AN ESSAY ABOUT THE JOURNEY BACK

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.