My Father's House by Reggie Ugwu

(By Reggie Ugwu)

After my brother dies and my father was partially paralyzed, my family traveled 7,000 miles in search of an old home, a new house, and the things we'd lost on the road in between.

I remember feeling grateful that we never said “Merry Christmas.” We didn’t say it on Christmas morning when we awoke in Virginia, during a layover at the world’s most desolate Hampton Inn & Suites, and took long showers and poured too much batter into the waffle machine. Or at Washington Dulles International Airport, 1,400 miles from our cul-de-sac in Houston, where, at 8 a.m., bright, deserted corridors seemed to me pleasantly indifferent to the calendar. Near midnight on Christmas Eve, we had wished for a shuttle in lieu of a sleigh, making our plea with a dead-eyed driver who we’d been told could take us to the Hampton Inn. His broad white vessel didn’t have a ramp for Dad’s electric wheelchair — the one that chirped like a repair droid (meep murp) whenever you turned it on — and was too far above the ground for us to maneuver him out of it and into a seat. The driver suggested that my sister Adaeze and I ride the shuttle with our bags while Mom and Dad follow in a taxi. But Mom threw me a look that even I understood meant “I don’t want to be alone,” and so Adaeze rode with the bags while the three of us stayed behind, waiting by the curb at passenger pickup as the cool black night ticked into morning.

Of Pope Francis and Catholic Compassion

(CNN—Jill Filipovic) – Is Catholicism about faith and compassion, or rigid doctrine and exclusion? According to a group of conservative Catholics who just accused Pope Francis of spreading heresy, it's the latter.

Sixty-two (somewhat marginal) Catholic scholars and clergy have signed a letter that disputes Francis' signaling of his willingness to allow divorced and remarried people to receive communion. This, they say, is immoral and heretical, a sign of Francis "misleading the flock." Far better, in this retrograde reading of doctrine, to ostracize and shame the remarried as "adulterers" and the divorced as sinful failures. 

Really?

I've seen how this "old way" played out in my own family, and it puts Pope Francis' more reform-minded church in useful perspective. My grandparents were devout Catholics, married young, and had five children; my grandfather also beat my grandmother. She eventually left -- a painful and terrifying decision for a woman with only a high school degree in 1950s America. She supported the five kids by working multiple low-wage jobs at once. He did his damnedest to skirt financial responsibility, and she struggled her entire life.

"When Women Gather..." - A Movie Review

(By Tony Kan) – “When Women Gather, There Is War!” – A Review of The Women 

 Every movie has an emotional core, its beating heart.

In The Women, Blessing Egbe’s latest movie which opened in cinemas yesterday, the core lies in a statement mouthed by Teni (Omoni Oboli) who tells her long-suffering husband: “Where two or three women are gathered, there is a silent war.”

Cold, hot or silent, wars lead to casualties and there are casualties aplenty in The Women.

The premise of The Women is not absolutely original and neither does it pretend to re-invent the wheel. What Blessing Egbe, who gave us Lekki Wives, has done is to present us with a story (sprinkled with her inventive touch) that is real-to-life, thought provoking and funny as hell.

Consider this killer exchange between Chubby and Omo.

Chubby: Does your husband know you are here?

Omo: No. If he finds out he will kill me

Chubby: So why are you here then? You want to die?

Nigerians, Nigerian Pastors, and Tithing