UDEME RALPH

      No matter how much we think we know about light, there is always something more to learn, something confounding, something mysterious lurking somewhere.  But the fact that something as common as light can be deemed a mystery is itself something mysterious and baffling.  How can light, which makes things lucid and makes mysteries known, be elusive and mysterious? In all my studies, it appears that light has shed light on all things except itself.  Apparently, science has come up with tentative answers regarding the nature of light, the speed of light, and so forth, but those answers are not enough. We’ve made extensive progress in understanding light, but, it appears our progress is not progressive enough. We’ve harnessed the power of light to explore and solve many problems in our world, but we’ve not yet begun to explore the world of light itself.

We’ve been invaded, Harassed and battered Broken and torn apart By a strange, nameless menace. It started as nothing, And grew into a wild beast, It began like a cool breeze And morphed into a storm The noise keeps rising: The shouts, the loud halleluiahs, The buildings keep doubling, Here and there a new structure Now and then a new signboard Each new day, a new nomenclature, Each season, a new, troubling doctrine. The number keeps swelling, The offerings keep getting fatter, The sermons keep changing To meet the longings of the age. Retreats are on the increase, Concerts at every corner Now and then the globe is toured This moment or the next a soul is won But all things are as were Before the dawn of the hoy ones The world is still the world And men are still men Flesh still feels like flesh And blood still flows like blood. The saved and the unsaved Still tread the path of all flesh.

    I see an abyss the size of eternity, planted in the heart of man, a horrible hollow in the core of mortals. I behold a vast edgeless gap in the midst of beings, a black hole taking rest in the soul of souls. I speak not of a poetic hole, nor of some imagined pit of hell. I speak only of reality, of what I’ve seen and felt: things too real to be unreal.     There is a world without end, em ptiness without limit, in the belly of men. Believe me. A hollow such that eyes have never seen, deep as Satan’ final pit, rich with the stench of all that is rotten and gone.

At her grave we stand and mourn, And think of the days of her youth, When inventions were few, When guns were still new, When prudence was still precious, And men hadn’t yet the heart of beasts Evil has unseated reason, Humanness lost in the abyss Of greed and rotten isms Sound souls have fallen away from the simple byways  Of truth and commonsense Our hands made the guns, Our labs nursed the bombs, And our leaders helped to launch the two wars that marred the world. Once we knew peace and bliss And dreamt of big and lofty things Once we sailed into strange new worlds Vast lands of gold, sugar, and corn. Then the revolution came: Machines worked harder than men, Homes of smoke littered the globe, Cars and trains bade bicycles bye, Houses towered into the sky, And knowledge peaked like a plague. Then the awful warming came: Sings of an impending terrible end, Green house effect; ice melted away Flood and famine, th...

“Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.” Marcus Aurelius      The world is full of noise and distractions. If one is not careful, one can get completely drowned in the noise or swept away by its abundance. Some people, unfortunately, are already getting drowned, and they don’t even appear bothered. They see nothing wrong with their state; they’ve not yet recognized the noise as noise. They see it as something entirely different—as something good and desirable. They label it “civilization” “sociability” “blending” and so forth. Great souls, on the other hand, look at the matter differently. They, too, are friends of civilization and of technological advancement, but they are careful not to get drowned. They love to interact with people, but they wouldn’t let such interactions get in the way of their personal growth. They have simply discovered the power of solitude in a world of turbulence and trivialities.

    Unto us a child is born. Welcome, dear baby. Welcome to earth.     So what next?     Several years await you; several lessons to learn. Your legs must learn to walk; your tongue must learn to talk; your frail little hands must learn to write. After few months, you're able to walk and run around. You've mastered the alphabets and have learned the strange ways of arithmetics. Well done.     What next?     More learning. More schools. More failures and exploits. And now, after years of pensive yearning, days of sitting at home doing nothing, you're in the university. Welcome to the system. Your travail is unspeakable. Already, after just a year, you're talking about stress and frustration and countless sleepless nights. You're eager to graduate, and you desire to do well at all cost, to be among the best. In a blink, your dreams have turned real. Well done. But you're not satisfied.     Your mind no longer dwells on lectu...

The human race is in a serious mess. Here we are, helpless and miserable, battered and bruised, hopeless beyond words. Ages have come and gone but our shackles have lingered. Day by day, our pains surge. Our maladies remain. Hither and thither, evil acts abound. Our best efforts end in misery; our best minds stink. Our technologies, our inventions, all our fine theories and logics, our greatness and grandeur, only pave way for greater despair. Every new policy draws us to the brink of nuclear war. Every path leads to doom. Our heads bloat with ideals; our tongues flourish with promises of paradise and Utopia.  We long to live in the stars, to sail accross galaxies, to rule over the universe. We dream and dream and never stop dreaming. "Better world! Better world!" We cry out. "Change! Change! Change!" we keep crying. But has the world gotten even an inch better? Has anything really changed since the days of Napoleon or Hitler?  We say we're wise and able, but ...

      There is a great channel, an almighty means by which men get almost everything they want in life. That means is called God. And as long as “God” meets these needs, as long as He satisfies these longings in the hearts of people, He remains relevant, needed, sought, and worshiped. And in that case, He becomes something more than an end; He becomes a means, a middleman, some kind of noble pathway for the attainment of nobler heights.       People generally call God lofty names—Almighty, Alpha and Omega, the King of Kings, and so forth. On a philosophical plane, God is often conceived of and portrayed as the noblest, the most perfect, the unmoved mover, the Great one at the Peak of being. All these point to one thing—the supremacy of God. People, believers especially, have the trite tendency to refer to God as their “all in all,” and to make allusions to self-abnegation, self denial and other things of that sort. But deep within, ...

On a cold and rainy night, Walter, a world-weary thinker stayed up to write a short story about a writer. At first, the idea seemed absurd. Even so, his obsession with absurdities made it desirable.   Before him was a blank sheet of paper, time-yellowed, resting somberly on his reading desk. The light from his lamp was growing dimmer and dimmer; but he had to write. He had learned to exploit his growing sleeplessness by writing—writing anything. He named his protagonist “Okoro” and plunged immediately into the burden of whys, how, where, when, and who did what. At first, his mind was blank, blanker than the paper before him. He knew nothing about this creation of his, other than this: that he was a writer, with a name like that of a typical village chief. He was not very good at details, especially at faces, and heights, and other things of that sort. He was not actually a writer, so to speak. He was a thinker, a master of the abstract, the metaphysical, and of countless exi...

        There is a way, lofty and noble, with a gate so wide and tempting. And many are there, strolling, trotting, running joyfully, heading steadily towards doom. The world has finally found this way; lo, humanity has reached the gate, and there we linger, glad and thankful, that at last we've found home. But this is no home. This is misery, and in it we keep wallowing, day after day.        Thinking beings: so we are called. Homo sapiens. Wise beings in exalted attires, builders of sky scrapers, writers of books, builders of softwares, explorers of space and deep space. Our schools keep swelling, with more and more minds coming to learn, libraries filled to an overflow. Computer has come and knowledge has surged; the internet has arrived, and humanity has advanced. And so, our pride grows, our respect for sacred things wane, our regard for the spiritual and ancient goes faint.        In the days of old, divorce, to us, w...

        Imah was unusually happy that morning. Happiness was not a luxury she possessed: it seldom crossed her path. She had found solace in the busyness that work offered.         She came to the camp four years ago, at the age of sixteen. She had just started form three--senior school--when the rebels invaded her village. That terrible afternoon, she was in school, quietly listening to a long talk from her Government teacher about the efforts of the nationalist towards the attainment of Independence, when she heard a very deafening sound, ‘Kaboom’ followed by a rising cloud of dark smoke that enveloped everywhere.        “It’s an air raid!!! Air raid!” a voice bawled, as dozens of military choppers began to drop explosives into the hapless town. The air darkened. People ran in different directions, as though running was the ultimate cure.  Imah and other members of her class  sallie...

                                                            Gone are the good ancient days when the world was peaceful and men were like angels. When pure souls still died in the cross for the sake of filthy millions. Who would stoop that low today? Those were the days of obedience, and of submission, when God was God indeed in the eyes of all. The climate, then, was still full of life; and we went about business, led by the light cast on our paths by ancient peoples. Those were the days of law and order, when justice had not taken up the cloak of injustice.       Men with seemingly higher minds strangled the order. They stepped on sacred grounds; they wrote books, and led many astray. Marx, ...