Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Quote of the Day

Mazi  Chidi Anthony Opara,

We revisit this thread once more, again!

 One God one universal religion! No?

Well then that's where culture comes in and who is better at "contextualisation" than the Catholics?

You say that "Igbo Catholics should go back to the worship ways of their forefathers"

Perhaps they should revert to doing the Holy Communion with cassava bread and palm wine?

At least then you will not undergo something like The trial of Socrates – for teaching a foreign philosophy!

Mazi Chidi Anthony Opara: Who was it that said

"We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."?

Wordsworth was himself a pantheist  as are many Swedes I know,  although in all my acquaintance with  W's poetry as introduced by my English master at secondary school,  Mr. Bankole Thompson – back in 1965 -  nowhere do I find  him venerating man-made art as objects of worship or deification –  as in Hindu and Sufi pantheism, he saw in created nature a spirit that pervades all things: Tintern Abbey (lines 85 – 134):

"Not for this

      Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts

      Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,

      Abundant recompence. For I have learned

      To look on nature, not as in the hour

      Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes                    90

      The still, sad music of humanity,

      Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

      To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

      A presence that disturbs me with the joy

      Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

      Of something far more deeply interfused,

      Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

      And the round ocean and the living air,

      And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

      A motion and a spirit, that impels                             100

      All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

      And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

      A lover of the meadows and the woods,

      And mountains; and of all that we behold

      From this green earth; of all the mighty world

      Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,

      And what perceive; well pleased to recognise

      In nature and the language of the sense,

      The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

      The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul                  110

      Of all my moral being.

                              Nor perchance,

      If I were not thus taught, should I the more

      Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

      For thou art with me here upon the banks

      Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,

      My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch

      The language of my former heart, and read

      My former pleasures in the shooting lights

      Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while

      May I behold in thee what I was once,                          120

      My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,

      Knowing that Nature never did betray

      The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,

      Through all the years of this our life, to lead

      From joy to joy: for she can so inform

      The mind that is within us, so impress

      With quietness and beauty, and so feed

      With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

      Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

      Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all                    130

      The dreary intercourse of daily life,

      Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

      Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold

      Is full of blessings."

RE- the madness - again, WW could not have been talking about all poets, although in your case, theologically speaking from a strictly Christian and I should add a strictly Islamic point of view when you say "Igbo Catholics should go back to the worship ways of their forefathers" – this is  the sort of mad-ness that could be surely playing into the hands of mwalimu the strictly monotheist Boko Haram theologians who assert that the one sin that Allah subhan't'ala does not tolerate or forgive is that of Shirk.

 I arrived at my conclusion after following this story : At last Fashola begs Igbos over Deportation Saga |  and in seeking more information about the "Aka Ikenga"  which I thought must be connected to the music group -  I arrived at  this Ikenga which has considerably elevated the Igbo's artistic status when it comes to woodcarving. I didn't know that Igbos were any good at wood.

In my opinion what is needed is a certain generosity of spirit, of the type that our Brother Wole Soyinka ascribes to Kofi Awonoor when he eulogises him thus:

" Kofi Awoonor was a passionate African, that is, he gave primacy of place to values derived from his Ewe heritage.  That, in turn, means that he was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of ecumenism towards other systems of belief and cultural usages – this being the scriptural ethos that permeates belief practices of most of this continent."

The other Bard opined :

"What custom wills, in all things should we do't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heapt
For truth to o'er-peer."

The idea of sacrifice is so intrinsic to e.g. Yoruba religion - as I have gleaned from this single source in  my possession: J.Omosade Awolalu: Yoruba Beliefs & Sacrificial Rites – I guess that there's a similar practice of sacrifice among the Igbo  - and from there to the grand conception about " the lamb of God"  - is within reach of those who practise sacrifice – and as a former Biafra child soldier told me  - the idea that believing in " the lamb of God"  could absolve him of even the most heinous sins, was a winning argument!  So the salvational theology of Roman Catholicism is not such a foreign religion after all

So you see dear Chidi, I have no objection to your advocating that all the Igbos revert to Chukwu – assuming that you ever left him. It's possible that Igbos were born Catholics - not being a missionary boy myself, who am I to object?

However since it was the Igbos that nearly drowned me by "full-immersion" baptism" in that river in Umuahia in 1981 - we should hope that they still do not indulge in such practices   that could endanger the Igbo species and engender pieces such as "Death by Water"  Wasn't  Eliot himself an Anglo Catholic ?

RE- Boko Haram: Investigating the latest claims about their leader's resurrection – at least on video. Well I shouldn't be too surprised if it turns out the Nigerian militray hit the wrong man and he's still alive. A dear friend now late, Teju Dedoye of Ondo wrote a paper on a resurrection that took place in Yoruba. He talked about it, we discussed resurrection mostly in the abstract, and unfortunately I didn't read the paper up to the time he left for Nigeria. He has now joined the ancestors....

Chidi - btw - you know

 I'm beginning to warm to two guys: 

Pope Francis and Chika Oyeani 

 Not because the latter has plenty of money

And I don't have any

 But because in the Sun Times he always has

 A naughty story....

See you soon (by which I mean I'll be in Dallas 2^nd week of October and in Owerri 2nd week of November)

Sincerely,

We Sweden

 

 

 

On Monday, 10 June 2013 21:32:48 UTC+2, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:

"For Chidi Anthony Opara who says  that "with God all things are
possible",
the past and the future should fuse into a continuum in which the
future
should recede into the past, as when he wishes that  "Igbo Catholics
should
go back to the worship ways of their forefathers". That would be
future
progress...."
-------Mazi Cornelius

Mazi,
That would be cultural re-awakening.

CAO.

On Jun 10, 3:08 pm, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>  The past can be easily changed from fact to fiction as has been done byrevisionists<http://www.google.co.uk/#gs_rn=16&gs_ri=psy-ab&suggest=p&cp=11&gs_id=...>
> who say that  the Holocaust  never happened. The revisionists could come up
> with similar crap that the Atlantic Slave Trade never happened - especially
> now that Kunta Kinte is gone - just as the generation of Holocaust
> survivors will not last forever (thinking of Lord Anunoby Ogugua and
> "eternal salvation" which for certainty's sake would also be a nice thing
> to have - a reassuring taste of eternity, starting with something like a
> few thousand years of  permanent youth in the here and now and not just in
> the future, eternal virgin houris waiting for the jihadists and
> suicide-bombers in the Islamic heaven.
>
> The past can also be changed by pathalogical liars for the purpose of
> self-aggrandisement...
>
> For Chidi Anthony Opara who says  that "with God all things are possible",
> the past and the future should fuse into a continuum in which the future
> should recede into the past, as when he wishes that  "Igbo Catholics should
> go back to the worship ways of their forefathers". That would be future
> progress....
>
> The past can also be changed, from poetry to prose.
>
> Present Tense<https://www.google.se/search?q=James+Carter+:+Present+Tense&client=fi...>( I gave this CD to Brother Harvey Cropper last year and was happy to  see
> him rave about James Carter !)
>
> Past tense
>
> Future Tense<http://www.google.co.uk/#tbm=bks&sclient=psy-ab&q=Jonathan+Sacks+:+Fu...>
>
> Speaking about  future possibilities be sometimes frightening , such as
> what you can read in A Vision of the Future<https://plus.google.com/114250946512808775436/posts/QmX1vq2P9uw>
>
> http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, 10 June 2013 14:35:52 UTC+2, shina7...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > Or yet:
>
> > "The past and the future are subject to wilful transgression."
>
> > Adeshina Afolayan
> > Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
> > ------------------------------
> > *From: * kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu <javascript:>>
> > *Sender: * usaafric...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>
> > *Date: *Mon, 10 Jun 2013 07:24:25 -0500
> > *To: *<usaafric...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>>
> > *ReplyTo: * usaafric...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>
> > *Subject: *Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Quote of the Day
>
> > can we alter the quotes, eugene?
> > here's mine:
> > "The past can always be changed, but the future remains immutable"
> > ken
>
> > On 6/10/13 12:34 AM, EUGENE NWOSU wrote:
>
> > *"The past cannot be changed.  The future is yet in your power."* – Mary
> > Pickford (1893 – 1979)
>
> > *With compliments: *http://optimaledge.net/#/the-secret/4574222007
> >  Check out the "Secret behind the Secret" @
> >http://optimaledge.net/#/the-secret/4574222007
> >  --
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> > faculty excellence advocate
> > distinguished professor of english
> > michigan state university
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