Dear Kin Spirit — Oma's Garden

*Tripod drum Abiriba, Image by G.I Jones*

This series of letters was first published on medium in December of 2021, where it's still available and you can listen to its audio format as well. We've published them on this blog just so they can be available as a one pager, all in one post.

Dear Kin Spirit, also happens to be the title of a poetry collection we are currently working on, for those who are familiar with that dream and wondering, it just felt right to give that title to this post as things unfold. Enjoy.

twelve letters to the ungodly ones — introductory note {01 : 11 : 2021}

these letters will only make sense to those it’s supposed to make sense to. if they do not make sense to you, please, turn away from them, you will find what you need elsewhere, we cannot assure you but we hope you do.

the letters do not have titles for this simple reason - i have had to title so many things in the last couple of months and even now, that i do not have anymore titles to spare. it’s not that i cannot, it’s that i will not. i hope that doesn’t matter too much with you.

my wish for you as you read each letter is that you encounter something that resonates; may you encounter yourself, may you encounter god.

letter 1 — to the ungodly ones.

dear ungodly one,

the state in which i write this letter would be referred to in my mother’s village as being possessed. i am currently in a state of being “possessed” as i write this, in fact i cannot tell you what part of my body i am currently occupying, maybe my hands and teeth.

do you wonder like i do what it is that is so bad about being “possessed” that humans resist it so much?, i do and maybe i understand the resistance because if there’s anything spirits choose to miscomprehend it’s boundaries, you give them a line and they cross ten. they lobby for authority in your body; may the most persistent spirit win.

in my case, i have chosen to make more room to the divine which really means the divine is in charge in this body.

we create a binary when we say there is the diabolic and there is the divine, but you know humans and their attachment to binaries, it makes them feel safe in unsafety. the thing is there is truly just the divine, everything else including the diabolic is secondary or as i prefer to put it - consequent.

that brings me to consequences, do you understand that consequences are a state of your being? not just a condition or a result, a state of your being. the sooner you accept this, (you do not have to understand it) the better for all of us. then we can have less violent and dramatic reactions to your simply existing as human.

we belong to the divine, everything else we become or are becoming is a consequence.

letter 2 — to the ungodly ones.

no weapon formed against you shall prosper.

i recall the question my arabic tutor always brought up before starting any session, he would make it feel unanswerable to my young mind — who is the 'you' in you that makes you the 'you' that you are? i say it is — God, the source of all things.

we misunderstand this commandment — no weapon formed against you shall prosper - because we think that the prosperity it refers to is ours, instead of God’s. as for me i am convinced that God’s prosperity can be very different from what we project as ours, sometimes as a result of misalignment, other times as a result of simply existing in different realities.

in fact most of the weapons that have been formed against us have prospered so many times, we start to say things like it is for our good. oh my dear it is okay to negotiate with existence by accepting defeat sometimes. but what do you do after that? you rise and move in power — move in function and discovery of 'you' , God.

what do you think about faith, is it necessary for our existence or is it a necessity as a result of our existence? i say both things are the same thing.

what do you say?

letter 3 — to the ungodly ones.

dear ungodly one,

the reason i refer to you as ungodly is because the world refers to you as that. we can reclaim or borrow language when it is available, that does not mean we believe in it’s projected meaning.

you are as a matter of essence the opposite, you are - godly - a god - of god.

the world tends to bend language to adjudge those things they cannot understand or box in. maybe that’s okay or not, but it’s not the point of this letter.

existing as spirit (first) without engaging with spirit while in this world is self sabotage.

a praying spirit will be aware. a praying spirit is a powerful spirit. a praying spirit is an active god.

it's important, very important as a spirit, any spirit, to be in constant communication with source. this is an effective way to survive, this consistent communication is what i am referring to as prayer.

i do not claim to be anything other than a being trying to be. i can tell you from personal experience that everytime i have been out of consistent communication with God while existing as spirit (first) in this world, i have failed to exist successfully.

trials and tribulations or as holy texts refer to them - weapons of warfare which are not carnal seem to prevail and abound. but there is a formula to us too prevailing, and that formula rests somewhere within our Koinonia with ourselves and with our God. there is a realm above all realms which we can function from but not without putting in the work of actively abiding.

you cannot be spirit and not be spirit first, it will not work. it is either you are flesh and bones or you are abiding in flesh and bones, choose your weakness or choose your strength.

knowledge is power but power is also power. so i ask you, who do you say you are? spirit or flesh?

whichever. you must act accordingly. make up your mind.

letter 4 — to the ungodly ones.

both of my mother’s, biological and legally adopted, were religious. they were what would be referred to as staunch catholics.

i think religions are blasphemous, but this is just what i think, doesn't mean it's right.

religions try to tell us that God is a certain way, that God is a particular thing or a particular person, or that God can only be experienced through a specific means.

what could be more blasphemous than this thing - religion, claiming to be the only way to make an unknown mighty force known to us. i find it ridiculous and utterly malignant that anyone would dare make doctrines out of outward appearances or occurrences as opposed to leading people inwards. such insanity, yet those of us who refuse to conform are tagged as the insane ones.

i say fuck them, all.

regardless, i respect them, yes yes i pay them my respect because they’re also evidence of several attempts to find and make meaning out of this life that we have come to live. doesn’t make them any less malignant though.

if i had to answer the question of what my religion is i would say - my religion is God, yes God.

humans are so conflicted by their mortality that anything that appears to have a likeness to immortality or presents itself as proven immortal drives them to worship. and that’s okay in it’s own way, as long as the belief stays benign. but has there ever been such a thing ? belief that stays benign.

anyway, my message for you in this letter is that — God loves you. truly and wholly, God loves you. God’s judgement does not come out of a place of spite or wrath like you have probably been taught. no, it comes from a place of love, LOVE. think about it, infinite love ever present to guide you and surround you (protect you). God loves you. you are loved.

what is your religion? whatever it is, i hope it is rooted in love. and whatever it is not, wherever your beliefs go to rest, i hope they are sprout out of love.

as the ancient people would say — SELAH.

letter 5 — to the ungodly ones.

dear nwachukwu,

‘nwachukwu’ in my mother tongue means ‘child of God’.

yes, we too are children of God. God is responsible for us, that parenthood of the divine is our birthright.

i spoke about religion, and whatever belief we carry being rooted in love in the last letter. well God is love, and from what some of the holy texts tell us we can gather that: love is patient, love is kind. love does not envy, love does not boast, love is not proud. love does not dishonour others, love is not self-seeking, love is not easily angered, love keeps no record of wrongs. love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. love never fails. love is eternal. love is divine.

so, tell me, who taught you the opposite - that God is somehow angry at you, that God keeps records of your wrongs, that God has turned it’s face away from you. who taught you those false lessons?

love is here, ever present to protect you. this love is within each one of us, a thousand of us, ten thousand of us, we have it abiding within us. we hold this love. we carry this love. we embody this love. we can wear this love, and we too can become this love, if we pay attention to it.

i don’t know about you, but this is how i want to experience love, without all the things humans have attached to it overtime. naked without shackles of fleshly limitations, without doubts, i want to be able to give and receive this kind of love. it’s available to all of us.

the impossible is accessible and available to us. the impossible is a resource within our reach, from our birthright.

remember i said, we too are children of the divine. that parenthood is our birthright, we bear the name, we are gods.

act accordingly.

letter 6 — to the ungodly ones.

dear,

i think of imagination as a measure of reality. my belief is - if you can imagine a thing then it becomes possible. imagination is an active measure of a possible existence in a reality, it can be used to pull what should be to become what is.

if we really get into the discourse on the power of your imagination, then I could go on about how it’s really in actuality pulling what is into what should be. but let’s not complicate things, the english language can get dismissive, suppressive and confusing very quick and one of my goals with this letter is not to complicate things.

on a personal note, memory has never really been my finest tool, mostly because my brain seems to be wired to not hold it and over the years i have intentionally trained my mind to not keep an archive of it. as much as we need our memories of things, when stored actively in our consciousness they can become huge hindrances to our thriving in this realm of existence.

not all resources are good, sometimes especially depending on how they are mined. memory has always been a tricky resource for me, it’s not that i forget things, it’s that i bury (i do not keep them in my conscious, sometimes in my subconscious yes, but these days any memory older than a couple of months stays mostly in my unconscious). what that translates to is that i can also unbury them whenever i want, that is if i find a way to dig them out of my unconscious, the new challenge would then be in what state i would find it - rotten, discombobulated or still solid like ancient bones.

what would my point of sharing all of this (which could be presumed to be considerably strange to some of you) with you in this letter be? to inform you; and for some of you remind you that divine intelligence abides within you, like i said in one of my letters — you are of the divine, and you must begin to act accordingly.

to function powerfully as the divine we may have to apply some methods which require shedding human barriers we have claimed as ours overtime, this is where my reference to memory comes in, what use do you have of a memory that bears you no good fruits?, we have to learn to exist under one of the divine laws which is — the law of forgiveness; especially of oneself. that law demands that you forget things (actively) and this could simply mean — setting a memory aside; giving up the mental work of reciting limiting thought patterns in your mind and switching to a divine model of grace — actively thinking and reflecting on only those things that edify your existence.

as i was saying about the power of your imagination at the beginning of this letter, use that power (it’s gift) to your advantage; there is no loss in the divine; you are of the divine; all things in your life work out with one assignment — your good. take that word, believe it, lean into it (the divine) and thrive.

letter 7 — to the ungodly ones

the number seven seems to be one of the “cool kids" of numbers, so i’m a typical fan of course. i like it especially because it’s an odd number yet so ordinary, all at the same time. you can understand then why it’s difficult for me not to notice that this is my seventh letter to y’all.

i have experienced grief in my life in such a way that seems so odd yet so ordinary. the way loss was unrolled in my life has kept me up on many nights, i’ve lost count of how often my chest would clench itself from trying to (not) feel the pain of being unable to reach loved ones in those odd yet ordinary very human moments when you need them. there’s a very sure reason why family is the most important unit of any society, it’s not one of those coincidental structures that exist within the human plane, no, it’s a very intentional conclusion of the universe, or at least that’s what i believe.

i’m not going to make a lot of sense in this letter and maybe that’s the point of this one, to not make a lot of sense and that too is okay. a lot of things happen in our world that do not make sense at all and nothing stops to try to understand or in many cases try to be conscientious about those things. what’s the popular saying “time waits for no one" such truth, the kind of truth i have taught myself to not always believe or accept. i am not “no one" or “everyone” or “people”, whatever those phrases that are used to capture human ordinariness are, i am not those things. if anything my life has been used as a drawing board over and over again to illustrate that reality to me.

there are certain ordinary things i enjoy deeply; like eating my meal in silence and with complete focus, reading a good book, talking a walk, hanging out with friends to share a good conversation over coffee or a phone call e.t.c things like that. there are also certain odd things i enjoy thoroughly as well; like filling up empty blank stripeless journal pages with words, decoding métaphysical technology languages, pausing at 3am/pm — 6am/pm — 9am/pm — 12am/pm to lift an intention or prayer inwards through my spirit etc. my life is an unbalanced mix of ordinary and odd things.

i was going about my day casually at the start of the month of November when i felt an instruction deliver itself into what i call my intuition box, leaving a task for me to write twelve letters to the ungodly ones and share them online by or before christmas as an offering of some sort. whatever it translates to i do not know the why of it and i’m not concerned about that one bit, all i know is i have an assignment to do and i am doing it. this has not always been my way to respond to things like this that show up in my intuition box, i am practising non resistance more and more so i suppose we can call this a result of that practice.

life comes at all of us fast, in different ways and forms, but my new thing is to also start to come back at life fast, not even as a response or reaction , no. more instead, as one in control rather than one being controlled. it’s possible to be in charge. this is not a drill. impossible things are possible to those who lean into belief (faith).

i told you this letter is not supposed to make a lot of sense, yet my intention is that you find it useful in some ways regardless.

i know what i am. i have never not known, i have just chosen in different phases of my life whether out of resistance or humaneness or a sense of (ir)responsibility to people places and things to not pay attention. none of that really matters now except that i know what i am and i am no longer resisting being.

what about you?

letter 8 — to the ungodly ones

dear nwachukwu,

i heard Maya Angelou say this in an interview one time and i loved it, she said “if you don’t laugh you will die, so laugh”, she also said something about not trusting people who don’t know how to have a good laugh, people who always present themselves to be so serious. she quoted a west african proverb about not trusting someone who offers you a shirt to wear but doesn’t have any on themselves. i agree completely with that line of thought.

life is serious business, yes, but we must not get stuck in the habit of taking it too seriously. find ways to laugh and laugh well. find people and things that bring you joy. make a habit out of feeling happy, consciously seeking out that feeling of happiness and actively holding on to it. it will benefit you greatly and not just you but people around you will benefit from your happiness also.

have you ever heard the saying “joy is contagious”, well it’s true, it is!

this is all i want you to take out of this letter — to remember one of the most important things in life is to feel happy.

work actively towards this, feeling happy and joyous, it’s good for your well being. it has become the most important thing in my life over the last few months, yes “the most" important thing.

the divine wants you to be happy.

letter 9 — to ungodly ones

at the time in which i’m writing this letter the holiday season is fast approaching, christmas eve — christmas day — new year Eve — new year day, you know the drill.

i’m not big on holiday seasons in general, whether it’s a religious celebration or a personal birthday or anything that involves some sort of performative celebratory drama and run around. however, i understand the value a lot of people have attached to it and the sort of joy it brings to some, for those people i am happy for them and i wish them well. i take most holidays to rest of course and i suppose i can say i am privileged in such a way that i can really genuinely do that — rest, i do not have large or small groups of people running around me that require me to perform any sort of labor for their benefit that’s what i mean when i say privilege. i consider it a privilege because many people do not have this as much as they would like.

the most remarkable memory i have of a christmas holiday was one i spent with my grandmother in Nigéria. i remember i went out despite my grandmother warning against it, to watch masquerades perform in the king’s palace and i ended up being chased by one of the masquerades. everyone thought i was going to die because several rules were broken;

as a female child i was not supposed to watch that particular kind of masquerade with my naked eyes. older women were allowed to but in other to do so, they would have had to strip naked and have a particular kind of leaf plant in their mouth.
if this particular kind of masquerade started chasing anyone (presumably men) they were expected to immediately upon noticing the chase lay down flat on the bare ground in surrender and beg for mercy in the local language.
if anyone (presumably men) accidentally came in physical contact with this particular kind of masquerade they were expected to strip naked immediately and lay down on the floor begging for mercy.

that day i went out to watch those masquerades because i was curious and also felt drawn to. i heard my grand-father tell someone a tale about one of the masquerades that was performing that day in question being one of his older brothers who had died at least twenty years back from the time this was happening and that caught my attention. so i got to the king’s palace and on sighting two or so of the masquerades i shouted out the name of the said relative hoping he (it) would hear me and he (it) did, in response it spun around and started chasing me. while i was running i ran right into the body of another masquerade that was performing just ahead of us. it felt like the whole town came to a standstill in that moment, you could have felt the hush of abomination in the air but i kept running until i got back to my grandmother’s house.

the rest of it is history. of course i did not die as expected but i became very ill for a while and the illness was attributed to this experience. that was the most remarkable (for me) memory of a christmas holiday that i have and no other has come close to beating it yet.

holiday seasons also tend to come with a feeling of nostalgia for me especially these days, but i don’t allow myself the irony of sitting in that instead i find ways to escape, and in many moments to be human against all odds.

i hope you have a joyful holiday, however you come about that joy, i truly wish you well 🌹.

letter 10 — letter to ungodly ones

dear ungodly one,

i spoke about masquerades in my last letter. i have a very personal philosophy that revolves around masquerading. one of the subjects i have gathered much personal interest in over the years has been on masquerades, especially as it concerns the traditional culture i identify with which would mostly be the ìgbo culture. i am intrigued by masks, the idea of not being seen, that kind of very present invisibility. it’s reminds me of godliness, an attribute of the divine, wearing a face or faces, the seasonal appearance and disappearance of it all.

a single letter would not be enough for me to go into surface details of this very personal philosophy i just mentioned, yet there is something that bothers me (it doesn’t bother me as much so maybe i should have said that in past tense) about the digital age, what i call the social media reality — the kind of presence social media technology enables — this bit of the 21st century has been such a wonder to me, i have not figured out a way to make it not taste like violation in my mouth even though i am a beneficiary of the invention in a lot of ways.

i understand how strange my thoughts ( wonder ) around this subject might be to a lot of people, but why not? like a lot of things these thoughts are mine — they belong to me. i have been told i have a lot of self restraint because i have never yielded to any urge or request to show face online, not even with people i have personal relationships with. for me it’s not a matter of restraint, it’s something else — a very personal philosophy, which i can’t get into. however i am curious in the same way i am of masquerading, of it’s opposite, whatever that may be — openness? honesty? what many would call truth? a reality? i’m not sure how to title what this opposite is without making it’s latter seem pretentious.

like i have mentioned somewhere, my human profession is grounded in strategy work so i guess the dots connect with my interest in masquerading? i’m not opposed to that conclusion, however i would strongly oppose a generalization of it.

the question i want to raise in this letter is this — what is it about being seen that satisfies human ego so much?, what is this desire rooted in?, how and why does it feed relationships?

i would have asked if relationships were possible without being seen in a certain way but i already have both general historical proof as well as very personal proof that relationships, satisfying ones at that, are very possible without showing face.

human existence as a whole and the ways we choose to go about it interest me, and i am constantly interrogating this phenomena with questions and answers.

letter 11 — to the ungodly ones

dear ungodly one,

one of the other reasons why i keep referring to readers of this letters as “ungodly” is because the things i write about in these letters or the ways i go about writing them would ordinarily be referred to as just that — ungodly.

let me share a small confession with you, one or two people in my life already know this, i have never engaged in or as people would say it “been in" a monogamous relationship before — never. i have not allowed myself practice romance and it’s siblings in a monogamous context with anyone, yet.

every request i have ever received of engaging in a monogamous relationship with anyone has always felt like some sort of trespassing to my being. i have never really been able to grasp the preciousness people have ascribed to it or maybe i do and that’s why each request has always felt like a trespassing.

the idea that just one single human being should have access to certain parts of my being or body for a period of time, in most cases expectedly long periods of time, is foreign to me. i am almost thirty in human years and i am still unable to let myself grasp this concept or accept it. but maybe someday i will, with something or someone that feels as close to god as i can get within the space of human relation-ing. a relationship that will feel like a burning bush (the kind moses of the bible encountered) to me, the kind of relationship that would require me to take of my shoes and thread it’s floors with naked feet. maybe i am waiting for a relationship that feels impossible, before i say yes to trying out monogamy.

with that said, i am as opposed to monogamy as a way humans choose to experience things in the same way i am opposed to binaries, however, i understand and in many cases accept their necessary use.

letter 12 — to the ungodly ones

dear ungodly one — nwachukwu,

the most important thing i believe i have done with my life first was to figure out a way to be born, and then be reborn. i don’t believe death is the difficult task as many people seem to deem it, it’s the rebirthing of the soul that’s the truly difficult and painful task.

the worst is the rebirthing of the soul inside the same body. typically when a person dies, they exit that body, that body is buried whether in earth or set on fire or however. but to experience rebirth within the same human body and be given divine consent to be aware of it, this is a new thing, a more recent thing, a difficult thing to explain.

to experience any kind of rebirth, a kind of death has to occur. it’s in the principle of the whole thing, and as we know principles tend to exist within laws. so i am not far from the truth when i say — it is a law — to be born you must die, and to ease death one must learn to accept death as a constant and evolutionary thing, not as an end.

i have (with relief) come to an end of this series of letters to you, what has been for me an experiment of non resistance — an act of obedience.

the english new year is just around the corner, lingering, waiting to be caught by eager hands, plastered with resolutions and in general all kinds of expectations. i hope for your sake that you expect good things, that you imagine good things and that you feel good emotions towards the new year.

you are more likely to experience and bring to pass whatever you feel.

as for me and my household we are already ahead and thriving.

i wish you well 🌹.