THE THIRD SERVANT IN THE PARABLE OF TALENTS

At Mass today, the Gospel reading was on the parable of the Talents. I am sure you know the story. One guy was given 5 talents, another 2 and the third was given 1. The master who gave them the talents left everything to their initiative. The first two guys invested their talent profitable but the last guy buried his.

Why on earth did he do that? Well he said it was because he was afraid of the master. He considered the master as a mean gentleman that "reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he did not scatter. How honest that was! How admirable and audacious! He said his mind. And if that is truly the case with his master, we can really lay blames on the poor guy.

Well the guy was wrong in his perception of the master. The story reveals the master as a generous, wise and considerate man. Remember he did not even ask the other two servants to refund him his capital; he gave them but the capital and the profit. This act alone does not potrait someone who reaps where he did not sow.

In reality, friend, man of us are like this third servant in the sense that we have a misguided notion about God. There are not a few people who think God kind of a kill-fun entity out there who places laws against does things that makes us feel good. Some see God as one big mean fellow that punishes us with a guilty conscience when we do some of the things we like to do.

No, that is not God. God is love and whatever he tells us to do, he tells us because he cares about us and because He knows that at the end that won't make us happy. He is calling you and me to us our three Ts: time, treasure and talent . we must not bury them as the third servant erroneously did. We should use them for the betterment of the world, to put a smile in the face of the needy person next door, we should use them to promote justice and right morals wherever we find ourselves. In short, we should us our 3 'T's to build the kingdom of God here on earth. Be sure of this: there is an abundant reward in store for anyone who does this. God will faithfully multiply his or her lot until he or she becomes more or less intoxicated with blessing. I mean it. it's true; I have tried it. May be you can do the same. Try and see. PEACE

THE WORD BECAME FLESH

The openning words of St John's gospel contains this striking phrase: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us". This short eight-worded phrase is the sumary of our Christian faith. We believe in a God who came among us and became part of our history and transformed that history.

This Word of God, who is Jesus is our sole and authentic authority

THE ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE

I look at the world outside and at the other person
Then I look at myself
Sometimes I get sober on the inside
I ask questions
Questions that have always been asked
And which resonate every now and then in my heart
How did it all come about?
Where is it leading us to?

I want life, abundant life
But I can get only just my life span
And I burn inwardly for love untainted
But what comes comes with prizes and reserves
Then I ask where to find the truth in all these
Alas, only this and that opinion before me

I am discouraged and suspicious
Perhaps there is no need to worry
Just eat and drink whatever is present at present
And I say in my anxiety, 'Be free be free my heart
Cut the strings that holds from above'

But from time to time comes the knock on the door
That gets me uneasy with its calls
Afraid to open the door and sit a while in my depression
Somehow I find a way to dull the sound and continue
How long will it be, the subtle longing of my heart

Wake up, sleeping soul
Answer the phone that's been ringing
God is calling you because He love you
Come, He says, to the Spring of Life
And to the Love-Well that never dries
Come to the truth you are searching for
You are tired, come and rest in me.

MY INTRO

I think that there is really no time to waste time. I think no one should think he is too small to make a difference and to affect the world positively... Its a duty, a commandment. God, after He created the world gave us the mandate to look after it and 'dominate' it. That means we should make it a better place.

We are co-creators. God created and we continue to 'create' by means of the gift of reason God gave us. That is how the scientist make discoveries, and the artist makes his arts and the novelist writes his stories, and the preacher preaches his sermon. Everybody is called to do something.

Nobody is allowed to be a spectator. We are all actors. And I wish to make my own meaningful contribution.

GOD IS THE ANSWER TO YOUR YEARNINGS

If you could take out your heart and hold it in your hand to examine, what would you notice as its most foundamental yearings? Perhaps the yearning to live, we yearn for life. Without it no other yearning can be achieved. Perhaps you will also see the yearning to know, we yearn for truth that is why we dont like secrets kept from us. Perhaps you will see also the yearning to be loved, we yearn for love, all of us. how can you satisfy these yearning or better stil, can we really satisfy our yearning so completely. No, because we all die and lose life, we can know as much as we desire, and we are often disappionted in love. Since these yearning can't be met here, and given that they must be met afterall, how do we go about fulfiling our basic heart desires? What it is the answer to our yearnings?

Well, if you need energy, you need to eat food which is the source of energy for all animals. And so, if you need life, you need to go to the source of life, the "I am the Life" and He will give you life everlasting. If you need truth go to the source, the "I am the Truth". If you need need Love, go to the source, to God who is Love. For no one has ever claimed or can ever claim the he is the Way, the Truth, the Life and Love personified but God. God is the answer to all our yearnings.

DEVELOPMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

I was discussing with someone about the present sorry state of many African countries and I will like to share with you some of the gist.We both agreed that Africa (particularly, South Saharan African countries) ought to be more developed that it presently is. What is the cause, Why are we where we are? We did not find the cause in bad leadership or government nor did we attribute it to corruption or as some claim, to exploitation from the West. We went a step lower. The cause, we thought, is that we don't seem to have a concrete and proper substructure to support the superstructure of development. In other words, we lack the thought-foundation upon which we can base our evolution as a people.Take note of the words concrete and proper. By concrete, we meant that despite the fact that we have a so-called African philosophy, it is not well articulated, it is not strong enough. This is what I mean for example, my people say its not good to walk across the legs of someone, and that if by mistake you do it, you have to redo it so as to cancel the effect. Now have been asking what that means and the only answer I get is that it is not just good. Again, they say you don't have to point to a grave with your fingers and when you ask why, they will tell you "we don't just do it". I am sure that all these cultural practices have a basis, they must have a reason. Perhaps they got lost in the stream of oral tradition. So we tend to behave in certain ways without really knowing why, and no one can build anything solid on this kind of thing.

When we said we lacked a properly African thought system, we meant that we seem to see things through Western-coloured lenses. Some of the acclaimed African Philosophers are doing what can be called the Africanization of Western concepts and categories instead of producing our own proper philosophy without being ashamed of using African-made concepts. Take Nnamdi Azikiwe's neo-communialism for example. It is a good concept and may help us if we implement it. But exam it carefully and you will see that it was just an effort to africanise a synthesis of West-born ideas of Communialism and capitalism. Nyerere's "Leaders must be servants" philosophy seems to me like an african reformulation of the Western idea of democracy.

The problem is that we can not go very far with this kind of 'cut and join' philosophy. To develop, we need to discover and properly formulate "what works for us". We can't find this "what works for us" from outside. We need to search from within, from our roots, our origins, from what is(was) truly ours. Take the case of Democracy. Look at how it is working well for France, USA, Russia and other occidental nations. Why is it not working as well for countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Zimbabwe? Because the concept of democracy that we practice does not spring from us. It was adopted, it is foreign and alien. The point is not that we don't have the concept of democracy in our roots and tradition, but that what we are presently doing is not a development of our own proper concept of democracy, but an adoption of something else. And the problem cannot be solved by trying to domesticate the foreign concept, as many African nations are presently doing.

It is true that the power of influence of the West in the present world cannot be overlooked but at the same time we must not allow ourselves be cajoled and intimidated into the thinking that we have to follow their paradigm or appear odd and not-in-fashion. The waves of globalization may be gaining strenght and popularity, but we need the time to stop and see whether it is really leading us forward. Perhaps we might come to the discovery that most of what poses at globalization is actually cultural domination and we need the courage to stand against the waves for our own good.

The solution is, as we thought, that African historians and philosophers should go back to their duties and really mean business. They need to do their work so seriously that they draw attention. They need to be make themselves worth listening to. Let the historians go down as deep as is required into time so as to dig out our heritage and identity as a people. Let them use all the modern means that is available like fossil excavation, carbon dating and studying of ancient sciences and symbols. Let the philosophers too go to work. Let them gather all the concrete data available, let them do thorough reflection, analyzing and synthesis. Let them come out with something, a substructure, a thought basis, a philosophy that we can truly call our own. When this is done, it will be necessary to reform the education system such that from very young ages, children will be initiated into thinking and being Africans. Then we can begin to build the edifice that will make Africa the best place to live life on earth.