Singing to child wish lusts

Pastoral indulgences

In a spurt of scandalously sacrilegious inspiration, I read a tweet earlier that gave sprite to a poem written to the tune of the Christmas Carol - O Come All Ye Faithful.

Pastor Divorces Wife, Marries Choir Mistress And Opens New Church Branch For Her In Delta.

— Instablog9ja (@instablog9ja) June 30, 2021

“Pastor Divorces Wife, Marries Choir Mistress And Opens New Church Branch For Her In Delta.” [Sahara Reporters]

So many themes to pick apart here, the pastor obviously abandoned his marital vows and began an affair with the choir mistress whose melodious talents within the choir made her a suitable mistress to the available and fully tempted amenable pastor, who yielding to his lusts jettisoned his wife for her.

Then by unction or more that we may not know, he generously gave the gift of ministry to his old mistress - new wife who probably will pastor the new boudoir for to call the meeting place a church might be blasphemous even from the most liberal viewpoint.

The evidence of slime

Upon further research, Prophet Evidence Chikason had been consumed of a Henry VIII complex, his third child by his wife Praise Chikason was not the expected boy, as if it is primarily the function of the woman to determine and choose the sex of the child. He took the hand of Helen with whom he had been having an affair and ordained her resident pastor of the new boudoir.

Ex-wife meanwhile apparently performs signs and wonders with holy water merchandise to boot, much of this would have been the stuff of a Nollywood script, but life in Nigeria could be more realistic than the art that imitates it.

The poem

Sing choirs of adultery,
Sing indecent liaisons,
Sing all ye mistresses,
Of heathens in lust.
Just can't behold it,
Living in sin and debauchery.
It is a shocking story,
It is a tale of reprobates,
It is the news of pastors,
Who can't zip it up.

As I was saying

Order to the chaos

There is much to be thankful for, the uncertainties that greeted the beginning of this month eventually found a useful and beneficial resolution. Back into the mix of things that have hardly changed from when we left, one can only hope that opportunity will come to do much more.

As my desires fluctuated between offers that did not represent the newness of things required, the greatest support through times when days passed listlessly away with little to review of what might have been achieved came from Brian. His inimitable self-deprecation usually unaware of how central he is to my sense of purpose and being.

Doing the undoing

Then again, the month has been lazy if not uneventful, the furthest I had been from home was on my walk to Chorlton Water Park some 9 kilometres away which included a 2-kilometre walk by the River Mersey. The promise I tacitly made to get out a bit more undone by occasional restlessness.

The most productive time was on my test lab, slow and painstakingly, I wandered like a sloth with very little deliberation. My notes might suggest I got more done than I give myself credit for.

Significantly the other

June is assigned the Pride month even though the Pride marches I used to attend would have been in Berlin in July and outside my door in Manchester at the end of August. Berlin, I have not visited for 3 years already, and Manchester presents discovery and the mundane in equal measure, the pandemic still affecting us more than anywhere else in England.

One constant has been Brian, his voice, his smile, his sweetest messages that characterise amazing inspiration and talent I aspire to. To love with a love that dares speak its name and feel that no one else can begin to fill that sense of belonging and companionship is wonderful. The answer to the many questions is Yes and yes, I am happy too. Thank you.

On the faith of my fathers

Of mixed religious heritage

Something excites me about the notion of the return to the faith of my fathers even though fathers in the plural would hardly be the word to use with regards to generational providence as my grandfathers were quite interesting and radically independent persons.

My paternal grandfather was Muslim, and that heritage goes down the line as many of his relations from the town he originated from were mainly Muslim. Of my maternal grandfather who predeceased my birth by almost 5 years I have only recently been learning of, he was essentially Christian, literate, royal, and an anglophile that he was more commonly known by his very English nickname.

Impactful influences

Then my paternal grandfather married my Christian grandmother and together they had children split down the middle as Christian and Muslim; with my father, the first choosing to be Christian, my uncle, the other male of his siblings was a lifelong Muslim.

I think my great-grandmother’s family on my paternal grandmother’s side probably had an overbearing influence on my father’s childhood and development, she, my great-grandmother and her brother, my great-uncle seemed to have decided together my father will be educated in Western ways to the extent they were able to sponsor and encourage.

Each to their beliefs

In any case, having made the rounds of many Christian denominations and beliefs, I have settled into the Anglican faith of my childhood, at least, for some time, it was where my parents seemed to have some agreement and put up an appearance even if they were eventually persuaded of other things.

Upon review, it appears a majority of the grandchildren have adopted the Christian faith apart from what their parents believed and have chosen names that no longer belie their original Muslim allegiance, I am left literally not recognising who they are now.

A grandfather’s example

It goes to show that each person in their individuality would determine what belief system they would follow, the kind of purposeful individuality that set my paternal grandfather as probably the most moderate Muslim I have ever known because he was amazingly pragmatic and deferential to the choices others made without imposing his views even in the names he gifted his grandchildren.

Each Sunday I attend church in the Anglican Communion, here in Manchester or when in Cape Town, I am caught in awesome wonder, the ritual, the traditions, the ceremony, the uniformity, the congregational setting, all of that suits me well.

Now, I seek to exercise the kind of pragmatism of my paternal grandfather, accepting that the way people believe is essentially theirs to choose and should be respected without interference or a pretended audacity to proselytization, with one caveat; cults are untenable, where freewill and agency is under threat, it must be challenged on all fronts completely without relenting.

Accountability for naught

Coming to bury Caesar

It would be easy to mock Matt Hancock but there is much more for which he should be justifiably excoriated. His resignation yesterday came as a surprise to many of us and like I had indicated before, that would not suddenly mean integrity has found some exposure in Boris Johnson’s government, Matt Hancock’s position just became increasingly untenable, there was no other option than for him to resign.

In my view, Matt Hancock’s tenure as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was marked by abject failure damningly exposed by the pandemic from the poor PPE provision, the lack of adequate testing, the seeding of care homes with infected discharged persons from the hospitals, the failed and exorbitant track and trace system, the multiple waves of infections all resulting in the highest deaths from the COVID-19 in Europe.

Torched by a fling

If there is any commendation to be given, it is that the NHS was allowed to run the vaccination programme rather than farm it out to friends of the Tories. Yet, none of those failings in office were enough to hold Matt Hancock to account until he was caught in a clinch. Something is wrong with our systems of accountability in public office if peccadillos matter more than performance.

Matt Hancock’s situation is maybe a personal human tragedy of the absence of self-control with far-reaching ramifications that cannot in any way begin to compensate for his professional failings and political misjudgement, his wife apparently is not available to stand by her man and play the doting Tory wife.

And so he got away

He is ensconced in their constituency home in what suggests the end of their marriage. The other lady who got squeezed and snuggled, has resigned from the posting that gave them proximity in his office and one can only wonder what story would result from this sordid saga.

There is no more to add to this tale than to feel Matt Hancock has escaped essential scrutiny for monumental catastrophe on his watch, he according to his boss, Boris Johnson “fucking hopeless” and Boris might have said that whilst he was shaving too.

Thoughts of love distant

Out of my funk

A sense of feeling a bit low and every attempt to cheer myself up looking for something that will lift me out of my funk. It is quite strange that I am in a relationship, a really meaningful one but we are not together because we usually rendezvous in South Africa and this pandemic keeps us apart.

Since we were last together the residual effects of the elixir of our meeting has depleted, we could do with a reunion again. Whilst they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, presence does make the heart glow with wonder. I guess what keeps us going is hope and expectation, we are closer now to our next tryst than when we said our goodbyes.

Meanwhile, I rest in the comfort of the messages we regularly exchange buoying up each other in the expression of love and care that we have. For that, I can both be thankful and grateful as I pray for and dream of the wonder of not-too-distant time ahead.

Character in Amsterdam

Absent from presence

Amsterdam, and what comes to mind is the Red-Light District and coffee shops, to the initiated, the former refers to legalised sex trade and the latter to easy access marijuana. There is a likelihood that people would visit Amsterdam to observe and experience that part of the city which is hardly the full story of a city of culture, architecture, music, and amazing diversity.

Fundamentally, Amsterdam residents do not spend their lives in sex shops or getting stoned, there is more to life than that and I lived in Amsterdam for almost 13 years. Now, I appreciate that when I first moved to Amsterdam, many of my colleagues did get carried away with the fun at the expense of their purpose for being there, once the novelty wore out, many had exhausted the goodwill of their sojourn.

Some of us knowing what was available chose not to be amenable to the vicissitudes of lasciviousness, regularly invited we did not participate even if we had the freedom and latitude to indulge with reckless abandon.

Damned either way?

We must however separate the place from the person, that a person visits a place should not mean the person defaults to the reputation of the place in its notoriety. People have discipline, character, and purpose, in the midst of great temptation, people do have the resolve to resist and not succumb just because the opportunity and possibility presents.

In the same vein, there is a need to know the difference between the person and the place by reputation. Knowing the person and trusting what the person will do especially unsupervised is to ascribe a modicum of integrity on the person. The person might be given to mischief and yet be quite honourable and full of consideration for others. Then by reputation, Amsterdam can be a crazy place; damned if you do, more damned if you don’t.

The dreadful life of a Tory wife

Temptation is a full platter

To one of my closest friends, I would usually say, we all have needs. The fact that we forget that we are human with all our inadequacies and frailties is sometimes evident in the way we judge or prejudge others. Now, I am not advocating a race to the bottom of moral rectitude and the absence of integrity, but there is a reason why in the Lord’s Prayer, there is a line, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’

Temptation is always there as an easy distraction from what we should be doing. We are prone and primed to yield to temptation but for other factors of self-awareness, discipline, the consideration of others in needing to be careful rather than carefree and careless.

Men in power with the trappings of it are sometimes insulated from scrutiny in what they are allowed or what they think they can get away with. Audacity and hypocrisy are stock in trade of the people who lead our country today.

The examples of sleaze

There is no virtue they have not overturned with impunity as they forget that power is transient, it is their time now, it will pass. Pass into history and on the coattails, I fear of ignominy.

Affairs and adultery used to be untenable with regards to those holding high office, but we now have a permissiveness that has no moral guardrails, ministers lie with no pang of conscience, they fulminate on the acts of others with a complete lack of reflection on themselves. It is really one rule for them and another for us. We are to do as they intend and say, but we must never hold them accountable for their example, for they have none to show.

On the matter of the Secretary of State for Health having an affair, even if he consequently resigns it would not be a turning point towards a course of integrity in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, because the Prime Minister himself is not of the standing where he can honestly demand a resignation. Meanwhile, one can only wonder at the unfortunate public spectacle on the women involved, the lady in the affair and the dreadful Tory life or a Tory wife.