But then last week I went to confession and I feel fantastic. More in control. I desperately need to get back to me. I’m not sure what has happened to me in the last two years but dang, I need to get back to me. That means, I’m putting the whole man thing on hold. Honestly, the whole thing is just too much work and not enough rewards. I came to Oxford with a lot of high expectations on the relationship front – I confess – but now that I’m staring at the tail end, I can drop all of that insanity and focus on the things that make me happy. Dance more. Sing more. Act a little. And just get back to me!

I’m tired – I had an epic Fartlek session in the gym today and I’m dehydrated and exhausted! (Fartlek is Swedish for speed play. You get on the treadmill and basically adjust the speed every couple of minutes. 2 min at 7 km/h, 2 at 8, then 9 then 10, then back to 2 minutes at 7, then 1 at 8, 9, 10 and 11, then back to 2 minutes at 7, then one minute at 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, and finally 2 minutes at 7, one minute at 8, 9, 10, 11, 30 seconds at 12 and 30 seconds at 13 km/h. Finally 2 minutes at 7. WOW! Exhausting! Sweated like a pig and but I hope it increases my strength and tolerance with the running).

KT, invigorated but exhausted. 

Freaking.

Kilometres.

Seventeen. Freaking. Kilometres

This morning’s run nearly killed me. Nearly killed my legs at least. It was only supposed to be sixteen kilometres but I forgot everything including the map of my run so I added an extra kilometre unnecessarily. Between the hills and the distance, by the time I got to 12 I was dying. DYING! The funny thing is, I couldn’t bring my legs to move. The rest of my body was fine – I wasn’t panting, I wasn’t sweating more than for a shorter run but I just couldn’t bring my legs to move any faster. I stopped a couple of times during the run just because my body said NO! Normally with this kind of run, by the time I get to the end, I have some ridiculous sense of accomplishment but today I just felt shattered. My legs are still extremely sore. Walking is a massive pain but I hope that with the day off tomorrow everything will be alright.

If someone had told me three months ago that I would be running seventeen kilometres in about 2 hours I would have called them a liar. But here we are. Be magnified Lord. Accept this humble sacrifice.

Seventeen. Freaking. Kilometres.

Running is quickly becoming the most reliable part of my life. The freedom of the open road, hearing the Voice of God as I push myself to keep going – one step in front of the other, one step in front of the other. I’m actually starting to take real joy in the whole process – even the sweat dripping off my back and my forehead as I work against my own laziness or inertia. Most importantly, I love the thrill of growing closer to God with every step. I’ve actually been mentally adjusting my run to reflect a new attitude to life. I’ve been teaching myself to “run open” i.e. stop hugging my hands so close to my chest when I run because it’s bad for the balance but also I feel like it closes me off to the run and therefore to life. I tell myself as I run “my utmost for His Highest” and I feel that permeating my attitude towards life. So even as things go wrong, I still feel Him watching over me, guiding me and seeing me through the run and through life.

Which is not to say that bad things aren’t happening. They most certainly are. My two biggest interviews for my thesis pulled out within hours of each other. HOURS. I’m so sad, because they would have given me the best insight into my research subject, and while I understand that they’re busy, that doesn’t really help me. I’m still screwed five ways. Still, God’s got it all in control. I have faith – go before me Holy Spirit and sort this mess out! Can a sista get a hallelujah?!

My love life is still pretty non-existent, but I think I may actually be getting comfortable with my singlehood. It’s part of my emerging fierceness. Singlehood is a unique season in life in which I can give so much more to the Most High than other people who are partnered up or in couples. I’m not distracted from giving my Utmost for His Highest in everything that I do. That may sound like a lot of self-consoling, and to be honest, in the past, I think I said this to myself partly to do that. But I’m getting really settled into my singlehood and seeing glory in things that I hadn’t noticed before about the world in which we live. I just spent 6 days in Singapore for no other reason than I could. No more distractions. Keeping my eye on Him and his wonderful plan for me.

Life, after all, is like running. One step in front of the other, one step in front of the other until eventually you build a good comfortable rhythm. And then you work it out. The more time I spend alone the more time I have to think about this and other things. And this morning, as I dug out an old memory of what I planned to do with my life before England, I felt a surge of familiarity, comfort and PEACE. Pure, unassailable peace. Like that moment in the run when you hit your stride.

Can you sense that I’m planning another random trip?

KT, peacef

Every so often a book comes into your life that raises all the right questions and pushes your buttons in all the right ways. This is definitely one of those books. So unlike any other book written by an African that I have ever read in so many wonderful ways. An account of a woman’s descent into hell and her subsequent attempts to claw her way out – it’s a fascinating study of the human mind, of the effects of apartheid and racism on the individual and of the true complexity of the individual. Really, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It has absolutely changed me – the unapologetic character of Medusa actually started me thinking around the train of going back to confidence and fierceness, even though I didn’t really think about her in the positive way – and even all deeper meanings aside, it is a quality, well written and wonderful book.

Read it!

During my run, I was meditating upon being confident and being fierce. I’ve been having some self-doubt the last couple of months because I’ve been failing at everything. I sacrificed so much to be a good student but I was failing at being a good student, at playing pool, at Arabic, at everything. And there was no shortage of people to remind me. I got caught up in this spiral of self doubt that made me feel like running away and hiding. So I seriously started thinking about doing that – going on holiday to Kenya and just not coming back.

I started to pray about it a few days ago because the sadness was getting a little insane, and the more I prayed about it and reached out to my Christian friends for counsel, the more it started to seem like this was something that I could hack. And then today, before the run when I was doing my morning devotion, I opened up my bible to a random page and found this verse:

“Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated… So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. you need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised” (Hebrews 10: 32-33, 35 – 36)

I love it when the Lord speaks a word directly into my heart, and this was definitely one of those moments. I did have a moment after I came back to the faith when the world moved around me and beneath my feet and everything seemed unbearable, but there He was, keeping me sane and keeping me strong. When people made fun of me and of my faith there He was. It doesn’t make any sense to have persevered through so much struggle and then to walk away just because of no confidence. I need to have confidence in myself, not because of who I am, but because of who He is. Because Christ working within me is the only good thing within me but he’s all the good that I need.

I need to become fierce and fearless in Christ. To trust in the Lord’s wisdom, purpose and plan for my life. Like running, the hardest part of life is to continue to put one foot in front of the other and keep going, but I need to find my rhythm and do that, so that I can stand in his presence and praise him when that day comes.

KT, finding my way back.

I was thinking more about the idea of not conserving my energy and just going flat out as I was running, in part because yesterday I did an 8 K run in which the instruction was to run “fast”. Not Olympic fast, but to run just outside the threshold of comfort, work up a sweat and get that shortness of breath that is a mark of truly working it out. To keep me focused, I had this line from an old prayer that we had hung up in our house in Kenya “rest if you must, but don’t you quit!” Instead of going for a flat out run, I did it in legs – running flat out for about 5-8 minutes, resting for about 20 – 30 seconds, and then picking it up again before my heart rate slowed down too much.

Man! How rewarding! Praise God! Not only did I finish my run unbelievably fast – thank you Jesus! – but at the end of it all, I was FINE! Winded, yes. Covered in sweat, absolutely! Breathing like air was going out of fashion, you know it! But I was fine! It didn’t kill me. The awful feeling only lasted about 15 minutes after the run and then – nothing. My feet didn’t hurt (although I am being more religious about the stretching pre and post-run), my muscles got over it – I was just FINE.

I say this, not to praise myself, but to remind myself that this applies in real life as well. I’ve been concerned about pushing myself too hard because I thought it would result in some kind of internal destruction. But Lord, life is a race, and I need to run each leg flat out, rest for a bit, and then run the next leg flat out. Because ultimately, all I can do is glorify you through the way I live my life. I can only do my best with the here and now and then let the future sort itself out – that’s what You’re there for!

Thank you for the strength to run! Thank you for the inspiration to meditate Lord!

Here’s a tip – the best thing to do with the running, I’m finding, is to leave the iPod at home.

KT, wohoooo!!

I had an epiphany while running this morning. These morning runs have become the best opportunity for me to pray and speak to God, and just let him speak to me as well. Today, I was meditating on ambition. I was wondering how I could allow myself to be an ambitious person without falling into the sin of idolatry. I don’t want to make the things of man the sole driving force in my life but at the same time, the placidity and numbness of my current existence is driving me slightly bonkers. Not being busy is allowing me far too much time to spend inside my own head, and there I only come face to face with more and more demons. Things that I thought I had conquered some time ago but still seem to be lurking in my conscience.

I found myself asking God what I could do to be more driven without being pulled and pushed by the vagaries of life. I want to want bigger things without necessarily being driven to sin by those things. It’s been bugging me for some time now.

While I was running, it occurred to me that life is very much like running a race – St. Paul uses this analogy, I think in Ephesians, I forget. He talks about how each one of us is running towards the prize and we’re all given different abilities but our goal is the same. My epiphany is basically that I need to get back in the race towards Christ. Right now, I’m sort of checked out from all of it. I’ve put my ambitions on hold as I try to make sense of this new world that I’ve found myself in, but in the process, I’ve forgotten how to want things, how to desire things in good proportion.

The last few months I’ve been living my life like I was running a marathon that will never end – conserving my energy unnecessarily for fear that I won’t have enough energy to complete the race. But why should I let such fears run my life? Isn’t that what the Holy Spirit is for? To give us eagle’s wings to carry us through to the end of the race even when it seems that we just can’t make it through? I realised that conserving my energy is the same as relying on my own strength rather than calling upon God, which is ultimately what I am called upon to do. I need to just go crazy with the life and the energy, and let God work out the details.

Even as I was running this realisation pushed me to run a little bit faster – I finished my 5K nearly 10 minutes faster than I normally do which was quite fun! And while I was tired at the end, I was grateful – so grateful. Because I felt myself soaring above my own abilities and limitations into a space where God has everything in control.

KT, energised!

Not that I wasn’t thinking about it. I just didn’t get round to it. I spent most of the month celebrating my birthday – which seems a little insane – but consider my position. Aside from routinely forgetting that it’s my birthday, most of my friends and family struggle to get me anything that is of meaning to me, and I hate receiving empty platitudes and stupid gifts so I find it easier to just do things my way. I spent every weekend/week doing things that I wanted to do with people that I wanted to do it with rather than sitting in my room waiting for other people to notice me and care! I have no regrets about it – except maybe that the whole month, including the week-long trip to Singapore, cost me a small fortune.

Otherwise, it’s Lent from Wednesday and it’s time once again to enter a season of purification and drawing closer to God. I’d like this to be a season of spiritual detoxing – getting rid of all those habits or behaviours that draw me away from God, coming away from them and being separate, meditating on the goodness of God and generally finding my way back to faith. I’d like this season of sacrifice to be an offering of praise, a reminder that God made the ultimate sacrifice for me and that the least I can do is offer this small sacrifice for him.

So what am I thinking about giving up?

1. Facebook. Definitely. I spend far, far too much time logging into Facebook and it is definitely detracting me from spending more time in prayer. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check my Facebook! That’s sinful and has got to go!

2. Celebrity sites. I have to confess, I am a glutton for pop culture. I check these sites so often but I don’t know why. It’s not that I’m learning or even gaining anything from checking these sites. It just kills five minutes of my day. Every 10 minutes. Which if you think about it adds up to almost 2-3 hours a day spent looking at these meaningless images and absorbing this useless information.

3. Chocolate.

4. Red meat. Sigh. This is probably going to be the hardest. Not that I eat that much red meat anyway. It’s just that I like to know that the option exists. If I wanted to eat red meat I could.

5. Google Chat. On one hand it started off as a great way to keep in touch with friends and family overseas, but now it’s spiralling into something more dangerous. I spend so much time waiting for people to notice that I’m online and to try and chat with me that I find it hard to focus on just about anything else. I need to reevaluate my relationship with Chat, so I will log out for 45 days and see what happens.

6. the lie in. Time to go back to the 6 a.m. wake up call. It’s time to make space in my life for more quiet time. Especially now that the sun is rising earlier and earlier, I can wake up and pray as I run. I’m finding this a really effective way of getting my quiet time done.

so that’s my Lenten list. Lord, what do you think?

KT, contemplative.

Black skin, white masks by Frantz Fanon

I spent most of yesterday reading Frantz Fanon. How have I never read Fanon until this stage in my life?! I have an undergraduate degree in African studies and Political Science – how is it that such an influential and seminal writer never once came into my radar? What a great and powerful writer! I’ll admit, reading it in English may take away some of the “edge” from it, but I’m so glad that it’s finally come into my life!

What do I love about the book? Fanon is a master at capturing the unspoken, and considering that so much of the African – Black really – experience is unspoken, it’s wonderful to read a book by a person who understands that life is really more than words. Take the chapter on”the Negro and Language” -

“The black man has two dimensions. One with his fellows, the other with the white man… That this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question…”

Wow! In 3 short sentences, he manages to capture something that I’ve struggled to explain to my white friends for years. I know for a fact that I’m very different when I’m around white people. I don’t know why – I’ve never really understood why, but I know for a fact that it’s true. It’s like, there are movies and t.v. shows that I watch with my black friends that I’d never watch with my white friends, no matter how close I get to them. The Boondocks, Chris Rock’s comedy, the Kings of Comedy – the list just goes on and on. I just don’t feel at ease the same way and I’ve never understood why. Then here comes Fanon and in 16 words he manages to break down this unspoken process of self-division while capturing the irreconcilability of it. Amazing.

Or here’s another one,

“Oh, I know the blacks. They must be spoken to kindly; talk to them about their country; it’s all in knowing how to talk to them… I am not at all exaggerating: A white man addressing a Negro behaves exactly like an adult with a child”

So, so, so true! Sometimes you talk to perfectly intelligent white people and you get the sense that they’re talking to an infant. So the opening gambit in any conversation is always to ask more about your country, like you wouldn’t know anything else. It’s another unspoken element of the discourse that is so difficult to capture but Fanon does it beautifully and succinctly. There are exceptions of course; the white friends I have are for the most part the ones with whom I’ve been able to move beyond such puerile discussion.

I have to confess, I didn’t understand all of the book. There’s a lot of psychoanalysis in the pages that I’m just not familiar or interested in. Lots of random penises and phalluses all over the place. All very Freudian and incomprehensible to me. I’m sorry but I don’t believe that we can all be reduced to phalluses and genitals, although Fanon makes a great point about black men being reduced to penises in the white consciousness and the exoticisation of sex with Black men.

The parts that I got were brilliant and inspirational – thought provoking. The parts I didn’t get were interesting in their own right if not entirely convincing to me. Another fantastic book that totally distracted me from what I intended to do yesterday! I’m going to have to reel in this reading habit if I’m going to get any work done!

Well written!

KT, pleased!

Dark Days in Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah

Dark Days in Ghana was written by Kwame Nkrumah after his government had been deposed while he was on official duty in China. It’s really fascinating that I read this book last night because I attended a lecture by a lady who claims to have uncovered the link between aid, development or underdevelopment and Africa, and the whole time she was talking I was thinking to myself, this woman has very little idea of what she’s talking about. But not Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah is the quintessential African intellectual, having not only ideological knowledge of his country but also practical knowledge. He reads everything from economics, to politics to science, and the diversity of his background comes to bear when you consider the sheer range of the material that he’s writing about. He knows Ghana. He knows politics. And he knows the international “imperialist” establishment well enough to call them out on their crap. Dark Days in Ghana is fascinating because a lot of the things that Nkrumah talks about are actually still valid in Africa today, and even more pertinent than what this pseud0-academic was talking about yesterday. Sample quote:

“The problems we faced at independence were similar to those which confront most states emerging from colonialism. A once dependent territory if it is to survive in the modern world must try to accomplish in a single generation what it has taken developed nations 300 years or more to achieve. There is a need for radical change in practically every department of national life.” Nkrumah

How distressing is it that this evaluation is stil valid today? With people expecting Africa to accomplish in a single generation what has taken the US 300 plus years so to accomplish (and only a decade to unravel, but that’s another story for another day)? Why the push for mad-rush development when we all know that true development is a slow and systematic process? I recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to understand the other side of the post-independence African crisis. It’s really, really prescient.

Representations of the Intellectual by Edward Said

Edward Said’s is a brilliant mind. I would say was given his untimely death, but I think a lot of his ideas and opinions continue to shape the way “non-western” cultures continue to envision themselves in relation to the “West”. I haven’t read “Orientalism” yet but i’s very much next on my list. Representations of the Intellectual was Said’s contribution to the Reith Lectures, an annual lecture series in which prominent thinkers are invited to lecture on a variety of issues. Said wanted to talk about the intellectual tradition in general, and the book links all sorts of trains – from Sartre, to Foucault, to Turnov, Flaubert and other writers, in order to build up a composite picture of the intellectual as an exile, as destined to stand out and be cast out, but also as a necessary and integral part of society. Said’s picture of the intellectual is saddening and heartening, maddening and encouraging, frightening and invigorating. It’s just a reminder that the road towards enlightenment is never easy or free of discomfort, but greater rewards for the whole society lie in helping those who would follow this path.

Sample this:

The central fact for me is, I think, that the intellectual is an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public. And this role has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publically to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.

It’s an extremely short book – it took me about two hours to read and make notes from it. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone who is even thinking about going into politics or social commentary. Elucidating, illuminating, inspiring and altogether fascinating.

It’s nice to be ensconced in the fold of true intellectuals after the brutal assault of pseud0-intellectualism last night!!

KT, inspired!