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#SV – Love-filled

Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke

The Pentecost feast reminds us once again that for us Christians, it is a ‘new’ version of Pentecost; one in which love is made accessible to us to live and share in a very radical way. This radicality of love has already been exemplified in the life of Jesus himself, who readily gave his life for the sake of love. In that sense the ultimate consequence of love is death – death to selfishness, to clannishness, to parochialism, to ethnicity, to racism, to extremisms that exclude, injure, hate, hurt, main, kill, destroy, and impoverish others. It is only when we … Continue reading #SV – Love-filled

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#RS – There’s More

Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke

Listen, to the world that’s filled with noise. Listen, to the inner voice that won’t just cease. Listen, to the broken heart that pours all out. Listen, beyond the words and the laughter; beyond the anger and the angry; beyond the facts and the pretense; beyond the beauty and the glamour; beyond the drama and the comedy; beyond power and its exercise. Just listen, for the unsaid and the unsayable. ‘Cos there’s always more. Continue reading #RS – There’s More

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Five Things COVID-19 Can Teach the Churches

Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke

In response to the pandemic, there have been many write-ups concerning the appropriate precautions to be taken, the activities to be explored during lockdowns, ways to take care of the body and mind, as well as the existential lessons that we ought to learn from the COVID-19 experience. In an earlier post on this site, I explored how the pandemic has succeeded in exposing our collective vulnerability, not only in the fragility of life, the illusion of what we had thought we can control and the grave inherent depravity that we never knew was there all along. In that piece, I also … Continue reading Five Things COVID-19 Can Teach the Churches

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#SV – Enough Room(s)

Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke

Growing up, there is this popular hymn that is based on this particular passage of the Gospel (John 14:2): “In my Father’s house…” The hymn goes like this: In my Father’s house, there are many mansions there, In my Father’s house (twice) In my Father’s house, there are many mansions there, In my Father’s house above. Happy, happy, happy we shall be (trice) In my Father’s house above. Now this is a very exciting song, but the little trouble I have with the song is the exclusive reference of the Father’s house as the one ‘above’. This is purely transcendent … Continue reading #SV – Enough Room(s)