AN ESSAY ABOUT THE JOURNEY BACK
During the last week, I took my
family for a visit to a friend’s place. We got talking about the need to
ultimately return home and invest in our roots. My friend’s wife did not agree
with us, as far as she was concerned, she was done with her native town, if anything,
she would rather claim as her home, the nearby megacity to her town . Ancestral
town, for her has become a closed chapter with her parents.
On the contrary, I spoke
passionately about digging more and more into my root. I told her about my
current discovery that my ancestral families were originally not from my native
town and that I intend exploring that history further down to my roots as much
as I could. She couldn’t see any rationale in my motives, as far as she was
concerned it was a risky, worthless and meaningless endeavour. She told me that
her ancestral root was Jerusalem and that she would rather venture through the
scriptures than expose herself to dangerous meaningless ventures like mine. I
made to tell her that she wasn’t wrong and not totally right either for
claiming Jerusalem and for exploring through the scripture, but her husband (my
friend) stopped us from the discussion being too complicated for his wife.
Many people get a good grasp
about the need for conquest and moving forward, but this idea of exploring the roots
and repairing the past is still alien to many.
After we must have escaped from a
circumference of work and friction, we immediately face an instant disgust against
the necessity to return to the circle. We
normally have no motivation towards returning to that cycle of work, friction
and torque. The evils on ground is easier seen when one is up, it gets magnified
and exaggerated, the more our perception of these, the more our natural
repugnance. That is why towns are empty and villages are void.
The reality remains that the momentum gained from going back into
the cycle and repairing the root is what propels the energy for the forward
conquest and the attainment of true liberation and peace unimagined. That is
the path God took: Phil: 2:1-11.
Passion about history, grace of
memory, will and intellect are the energy base of our victory. Our liberation
shall be incomplete if we are reluctant to go back to our roots in order to repair and refine it. The more a man
forgets his roots and would neither physically, intellectually and
spiritually repair and refine it, the
more suffering is laid down for him and his posterity. Forget the land of
source and it takes longer and harder to conquer the land of venture.
“He who forgets the home has a
sack of suffering hung around him”- African proverb.
Of course, this journey back is not
an easy task; it is the height of responsibility. Reality points to the fact
that some evils perceived after an escape from a particular centrifuge are not
always figments of imagination. One experiences a situation whereby one is not
received both ways, whether from the area of venture or from the root backward.
Ideas gained from the forward leap are often translated as pride and insolence
by the source. Memory is often plagued by myths and history tilted to the
advantage of the loudest and not reality, back and forth.
God Himself appeared not very
successful in His root cause, but for Him it was worth the effort. He remained
committed to His root; He was forever a Nazarene, perpetually a Galilean and
eternally a Jew. Without walking with God, the principalities one encounters in
the search for the root and attempt at liberating the past through memory,
intellect and will are enough to jeopardize the journey; but of this is real
mission made of: giving back to the circle of your escape. God is still a Jew,
and so are we, albeit at the other end of the bridge. Going back is work, and
it is absolutely impossible without love, but it is also the basis of real
power and influence, it is the residence of the elders, the commitment of
protagonists, and the fellowship of God’s strength. The back mission is the
basis of baptism without which there is no redemption.
John’s concept of baptism came
about as a result of his conviction about repairing the root and liberating the
past. As far as John was capable of seeing, the beginning could only go as far
as creation. Biblical narration of creation
tells us of the land coming out
from water and it was from the landmass that earth was taken to form man, thus
by consequence, man , from dust, forms a generation of the sons and daughters of water, and thus for creation
to be renewed, through man whom God had originally bequeathed all power, he must turn back to God
to be cleansed and must be recreated by coming out from water in baptism which
is a journey to the root .
Christ saw deeper than John, He
went deeper than the adamic creation into the beginning of which no humanity
had seen nor heard anything about (cast your mind back to the pre creation
battle between St Michael and Lucifer before creation in which the latter was
cast down). He also did this by a personal journey into a mystery of which we
know not much about: He descended into hell. Christ’s descent into hell was a
work, the reason for His death on Calvary; it was a journey into the spiritual of
which only God was capable of winning. Man must thus, not only be baptized with
water alone (which is Joanine and incomplete) but with water and the Holy
Spirit through the sole journey of Christ ,he who was born of God and he who snatched the key of
death and brought about life and liberation through His death, descent into
hell and resurrection. The journey is a Trinitarian mission and man must be
baptised into God in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit to be saved. Such a great mystery. Here let every tone be mute.
Baptism, whether in the Blessed
Virgin, at Jordan or on Calvary, is not just a ritual, it is a journey of God
and with God, and we little can perceive the depth of what it costs God. We
must not take this work of His for granted. Work really costs, even God’s work,
definitely God’s work. For God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but gain eternal
life Jn 3:16.
Mediocrity reigns in our land
because of our reluctance to journey back physically, intellectually and
spiritually to the root of our experience and environment. In Engineering, we
study both Integration and Differentiation to make us holistic designers. Even
as we seek the power of His resurrection, let us accept the fellowship of His
suffering. The latter is not easy for man , but it is the sole investment for
self and posterity, as long as we live in the arena of time and space, we gain
power, peace and freedom through work, energy , torque, friction, source,
suffering, call it anything, but you know what I mean.
One man dared to make the journey
, thus in Christ we already have all sins mitigated and all experiences
leveraged unto His own. The journey back can be tough without Him because we
enter an arena of competition for power, but with Him we have nothing to fear,
believe me, we journey farther, quicker and surer with Him. Those who would not
journey back seek to avoid work, but they end up labouring far more, and they
return empty handed, unlike those who would take the step of faith and journey
with Him. Being shallow, myopic, slothful and ignorant happens through our
reluctance to liberate the root in our individual capacities; the journey which
definitely needs meekness and wisdom, has growth, peace, liberation and
prosperity as an assured destination.
When you arrive at the point of
generating the new without throwing away the old, you arrive at the position of
an elder full of wisdom. Old things breathe; don’t mortgage your future and
that of your offspring.
“Therefore every scribe who is instructed unto
the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder who brings forth
out of his treasure things both new and old.”- Mt: 13:52
Keep and treasure your antiques.
