Catechism

I wake up in the morning quite undecided whether to wake up at all or sing along Bruno Mars... today I don’t feel do anything… but the rush in the house cannot allow me such luxury especially that they are incessantly asking the million dollar question “You are not going to church?” in turns as if they had convened and conspired to rouse my guilty conscience.

Maybe guilt does get me off the bed as I remember the number of times God has bailed me out, honestly counting my blessings would be futile just like counting the hair on my head so I let the Almighty do that for me in a book of life that would hopefully be on my side on judgment day.

So I awake and drag my feet I simply don’t care if I’ll be late or not as long as I’ve gone to church to appease my conscience, it’s the only earthly power I answer to.

On the way I meet a fellow I was with last evening at a mama Pima and he is ecstatic. His excitement is stemming from yesterdays escapades and he thanks God for meeting a fellow who shared the devilish communion probably more than the faithful am going to join in a bit.

We decide to poke a nose at mama pima and somehow I abandon the conscience that I know will question me later, well even judgment is not today anyway, I might make up later by doing something good as atonement like Kenya for Kenyans or something.

At Mama Pima’s we are shocked to find that the booze is surprisingly over! What? maize mill at Unga limited might be exhausted and that would never  raise my hairs, petroleum might run dry and I will walk without much ado, but changaa! How is it even possible for changaa to run out? I make quick inferences maybe my God this time really is serious on getting me to his Christian house.

“Alright I admit, I m coming father,” I resolve and walk late to church. I do not even attempt to go in and sit at benches outside the old church and start to contemplate time looking around for young girls and admiring God’s creation at his house, befitting ;-}

I know that majority of young men have turned the house of God into a hunting ground for potential wives and girlfriends. But by God where are young people. This trend is scary honestly where do we all go to on Sunday coz we are neither too many at mama Pima anyway.

I start to rouse my philosophy and find out why we are all fleeing the church?  One I think up that maybe the church is too rigid and the TV has practically taken over with church services over. They run morning shows with youth dancing lingala and mentioning God in one verse of the whole song and call it that gospel. They pervert every conservative dogma and retain very little element of worship. They forget that the devil was an angel and he decided Gods tyranny was not going down his throat no more.

That he fought his angels because he thought he was smart enough to reject the ways of God as archaic as the beginning and it was high time they moved furniture around. That martin Luther King saw the Catholic Church as a backward conservatism and in seeking to change it he broke it into a million shards. And that what they are doing is actually the same. Secularizing religion is just not right and it cannot find justification. If you cannot stand the heat join me at Mama Pima and do not come to sell doves at my father’s temple collecting offering via M-Pesa!

Everybody around me suddenly stand up. Am jolted back to the mass service, I say my prayers murmuring to a God who hears even the thoughts unvoiced. And they say the reading. My favourite.

The rich man with talents that he gives to his three servants; immediately I take defenses in finding philosophies to counter the preachers coming sermon. And I smile wryly when the third servant says tells his master on his face that he is a goddamn capitalist, gathering where he has not scattered and harvesting where he has not sowed. I think of Caliban cursing Prospero; about insulting patronized benevolence.

And when the preacher starts his sermon I start my arguments; when he encourages people to make the most of their talents all I can think of is that we should struggle with our lives so the government and some Multinational company gets paid. I want him to teach us to be the third servant and take all the money they delude us with and bury it. Fuck the banks, fuck the multinationals and fuck the government and the church for pacifying us telling us to work our backs out so the villains can continue investing in us so we earn them profits.

I remember that was why I left the church in the first place. I could not take the animosity anymore. Holding constant arguments in my heart with the preacher that I left there angry and emptier than I ever went there. And in my exhaustion I gave up and stopped going. I could never find the element that religion is supposed to inject in my essence. I abandoned myself to the idea of god without needing a communion with people who professed a similar maker but held very different perspectives of everything in life.

But then he also taught maybe in his seeking relevance maybe unconsciously that we ought to be self reliant. That we should go back and be subsistence. He asked the congregation if they had their own maize would Unga limited strangle them in a chokehold. If we walked to the banks of Indus River with Gandhi would we need the British to make us Kay salt or if we spun yarn like Gandhi would we need to be slaves of consumerism buying second hand Louis Vitton, Gucci, Prada dumped in our ‘free’ markets.

Wait so he could also go against the pyramid his position espoused. I wanted to ask him is we could pray at home would we need to come here pay for his phone gas and light bills in the name of offering to God?

But I did not as I have never but saw the power the churches wielded in Africa and I wrote this catechism to churches in the homeland. You need to know where your allegiance lies. Between God and his people or your church and its politics. Find the renaissance of civil war preachers in America; own their religion and save the souls in the homeland. Take a catechism of reality of the homeland and without fear like the knees of Rev. Nzioka as the police brought down their clubs; teach not what they taught you but what you see every day. Catechism.