Thought Picnic: In my cave of safety?

I wasted many things

“Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips…” [BibleHub Isaiah 6:5 (KJV)] These were the words of Isaiah the prophet as his inadequacies became evident in the realisation that he had seen God.

For one as I with many gifts unused and considerable potential unrealised, blessed with the grace and favour of fortune and opportunity that I have many times not appreciated, I find myself so literally undone by situation and circumstance, yet I should maintain a broader perspective.

A sorry story told

As a mere mortal with issues and vulnerabilities, feelings and imperfections that can stand out well beyond where you want expression, the vicissitudes of life can be quite impactful as you continually berate yourself of inadequacy and encourage yourself of possibility.

For a story tries to speak itself with volume that there was a time you could do this or another when you never had to think of that, facility and provision were present to do all that you desire and much more from that which you have acquired, but for the moment in which you reflect, you have nothing to deflect.

A longing for the hills

In the days of the seasonal chills,
As nothing is ringing from the tills,
You ingest with routine your nightly pills,
And wonder how to address the growing bills,
Whilst hoping you can dream away the ills.

Like the prophet, there is a humiliation of humility that strips you of the confidence that once betrayed your innate abilities, your voice is lost in the cacophony of the silence that envelopes you, the shell in which you find refuge is almost like you are caught in the helplessness of resignation, you want to lie down believe it is just a bad dream.

Come, come, come away

You cannot despair of the cycle of life, the turns that bring experience and lesson, for which knowledge of the past is not necessarily preparation for the present. How sometimes we could have seen the future better, but where would life’s excitement come from if you knew before it became known?

We all have our caves that little place that is hardly comfortable but generally safe, you can lick your wounds in secret, cry yourself to exhaustion in solitude, stir your spirit with some resolve and then rise to start the journey to where home and love abides. It takes time, time is the sting of realities ticking away like a clock, never really beginning to ever deeming to continue without an end.

Opinion: Redeem your integrity not the auditorium

¹¹ And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, ¹² for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, ¹³ till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; Ephesians 4:11-13 (NKJV)

Religious chicanery

You get to a point where certain events in religious circles begin to create the impression that a particular portion of their holy scriptures has been misread or that the reading to our hearing and the actions that follow are completely opposite to that intended piece.

As the convention of a renowned and popular church with a following seeded around the earth in the millions drew to a close, the leader of the congregation launched into an appeal to extend the current auditorium where the people were gathered to a 3 kilometre square tent of proportions that will make the eyes water that those who have the misfortune of sitting at the back might well need at least high-powered binoculars or dare I say a telescope to see the pulpit.

Crowds are masks for trouble

Surely, there is a need to gather for fellowship but there comes a time when size becomes an unwieldy exercise in gargantuanism that other issues of health and safety are a foreboding for a dangerous experiment in crowd control and egress if an emergency occurs - this could spell disaster.

Even in religious settings, we are not given the licence to discard logic and reasoning for the sentimental belief that all is well when the intellect is given to perform a ready and needed function.

Evidence of the fact that things can go seriously wrong was revealed when a 5-year old was apparently abducted from the vicinity of that convention, called Redemption Camp.

It might well be a rarity, but for the parents and relations of that little girl, it is the closest thing to hell on earth at a place when heaven was supposed to meet with the congregants. If the girl does end up being found, and I hope she is promptly reunited with her family, the happiness that ensues should not overshadow the reality of the fact that crowds make it almost impossible to guarantee the safety and protection of little ones, as it also offers cover to those with ulterior motives to operate.

A public relations deficit

Now, this is not the first time that a child has disappeared from a gathering of believers. In another mega-church, the child was missing for two long years until it was returned to its family just recently.

These megachurches whilst majoring on selling the elixir of hope within grasp but out of reach also seem to be poorly equipped for dealing with these matters, as the news story suggests, “It was not the wish of the church that the news of the abduction be leaked to members of the public.”

It begs the question how you intent to find an abducted child without informing the public and engaging the public because, short of a miracle of sorts, it might well require sighting and eye-witnesses as far afield as possible to get that child back.

Poor social responsibility

This theatre which by its size will be larger than any sports stadium in the world might well be the size of some of the largest calderas of mainly dormant volcanos and dormant volcanos are not by any means extinct.

Besides this, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway that services this camp and many others that line up that road does not have the capacity today to handle the traffic and movement of people and goods for these meetings with tailbacks that upset the already poor traffic conditions in the Lagos megalopolis.

To literally triple the crowds that throng that camp borders on the highest level of community social irresponsibility that has been witnessed in that country where religionists had attained an exculpatory status from being questioned about what they do – it is as appalling as it is atrocious that this idea was conceived, it would be like tripling the size of a body without consideration for the arteries necessary to keep that body alive and well.

He gave some opportunity for show

More galling is the way the appeal was made for funds to build this monstrosity whose idea will give the Tower of Babel a run for its money, in fact, I am now of the persuasion that they all be inflicted with a confusion of tongues so that this hare-brained and ill-thought out scheme is abandoned with the urgency with which it was announced.

From what was reported, no idea was given of the total cost of this project, but the words of the leader were transcribed as follows:

“We need N1 billion from ten people. If you are one of them, please see my personal Secretary after we finish today, we also need N100 million from those who can afford it, if you are in that category. Please see my personal Secretary as well.”

“Nonetheless, we need everyone’s involvement. If you can afford N50 million, N20 million, N5 million, N1 million to as low as N100, kindly make sure you participate.”

Money, just money

If by that token, 10 people each stepped forward to donate these sums, the total will come to NGN 11,760,001,000.00 or at today’s exchange rate $73,280,622.39 and that is if 70 people stepped forward for that challenge out of the thousands gathered there.

The real money and pledges could easily take that to multiples of a hundred, just because they all want to see one man talk, you wonder whether the concept of delegation is anathema, for someone opined recently on Twitter that the organisation has produced more pastors than Nigeria has produced doctors since independent, I presume that is just anecdotal, it could be researched to ascertain its veracity.

Subscribing to the basest of our human instincts, I would suspect the billionaires club will have all the accoutrements of privileged access, helipad to land their choppers, fast-track to their thrones ensconced in the altar – they all have their reward already.

What we heard

But back to the quote that sits atop this blog, what we heard from that reading was more like – And he required some to give 1 billion, some 100 million, some 50 million, and some 20 million and 5 million, for the competition of the saints for the work of his ministry, the building of a larger temple for Christ, till we all come to the unity of derision of the excess and wanton abuse of responsibility in the name of Christianity.

This is not what we should hear, but as they act and do, this is what is happening as one preacher said, it is the junk religion in the celebration of Mammon.

My view

Now, is nothing wrong in building a large auditorium but that should be with reference to more than just putting up the building. One would have thought the reason why private jets are acquired by the glitterati of the preachers world was to visit parishes and outposts rather than attempt to create a new Jerusalem place of pilgrimage in Nigeria which has no particular significance apart from what is beginning to look like catering for the cult of personality.

And before anyone attempts to post a comment on this opinion, engage the reasonable side of your disposition before you script the objectionable side of your views, allow the latent Christian attributes to gain ascendancy over sentiment and emotion expressed with fanatical abandon.

Thought Picnic: A total loss looms for restart

The threads for this yarn

When this story gets told in some book where all the threads that reach the present are twined into a rope with some pulling power, you can only wonder what it would be used to moor to the docks of history.

Many narratives exist where it all seemed to be at a dead-end, hope appeared to be lost and there was nothing in the horizon but the darkest clouds of storms that have never once before been predicted.

Somewhere in the past the seeds were sown that have become wild orchards of poisonous fruit harvested to ills that do not take to medication, the cramps being more persistent, the pain without respite and end unimaginable approaches at speed too high to manage as one.

The losses accumulate

A day so close looms with the risk of losing everything but life and a slither of hope that the rebuilding from scratch would be merciful, swift and tolerable.

Whether one likes it or not, the survival of something as life threatening as cancer when it was a battle that could be lost in a month to almost two years after suddenly seems as one of the little battles raging to claim ones sanity and many other things.

There are basically no solutions that appear to be in sight, sometimes you just want to pack a bag and walk away from life leaving behind memories of the many lives of cat lost with probably just one or two lives left.

The house that Jack lost

Looking around you remember the old nursery rhyme; “This is the house that Jack built” with everything you can see of what is in the house that Jack built and then because of so many things, situations, circumstances, hardships and probably a run of not so good fortune, you wonder if the next day will end with; “This is the house that Jack lost.”

For all the external calm, the turmoil is great and tumultuous; sometimes you happen to live and at other times life just happens to you.

A barking rich bitch

Between class and trash

Two grand dames of New York died within a week of each other and the Economist ran an obituary comparing and contrasting both women.

Brooke Astor who died at 105 had an air of comportment, grace and class about her, whilst Leona Helmsley dying at 87 was literally the opposite.

Both had a sense of eccentricity about them, though this only became all the more compelling on the death of the latter.

The rich bitch

Now, the best retort I have ever heard at being called a bitch went thus.

I am married to the witch, we’ve got a cat called snitch and the dog is the bitch.

So the “Queen of Mean” knowing she could not take her money to the grave, gave $5 million each to two of her four grandchildren, cut out the other two for reasons they should know which can never be resolved except in a séance or in court and gave $12 million to her bitch called Trouble.

Now, Trouble had better have some seriously good lawyers, because this would spell trouble unparalleled as the ones left out would scramble to do Trouble out of her well deserved Pedigree Chum gourmet meals prepared by 6-star barking Michelin chefs.

At death which would almost certainly come quickly for all sorts of natural reasons, the bitch shall be interred in the family mausoleum.

Beyond that, $3 million has been set aside to tend the graves, such hubris in death is legendary, it is like dust to gold dust.

Derision follows ultimately

Beyond this is the moral reality with sombre reflection of the fact that the Good Book does say that one should leave in store for the children and the children’s children, this comes by setting your house in order before you depart, something she obviously failed to achieve.

The fact that she could not find anyone of her descendants to take on the upkeep of the dog but her brother who walked away with $2 million less than the dog is interesting to say the least.

Herein, we have a case of those who were rich beyond their dreams and in leaving to the great beyond sowed even more animosity as to bring disdain upon their passing.

This situation presents a lesson and definitely no good example, it would appear, the evil women do can also live after them. How a dog can really survive with the poo-change of $12 million escapes me when Nobel, Ford, Rockfeller, Carnegie & Wellcome blazed the trail of large bequests to humanity for charity, endowment and development.

So much for a life well lived with the epitaph – In all the opportunity she had to bequeath to humanity something to celebrate her memory, all that she had can be summed in one phrase – She left it all to the dog.