Looking back...2013

FIRST DAY OF THE NEW YEAR: HERE IS TO MAKING IT TO THE END IN WITHOUT DRAMA AND IN ONE PIECE.HERE IS TO ENOUGH MONEY TO DO WHAT I NEED TO DO, STRENGTH TO GO THROUGH WHAT I NEED TO,PATIENCE TO HANDLE ALL I NEED TO,VISION TO FOLLOW MY DREAM,DETERMINATION TO KEEP GOING WHEN ALL ELSE SEEMS LOST,FAITH TO KEEP LOOKING UPWARDS AND HOPE TO KEEP LOOKING FORWARDS.HERE IS TO MORE FRIENDS,MORE LAUGHS, SOULFUL CRYING, ERRATIC EPILEPTIC TYPE MAD DANCING, GENIUS IDEAS,RANDOM SURPRISES,MORE GREAT BOOKS,GREAT MOMENTS,GREAT FRIENDS,PEACEFUL NIGHTS AND RESTFUL SLEEPS.HERE IS TO THE WOMAN OF MY DREAMS AND THE FULLNESS OF FAMILY AND GODS BLESSING. HERE IS TO MAKING IT TO THE END OF THE YEAR IN ONE PIECE.

That was my status update on January 1^st 2013. The year I coming to a close and if this list was to be treated like a check list it would be:

MAKING IT TO THE END IN WITHOUT DRAMA: all I can say is drama, drama everywhere. Even when I was not looking for it.

AND IN ONE PIECE: all limbs attached and working as expected. I give this one complete success. My back and right shoulder could do with a bit of grease and fine tuning though.

ENOUGH MONEY TO DO WHAT I NEED TO DO:hmmmm I never starved but I did not have plenty.

STRENGTH TO GO THROUGH WHAT I NEED TO: I am here aren’t i?

PATIENCE TO HANDLE ALL I NEED TO: Good lord it almost killed me but I think I give this 50 percent

VISION TO FOLLOW MY DREAM: a little blurry cause life got into my eyes but I am stumbling forward.

DETERMINATION TO KEEP GOING WHEN ALL ELSE SEEMS LOST: well when you cant go back all you can do is go forward to technically yes on this one. I shall admit I did abandon a few things on the way but I remember where I left them. I intend to go pick them up later.

FAITH TO KEEP LOOKING UPWARDS AND: what can I say, when your at the bottom of the wall all you can do it look upwards.

HOPE TO KEEP LOOKING FORWARDS: it must get better or else whats the use of going on. I must believe that it will and so I hope, without it all else unravels.

HERE IS TO MORE FRIENDS: check mate on this one. Met lots of people.

MORE LAUGHS: not enough of this but I have a few days before the year is up.

SOULFUL CRYING: did a lot of this without the tears though. God saw. God understands.

ERRATIC EPILEPTIC TYPE MAD DANCING: yes yes yes. And with friends too.

GENIUS IDEAS: hmmmm the jury is out on this one but I did think most of them were at least decent ideas when I thought of them.

RANDOM SURPRISES: oh boy did I have many of these…not all were good but hey specificity is what counts next time I say stuff like this. So I cannot complain.

MORE GREAT BOOKS: totally yes on this one. Sadly most of them stayed on the bookshelves in the store.next year I learn lock picking and cram the patrol system at the mall.

GREAT MOMENTS: I think I had many of these disguised as life.

GREAT FRIENDS: made some lost some.

PEACEFUL NIGHTS AND: a few…need more.

RESTFUL SLEEPS.: definitely need more.

THE WOMAN OF MY DREAMS AND THE. Met her I think naye there is a chasm between us…now to develop wings.

 FULLNESS OF FAMILY AND: family has been awesome I cannot complain.

GODS BLESSING: always even when I don’t see them.

HERE IS TO MAKING IT TO THE END OF THE YEAR IN ONE PIECE. In a few days this shall be completely true.

Everybody starts from somewhere

When I was younger, because my teleportation powers had not  kicked in yet, the age of 30 was like the upper limit to all the cool and great things that I would do.

In my head, by 30 I would obviously be married and enjoying all the movie like bliss of a husband and wife including sex every day. Yeah I realize how unrealistic that is but back then sex seemed like the best reason to get married, especially for a true-love-waits card totting hyper spiritual overzealous pubescent Homo sapiens.

I also imagined I would have given up jeans and t-shirts as I embraced my new found wealth and jobs and status in life. That I was not looking forward to but imagined it was part of the growing up package.

I believed I would be an admired member of the church straddling succeeding at that precarious balance between work and ministry. I even believe I would be giving lavishly to the church coffers and would not need to heed those stuff old men and women at church stuck in the past.

There were so many dreams and visions and ambitions that filled my head each day and I prayed and planned for them as best as I could. I read books. Wrote the vision down. Looked for partners who dreamed as I dreamed. Declared prophetically. All this and more.

I can confidently tell you that very little of the stuff I dreamed about has come to pass when and how I thought it would. In fact some dreams have been abandoned all together and as 30 is winking at me from around the corner I still have a long to do list. But here are a few things that have not really gone according to plan, the minor setbacks in a major operation as it were.

I am still very much a t-shirts and jeans guy. More jeans and t-shirts than I think is healthy. Every time I have a dress shirt and pants event I really really have to plan. Many times I am like, where did I leave that shirt or I have to go buy a shirt just so people don’t get too bored of the 4 shirts I have.

I am definitely not married. Trust me I have tried but chic’s can knife these days. But more importantly I am not too bothered about being married at the moment. That does not mean I do not want to get married but it has lost its urgency and shine.

Sadly I am not having sex every day. I still believe in abstinence and obedience to Gods word about that part of marriage and life. I shall take this moment to say congratulations to all my married friends, I hope the sex was worth the wait and if you did not wait…well I hope…well I hope…hmmmm tight one.

About the admired member of the church…hmmmm that’s a long story and as of lathering the church coffers with my bounty…I don’t make it rain but I sure as hell try to make it drizzle.

So two things.

Our tomorrow is totally in the hands of God. We can plan and do all that, in fact we should, but ultimately our path is the Lords.

The other is that you may not be where you want to be at the moment but keep moving forward, we all had to start from somewhere.

May you find your second wind as you chase all your dreams.

P.S. i still have not figured out this teleportation thing.

Rethinking: friendship

Growing up we form friendships based on geographical proximity and I think necessity. There is no prejudice or malice, just the need for a play mate close to home. These normally develop into long lasting friendships that span time and distance. Well that’s true for most men. I am told the best friends in a girl’s life change with each PMS episode but I may be wrong in this too.

We then grow this to friends based on a shared torture regime namely school. So statements like we went to Kitante Primary school together used to explain how people know each other and are friends. Back in the day there were not that many schools and so you all went to the same hand full of school which meant you were more likely to meet you neighborhood playmate there.  This change allowed you to have both your home friends and school friendsi.e. those who were your friends only within the confines of the school perimeter.

This is further amplified when we move away to attend secondary school. This is where we come into our own. As we grow we meet different people from all over the country. We lose some old friends along the way and gain more based on our ever changing worldview and values.

This season makes for some awkward holidays when former childhood friends meet and feel like strangers or one of your former primary school friends keeps ducking you because he or she went to that weird school on the further side of civilization.

Somewhere along this high school journey, some of us meet God. He arrests and we swear undying devotion and allegiance to him. This causes a further shift in our friendship landscape. It is here that I suspect things start getting a little complicated.

You see, all your non saved friends are labeled worldly and your told to stay away, after all what does darkness have with light. This view point right here is just a pile of bull crap although we do need to watch who we call our close friends after all it’s easier to push a squatting man.

Now enter the young adult phase. I don’t know about you but phase seems to have the chemical confusion of adolescence and the morose depression of adulthood. Everything is changing and I mean everything. Suddenly they have removed the safety and the world is rushing at you full speed and you have nowhere to hide and no instructions to guide you through it all.

This phase is rather potent for me. You see I was a loner most of my life and actually happy with it. But I get saved and there is this change. I discover my inner people skills and I get quite the friendlist. I was relieved because deep down their friendship validated me. I was terrified of being alone or lonely. So I visited, kept in touch and hungered after these friendships. This was all done under the umbrella of ministry and don’t get me wrong it was all genuine most of the time. In fact these salient fears came up years later when as happens with life things begun to change again.

Everyone I know goes to one university and I alone go to another. I have to face my aloneness and loneliness. Luckily I was a proud chap determined not to let anything get me down. So I soldiered on but in the dark silent load shedded nights of Mukono I stood face to face with my fears and they won again and again.

Throughout campus I portray one thing during the day while at night I was transformed into something totally different like a wear wolf under a full moon. It’s at this time that I start noticing my low times last way to long. My grades slip and my faith takes a dip. For some reason not even my dogged determination helps me. What’s worse all the things I used to do to get me up and going, the prayer and bible reading and fellowship just becomes bland. My soul was thirsty for a water I could not describe. I knew what I did not want but did not know what what I needed looked or tasted like.

Fast forward to now. I different version of the same battle and this time I just explode, covertly of course. First person we “stopped” being friends with was because I called them fat. Many months later I was unfriended in real life for reasons even now I still don’t understand. Others I avoided because they just exacerbated me more and left me acerbated. My mouth seemed to lead the way and the slights of my tongue were mightier than my apologies.

And so I gave up on friendships that seemed to much work. I opened myself to the possibility that people I had known for years and had shared important aspects of my physical and spiritual growth together would no longer be that important in my life and me in theirs. I realized that, hey, I can make new friends and so I let my fair people skills guide me. If I met someone and something about then grabbed me I struck up a conversation and then let it all to God, if it was to be we would link up.

I gave up strife and effort but I did not abandon civility and courteous behavior. I dialed down immensely. But still I lose friends and still my mouth is the culprit.

So this is what I have decided. I am an honest, opinionated, tactless man cursed with pride and the hard headedness of a buffalo.  My head , my heart and my mouth do not always coordinate and sadly my means do not allow me to demonstrate my love and concern. This means that one moment I shall be super nice and sensitive and the next moment as callous as a sailor in a whore house. Its not always intentional nor is it even obvious sometimes.

Like I pointed out, I am a little bit worn out so if I pull at these friendship strings and feel no pull from the other side, I don’t sever the rope, I tie it down somewhere for when I feel a tag from the other side.

Because I am a bull in a china shop, I expect things will break but I believe that as adults we can and we should look beyond some of these slights and if we cannot to be open, end the relationship. I am not one for pretense.

Oh yes, I have had a looong year and sometime I don’t want to talk to you or see you or pour my heart out to you and sometimes when I want to do all these things I don’t want you to open your mouth and spew some nice Christian jargon, I just want you to shut up and partner with me in hating. You can send you rebuke by text later.

Or sometimes I just want to swear and be mean to someone. You may be that someone. And know that sometimes my rave and rant has nothing to do with you. Good thing I always give fair warning…I think.

To me friendship fills that void left by family and God. Ti should be that one place where we can be honest and mean without taking everything to heart. It should be that combination, at this point in our lives of childhood friendship, I just need a playmate and you shall do as well as that of primary, we have been through shit together and that of high school we identify with something bigger than each other and that of adulthood…measured and tampered by experience and love and God.

I don’t know if I have been a good friend but I have tried. Right now the strong indomitable Andrew Is worn out and tired and just needs a break. If I call you be fine. If I don’t, be fine. If you call and I sound bored be fine. If I am weirdly excited be fine…I may have imbibed some happy meds. I probably want to spend a bigger amount of time alone and not with you. Be fine. Oh and when I come seeking you out it may be selfish…be warned…be fine.

This sun shall set and when the dust is settled from this epic rethinking of friendship, its it those left around with whom we shall skip hand in hand into the sunset leaving rainbows in our wake….or not. I am still re thinking all of this friendship stuff.

 

The Girl with the Blank Stare in her eyes.

(unfinished pieces)

There she sat, in her long blue dress, hunched up knees to chin with her arms wrapped round her legs. She swayed softly as if moved by a gentle breeze. The sun was shining but she seemed cold.

Her choclately skin seemed pale, almost grey and she stared listlessly at the ground. The sun was out, slightly toasty but she seemed unaware of it. Everything around her was bright and green drawn in palettes of colour and she and only she was drawn in shades of grey.  She cast an aura of shades of grey.

But not all was grey. Here and there you could see colour. Her finger tips were a delicate pink. Here hair band was a brilliant blue and her lips held just a hint of colour, evidence that life still coursed through them.  Her eyes lashes were long and black thick as an African mush.  The tips of her hair, natural and curly fluttered ever so slightly when the wind picked up slightly.

I walked to her gently, my brown suit drinking in the sun. I had a few minutes to spare and thought I walk through city square would do me good, after all it was the only place between my current stops that gave me a chance to sit and rest. Hers was the only bench with room. I had stopped when I had seen her.

Everybody seemed to avoid her as if she cast a spell that kept them away. Or perhaps they did not see her. They obviously did not seem to notice her at all, or the space on her bench. I guess not one was brave enough. I shivered thinking of the chill she most probably exuded. But I was drawn to her, that and my feet hurt.

Re Thinking it all.

I stop and see the confusion of the world and wonder…is the confusion of the church a better substitute.

In the last months as I have battled depression, failure and all manner of personal demons I have heard to think hard about some of the moments that have defined my past year.

I have had to rethink politics. Will all my friends shouting and campaigning under the Black Monday Movements actually cause change? Is it a passion filled tirade with about as much future as the white rhino and the life span of a fly? What are my views about politics anyway?  I have had to answer these questions and still refine those answers.

I have had to rethink church. Right now there seem to be several factions split between the traditional churches and here we have all those Anglican protestant and other traditional denominations. There is the “born again” faction characterized by wild gesticulations and noisy overnight services. Then there is what I call the alternative style churches. There are mostly new and tech savvy for the most part. This is where you find the bohemian crowd and the others who found their traditional churches too…well traditional and the born again churches I guess too noisy. Please note I said church and not faith.

I have had to rethink dreams. Anyone who has followed this blog or read any of my pieces on Facebook has come across the Chasing your dreams series . I have had to rethink this whole concept. I have accepted that time is a greater ally and the straightest path is not always straight and that sometimes I need to stop and camp a whiles on this journey. I have learned that when you smile, make sure you fangs show but like a gentle she wolf, never bare them in anger, malice or hate. Just let them know you have them as well and yours Is a choice not to use them…unless they provoke you.

I have rethought money and poverty. These two seem to be the yin and yang of my existence. Money is not what I work for but it’s a just recompense for the expenditure of my talent. The journey out of poverty is not that easy. Stop reading get rich quick scheme books, work hard, save as much as you can, give as much as you can and be content. The last bit is playing me.

I have rethought friendship. This is the one year that most of my friendships seem to have imploded or just gone into some sort of coma. I will not lie, I am not all torn up about all of them. In fact these days are am not as quick to save friendships. I believe they should develop organically and just go where they may of course with a little trimming and such here and there. I am not trying to grow a bonsai tree but a radiant flourishing bush or tree. I do my part or what I can cause at the end of the day no amount of water or manure makes trees or bushes grow faster…perhaps a little better.

I am still rethinking…perhaps soon we shall share deeper exactly what I have been thinking on some of these topics.

This marriage thing....

I have never feverishly desired marriage nor have I admired married men except for when I am lonely and horny or both.

There is however one couple that constantly revives my faith in this institution and I don’t know why.

For better or worse, no pun intended, I am at that age in my life where marriage hangs over my head like a nimbus cloud, pregnant and heavy, full with the promise of good things but also promise of disruption.

The major champions for this endeavor in my life are my uncles and a few well-meaning friends. I am normally honest with them. Sadly my answers to their query seem to hide a past hurt or a cynicism that seems misplaced in the heart of a God fearing youth clinging onto scriptures like Jeremiah 29:11. But that is far from the case.

A relationship, ‘oba’ love, is a two lane road of emotion and logic. I seem firmly embedded on the logic side of the lane. You see nothing that has been promised me from the time I started listening to teachings about marriage seems limited to marriage. It either seems like a lot of work or just too fairy tale.

Of course those who are married make it look like they have ascended through a portal into a realm of good things that only those that have partaken of it can express or understand. This is well and good, but the other side of the coin seems true. The world is full of couples, born again I might add, that seem to be existing in limbo. Like when they were making the jump into that portal Umeme load-shedded and they ended up in some other twisted ‘horrorverse’.

I feel, rightly or wrongly, that all the ‘marketeers’ need to change their strategy. I don’t need to be married to have sex and enjoy it. Contrary to popular belief not all acts of fornication are immediately followed by catastrophic or cataclysmic planetary collapse and blinding or numbing guilt. The many Christians having sex can attest to that.

I definitely don’t need to be married to have babies. All the single mothers and fathers can also attest to that.

I don’t need a wife to wash my clothes; my washing machine is doing just fine. Yes my house may be covered in a layer of dust most times however when I do get around to cleaning it is a good job…sort of. I don’t need her to cook, I have lived on my own since my second year at university, I can manage a proper sensible meal for over ten people and I am not just talking about one source and one food.

Companionship, conversation and most other things can be got from without marriage. So what exactly is the validation for getting married especially when the statistics say being born again apparently has very little to do with your divorce quotient, sex is freely offered and pregnancy out of wedlock is not “that bad” any more, the number of domestically inept bachelors has gone down considerably and ladies believe that men are ravenous, cheating canines with the men claiming that women are nine tailed green eyed vixens.

Don’t get me wrong I want to get married, I want to have kids but at the moment, I see no good reason to.

But, this couple I speak of seems to have landed on the answer. They have not told me, they have not taught me, they have shown me. When I look at them, it’s like I have caught a glimpse far beyond the reaches of all the married people I have observed or talked to, it’s like for a brief moment, a brief instant I gazed into something more beautiful than the stars and as endless and mysterious as the galaxies in the heavens.

They may not have been married that long but for now they are my sextant, my rule, my campus…my north star on this thing called marriage. They renew my faith in marriage.

Chasing your dreams: The space in between.

As you may have noticed I have not written for this series in a while. The spaces in-between inspiration to write is filled with the everyday voracious survival tasks.

And so like a soul survivor in a treacherous land I am reminded of the spaces in between. The spaces between the inception of the dream and the fulfillment of that dream are sometimes many and sometimes long but we must survive them. The spaces in between are also the times between revelation of different aspects of the dream like a much needed encouragement/confirmation, the appearance of a divine connection or the sudden realization of what is needed for your next future move. The space in between are many and in between (no pun intended)

The spaces in between are where most of us spend our lives. They are those pleasant platues filled with the sweet fragrance of everyday living that slowly lull us into a cycle of wants and needs. There are like the mirage in the sun scorched desert, a hope that our parched throats will soon be sated. They are ever present but always far. And so we keep walking.

Like the mists of an English bog, they cover the pitfalls and paths, obscuring our way forward and our way back and so we wonder aimlessly constantly aware of the danger that lurks in the murky depths.

And so we walk hunched over, watching the ground in constant fear of falling into poverty, our dreams lost to sight and our consternation growing and growing and our journey seemingly endless. For a person of faith, it’s not the brutal onslaught of the Devils blows but the subtle espionage of a weary soul that will get you.

I have to constantly remind myself what this dream is, what it is for and why it was given to me. I also have to remind myself of the one who gave me this dream and the promises He gave and continues to give.

I must also prepare. I love the story of the building of the temple. David had a dream to build a house for God but Solomon was the one appointed to build it. But David prepared. He was not allowed to build it but he saw nothing wrong in preparing for it. In Isaiah, we are encouraged to “enlarge the place of your tents”; Elijah was sent to prepare the way for the messiah. The reference goes on and on.

And so I prepare, my heart, my mind, my spirit, my hands and my substance (home/house, equip etc.) for the time when the dream comes to fruition. In my case I have seen the dream unfold like a parchment, and for each page, each chapter I must be ready.

So my dear friend, as we seek out the dreams God has placed in our hearts, use wisely the spaces in between. 

Flags of our fathers: Unclaimed Baggage.

We are the sum of our experiences. My earliest vivid childhood memories are of my parents separations and the premonition filled dreams I had before. It’s a dream that recurred over and over in varying degree throughout my life.

My second most vivid is sitting on the floor at my mother’s feet playing with toys as she sipped her trademark cup of tea. In almost movie like frames I remember her looking at me and smiling as me totally engrossed in my toys.

The rest of my memories are snapshots of various events but most of my childhood seems black or at least locked away in some deep memory vault until the right key is found.

I do however fondly remember my petrol sniffing escapades. I and a couple of friends would sit behind a friend’s dad’s car and through a hole in his makeshift petrol cover inhale the petrol fumes. We would then lie back and giggle away in a petrol buzz. We would then stagger home eat everything in sight and then repeat. I can tell you this ended quickly when our moms found out. We never did it again. Our bums still tingled with the memory of a well taught lesson.

Today I sit here a little sad and angry. I am sad because in the space of 24 hours I have had major run-ins with two close friends and mad that I feel apologetic for speaking honestly. I am mad because I find myself afraid of being alone and wondering whether I should have spoken the truth. I am more afraid of being alone than standing up for myself.

I am mad because I should not be here letting another’s  behavior go un checked especially if I am constantly being hurt or put down for being human, for being me.

As a man of faith I have continually vowed and tried to be different, not in the hip cool way but in the Biblical way. I have despite my inclinations to anger and resentment tried to be more forgiving, understanding and patient.

I chose to not hold a grudge which seems simple if you are not a choleric for whom grudges and vengeance come easy. Take a survey of a choleric's weaknesses and you shall begin to understand the extent of my cross (smile)

More than my inherent weaknesses I am weighed down by some pretty deep mental chains. All the unclaimed baggage left by careless words and actions. To deny them would be foolishness. To allow them to rule me would be suicide. And so I write.  

To get over my fear of failure, loneliness, losing people and to an extent being a victim I write.

I write to tell myself that I don’t deserve to be treated badly and yes I am worth being loved or fought. I write to extend my boundaries and discover my limits, to learn to shove some shit and also not to take some shit.

I write because I hope that someone else will find the strength to start their journey and face their demons, to take inventory of their baggage and to day by day remove all that is unwanted, perhaps put in some much needed supplies and with each passing day travel light.

My pen is the blade that cuts away my pain. It is the surgeon’s scalpel that allows me to dig deep and find the cancer. It is the rescuers search lights that allows me find myself in the night and it is the scribes torch that illuminates the library that is my soul and allows me to find the answers. It is the gift that God gave me to deal with all this excess unclaimed, unwanted baggage.

Flags of our fathers: Silence of the lambs.

The internet is filled with many blogs full of emotional gash written by people screaming for attention and willing to do anything to get it including wanton revelations of everything and anything personal.

This is not that kind of blog though it is filled with screams of attention of a kind. This is another reason why I write…and I hope why you continue to read.

I write because there is too much pain and darkness where emotional wounds fester and cankerous sores multiply.

I write because I must find healing. Perhaps this is the famed mid mid-life crisis, I don’t know. But one thing is for sure my ghostly sirens have been released from their dungeon, stirred up by the father’s hands. I must banish them at once or risk my future and the future of my sons and daughters.

And so I write. I write because I must be heard. I write because my existence should be more than just a scream, it must be a life well lived. A life of peace, serenity and completeness.

I do not write to stir controversy, at least not all the time nor do I write to engross myself in the vagaries of my own darkness. No, I do not write to create a rallying call for like-minded demons-of-the-past infested individuals seeking consolation in self-pity.

No, indeed I write because it is my light, my door, my path to a new tomorrow, to redemption.

I do not, through my pen, undress myself to stand naked before the world to satisfy its lust for voyeurism but because I must unclothe myself of filth to be able to arraign myself in the light of my father.

I write because the silence of this lamb is no more.

The flags of our fathers: A father’s greatest gift…

This series is something that I have always wanted to write but is one of the hardest things to write.  It is hard because, despite what I think of my dad, he is my dad and I love him. I don’t want in any way for what I say to shame him.

However even as much as I love my dad I want to speak and speak out. I want to speak out because no one has ever given me the permission or the place to speak, to pour my heart, share my grief and shout my frustrations.

Something about the African society just goes all mysterious when it comes to parents or adults. But also the blatant abuse of the responsibility of fathers is clear. I want to ask why anybody isn't speaking up.  I am surprised with tradition, culture and scripture. Children don’t speak to, about or against adults. This is not our culture. Honor your father if you want to live long.

But sometimes I want to ask, what about the children, these little eyes, ears, feet and hands all unified by this mind. Won’t these little people readily propagate the same hurtful and damaging cycles their parents initiated? Is it a wonder that Ugandan society seems to be spinning a little off centre.

I may not be the best or the right person to speak, but if I cannot let the evidence all around you speak.

There is the little girl who somehow ended up at my church early in the morning with the thought to end her life.

There is the little girl whose was abused by an uncle and when she spoke to her parents the pride of the clan was greater than her pain.

What of the family that endures the unfaithfulness of their father. Something everyone including friends knows to be happening.

The family that has to go through a divorce after many many years of marriage because of infidelity.

The son who “run" away from home simply because at a friend’s home, he found a sense of family, something he said he had never experience while in his father’s home.

The girl who believes she is curse simply because her mom say such dreadful things about her.

The boy who struggles with self-image because his dad told him he would amount to nothing.

You can fill the spaces with examples ad infinitum

I know nothing about parenting but I know a lot about being a child staggering under the weight of my father’s actions, words and more and yes honour parents, respect culture what whatever is done to the least of these is done also to Jesus and trust me some of it isn't pretty.

So what is a father’s greatest gift? It’s not education though that important. It’s not clothing or housing or all that other stuff that parents have a duty to provide. Put simply its love. Because love empowers us to be more than just dutiful adult person we can grow to be all round human being brining life and healing to a world sorely in need of it.

No wonder Christ’s major work was love, not the material gifts of a gracious God.

Work out your own salvation a.k.a Twakowa sausage

Today is Monday May 20^th 2013. For many of you out there you have a very detailed plan for your career and perhaps hope for your relationships by 2018.

You have read all the right books, joined all the networks online and groups on Facebook. You have signed up for all the newsletters and follow the  right people on twitter and are current with all that pertains to your field of interest all in a bid to stay on top of the game career wise.

You mouth all the mantras and live all the principles. You have Steve Jobs biography on you shelf. A copy of Richard Bransons “breaking my virginity” book has dog ears from over use while Kiyosaki's “Rich dad poor dad” has been underlined to the point of illegibility.

You subscribe to this newsletter, attend that weekly ‘millionaires’ meeting, seek mentoring and leadership from the business persons you admire and have invested in several businesses. All because in ten years you have this picture of financial stability, independence and more.

But I wonder how many of us actually put the same amount of effort into growing our faith. What are our spiritual targets for the next 5-10 years? Who are the men of faith we have submitted to in mentorship and discipleship to get to where we want to be? Which books that build our faith have we bought and totally worn out from reading and rereading. How many select groups do we attend to both encourage and find encouragement? How much have we invested in both time and money and more into this venture called our spiritual life? How many of us actually spend time training our spirits in the ways of the master.

When you read scripture a lot of the analogy for spiritual disciplines was connected to work. It was a sort of apprenticeship with us as the novice and God as the master. Those days and even in apprenticeship today it was mostly learned by doing. But there were other skills needed.

Because apprenticeship was long and hard and often took year’s commitment was foremost. Others I imagine was teach-ability, faith that your master would teach you all he knew, humility as learn and ask questions, grace under rebuke and failure, respect for your time and that of the master as well as keen eyes and hands cause after all that was the basic mode of skill transfer. You watched and did and watched and did till you were as God as the master. It was only then that you could work on your own.

So let’s all let go of these excuses we give, mbu church has failed us (this is my personal favourite) oba there is no longer preaching of the right gospel, true gospel or full gospel. Stop using the failing of other Christians to justify your actions; they were never your example to follow in the first place. Let us abandon the self-righteous internal neo judgment peppered with false humility that Christians lately are wont to do.

Instead let’s put out hand to the mill and follow that age old advice contained in the scriptures

¹² Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,

Philippians 2:12

New International Version (NIV)

God knows we all need to.

Chasing your dreams III: Hello Fear (one more round)

I was quite miffed that I was. Seated in a friend’s Spartan living room, I was wracking my brain for the answer(s) to the question she just asked. “What would you do if you had one million dollars?” How do i explain this fire in my heart.

And right there is the heart of my quandary. When I was growing up choosing “full time” ministry was like the loftiest goal a Christian would have. Our scripture union heroes were those that had quit or passed over “lucrative” chances to serve God instead. That was true denial to self and true answering of the call of God.

Today it’s a different story. Men who chose the “ministry” are scrutinized more and those that blindly walk into a profession are only questioned if the number of zeros to their salary is requisite and if they are what figure is at the beginning. I do not know how many times I have been asked to make sure that ministry is really the path God has set for me.

I feel like a man stuck in a time warp of sorts. Here I was, in the prime of my life, in a game whose rules had been changed. I feel like I am taking part in a game with an outdated rule book as my guide and being given a thorough butt whooping.

The world and the church by extension applaud winners. Nobody remembers who comes second they say. If two people walk the same path and one succeeds and the other fails, well the one who succeeds is revolutionary while the loser was probably 'delusionary'…this was not his true calling.

You see failure(s) is no longer well received in today’s church either. It’s either condemned or soothed away with the message of grace. And as far as I saw it I was a failure. I was quitting a good job for ministry.

The response of the faithful to my decision to leave a “big” job in one of the leading corporations in town was nothing but confusing. I think part one of chasing your dream goes into detail of my fears and more but the one comment that stood out for me and today still rings in my ears was one made my a close friend. He said I was being lazy and did not want to work hard and was using church and ministry as an excuse.

That left me reeling both from the meaning of the statement and the person who had spoken. I am not sure I have truly fully recovered from that. It was the seed that I am now constantly fighting to uproot. It is the doubt that has become my proverbial thorn in the flesh.

You see if your dream was to be at the top of this or that corporation then today’s game is for you. But if your dream was “mother Theresa” in shape or form, you have  your work cut out for you because nothing about today’s world or church, in so much as I have experience it, is rarely rooting for you Unless of course you win.

When they do listen they want you to present them a clear “ministry plan” of how this is going to produce dividends (saved souls) at the end so their money can be well spent and every time this comes up, well how do you explain a desire to give yourself towards the discipling of people, the provision of a home, a place of comfort and refuge where the weak, tired, worn can come and receive some “chicken soup for their souls”.

Every time these issues come I say. “Hello fear, I have two fist, faith and a promise let’s do this cause backing down and backing out are not an option.”

Ding! Ding! Ding! I’m ready for one more round.

Chasing your dreams II: waking up to the dream

Now here I stood fresh out of my corporate job and absolutely no plan, except to trust God and see where that road led. 

I was excited. I felt liberated. This was one rat that had made it out of the rat race alive and in one peace. I felt like a prisoner who had just made a successful escape from a super max high security prison.

I had quit to follow my heart and do ministry. That right was the first obstacle. What was this ministry I wanted to do? You see I had made this move at a time when “ministry” had been demystified and so even you work was ministry. It was all about going out to the market place and living the gospel. Taking the Gospel to the people so to speak. And here I was doing the exact opposite.

I was undaunted. I chose to volunteer at my home church All Saints Cathedral Kampala while figured that out. I also started raising support which in this case was asking people for their hard earned cash to facilitate this ministry.

Nga Christians do not give, especially to ministries that cannot be quantified or where they have not benefitted or witnessed the “power” first hand. And here I was, green and bleak, a newbie, a fresher in this whole “ministry” business.

That was just one of my problems. I wondered what I would tell people when they asked why I had left the job the God had “blessed” me with as a reward for my years of faithful service. I honestly did not have an answer. All I knew was that like Jeremiah I had a fire in my bones. I thought that perhaps a scriptural analogy would suffice but nga Christians really carry out due diligence when it comes to separating them from their money.

So I went back to God, remember the advice of a good friend who was doing something similar to what I wanted to do. He told me, before you leave make sure you have promises from God about these things. In other words, get a promise from scripture to back up your call and ministry.

SO I went back to God.in the months leading up to my notice period elapsing I asked and asked and asked.

HE sent me to the story of Abraham.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him….

One thing that really stood out was the portion “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. There are no assurance Just the command to leave all that was familiar and go “to the land I will show you” it does not get any more vague than that and scary.

Many people think that following God is about him showing you the whole map and telling you this is what will happen and how. But often it’s the command and the promise that keeps you.

The other thing I asked is God what shall I tell them. How shall I qualify all the crazy things I am sure you are going to make me do? I need some back up here.

He took me to the story of Moses.

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them? “God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

Two things happen here. God asserts Himself and He deputises his servant. Well here I am, God has sent me and God is who he is. Hey I don’t make the rules I just follow them.

He also reminded me of some instance in the past where I vowed to expend myself in doing his work and in return that He would expend himself making sure I was covered because poverty and I had parted ways and I was not going back.

So armed with nothing but A COMMAND and A PROMISE I set out to the ‘land’ He was sending me to. I an still Journeying.

Chasing Your Dreams Part I

This piece first published on Facebook  on Thursday, 29 July 2010 at 15:2 
I Hope to continue this walk from here.

Sweeping my sitting room floor this evening, or is it night; it was 11:45 pm, I mused at how much pleasure that single act brought me. In fact I had paused a series I was watching because I was overcome with the urge, so to speak, to clean my house and test my new broom.

I just love the way it sweeps and I love the way simple things now bring me joy. No longer do I have to pray for the joy of the Lord but now I take joy in the Lord and the things that He has made. Joy is no longer something that I have to search for in fact I find it in the most unusual places these days and mostly in the everyday things of life.
It’s funny how the little things bring out the best in you and you know what it’s also a good thing because these little things are all around me so I don’t have to search far for a smile.

I rewind back to the days when I seemingly had it all, a good job, a good pay chaque and with this a new freedom that even my lack of curfew could not bring. Man, I was “in things” but I was out of touch.

I hated my job, not because it was a bad job, heck I spent three years and nine month and an extra retake semester preparing for this. I chose journalism. I was made for this. I had all that people said it took, confidence, an eye for detail read critical thinking, I was good and English, literature, I was an avid reader and I was average with people. But for some reason Mondays seemed like another tool the devil was using to torture.

I was groggy right out of the stock and I knew it. Something just did not feel right, at least not the way I had expected and I did the obvious Christian thing, I prayed about it and put my back into it. But like a bad stain, the more I rubbed the worse it got and soon my work begun to reflect the death that I was feeling on the inside. 
I felt like every day I spent chasing the news I was losing billions of brain cells every day. Million, trillion little creative cells seemed to fall off like dandruff. I felt like I was doomed, sentence to a life of routine and…well whatever it was that I was living at that time.

I could not find solace in my secular friends the just said I was lazy and to an extent they were right. To my Christian friends, well to them it was all about attitude and praying or speaking positive things in my day. The only positive thing to the day was the fact that it would end I could go home and spent another restless night waiting for the next day.

But my life was not all drudgery and pain, in fact there were some pretty colorful things about them but sadly they had little to do with my life as a journalist or even getting stories into the paper. I enjoyed the times I finished a story and could go and hang in church for a few minutes. I enjoyed the books I bought with the money I earned and the ideas that swam around me head when my boss was not breathing down my neck. My job gave me the money but robbed me of the time.

It was then that a crazy notion hoped and skipped its way into my heart, why not quit it all and just do something you love? Why not just shout “screw you world” and run out and follow your dreams. But reason stepped right between me and this thought and said, 

“ What? Are you crazy? Do you know that this job pays the rent and buys you cloths and food and all this other stuff? It asked
“Heck it even allows you to do some ministry on the side” it’s said rolling its eyes and stood back with its hands on its hips.

Leaning forward and pointing a finger into my face, it lowered its voice and said, “ Do you know that that would mean you going back to your father’s house?
We all shivered at that thought.
Poking its head through the window, the journalism Angevil, that yellow eyed, red faced, off white cross between an angel and devil chipped in. 

“Do you know how many lives you could change? Think of it, we are the ones who keep everyone honest and bring all that filth into the light? Man we are engaged in a national duty. You don’t have to be in church to change lives? Boy gets back in here!” he motioned with his pen spiked fork.

Taking all this in, I thought for a moment. All that was said was true and made good sense. The idea of going back to live under my father roof terrified me. Id sooner lived under a bridge than done that. Journalism did do some good but what evil I had to be put through to do it, I was not willing to pay. 

What about the Christian folk and all their peer pressure? What would they say? What about my reputation for laziness and failure? Wouldn’t this just prove them right? But if I leave what shall I do, God whom shall I say sent me? These and thousand other questions filled my mind, they were so many I took me 2 months to tender my resignation and another month to serve out my notice period.

But there I was, free and a bird and as clueless as a deer caught in headlights. What was my next move and where would I go? I went where every sensible Christian would go, I went home, to my Father’s house.

When death Visits...

I am mindlessly clicking through random websites trying to drown out my thoughts as they linger around death and tragedy.

Another person was killed on the Kisaasi-Bukoto road. That makes the Third accident and second death in as many months. The most recent was a white lady and her bajaj guy who was hit as the joined the road at a T junction.

Strangely enough I have arrived on the scene moments after these three different accidents happened. I was furious. I was sad. I was tired and sometimes waved it away with the traditional luganda phrase. “Kitalo”

The very first accident was a cyclist. He lay still and unconscious on the side of the road. His bicycle squashed that both tires not touched lay a few feet away. Around his were a few people who wanted to help but could not. Makes you wonder why first aid is not compulsory all the way to university.

The dimly lit taxi cabin illuminated the expressions of its occupants. I wonder how many of thought to do something. This was the day where I was tired. I waived it off. Our taxi lurched forward propelling my homeward but my heart was unsettled. This new beautiful road was just another death trap waiting to happen. When I finally got to my stage, I opted to skip my boda ride and walk that last few meters. This had been a terrible punctuation to what has been a long day.

I reported the incident to police and sat there listening as he tried to cut through all the chatter on his radio and get the right authorities. Funny how the roads are totally a different jurisdiction and he had to call a highway patrol man from God knows how far. After a few moments of chatter back and forth, I heard the confirmation that a car had been dispatched. I hoped it would reach in time. I trudged home, I felt a little better.

Today’s accident is still fresh in my mind. I wonder if it’s because there was a foreigner involved. You see one of my fears was dying with no one knowing what had happened. In this our pearl I am sure you know how that is possible. Here he or she was, far from home, pursuing God knows what and boom out of nowhere a speeding motorist ends that journey. She was So far from home. I guess death needs no visas.

The second of these events was a collision between a boda and a van. That impact was horrific because the damage done to the van looked like it had been clipped by a truck. Irony was that a friend and I were heading home on the latter’s motorbike. Coming upon this scene makes you think on how getting home alive is a blessing.

Thankfully my friend was a medic and he gathered a few people and they lifted the injured into the van and rushed them to hospital. His prognosis was that one seemed to have suffered and fractured hip and the rider, who took the brunt of the impact, would not make it.

We rode in silence for a while.

There is a bad taste in my mouth now. Death visited my neighbourhood this afternoon.