Unstructured Thoughts: The Love Moment

Never written a tale of love...where forever and the present intercourse together in eternity.

 I feel it's something I've got to feel for forever before I write about it? But the problem is I feel that only in moments. That love feeling of eternity and powerful endlessness in that warm, very warm mushy feeling that makes your chest feel like a calm blue sea; powerful, capable of anything and wonderful...the best of God's creations. Love. I feel it in moments.

So I'm hesitant to write about it because they say it's forever. But I feel it in moments but it's still awesome! I breathe very deep in its scented whiff. Even more so 'cos I know its going to end, in the next second. I hold tighter, kiss harder, talk deeper, stare harder and imprint the Moment in Forever.

 In Moments.

When it's about to happen, it doesn't warn you. It's not exactly slow nor sudden. It eases into The Love Moment. But you've got to recognize it. You would be too busy blinded by the lust or blinded by the popular explanation of how love happens. Or caught by the intoxicating feeling of the honeymoon phase of meeting a person for the first time. You don't have to look too hard. Just ease onto it, soak in whatever is around you, be grateful for what is happening at the moment. Because it passes.


When it ends, I used to reel from the suddenness; wonder about the speed of change that can happen in a person. It was too hard, too sudden to understand. So I got bitter, lashed out, generalized. But I came to understand. We are Humans. There really wasn't any 'unique' 'special' 'different' 'knight in shining armour' human.Might as well look for air in physical form. I came to understand the Moment power of love, and accept it. I wish fervently for it when its over, of course. Noone wants a good thing to end. But I place more importance on being able to catch The Love Moment than wishing it lasted forever.

And the great thing about the Love Moment is that it can happen with anyone.  And I believe it's ultimately because of God who resides in each and every one of us, God being Love and Love being God. So you can catch that moment with anyone, connect with anyone for that moment on that lofty plane which is heaven. Our very own heaven on earth for the briefest, sweetest of seconds, minutes, hours, days, a week or whenever it decides to end. 

You've just got recognize it when it comes. And accept its end.

The Jesus Fallacy

Jesus I stand opposite You

By You, near You, a hope to be You

Staring into your eyes which for some reason are still blue

Looking up to your haloed head which for some reason is still crowned by silky blonde hair

Jesus I stand opposite You

But my eyes are blind to You

All I see are the distortions of You

Jesus I stand opposite You, staring at your white hands outstretched to me

That’s how they painted them, always outstretched

I stare hard at those white fingers promising me Salvation

Extrication redemption liberation emancipation for all that I am and could be

Jesus I stand opposite You But I’m afraid of it

I’m afraid of You

And all that You promise I could do

For you see, Sweet Jesus, my mind is a maze of impossibilities

I don’t understand myself enough to trust myself

A piss painting, a collection of mud footprints all over my canvas

Sweet Jesus, this I understand

But you see, You I cannot understand

Jesus I stand opposite You

But I don’t understand You

Jesus Sweet Jesus your image scares me

You say You Love me and you’re my light

That warm refuge I can come to when all around me is coloured

With despair, repair my errs when all I dare lays me bare

And destitute, and scarred, a flailing body in a dead field

 I turn to You and You look…cold

No. Fiery hot. Whispering to me in a strange tongue

Your lips hiss threats of hell, an eternity of flames burning my hairs, my skin…

Leaving me to the mercies of an evil beast…as punishment…for my sins

A sentence of eternal damnation as punishment  

For the child You loved so much You bled for, was whipped for

Spat upon for, took nails in Your palms for, flesh torn apart for

Then died for…

Jesus, Sweet Jesus, I stand opposite You

But I don’t understand You

I don’t understand Your Love

Maybe I…maybe I got You all wrong

Maybe They painted You wrong

Maybe I was told the wrong tales growing up

Given the wrong interpretations, mixed with fabrications

To suit the intentions of people so selfish they would warp a child’s mind

Till that child becomes an adult whose thoughts aren’t really her thoughts ‘cos those thoughts are the thoughts of someone else who wants those thoughts to control her

Break her

Confuse her

Then kill her

Jesus Sweet Jesus, I stand opposite You

By You, near You, a hope to be You

But I don’t see You.

SUN-SEARCHING

One morning, Mr. Chagreen left and never came back.

He picked himself up from the corner of my room, skipped out the window into a freedom I had never had. I stare at the window and watch the wind blow my drab curtains. Wonder if freedom felt like the happy swinging of the purple patterned fabric.

I didn’t understand why I was never to leave this room. They said I was mentally unstable, caused by traumatic experiences. They said that I could put others in harm’s way. But then again, they said I was of no harm too anybody but myself. I didn’t understand people. They say one thing all the time and mean another. They don’t make sense to me. But I guess that’s what makes me different. I guess it’s what makes me ‘mentally unstable’.

Mr. Chagreen was my invisible friend. He made me laugh when they made everything seem sad. Once, we went sun-searching. It’s a term he created for chasing the sunset, trying to catch the shimmery orange rays of the sun as it fell away from earth to give way to the moon. We’d rush outside and sit on grass, stretch our palms out to the sky and try and catch as many rays as possible before the sun said goodbye. When he caught a ray, Mr. Chagreen always looked beautiful. The orange glow set his brown face in a shimmery halo, and a thought always flashed at that moment: God sent him to me.

But they say Mr. Chagreen is bad. They say he takes away my real friends and he is only a figment of my imagination. They say he scares people away from me and makes me talk to myself when real people want to talk to me.  So they drove him away from me. For days, I was lonely. I wanted to call him back but I dared not. Because they said it was part of my ‘treatment.’ So I hung alone in parks, played in the grass by myself and went sun-searching alone, because you see, the ‘real’ people still talked to me strange. They still stared at me funny and whispered behind my back.

Mr. Chagreen first came to me that night when the pain began. All I could hear was screaming voices. Mummy and Daddy were angry again. Mummy was crying but she was screaming. Daddy looked like the evil purple monster in my bedtime story. I crawled to the corner of my room and closed my ears and hummed that song mummy taught me to hum. But they were shouting so loud I did not hear myself.  I started to cry. I wished they would stop. Then a thought flashed in my mind: Tell them to stop.

I run out of my room to the hallway, looking up the staircase at them and just when I filled my lungs to scream ‘stop,’ Daddy hit mummy hard. She fell and rolled down the stairs. I looked down at mummy lying next to my left big toe. She was no longer shouting. She was no longer crying. She was staring at a place between my legs and her red juice started to creep under my toes. It was warm. It was sticky. I called her but she didn’t respond. Then daddy swooped me into his arms. Everything went dark after.

But Mr. Chagreen pinched my cheeks and kissed me awake. He told me he would be my best friend. He told me we would play lots of games together. And we would grow up together. He was with me when the men in blue came and took daddy away. He was with me when the fat ‘institootional’ lady came to take me away too. He was with me when the doctor with thick glasses told me I’m ‘unstable’. He was with me when the nightmares came and mummy kept staring at somebody else with her red juice wetting my hands and feet and my favorite purple dress. I screamed her name but she simply looked away. Mr. Chagreen was with me when I woke to find the red juice had become urine all over my sheets and clothes. He cried with me when the fat ‘institootional’ lady gave me a ‘good spanking’ for wetting my bed.

 He was with me when the other children refused to play with me. He made my tongue form words when I was so scared to talk, I stuttered. He made me talk of the green leaves, orange sunlight, rainbows and unicorns when my mouth wanted to scream that mummy’s red juice was on my feet. Mr. Chagreen braided my hair and put flowers in it, though it made the other children shout, “She’s putting dead flowers in her hair again!”And when we went sun-searching and the magic orange rays fell on our faces, that hole in my chest that made it difficult for me to breathe vanished. That urge to scream ‘stop’ melted and mummy’s smile came back, daddy’s laughter caressed my cheeks again. And we were rolling around in my bed again, tickling each other and laughing and telling stories. Like the story of the handsome prince who looked like Daddy and would sweep me off my feet.

But the doctor with the thick glasses and moustache like a toothbrush said Mr. Chagreen was bad and had to go away. So I pushed him away. But he still held on to my hand.

Then one day, he went and never came back. And the nightmares came back, so I began to cut myself to see mummy’s red juice again.

Lovemaking In Purple Rain

Soft lips, soft hands, wet bodies, slow rhythms…

I give me, all of me, to You.

Stroke me like You Love me..Love me like You need me…just for one night…

A wet rose sliding down my cleavage, my hands encircling your waist, sliding lower…

Reach into the depths of my bruised heart…it’s dark down there. It’s dead…but Love me. Just this night.

Warm tongues probing, searching...entangled rhythms of tales as old as time...withered wishes of worn fairytales

Fingers brush the warm wetness of open thighs…

Breathing heavily on sensitive tips…

An incestuous affair of pain and pleasure…tears glistening on the tips of pubic hairs...please…Love me…if only for one night…

Shadows on a bruised wall…arched backs, breathing in the secret of night

Entangle me in the rich darkness that relaxes my soul

Light, a mirage of a rude awakening….drink deep my bittersweet juices

Sinful traps of sorrowful tunes, Love my lonely lips till thorny crowns hover above a bleeding head

Winding waists...clawing fingers…come inside me…take me slowly…yessss

Be with me, of me, by me…till You becomes Me and Me becomes You in the powerful circle of…Good.

Love me. Just this night

Climax hovers on edges of that sweet, sweet atmosphere…

Grab my hair…breathe in my…you feel so good…

Higher and higher…faster and faster…images, a chorused blur of Love tales, Love tunes…Love me…Just this night Love me

Fantasy meets reality on a purple horizon

I’m…Free

THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

 Man were cursed from paradise for eating the fruit from the tree God had forbidden them to eat, a tree which God, in the birth of time, planned for them to eat and experience. For first of all, God would not be omniscient, neither omnipresent, if She did not know beforehand that Her first humans would be seduced by the fruit she had expressly forbidden them to eat. Secondly, she would not be omnipotent if she knew and could not do anything about it, like stop it. Thus God, being all omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, had to know.

Now, the question lies in God’s knowing. What were the consequences of eating from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil? It meant man would be privy to knowledge that would either curse or bless his and her existence above or below all other creations of God, in heaven or on earth. Blessing or curse, one thing was for sure: Man’s acquisition of this knowledge probably set him and her above all of God’s creations. For it is only in man that God, the Ultimate Scientist and Artist, created his first being that wasn’t of purely and solely ‘moral material’ (angels, and whatever other creations exist in the heavens) nor purely and solely instinctual material (animals, plants, nature in general). Man and woman were first created as part of the group of the latter, but it seems God had loftier plans for Man. What if I were to make man the point of synthesis? What if I were to make man the merger of the separate divides? What if I were to make man the image of God? Mind you, just an image.

Thus the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was created, and the possibilities for fallibility, which Man was by the nature God had created him and her with, put in place. You see, Man had to be forbidden from the Tree, because the process to attaining the knowledge of Good and Evil would not be complete without this quality of forbiddingness. In other words, it was a necessary condition that man and woman were ordered not to eat from the Tree, for his and her defiance of that rule would spark the fires of eternal remorse, the needed fuel to commence and sustain man in his and her struggle for understanding Good and Evil, for understanding this ultimate truth of existence, made man alive and meaningful. Also, man’s choice to want to know what was hidden from him and her was that step God needed. Why was this eternal remorse needed? Because remorse is what drives the human mind to further seek and understand the truth, the knowledge of good and evil. Man’s Fall was a necessary condition. Man needed to fall, fall short of accessing God, to be able to make sense of the truth. It is in the fires of anguish that the sword is forged.

The powerful metaphor of a garden of Paradise accurately captures the state of freedom and innocence man’s mind was enveloped in at the beginning of his and her creation. The battle man henceforth suffered for wanting to know, for wanting to understand beyond the blanket of nature he had been created in, was man’s inevitable burden. Man would not be man without this battle/ blessing/ curse. Man would be a being without purpose for it is this battle to know and understand good and evil that validates his and her existence. The fruit is a heavy symbolism of man’s decision to want to know, thus, the point at which God draws away from the earth, draws away from man who is a sliver, a mere image, of Herself. With God in the picture, that battle to understand the distinction of good and evil, to live the merger between natural instincts and morality, would be unachievable. It is a struggle man must go through alone; his and her success would be the first, making man the greatest of Her creations.

Man is definitely no longer in the paradise of Eden, but we still circle the gleaming fruits on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good And Evil daily, still ruminate about the different flavours of its bittersweet taste on our tongues, still seek to draw the lines between the lines and find that elusive balance. This is our battle, our struggle, our curse, our blessing, made more urgent by our anguished illusions of an eternally burning pit of fire where we shall burn ceaselessly, denied the pleasure of death. This hell is not an illusion. Nor is it a reserve for our unknown future, the punishment for failure to complete this herculean task God has given us. It is our present.

Thoughts of a Wo/anderer

View through keyhole-by Janek Sedler

God is the totality of human beings and the totality of the humanity is God. Each and every human being is a speck of God or has a bit of God in him or her. I dare say, God is even more than the totality of the human race.

Each human being realizes the giant of a potential if he or she finds the God in him or her. God is locked in us, and life’s purpose, life’s journey and destination is to find the God locked inside. It is this speck that when discovered would set the ‘world on fire’ (as the Archbishop of London said rightly). This speck that would reach out to you and the rest of humanity in astounding, inhuman ways. Inhuman, because  there is the ordinary human, already a wonderful masterpiece for being a creation from the hands of God. However, this creation is simply designed dust, a beautiful frame without a picture in it, a delicately woven basket just placed on display. Then there is God in the human; the animation of the empty frame and basket, that which breathes life into the formation of dust.

There have been humans throughout the generations who found the ‘God’ in them and have done great, virtually inhuman things that reverberate throughout the generations: Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, these are people of the very first level. Then we have the second level made up of people like Galileo, Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Newton. Then there are people like Mother Theresa, Kwame Nkrumah of the third level. All these people in whichever level, did things so outstanding to their generation of humans that they drew and still draw followers, at times worshippers from generations that follow.

Imagine if every human being was to unleash the bit of God in them for the benefit of humanity! 

Going to church, praying fervently, reaching out to the ‘man of God’ for him to ‘unlock your blessings’ is clutching at straws and, in a reverse way, is further locking, placing in a tomb, sealing and then throwing out the key of the speck of God in you. I went to a church once, when the ‘man of God’ delivered a sermon on the importance of tokens. He begins by telling a bible story of the imminent destruction of Jericho and how a prostitute was saved because she had sheltered the two men sent to scout in the city. The ‘man of God’ (I forget if he was a pastor, or reverend. The right title is important!), stresses on the part of the story where Rahab, the prostitute, asks for a guarantee of her safety in the imminent war, a ‘token’. The men guaranteed/ swore on their lives for her safety and told her to leave the scarlet rope from which they escaped, hanging from her window. It later served as a signal that no one in that house was to be destroyed.

The ‘man of God’ then twists the story of tokens and concludes that we must then give (in money) to God for God to give back to us! I really don’t remember how he linked it but this was the manipulation of lies, reasoning and the Bible he used to prove to people why they should give money. And was he successful! There were crowds of people (without exaggeration) around him collecting envelopes to put their money in. Some were very huge amounts. If they could not give instantly they could bring their money at the next service or at the end of the week. This then drew, if not the whole church, almost all of it. What really ticked me off was him repeatedly saying, “It’s not about the money. I want God to do something for you. It is a point of contact for God to bless you.”

I can’t begin to point the number of things very wrong with this argument. First of all, why would God need you to give something before your blessings can be released unto you? What can you possibly have materially that God needs? Secondly, if it is truly as a point of contact, then money is the most impersonal thing to a human. It is a material thing foreign to the body and mind. It has passed many hands and would still keep passing more hands because that is the purpose of money: for barter. The most powerful point of contact, if the ‘man of God’ was really looking for one, is the human body, direct from the hands of God.

It is people like these, churches like these that create the eternal damage and further lock God inside the human. He or she loses, in a roundabout way, self-knowledge, and understanding of the power of Self. This is only because, one has been brainwashed and manipulated to become dependent: dependent on the ‘man of God’, dependent on a heaven where life would be as good as you cannot make it here on earth, dependent on your ‘reward in heaven’.  We search and search for a miracle, pray, fast, day in and day out for ‘the hand of God to touch my life’, but it is already there! In you! It has been there even before you were born and would continue to be there just because we are God’s creation, made ‘from God’s very fingers’.  This is such a remarkable thing that even a part of creation has been left to us in the phenomenon of reproduction. The woman gives birth to a creation formed by the fusion of man and woman. This is proof, in my eyes that God has left a bit of herself or himself, rather the sexless Self, in us. Humankind was created in God’s very image, and made masters of all life. How can designed dust be that important without its animation? How can humankind be masters if they did not have God?

A very good friend of mine points out that physical proof of God already in us is our breath. Up and down our lungs go, inhaling and exhaling that which cannot be seen and yet inhabits the whole earth. 

Why do we flock to, admire, look up to, want to be like, respect, are in awe of and even worship certain people? It’s because our connection as humanity makes us naturally sense the brilliance of their speck of God which they have unlocked, and want to draw even closer because, we want to draw closer to God. This is mostly an unconscious act. It is like a blind puppy finding its way to its mother’s teats when it is hungry. Human has a magnet reaction to God.

The Ideal speck of God unleashed is a force that benefits humanity and life in the universe as a whole. There is an undeniable connection between everything in creation: trees to human, human to trees, to animals, to the earth, to the sea, even to the cosmos. This is the phenomenon of the circle of life, the interdependence whose totality is God. It is the eternity we seek in ‘heaven’, of giving to, to be received of to be given for and received of so that life continues its remarkable process of evolution.

POOR ISAAC!

                           

He runs outside the camp using his stick to chase the elusive reptile. He stops to fix his turban which was threatening to free itself in the dusty wind. It took only a few seconds but the confounded reptile slipped away to a place unknown. Isaac stood still, right hand on turban and crouching low, watching the ground carefully to see where it would emerge. The suspense built as he waited knowing for certain it would have to rush past his feet if it wanted to be free. His stick was ready.

Suddenly there was an abrupt movement, an opening of a tent flap and the lizard scurried past in a frenzied hurry. He jumped straight at it to hit it with the stick but collided into the fully robed figure of his father. He looked up sheepishly, expecting his father to nuzzle his head like he always does. But the look on his father’s face made him freeze in alarm. His father looked like death. His eyes were staring so intently into his, Isaac looked away to breathe again.

“Let us go and make an offering to the Lord,” his father spoke in a voice devoid of everything. Isaac had the vague impression of a black, yawning hole when he heard his father speak. They had done this several times before. But father seemed different today, why?

He joined his father and the two servants. He was carried onto his father’s donkey and they set off. He would have liked to ask many questions like, why do lizards crawl on their bellies? Why were they so jumpy all the time? Why…? But father was different. They were sitting on the same donkey but it felt as though he were sitting alone. The journey took three days, in between rest periods of water and food, and protecting against the furious glare of the sun when it became too hot to walk in. Finally the destination was reached.

Father asked the two servants to stay with the donkey while he went with Isaac to go and worship the Lord. Father placed the wood on Isaac’s shoulders. Isaac was happy. It made him feel like a grown man. Father himself carried the fire and the knife and they set off. Isaac was baffled. They had the wood, fire and the knife but there was no lamb or ram or any animal for the sacrifice to the Lord. He remained silent though, for Father was not in the mood. But after a few more steps, the flame of curiosity so burned in him he blurted out his bafflement.

“God Himself would provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” his father answered gravely.

His curiosity thus satisfied, Isaac continued on, once again relishing the manly burden on his shoulders. Father had always let the servants carry it. Now, he was a man.

Father then stopped. They had come to the place of sacrifice. His father began to build an altar as Isaac put his load down. It was heavier than he cared to admit. He then rushed to help his father finish the altar and arrange the wood on it. Isaac began to look around for the lamb that God was going to provide.

Then he felt his father grab his hands gently but firmly behind his back. He looked around, smiling at the first playfulness his father had shown since they had set off. But the lifeless look in his father’s eyes made him want to let his bladder flow. Father’s eyes had become a deep non-ending abyss of black. It went on and on, Isaac almost got lost in its depths. The black was blacker than anything black, especially against his father’s now colorless skin. Father looked like one of those walking corpses he had been told horror stories about.

A jerk and sharp pain shook him from his trance to see that his father had tied his hands behind his back. Isaac was now bewildered. He wriggled his hands and found the binds as secure as a rock. He looked in his father’s face again, a questioning look in his eyes. Fear was creeping into his childish heart. It clutched at his chest and shoved hard against till he was out of breath and in pain. His father lifted him up and placed him on the altar. Isaac was in such an agonizing shock that the cry choked in his throat and came out as an infertile gust of air. He looked frantically at his father trying to stare the questions his voice had failed to do for him. But his eyes were put in darkness with a piece of cloth and tied securely behind his head. Isaac was frozen from limb to limb in fear, anguish, and confusion. The world had gone wrong. The laws of nature… Father! Father?

He could see nothing, and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of this man who had loved him as a father. He lay there wondering how it would feel when the knife cut through his soft flesh. Would he squirm in bleating agony like the many lambs he had seen his father sacrifice? He wanted to call for help. He would call for Father to save him. Yes, that is what he would do. He filled his lungs and prepared to scream with all his strength but it pushed out in an infertile gust of hot air. Scream for Father..?!?! Fiery hot, blinding salty tears soaked the cloth on his eyes. He felt a darkness creeping slowly into his being. Something died. Something was lost and gone forever as he began to slip away to that black darkness. That darkness that would forever be warmer than what he had seen in his life’s light…

Then he felt hands frantically tearing the cloth on his eyes apart and he looked into the face of his father once more, now delirious in joy. The smiling face swam for a moment between his eyes before he fell in a faint.

When he recovered, he was in his father’s arms, held gently and protected against the sun. He felt his father’s lips on his face as he kissed him over and over again. He closed his eyes once more and held them tight to prevent the tears from falling. He was afraid.

Something had died inside him. The world is no longer what it had been. Perhaps it never was what he had thought it was. Love is an illusion. Father is evil. God does not exist.