THIS IS MY ‘RELIGION’

Love has been defined in different ways throughout time. Mahatma Gandhi to me described it as "My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.” Maya Angelou simply describes it as "HATE, it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet." The Apostle Paul’s poetic expression 'If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything but didn't love others, what good would I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it but if I didn't love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.' to me describes love at its perfection. As an activist love to me is manifested through the bravery of a small but powerful movement, consisting of activists and mothers of political prisoners that began at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park, Nairobi, Kenya. The mothers would be continually clobbered by riot police, rushed to All Saints Cathedral for shelter and then back to Freedom Corner. They put everything at risk for the freedom of their children, including their nudity.

See, love is beautiful and amazing! It gives us security in the midst of insecurities, ill emotions, bad health and in our darkest and scariest moments. Love is powerful, whether we want to admit this or not. We are created by and with love because God is love. But then it's hard just to give love without something in return. We manifest this in our work, in our relationships, in friendships and even amid our families. We leave by the motto 'nipe ni kupe' (give me some to get some) and we are die hard believers of this. I mean, even in religion the word grace has been made impossible to understand. Brennan Manning in his book the Ragamuffin Gospel describes today's society pretty well, he calls it one that resonates on slogans such as 'There is no free lunch', 'You get what you deserve', 'You want money? Work for it.', 'Do unto others before they do it unto you.', 'Watch out for welfare lines, the shiftless street people, free hot dogs at school, affluent students with federal loans: it's a con game.' and then there is this one 'By all means give others what they deserve- but not one penny more.' We tend to forget that our lives are centered on love, from family to friends to leadership and even to how we need to relate and treat our environment. We also tend to forget we survive on self- love, which we translate as good self- esteem.

The world, my continent and my country today resembles the leading character in Eugene O'Neill's play The Great God Brown: 'Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why I'm I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colours of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?’ Lack of empathy has given us an unsatisfactory society with an empty quality. It has blinded us and has pushed us into a deep state of loneliness. In my country for instance, the lack of empathy has made us fail both as humanity and as nationalist, we have forgotten where we came from, where we are today and where we are heading. It has cost us our self- esteem and just like a post I once read on Facebook 'we end up voting for a politician simply because of small temporary handouts, because they are from our tribes or because they are good at making jokes at rallies. We end up forgetting year in year out that we, our country and our families still remain at the same position or worse, while they and their families seem to unscrupulously gain more handouts to give us again when they need us. We seem to think in this small box that we also seem to leave in that leads us to become political tissue papers.’ We end up making this seem as our new normal. Carl Sagan in his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark says: ‘One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.’ We end up fearing the word ‘NO’ and are afraid to say no to tribalism, to corruption and to vices.

The church today has also been affected by this and has forgotten that its foundations are based on the golden rule principle. It preaches of ‘moralistic religiosity’ and forgets of the answer Jesus gave to the rich man who inquired what needs to be done to receive eternal life, ‘that there is nothing that any of us can do to inherit the Kingdom but simply receive it like little children.’ (Luke 18). Little children do nothing to receive love from their parents, families and the community they simply get it. Today’s church decries the loudest on how homosexuality is undermining traditional values of society but yet shows less enthusiasm towards the economically crippled African youth- who in 2010, 70 percent of the region’s population was under the age of 30- due to soaring unemployment and corruption or South Korea’s elderly who have been neglected by family and end up in sex work to meet ends meet. Or even the 43.7 million people forcibly displaced worldwide (the highest number in 15 years and equals the entire populations of Colombia or South Korea, or of Scandinavia and Sri Lanka combined) because of climate change, war or persecution. Today’s evangelical faith has been bartered for cozy, comfortable piety. And has been deprived of love based on the golden rule principle.

Leadership on the other hand has turned into a capitalist venture and not love for humanity or even the popular slogan ‘comrades’ power!’ It has become individualistic in nature with a greed that has fashioned a need to accumulate more profit. It has made public and political interests individualistic rather than a collectivist (community) concern and costs Arica an estimated US$ 10 billion every year through corruption (estimates from the World Bank)- this is roughly half of Africa’s 2003 aid receipts. In my country for instance leadership tends to run into the cocoon of ethnicity that has resulted to distrust between different groups, making collective governance and public service provision difficult. It has limited economic, social, cultural and moral growth that has resulted to poverty. It has slowed the implementation of key policies that could spur economic growth in investments and entrepreneurship. Lack of empathy has made the African leadership forget proverbs from our ancestors and even sayings from contemporary African scholars such as Chinua Achebe who in his essay, The Education of a British Protected Child says: ‘We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo always practical put it concretely in their proverb- ‘Onye ji, onye n’ani ji onwe ya’- He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’ But then as it is said the dumb politicians are not the problem. The problem is the dumb people that keep voting for them. So if the ‘Kenyan Project’ is failing, it is we who are failing it and not the other way round.

PJ O’Rourke in his book Parliament of Whores says: ‘it isn’t drugs, not even alcohol that causes fundamentals ills of society. If we are looking for the source of our trouble, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power and money.’ We are not getting younger, or are you? So why not try to give love to yourself, to your community, to your nation and to humanity. Why not take that risk? Hate has costed us many lives and many years that could have been used to promote development and just like Maya Angelou said "HATE, it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet." Let us not allow it to rob us our inner child, our capability to imagine, to dream, to believe, to hope and to grow. I guess I’m that fool who believes that love will give us the freedom that we’ve desired as humanity, as a continent and as a nation. This is my religion.