twena nitwe ruhanga; direct translation, all of us are a part of the creator. all of us are god.
twena nitwe ruhanga; as a declaration, a call to action, a remembering of what lives inside us.
It has been a while since I was here, on these pages, sharing with you who reads. i think now perhaps it is best to take us back to where i have been, and then in that sharing, we can come back to what has led me to this particularly declaration. You see, like you, i am searching for the meaning of what it means to be here. I look around at the world and i purpose to not despair, because of course there is much to despair about, but that cannot be the point. So, i hold that; the wars, the aches to my spirit, the grief that is mine and yours, and i hold space for what else can come through or perhaps, sit alongside.
As i search, trying to understand why i am here, how i can be here, and if at all there is much more-than-meets-the-eye significance to these our human conditions, i seek and call to god. Ruhanga orahi? Ruhanga aha bwenkyi noreba ebi byona akahunama. these are the questions that i ask; where is this our creator and giver of life? do they care, do they see what is happening to me, and you and us, and do they dare respond? I ask, and sometimes there are no answers, sometimes the answers come in ways i do not like or yet understand, sometimes it comes back that i already have the answers i/we seek.
Aha bwenkyi murikubireba mukahunama. aha bwenkyi mwikyirize ebi byona. this stirs my spirit. I feel annoyed, sometimes enraged by such responses. still, to know one must listen, and one who seeks must be willing to hold what comes, no matter what it is. so i ask, and i listen. why do we not speak, not act? why do we do what we do? why do we accept this as our fate? you see, i have gone looking to put god on trail, and it has come back that we too need to be tried.
I pause now to give you time to collect yourself. i understand the discomforts that come with these answers. they are demanding of us too, they say that perhaps we should look to ourselves, within ourselves, and this too can be a load to hear.
I am not at fault. we are not at fault, or at least, i/we are not, in the way they are, at fault. yes it is true, yes i hear what you say and i might even be in some agreement, but please stay a while, let us follow through with this Ruhanga’s rebuttal to my/our accusations.
You see on this trail of god, i/we have made many assumptions consciously or unconsciously. for example, there are those of us now who conjure up images of this Being who is set up in the skies somewhere, removed from us, pulling strings; there must be after all somebeing else that is responsible for the ways in which we act, respond and all else. I do not contest that, not entirely. let us say, owatuhangire ariho. ekyahangire ebi byona kyiriho. for after all, the mountains and rivers have been here longer than we. the sun rises and sets and we have nothing to do with that. so yes, we are in agreement that there is that which is beyond us, whatever that might be, for it remains unknown and mysterious.
If then it remains unknown, perhaps even unwilling to be found, then for today i purpose to leave it there. let us then focus on us, who are here. what then for us? We circle back to where we started. twena nitwe ruhanga. it brings us to another preposition. this one i/we are still exploring. this one says that twena nitwe ruhanga, and so, all of us are responsible. it implies that all of us have been bestowed with creating power, life giving power, and how we use it, is up to us. It says, Ruhanga Nyamhuhanga owahangire byona, akaha abantu obugabe bw’okwecweramu. this different preposition brings us here. you, and me having to come to terms with what then comes through us, now that we are here.
We can not be blamed, not entirely. and so as we sit in despair ours and not ours, looking for where else the fault can be, should be, it makes sense to look to this other somebeing, to take this blame and load off us. alongside that, twena nitwe ruhanga is a call to action, a remembrance of what lives within. it asks i/we to come to terms with what is within our power, and contend with what it is we are doing with it.
It says, the waters flow freely, the earth stays here, what we sow and how we do it, is up to us. and so, i turn further and further from despair and annoyance and feel a particular stirring that tells me that perhaps then i/we as the creators and shapers of our own world can fashion a way out of that which weighs on us; even the wars, we do not have to be at war with each other, or ourselves. It tells me that with this creator energy i/we can conjure for ourselves and each other that which is similar to what is innate in creation; life, abundance, vastness, regeneration. it says, perhaps from all of this we can build anew, weave new worlds into existence, twete ebitariho nk’ebiriho, shape light from darkness.