Understanding the Main Character of the Good Book

So I started reading the Bible over again. Yeah, “again” can be deceiving because it suggests that I have, at one time, completed reading the Good Book. Nah! I have started a few times, but I’m yet to finish. In any case, I am starting with the New Testament. Every morning on the bus on my way to the city I pick up my little New Testament Bible and read a few chapters. No pressure, just me and the Book.
There’s just something a little different about this renewed ambition of mine. Perhaps that’s an inaccurate description of this "thing" and the primary reason for the difference; it is not an ambition like the other times, not a chore, or an obligation assigned by Church, not a memory verse marathon, or a miracle and parable seeking adventure…, it’s simply a quest to know my maker better. People say not to read the Bible like a novel, but I almost disagree. I say almost because you read fictional and nonfictional novels in two different ways. For both types of novels, you get to know the main character of the book intimately. If permitted, and one often is, you can tell where the character is coming from, where they are and you plan with them where they are going to. The fictional novel forces you to take sides, you're excited, anxious, you feel all those emotions in the series as they were carefully orchestrated by the writer, but with the nonfictional, you pay attention, you are not anxious, excited...you feel the pulse of the character, you don't attempt to manipulate the character or the story, instead you attempt to completely understand. And that is why often, a nonfictional story is the same no matter how many times you read it, but the fictional always reads like a new book with a new opened warp zone every time you pick it up. Oh Blah! For whatever reason, I find that I understand Jesus better. I feel like I know "who" He is. As in, likes and dislikes...that sort of thing. The phrase "What Would Jesus Do?" WWJD now has a totally new meaning to me. I don't quickly recall the ten commandments or quickly try to put Him in that scenario, using full color imagination and so on, I am now getting to the place where I can quickly decipher what is acceptable, right and true, what He will do...but even scarier is the fact that I can also demarcate between a preacher peddling his word as God's and God's own words.
Let's think about this some more.

For God or for us?
Remember when Jesus went into the temple and scattered the money changers and the dove sellers? Well, the money changers were probably changing money for offering, not for traders and the dove sellers were probably selling doves to be used in offerings, not for soup...all for God, and yet, He himself threw them out. How is that different from all the things that are sold in the church today, whether the church bookstore, or the hats sold after church, or the olive oil sold in the bookstore, or the checks (money changers) we write....

Impossible and sensible or Possible?
Or how about the 5000 Jesus fed? and the 4000? Remember how the people had stayed to listen to Jesus, and how the disciples had asked that the crowd be sent back to go look for their own food, and how when Jesus had said that the people be fed instead the disciples looked at him like he was joking? Well, Jesus fed them. Now though, you can stay at convention for days without being fed, even big churches cannot spend that extra cash to feed the people, instead, the people pay for the "conventions" and "conferences" and it remains such an impossible feat to feed the crowd.

The inside or the outside of the cup?
And remember when the pharisees were sweating Jesus because his disciples did not wash their hands in the ritualistic way before eating, or plucked the grain of wheat to eat on sabbath, how Jesus said the pharisees focused too much on doctrines that they had now preached as though it was God's word and how they should instead focus on God? Brood of vipers he called them. How are things different today? So many rules, don't watch T.V., don't put on earrings, don't put on pants (trousers) if you are female and if you do these things you are sinning.... Hello? And how much we focus on paying our tithes, of course you should pay tithes, it is the commandment of God, but how much we focus on that more than we focus on the greatest two commandments "Love your God above all, Love your neighbour as yourself". The inside vs. outside....

Every time I write passionately, my words are many, but they are a serious tangle due to the speed at which they pour out of my head and the sheer volume of all I have to say, so I end up not saying anything close to what I have to say. All the same, I pray you understand my words and are blessed.

The worm wiggling in the Big Apple

You see them on every street. Actually, you only see them your first two days in the city; soon afterwards, your eyes are open, but you see nothing, them included. At the pace you carry on day three, after you have been submersed in the unnecessarily fast culture and have risen up looking more like the inhabitants, it's no surprise that everything else is a blur around you.

Yes, I too race through the massive human traffic at 6pm towards my bus, eagerly looking forward to that wide soft seat that is barely reclined even though it has the capabilities because the drudges of the city will start a fit "your chair is on my knee" they'll cry. In the bus, I experience serenity, peace and quiet...till a phone breaks the silence...

The worm:
At first sight, you see an extremely dirty looking man or woman, this is your first two days in the city, quickly you dart to the other side. You don't make it there because the human traffic does not permit, but you do get a solid foot away.

See, in the city you're always sprinting somewhere; to your 3 o'clock meeting, that you will arrive to fifteen minutes early, but so what?, to Ginger House where there's always a waiting line, and since there's always one, you can never get there too early or late, oh and you have nothing waiting on your desk, but still you sprint, to catch your train home, it comes every 10 mins, no particular schedule, it just comes and yet you sprint...

They're no longer human, well not a hundred percent. Their legs resemble tree logs; the texture and size. Short stumpy logs with dead skin the color of white chalk scattered over a dark brown base. An arch of green mold over each eye lid, on what looks to be where the eye brows used to be. Hair, either a massive confusion of dirty hide or a scanty wet rag over the face. They drag their legs behind their slowly decaying bodies when moving from one place to the other. They're the only ones who don't appear to be in a hurry. A sit here or there for an hour is not unusual.
One can't help but wonder where the destination is when they're moving. Surely if they had a place to go they wouldn't look like this. Yet when they are sitting in the same spot for a while, one wonders again "what next?" and food? What will they eat? Yet these beings exist in the financial capital of the world, moving in an exaggerated slow motion while the brokers, analysts, delivery boys, construction workers, yellow cab drivers, plaque holders and their types race around them with a speed so swift that the invisible, the homeless of the city spin in a defeated daze like ghosts wandering in a world that is not theirs.
Such is the worm wiggling in the Big Apple. It is disgusting, but no one sees it. The shiny red coat of the Apple is too alluring to most. It's lovers greedily take big giant bites without a care for what else is in it.

"Everyone in the city makes six figures now" except for that man or woman who cannot buy a dollar meal at McDonalds.

Caine Prize for African writing

A Ugandan, Monica Arac de Nyeko beat three Nigerians and a South African to win this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing. How exciting that there were three Nigerian finalists and yet disappointing that not one of them won. Her book Jambula Tree is about two young lesbian girls and the Jambula Tree is the precious spot from which a neighbor spies on the girls; the fruit of the tree represents the girls breasts, and so on and so forth that make this book very African and exotic, no doubt to the judges, in its use of prose and symbolisms. I’m sure the book is great, but I am inclined to believe that she got an edge, no matter how minute, over her peers because she wrote on a topic that is considered taboo in Africa,but then, that is one of the things that makes for an interesting read, something new, different, bold....

I have to reveal that the thought of one day writing a book that would be published and considered for such a prestigious award has put me back on dream lane. I love to write. I don’t write as much as I feel like, but I would love to one day complete a book that would be published. God bless my dreams in Jesus’ name.

There are so many young Nigerian authors these days that make me proud. I am spending the rest of my summer reading their books. My next book is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun. I have heard so much about the book that I must delve into it as soon as work gives me time. Then there’s Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl. Brrrr…that’s a horror one, but an impressive piece of literature for such a young girl who was nineteen at the time she wrote it. I am currently reading an older book by a Senegalese, God’s Bit’s of Wood by Ousmane Sembene who passed away I think earlier this year. What inspiration I draw from Sub-Saharan African Authors. God bless them all. And my Nigerians; I hope to one day meet Chinua Achebe, I haven’t tried to yet and so the word hope is a very unnecessary and emotional word at this time, but I will like to meet him nevertheless. Wole Soyinka is another author I appreciate. Of course, his notes and books need a lot more attention and passion, because he writes it in a very intellectual way, and so you cannot casually pick up his books and quick-read a few chapters, but that is also why I am drawn to his writing. I do hope that these authors, as with other Africans who excel in their passion mentor other young Africans to achieve even greater.

Kudos to African Authors.