Sunday 17 March 2013

BOOMERANG




Drowning in an inexplicable torrent of paralyzing negative energy for the last 72 hours, I got caught up in a state of mental exhaustion in which I contemplated not blogging at all this week because it seemed as though I hit a road block somewhere in my trail of thought every time I pick up my laptop. Anyway, I was in service today when all of a sudden the barricade damming my trail of thought broke and great ideas came gushing like tidal waves. It took all my resolve to restrain myself from jumping on my feet and screaming eureka in the middle of church. I hope you had an excellent week and with vehemence, I would like to assure you that this week holds brighter promises.

Often times, I hear people use the phrases” what goes around comes around” or “what goes up must surely come down”. Both phrases I totally agree with as a scientist and geography minor. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sea captain and his crew proved the first statement definitively when they circled round the globe on a three-year voyage from 1519-1522 and came back to the exact point they began from without encountering an abrupt end. This, amongst several other works later formed the basis on which fact that the earth is a spherical body was established while the law of gravity in physics backs up the second phrase.

Today, my mission is to prove both statements without a tinge of doubt but using a real life situation and not physics or geography. I would like to share with you an apocryphal story, didactic and very limpid.
In the remote past, along the ancient coastal area lived a simple fisherman, his wife and son. Their life was austere but beautiful, peaceful and enviable.

The fisherman lived in an isolated hut in the middle of the forest with his family and every fishing morning, at dawn, along with his little boy, he would set out with his boat to spread his fishing net.  The catch would be collected the next day, a marketing day according to their itinerary, and his wife would take part of the fish to the town market for sale and so was their routine until an impending doom struck. The fisherman and his little boy left for the river as usual on a morning but never returned. Joy and peace ceased in the little isolated hut that now housed only a distraught wife and mother who wailed incessantly for her missing husband and son.

Days turned into nights, nights into fortnights………market days passed, years went by but the fisherman and his little boy where nowhere to be found! Notwithstanding, the sad and lonely woman in the isolated hut didn’t give up. Somewhere deep inside her, she had the fleeting assurance that her son and husband were still alive and would come back to her some day. She stopped weeping and dedicated her life to doing good and helping strangers. Feeding and sheltering weary travelers who got lost in the forest.
On a sunny market day, she stumbled on two young but ragged looking strangers. Weak and feeble from the perils of journeying. They looked alike but one seemed younger and had a deep cut on his left feet. He had walked into an animal trap in the forest and was bleeding profusely.

She immediately helped them to her hut where she tended to the wounds of the young lad with healing herbs. Fed them with a nourishing fish meal and gave them a warm place to spend the night. The next morning, they decided to continue their journey but she persuaded
them to tarry till the wound healed completely. They stayed with her for three market days and for the first time in over seven years, her hut felt lively and happy again but alas, they were on a journey! They bade her farewell with a promise to return her kindness.
Did they keep their promise? You will find out shortly.

On a cool dusk, sitting in front of her hut and listening to the birds chirping, a vaguely familiar figure emerged from the horizon. Joy leaped on her inside, the type she had not felt for over seven years since the disappearance of her husband and son. Soon, another figure emerged and yet another. Two men and a teenage boy walked closer towards her isolated hut. Emotions welled up inside her and erupted into shriek the instant they closed up on her, it was her long missen son and husband.
Eventually they told their story after a lavish meal. They had been captured by slave traders and sold into slavery in a far away kingdom where they had been serving for over seven years until something happened.

The prince and heir to the throne went hunting with only his personal guard and didn’t return for weeks. The palace mourned, as it was rumored around the kingdom that he had fallen prey to ferocious wild beast. Providence shined on the palace and he returned to tell a tale of abduction, escape and finally, help from a poor lonely woman in an isolated hut. The teenage boy was working at the prince’s chambers one night when he began to hum a tune. The song was familiar and great perturbation hit the prince, he tried desperately to recall where he first heard the tune but to no avail. Another night, the same incidence occurred but this time, the prince summoned the slave boy and interrogated him.

The boy confirmed it was his mother’s lullaby. The one she used in singing him to sleep as a little boy and immediately, the scales fell off the prince’s eye. It was the same tune the lonely woman hummed every night. He asked her about it but all she said was” it was a happy song before my grave lost, now it is a song of sadness”
The boy’s father was sent for and he narrated how they got into slavery at the palace.
The prince ordered their release and sent his personal guard to take them back home; he said he had made a promise to an angel.

What goes around comes around! Life indeed is a boomerang! Whatever we do, good or evil always finds their way back to our lives.
So, what kind of seeds are you sowing?
Let this linger in your heart this week

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