The Kenya National Environment Policy

THE KENYA NATIONAL ENVIRONMENT POLICY 

The Kenya Government through the Minister of Environment and Mineral Resources has embarked on reevaluating its policy on environment hence coming up with a National Environment Policy, 2012, a revised draft No.4 of April 2012.  In this draft, the government defines the environment in a broad way. Where it includes physical factors of the surroundings of human beings including land, water, atmosphere, sound, odor, state, the biological factors of animals and plants and the social factors of aesthetics and includes both the natural and the built environment. 

Kenya has a wide variety of ecosystems ranging from mountains, forests, and semi-arid areas, freshwater, wetlands, coastal and marine, offering myriad opportunities for human, social and economic development. These ecosystems are natural capital which provides important regulatory services like forests and mountains serving to regulate water flow, sustain biodiversity, cultural services that include aesthetics, recreational or spiritual values, and their uses, supporting services that include soil formation, nutrients cycling, and primary production. 

The survival and socio-economic wellbeing of Kenyans are ultimately twined with the environment. Most Kenyan citizens depend directly or indirectly on environmental goods and services. In addition, Kenya's environmental resources contribute directly and indirectly to the local and natural economy through revenue generation and wealth creation in such productive sectors and agriculture, fishing, livestock, water, energy, forestry, trade, and industry. 

The environment is an essential feature of Kenya's development policy. This is captured through the periodic development planning cycles since independence. This is traced to the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 that helped in raising understanding of the link between environment and development. From this Kenya initiated the Natural Environmental Actions Plan (NEAP) process. This was completed in 1994 that recommended the need for natural policy and law on the environment.  This culminated into a draft sessional paper No.6 of 1999 entitled "Environment and Development" The legislative process that gave forth the Environment Management and Coordination Act (EMCA), Act No.8 of 1999 as Kenya's first framework environmental law.  This has created a diffuse system of environmental laws and policies, some of whose provisions are not in harmony, making them ill-suited to aid the pursuit of sustainable development objectives as set out in the vision 2030. 

The promulgation of the Kenya Constitution, 2010 marked an important chapter in Kenya environmental policy development hailed as a green Constitution. It embodies elaborate provisions with considerable implications, for sustainable development. These include environmental principles and implications of Multilateral Environmental Agreements. (MEAs) to the right to clean and healthy environment enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It's chapter five that is embodied on a host of social and economic rights of an environment such as the right to water, food, and shelter among others.113 

The National Environment Policy aims to provide a holistic framework to guide the management of the environment and natural resources in Kenya. It creates a linkage between the environment and poverty reduction as integrated, in all government and poverty reduction as integrated, in all government processes and institutions in order to facilitate and realize sustainable development at all levels.  

THE STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT IN KENYA 

The main human activities contributing to environmental degradation in Keya include unsustainable agricultural land use, poor soil, and water management practices deforestation, overgrazing and pollution. This means that the country's natural resources of land, fresh and marine waters, forests and biodiversity threatens the livelihood of many people. These undermine the sink function of the environment which operates through such processes as nutrient recycling, decomposition and natural purification and filtering of air and waters. 

In Kenya, the environmental degradation is partly responsible for rising costs of water, treatment, food imports, and medical treatment. The loss of biological resources translates into a loss of economic potential and options for commercial development in the future that comes with considerable and ever-growing environmental issues and challenges. Harmonization of sectorial policy instruments with EMCA and constitutions, implementations. Sometimes the state resources are misplaced and dis-coordinated services in the implementation of land policy. The rehabilitation of degraded areas needs to be emphasized and followed up so as to the loss of biodiversity. This can only be reached through concessions and incentives that have to start from the local communities, counties, and parishes. 

The people should own the project and policy amendments, where they can own it hence creating a communitarian and public awareness that guards against: waste management, pollution, energy, climate change, disaster management, conservation of shared natural resources, invasive and alien species, public participation, environmental education and awareness, data and information, poverty, weak enforcement and then fragmentations which disintegrates the soil. 

The goal of the National Environment Policy, 2012 is for better quality for the current generation, without compromising the quality of the future generation through unsustainable management of the environment and natural resources.

© Don. J.B Nyamunga'20

AN AFRICAN UNDERSTANDING OF A COMMON HOME

In Africa the common home can only be understood in terms of community, relationship, and belonging. In order to be realistic and concrete, we need to factor in the African concept of family that will help us have a sense of belonging and contribution towards building this “common home.” As we have mentioned in the contextualized perspective of Common home, the same thread runs through from Pope Francis’ understanding of family. Pope Francis proposes the paradigm shift and personal insights and compressive approach to ecology and environment as a “common home”. It is also good that we slot in the African understanding of family amidst ecological and environment crisis that has befallen humanity. African continent is at the receiving end of this crisis, Africa has to wake up. The lying giant needs to wake up to roar again to claim its space at the international platform. The environmental crisis that is affecting the globe has to be viewed from the localized altitude so as to see the bigger panoramic picture of this ecological crisis. African families are crawling on their knees due to colonial hangovers, political poor leadership, terrorism, poverty, poor governance and so forth. The question is how can the African perspective help us understands Pope Francis’s encyclical letter laudato Si’ in the context of African families? The challenge that is first before us is that in Africa the “common home” has a definition that is concretized by place, region, nationality, culture, ideology and traditional believes. In this section our focus will be more on what unites Africans than what divides them. Fact is if the enemy attacks and finds the household in disorder, he will run over the homestead but if he gets the homestead guarded and its members awakened, they will be able to repel off the enemy. Truth is African families are wounded, and disengaged from the global scene. Others in the global scene have turned African continent into a dumping site for western waste, cheap market. Right now the African continent is almost being auctioned by the invasion of china. How can African families, Christians, churches come together to face these invading enemies who are raping Africa off her dignity and morals due to technological advancements? Oborji in his discourse builds clearly on this when delves into the problems which he basis it on cultural and political undertones. He argues that add religious sentiments to them, and there you will witness out blown phenomenon which are simply meant to serve the above goals.This according to Oborji categories it as some of the exaggerated ethnicity if these factors are not well addressed, they will continue to frustrate the on-going work of evangelization and the church formation on the continent, because this is the real cancer that is eating into ecclesial and civil communities. In Africa when we talk about family, it’s goes beyond the western understanding of family. There are many modern changes in the definition of family that the traditional understanding seems discarded. In this part of the thesis, we want to focus on African meaning of extended family that incorporates all as a clan. Most Africans put a lot of emphasis on the brotherhood where there is an amplified sense of family. According to Oborji he stresses that if we have a sense of development in Africa, the language should be that of deepening the relationships among Africans of different ethnic groups living in the same community and nation and between them a people of other religions in the same society of relationship and pluralistic society. The African families have to get their places in the “common home” that Pope Francis is building on. We need to think internationally but also act locally within this common home. African families can get their roles and responsibilities in the common home, but not as spectators or passive fellows, but activity persons in moving the ecological agenda and finding solutions of these ecological crises. These big families in Africa ought to forge the way forwards, not only to wait to be given handouts but being protagonists of transformation. African families need to come up with local bred solutions to their challenges. Ecology seems not be something on the priority list because of what Oborji calls laziness. African families are becoming a burden to themselves, unless they get back to the root of Ubuntu (African ethics), Ujamaa (oneness) and Umanna,(extended family system) Undungu (brotherhood), concepts that real define who Africans are in on a global stage. Oborji’s concept of family is that of which each person is born within an extended family. One has to have a sense of belong. He argues that no one falls from a tree and finds himself automatically in some realities, he quotes Cardinal Arinze on what an extended family is and what it is composed of: African are at home both in the nuclear family and in the extended family. The sense of family belongingness is rather strong. Many African languages have the same word for brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews and nieces, the same word for grandfathers and uncles, and sometimes even the same name for fathers and masters. The sense of family belongingness pervades all these scales on the genealogical ladder. We all live in the community and this has to help us to build a spirit of working together towards a united front with collaborative global outlook. All this is towards protecting and safeguarding the “common Home” which Pope Francis proposes in the encyclical letter. With the African family model of family as Church, we should be in good position of understanding Laudato Si’ not like any other document but as a call to conversion and reawakening from our long slumber to care of this common home. As Oborji reminds us, that we are sons and daughters of the soil entrusted to carry the torch mantle that has to lead us towards environmental care and protection. This re-awaking has to get us to re-educating ourselves and our people. It’s through re-educating ourselves in new ideals that we can rightly redefine and rebrand our theology in understanding an African concept of family in her resilience in the contemporary changing cosmos. This pedagogy should be based on self-awareness and search for new paradigm shifts of identity amidst the plurality of ideas and religions in this big “common home” Oborji thus states: The stress should be on togetherness, communion, respect for traditions and unquestionable acceptance of what the ancestors have practiced, sectioned and established as the way things are done for maintaining the relationships. In this context environmental and ecological relatedness and co-existence. Nobody should exploit the other or engage in communal strife to endanger the common world amidst the tribal conflicts and civil wars, for they are alien to the practice in traditional African communities and cultures.

EACH MARRIED COUPLE IS LIKE A GARDEN

 Eco-CONNECT'20 

EACH MARRIED COUPLE IS LIKE A GARDEN: A BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE

By J.B. Nyamunga

The Bible begins with the garden planted by God in the Eden (Cf. Gen.2:8), a garden city, the heavenly Jerusalem. River, a tree of life with twelve kinds of fruit, each fruit each month and leaves of the tree are for healing of nations (Rev. 22:2). This throws one to a wide search outside there and the best place to begin from is that of the book of Song of Songs, which we have come to commonly call the book of Solomon, where Rabbi Akiva describes as “Holy of Holies”.

The garden that flows with water and flowering trees. (Gen. 2-3) and in the book of Revelation it has an invitation of a bride to come…The Spirit and the bride say, Come, let the hearers say, “Come”. Let he who thirst come forward and the one who wants it receive the gift of life of the life-giving water (Rev.22:17).

The lover and the beloved are completely in corporeal world (corpus), while in the Song of Songs we read “How beautiful you are, my friend, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves! (Song 1:15-16).

The interesting part of this text can also raise a pertinent question…why does the couple meet in the garden? It’s the Song of Songs that provides a scenario for holding ourselves to that garden, that garden of reflection… Awake, north wind! Come, south, blow upon my garden that its perfumes may spread abroad. Let my lover come to his garden and eat its fruits of choicest yield… I have come to my garden my sister, my bride I gather my myrrh with my spices, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk. Eat friends, drink! Drink deeply, lovers! (Song 4:16-5:1).

Pope Francis in his encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ on the care of the common home (2015) which we are encouraged to read atheist a page each day. Just in that same line we also get the apostolic exhortation of Amoris Laetitia: The Joys of Love in the Family (2016). This garden is entrusted to man by God, for care (Cf. Gen. 2:8). Jean-Pierre states this by driving us into the Hebrew understanding of garden when he states that The Hebrew gan is a “fence” (the root ganan means “to enclose, to protect). In this garden (Gen. 2:9) man and woman discover themselves, but that brings in a big trial and challenge on man and women. The matrix of “where are you? 

This question often disturbs many, the answer is often responded to why do you ask? Say what you want to say? Kwani nini (Swahili for (what is it, what has happened). We are being called to make a journey through the Bible, and the best way to get our bearing is through Isaiah…As the earth brings forth its shoots, and the garden makes its seeds spring up, so will the LORD GOD make justice spring up, and praise before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11).

For Israel shall be like watered garden, like spring of water, whose waters never fail. The prophets as we know them did their missioning in the deserted places, there is where you listen attentively, no noise, only the whistle blowing sound that tickles your ears. Hosea the prophet of love brings in olive tree of the fragrance (marashi) like that of Lebanon. This God can still bestow his beauty out of sorry that each of our story, regardless of their repeated wounds.

The Song of Songs projects us to have the teleos, sharp vision to that of a typical scholar of scripture who would sit on something and gets refreshingly lost in that thought. Its one vision that no one can get it except he to whom that vision is revealed to make that journey.

 Jean-Pierre quotes Robert Alter in his essay, the Art of Biblical Poetry, as unique strategy in the metaphorical inventiveness as that which has a confusing tendency of its borders. He still brings in the reflection of another author, Lewis Carroll’s novel “The characters pass” through the looking glass, and finding themselves in the world of metaphor, a completely wide horizontal hope with new leitmotifs.

One gets lost into the sweetness but there is a limit to it, he can’t hit the roof of sweetness, it’s sweet to his taste. (Song 2:3). It’s not enough to say I love you, but behave accordingly and this is a call to each one in his or her capacity. You should be able to eat with great calmness not as a thief ready for a chase after. It’s about a place for everything and everything in its place.

 In love you don’t compare the palm tree to something else, the beauty of the feel is to climb it and know how it feels. As they say, a palm tree grows under difficulty. Don’t be too lose to be climbed, make it difficult and hard nut to crack, of course if you were not raised in the palm tree zone, this may be difficult to comprehend. You are invited to come in and eat the fruit (Song 4:15-16).

 It’s about the chase coming to the celebration after a catch, its beautiful id you are the one who catches her, she becomes part of you internationally, not externally…my lover has come down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed I the gardens and to gather lilies (Song 2:3), you seal it to be yours (Song 4:12), fence of fence. Intimacy is not a public show, it’s a world of two, one feeling and each is lost in the other.

A metaphor is so lifting that you can’t exclude yourself from what Song of Song says. Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit put it, “a room with no ceiling. A place you say what you feel not what you think, its exotic in nature. As one gate closes, the other opened to allow the personal mystery and openness of being in relation.

This is a place of wonder and requires all the attention of lovers…let us go early to the vineyards, and see if the vines are in bloom, if the buds have opened, if the pomegranates have blossomed, there I will give you my love… (Song 7:13). This shows that we are able to drive ourselves to the sexual nature of flowers, between the pistil and stamen.

The irresistible gratuitousness of the buds reflects the bond of their love. As you stay together, everything matures according to that plan of God, you feel at home, you are yourself, not hidden mystery (Song 8:6-7).

Jean-Pierre quotes philosopher Harrison as one person who always liked to say…”the growth gardens are places that show down time, the growth rates are slow, the ripening of the fruit, the growth of trees, thus the garden supports with its long duration, promises and oaths by which the lovers live.

Rumi says “love is a tree whose branches reach eternity and whose roots grow in eternity and therefore the trunk is nowhere to be found. 

John 20 is a typical scenario “Now in the place where he was crucified, there was in a garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been placed. There then they laid Jesus” (John 19:4-42) she is weeping looking for her lover (V13)…tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away (V15), very powerful gesture of deep passion for lover, for love has no fear, jealousy, etc., this is it. (Cf. Song Chapter 3)…

An encounter in the enchased garden, a graveyard is not an open place for everything to enter in, its sacred place, a place of encounter, a modern desert, a garden of forgetfulness. Hence a good grave yard needs many trees planted there, preserve one and handover to next generation, a change of generations, events, where human person rediscovers the self.

A garden, a place of smells, I sit on the bench and get lost in the smells. We create this garden (kitchen, medical, botanical vertical, urban herbal), where we can get lost in nature, in silence and mediation.

Planting a garden also means offering believers a living parable of God’s faithfulness in his plan of salvation. Between the garden of the origins and that of the resurrection while waiting for gardens-city that of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Between the man and the woman, the garden is the holy of holies of meeting the parable of miraculous beginning and faithful growths of secret intimacy and communion with creation and with the creator. This mystery is great… (Eph 5:32). Equally great is mystery between the couple and the garden.

CONTEMPLATION AND IT'S TWISTS...

 CONTEMPLATION AND WHAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND OUT OF IT

By. Don. J.B. Nyamunga

Contemplation for many may be a recitation of formulated prayers, mysteries of the Rosary and common traditional prayer patterns instead of the awareness of God’s presence at its deepest value. Most of us have been trained to pray, instead of being trained in prayer. Many find themselves in phenomenal amounts of formulas which have become aid to prayer, which have become ends in themselves. It eventually turns into a product-oriented method.

Being trained in prayer has to lead to contemplation. We have to realize that contemplation is not for few people set apart but it’s a call open to everyone to delve into contemplation. This is something beyond prayer but someone, God. Contemplatives are people whose consciousness of God permeates their entire lives. Their awareness of God’s presence magnetizes them and directs them beyond everything else, beyond all other values. They are aware that God creates them, sustains them and challenges them. As a result all other agendas, values fall away. Of course it doesn’t mean that contemplatives don’t find values in other things, e.g. in career, money or achievement, but these things do not become their great value. The awareness of God becomes their greatest value, living steeped in God, surrounded by God, of being directed by God, of being in the presence of God, of learning to see life through the eyes of God, of being aware of God’s love, action and challenge. 

The desert fathers and mothers felt that contemplation can be accomplished through labor (work). These works could be basket weaving for example, which was often mentioned, for the contemplation was not idleness but who is better for the contemplative life if not a person who is working, but not totally caught up in things he or she is working with. With this approach work or being busy can become a contemplative act, can be an occasion for fostering the awareness of God’s presence Giving yourself a chance to see yourself as you are, a chance to relate your own story to the Jesus story, being renewed and revived by that presence. But you remember that all these you have to make time for it. Once you make it a practice in life, there is a way it overflows even into moments that are consciously are spent in reading, working through problems, organizing, administering. 

The interesting thing is that one can’t live contemplative life without discipline. This will include regular lectio, or spiritual reading, to undergird it and to challenge the way one lives. There should be time for work, time for family and community, time for Christian community, time for private scripture reading and reflection. Out of this will come a whole new rhythm of life, a whole new way of seeing the relative importance of various parts of one’s life, it provides the discipline, the structure, to help one to make the awareness of the presence of God as the greatest value in life. A married woman for example who works out of her home may not do her lectio, spiritual reading, with a book. Instead, she might get the spiritual nourishment provided by lectio through listening a tape while commuting to work or working around the house. This will mean cutting out listening to hard rock or watching “soap operas” But becoming a contemplative does involve discipline as well as desire.

Work shouldn’t be an impediment to contemplation, we all have to work. In the rule of St. Benedict there is a marvelous chapter in the rule that says in effect, when you have to get the harvest in, you have to get the harvest in, so pray in the fields. You don’t have to have the harvest in the rain because you have to get back home a certain time to pray, to contemplate. The harvest is what needs to be attended to now. Do it. This is your contemplation. A women living in the suburb can do the same with her good works. This presence of God in one’s life and the world. It wouldn’t be a burden, it won’t be an exercise. It is. This awareness of God’s presence that will always be the filter through which one has to think and act and pray. This presence will always stand between one and those around him or her and what they are doing.

© Don J.B Nyamunga’20

SEX AS A SACRAMENT

SEX AS A SACRAMENT

By. J.B Nyamunga

The most important task of the church is to emphasize the sacramental character of sex. As a symbol of spiritual reality, sexuality takes on the sacred character. A spiritual gift emerges through this physical act.

This concept is probably an intuitive conclusion rising out of the essentially sacramental character of life. In a more modern times sexuality has been divorced form the whole man and delegated or derogated, to the biological and psychological dimension.

Heretical and pagan religious movements have often observed the sacredness of sex. Unfortunately it has not been considered as the divine-human encounter of Biblical sexuality, but has been made explicitly in religious activities. 

In the First letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, Paul urges his readers to “Glorify God in your body.” They would be well aware of sexual orgies at the nearby temple of Aphrodite, where pagan Corinthians visited temple prostitutes in the name of worship.

By way of contrast to this blasphemous violation of God’s gift, Paul encouraged the Christians to see their sexuality as sacramental, a means of glorifying God.

This reminds us of the essential awfulness of pornographic literature which makes the sacred profane. It tempts one to consider his sexuality as an end in itself and to express it in a way that will deny its inherent spiritual character. Reacting by denying sexuality, as many Christians seem to have done, only makes a difficult situation worse.

Denial of sexuality is in effect to accept the secular view of sex. It is to consider it base, fleshly and in opposition to the spiritual life.

Unbelievers hold a similar view of the biological essence of sex while denying God. Christian’s have tended to regard the privacy of the sexual act as the means of hiding from view of stigma of his expression of lust, in sort of vain hope of being secluded from God and neighbor. However, the privacy of conjugal act is not in order to conceal one’s participation in an earthy, demeaning act, but rather to respect its holiness. Just as significant worship is essentially private, so is the exercise of this divine gift to be cloistered communion.

In a guarded way, we would say that there is a significant parallel with the entering of the high priest into the holy of holies on the day of Atonement. His act was neither sinful nor loathsome, but rather a high and holy response to God’s instructions. It was kept from the public eye because of its sacramental character.

Sexuality is a unique function whereby the Christian may grow in grace and in the knowledge of the lord. Its nature as a sacrament ought to be taught early and forthrightly in the context of Christian education. We should be convinced that this would strengthen the church and support a proper psychosexual development of Christian youth.

© J. B. Nyamunga’20

ADULT PSYCHOSEXUALITY

ADULT PSYCHOSEXUALITY

The most important attitude of the adult is a positive attitude toward his or her sexuality. As an adult how have you been brought up to view sexuality, do you believe in yourself about what you inform yourself to be or what you have been schooled into as far as your human sexuality is concerned. There are some of us through the years have been taught that sexuality is innately evil. The really spiritual person is for the celibate, the one who abstains from marriage, and sexual intercourse. If not evil, at least it is earthy and the sort of thing one does in the dark corner apart from the judging eyes of God and neighbor. 

Such an attitude misses the important point of sexuality being the gift of God. The Word of God revealed by the Holy Spirit through the prophets and apostles, explicitly refers to the wonderful potential of it. Responsible sexuality holds the key to great human joy and possibilities for ultimate human growth in spiritual insight and personal fulfilment.

Sexual compatibility involves an understanding of the sexual differences in psychosexuality. Males for example attain the height of sexual potency at about eighteen years of age while female mature in potential of sexual activity in the late twenties or early thirties. The man is easily stimulated to sexual readiness, whereas his mate may need preparation of a romantic aura for satisfactory sexual experience. 

To keep married love exciting and romantic is a most rewarding task. Many couples begin to take each other for granted and develop habits of sexual scheduling and conformity which obscure the ever new delights of the sexual secrets of the marriage partner. 

Marriage is not a reason to stop having dates, or wooing the beloved, or continuing the courtship. It’s through perennial practices such as these that conjugal bliss and mutual love will remain fresh and flowering. An attitude of openness and freedom in sexual play with one’s spouse, as depicted in the Songs of Solomon, will maintain the enthusiastic and exciting encounter of first love and will reinforce the mysterious enchantment of wedded happiness.

On the contrary, much of the difficulty in early marital adjustment relates to the guilt and anxiety of premarital sexual experimenting. This is compounded by the furtiveness and uncomfortable surroundings that usually accompany experiences of illicit sexual activity. That one needs premarital sexual experience in order to become an adequate marriage partner is a scientific nonsense and dangerous psychologically. 

One of the maturing of marital experiences is the opportunity to discover together the mysteries and joys of heterosexuality. In the light of fullness and freedom of Biblically oriented sexuality, this can be a most stabilizing factors for marriage. 

We live in the world where there are many who are frustrated in their lack of opportunity for sexual commitment. However, satisfactory sublimation in meaningful and enjoyable alternate tasks is always a present possibility. In any case, this is the providential ordination for the Christian whose full sexual experience is pending the provision of a marriage partner. 

In conclusion, we can say that sexuality is one of the great and difficult tasks of the Christian, as well as one of the most fulfilling personal experiences. 

We live in a culture in which, for the Christian, psychosexual development is a daily dialectic between the demand for personal purity and the tensions of sexual desire, stimulated by pornographic pressures at every hand. However, with confidence we can remember that our providential sexuality is God’s appointment and that He has provided a means of fulfillment of our sexual personalities in the mystery of marriage. 

The tensions and tests of patiently preparing for this mystery will, perhaps, be alleviated if we remind ourselves that we should work out our own sexuality with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God working within us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Don J.B NYAMUNGA

EFFECTIVE PASTORAL PLANNING AMIDST COVID-19

PASTORAL PLANNING AMIDST FIGHTING COVID19, THE BASICS

By Don. J.B. Nyamunga 

We are all figuring out the pastoral planning mechanisms and we are fully engaged in “let’s do it next week”, “We shall be well with this plan and that” mentality, everyone seems intelligent, hands on and all ideas are being floated around. This may look a naïve approach to the challenge, very flawed process that may do more harm than good. Being realistic and pragmatic in planning is what is very essential. 

Developing a way to think about the key areas of pastoral concern and one of them being the Covid-19 pandemic that is spreading like bush fire allover. That now is our pastoral focus at the moment, our working progress. This will come with its characteristics of effectiveness on the ground and the way the pastor/s understand what he is dealing with. 

All in all this planning has to create a deep faith community and not a government program executed by the Church. Those giving those guidelines seem to be non-Christians or simply people who look as if they belong to no church. The burning question we need to ask ourselves amidst the haywireness of Covid-19 is what is it that we do not know so far? Or what is it that we do not want to know?

Pastoral planning has to result in a better faith community with deep cultivation of the ideals of Jesus. If we don’t center Christ in our planning will be creating pitfalls in our pastoral planning. 

Planning even a simple task can be confusing if people are involved. With more people and communication channels be sure that there will also arise misunderstandings. The very thought of engaging in the process that produces an effective outcome is something overwhelming. 

We are to get involved in simple process that brings in right results, just enough and not also too much process hence beginning with a little too much than too lean. That means to loosen up than tightening up once the project of any sort starts. 

This will call for those concerned to be clear, easy in understanding and easy in communicating so that others but above in clear and workable enough utility to be effective from the starting point, flexible enough and all will depend on the type of leadership.

Planning is essential today because everything around us is changing, the world too is changing at the rate which no one knows what we shall wake up to. Heraclitus a sixth Century philosopher stated once that “you can’t put your foot into the same stream twice”. 

In the contemporary society, the scope and pace of change requires a constant planning. Problems do not stay the same, let alone the solutions. What we have to know is that the spirit of Jesus works in us that is true for that will remains constant and unchanging. But the humans change, physical environment changes, and some changes will call for signs of the times to be interpreted rightly. This means not keeping things as they were, or returning back to the factory settings. 

There will have to be clear-headed engagement with the way things are. What is that we did yesterday which may not work for us today, we have to invent new approaches to new challenges. 

Planning is about invention and implementation.
Effective planning is based on agreement about the present. Most people think planning deals with the future. We are here and we want to be there. We spend most of our time trying to agree on where we want to be and assuming that everyone knows where we are. 

After all we are all here, in the same place. Right? Wrong. The key factor is for all of us to agree on where we are right now, we need to know where we ought to pay attention to out of the mass stimuli that bombard us constantly. We construct our reality based on past experiences of what works and what doesn’t. 

Unfortunately most of the time we are living in the past, thinking its present, and trying to plan for the future. This is where information about the present realities is so important, it forces us to look into the way things are, and not how they were or how we would like them to be, that means giving up our preconceived notions of how things are and how they came to be. Learning is the only sure path of effective planning.

As we learn we discover that none of us is as smart as all of us. This comes out clearly in any team or group, there are some people with more power and authority, based on position, personal characteristics and skills, intelligence, insight, commitment, honesty, creativity and other giftedness. Effective planning has to involve everyone, what we have come to call “level the play field” not for aggressive and assertive but also not necessarily more intelligent and creative. 

We should not use our positions in that way. People will always differ to someone who is in an authority or someone who is in a position of authority. All participants should feel they are legitimate actors in the process, leaders must be careful to express their views or provide information in a way that doesn’t stifle the engagement of others.

In effective planning, what we also need to consider is the element of quality that is very important. Quality is what counts, in short-term numerical goals can prove deadly to an organization and church institute. Quality drives everything. Just don’t say we are going to increase by this amount, but what will you do differently that a reasonable person would think could result in such a change. No matter what goals we set for ourselves, if we continue to do things the same way, we will continue to get the same results. If it’s about directive planning that deals with where we are and where we want to be, and what needs to be done so as to be there, assuming that we know where we are and where we want to be, we can control our movement towards the desired state. 

Focusing on what we want and implementing action steps that look back from the present tends to confirm this view. Sometimes it may call dealing with probables of realties what technically in the pastoral language we call probabilistic where nobody controls what is happening to that effect. 

Probablistic projections are those insights into the futures with best information available and also other factors which may influence the outcomes. This can be compared to weather focus maps. Knowing where you are, and where you would like to go, tolerating ambiguity is flexible in the means and ends, values diversity.

Vatican II has taught us how to read the signs of the times on how to sustain faith communities of disciples who follow Jesus in whatever conditions in the world presented. Today the Church institution requires the astute use of the best human wisdom on how to create and sustain concerted action toward organizational goals. 

We are a Church because God has called us to announce the Reign of God in the world and especially to those whom the world cares little. We are also called to use our human talent and understanding on behalf of this community seeking its life in the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. 

Pastoral planning joyfully confronts change in the conditions under which we are called to discipleship. Talents and giftedness of the assembly are discovered, called forth, respected, and celebrated. Not only from top down, command-and-control planning does not work anymore, it is fundamentally at odds with an understanding of the Church as the people of God.

Although we can count many things in pastoral planning, we cannot measure qualitatively the most important thing: The vibrancy of a faith community. The heart of pastoral planning is a focus on qualitative issues without ignoring the quantitative. 

The notion of probablistic planning must be an essential and ongoing part of the life of a vibrant faith community. Pastoral planning is not done with a five-year plan but it is an ongoing cyclical process.

©Don J.B.Nyamunga2020

TEAMING UP FOR TOMORROW

TEAMING UP FOR TOMMOROW

We are all daily working towards a structure that loosens rigidity that could make people be themselves and creative at their best.

This will enable those who are still lying dormant on their talents that seem to be going to waste. We now have to be invited to work beyond our disciplines, outside our cultures above and below our ranks. Working in a TEAM.

Being organized as a team. Today being a lone ranger is impossible unless otherwise. Today you can’t invent something alone, you need several people, form different disciplines, working together at the same time.

This is what calls for a paradigm shift, information based model, in the technical language what we can call Connectography- the lining up lights in the a straight line that produces bright light and connections of city to city that manifests a brilliant beautiful panorama.

This calls for team spirit as in a football, tennis or any sport that carries with it a deep district if what is intended for can reach its objective. The members have to act as responsible decision-maker, where all members have to see themselves as executives.

All members participate in a creative action team right across departmental lines. There is no need for one to be the president or chairman, unless he is dedicated to serving the needs of others and to providing resources to the people who are getting the job done. What used to work no longer works anymore.

Management is becoming a lot flatter. Now there is a real need to build teams, lead teams and motivate people horizontally, and this in most cases has been without titles, without financial remuneration or incentives. Its team performance that is key. They cooperate, they work in teams, and they produce group projects.

Working more cooperatively than they ever have before, Team effort, social skills, to encourage those in the group who aren’t doing so well. They should not be made to feel less than worthy because they slip up or they do not have all the answers. We need to feel welcomed to real world of team work.

Effective team work doesn’t happen by magic. It takes a cooperative group of players, and it takes a talented coach. You can’t simply throw a few individuals together, even a highly talented individuals and expect them to perform brilliantly.

When it comes to playing as a unit, it’s important to forget about the specialties and limelight as in being a superstar, but to create the image of the teamwork. There are some few coaching skills in the field of sports that can help us get the idea of what we are trying to approach in this context of Team work for tomorrow.

a) Create a shared sense of purpose

People working together can accomplish tremendous things: a unified vision, ideas, creativity and intelligence sparks a sense of oneness. A strong leader is always needed to focus all that energy established, to focus all that energy that helps the team members how their accomplishments will impact upon the outside world.

We ought to provide an environment, the corporate objective and encouragement so that people as individuals and as teams of individuals can feel that they are world-class, that they are better than any other team, and that there’s recognition and feedback which acknowledges that.

b) Make the goals team goals

Unless the whole team wins, no one wins, this is how the world sports do what they do to win. Individual records are fine for history books. What matters is more of performance of the entire team. Once people get involved in this way and they feed off each other, it’s contagious.

c) Treat people like the individuals they are

When individuals come together as a team, their individuality doesn’t suddenly evaporate. They still have different personalities. They still have different skills, different fears, different hopes, we need to recognize those differences, appreciate them, and use them to the advantage of the team.

d) Make each member responsible for the team product

People need to feel their contributions are important. Otherwise they will devote less than complete attention to the tasks at hand. The project belongs to the team. We should let as many decisions as possible bubble up from the group, invite participation, don’t dictate solutions, don’t insist that things be done a certain way.

e) Share the glory, accept the blame

When the team does well and recognized, it’s the leader’s responsibility to spread the benefits around. A public pat on the back, a bonus from the top, whatever form the recognition takes, everyone should get a generous share of it, and we all congratulate each other.

People appreciate being included in the praise, it encourages them to give their greatest efforts and makes them want to works, again with the leader who guides them to this success. In the end the leader gets a big share of the credit anyway.

When it comes to criticism be smart leader and take exactly the opposite approach. Don’t point the finger to others, never raise public complaints about the weak link in the chain. Step forward and accept whatever complaints arrive. Then speak privately with the team members about how the results might be improved, and turn their attention to doing better next time.

f) Take every opportunity to build confidence on the team

Believe firmly in the team and share that belief with every member. Who doesn’t want to feel as if they are part of the wonderful group? When they get complaint from others, they can begin to see the progress they are making and changes in themselves.

g) Be involved, stay involved

The stronger leader has to be involved and stay involved, visualize the leader as a commander of the busy battalion. The leader doesn’t need to be there, you have the experience and you got to listen. If you get enough experience, if you work hard enough, if you are smart enough, if you don’t do your then you get a good feel for all these activities going up and down and for all the other things around you. You cant always draw up a precise battle plan. Get initiative feeling for it, you have to have antennae out, at the back of your head.

h) Be mentor

It’s the leader’s job to develop the talents and strengthen the people on the team. Team members ought to deal with their assignment at hand, taking genuine responsibility for the lives and careers of the members of the team. How would you like to improve? Where do you want your career to go from here? What kind of new responsibilities would you like to be taking on?

It’s your job as a leader to ask all these questions and help the team and whatever knowledge and experience you possess to help the members achieve those goals.

The final test of the leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. The greatest reward of a leader can achieve the greatest legacy a leader can leave, is the group talented, self-confident, and cooperative people, who are themselves readily to lead. Team players are leaders of tomorrow.

© J. B Nyamunga'20

HAVING THE COURAGE TO PREACH

DO YOU HAVE THAT COURAGE TO BE A GOOD PREACHER?

By. Don. J.B. Nyamunga

The word is always communicated personally in one to one dialogue and it has to create and focus towards the proclamation of the word in a public way, and has to be set in the context of worship of the revealed God. Preaching to produce the quality and depth of Christian discipleship in the congregation that depends heavily upon the weight of preaching. This will depend exclusively on what investments we have put into homiletics (from homileo, “to speak, converse, address someone”). Homiletics is the study of the process and act of listening to the Spirit speak through Scripture so as to engender an appropriate here and now witness to God.

We proclaim about the coming of the kingdom of God as Jesus preached: on mountains, on plains, form a boat, near the temple, in the market place. The apostles were sent out, two by two, they assigned them the responsibility. St. Paul too reminds us of the necessity of preaching: faith comes by hearing and hearing comes through the word of God. And how do you hear this word of God unless you have somebody to declare it, and how do you do that without a preacher? (Rom.10:11-15).

Preaching (kērugma) means proclamation of the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord. Preaching is a continuous and public testimony which the church is constantly seeking to make to all who would hear it, most conspicuously in the context of worship, witnessing to the church’s faith in Christ. Preaching consists substantially in the clarification, exposition, interpretation and re-appropriation of the written word that witnesses to the revealed word. It’s a public exposition and to all who would hear it. In the contemporary language we say that God is addressing us personally through Christ in history as revealed word. The proclaimed word is witnesses to the revealed word. (Cf. Luther, WLS, vol.3, 1125). Before it became a written word, the proclaimed word was first and foremost an oral tradition. In time, a written tradition of apostolic teaching emerged that subsequently became universally recognized as canon to which the church could constantly became universally recognized as canon to which the church could constantly return for the nurture of its continuing oral witness (Cf. Tertullian, ANF, vol.3, 610).

The revealed word, the preached word and written word all cohere in mutual interdependence. The revealed word of God is communicated through speech, expressed through ordinary human languages, spoken, written, remembered, translated, and respoken. The gospel itself is thought to be a word (logos) an address to us from God Himself. The notion of logos can be translated not only “word”, but “reason”. It is by means of words, through ordinary language, that reason is expressed. As a struggle for words, I struggle to express reasoning. Preaching seeks to clarify that self-revealing word of God in the pulsating contemporary, local, here and now situation. (Luther, WWL, 79).

The Christian worship contains both prophetic and priestly dimensions. The prophetic aspect deals essentially with God’s address to us. The priestly aspect focusses on the gathered community addressing God responsively in prayer, praise and intercession. Preaching emphases the prophetic side. Ordinarily, Christian preaching does not, like Old Testament prophecy, says directly: “Thus saith the Lord” as if the revealed word were coming immediately through our preaching. But we have a more modest task of saying “Let us listen to the Scripture together. We will talk about the way in which the word of God the Father through the liberating son meets us with help of Spirit through the Scripture.”

Preaching has to lead towards inviting persons to Christ as evangelization agents. Sometimes leads to seeking comfort, encouragement and inspiration, devotion, dedication, loyalty and discipleship to Christ on the pastoral level, imparting clear, understanding Christian teaching we find in the doctrinal dimension and then building moral sensitivity and awareness and elicit changed behaviours, which comes with morally formative dimension. The preached word addresses the whole community, yet by this means hopes to penetrate the heart of each individual in community as if alone before God.

Preaching, to be complete, requires hearing. Yet each act of hearing in highly individual, even though addressed to many. Preaching speaks from experience to experience. One’s own personal story is the lens through which the larger Christian story is seen. The Holy Spirit is at work to bring the preached word home to the hearer. The best preaching prays earnestly that the Holy Spirit will illumine the hearer through our frail attempts to speak God’s own word through human language. One is dully authorized officer of the church. You are appointed to the office of preaching. This is the reason why vestments in preaching have had much historical significance (Clement of Alexandria, ANF, vol.2, 453).

The liturgical vestments point beyond all temporal powers to the ground and end of temporal power. The office of preaching needs the imprint of personality, without being reduced to it. As a preacher, one has to risk telling his own story, not as an end in itself, but rather as a sharply focused lens through which the whole Christian story is refracted. This will require delicate balance, a creative tension, a dialectic that can easily become imbalanced. It will test your insight and ability as a preacher of the word to hold person and office together in fine balance. There is no easy formula. It requires an intuitive wisdom that has on it the stamp of your personality and sense of vocation.

God preaching is in touch with specific hungers, the current aspirations, the sociocultural presuppositions of the contemporary audience. Preaching must come through with a vital recollection of historical Christian memory so as to illuminate and challenge the alienated present by means of Scripture and tradition. Preaching is not simply fixated on the now archaic language of the first century A.D. or the sixth century B.C. It is by definition essentially contemporary, a here and now event. How are we to make clear the seemingly remote connection between a text written twenty-five hundred years ago and this here and now audience? God’s spirit work cooperatively with our intelligence and attentiveness to make that otherwise improbable connection.

Preaching is therefore concerned with both the widening of the community through evangelical witness and the deepening of the community through spiritual formation. Homilia, from which our word homily comes, points more often toward the pastoral nurturing, and didactic side of congregational preaching. When the good news is announced, it is often perceived as a profound challenge to our idolatries, and so we may fight it or be offended by it. The best preachers have always sought to penetrate the self-deceptions of their hearers and work their way skillfully through hardened layers of defense. Christians preaching tries to announce the judgment and grace of God to those who may not want to hear its full force. Preaching tries to get through these obstacles, not in coercive or overbearing ways, but through skillful persuasion under the guidance of Scripture and Spirit.

A preacher has a delicate task analogous to that of an ambassador delegated to an embassy in a remote, perhaps hostile, area who tries to get across the message of the home government in whatever ways possible. The preaching today has to be addressed to all and the people have to believe and respond. The poor and unlearned were crucial contributors to the primitive Christian mission. This has to be done in the language of the common people, rather than in a special technical language or an academic jargon.

The church celebrates good preaching as a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor.12). It’s not an easy to do this task well, to take hearers deeply into the meanings and claims of scripture and to bring ancient wisdoms into contemporary context in good humour and spirit, and in such a way that not only the least educated persons in the congregation can understand, but the wisest also be moved and edified. Preaching is not only a gift but a studied and improved upon. It involves cooperative relation between the spirit’s awakening guidance and our best human efforts. It’s God’s address through our fragile, distortable language. God the Spirit cooperates with our human competencies, talents, languages, abilities, and imagination to enable our speaking and hearing.

When preaching dwindles into philosophical speculation, literary criticism, free verse, political manipulation, or lathered sentimentalism, the laity know that the commission of ordination has somehow been misplaced. To some we give milk and others, meat (1 Cor. 3:2). To preach “in wisdom”

 Is to draw out of the fund of scriptural wisdom the particular insight that applies most clearly to this circumstances here and now (1 Cor. 2:6). Preaching involves a personally grasped, experienced affirmation of these meanings, a clarification of what they signify in our times and how they address our own situation. The pastor is called upon to make accessible the wider range of the wisdom of Scripture. The lectionary will always help prevent subjective, biased selections of texts.

To pretend to know everything and cover all subjects as encyclopedic manner will be disaster to the hearers. There is much of which we should never speak in the pulpit, yet which we do well to know. A man who understands his subject and his work can speak to the ignorant in a manner interesting and instructive to the wise. Depth and simplicity meet at the same point. Have you an audience composed of forty-nine wise and one ignorant? Speak for the ignorant one (Vinet, 1853, 206). The best preaching is wise in its simplicity, nor its complexity (Kierkegaard, 1851-52, Bonhoeffer, 1948).

Through ordination, the minister is authorized to preach, assigned in the formal sense and does not make it subjectively appropriated, in the consciousness of either the preacher or the hearer. The preacher has to say something right, to utter something worthy of belief. The hearer must be conscious of the rightness of that word. Only then does the circle of authority completed. Then you have to speak with something significant to say and those who hear will be prepared by experience to trust what that person has to say. Authority is diminished when the divine self-disclosure is ignored or overlooked in the interest of personal opinion-making. Humble submission to the authority of the word is central to the authority of preaching. One cannot make up for absence by personal charm or rhetorical flair.

Preaching is closely connected with duty of reproof: correction, discipline and admonition. The teaching must be correct; otherwise, false assumptions may be reinforced. The pastor must reprove with authority. (Titus 2:15). Christian teaching stands in continuity with the prophetic tradition. This calls for pastoral courage to identify accurately the particular deficit or injustice or lack of awareness in the flock at a given time. But if you are going to offend the flock, offend them with the truth. You have it turned around if you yourself are the offense. Let the gospel be the offense; let the word be the scandal; let the truth be the offense. That is good preaching in the prophetic tradition. Prophetic preaching addresses human need not just on the individual scale, but on terms of ingrained social injustice (Amos 5:7, Isaiah 3:13-15) The preacher should have the courage to stand up as the conscience of the community, as an unintimidated critic of the corrupted society.

One must grasp inwardly the depth and relevance of those truths that elicits in other the same emotive qualities felt in oneself. “The anointing which received from him abides in you and you have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything, and it is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him”. We know good preaching when we hear it. It touches us viscerally. It is profound, subtle mode of communication that somehow makes the transcendence of Yahweh appear palpably imminent. It mixes courage and comfort, candor and sympathy, strength and vulnerability, in the kind of delicate blend achieved by excellent cook. Most worshippers know that there have been rare and beautiful times when they have been privileged to hear such a word. When it happens it is a remarkable event. It is a treasure in earthen vessels.

 

© Don J.B. Nyamunga’20

 

Prayer, the power of self-belief

Eco-Connect'20

[Prayer the power of self-belief]

Everyday we engage ourselves in what we have now come to call prayer... We pray, we get in touch with the Divine.

This has to lead one to something... You don't enter into prayer without knowing what has taken you there-in in the first place.

Prayer is to transform one in spirit and make one into a person in the person of Christ.

That now means one entering into conversion, metanoia that deep change of heart in which one dies on a certain level of self in order to find the self alive and free and on a more spiritual level.

That is why we say, if you are not yet to ready to be converted don't pray, and if you pray at all be careful of what you are praying for.

The love of God as taught of holy men and women more so the monks and nun require two things: Love in the heart (effects mentís) and productive virtue (effectus operis). Virtue and love are great components of spiritual experience.

Virtue consists in a certain way of life: fasting, vigils, manual work, reading, prayer, poverty. This calls one to enter into 3 types of meditatiin: memory of the past, then awareness of the present things, concerns of the future. (cfr. Thomas Merton, on Contemplative Prayer, p.89).

As we pray, we are called upon to control out thoughts and our desires, we must acquire interior freedom. Here we are called upon by st. Paul as he says

"We have to be pure-minded, enlightened, forgiving and gracious to others, we have to rely on the Holy Spirit on unaffected love, on the truth of our message, on the power of God..." (2 Cor 6:6-10).

During prayer, we suspend earthiky preoccupations and direct our focus to the Father. We shall always enter into a struggle for divine peace and spiritual love, in contemplation.

This calls one to think of what he or she is doing and this can only be helped from the grace and without ever renewed self-discipline. This may call upon one to fast to achieve this personal meditation.

We have to think of what we are doing, and reasons for our action must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love.

Our ability to sacrifice ourselves in a mature and generous spirit may well prove to be one of the best test of our interior prayer, for prayer and sacrifice go together.

Where there is no sacrifice, there will eventually turn out to be no prayer, and vice versa. When sacrifice is an infantileself-display, or maudlin self - pitying introspection.

Serious and humble prayer, united with mature love, will unconsciously and spontaneously manifest itsrl in habitual spirit of casrifice and concern for others that is unfailingly generous, through perhaps we may not be ware of the fact. Such union of prayer and sacrifice is easier to evaluate in others than in ourselves and when we become aware of this we longer try to gauge our own progress in the matter.

© Don J.B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho
Www.nyamusus.blogspot.com

PASTORAL LEADERSHIP IN TIME OF C-19

Pastoral leadership

1. Practice Personal and Team Learning:

a. Pursue passions,

i. Explore what attracts or beckons
ii. Discover what energizes
iii. Recover what’s been suppressed
b. Examine what de-energizes

c. Pursue ministerial and professional proficiency, but…

d. Surpass competence and seek excellence

e. Report personal learning

f. strategize team learning, set dates, prepare, follow through

2. Practice Menagerie Ministry (possibly with a skilled consultant)

a. Name and tame Elephants: drive out blame, eradicate fear,

i. Nurture trust,
ii. Clear safe space,
b. Acknowledge Gorillas
i. Practice facing up to bad news
ii. Re-imagine failure
iii. Learn to welcome conflict as “something important going on”

c. welcome the Dove

i. Acknowledge, respect and engage change
ii. Inspire, call to, and lead change
iii. Re-align the change sequence: end; middle; begin

3. Cultivate and Share Spirituality: as persons, as teams

a. Take time for personal deepening

b. Bring your spirit to work

c. Honor Real Presence

i. Take time to be in God’s presence together
ii. Pray for each other
d. Set aside ordinary times -holiday
e. Set aside Sabbath time - for rest
i. Fold in to weeks, month
ii. Get away

4. Aspire to Common Mission:

a. Review the mission, link everything to it
b. Compose and declare a vision: with a “gulp” factor
c. Dream it, tell it, plan it, grow it
d. Name it, affirm it, take delight in small steps
e. Practice tagging
f. Ask, How does this foster my own personal mission?

Don. J.B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Keeicho

PEDAGOGY OF THE YOUTH AND THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH

Eco-Connect'20

THE PEDAGOGY OF THE YOUTH

[Things necessary]

- We need to enlighten the minds of the youth, so as we are able to direct them.

- We need to change our attitudes towards them.

- We need to learn from history

- We need to play a more prophetic role when dealing with the youth

- We need dedication

- We need apostolate that is beyond our church

- We need to know the different behaviours of different stages

- We need to know their families and even have concern for them.

- Beware of the society around us.

- Beware of their needs

- They are looking for the society that is revolutionary; they will question the steps of the church.

- Need for solidarity, with their parents, friends and common good.

- Need for truth. They are searching for truth and they will always be in constant protest. They love examples rather than speeches

- They need to be understood.

- Need for complete vision- better die standing than kneeling, have creative mind to escape anything that induces fear or tension. We have failed to prepare the youth in the basic manner so that they are able to imitate.

- Need to work with the parents and the state.

[THE CHURCH AND YOUTH]

There is little being done for the youth

- The church needs a new strategy for the youth which is more accommodating for
them. We need a revolutionary strategy. This is the church should employ

- Inspiration approach which should consider objectively

- Kind of world we live in

- How that world can be changed

- The force that can change the world.

- Instruction for action training them how to fight against evil of their society

- Global struggle through group study

- Categorized catechesis

- A follow up

- Dedication, zeal the church should evaluate their apostolate

Don. J.B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho

MARRIAGE IS WHAT YOU WANT NOT WHAT IS THERE...

THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE

“There was a wedding in Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there and Jesus and his disciples had
also been invited.” (John 2:1)

“Marriage is an order in which the profession must be made before the novitiate.” (Jean Pierre Camus)

“The form of matrimony consists in an inseparable union of minds; a coupled pledged to one another in a
faithful friendship. The end is the begetting and upbringing of children, through marriage intercourse and
shared duties in which each helps the other to rear children.” (St. Thomas Aquinas).


“Marriage is a covered dish”
 (Swiss proverb)

“Marriage is heaven and hell”- (German proverb)

“Marriages are happy. It’s the living together afterwards that causes all the trouble.”(Farmer’s almanac)

1. Always place yourself in the hands of God, so that he may give strength and courage you need to carry your cross.

Walk with Christ through prayer and rosary which unites families with family of Nazareth, which came before the families of the earth.

2. You are the true images and mirror where the people clearly see God’s plan since creation. It was God who chose you and asked you to live in the vocation of family life.

3. You should always be a role model of Christian values. Always guard yourselves against the hostile winds currently blowing against the family around the world through the media.

4. Sacrament of marriage like the ordination plays a very important role in the life of the church because the domestic church, the first school that teaches the basics of Christian values.

5. If you read the Holy Scriptures from where it starts to the last page you would continue
to admire and marvel at the wisdom and unique ways of God.

6. The disposition of the couple is to listen to God’s voice. Gal 5:13-16

7. Have the ability to listen, objectively analyse what you say and hear. Prejudice and emotions should not be in your vocabulary when dealing with an issue.- be open, wise,
simple, prudent, tolerant and sincere.

8. Be optimistic about your life, marriage, family, husband, and wife. God’s ways are not always ours.

9. Strongly believe in providence- in thee I put my trust, I and my house shall worship the lord, a family that prays together stays together, if the lord is for me who can be against
me, he who puts his trust in man is bound to fail- salt and mystery- the lord bless the upright-Ps.73/74, a pure heart create in me O lord.

10. You shall never look strong faced like the bereaved. Always be cheerful and ready to welcome a visitor in your home with a smile.

11.The identity of a catholic is the Eucharist where all other sacraments rotate. Without the Eucharist we would have no identity. Receiving the Eucharist is part of the identity of a
catholic. If you strike it off, you become unrecognisable. It is a feast of peace where everyone is invited to partake.

 Teach your children the sign of the cross. On your death bed the words will be
“Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.”

©Don. J.B Nyamunga
Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho 

Be honest...

BE HONEST                           

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a 
successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his 
Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called 
all the young executives in his company together. 

He said, “It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have 
decided to choose one of you. “The young executives were shocked, but the 
boss continued, “I am going to give each one of you a SEED. I want you to 
plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what 
you have grown from the seed I have given you. Then I will judge the plants 
that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO”

One man named Joseph was there that day and he, like the other, received a 
seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him 
get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Every day, he would 
water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of 
the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that 
were beginning to grow.

Joseph kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. Three weeks, four 
weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now others were talking about 
their plants, but Joseph didn’t have a plant and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by, still nothing in Joseph’s pot. He just knew he had 
killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, and tall plants, 
but he had nothing. Joseph didn’t say anything to his colleagues; however, 
he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil. He so wanted the seed to 
grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought 
their plants to the CEO for inspection.

Joseph told his wife that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she 
asked him to be honest about what happened. Joseph felt sick to his stomach; 
it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life. He took his 
empty pot to the board room. When Joseph arrived, he was amazed at the 
variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful, in all 
shapes and sizes. Joseph put his empty pot on the floor and many of his 
colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him.

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives. 
Joseph just tried to hide in the back. “My, what great plants, trees and 
flowers you have grown”, said the CEO. “Today one of you will be appointed 
the next CEO”

All of a sudden, CEO spotted Joseph at the back of the room with his empty 
pot. He ordered the financial director to bring him to the front. Joseph was 
terrified. He thought, “The CEO knows I’m a failure! May be he will have me 
fired”.

When Joseph got the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed, 
Joseph told him the story. The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Joseph. 
He looked at Joseph, and then announced to the young executives, “behold 
your next Chief Executive Officer!” His name is Joseph; Joseph couldn’t even 
grow his seed.

How could he be the new CEO?” the others said.

Then the CEO said, “one year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. 
I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me 
today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead, it was not possible 
for them to grow.” All of you, except Joseph, have brought me trees and 
plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow you 
substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Joseph was the only one 
with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. 
Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer.

If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.

If you plant goodness, you will reap friends

If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.

If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment.

If plant consideration, you will reap perspective

If you plant hard work, you will reap success

If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation

So be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you reap later.

© Don J.B Nyamunga 
Girimori Catholic Parish 

YOU FIGHT BECAUSE YOUR HEART IS EMPTY OF LOVE...

WHY IS THERE WAR, QUARRELS AND FIGHTS AMONG US? 

A beautiful Christian ideal to have before us is that which Jesus presents in my neighbor. Jesus is in the person next to me, behind me, in front of me, in the person with whom I live and work. 

One person in recent times who lived this reality is Mother Teresa of Calcutta. While in hospital in 1983 she meditated intensely on the Gospel  message on Matt 25:31-46, where Jesus said that whatever we do to others, we too do to him:

Jesus is the Hungry - to be fed.

Jesus is the Thirsty - to be satiated.

Jesus is the Naked - to be clothed.

Jesus is the Homeless - to be taken in.

Jesus is the Sick - to be healed.

Jesus is the Lonely - to be loved.

Jesus is the Unwanted - to be wanted.

Jesus is the Leper - to wash his wounds.

Jesus is the Beggar - to give him a smile.

Jesus is the Drunkard - to listen to him.

Jesus is the Mental - to protect him.

Jesus is the Little One - to embrace him.

Jesus is the Blind - to lead him.

Jesus is the Dumb - to speak for him.

Jesus is the Crippled - to walk with him.

Jesus is the Drug Addict - to befriend him.

Jesus is the Prostitute - to remove from danger and befriend her.

Jesus is the Prisoner - to be visited.

Jesus is the Old - to be served.

As Mother Teresa accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1979, part of her acceptance speech went like this:

“It is not enough for us to say: ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor.’ Saint John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. (1 John 4:20) 

How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? And so this is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt.”

How can we love like this? 

Where will we get the power to love Jesus in others in this way as he asks in the Gospel? (Matt 25:31-46) 

In her letter to the people of Albania on April 28^th 1997 Mother Teresa gives the key on being able to see Jesus in others. The key to loving others is prayer. She wrote,

“To be able to love one another, we must pray much, for prayer gives a clean heart and a clean heart can see God in our neighbor. If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another. If each person saw God in his neighbor, do you think we would need guns and bombs?” 

We may not remember every time we are talking to someone, “Jesus is in this person.” In the parable in today’s Gospel the people were not aware of the presence of God in those around them. That is why in the parable both those to left and to the right of the Son of Man ask, “Lord when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison?” (Matt 25:37,44). Because we do not always think like this. 

Mother Teresa rightly said, “If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another. If each person saw God in his neighbor, do you think we would need guns and bombs?”

Thinking like this means thinking in a new way, putting on a new mind, letting our brains be washed with the Gospel of Jesus. And as Mother Teresa said, it is through prayer that we will receive the grace to see others with this new mind of Jesus.

When we put on this new mind, the mind of Jesus, then his kingdom is coming in our world. Then Jesus is King of our world.

Be kind this week and look at a sister, brother, wife, husband in the eye and say I care and I love you.

© Don J.B Nyamunga

Girimori Catholic Parish - Kericho