Six months later, she walked down the dusty road that led to the market, carrying a basket of freshly harvested yam. She felt the eyes on her stomach as the village women passed by and greeted her. Nobody asked why she wasn’t protruded yet, but they didn’t have to. She didn’t know why she couldn’t conceive. Why would God not give her a child? Why would God not complete her womanhood?

The day that the missionaries came to town, they had told the villagers that God could do anything. She went there with hope perching on her shoulders. All she had to do was accept the gift of forgiveness for all her sins and her prayers would be answered. What sins had she committed? She didn’t know but she knelt down anyway and said the words after the pastor. That same weekend, she and other converts were led to the creek in the next village and immersed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They said it was a rebirth.

Three weeks after the baptism, she felt a pinch in her stomach. It had been six weeks since she saw her moon. The pinch travelled through every muscle in her body, and she felt dangerously close to exploding with joy. She skipped the entire way to the home her mom and aunt shared. When she found her voice through heavy breathing and broke the news to them, they curved their shoulders, and swayed their hips.

On the day she was to give birth, she crouched in a large bowl of warm water. She pushed, and pushed, and pushed, but her strength failed. She felt her aunt tapping her face in almost violent ways as she roused from the slumber she almost fell into. The midwife’s voice trailed, “you can’t rest now, the baby is almost here”. She let out one last cry and the baby arrived, tiny and almost blue. Why wouldn’t he cry? Babies are supposed to cry.

The midwife explained that due to the stress of the birth, her baby was going to have a difficult time growing up. “It would have been better for him to die”. A question rose like a seed in her belly but her throat tightened around the words. They had been warned in church that questioning the Almighty was the only unforgivable sin. So she swallowed the seed, and drank some water.

She would feed her son from her breasts, she would consign herself to the strictest regimens to make sure he got all the nutrition he needed. She would try every suggestion offered by the women of the village. She sang. She danced. She prayed. But five years later, he was still the size of a six month old.

The boy turned five and another set of missionaries came to town. She had longed for this visit as parched earth longed for rain. Her miracle had come. This God could raise the dead, what was a boy stuck in time? On the first night of the crusade, as she wrapped up her boy in a shawl, she let her tears fall on his face. This would be his baptism. His rebirth.

At the church, the elders were gathered with the missionary leaders. She made her way into their midst despite the looks of disapproval on their faces that said “This is an important meeting, woman, your miracle can wait”. But she did not care. She laid her child on the floor in the midst of them, she had no words. The local pastor explained her plight to the missionaries and somewhere between his words and their understanding, the boy breathed his last.

Suddenly, the men were fired up. Something inside of them rose at the potential of performing the impossible. They chanted, they prayed, they spoke in languages she did not understand. She paced, she sighed, she knelt, then stood up. She sat on a chair, then stood up again. She felt heat rising from her feet to her stomach and then to her head. She couldn’t be in the room anymore, so she ran outside and buried herself in the ridges of soil where the pastor and his family had planted corn. The seed that was buried in her rose to her throat, her lips parted and her tongue moved, and she gave way to the gravest sin, “Wayyo, Allah, Wayyo! Why would you give just to take away?”

2025 met me in a state of quiet rest and confidence. At the start of the year, I published “2025 is for the brave”. Little did I know that it was a foreshadowing. I had wanted a year that encouraged me to bravery in soft, subtle tones. I had designed my life for slow, steady growth. I had just started a new job in a new industry, and had created an ambitious strategy for the organisation that I was going to execute at my own pace. I was sure of the year I was going to have, to a certain degree, and I felt safe in my certainty.

When adventure calls, say yes.

On the first day of 2025, I was on a plane to Abuja to reinforce my hope for a slow-paced year. Abuja is the city that feels most like me in Nigeria - expansive, paced, unobtrusive. On the 9th of January, I called Makuochi to ask if he was planning a hike in the city (I have never hiked in my life), he said no, but he was planning a trip outside the city with friends. I was in my “yes” era, so I asked him to sign me up. On the 9th of January, I joined an unplanned road trip with 14 strangers who became friends over shared jokes, trauma and creativity in the 14 hours it took from Abuja to Obudu mountain resort. It still is one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. You don’t know ecstasy until you have listened to Sleeping at Last’s saturn at 5,630 feet above sea level. It was glorious.

Say yes?

On 23 January, I called Allen to catch up as friends do. Allen is one of the smartest people I know. I had just taken a quote from an old essay on his blog1 as a reference points for one of my goals in 2025 - to write again. I wanted to share that with him.

Allen tells me on the call that he is transitioning out of a role at a neobank where he had built smart agents for their compliance team and that he thinks more teams should have products like that. I’d spent almost 5 years consulting for banks and financial services companies about fraud management and compliance, so of course, I had thoughts about the industry. I’d told him I thought there are a lot more opportunities to build for within the space. Without missing a beat, Allen asks me to join him as a cofounder to build a software company. Like Sarah in the famous bible story, I chuckled2. But he was serious, and he gave me solid reasons. I asked to think about it.

I spent that entire night on my balcony, among the plants that I tend in my slow-paced vision of a life. And I felt something I had never felt in my life - clarity of purpose. It feels like faith. It feels like an undaunted assurance of “this is exactly what you should be doing with your life”, and “you are the two best kind of people to do this”, and “what do you have to lose?”. I sent a voice note to Allen expressing my limitations (hello, a full time job that I had just recently taken and a depleted financial stash that I was only starting to build again after a 6-month sabbatical). Somehow, by the 24th of January, we were cofounders of the concept of a company. On the 6th of February, I was looking at the Certificate of Incorporation for InfraRed.

I was rested. I was pumped. I had unprecedented faith. I was taking a calculated risk. I’d do this alongside my full time job, my passion projects, and the building of a life I didn’t want to escape from. To build strength, I enrolled in tennis classes. I was not to be found wanting.

By June, I was severely exhausted.

I wasn’t the same person that started the year. I had watched my cousin endure the pain of birthing her son 6 years ago, and in June, I watched her endure the pain of losing him in the most tragic manner. I didn’t remember how to fall asleep. I had nightmares when I tried. My close friends were packing their bags and leaving the country. Grief changed the shape of my heart, and stress thinned my mind. I was at the edge of myself. I learned a new kind of fear. I was forgetting how to be a person. And that’s when failure found purpose and gained momentum.

Attention is the price of excellence

And I was spent. I was spread thinly, as Bilbo Baggins said, “like butter scraped over too much bread”3. I was forgetting meetings. I am typically too anxious about meetings to forget them or be late to them. I was coasting through the days, doing what absolutely needed to be done, and no more.

This year, I learned that excellence demands attention. And the more things fight for your attention, the less good you can do. Hitherto, I've have prided myself in my ability to do many projects, and pursue multiple expressions of myself at the same time. It still is true, but some things demand more attention than others, and for all our limitations as humans, one must prioritise a path.

To more adventures

I needed a break. Allen and I were planning a trip across West Africa - it was going to be the revival my soul desperately needed. Few days to our take-off from Lagos, Allen was invited for another official assignment. I had to decide whether to postpone the trip or go alone. I went alone.

I made unusual friends in Cotonou. Lost and found a bit of Lagosness in Lome. Recorded a song in Accra. Watched the city like stars on earth in Aburi. I ate great food in Abidjan. I trembled at the sound of the waves at 6am in Saly. In Dakar, I sat on the stairs by the corniche and thought, “what a privilege to live this life that I have”. Everything was beautiful.

“Everything is beautiful and I am so sad”4

I said this to a psychotherapist while in Dakar. I had braved my fears of traveling to five countries alone (some by road) and was having such a wonderful experience. It had been almost 2 months of new, expansive experiences. And yet, my heart felt like lead, weighing my body down. I couldn’t get through a few hours without guttural tears. I had no reason to be sad, and yet I was. I did everything right - ate well, took daily walks with friends, slowed down, lived it up. And yet, I was in despair. I am well acquainted with depression, but I understood it a bit more this year.

At a friendsgiving this December, the hosts asked us to write something we were grateful for on a card attached to a stick. Our card sticks would go on a gratitude cake. I wrote, “I did not lose all of my mind” because I sure did lose some of it.

Give back your heart to itself

In November, I turned 30 without pomp or circumstance. I was too tired to make a celebration of it. But I didn’t think I’d make it to 25, much more 30, and somehow, I have built a life I like with my own two hands, so I decided to start rebuilding my routines with a 7-day challenge to walk every morning, pay attention, and write. I walked, I paid attention, I got inspired, and I wrote. I wrote about wisdom and finding one’s place in the world. I wrote about pain and sabotage of the self. I wrote about possibilities and frailty. I wrote about how easy it is to destroy something that was built over time. I wrote about wonder, and letting myself be astonished by the mundane.

On day 4 of my walk, I was in a lot of psychological and physical pain. To my left, the sun was rising and making a show of it. It was a particularly bright morning and I felt anger at the glory of the sun. Why would the sun not dim its light in solidarity with my gloom? Why did it insist on keeping its routine? I flipped a middle finger at the sun.

On day 5, I took a detour from my pre-planned route and walked to the lagoon front at the University of Lagos. I hadn’t been there for some weeks because the last time I was there, Chidi and I had a conversation about death, drowning, and grief, so I catastrophized myself into terror. I couldn’t be near any body of water for a while (my relationship with water bodies is complicated and marked by trauma). But on this day, I inched close to the edge of safety. Sunlight kissed the face of the lagoon and released a glow. The birds were chirping endlessly. The crabs were playing hide and seek in the holes they dug. The traffic on third mainland bridge was steady. Some things never change. The lagoon was there before me. The lagoon will be there after me. I felt a tear drop from my left eye, a gratitude for the constants. It is utterly important that there are things in the world that never change, despite the state of my own heart.

The grace of failure

Many times this year, I missed the mark - of KPIs at work which I’d set by myself, of showing up fully for Allen and the team at InfraRed, of showing up for a passion project with Ife, and other passion projects. Of keeping up with family and friends. Of keeping up with myself. And this failure was expressed by the affected parties too. It is not very often in my life that I miss the mark. At the very least, I end up average. And so I didn’t know what to do with this failure.

I weighed myself in the balance and found myself wanting. I wanted very often to crawl out of my own skin. To put distance between me and myself. I couldn’t look myself in the eyes.

That day at the lagoon, the day that I felt grateful for the constants, I could swear that I heard the water say to me, “look at yourself with kinder eyes”. And I did. I received new eyes - a new perspective. I failed so much this year because I tried so much. In most other years of my life, I have taken a more passive approach to living - to letting things happen to me. And since I wasn’t the one making the move, it was easier to deal with whatever did or didn’t happen - I could project disappointment, in the form of anger, outwardly, and let it go. This year, I failed because I tried. I failed because I did more than I should have. As I write this, I feel exhausted, but the good kind of exhaustion, the kind that comes from a year of trying. I can live with that.

At the beginning of the year, I wrote, “Let it be that the world is unfair. That my efforts were not met with commensurate results. But let it not be that I did not try.”

I close 2025 content, even with my failure. Which is to say that I am content with my trying. I did what I set out to do. I accepted defeat, and then I tried again. I cried and struggled, and then I tried again. Here’s to me, for the trying.

A commitment to the trying

As 2026 dawns, I will be picking up my tired self yet again. I will stay close to the ones that strengthen me. I will commit to fewer things. Say more nos so that my yeses are valuable. I will double down on the things that matter, leaving some for later. I will not sacrifice softness for ambition - I will hold both in tandem. I will do small things with great care. I will lean into the discomfort of growth. Of looking foolish. Of taking risks. I will once again be leaving the certainty of full-time, paid employment to focus my attention on InfraRed full-time. This is exactly what I should be doing with my life. We are the two best kind of people to do this. What do I have to lose?

I hope to get more rejections. And fail some more. Which is to say, I will try some more. Pray for me, a spirit with the resilience of water5.

Here’s to 2025, the most adventurous year of my life yet.

There are many almond trees in the university compound where I take tennis classes. From February to early March, the trees generously give their fruits and leaves to the earth and because most of the trees are by the road, the purge poses a safety concern for drivers and pedestrians. Diligent cleaners sweep the fallen fruits and leaves off the road but their efforts cannot outpace the fertility of the trees in their season.

The almond tree closest to the tennis court is not a safety concern because it is aged and sparsely sheds its foliage. I found myself frustrated by this tree’s barrenness because it is closest to the court and the most hidden from peering eyes that may judge me for picking fruits from the floor. I definitely now understand Jesus’ frustration with the fig tree when it wouldn’t produce fruit for his hungry team1. To think that my desire was just a craving, not genuine hunger after days of walking through the wild.

In processing my frustration with the tree, I heard myself say: “why don’t they just cut it down.”

Almost immediately, another part of myself responds: “why? Is fruit bearing is the only useful purpose of a tree?”

The irony of this internal interaction is that I, a firm believer and advocate for the right of women to have autonomy over their own bodies, including the right to be intentionally child-free, chastised a tree for its inability to bear much fruit. That my first thought was to cut down the tree is proof that in a world that solely prioritises utility, measured in terms of output and monetary value, there can be no true inclusion or freedom to exist.

If we think that a person is less worthy of certain rights and freedoms because they have less (money, power, or any other privilege), then we will inevitably create a world that edges out the less privileged. This is how all forms of injustice begin.

Women were less physiologically capable in a hunter-gatherer world where physical capability was the prime utility, therefore the world prioritised that utility and invariably created a world that recognised the male human as the default human, edging out women. Apply this to all forms of oppression today.

Every now and then, when I take the 3 flights up the stairs to my apartment, I think of the lack of consideration for people living with disabilities in housing development, especially in Lagos where I live. It is bad enough that there are no elevators or ramps in most buildings, and even worse that the stairs are too narrow, the railings are too fragile to hold on to and the flooring is too slippery. I do not really consider this when I’m house-hunting because I have the privilege of not having to. Think about the many injustices that you do not have to worry about or notice because you are not affected by them.

March is women’s history month, a time globally earmarked to consider the contributions of women in history and in society at large. Sober reflection for a world that systematically dismisses half of its population. It is also a time for the performative recognition of women by institutions who do nothing to foster equality and equity for women.

In Nigeria, there wasn’t even enough consideration for a mere performance. A senator was suspended after levelling a sexual harassment accusation against the senate president2. An Uber driver asked me this month whether sexual harassment was a real thing. “I think that only rape is that serious", he said. In the same vein, it has taken a group of women protesting to bring the attention of the Federal Government to the about 24 reported cases of femicide in Nigeria between 1 January 2025 and 8 March 20253. 24 dead women killed by men in the space of 90 days. And these are only the documented cases.

24. Dead. Women.

This does not account for cases of sexual assault, other forms of violence, and the systemic oppression of women everywhere. In a world where men are raised as the default human, women do not matter.

Are you listening?

There is no real change without real listening.

So, if you cannot see, listen. Listen to understand. Listen to make space for realities you do not understand or relate to. Listen to be part of the solution.

Listen.
Listen to women.
Listen to queer people.
Listen to economically disadvantaged people.
Listen to people living with disabilities, physical and invisible.

Center the people who have hitherto been systematically exiled to the edge of society.

It behoves you to listen. Just because the world works for you in some ways does not mean it works for everyone else in the same way.

If you cannot see, listen.

My favourite rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “hallelujah” was at the “Live in London” concert. It was my ear bug for most of February and also the source of the title of this post. I think this is one of the most important songs of our generation and based on how many times it has been covered, and how many books and essays have been written about it, I’m not the only one who thinks so. There are so many interpretations to the song but to me it is a song about being human and it is a song about love.

There is a sense in which we are taught to recognise love in big sacrifices - like a man laying down his life for his friends or a parent giving up their dreams to raise a child. These grand acts of love are significant but not generally accessible - most people will never be required to actually die or give up ALL their dreams. So we end up living our lives with an inflated sense of our capacity for love that is never put to the test.

If you win at making a huge sacrifice for love’s sake, you get to hang your flag for everyone to see. You get to be the messiah for an entire population and your murder weapon becomes the ultimate symbol for sacrifice and grace. But love is not a victory march. Not for most of us. For most of us, it’s the cold hallelujah of tiny discomforts and the broken hallelujah of the repetitive, mundane tasks of making the lives of our loved ones easier.

Making a new friend is exciting. Learning new information about them feels like a dance, or like peeling off new layers of an onion. In one of those layered conversations with a new friend recently, he mentioned visiting his parents often and to share a bit more about myself, I mentioned that I don’t visit my parents often because I don’t miss them and don’t often feel the need to. In retrospect, this reads like something a cruel daughter would say and I won’t attempt to explain that away.

“I don’t visit them because I miss them”, he said, “I visit them because they love me.”

It is a very simple perspective and yet so profound for me, personally, because I have never approached love from that perspective - one where I decenter my comfort in little ways, for the sake of love. Not just the love that I give, but the one that I acknowledge and receive from the people who love me. It is sometimes easier to give love because it gives us a sense of fulfilment but do we ever consider that denying others the chance to love us is denying them the same sense of fulfilment? And maybe even more poignant is that in certain contexts (particularly, familial), it is our duty to express our acknowledgement of their love and give it back in the way the recipients understand it (to the extent that we do erode self. Permitting a little discomfort and self-erasure are two different things).

I felt a little shame in realising that there is a lot of simple wisdom in this world that I do not possess, but that shame too is quite the outcome of narcissism, no? Who do I think I am?

The conclusion here isn’t that I am now a changed or better daughter to my parents. It is that I now have a new schema to processing how I choose to love them and it is this - that love makes demands of us in small, boring, uncomfortable ways and sometimes, it is simply the accepting of another’s love that empowers us to fulfil these obligations. Yes, obligations. Love grates on us, but it also fills us with hallelujahs. This is the price of belonging.

What I was up to in February:

1. I enjoyed reading about Leonard Cohen’s life. Before pursuing music professionally, he was an acclaimed poet and writer. You may enjoy this audio documentary about him by BBC.

2. I started tennis classes and it has been a lesson in seeking progress over perfection. Perhaps I’ll write about this soon.

3. I absolutely enjoyed reading Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Carrie Soto is Back”. TJR writes complicated female lead characters very beautifully and this wasn’t an exception. It was even more impactful for me because it was based on the life of a fictional tennis star and it helped me understand the beautiful game. I also enjoyed watching the 2017 Australian Open where Serena Williams won her 23rd grand slam in a match against her sister, while pregnant. The game ended so emotionally that I cried.

4. I enjoyed watching this episode of “View from the Top” by Stanford Graduate School of Business, featuring Leena Nair, the Global CEO of Chanel. Her professional journey was inspiring and she seems like a good epitome of my belief that business can be done with kindness. I’m now a Chanel convert, I’m afraid.

I hope that March brings you the warmth of spring and the coolness of rain.

As I look back on the year that 2024 was, I am overcome with gratitude for a year that came with answers. 2024 helped me understand that the answer to a question can be another question. That the call is not to perfection or certainty. That life is not about some grand purpose of changing the world or being remembered by the large population. That life is for joy and for beauty.

In this stack, I’ll be sharing an excerpt from a journal entry I made sometime in 2024 as I decided on the meaning of my life. See quoted portion below.

*********************************************************************************

Growing up, it was perhaps easier to navigate purpose. There weren’t a lot of options - I just had to do ALL to the glory of God. All my dreams were guided by the framework of the faith I held. Having mostly given up the cross, I now make my prayers on these white pages, also made of wood.

These days, I ponder very often on Mary Oliver’s words: “now that you are here, what will you do with this your one wild, precious life?”

In the moments that I write this, my sole purpose is to build this house with my hands.

The Bible tells the story of four lepers in 2 Kings 7:4 who, being on the edge of a country given to extended famine, were confined to the gates because they were laden with an infectious disease. There wasn’t much of a life to be lived by lepers. And even worse, in a famine. If by some miracle, there should be food in the city, they would be the last recipients. After much contemplating, they decided that if they were going to die anyway, let it be with the dignity of choice.

They had the certainty of imminent death at the gate and the uncertainty of surrender to a hostile army. Would they be spared as objects of compassion or would they be killed? One option presented the possibility of life and they took it. And providence smiled on them.

“Why sit we here until we die?” is a lesson in agency and self governance.

There is something to be learned from the common saying that “fortune favours the brave”. Perhaps, it is that the even the audacity to act is its own fortune.

These days, I’ve given up seeking some grand purpose. Now I seek beauty instead. I do not reckon that life requires us to win, or to succeed, but to keep trying.

This has become my driving force: that as I breathe my last, whether on my death bed or in some form of tragedy, I may look back on my life and say, “this is the house that I built with my own two hands, and look how beautiful it is.”

Life is hard. Perhaps I spent my life hitherto waiting for death as a saviour - to excuse me from doing the hard work of living.

Therefore, for the next phase of my life, my word is “try”. There is a beautiful life to be built and it requires much effort, fearful as I am of futile effort.

Let it be that the world is unfair. That my efforts were not met with commensurate results. But let it not be that I did not try.

*****************************************************************************

It’s been a few months since I wrote that in my journal but the charge remains the same as another year makes its way into existence. To try. To keep trying. To do the hard work of building the life I want, and to do it with joy.

I feel very strongly that 2025 is for the brave.
It is for those who will hold life in their hands with sacred tenderness and choose to love it, despite, despite, despite.
It is for the gentle, the kind, the ones who hold space for beauty, joy and hope.

2025 is for everyone who fills the world with love.

Here’s to a year of more.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

*****

Some housekeeping:

1. I’d love to send some personalised letters in 2025. Write me with your experiences, feelings or situations you’d like some kind words about and I’ll send you a response. I’ll publish some exchanges (with permission and anonymity). Please send your letters, notes or wishes to letters@mercyore.com.

2. I created a comprehensive, easy to use spreadsheet template to help people manage and plan their finances in 2025. If this is something you need, find it here.

3. I wish you a year that brings answers, a fertile ground for all your dreams.

I first learned about mimesis in Andre Rabe’s ‘Desire Found Me’, a book that explores René Girard's theory of Memetic Realism in relation to the atonement of Christ. Mimesis is essentially imitation, or mimicry - the act of resembling. Philosophers, from the ancients (Plato, Aristotle, etc.), to the moderns (Coleridge, Taussig, etc), theorised about the idea of mimesis in some way or another. Artists mimic nature and humans mimic one another. In the latter, this either leads to conflict - with the self and with the other - or to understanding. When I discover mimicry in my behaviour, I choose to lean towards understanding.

At my birthday party recently, my friends took turns to share their favourite things about me. This exercise was both painful (because having that much attention directed at me made me feel overly self-conscious) and beautiful (it feels incredibly good to seen through kind lens). It was positively revelatory and the most important realisation, which I also shared with them, was that the virtuous traits I possess are traits I’d mirrored from each one of them and from others not present.

In Moana (my favourite Disney movie for its strong themes of self and cultural identity), Moana’s grandmother teaches her (through a song, “I am Moana”) how to find oneself and one’s path in life through self understanding and listening to “the quiet voice still inside you”. My favourite line from that song informed the title of this post because I have found it to be true - “the people you love will change you”.

The first set of people to imprint on a person’s identity and behavioural patterns are their primary care givers. As the little human grows and meets more people, they acquire more traits, for better or for worse. And the people who most impact a person’s life are the people closest to the person - the loves of a person’s life. And these loves come in all forms - familial, platonic, romantic, spiritual, societal, etc. Could be love, could be the lack of, but the price of existing in community is change, for better or for worse. To resist this kind of change is to be at odds with everything and everyone.

If the people closest to me are one of the biggest determinants of who I am or become, it makes sense that I choose who gets to be closest to me. I’ve never been one for superficial friendships and I think that a question afore one’s mind when making friends or lovers should be, “in what ways am I willing to be changed by this person” or more simply, “What trait, possessed by this person, do I hope to imbibe?”

Pre-determining the inevitable, as much as is within our power, is one of the best ways to achieve our preferred outcomes. Whenever I’m looking to strengthen a virtue in myself, I subconsciously inch closer to someone who strongly embodies that virtue. To be fair, it hasn’t been that calculated in real life, only in retrospect do the dots connect. There is a stroke of luck here too in that I have been incredibly blessed with great friends. To love is: to be open; to be changed; and to change others.

This is not about adaption (changing to keep someone interested) or erasure - (losing yourself for acceptance). It is allowing yourself to show up as yourself and allowing yourself to refine and be refined by others into something more beautiful. This kind of beautiful, impactful exchange is only made possible when one is secure in oneself, a security that comes with self understanding and self acceptance.

Self acceptance has become a recurring theme in my writing because I’ve found it to be liberating. In friendships, it helps me to show up as myself, virtues and flaws. It is in this honest showing up that I can be truly accepted. It is also in this honest showing up that my virtues are strengthened, and my flaws are exposed and corrected. “Love your neighbour as yourself” is, beyond a spiritual instruction, a declaration of a primal truth that one can only love others to the extent that they have loved themselves. nemo dat quod non habet.

When you stop being at war with yourself, you find that you have more space for love and connection. Yet, committing to the journey of self understanding and acceptance is no reason to isolate. Even that road is best travelled with the love of others.

Change in life is inevitable, with love or without, and yet, the terms of sacred communion is to be open to change. Would we rather not be changed by love?

Until more recently, my introspection resulted mostly in self-loathing. You see, I had a very conservative christian upbringing where the message was holiness and achieving perfection above all else. Every night, I would bind my thoughts, words and actions together and put them on a scale versus a stringent idea of what I knew to be right. The standard was Jesus, and based on our Christology, he was the perfect embodiment of what it means to be perfectly human and perfectly divine.

The problem was, by my own judgement, I was always found wanting. There were no markers for progress, you either attained the mark of the high calling or you didn’t. I did not and so, I loathed myself. And in my self loathing, I did not consider myself worthy of the air i breathed neither did I see much beauty in my existence.

The journey to vomiting all the negative stories I learned and told myself has been arduous but I realise now that as I rid myself of more lies, their escorts - shame and depression - retreated too.

To idealise oneself is to dehumanise oneself. I speak of acceptance very often and rightly so because it is the antidote to much despair. So what if you are filled with such terrible thoughts and feelings? How are you different from everyone else? Do you fancy yourself some angel, or Jesus or humanity’s best shot at divinity? What is so terribly wrong with being human that you despise?

Eloghosa Osunde writes about detangling goodness from worthiness, “they are not a braid”, she says. In my last letter, I wrote to let you know that it is okay to not be a “good person” and now, I am writing to tell you that this being human, in all its beautiful and terrible ways, is enough. You are worthy of the air you breathe and all the beauty in the world (I leave out the terror because terror leaves no doubt in its wake, we all experience it. But beauty requires keen observation).

One of my favourite contemporary philosophers, Alaine de Botton, talks about deprioritising self-love and embracing self-understanding on the journey to finding love (this was in a romantic context but it makes sense for all aspects of our lives). “When it comes to self-love, it’s not so much about loving yourself, but accepting that all human beings have their less impressive sides. They don’t mean that you are a terrible person who doesn’t deserve love. They just mean you are part of the human family.”

When we speak about love, I think what we mean is that we want to be fully seen and fully accepted for what we are. Do we not owe that to ourselves too?

If the outcome of all your self-evaluation is self-loathing, then you have not been fully honest about your own humanity. And what worse hell exists besides the one we hold the keys to?

To truly understand oneself is to:

• Be honest about one’s positive traits and what traits one can improve on. And to accept both. It is dishonesty, not humility to diminish your strengths.

• To explore the negative traits within the context of one’s humanity and to take steps to improve on them, acknowledging one’s progress, however slow.

• To keep in mind that perfection is a lie and that hate is not capable of bringing about any real change but compassion (or grace) does.

What I was up to in October 2024:

1. I started a new role in a new industry, on a new career path. Bridges for Enterprise supports social entrepreneurs in Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia with pro bono advisory services. If you know any impact-focused startups who might benefit from our bespoke advisory services, direct them to apply via www.bridgesforenterprise.com or send an email to outreach@bridgesforenterprise.com.

2. This month, I listened to Sleeping at Lasts, “to be enchanted” on repeat, almost everyday. This letter from Ask Polly healed something in me - “I’m too lazy and mediocre to deserve the life that I want”.

3. I’m rereading Natasha Lunn’s “Conversations on Love” and my goodness, what a resource! I think everyone should pick it up. Some of my fave TV shows were back on my screen so I binged them. If you like thrilling, political drama, you will enjoy The Diplomat. If you enjoy legal drama, see The Lincoln Lawyer. And if you’re a sucker for sweet, soft, queer romance, what are you doing if you haven’t seen Heartstopper. All showing on Netflix. This is not paid advertising.

In other news . . .

1. The Table Community is having a conversation (online) on African Philosophy and Indigenous Knowledge Systems with Kemi Lijadu this November. If that’s your vibe, register here.

2. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Instagram.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, you’re a champ!

I think if there is a purpose to be had in life, it would be this – to “pull apart the darkness while we can”. It is in spite of the darkness in the world that we shine. And it is because of the darkness that our light can be seen.

Every now and then, I get overwhelmed by the horrors in the world. Hardly a day goes by without news of terror, oppression and disaster around the world. If there ever was stygian darkness, we are living through it. But we do not simply lay on our backs and admire the stars, we are the stars - the things that beautify the night sky. And like fireworks, our beauty and brilliance may last for all of five seconds but beautiful are and bright, we must be.

What I was up to in September '24:

1. I volunteered as a non-fiction editor at Luminary Lines, a literary magazine by Nigerians, for Nigerians. Please submit your stories, essays and poems for a chance to be published.

2. My editorial article, “A Treatise to the Dreamers – We cannot sit around waiting to die” was published on Luminary Lines. Please read it here and let me know what you think of it.

3. I completed a controversial TV show titled, “Lucifer” and I enjoyed it. If you look beyond the title, it's a very interesting crime drama series which also explores themes around personal growth, healing relationships (with family and friends) and the decisions we make for love.

I think the participants on Love is Blind are brave, at least those of them who go on the show for the actual purpose of finding a marital partner. Similar to everyone who comes on a virtual speed dating show I co-host (See #SpeedDatingwithSelema on X, formerly Twitter). I think it is brave to make a public declaration about wanting something, and be subject to the possibility of not getting that which one desires. It feels like a special kind of failure.

To want, and to declare said wanting, is to admit a lack. To admit a lack is to be vulnerable. To risk vulnerability is to be brave. It is even trickier when that desire is for romantic love because we seem to live in an age where “self love” is the most applauded thing. And while I do admit that loving oneself unabashedly is ultimately necessary, I do not believe that it is antithetical to the desire for companionship. Self love is important. Familial love is important. Communal love is important. Friendship love is important. Romantic love is important. All loves are important. All loves are necessary for our survival.

I have a precarious relationship with desire and with hope. I want to be a hopeful person but whenever I want something, I fear that if I admit to wanting it, then I’d jinx it and ultimately suffer from disappointment and the feeling of failure. If I act indifferent, then the disappointment wouldn’t hurt as much. I’ve found this to be untrue though, the disappointment still hits as hard even when I pretend to be nonchalant. Even if I choose not to feel it. I’m learning that it is okay to want things and to hope for them. It is okay to be seen to want or need things. And it is even okay to allow myself feel the weight of disappointment when I don’t get the things I want. Disappointment does not invalidate desire, or make it trite.

Last weekend, I made a quick trip to Ibadan with a friend who is relocating from Lagos. She wants out of the chaos of this city and I get it. When we arrived at her new home, I immediately thought, “yes, this is so you!”. It is a beautiful house with a beautiful garden. A house with character and personality. On our way back, I ask how she feels about the house-hunting experience - the dance of seeking and finding. She tells me that at the height of her frustration, she felt led to vocalise her desire. Her chi asked, “What kind of house do you really want? You’ve said what you don’t want but not what you want. What do you want? Say it out loud.” And when she said yes to her desires, her chi responded in the affirmative. I said to her, “What you were looking for was looking for you the entire time” because what are the odds that you got this apartment that fits your personality and desire in an obscure estate in Ibadan.

So, what do you really want? Say it out loud. Hope with your full chest. Risk vulnerability. If disappointment comes, make room for it. And when a new desire is born, dare to hope again. Where there is hope, there is life.

What I’ve been up to:

1. My team at The Northstar Library had our first #PopUpandRead event - a communal reading experience. I am really proud to be a part of this and we have only just begun. Ask me about what we aim to achieve at the Northstar Library and how you can support us.

2. I enjoyed reading “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin; and “Out on a Limb” by Hannah Bonam-Young.

3. I saw Interstellar for the first time and wondered why I didn’t see it earlier. I also really enjoyed the Apple TV series - Lessons in Chemistry. Both 10/10.

If you’d like to know my thoughts on any topic, or if you’d like to share a personal experience with me and get a personal response, feel free to send me an email via orethebrave@gmail.com.

It is this acceptance of the human condition that allows for nuance in my social interactions with people, especially on sensitive topics. I write on some of these topics in this stack and I do look forward to both acceptance and critiques of my thoughts. I only ask that you seek to understand them first.

On ideas vs values

We often conflate people’s ideas or thoughts for their values and due to this conflation, we ascribe morality to thoughts and singular ideas. This shows up quite often in public discourse on social media but we need not ascribe moral value to ideas, we can simply evaluate ideas on their own merits. Interacting with an idea does not indicate acceptance. And demonstrating understanding does not equate endorsement.

Ideologies, on the other hand, often represent ideals and belief systems which impact behaviour, yet, people are not simply the ideologies they subscribe to. Therefore, I think it is presumptuous to assume alignment of values/morals with a person simply because you subscribe to similar ideologies. However, some ideologies do result in unethical/harmful behaviour and therefore, it is fair to be wary of people who hold these ideologies dearly. For instance, if an ideology is built on prejudice against a group of people, it makes sense that members of that group are wary of people who support said ideology.

On art vs artists

Following the train of thought demarcating ideas from values, I also think that the the idea to “separate the art from the artist” does not leave much room for nuance. We could either approach art as an idea (to be judged on its own merit) or as an extension of the artist’s ideologies and ethics. Neither of these positions is morally superior to the other, if you care for moral superiority.

I lean toward evaluating art on its own merit, even though in some instances, I’ve found myself unable to enjoy art due to my dislike for the artist (based on their behavioural patterns and yes, I see the possible dissonance). Not that my enjoyment or lack thereof really matters in the grand scheme of things. Yet I understand the clamour to “defund *insert name of artist* by disengaging with their art” because of some unethical behaviour which may go unpunished due to the imperfections of our justice systems. The question is, is this ideal?

Here’s a perspective I present for ponderation - is the confluence of people’s work/output and their ethos limited to creatives? If so, why? I ask because in our capitalist world, the owners of wealth/capital produce much of what we need for our survival and sustenance. And wealth owners are not given to ethical practices, yet we make them wealthier by consuming their products. Additionally, many poets, historians and other creatives whose work we interact with today were decidedly flawed too, yet their works are valuable and have shaped our world. So, if we can excuse the goose, why not the gander? If everyone is flawed, how do we decide which flaws are excusable when it comes to the work (product, service, art) produced by people?

Admitting the brilliance of an asshole does not make them any less an asshole and a person who consistently displays ethical behaviour decent/ethical behaviour may not necessarily do good work. Brilliance and good behaviour are neither conjoined, nor are they mutually exclusive.

If it is not already clear, this is not a call to support unethical/harmful behaviour. It is simply to distil expectations in social interactions by making space for the nuance and complexities of our shared humanity. And to point out that our collective redemption is not in social interactions characterised by suspicion and judgement. It is a request to replace suspicion and judgement with curiosity and clear thinking. And to evaluate ideas, behaviours and maybe even art on their own merit.

In a recent interview with Marie Claire NG for The Table Community, I told Chiamaka that as a child, I wanted to be many things. I had a new career ambition every week. This is true. My parents and friends, who are the primary audience of my passionate speeches about each new endeavour, can testify to this. I will forever be thankful for their support in helping me achieve each new goal without judgement. Because of them, I have lived many dreams.

Almost 3 months ago, I left one of my dream jobs — a fraud investigator — in one of the best places to start one’s professional career — KPMG. When people ask why I left the certainty of a partner track without an offer lined up, the best I could say was that I needed to rest. The deeper truth is, while I was great at my job (as evident in my performance reviews), I felt constricted. I’ve never fit neatly into a box and I wonder where I got the idea that finding a career path would be any different. I needed time to find out what it is that I really want to do “with my one precious life” (Quote from The Summer Day, a poem by Mary Oliver).

After 5 years of providing forensic services, I have decided to step out of the box — self imposed and otherwise. I love learning. I want to learn a new thing every day. I want to be challenged with big ideas and new ways of thinking as often as possible. I still want to be many things. I want to be an accountant, a risk manager, a creative thinker, a writer, a teacher, a product manager, a project manager, a fraud and compliance officer, an economist, a poet, and every new thing I dream up, all at the same time. The world offers itself to my imagination (also paraphrased from a poem).

I’ve struggled with a lot of self-doubt in my life. Writing this, I realise that I am absolutely terrified of failing, especially failing publicly. And perhaps, it is this fear of failure that has taken me this long to realise my many strengths. I have a unique ability to understand why things work the way they do and question the status quo, where the status quo can be improved. I know how to hold multiple perspectives and contexts without losing my mind and I know how to communicate these complex thoughts in ways many people can understand. I am insanely curious. Insanely quick at learning new things I’m interested in. I know how to get insight from data. Inspiring and bringing people together comes naturally to me. I’ve never struggled with organising and ironing out the details of what is required to achieve an objective. My background in accounting makes me a good budget planner. My work in risk management helps me to identify the risks in an endeavour early on and find ways to mitigate them. My background in fraud investigation has honed my analytical skills and taught me to pay attention to details. My experience in leading teams has helped me to identify people’s strengths and harness them to achieve the group’s objectives.

Being a specialist is great but our world also needs people who own their curiosities. People who have acquired and are willing to acquire knowledge and experience in a wide range of areas and can glean from all that knowledge and experience to support a new vision.

Therefore, if you’re building something exciting and you need a support/operations person who is not afraid to challenge ideas and who knows how to get things done, please view my profile and skill set at mercyore.com and let’s work together.

When I started publicly sharing my dissatisfaction with the prevalent evangelical Christian faith in which I was raised, I was met with an othering. People will give you a new identity because in their box of faith, there is no room for doubt. And nobody wants to entertain the ‘little yeast that leavens the lump’. You become an outcast, a backslider, a heretic, a ‘new ager’, a progressive Christian. You will be called many things except what you truly are — beloved.

I also received personal messages from people who could not publicly admit to sharing the same thoughts and feelings about their legacy faith. People, like me, who even though had become disillusioned with problematic theology, still held space for wonder, for curiosity, for beauty, for mystery.

People do not understand how one could hold both dualities in tension. If you pick a side, people know where you belong. People side with certainty because it is neat, well put together, steady as a rock. But what do you do with an uncertain, wavering faith in divinity. What do you do with wild, wild wonder?

The more I spoke of this dissonance and dissatisfaction, the more I met people who found themselves on this path. It was during conversations like this with two friends, at different times, that I heard of Kamsy. “You should meet Kamsy”, they said. “You have a lot in common.”

On a random Thursday evening, Kamsy sent me a message on Twitter, “would you love to have drinks this evening?” It felt like kismet. When we met, we realized how similar our stories were. We both loved the church community but we were both undergoing a severe phase of ‘deconstruction’ and spiritual exhaustion. We spoke about how lonesome the journey had been. I remember that night with fondness because I walked home with a leap to my steps, smiling at having found a soul sibling.

On 22 May 2021, one of our deconstruction favorites had tweeted about a real life conversation around a campfire. I shared this with Kamsy, telling her that I needed such a gathering too and that I had a couple friends who had shared their desire for community with me but I didn’t have the bandwidth to start a community at the time. Kamsy decided my unavailability was not a hindrance, she would shoulder the burden. And she did. We sent out personal messages to friends who shared our loneliness to be the founding members of this community.

Thus, The Table was born in line with the philosophy of inclusion represented in Laura Jean Truman’s writing about communion. We officially launched the virtual community by creating a Wixsite, an Instagram page and a Whatsapp community on 4 June 2021. At this initial launch, the goal was simple — to help people who were deconstructing their faith feel less lonely and to maintain a resource directory covering essays, books, podcasts and all forms of media across topics around deconstruction.

In the last (almost) two years of The Table’s existence, we have:

• Held virtual conversations, both planned and unplanned, on topics ranging from sex and sexuality to queerness, alternative spirituality, teachings etc.

• Held healing circles during periods of communal distress to hold hands and confront religious trauma, the ENDSARS protests, policies on choice in America (Roe v Wade) and most recently, the outcomes of the Nigerian Elections.

• Held conversations with leading voices in deconstruction — The Naked Pastor, Salem Afangideh, Casper Ter Kuile and Jo Luehmann.

Our first physical event, “Cocktails and Conversations” , was held a year after the community started due to COVID-19 restrictions.

In a publication by Minority Africa, community members spoke with Edikan about The Table as a safe space for nuanced conversations.

We created The Table to provide community for people deconstructing their faith and we have done that in the best way we can. After two years of simply going with the flow, listening to the people and feeling the pulse, we have a new vision. A much more encompassing vision.

If we think of deconstruction as questioning, rethinking and redefining our ideas of the divine and spirituality, then deconstruction is a never ending process. We believe that the curiosity and wonder that causes us to question is an integral part of life in all stages. Therefore, we are redefining the Table as more than just a group of people deconstructing their faith.

The Table will now be a third space — an alternative space for everyone who desires spiritual growth outside of religious walls. We think of spirituality as “the idea that there is an animating principle in the self — a life force that when nurtured, enhances our capacity to be more fully actualized and able to engage in communion with the world around us.”* We are creating a space where people’s souls can be nurtured and their capacities enhanced, in community.

Because the Table brings together people of different religious backgrounds and spiritual ideologies, we aim to foster growth for everyone by inclusive programming and a people-led community where each member can take the lead in hosting community gatherings to share their ideas and the ways in which they nurture their souls. In this sanctuary, everyone is a priest and everyone is laity.

We are committing to the intentionality, consistency and support every person needs. We also understand that the Table can be a transitory space for any individual. In our creed, we recognize the freedom to join and the freedom to leave. Our goal is to be a gathering in the wilderness where a lone traveler can rest for a while, take what is needed and continue their journey, with or without the group.

This is a space for the curious, the marveler, the sceptic. It is no place for the cynic or the certain. This is a table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry, come.

For more information on our programming in the coming days and how you can help, please send an email to thetablecommunitynigeria@gmail.com

*Definition of spirituality from bell hook’s All About Love.

The Table Community: New Visions was originally published in The Table Chronicles on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am writing this summary to the sound of Alice Smith’s cover of ‘I put a spell on you’, because this is a book about love. The love of a black woman. This is exactly as it should be.

“They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” The first time I saw these words, I knew, instinctively, that I had to read from the source.

It is for this poetic use of language and the vivid imagery that it felt like I was an observing character in this book. An example of vivid imagery was a description of a hurricane and flooding disaster — “The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel”.

Flowery writing is not always cohesive. Sometimes, the metaphors leave their meaning behind, making the interpretation of each sentence a chore as the reader struggles to catch up. This is not the case in this book. Zora Neale uses lots of epigrams in her writing and personifies abstracts like time, night and death. However, she does this skillfully, proving an outstanding level of intention and creativity.

For instance, in chapter one, she paints a picture of the timing when Jamie starts speaking with her friend, Phoebe — “they sat there in the fresh, young darkness” — speaking of dusk. In the closing paragraph of the same chapter, she represents the graduation of dusk to night — “Time makes everything old so the kissing, young darkness became a monstropolous old thing”.

The Plot

It is the early twentieth century. Janie walks into her community alone, wearing dirty overalls and her thick, long hair down her back. This gets the community talking. She had left years ago in a blue dress, rich and in love with a younger man. Her friend Phoebe advocates for her amongst the gossips and goes to her for answers.

The book is the telling of Janie’s story, narrating her childhood, her consciousness of blackness, her ponderance on love, her arranged marriage to an older man, her second marriage to a man who promised her the world and finally, her love marriage to Vergible Woods, whom she fondly called Tea Cake.

The Main Character

Janie was a dreamer and a romantic. She starts off with a curiosity, wanting to know what love is, especially as expressed in romance and marriage. At the end of her story, Janie tells her friend, Phoebe, “ love is lak the sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”

Beyond contemplating love, Janie loved to observe nature and conjure her ideals from said observation.

“She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.”

Janie was also self-aware, embracing her multiplicities and the yinyangness of life.

“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.”

Sub-themes

On the difference between how men and women approach living.

The book starts with a commentary on how men and women dream, hope and live. This is of course a prelude to the story of the main character, Janie, and is therefore, in tandem with how her story plays out. This is how the book opens up.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.”

Perhaps this is a commentary on the ambition and fortune (or lack thereof), of the men Janie interacted with. The plot is set only a few years or decades after the freedom of black people from institutionalised slavery in America. All men have hopes and wishes. Some see their wishes come true, by strokes of luck like the rising and falling tide. Some live in a constant state of wishing because the thing that they hope for seems near enough but never really arrives. Eventually, despair takes over, as in the scripture that, “hope deferred makes the heart sick”. Proverbs 13:12

In this world, however, the woman keeps her dream as the standard, the tune to which she dances. When a woman hopes, and when a woman forgets to hope, it is as intended.

“Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”

On Marriage

Janie’s idea of marriage was idealist. She had observed pollination between a bee and a flower in her grandma’s garden and this informed her idea of what marriage should be — a symbiotic relationship. A partnership. A welcoming to give and receive of each other. A delightful effect on one another.

“She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation.”

It was this ideal that she upheld as she was to be married off at 16 to Logan Killicks, a much older man. She felt nothing but disgust for Logan, yet she channeled her curiosity.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?”

It was this ideal that led her running to her grandmother in dissatisfaction, “but Nanny, ah wants to want him sometimes. Ah don’t want him to do all the wantin’”

After a couple years of enduring a lack of delight in her marriage, she makes a brave decision to run off with a younger man who promised her the world.

“What was she losing so much time for? A feeling of sudden newness and change came over her. Janie hurried out of the front gate and turned south. Even if Joe was not there waiting for her, the change was bound to do her good.”

On heterosexual marriage in a patriarchal world

Through Janie’s second marriage, Zora Neale explores the misogynist ideas held by the men: that women were eye candy, objects of sexual gratification, owned by the men and useful for domestic labour, classed with children and domestic animals. Thus, women were to be quiet as they had no productive intellectual capacity.

“Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves.”

The men spoke casually of hitting and even killing their wives as they would speak of taming or putting down an animal.

“‘If dat wuz mah wife,’ said Walter Thomas, ‘Ah’d kill her cemetery dead.’

‘Dat’s ’cause Tony love her too good,” said Coker, ‘Ah could break her if she war mine. Ah’d break her or kill her. Makin uh fool outa me in front of everybody.’

‘Tony won’t never hit her. He says beatin’ women is just like steppin’ on baby chickens. He claims ‘tain’t no place on uh woman tuh hit” Joe Lindsay said with scornful disapproval, ‘bhut Ah’ d kill uh baby just born dis mawnin’ fuh ah thing lak dat”

The men who wouldn’t hit their wives were considered weak but even they did not refrain from hitting out of respect but out of benevolent sexism.

In Janie’s last marriage, the one where she lived her dream of partnership and mutual delight, she still got a beating.

“Janie is wherever Ah wants tuh be. Dat’s de kind uh wife she is and Ah love her for it. Ah wouldn’t be knockin’ her around. Ah didn’t wants whup her last night, but ol’ Mis Turner done sent for her brother tuh come tuh bait Janie in and take her way from me. Ah didn’t whup Janie ’cause she done nothin’. Ah beat her tuh show dem Turners who is boss. Ah set in de kitchen one day and heard dat woman tell mah wife Ah’m too black fuh her. She don’t see how Janie can stand me.’”

In almost every heterosexual pairing in a patriarchal world, women become collateral damage in the fight for men’s ego.

On the intersection of racism and misogyny

Janie’s grandmother gave her a lesson on the pecking order of oppression, at the bottom of which black women exist. You would expect the black man to understand oppression and equality, instead, they find the backs of black women to dump the burden of hate on.

“Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.”

On leadership and followership

Janie married a man who fancied himself a leader. When they arrived at a new town with no government, he appointed himself the mayor. While he did the work of developing the town, he also placed himself, and by extension, Janie, on a pedestal of deity.

“The town has a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe’s positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of those things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.”

This commentary led me to contemplate leadership and worship. Followers make a leader. Worshippers make a god. Neither would exist without the other.

On familial love

The first love Janie knew was that of her grandmother, who had married her off at 16 in a bid to protect her. Years later, Jamie would reflect on the love she had for her grandmother and rename it pity. She felt obligated to her grandmother but she resented her grandmother for her inability to dream. She did not consider her grandmother’s love for her genuine. In Janie’s eyes, true love frees you.

“Some people could look at a mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon — for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you — and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn’t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn’t overcome it all the time.”

On Internalised colorism

In Chapters 15 &16, Zora Neale explores the thinking behind internalised colorism through a character — Mrs. Taylor — who worshipped white people and light-skinned black people.

“Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t”

Once again, the pecking order of oppression makes its way into the conversation. Mrs. Taylor treated the people more light skinned than herself with reverence and the darker-skinned people with deference. She expected this reverence and deference too, from those darker-skinned and lighter skinned than she was, respectively.

“Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”

This reminds me of lines in WanaWana’s discourse on beauty standards in her poem, Conversations with your Mother — “when you become a woman, your mother will tell you how she mutilated her body, splayed each part to be sanctified by the sun so that your father could love her.”

On self reclamation and the need for authenticity in community

In her resurrection to self, set against the backdrop of her second husband’s death and funeral, Janie solidifies her expectations of love as freedom, looking within first. In this reclamation of self, she starts to seek community that gave her room to be everything she wanted to be.

“She had found a jewel down inside herself and she wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around . . . When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.”

One of my favorite writers, Kamsi Asuzu once twote,

Kamsi on Twitter: "show people who you really are, they don't know you like you know you. let them be shocked, let them not like you, let them love you, let it not be said it wasn't you that they met. / Twitter"

show people who you really are, they don't know you like you know you. let them be shocked, let them not like you, let them love you, let it not be said it wasn't you that they met.

Other Comments

1. Zora Neale teaches me that words are malleable. She makes her own words in this book, some of which are now (somewhat) accepted in language or pop culture — e.g. diasticutis, monstropolous, disfavorite, mislove.

2. I struggled with the punctuation in this book because of course, it was written in a different time when writers did not debate the use of the Oxford comma. I did think many sentences could have used extra commas.

3. A 21st century reader, like myself, may also struggle with the use of negro folk language for dialogue in the book. I did get used to it eventually.

Conclusion

If it is not already apparent by my commitment to writing a 2500-word summary of the book, I absolutely enjoyed reading it. I did pause a few times to reread and take in the brilliant, poetic writing but I looked forward to picking up the book again every time I had to put it down. I therefore wholeheartedly recommend it as required reading.

I opened my Bible today, for the first time in 2 years, thanks to Eloghosa Osunde. It’s an English and French Bible I collected from my dad’s collection to help with my assimilation of the continental coloniser’s language.

First, I flip through, trying to find something, anything that feels warm. I don’t — particularly because nothing comes to mind. Then, I open the verse mentioned in the article that spurred me to pick up the Bible in the first place — Ephesians 4:1 — “Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.”

This verse reminds me of a line in Order my Steps — “Lord I just want to walk worthy, my calling to fulfil”. It reminds me of insomnia-ridden nights I spent praying to be like The Christ — all loving, all holy. I’d go on fasts, take quiet moments when everyone else was in class, stay awake — my prayers were never for things I considered mundane — like passing an exam or provision — it was always this one thing — to be like Jesus.

I remember being so fascinated in Christology class during a Short-Term Ministerial Course my then fellowship organised every time we had a long break from school. I enjoyed all the classes — Biblical Hermeneutics, Christian Apologetics, even the course titled, Old Testament. But the one I loved the most was Christology. The person of the Christ was enthralling. The teacher also did a good job selling it.

Jesus, the Christ, was a person of immense paradox and wisdom, per the interpretations of the scripture taught to us. He knew when to be quiet, and he knew when to draw a sharp word. He was meek, yet he would declare himself to be the son of god. He’d bless some and pronounce woe on others. He lived simply yet could command money out of the mouth of a fish. How do you not love a character like this? He seemed perfect. And perfection was the one message I’d learned since I was a child.

In every Monday Bible Study, every Thursday Revival Hour, every Sunday Worship Service, every House Caring Fellowship, the message in my childhood church was constant — “be ye holy, for I am holy”, “be ye therefore perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. “Follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the lord”

This mandate was personal to me. This was my singular purpose for existence. If I would be anything in life, I would be like Jesus or I didn’t want to live.

We sang self sacrificing hymns like, “take my life and let it be, consecrated lord to thee” and prayed self mortifying prayers like, “if it is one moment before I sin and lose my place in heaven, take my life before that moment”

I didn’t know anything else. And that’s why I’ve read Eloghosa’s essay multiple times. The sound resonates deeply with all the tunes that played in my soul for the first 20 years of my life. I’ve known a quest for perfection longer than I’ve known what it is to live. And leaving the church does not automatically take your foot off your own neck. You still hold the hammer of high moral standards and every misstep, every imperfection is a nail.

You change your mind on certain topics but you don’t necessarily act out your new ideas. You are permissive to others but not to self. “Others may, I cannot”. The dissonance between what you believe and what you live out throws you further in the ocean of anxiety and now, you’ve lost the faith that lets you walk on water. So, you drown.

But you are no stranger to dissonance. You are no stranger to drowning. Only this time, you are more honest about it. Remember when you were in the faith? You had a sibling in the Apostle Paul who loved god’s law with all his heart but had “another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.”

On 17 April 2022, I sat with Oluwatoni at Churchill’s, a dingy Irish pub in Lekki I visited often for their Sunday roast or fish and chips. Toni and I have many things in common, especially the faith of our fathers. We talk about how we have imprints on our souls that may never fade with time. We talk about rediscovering the self and the sacred after leaving organised religion. We talked about redefining spirituality and other themes for ourselves. This conversation was koinonia, a fellowship of souls. I have a shaky memory but the details of this conversation stayed with me. As I got in the cab to take me home that night, I wrote in my journal. And I cried.

We talked about holiness and what it is for us to see god. I told her this was one of the first things I had to deconstruct for myself because “be ye holy” had a chokehold on my life.

It was one day in 2017 during my NYSC. I lived in a dilapidated flat and taught principles of accounting in an all boys school in Kano. But if there was anything I had, it was time. With a 2G internet connection and little money, there wasn’t much to do but sit under a tree, think and write. This was my wilderness experience. This was when I had to face the dissonance in my soul. This was the beginning of my backsliding, or in a way, a rebirth — depends on where you stand.

I remember sitting under a tree adjacent to the building with my Bible and journal on my thighs and a quiet prayer in my throat, to know god more. to be like god. to be holy.

And then it came to me this way, If God did not say to fish, “fly”, nor to bird, “swim”, why was “be ye holy” a command to attain rather than a pronouncement of what is natural to us.

You see, my ideas of god had begun to change, and one of the sounds of that change was Pieces by Steffany Gretzinger. I was being introduced to her ideas of Love and it was quite jarring, compared to the righteous god I knew. It wasn’t that my people didn’t believe that God is love, it was that God was first holy, before God was anything else. and God’s love also meant God’s judgement. My friend, Ferdy, would preach to his congregation at The Tribe, years later, that God’s judgement was for us, not against us. God would go to war against the things that warred against our freedom. This was a beautiful rendition of it. I had known a god that threw both the baby and the bath water into the lake of fire. Eternally. For sins committed in time.

My ideas of the divine have not stopped changing. This is not a theological discourse or an invitation to one. It is a coming to terms. Or a response to the many questions I’ve received over the years from people who care about me, “what changed?”, “what happened to you?”, “what do you believe now?” If you still haven’t figured out from reading this, here’s the answer, “I don’t know.” And on most days, I don’t care anymore.

However, I am still drawn to the sacred, a space inside me where I meet my whole, free self. I am still drawn to the beauty of existence and what it means to be human. The many complexities of our being is very much Christlike to me. My calling is still to love. to love. to love. It is of this calling that I will continue to walk worthily.

Some days ago, I started a challenge to write, using lines from songs I like. The goal was to help me get back my confidence as a writer. I’ve been publishing the results on my newsletter but I like this one enough to share on a more public platform.

This song is called “Jupiter” by Sleeping at Last.

Fun fact: If you listen closely on this song, you’ll hear some radio static that NASA recorded of Jupiter’s unique storm systems. Ryan O’Neal is one of the most brilliant artists/songwriters to have ever existed.

“Wrote it down in the summer of 1610

Just a secret under lock and key until then”

A reference to Galileo Galilei’s discovery of Jupiter’s four moons. It was this brilliant astronomer who said, “Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.”

Maybe we spend too much time trying to find meaning when we should simply appreciate beauty. Maybe there is purpose to existence, maybe there isn’t. You won’t find the answers outside yourself. Such answers are custom-made. Hold a telescope to your own soul.

“While collecting the stars, I connected the dots …”

Did you know? In ancient civilizations, both Greek and Roman, Jupiter is named after the king of gods. Known in Greek mythology as Zeus. And Jove, (now Jupiter) to the Romans. Maybe for its size or for its age or for its brightness, which makes it the third most visible object in the earth’s sky.

Hail Jupiter, king of planets, ancient of days.

Now let’s talk about how Jupiter, bright as it is, is only visible at night — like Earth’s moon. And Venus.

“I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

— Galileo Galilei

I know darkness well. I’ve stumbled in it and hurt myself a couple times. I lived in fear of it. Then I befriended it.

You see, “even darkness has its uses”

— The Ancient One in Doctor Strange: In the multiverse of madness.

Darkness brings calm. And quiet. A longing for rest. And an opportunity to see beauty that is otherwise hidden by too bright light.

“I don’t know who I am but now I know who I’m not.

Just a curious speck that got caught up in orbit. in orbit”

I am definitely no Jupiter. There is nothing grand or notable about my existence. Jupiter has a “great red spot”, a mere blubber on that planet that is larger than Earth!

When you contemplate the universe, and perhaps, the possibility of a multiverse, you realize how infinitesimal you really are.

“Make my messes matter

Make this chaos count”

Isn’t this what we truly desire in our frantic search for meaning? We want to know that even our smallness is beautiful. We can live without the knowledge of Jupiter but we want to know that our decisions and actions — small as we are — ripple in time. And maybe, beyond time. That what we are now isn’t all there is to us. That we can be Important. Remembered. Or even immortal.

But maybe our immortality is in the way we love, the things we live for and the things we create.

Isn’t this why we try, in this ever chaotic world?

Here is my extant conclusion:

Existence is chaotic and often belabored with needless suffering. But, by Jove, it is beautiful and breathtaking.

“Let every little fracture in me shatter out loud.”

<a href="https://medium.com/media/c8b068db3f77047e7df8598212de3cb5/href">https://medium.com/media/c8b068db3f77047e7df8598212de3cb5/href</a>

Originally published at https://www.getrevue.co on May 22, 2022.

The way the world is set up, unfortunately, only a few will ever make it to the top. The top here being top-level financial or social capital . A larger group will sit in the middle, not poor, not wealthy, just getting by. This is to question why we have attached financial averageness/failure to self worth. If we all know we are all NGMI (not gonna make it), then what is wrong with simply wanting to get by? What is wrong with not wanting to expend so much energy into a risky venture that may or may not be rewarding, when the odds are even more stacked against you? What is wrong with optimising for an average, decent life?

*Mediocrity, in this context, is defined as average. Not good, not bad. Just there. Some other definitions consider mediocrity as “being of low or average quality”.

When I was much younger, I did a lot. I was not a very physically active child, because I just never had enough strength. But I enjoyed reading, making up scenarios in my head and snooping around. I read a lot, mostly books categorised as self-help. I’d get motivated for a day or two but realised, many of the strategies did not work for me. So I started to despise self-help books and generic advice. The writers barely acknowledge their privilege and the disparity in the context of the readers. So, when many of my friends and colleagues attended a lot of motivational speaking events in university, I sat those out. I already had enough. But at least, they fueled the dreamer in me, however temporarily.

I generally did well in school, without much effort. I’d receive prizes for the best performance in a class, every now and then. At the end of my primary school education, I was branded a “gifted child”. As a teenager, I would look at my parents and the adults around me and wonder, with some disdain, why they weren’t richer or making more money. I would blame it on their settling for mediocrity. I’d wonder, “If you spend an extra 2 hours a day on something else, you’d be making more money and we’d be more comfortable.” I blamed our financial status on their lack of ambition.

At 17, I was well on my way to being a chartered accountant at 19/20. My relatives were excited, “the youngest chartered accountant in the family”. Until I failed my first professional-level exams. Of the four courses I enrolled for, I passed only one. I had never failed an exam prior to this. It left me stunned and of course, for someone whose entire self worth was built on being the “gifted” or brilliant child, my already negative self esteem took a hit. Worse still, I started to develop different symptoms of an undiagnosed chronic illness, which led to mental struggles. I was struggling to keep up with school work, non-curricular activities and professional exams. In my third year, I mostly couldn’t get out of bed. My roommates would call me lazy. I’d cry. I’d do a lot more medical examinations. “There’s nothing wrong with you”, all the doctors said.

Fast forward 10 years later, working in one of my teenage dream fields, earning what is considered and fairly so, better than the average Nigerian with my qualification and years of experience, I’m sitting on the floor of my one bedroom apartment that I share with a colleague, asking whether the long hours of work are worth it. As a millennial living in 2022, year 3 of a pandemic that forced us as a species to reflect on the sustainability of our choices in life. The majority of us are also realising that we’re not necessarily in better financial positions than our parents were at a similar stage of life, even though we have had better opportunities, especially internet access and technology. We’re all asking similar questions — What’s the point of all the hard work? When does the rat race end? What is the reward at the end of the marathon?

Creative on Twitter: "The promise is always in the future Joy is always postponed https://t.co/qg8Iwu7OP9 / Twitter"

The promise is always in the future Joy is always postponed https://t.co/qg8Iwu7OP9

I have since come to realise that financial inequality, success, productivity or happiness, generally, is not just a function of hard work. If it were, many Lagosians would be wealthy. Many young people I know work multiple jobs, handle other projects on the side and still try to be excellent at it all while battling mental illnesses in a world that isn’t designed to help the average person thrive. We make jokes about how humans are the only species that need to earn a living, how existence is a ponzi scheme. We are having honest conversations about trauma, about what we truly want out of life outside external expectations, about how difficult it is to keep up with it all. Slowly, you start to realise that none of these guarantee you a soft landing, especially if you’re coming from a low/average income household because unfortunately, the system is pre-rigged against you and it takes a special blend of ambition, grit, education and a whole lot of luck to actually “make it”. And even if or when you do, at what cost? In most cases, you would have put your health, your relationships and your joy on the line. Is it really worth it?

Ṣadé Adon't on Twitter: "Existence is a Ponzi scheme tbh https://t.co/8Iq92dekiW / Twitter"

Existence is a Ponzi scheme tbh https://t.co/8Iq92dekiW

I have had many moments of self reflection and I have decided not to be a rat in this never-ending race. It simply is a lot of work I am neither interested in nor equipped for. I have decided that I want a simple life with a positive impact on the people closest to me. I want comfort, because it is the only way I thrive. If the world, especially Nigeria where I live, was much more comfortable for the average person, that’s exactly what I want out of life. I have no dreams of creating mind-blowing inventions/innovations that change the course of the human race. I just want to make my own little contributions to the betterment of human beings and leave. I want to create things that outlive me but not necessarily for the consumption of a large number of people. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with just wanting to get by, having my needs being met and being there for the ones I love?

At some point, you’ll realise that a system that thrives on your sense of inadequacy will always sell you pipe dreams — buy more, do more, get more. I wish that we meet ourselves with a little more compassion. And while we work and create value, because frankly, that’s the only way to receive value, we are also prioritising rest, softness and the things that spark joy. And of course, this looks different for each person, but rest or ease should not be a reward for labour. All living things must rest to survive, even the sun goes down.

I believe that human life is inherently valuable, not as a function of what we’re able to create or produce, as important as it is to create. Neither is human value defined by how much wealth or social capital we are able to amass. In the end, we will die and leave it all behind. Recognizing and insisting upon your inherent worth as a human being, is what I would consider a sacred practice. A holy defiance.

“God abeg”, you mutter over and over under your breath because there are no other words to express your cry for mercy. It’s not like you believe in any God or their benevolence but you’re at your wits end. You’d do anything to ease the pain. You bury your head between your knees, your eyes and nostrils flowing freely like a dam, “God, abeg.”

Your desperate attempts at seeking the benevolence of deity don’t end with the unscheduled moments of prayer, you now punctuate each breath throughout the day with the two words you can utter coherently. You don’t know what it is you’re pleading for, do you want an easier life, do you just not want to feel pain or do you want it all to end? You leave the answer at the discretion of whoever is listening, you seem to say, “do with me whatever feels like mercy”. If it were up to you though, you’d rather cease to exist.

You want to scream but you can’t find your voice. You give whatever gods are listening, an ultimatum. If the heaviness does not lift by evening, you’d visit the beach and become one with the ocean. Forever.

You’ve lived with this inherent sadness all your life but this year, the doctor put a name to it. It makes sense. It all makes sense. Your will to live now hangs by a thread. You’ve chased joy and hope in circles all year long but they always seem to evade you. Now, all you’re left with is sheer exhaustion.

Once again, you fall on your knees. You groan. Your body trembles under the weight of the burden you cannot name. You let the tears flow. You let the panic run its course. You feel the nausea. You don’t get up till you feel empty. You make your bed. You take a shower. You light candles. You play Uneven Odds by Sleeping at last. You exchange messages with your friends. You sleep. You wake up the following morning. You go again. Or not.

Our Father . . .

The prevalent Christian tradition views God as father, based on the interpretation of Jesus’ portrayal of the supreme being. This, of course, holds its own beauty in the sense of a personal relationship with the divine. What we often do not address, however, is that Jesus may not have meant “Abba” (Meaning “source”) to mean male parent, but as an acknowledgment of his nature as divine. In my opinion, the Jews understood what it meant to speak of God as source, realizing that source and offspring would be of the same essence. If Jesus regarded God as source, he was declaring his divinity and the price of such blasphemy was death.

Our Mother . . .

The Ijaw tribe of Southern Nigeria hold a feminine view of the supreme being — Teme Arau (she who creates) and Ziba Arau (she who births). I find this particularly interesting because of how this theology/cosmology impacts on the elevated socio-cultural place of women in this society in comparison to other patriarchal societies. This is covered in an essay by Endurance Uzobo, titled, “the implications of feminization God among the Ijaw people”.

You may argue that the genderisation of God is quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things, because God, in most theological contexts, is spirit and spirits are disembodied beings, therefore, they cannot be categorised by sex or gender. I may agree with you, but only partially. In the religious tradition that I was raised in (and most other religious traditions), even though “God is spirit”, God is only ever imagined or referred to in masculine terms and believe it or not, this impacts our view of gender. What we have subconsciously imbibed, is that God is male — Father, king, priest, judge, warrior, provider — all of these then inform our expectations of gender. And representation matters, even in theology.

For mystics, your mental picture of God goes on to define your spiritual or soul experiences. And because our societal view of the masculine is characterised by strength, power, courage, assertiveness and sometimes, aggressiveness, we miss out on the softer elements of the divine, characteristics we have socially assigned to womanhood/motherhood — presence, care, nurture, tenderness. For people who define God as “unlimited”, we tend to fit Them in our perfect, little boxes. This is not a call for the erasure of the male view of God. This is a call to, at least, expand our boxes, and therefore, our experiences of the divine. If you cannot see God as female, you may have trouble seeing the divine in women around you.

This is a call to, at least, expand our boxes, and therefore, our experiences of the divine. If you cannot see God as female, you may have trouble seeing the divine in women around you.

It took a few months to write this piece because I wanted to experience, firsthand, what a feminine view of the divine would mean for me, personally. This took a while because my mystic side has been quite lost lately. I’m in free-fall mode. I started by changing my mental picture of God to a woman — mother, female friends, and sometimes, myself (picture bigger me rocking a smaller me). Then I started to change my language in self talks, prayers, benedictions, songs, all of it. I sometimes use “mother” instead of “father”, and included she/her/they/them as my pronouns for God. This has provided a richer experience and expanded my mental image of what is sacred and holy. If we believe that language is important to reclaim culture and identity, then language is surely important in expanding or rethinking our ideas of God.

“The language we use to define, explain, and identify God shapes the way we understand God. By having an essentially masculine view of God, we blind ourselves to other ways we may connect to God and understand God.” — Abigail Dolan

For the bible-believing Christian . . .

If you are a Christian reading this, wondering if this is heretical. First of all, I applaud you for even making it this far. Secondly, we are all heretics in our own way, I suppose, but this paragraph is dedicated to you. I will draw on the prevalent Christian theology to state, once again, that God is Spirit. The first mention of God in the Christian bible is “Elohim” (Genesis 1:1), which is pluralised pronoun. And the Spirit/breath/wind is the feminine noun, “ruach”. This tells that both masculine and feminine energies (?) are represented in God. And in the creation of humanity, per the bible, “ . . . male and female, God created them . . .” All forms of gender emanated from the divine. Why view God through only one lens?

Other portions of the Christian Bible also speak to the mother/feminine metaphors to speak of God — mentions of God gathering people like a mother hen (Luke 13:34); God as the womb of creation (Numbers 11:12, Deuteronomy 32:18); God as a comforting mother (Isaiah 66:13). According to some biblical scholars, to be “born of God” as presented in 1 John 4:7 presents birthing by a mother, and 1 Peter 2:2–3 speaks of the believer desiring milk, as newborn babies. Milk for newborns is derived from the mother’s breasts. My point remains, why enjoy only one view of God when you can experience more?

Normalise boredom.

I tweeted this some months ago and then it happened to be a topic in this book I started reading recently — “The deeply formed life” by Rich Villodas.

Weeks away from Twitter taught me that I’ve not learned how to be bored. How to just be; without the restlessness that comes from lack of activity. During this alleged hiatus, I spent more time on Instagram and Netflix. Books too, I deserve some credit. I really just replaced one addiction with another. And it speaks of how much of our identity and self worth we have tied to work, activity and the illusion of productivity. Or perhaps, how much we avoid the deep work of processing information, thoughts and feelings.

I’ve recently started to practice being still — just sit there, no phones, no books , no loud prayers — just meditating and praying silently and boy does it get boring! One time, just 10 minutes without my phone and I fell asleep. I almost never sleep in the afternoon.

Learning to be consciously still and quiet is a discipline we don’t see much around. And it’s a much needed skill for the strengthening of our spirits and the grounding of our souls. There’s so much noise we drown in and it’s so easy to lose sight of one’s essence.

Many Christians are practicing lent this season and maybe it’s a good custom to imbibe (customs are simply disciplines for spiritual growth. God already approves of you). Lent is a season to contemplate on Jesus’ journey to the cross and his resurrection. Easter happens to be my favorite holiday. So this season, my Lenten practice is to learn stillness so I can hear the rhythms of divinity within me.

I’m learning to normalise boredom because most of the time, God is not in the whirlwind of excitement and frenzy, nor in the fire of passion and zeal but in the stillness of our hearts. In the quietness of our minds.

The lines of an ancient song in the Bible inspires us to “Be still, and know and know that I am God!” Psalm 46:10 (NLT).

I sit on my bed pondering on my faith journey over the years. It has been an interesting one. There are many things I held on to dearly that I do not anymore. Maybe I’m realizing that the essence of faith is not trying to hold on so tightly, but to be held.

There are many things I thought I knew for certain that I don’t anymore. For instance, what happens right after a person dies? I don’t know. How will the world, as we know it, end? I don’t know.

And I may never know.

Again, what if the essence of faith is not to know, but to trust. What if faith wasn’t meant to be easy, but to be simple — to trust. After all, it wouldn’t be trust if all the variables were certain and oh! how difficult it is to trust in uncertainty.

So I wonder a lot, I wander too. On my worst days, I am a doubter. I am like, Thomas who said, “Until I see and touch, I won’t believe.” Jesus did not condemn Thomas and say, “you faithless one, no kingdom for you.” Jesus shows Thomas his hands, “touch it”, he said. So Jesus gets it. Jesus cares for the doubters, too. He cares for the people who need a sign to believe. On my best days, I am one of those of whom Jesus said, “blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe”.

On some days, I feel lost. And I ask myself, “what is it that I believe exactly?” But just because I feel lost doesn’t mean that I am. If I am not doing the holding, if I trust that I am held, then I am never truly lost. Home is here, in me.

So once again, I’ll pack up my bags and move, like the wind. With the wind.

And don’t ask me to come home
I wander
But I’m not lost
I carry home with me