Don't dare believe you have a say

My business and butt out

There is nothing I find as irksome as people who think they have the purchase to decide what you do, how you act or what you think. People who have no particular interest in you apart from being part of a contrived mob of opinion that would seek to sway you as you respond to the pressure of some sort of scrutiny or sanction.

No one has been exposed this intrusiveness today as much as the Duchess of Sussex, people who have arrogated to themselves the right to decide what she should or not be doing. Speaking up for the Queen forgetting that the Duchess is in fact a granddaughter-in-law, the familial ties sometimes complicated by the monarchical institution, this is still a family issue regardless of the public spectacle.

Live without excuses

Be that as it may, I am not here to support anyone, my only hope is that the Sussexes are happy, happier than what represented the marriages of their parents. 'The Firm' which is essentially the court, gets confused with the throne to the exclusion of a grandmother who just happens to wear a crown. For her grandson, office and duty are secondary, the safety of his family and their happiness above all is all that matters.

For everyone else, this is something they may need to read and hear, that they do not owe anyone anything about what they choose to do. Yes, we could all do with some advice even if unsolicited, we need to have the courage of our convictions and go out to live our full lives not having to make excuses for who or what we are.

'Cause you're free,
To do what you want to do,
You've got to live your life,
Do what you want to do.
Ultra Naté - Free [Wikipedia]

Christ the door needs no other gatekeeper

The unconditional love of God

“The mission of the church is the same in every culture and country: to demonstrate, through its actions and words, that God’s offer of unconditional love to every human being through Jesus Christ calls us to holiness and hope.” The Archbishop of Canterbury

The statement above was made by The Archbishop of Canterbury, that should be the end of any dispute regarding who belongs or not according to whatever beliefs or perceptions we might have. This statement was to address statements made by The Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of All Nigeria.

No other gatekeeper to the door

I am uninterested in joining issues with whatever the archbishop in Nigeria had to say, but it is necessary that the profession of Christianity, being an individual article of faith needs a place and security of expression, that when Jesus Christ professed in his own words, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” [Bible Gateway: John 10:9-16 (NKJV)] He was not asking for another gatekeeper to that door.

Whatever position anyone might hold in the church, their call is to welcome not ostracise, castigate, judge, or condemn. For Jesus Christ did not die on the cross for another man to take away the benefit of that salvation from others.

Know the amazing grace of God

Even if anyone might think themselves bestowed with that power, a humble reflection on what Christ had done for them must every time lead them to fall on their knees for the grace upon them and the mercy of God that they are not consumed as they deny others the pleasure of that grace like the ungrateful servant. [Bible Gateway: Matthew 18: 21-35 (NIV)]

Obviously, there are some that might find some legalism to support the need to cast God’s creatures aside, seeking to ex-communicate, deny them the sacraments and abandoning fellowship with those they deem unworthy of the same sacrifice that brought them into the kingdom of God. That is their prerogative, that you refuse to church with me does not deny access to God.

The many people Jesus met with and bestowed amazing grace on were not the religious folk, but the apparently notorious, the obviously possessed, even the verily dead that were raised.

Full members all

The Archbishop of Canterbury goes on to affirm, “This resolution both restated a traditional view of Christian marriage and was clear in its condemnation of homophobic actions or words. It affirmed that “all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.” [Anglican Communion: Section I.10 - Human Sexuality]

Maybe the greatest call to understanding the unconditional love of God to the devout Christian today is to find ways to express the love of Christ to others regardless of who or what they are. If that is so difficult, then it is a cross to bear, for Christ bore a greater cross than this for the whole world, whilst we were yet miserable sinners. The call is upon us heavy as we might make the burden out of our imperfectness when humanity asks for the better of us.

Blue tick the damn thing

Long long time ago

Caught up in juvenile infatuation I could almost hear in my head a chorus of distraction, ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ a constant refrain that I cannot drive out of my head with the worry of love most fervent yet unrequited. Did I not feel that yearning even at the age of 7 and he a few years older playing a father in a game of family the burning tears of emotion filling my eyes whilst I pretended nothing is wrong. A tick for what?

Time passes on to when with another in a forage into what would not be much other than a dare, adolescence getting the better of me, my protégé submits a letter to her and she responds, ‘I am a small girl.’ That small girl a few years later a prefect, my junior but as fate would have it tables turned in ways that could never have been predicted. A tick-off that.

Letters and messages

We met for the school games, they from so far away, it was unlikely we would meet again. Yet, friends, we became and pen-pals more. A letter I sent, even two, unsure they will be delivered and even into oblivion they may have gone. If I do remember what I wrote then. A tickle it was.

Now, we seek in the instant, of gratification that cannot wait. In promptness and alacrity, the response must arrive before we have thought it. Woe betides he that leaves it nanosecond too late for the next will have you at the assizes and guilty, you’ll be found before your excuse is heard. To whom shall you appeal? In the courts of WhatsApp, the distance between you and jail is a blue tick. 

House watch type sea

The revisions of decisions

The luxury of being spoilt for choice can sometimes be a handicap to making decisions. You are presented with options and variations, reviews and options, desires and dislikes that you find yourself wrestling between opportunity and regret.

When you have wide-ranging choices out of affordability and not limited by available resource, other elements come in to play. For instance, when I was shopping for an apartment literally 20 years ago, the issue was not if I could afford it, it was whether after the choice was made, I will be happy with it when compared with other places, I viewed in the process.

Having a good feel

It came down to gut feeling, the place I chose was still occupied, it felt lived in, the departing occupants were friendly, nice, and accommodating, I warmed to the property the first time I saw it compared to the other empty shells that left me undecided and nonplussed. They all looked like hard work when the place I bought presented good ideas on how I would like to live there.

I visited the neighbourhood one evening and made enquiries at the Blockbuster store nearby about the feel and safety of the area, it got to a point that I could not think of living elsewhere, my mind was made up and I enjoyed 10 and half years there.

The tick-tock of time

Recently, I have been thinking of getting a new wristwatch, it has not been easy, and I am nowhere near being able to choose what I want. I have basic requirements, a watch without a busy face, with day and date, self-powered, and with a perpetual calendar. Alas! Every watch I have seen has more dials than an old nuclear power station, I do not need to know my altitude or how far below sea level I need to get before I have a drowning reflex. I just want the time without having to tweedled knobs and dials.

Extend this to getting a laptop and it is a mess, one look at the reviews, and every endearing feature is lost to the tales of woe standing out with just one star. You are left weighing all sorts of options that weeks after, you are none the wiser. Let us not talk of the watch, I have been on this Aegean treadmill for the best part of three years.

Maybe not now

At the turn of the year, I was looking for an apartment in Cape Town to spend the last 10 days of our holiday, we could have extended our stay where we were but decided on trying somewhere different. That was fraught with all sorts of disbenefits, location, safety at night, ease of travel, cost of the deposit, and user reviews. The longer we left it, the fewer the choices we had. Eventually, we just had to go for it, and it was a good choice.

Sometimes, the surfeit of choice is a warning to move on, give it time and hone your requirements to what really meets your needs. If you do not have to decide limited by resource, opportunity, or time, then you are not under duress and you do not have to create undue pressure on yourself. Maybe, you need something completely different, that is what breaking away allows, and with an open mind, you might acquire the unexpected which turns out to be the best.

Wearing earplugs to reason

We can no more talk

What have they been listening to or rather, who have they been listening to? That is the question consumed in incredulity that leaves me in bafflement when I am in conversation with some people, even friends.

In some instances, for the safety of our friendship, current affairs, if not ideas cannot become a topic of conversation because their minds have been made up, the sweetness to their ears has sealed the gateway of reason that it is both impervious and impermeable to any persuasion.

Forget pragmatism with dogmatism leading with a cacophony of fanatical tumult, you cross that bastion at great peril of the loss of composure to much more. A personality cult or a pulpit, some affectation even a sense of common purpose creates the affinity from which they can not and will not be extricated.

Where is the news?

I even had to self-censor that of the many other people I told about taking the vaccine, with the torrent of conspiracy theory channelled through them, I did not have the fight, I was resigned to my own fate because there are times you are made to question your sanity or rightness out of watching how they adhere to a narrative like it is the only gospel of salvation.

From those who shout the loudest whilst protesting about losing the freedom of expression when any opportunity of platform amplifies their views to the faux outrage that attends to shifts in cultural acceptance, we have found a different kind of mob with symbolic cudgels and cutlasses baying for blood and ready to lynch in the public square of clouded, corrupt, and stilted opinions founded on half-truths and falsehoods portrayed as the entirety of the picture, we are left with one fundamental problem.

“The problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as whether one finds it.” Joan Didion.

At all.

Lent has taken the year off

Not a pancake flipped

I thought about it and then decided we were doing more than our share. Two weeks ago, on Shrove Tuesday, it is not like I could be bothered with pancakes, no one was out for Mardi Gras, New Orleans was as quiet as you could hear a pin drop. That is what life in the times of a global pandemic has become.

It meant the Lenten season would be like we have lived for the past year, in limitations, in privations, in restrictions, too many to mention. To the question, what are you giving up for Lent? I had one answer. Nothing! Nothing more, we already cannot do as we wish or desire, what else do you want us to do beyond this imposed ascetic life?

Half of not much done

Other feasts will come, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Whitsun at the far end of May on the 23^rd and it is unlikely that we’ll be halfway through the tunnel, even if we can see the light at the end of it. The absence of any sound either dissipated by distance or in its realism might just assure us we are not in the path of a fast-moving train with nowhere to escape to.

What I am doing for Lent is really looking for how to recapture the essence of loving life, enjoying work, meeting people, travel, adventure, getting married and dare I say, making love. We all have needs and that is such that Lent might just take a break this year, we’ll be more faithful to the sacraments and creeds in the next.

Logic for the helpless

Agreeing to disagree

There is nothing I enjoy more than the buzz of logic, the challenge faced with consuming information, much of it jumbled and disparate, eliciting points that feed the process of elimination and leading you to a point of forceful affirmation of the conclusions you have drawn.

When it comes to these things, I do not enjoy being confrontational, but I need to be persuaded, having a hunch will not do, the data, the facts, the thinking and the wherewithal must be laid out for scrutiny. It could seem like a clash of egos, a joust of knowledge minds pitted against minds almost to the point of exasperation.

Trust is valuable

Much as I have wanted to entertain some earnest protestations most of today, I just was not carried along with the premise. My dashboard was informing me that things were fine, yet I was being fed contrary indicators that could not be explained. I have to be able to trust what my dashboard is telling me or have nothing to work with.

I have spent decades poring and sifting through logs to reconstruct events and activities, it is almost an art of divination. I have an open mind, sure of what I know, and ready to learn new insights, it is exhilarating. It is also understandable that others might interpret logs differently and quite outside the moorings of what they intend, that is a given.

The detailed proof

This is where an eye of the minutiae and detail comes to play. You cannot afford to miss essential information, words and jargon used, timings, relationships, and expected outcomes. I could be lazy not wanting to devote time to that because of my conviction, then, you cannot avoid it. It needs to be done painstakingly and thoroughly to debunk any assertions completely.

That is where the buzz sets in, you feel the racing neutrons coursing the channels of deliberate and considered thought. The temptation to obliterate beckons but the better nature to educate gains prominence. In the end, we are here to help, but if you want to make it my problem, speculation and escalation just asks to prove where the problem is, and how we can work together to help you solve it.