Physical labour leaves me weary, drains my energy and weaves patterns and thoughts of complacency into my mind. Oh, the act of physical labour is pure in itself...but now I find myself running dry and parched for something more...something I have tasted before...that is refreshing. It is not Gatorade.

I strain away from night till dawn, callused hands blistered with new blisters underneath the old. As I do this, I recall a verse that says “Sleep for the labourer is sweet, whether he eats much or little. The abundance of a rich man permits him no rest.”(Ecclesiastes 5:12) I am not a rich man by any means, and yet my sleep fills me with the want for nothing more than continual sleep. I am deeply tired...while awake I feel as if I am nothing more than a body, mindless, a zombie created by modern day Caesars to work... pay bills and keep the market steady on its feet.

It seems my mop of gold and bucket full of dreams has not kept me as fulfilled as it has kept the hallways clean.

When the weekend comes, I feel the hassle of the steady week quieting down, and I am filled with thoughts and hopes of a short amount of time for rest. A time when my bones can heal, my mind can become clear and my blood can slow down. Once the weekend is done, I am filled with no rest...only just as worn as I was at the end of the week. I blame nothing except my own fault...considering the text “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and find some rest.” (Mark 6:31)

It has been long, too long, since I have rested in Jesus. My spiritual fruits have turned into dust and rot, while the worms feed. I have let myself become blind by the physical labour to produce crops of money for the tax collectors and Caesars of this land and now I find myself going hungry within my spirit...for I have not laboured spiritually. I have not planted seeds. I wonder what I should I do next? Forgetting I have already been shown. It is a different kind of labour, the kind that rejuvenates and quenches the spirit...the labour of love. The simplest form of labour where your hands and heart combine together, the kind of labour that produces inner rest. Could this be part of the reason which keeps me tired, with hollow eyes, insatiable hunger and thirst?

Either way, I have been living for myself, trying to either get ahead or at least stay neutral for too long. Now is time to start labouring...start planting seeds, producing crops and sharing them, before this inner winter freezes my heart. May life beat within is once again.

If the Church is my mother.

If the church is my mother, then I have been her child. For through my father’s seeds and her womb, I have been raised to life from the dead many times.

My mother has raised my spirit; I have suckled at her breast and found nourishment. She has given me knowledge and showed me the inner crevices of my father’s grand design. In my childhood, I have found myself often rooted in the comfort of her reassurance and words of hope, as she has read me bedtime stories to help me grow and gain understanding.

Though at times I have strayed, I have always found my way home, along the paths encumbered with jagged edges, temptations and inner torment, to my mother. Her heart beats within mine.

Now I have grown and with new eyes do I see her truly in her form. A form of beauty, devoured by sub-virtue. My childhood ignorance is washed away and I have gained a clarity which I cannot shake.

My mother has been exploited...her beauty tainted while my father waits for her to rise from the dead. My mother has been a prostitute, swaying and shifting in her morals, changing and selling herself to the masses while the money collected by fast talking, slick tongued pimps is spent on architectural cosmetics that she does not need. Though she grows larger, more golden and more pleasing and welcoming to the eye, these cosmetics represent nothing of the nourishment fed to me as a child.

My mother has been...a murderer. In her name cultures have been wiped away, blood spilled from men, women and children who never had a chance to feel the warmth with which she coddled me. People have then willingly committed themselves to death to uphold her virtue, yet she still sells herself to strangers.

My mother’s children, she has turned away, left without a home. While in her sanctuary are seated rigid, straight faced slaves of self righteousness, in all their Sunday ornamental draperies of the social hierarchy, her poor, homeless, underdressed, malnourished and heartbroken walk by her doors, afraid to walk inside for fear of the judgement they would receive. Not from her or the father, but from their brothers and sisters in the great ordeal who are seated inside.

I have become disillusioned in my age...ashamed of what my mother has become. What she has been. I have been tempted to never again return home, to sift through the unstable sands of this world in search of a new womb form which to be born again...but...I still recall my mother’s tenderness. I remember her real beauty. I cannot leave her; I will not abandon her, for nothing can come of that. It would bring no changes except to aid in distancing me from my father as well. What kind of child would I be?

Even in all of my others sub-virtuous grievances ...the seeds of her and my father have been planted, grown and sent out to bring his light into the darkness. Remembering childhood days of nourishment and comfort, her children have clothed the cold and naked. They have put food into the mouths of the starving; they have broken chains of the oppressed. They have shared visions of unity and peace of our fathers attributes with the minds of the blinded and corrupted. These children have stood against the darkness, gathered with multitudes to make changes to wrongs and injustices. It has been beautiful.

Even in her impurities, she has given hope to the fearful and lost. Many have sinned in her name, but many have shared her warmth and nourishment, bringing home many who are lost.

In hope that she will one day reunite with her lost and abandoned, to regain her true form, I will always find my way home to mother. Those of you who have turned away in disgust, who have lost hope in her,  do not leave with anger in your heart...do not let the disillusion keep you blind to what she has taught you...come home, reclaim her and one day she will be free.

I often find my sincerest moments of insight and peace happen while fixed beneath a blanket of dark skies, luminescent with celestial balls of plasma, inspiring a deep...very deep peace within me. This is the time when my thoughts are most prominent, when the overpowering winds of the world become silent and whispers of another greater force penetrate with revelations. It’s no wonder, and I always enjoy it.

As I stood there once again, breathing in the fire projected by these beacons of light, I was reminded of the very fragility of my form. The very weariness of my human nature. I was reminded how brief my existence as a speck of dust in this universal element is. All of us.

I am not the end all-be all...my thoughts, my words, my very existence. You are not the end all-be all, your friends, family, none of them are the end all-be all. Yet we idolize our humanity, we idolize our words, our intelligence, our own force we have projected throughout history. We are vain, and we seem to regard ourselves as Gods on this planet. It isn’t hard to understand why we revere ourselves, why we have become our own Gods.

Genesis-27:“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

We are creatures of power, of intelligence. If we are created in God’s image, it is not hard to see it. We have the power to create, to give life, to destroy and take life away. In our conquest to expand ourselves we have created architectural feats that stand out as our own marks of being against nature...skyscrapers reaching towards the heavens. With our intellect we have made medical breakthroughs, cures for diseases, artificial limbs, we are able to transplant organs into a dying body to return life to it once again. And with all these feats humanity has accomplished, it is no wonder we think of ourselves as Gods.

But for all these feats, I see a world separated by our own hunger for more power, given to greed. I see us as an entire race not only trying to define ourselves as a whole, but for the most part, as individual beings, apart from this entire race. American money printed with the words “In God We Trust”...and that is the power we shift our focus to...money. People are poor and starving, addicted, unable to buy these miracle medicines we make, and we...are...not...Gods.

But, there is a hope. There is opportunity. Whether you believe the story of Jesus to be literal facts, or maybe you are considering it to be teachings of nothing more but wisdom and philosophy...there is new life to be given to us by it. We will never be Gods, but maybe, if we could take those teachings of compassion, unity, forgiveness, the ability to rise from the death of this life; maybe if we could replace our hearts of stone with hearts of spirit and flesh. If we could replace our hearts with a heart like that of Jesus...of a willingness to put people before our devolutionary rise to more power...we still will never reach omnipotence, but we could be angels.

Part One: Spiritual Fruits

“A tree can only be identified by the fruit it produces. Much in the same way, a Christian is only identified by the fruits they produce.” Rev. Anthony Kwaw

Spiritual fruits...fruits of the spirit. We, humble physical creations, have a unique ability...an opportunity to become spiritual/physical reflections of Gods attributes. The fruits of the spirit are not just ideals manifesting naturally in humanity...but a glimpse of how God manifests in us.

Galatians 5, 22-23“22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law”

These ideals are not something produced by man, but seeds planted in us by the grand being, and we have two choices: to either nurture these God-like attributes or else to ignore them and let them slowly rot. I wish to turn my spiritual fruits into wines and jellies to share in abundance.

Part Two: Light Confirms My Reality

 “I found a home-or a hole in the ground, as you will. Now don’t jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a “hole” it is damp and cold like a grave; Mine is a warm hole; I say all this only to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I’m invisible and live in a hole, I am dead; My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light; Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form” ~Ralph Ellison

Often while in the midst of people and sounds and everything that combines into some loud overpowering white noise in the world, I tend to leave my body and enter a different place. I become disconnected and drift away into my thoughts...sometimes I find light there, and sometimes I do not. Sometimes I merely wait for something or someone to pull me back and give concrete to my feet. But sometimes...just sometimes...I do find that light. In prayer, in people, in song and worship...in spiritual unity...and sometimes when I find that light, and it gives birth to my form...I can then see just how dark my form really is.