Dear Martha

Martha dear, I have been wondering what it would be that you would say you took away from me this holiday. But I can’t know that now unless we paka last. But I will tell you what I have taken away from you. From you I have learnt that sometimes the process of making a master piece can be painful, I have learnt that sometimes we stand in places blinded of where we are going, I have learnt that crying does not always imply weakness. But I have also learnt that God is sovereign in all.

So today I searched for the meanings of some names, yours to start with. My experience is that our names are not given by accident, that they many times represent who we are and that it’s unfortunate that we are not always aware of what they mean. I will start with mine, I have always known the meaning of my name, but I will give it to you and what I have learnt it means.

Ntumwa Edward Lubega: Lubega is my father’s name; I simply added it when I was in S.4. I have not found out what it exactly means. Edward: this has many origins, the German origin translates strong as a boar, the Spanish origin translates prosperous guardian, the English origin translates wealthy guardian. This name speaks of both my present and future and I believe God gave it to me to remind me of whom I am and where I am going. Ntumwa: this is a common name in many African tribes. The Burundi origin translates, one you can trust to ask help from, someone good and nice, the Rwandese origin translates, an angel of God, the Swahili translation means a slave or servant, the Kinyoro translation means a prophet, some other tribe translates a prophet, in Luganda it means sent of God or messenger of God.

I am not the most interesting person, but all my life I have been very close to the leaders, as if serving them, I have had strangers confide in me, I have found myself devote to people and works as a slave would, I have been a helper all my life. I don’t mean that I trust in the name, I trust in a purposeful God, He knew me and chose my name. And that’s how he sees me. That Firstly I am Sent of Him and in His service I will be strong and prosperous and wealthy as I remain a trustworthy slave, prophet, servant, helper, guardian and friend. That’s me. Now you.

Kobusinge Martha: If my understanding of your language is right, Kobusinge means the peaceful one, or the one with peace. Martha is of Aramaic origin, Aramaic was Jesus’ birth Language, and It means lady. If you put that together, your name would mean the Peaceful Lady or the Lady of Peace. That peace is the kind that comes from God. You are constantly reminded of who you are by your name. Don’t let anything ever make you forget who you are, neither pain nor joy, you are the Peaceful Lady. And that’s what the devil will want to steal from you by making you focus on all the bad things people do as opposed to the blessings that surround you, don’t let him steal from you. You are peaceful and that’s what you give to those that are troubled. Consider this and may God give you understanding.

You can tell Prim that her name is of Spanish origin and it comes from the name Primavera, meaning springtime. Springtime is when plants come back to life from the freezing winter, they get new life and Let her consider this and get meaning too. She may already know this, but she needs to regard it as important. Have a lovely first term as a semi candidate. God Keeps you.
Yours
Ntumwa E.L. 29/1/2010
You

The River Between

I have reached a rather delicate point in my climb, delicate because I see myself more in the singular form than ever before. In my eyes, I see me standing alone, walking alone, and fighting alone. Sometimes I find myself gasping for company and almost instantly I realize that that is not what I need, I realize that I need to be still and watch, and simply watch like a perfected hunter watching his prey and anticipating it’s every move.

The Masses:

We find ourselves, on many occasions, being part of the masses, that group that makes the majority, the ones that are planned for and the ones that are each fighting for a larger share. There are days in our lives when it’s very hard to have an independent identity, when the general fits us perfectly well and we lack only that which the masses lack.
In those moments we are not anything more than takers or potential takers. We stand in the crowd and we identify ourselves by the needs and anticipations of the crowd. Even though the individuals in the mass may have differing anticipations and needs, we seem to single out only those that are common to all as our own as well. I find that in these moments we ignore ourselves in the name of the greater good. The challenge is that while we assume to suffer similar wrongs and hold similar anxieties, we are without a common goal, without a common direction of movement and that to me is a false oneness.snf even though the leaders of the group may seem to summon us to respond to a single goal, we can only respond to it and look at it through our individual goals. To ignore those goals is to ignore the masses.

The Group:

There are days when we identify ourselves by a group. At this point we find a few people that identify with us. They are the ones with whom we can work and grow, they are as different from the rest as we are and that’s what makes us alike. It seems that our common background is basis for a common future and that while we stand individually, we all stand at an advantageous point above the rest.
The challenge with this is that we ignore ourselves by ignoring the rest. While we find ourselves with a clear line of action and direction, and we may achieve some success in that line, we forget that unless the rest make some move in the forward as we do, our success will be short lived or will not happen.
The point is that pain is ours when it visits one of us, and that success to is ours when it visits one. When that one chooses to hold on to it individually, they set all of us at a delicate point because the weight we impose to that success finally pulls his success down. The reverse is very true.

The individual;

Here we only see ourselves we are the point of focus, we are different from all those around us. Our goals are more important than those of the rest. We may make a significant amount of progress and we may be viewed as really successful but that success is not complete. On that road we have offended so many people; we have lost friends and missed the opportunities to truly grow. When we isolate ourselves from those to whom we belong in a way that makes us strangers to our own, and therefore to us, we set ourselves on a lonely road that yields little and in actual sense costs a lot.

The River Between:

At this point we see ourselves from all the points with almost the same intensity of focus in all three. I have looked in the hearts of children that thought they were alone and felt the pain and the loneliness they experienced. But I also realized how narrow their vision had become after that time of compression. There river between is the only point that they stoop so far from, to bring them to that point would require that we all get in on the job, the smaller group, the masses and the children themselves.
The point is that there is no saying that as long as our family, church, religious sect, nation, or even self is doing great we are all better off and we are not to look elsewhere. At the same point we realize that our job in the lives of the others is to create abilities as opposed to imposing our good on them.
I find that even when we stand in the midst of the greatest masses, we can and should be able to see our spot in time and space and take it. At the same time we should be able to realize the implications of that seeing on the other subdivisions. The older I get the more I realize that the lives we live are not indeed ours, and that how we use them, impacts greatly on those around us, both near and far off. I realize that living is like having God extend Himself through and into us and that what we do or how we use that extension matters greatly to Him.

I hope I got the point across, we all matter and all matter.

This is my first blog this year, this decade and as such it will reflect my most recent observations.

Growth: Its amazing that even when we don’t invite growth, it comes to us. There is a great joy in noticing that growth and the force that it represents was involved in the affairs of our works, that our thoughts encountered growth, that the people and the things we have devoted ourselves are growing. It’s like looking at a child slowly transform into a teenager well knowing that some of the traits you now faintly observe are going to be major determinants of the kind of person they are going to be when they get there. Its watching a son engage in their first fight, or your daughter smile as you dance with them for the very first time and then in your heart you learn that which only a parent would learn: that its going to be alright, but that you also have to keep your eyes open. You see, we have given birth to much, ideas, friendships, marriages children, investments and much more. We will watch it growth.

Growth, if it’s going to be right, is worked upon.

Friendship: We have started friendships on the road, in church, with a smile and with a tear. We have been friends and will be. But I have noticed that at some point the people that we are friends to, stretch themselves out and touch our lives. We let them. The ones that love us will always show and we will know with that delicate part, with our hearts. Friendship grows and we with it. To share our lives with others is one of the most amazing things we can do as living beings and that friendship should be with purpose and direction, we should have it well defined in our motives and in our actions and have that clarity communicated to those that we share ourselves with.

Friends are forever, they keep us with them, and we should whether they do or forget to.

Love: God is love

Trust: Our relations are built on trust, or they should. When we devote ourselves to a person or a venture we need to trust. But having a lower trust before having the greater trust is useless. I have seen that to trust people, we need to trust God first, trust Him that it will be okay and that the valleys will not always mean that death has befallen us, but that we are still on the road to better. So when I trust, I trust God and the people I trust I only trust because I have trusted the one that has made them and has their destiny in knowledge.

All trust is useless if not in God first.

Choice: People make choices, the choice to love, the choice to hate, the choice to appreciate and the choice not to appreciate. So when someone chooses to hate me for some reason, they have made their choice and if there is a problem in that, it’s their problem and I have not reason being sad and angry for that. Again, why do I have to be flattered by the love of another, flattered out of reason? They have made a choice; I can appreciate it, but not out of reason. But I owe them a responsibility to the hurting and trouble, to pray for them and always live at peace with all.

The same applies to me.

Me: I am responsible for many things. I have noticed that because I am part of a greater body, my thoughts, words and actions do not only affect me but also that greater body. I watch all and I pray about them all. When I experience a lag in my watch, I realize that I owe it to the greater body to get back onto my feet and into line. Soldiers don’t just fall and stay down:

That body, the Church owes me the same responsibility.

Children: My children, they are part of me, they will always be and I love them.
As they grow I realize that a friendship earlier started goes a long way in solving the problems that many parents have found on their hands.

Life: We are all managers, managers of this thing called life. We make all the decisions a major manager make for a big corporation. We ought to watch what we hire, where we invest, what mergers we get into, who we lay off, and respect the One to Whom we report. At the AGM, we shall give accountability on all the fronts, who we hired, how we helped improve our staff, how we enabled our partners make the most of this venture, what social responsibility projects we engaged in all those other aspects that create a profitable, environment and accountable institution.

When we are in love with someone, we have a partnership, that should make a merger because its hard to have interests in a company that you have to complete access to however mutual your understanding may be, and it’s easier when you both have the same reporting standards to the same superiors.

Conclusions: There is no such thing as a conclusion. We only pause to begin later.

Good new decade.