Religion

My view of religion had become deeply damaged. I entered college and then my professional career with a hatred and disrespect for it. Religion for me was synonymous with hypocrisy and greed. To me, it was a crutch for the weak.

When I need to call upon inner strength, I often think about my mother’s hands. In the ten years since she passed away, I can no longer remember her exact smell. Nor can I see her face as clearly in my mind as I once was able. I see it blurred, soft and undefined, like looking at someone through a frosted pane.

The language of the Qur’an is the language of poetry and so I found that meaning was the eye into translation and not the other way round. That’s when I began to take the exegeses and history classes more seriously. Without them, I found translation useless to my spirituality.

If Noah had 200 years, why didn’t he spread around a bit of his foresight and encourage his community to build their own arks? Why did he keep his knowledge of impending doom to himself (and his family)? Why didn’t he challenge God? Maybe Noah wants to play his own hero role? And that brings us to Elon Musk.

I was angry at the pandemic year that had been stolen from my active, bright, brave, world explorer cousin before she died, the year stolen from those closest to her. I was angry at the sight of these people having to see the world without us there to protect them. I started to cry.

Tradition is finicky. I get the value of apples and honey, in the stories (so many stories) of repeated cycles of liberation and oppression, in the raising of toes and bowing of heads during Kedushah.

Ramadan can be a testing time for Muslims who struggle with eating disorders or disordered eating, which can often manifest in ways that can make it even harder for them to observe the monthly fasts.

It is difficult to come across atheists in Nigeria. In a country where hope seems perpetually lost in the fog of corruption and chaos; where you’d often hear tales of humans flying at night or morphing into animals and yams, it makes sense that the average Nigerian hangs onto the comfort of believing that there’s a supreme being watching over us.

The doctors tell my mum that the lump is nothing — a benign cyst that will be removed through a simple surgery. But prayer, myth, and tradition are insurance against all we cannot know and Nanna sends a donation and a letter to the monastery of her favorite saint: Saint Rita.

I would later learn that their mother had waited for about a week until a white orthopedic surgeon was on call to do her procedure and that she would yell obscenities at all of the BIPOC orthopedic surgeons who tried to help heal her broken leg.

In falling in love with my girlfriend’s religion, I was able to make peace with my own.

There was no place like home, one’s home, one’s ancestral home, especially when one’s first name was Echezona: “Do not forget.”

Preachy presents the music of Muhammad Samie.