Human Rights Part 1

A colleague of mine recently engaged me in a debate about the rights of a minority group in this country and triggered many thoughts, some of which I wish to share today.

You see, I hear of the rights of so many groups of people, humans, children, women, men and even animal rights. But what are the most important rights? I the think the collective rights of humans are the most important rights. Those rights need to be protected above the rights of anything else. When we say the rights of children, have we firstly noticed that in a way the rights that they should have access to as humans are being infringed upon or are we trying to close them out of the human bracket and make them simply children? When we think of the women, are we doing that to them, are we enforcing their rights as humans or are we just boxing them out of the human bracket. You see, I believe that if we keep segmenting the human race, we shall have so many minority groups and each will stand to fight for their rights much to the destruction of those rights that we are all entitled to as humans.

But it may seem impossible to remove this segmentation. The more we fight for or against the rights of these minority groups, the more we break the rights that we share as humans. To protect the rights of those small groups, we many times find ourselves sacrificing the general human rights that we once fought so hard to build. Today we all stand threatened, threatened by the protection of the minority and the majority. For we can’t do either without violating the rights of the majority. We are firstly human, and those rights that apply to many of us should be firstly upheld and protected without offending ourselves collectively as humans.

So when we stand to say wives should not be beaten by their husbands, the reason should be that they are human and not that they are wives. Yes this will call for all of us to stand.

So what was the discussion that I was engaged in? It was on the subject of homosexuality in Uganda. Not just homosexuality, but homosexuality in this country. So that’s why I say we should firstly defend the human rights against the rights of any minority or majority group, but in defending those rights we should not offend ourselves. Ourselves as the people we are, in this case, we are Africans and majorities are Christians. We need to stand for those things by which we measure right and wrong. Those identities that have defined the course of our culture and our very lives. Those are the cultures by which we are human and by which we are able to defend the rights of us all.

And because as humans we have the right to express ourselves, all camps should front their opinions, and they should be passionate about their views, but in doing so their subsequent actions should not be in violation of our rights and our nature.
To be continues.

Is This Loving

Recently, I experienced a degeneration in my will to stand for the things that I believe in, a weakness towards those evil pulls that had once held me captive until the time the power of God intervened. Like many people I tried to understand my situation, and tried to find reason for the sudden drift. A drift from a safe and steady standing to a very destructive imbalance. I tried to blame those that I love and those that are near me, those in the distant past and those in my present. Today and I realized that I was grossly in error.

The question that stands today is why we many times want to share the blame we find on our hands with those others. If we love as we claim, why are we, many times, quick to accuse them. Why is loving a series of imposed responsibilities and obligations, the failure of which to perform, automatically leads to persecutions of those we claimed to love. It seems as if this love we claim to give, comes with a heavy obligation to those that stand to receive it, a burden of sorts. It’s as if we use them to cover up for the flaws in our own character or resolve to perform certain acts.

The husband that cheats on his wife because she cannot give him children, the other that beats her up because she is disrespectful are all symbols of this burdensome loving. The father that banishes his daughter from the home because she got pregnant while in school and the so many that may come to mind are all examples. You see my friends, in my opinion, the nearest word to love is freedom. Freedom to thrive and freedom to err, freedom to speak and to be silent when we choose. This is a measure we are not going to be comfortable with always and we may fail many times until we get it right but we have to keep trying.

The people we love are bound to hurt us many times, but are we going to let them? We hold such power in love that an offence does not hurt, that a wrong does not hurt. This does not mean that a wrong is not looked at as a wrong, it is, but in relation to the wronging, we stand to forgive, our bridge of love unbroken and our will to love steady.

So if my moral stand broke, I have no right to blame it on anything or anyone. It’s purely my fault and a problem for which I should get the help of those that I love and love me. That is the reason why we love, that we may prove that divine value, that value that sees people as they truly are. Not measuring them against what they gave and what they held back. For while we ask for help, we should learn to make our asking as freeing as we can. Not to wrap it in thousands of obligations and traps that many times break human bonds but to leave it exposed to the air of choice. To know that those that we approach with the request for help, have a will and a mission in this life, that they may choose to help or not and yet that does not imply that they don’t care about us or love us. We should and learn that people grow and that in what may seem like an offence to us, lies a lesson to both the ‘’offender’’ and the ‘’offended’’

Our biggest joy should lie in watching those we love grow, even if that groth may mean taking them from us. Shall we commit to the development of others? The questions on the subject reamin many.

my friends are those I am careful not to hurt and yet not afraid after hurting them. Those are my friends, the people whose love I will always count on.
Correct me if am wrong.

From Where I Stand

It is always easy to tell a story when we have experienced the details it presents ourselves. It is even easier to tell that story if we are the subject of the story and if it is not a matter of presenting cases.From where we stand is always the most suitable position to tell any story truly though not always completely. I stand at a place today where to love is to abandon self, where the object of love leaves no motive to do so. I stand at a place where my judgment can easily be biased. To take a walk through the forest, one has to know the path well, but even more importantly, one has to know the forest better. To love, we need to know and understand even better that object of love.The more we know, the better we are positioned to love and though knowledge may never increase our intensity of love, it will surely better our quality to love. As we walk this journey of life, we discover that making the right decision is not always going to be easy and that dying is not always the brave decision to make. We are going to be inconvenienced some times we are even going to be hurt but our resolve to love with no expectation of being loved will see us through.When people throw everything we lovingly give back at us, when they spit in our smiling faces, they leave us many options. We can choose to see them as that or go to the root of their evil. Much of our upbringing had a lot of training left out. We were not taught to be loved, we were taught that what we give will be valued over who we are and that that’s how we are to treat the rest. We have not been taught to appreciate without valuing. When I see good furniture all I see is the beauty but there are many people that will first see the cost and then all that’s missing and by the time they are done, there is no beauty.We have to teach people a lot, even how to be loved. Men are often hurt by wives that value what they offer over who they are. Women too. It is a very simple principle we love to be appreciated over what we are able to give.We love to be measured by who we are over what we are. Treat people like trash and very soon you will trash both to them and to your self. That’s just the way it is. What we give we receive and when we keep receiving we become. What ever is deposited in our lives stays when we let it stay.Need I say more?

Today.

We often meet the question; ‘how was your day?’ and when we do, our minds begin racing through all the stuff that we have encountered in that one day. All the people, the places we’ve been to, the conversations we have been involved in and the other many that I may not be at liberty to include here. So, thus we sum our days, a series of events that we have been involved in. but do we realize how our day spans way beyond what we have been involved in, do we notice the numbers of people whose days we are a part of even without their invitation? The shop attendant, the taxi man, the children crossing the road in fornt of our car and the others whose lives we visit with neither them nor us noticing.

If that brief introduction is to be followed, I can proceed. It occurred o me recently that each day represents a last day to something or someone or somewhere. Every day at the same time represents a first day to the same. It therefore follows that when each day begins, it carries in it both the beginnings and the ends and that when each day is ending, it carries the same. So here we are facing the possibility of a beginning and that of an end and many times living in at least one of them if not both or combinations of both.

We also realize that while we exist individually, we are each sharing with a vast majority of components. We are constantly sharing the common existence that is presented to all of us by the day. And while we all strive to get our most from a single day, we all have it equally and that to be selfish in an area of the day is to be ignorant of the abundances that are available to us all. We also realize that in the place of a selfish existence could grow a selfless giving and that to the benefit of all. It becomes obvious that the most hard working individuals of our communities could also share in the beauty of the abundant giving, a lesson we so clearly learn from each day that comes to us. That in the days of war, we are each exposed to the same dangers and yet if we all could, unity would see all our children safe.

The moral of the discussion is simply this; we have each day only once. And though in the morning we experience it for the first time in the morning, we experience it for the last time in the evening. The things that we do today, we can only do for the last time today. Actions released are often hard to call back and the beauty of our intentions should not be a secret for long because while to you it’s just the beginning, to another the end may be very close at hand.

When we set our efforts to a task, when we chose to love one, when we prepare for war and when we practice for sport, what ever we set ourselves to do, we should bare in mind that the end is indeed with us just as is the start. And while we don’t know for how long that may be, we know that we can make it last for ever. Some people have loved us and for that they will last for a lifetime, others have done a work in ways that history and the news will always adore them.
The beauty of each day is simply that we have it and all that it contains, what we do with it is always up to us. Let us realize that the best is required today and for today

To You

I have been told that the best things in life are free and I believe there is some truth in that. But because many people know that, they place a very high demand on those free things. Think of all those things God designed to be given freely, a warm hug, trust, faith, hope, love and those others you have imagined.
The demand we place on those free items on the market in the end places a price to them. We have to realize that just because they are free doesn’t mean that they are not to be fought for or should I say worth a fight.

And while our fight is not for the gain, it is still a fight worth staging. For love we fight with love, for trust we fight with trust, for hope we fight with hope. For all those free things, the commodity is also the weapon of war.

When I think of the friends I have lost, I realize the number of times I gave up on being a friend. When we think of the people that we have ended up loving we realize that the commodity was the weapon for the war fare.

Which brings me to this point; we cannot fight with what we don’t have. Even though we may see what we want across the table. The journey of our lives is a story of additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions all which serve to add to us. When we realize our need to be loved, we also realize our need to love, when we realize our need to trust, we realize our need to be trusted.

The sadness of life is that many of us have learnt to be without and to be robbed that to have scares us. To have people we can trust sometimes scares us, to have people that count on us many times scares us. The other absurdity is that many of us think we shall never truly have, so prefer to live a lie, we prefer that lying husband or good for nothing job simply because we believe we shall never have. We tell ourselves that thing will get better of that we are in the best place and that’s how our live pass us by.

The reality of the truth is that life is abundant; life is always sharing, sharing with those who dare to ask. We are constantly receiving, either from our fears or from life, the abundant life. When we set out to get the best from life we make a good decision. We make a decision to settle for nothing less than the best. We also realize that we have committed ourselves to giving nothing but the best.

To make such a commitment, we have to realize that we shall have to put some fight on. We shall fight for the good things in life not because its convenient and not because we have to, but because the reward touches many. Those free things are a mine not properly exploited and the world is hungry for men and women that have the real deal and still give it freely. Such people will be rewarded by those in need of trust and the others.

Have a good day fellow fighters and keep the quality of the free things in this life good, just good.

What If

What if this was the story of your life?
You were born to the only monarch in another life. Your parents knew that you were to reign next. Rule over everything living and dead, created and made. In fact the whole universe knew and all were glad.

But to be groomed for the job, you had to be sent away. Away to earth and in this time. Your parents sent you with a pair of subject( your earthly father and mother) to pause as your natural parents but really they are not. Then they flooded earth with many more subjects all with the aim of making you a better ruler when your time comes.

Think of it, they are all acting as instructed. The politics, the inventions, the wars where some subjects lose their lives, its all one big screen and you are the only audience. And it doesn’t matter where you started from, poor or rich home, both parents or single parent, crippled or not, it all doesn’t matter because in your kingdom all will be cleared and beautified.

So you go through life ignorant of this single fact. It is kept a secret because your true parents want to give you the opportunity to create the ruler you want to be without dictating it to you. They also want your subjects to have a feel of the real you before you step onto the throne. The only contribution they make is in directing the subjects on what to do to make your experience as real and natural as they can

You go to the bank and the teller attendant is rude to you just because she was instructed. You fall in love with someone and they love you back just because they were instructed, you choose to be corrupt, a prostitute, a priest, a rebel, a president and every choice you make determines the course of life for every one else because their instructions change whenever you make a new choice.

At many points you feel like the whole world is looking to you and indeed they are, at other points you feel no one care and yet they all do, in fact you are the reason they all exist. That is the nature of your destiny, you are that important to the whole world and low moments are not a privilege to enjoy. Constantly you are being watched and determining he course of many people and yet you don’t know.

So finally the time comes and you have to step into your rulership and you realize that a lot has always been in store for you. Many people have been waiting for you and many more have depended on you. All of them all the time. It is your crowning moment but first, a review of your life on the big giant screen, just you and every one else. You go through your life and see how every decision you made affected all of the future, how every friend you made, or enemy you created was part of the team that helped make this day possible.

You pause for a moment and realize that while you did much for the good of many, you could have done a lot more for a lot more. While you set your personal goals to be the best, you trampled on many and while you, you chose to take the back seat, there were many opportunities for you to help and be useful to many still.

With heaviness in your heart you turn your back to the throne. They orchestra stops the music; the entire kingdom is in shock that you have turned round. In you heart you know you are not worthy to rule a people that sacrificed their own lives to help make this day come to life let alone crown you as their king. And as you open your mouth to decline the privilege your natural father stands up, walks closer to you and embraces you. He looks you in the eye and says, ‘child, this day is your day, we are not mad at you. We have only watched that movie to forget all the bad you did. All we remember are your good deeds and gestures. In fact now we all wish we had come with you into time.’

Then you realize that the royalty does not only come with a crown and a respect but with the entire kingdom and the hearts of all your subjects. If you were aware of this about you , how would you respond to people?

Have a lovely day my friends, rulers or subjects.

The Fires.

While watching the movie, Fire Proof, I was fascinated by one particular scene. The fire man while trapped by a fire in a house muttered a prayer to God, ‘Lord get us out of here.’ At that point some of us would have expected this loving God to send the fire man a rope a carry him away but no, not this God. What happens is that the fire man sees a soft spot and begins to cut through the floor with his axe. The long story short, under immense pressure he manages to get both him and the girl out of danger.

That picture made me think about a lot of situations in our lives where we pray and wait for either our death or the rope that God ‘should’ send us. The circumstances of our lives are flooded with opportunities presented by a God who wants us to rely on Him even when it seems that we have put the best of our efforts. He is eager to write the story of our lives but more eager to have us involved.

Each day we are presented with opportunities to create with God, to do and put our very best without compromising on our trust and reliance on this Loving God. When the fire catches we often tell ourselves to stand and know that He is God. What we understand and do is that God wants total inactivity from us and that He is sending an army of Angel bankers or otherwise to our rescue.

What He actually means is that fear not and know that I am God, in all you are going through do not despair. But if you see nothing else to do, nothing else helpful, rest and know that I am working for you, making all nature, time and creation respond to your need and expectation. However if you see something helpful to do, do it in the rest I have given, knowing that you will not perish and that you are moving to your victory.

So see with me that instead of crying about your problems and fires, you can sing that word of God to them and be sure that you are a victor and more than conqueror. Life was meant to be lived and not fought against. This war fare is not for those who are helpless but for those who are helpful. We are never without help. When the fire closes in ,be sure to see God work to make you the hero.