted us, we lost the right to pride in the heritage that once was.

The Kissing;

I walked to her, with one desire in my heart, to kiss those wet lips of hers, to kiss myself into the poison that would see my children crippled and grand children incomplete.

When we take those road trips upcountry we often encounter people that tell stories of how their leaders have been cheats, women that speak ill of their co-wives and yet in those stories lies a great mystery. First the husband was cheating, now the co-wife is encroaching on her marriage, first the leader was a liar, today he is a smart man, a hero that has managed to get high on the political ladder.

Like it or not, slowly we begin to kiss that which we once hated. The system of parenting that looks at the most immediate need with no regard to the future the solution being provided will create is what is killing us. Parents that will want to have excellent students of their children with out necessarily showing them how to succeed or why the have to, or even more importantly what success mean, are creating time bombs. Society has placed a demand on all of us, that young women should be indecent to be beautiful, that beauty is a particular definition, that young men should all drive cars regardless of how they get them.

This road we have placed our feet on, it taking us to the furthest peats and it’s not us that will wake to realise it, not even our children will but our grand children.

Making Lo....

I then took her into my arms, my heart racing with excitement looking into the eyes of my death, the very weapons that will render me inhuman and my entire kind..

After all these years, we have become one with the things we purport to fight. The anti corruption unit is in itself filled with corrupt individuals, they are fighting an evil that rests deep into their own hearts and yet they seek to fight it elsewhere. That is why when one of them shows that they have well dealt with that evil on their inside, they all get scared and wish to get rid of such a one, or will remain silent as the loudly corrupt come out against such a one.

We have been made one with what we once thought was only in the others or far off from our open doors. You see while it is not affecting us, its introducing itself to us, not just in this time but also in all of the times ahead. We are slowly being united and developing an emotion attachment and intellectual adjustment. That is the power of a conqueror who will not necessarily attach but keep watching, stretching their hand out for you shake at your ease and they let you know that you are free to stop when you feel like and when we want.

Our First Child;

I held her in my hands, my baby smiling at me laughing at the fool that I had become just to have her..

Many years of holding hands, making lo.. And much more, we are one, we are deprived of the ability to see better. What was at one time blinding us, is one with us and when you think of it, we are not only blinded, we are the blinding factor. We are filled with ignorant knowledge, that strange power that keeps us from knowing that which would have helped us become better. At this point we are not interested in knowing better but in teaching that which we have become to the next generation. That has been the plight of our nation, that our forefathers kept the house open, they gave themselves a chance to know what seemed strange and now, to us , the children of their knowledge that ugly affection is the way of life.

So when you awake in the morning look at what you have and realise that the battle against the beasts around us, starts with each of us conquering those on the inside of us.

Ghosts and Demons

Day 1

Those are the moments when we can literally sleep in the songs that we sing, the music we listen to takes us away from the places of trouble and the faces of danger. When you look around, at that point we are being successful, we are at the places that we want to be at, we talk to the people we are talking to and with the words we want to say. Even though there is much for to learn, we are not bothered by that because it all seems distant and much of it we can do without. In this state of bliss we are virgins in many ways, uncorrupted and yes, we are the elements of purification. We know that there is a treasure on the inside of us, an element the world is yet to see, and when they see they will marvel. Our dreams are building and our ambitions are with energy. Yes we are the people to say yes to.

Day 2

We begin to realize that we need to learn what is lacking. We are now stretching out to be better, our comfort zones are still comfortable but we are predicting what may result if we stay there longer. We have some sort of stability and we are using it to advance. We are unlimited and we can quietly ignore the advice of the cynics and those that don’t understand us. We keep a small group of believers around us, they know the secret we posses and we let them in on it. The future is still bright and we are going places. We are unhampered by the troubles of false and useless desires, we are aware of where we are going and we are determined to get there no matter what. At this point we learn to hold on to a power greater than us, we rely on that power very frequently and we are helpless without that. We are looking into eternity and it is within our grasp, yes we are on a march and we are getting there.

Day 3

Life is too short. We begin to realize the things we have closed our eyes to. Some of the useless desires are now useful because they now fall into our greater plan; they are to be converted to usefulness in a way that will help our march to eternity be more meaningful. On this day we are realizing that we have principles and beliefs, they are part of us and we are part of them, they are what has made us outstanding and different. We are slowly realizing that we are an inspiration to many and they too are realizing that. However we begin to discover anew, things that we now want, we allow ourselves moments to be attracted to that which we earlier thought was not relevant. Of course we are careful, we only let into our lives that which helps us to get where we are supposed to get. We are helping others and they are learning from us. We are pillars to many and we are selling ourselves to causes bigger than us and we are loving that, it’s making each moment count and we are in the center of life. Morning and evening are moments to share ourselves, we believe our lives are worth sharing.

Day 4

A change in weather. We realize that some of the attractions we let into our lives were to our detriment. We have moments of doubt, but we also know that we have come a long way and will not just turn from our beliefs. Our commitment is being tested our strength is being measured and we are to prove that we can make it weak and strong. We are being threatened by the ghosts of the victims we triumphed over, and the demons that we long avoided. We begin to reach to those that looked to us and even though we do not tell them what we see in the dark we let them know that we need their support. Our invincibility is diminishing and we know it.

Day 5

Most of us. We begin to realize that most of who we are is longing for the things that we once hated the most. The slow fade has accumulated and we are now helpless. We have gone down a slope that we find it hard not only to climb up but to even want to climb up. In those moments, we realize that what we casually let into us has eaten most of who we were and has replaced us with an ugly passion. Our strength to say no has gone out and we desire more to abandon ourselves than to fight for who we are. Its sometimes scary to realize that we have embraced a strange ugliness and discarded a sweet beauty. We are finding new definitions for what was once wrong and what was once right. We are walking a deathly road with pleasure.

Day 6

Awakening. We begin to realize that we are lost, that we need to get up to the fight and we need to see like we used to. That is when we step to the fight, not for souls, but for our own. Every effort we can pour out we pour to this fight and even though many times the strange ugliness shows the sweetness of its familiarity, we are not discouraged. Falling is not the measure of who we are, we make the slow short steps and we are optimistic that we are going to make it. This is a time of realizing that ours is a God of Grace and Love, we embrace Him, not just for our weaknesses but for the love He has proved to have toward us. Finally we are determined to fight the demons, and we are no longer scared by the ghosts. Our seven days are coming to a good fill and even though we lost our way along the journey, we were not lost by the one who loves us the most. Then we are realizing that while we celebrated error and while we feared for the state of our hearts, His Love was not far, in fact it’s for His Love that we feared and it’s for His love that we are about to discard all those fears.

Day 7

Amazing Grace. This is the end of my weak. I have some times looked at myself in the mirror and wondered which I was, a saint or a wretched sinner. I have felt my heart get stolen by the evils that I once shunned and I have participated in the unspeakable and yet felt no shame, no shock and no surprise. But this I have learnt, God’s Love is longer than all my days, and that only a fallen man will appreciate the Love of God when he finally stands on his feet again in that Love. That the fallen are not to be discarded, but to be helped to see the Love of God.

We begin to realize that the good fight of Faith is indeed a fight and that we are called to be the keepers of each other not only when they are standing or interested in standing, but also when they are not interested at all. We are, after all, the Light of the world.

To all that have had this week, God loves you and no matter which day of the week you are at, His love will never let you go and when you are in that ditch, He desires to renew you in the newness that is only in Christ and the Life that is only in His Light.

From me, I love you, I love you all.