No Country

No Country

                I believe in the power of clothing. The power to shape a people's identity, the power to change behavioural patterns, the power to communicate in silence. I believe that clothes, as light as they are, carry the weight of an individual's self image and anation's collective ideology of life and living.

                Clothes have always had a voice. Just as the colour blue could say 'soft and calm' and yellow could say 'happy and playful', so can a skirt say 'lady' and a formal jacket say 'smart'. When a person's thought goes into what they wear, they are thinking about what they want the world to perceive them as on that day, at that time. A red dress instead of a green one, boots instead of stilletos...

                If our choice of clothing can express so much more than we can say at any given time, doens't it follow that the people who provide these choices have a lot of control on how we express ourselves? Here's an example:

                On a particular day, a young lady is feeling excited. She just gets some really good news and she wants to celebrate. She thinks immediately about what she wants to doto enjoy herself and what she will wear to equally match the feeling and the chosen celebration event. The image she has of how she wants to look is one of a girl she saw on T.V; happy, just like she feels right now, wearing a blue flowery dress, high heeled sandals and curly hair. Now, she may not connect what she is browing her closet for, (Something similar to the blue dress on T.V)to the girl on T.V consciously, but that is exactly what is happening.

                She had to make a choice to wear something that would show the world what she could not possibly tell everyone, and her choice was a blue flowery dress or something close to that because that's what she had seen. That's what she thought would express her feelings adequately.

                Who is in control here? The young Lady? Or whoever made that blue dress and put it on T.V, in a happy commercial so that whoever was feeling like the girl on T.V would automatically want a flowery dress?

                Let us break it down even further. How is it that a blue flowery dress ends up on T.V as a happy person's choice of clothing? Here's why: Because someone somewhere knows  of a flowery field that he or she goes to, whenever he/she feels blue. This place always has a calming, happy effect on him/her. He/she gets inspired to designa dress that captures the feeling this place gives so he/she can share it with the world, and Voila! The dress is born.

                Now, Imagine that 100,000 of this flowery field inspired dress has been produced and shipped around the world. Don't you think that what has been shipped around the world is not just a dress, but a place? A flowery field in country X? And whoever gets this dress, gets a piece of country X? If country X has 1,000 clothing designers that are inspired by 1,000 other characteristics of their country X, and they all produce 100,000 of their different 1,000 designs and ship around the world, does that not mean that a representation of country X is around the world?

                So, if the people of country Y love all of country X's clothing, buy and wear country X's clothing and this then makes up 80% of country Y's clothing industry, doesný this mean that country X is preferred to country Y by the inhabitants of country Y? Doesn't it mean that country Y's choice of expression is being controlled, not intentionally, by Country X? Doesn't it mean that country Y's 20% will also be influenced by country X's 80% in country Y? Doesn't this mean that there is, in fact, no country Y?

                But the blue flowery dress is beautiful. It is functional. It is available, affordable and it makes that young lady happy. And if all she has to do is wear country X to feel this way, country X it is!

                So what's the problem?

                Country X has obliterated country Y's identity. Even the 20% of country 's clothing isn't really country Y's> And a country without an identity is no country.

                Countries are meant to co-exist, to enjoy each other's difference and uniqueness. When I travel to a foreign country, I want to see how they are, what they do, what they love and many times, they dress how they are. They wear who they are. They can wear a blue flowery dress that i bring to them from my country Y, but it doesn't become their go-to happy dress.It could be worn when they feel like looking Y-ish, but it doesn't become their way. And if they love it so much, what it stands for, what it expresses, then they are inspired by it and they take that dress and make it theirs, make it how they are, functional to their society and applicable to their way of life. I believe that fashion carries a weigh; that is is more than a covering, especially in a country like our.

Mama Akara

Mama Akara

                One day not so faraway, I asked myself, What does business mean? So i took a long walk down the roads I had passed so many times before without taking time to notice the activities around me and what I saw and noticed for the fist time was astounding. Business is equal to busy ness. To me this meant that you just decide to get busy doing something, anything really, that you can exhange time and activity for money. I saw market sellers and traders dealing in a wide variety of commercial products, edibles and non edibles alike, people going about in their hunt for daily or monthly earnings, surviving youths just trying to make another day pass and many more interesting sights. And then I noticed something very strange, the most successful businesses in business terms are those with the consistency of cashflow: Money in (Income), Money Out (Expense). This is the story of one who we will name Mama Akara.

                Every single day, she comes to the same spot at a certain bus stop near where I live and sets her wares at exactly 5:30 pm. Begins to produce her products which include basic fried yam, akara, sweet potatoes and a stew based sauce. Her goods are displayed on a tray by the road side with dust, smoke and whatever else was in the atmosphere, yet people, including myself would come to Mama Akara's place of business to transact with her. After observing a trend in myself and others like me to finding Mama Akaras in a variety of places, I decided to do a study on the business of what she does. Now, I am not going to bore you with the details of how much a standard Mama Akara would invest and all the aligning business information but i will tell you how impressive it is to see, that even though this woman does not hold pedigree according to society, She offers a service that is applicable to all who are near her business stand, either they intended to patronize her or not.

                So i realize, something we knew as children but had forgotten because what we did had now become either skill, talent or qualification to be patronized and negotiated on, what we do naturally can also be offered as a service to be sold but the identity remains the same. We are just always that Akara Lover or Basket Baller or Car Enthusiast. It does not really matter what we do as long as it is something we Love to. Or at least have a tolerable level of operation while doing it. The world has proven, just like Mama Akara that in business, Serving and filling a need is paramount and that any need required can be filled and hence anything we choose can become a business. We get to decide if we are going to enjoy it as we did when we were children or Let it consume our daily living such that we are Lost in what was once Joy. The question remains, Does Mama Akara Love what she does? Do you? 

God's Will on Earth

God's Will on Earth

                In the Lord's Prayer found in the Bible, as being taught by Jesus to His disciples, a line reads 'Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven'. Now, this Will, would exist among whom? Will it cut across all mankind or will it exist only amongst those who acknowledge and worship God, through His only begotten Son, Jesus the Christ.

                This is a foundational question that, I believe, Christians need in their lives. So what is the answer therein? 'Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven'. What does God, Will in Heaven, that Jesus asks to be done on Earth. Firstly, we know that Righteousness does not exist in all places on earth, so people follow follow their own paths; Lovers of self more than more than God, fulfilling their own ambitions and desires.

                Does God's Will exist on earth or will it exist in the coming future? Does it follow that God's Plan and Will are the same thing? Day in, day out, we are plagued with the sinful nature of man and the wickedness thereof.

                God's will on earth is done through people who believe in Him, Christians. And this can be noted in human expression, one to another, obeying the Spirit of God in all things and not the Lustful desires of the flesh. In Genesis, Chapter 1, when man was created, God Willed for man to be Blessed; to be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it, Having dominion over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

                This was corrupted by the fall of man through sin and disobedience. This cost man the simplicity of Life as God had given it. Centuries later, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth as a mere man to pay the price of the sin of mankind, to return man to the original place of abiding in God's Will. According to matthew, Chapter 4, God's will is for His children, those who have denounced their sinful nature and come back to God through Jesus, to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, to be a blessing and be blessed, sharing God's goodness to all of mankind.

                Abiding in the Will of God, gives peace, unity and prosperity to everyone and this is God's will on earth, that mankind would prosper even as his soul prospers.

God and Me

God and Me

                Once upon a time, God made me. He poured Himself out and formed me in His image and likeness, for His pleasure and glory. He made me out of an abundance of Love, much like a couple in love decide to have children that are a result of love, to share their happiness with, to teach and show the beauty that their love is and to want them to have what they have. That's why He made me. Because He wanted to show me what He had done, who He was and the beauty of Himself. He wanted offsprings of His family, The Trinity, To love, to embody the completeness of what they share; what they are.

                He made me because He wanted to. He saw how good His creation was, how beautiful the animals were as they birthed their own kind, how much fuller it made life; that a kind will reproduce its kind and have more of itself to love and to teach and to guide and to enjoy, and He made me after His Kind. In His infinite beauty and magnificense, we all came. God is All and All come from Him. White, black, yellow, brown... All from His awesomeness. If there were only one-coloured people, with one-coloured eyes and hair and figures, then God would be Just that. But God is so full, so complete, the only complete being, so all that came from Him was all the different colours and textures and wonderful things. Add us all up and you get one beautiful and majestic God! Amazing, so amazing it beats our best imaginations.

                But we disobeyed. And we could not see Him anymore. We could not hear Him teach us about Himself and Life, could not enjoy the beauty of our existence in the simplicity that He made us to. We lost our source of Life, our reason for being. We began to struggle just to live from day to day. It became about Us, instead of about Him; about His way, His reason, His pleasure. He took pleasure from us experiencing all that He made and watching us wonder at the beauty of it all, from us simply being like Him, little versions of Him, coming together in perfect harmony, a perfect family, Us and Him.

                Our reason was simple: Be.

                But we forgot how to be. We lost how to be. We stopped being when we lost our connection to God. Because the only reason we could just be was we were connected to our Father, the Creator - King, the only one who took care of us, showed us Life, taught us mysteries and gave us everything. No connection meant fending for ourselves, meant thinking about ourselves instead of about life and living; there was more focus on what we can do to survive, instead of what God had already done and already given. This was the consequence of our disobedience. The more we focused on us, the farther we went away from Him; and the farther we went, the more evil we discovered we were capable of.

                But in His mercy, His infinite mercy, He saved us from our suffering! You see, through the years, some men had kept their eyes on Him. Though they could not see Him anymore or hear Him, they worshipped Him. They acknowledged Him as the giver of Life and the creator of the world. And they honored Him. God used these people to try to show others how good He was and how much He loved them and wanted the best for them. If they only turned their eyes from themselves and looked to the One who made them, they would be free. He would teach them again, about love and family, about food and beauty; He would take care of them again. They would not need to think about survival. They would just BE, enjoying His creation and giving Him glory. But just men as examples were not enough to show His love to the others. So He sent His Son, His Only begotten Son, that whosoever believed in Him, believed tha He was who He said He was, believed that He alone could repair the lost connection to their Father, would be saved and would live with Him forever! Just like He intended from the beginning!

                Jesus, the Son of God, came for Us. He died on the cross, shed His blood as a sacrifice, paying for all our wrongs, so that His Father, Our Father, could once again look upon us, through the blood of Jesus that cleanses us, and say, "Come, child". We could, once again call Him "Father", and He would Hear. He would show us Life like He wanted to, teach us Love like He is, show us beauty like we have never seen, give us everything that we could ever need, on earth and in Heaven, when we go home.

                What does it all really mean?

                It means that if we want to really live, live the way we were made to, for the purpose that we were made, then we have to take our eyes off of ourselves, and look to Jesus. He is our way, He is our connection to Home. We look and we look and we keep looking, until we go back home. He will teach us, show us, prepare us. And when we are ready, He will present us to our Father like we were in the beginning, and we will live Happily Ever After.

Christian Love! What is it, Really?!

Christian Love! What is it, Really?!

                So as christians, we read the bible and try to practice all it teaches. For some strange reason, we always fall short of the standards set therein, giving in to our own pleasures and wickedness. The funny thing is that this does not erode us from the ability to preach about the goodness specified in the Bible. The underlying message of the Bible is Love, Christ-like Love (1 Corinthians 13). So what is this Love that we can identify as Christian Love? I am a christian, a practicing one and i would like to say that the love specified, is easier spoken of than practiced or lived. This is a hardly spoken of but very true fact, even among christians. Is it even possible to attain this kind of Love and living? To ask us to be kind even when everything and everyone is unkind to us. To serve without any ill feeling. To have compassion for all of God's creation. To give out loans not expecting to get it back. To share our last meals and monies in the toughest of circumstances. In the world where I was born, the world we all live in, this kind of Love is not possible to find, at least not in the way we hope to find it.

                So here is what I know Christian Love to be, It is a way of Life that sees good at all times regardless of the obvious facts. It is totally based on the Faith preached by the Bible. By the way, Faith is Belief in The One who is able to do all things: God (Father, Son and The Holy Spirit). To have Christian Love is to be honest, caring, humble, kind, approachable, teachable and basically to walk and work in the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5: 22) and to keep growing daily until we learn to Love people as God does (2 Peter 1: 2 - 9). This basically means that to have this Love, the Spirit of God must be in control of our every impulses. I once heard a man say that if someone pushes you to anger, the anger was always in you and just needed time to show itself. In the same way, Jealousy, Selfishness, Cruelty and any other attribute that is the opposite of this Christian Love's expression. If this is true, then is it even possible to walk in this Spirit that ensures all that comes out of us is Love? The apostles believed it, and it was them who where first identified as Christians: They who walked with Christ. Of course they did have issues that arise out of human living as well but it was sorted out differently than we do today (Acts 6: 1 - 7). So what did they do differently? They surrendered their will, they let go and they let God guide their hearts, motives, workings and basically let God lead them home.

                As well as there are issues about temperaments and behavioural patterns, there is only also, One Christian way, This is to Love and it cuts across temperament, age, sex, race, account balance, job description, goals and dreams. Infact, in this love, the only thing we are conscious of is, what would God have me do. So I encourage you to see the Truth as it is, To love is not to understand it or define it, It is much more of a Surrender. Leaving what you think is Right and doing what God says is and this comes through His Spirit which guides you in what to do where, when and how. So when next you are faced with a tough decision, think about God. Think about what you are going through and remember the things you first learnt about Christianity and Love, not the things you picked up on human experience. Remember, The truth is always simpler than the circumstance. May God Bless you and grant you Peace.