The unique and glorious month that is May

Four days ago the ever-so-glorious month of May closed its cycle to usher us into the month of June.

May is a month of restoration. It is a month of awakening. To those who have preoccupied themselves with what can be called the characteristics of each month, it is, like April, a month of lightning and thunder.

Scientists have been admonishing us that in these times, once there are signs of the likelihood of rain, we should switch off our electrical gadgets. The reason is not hard to sense. Electrical gadgets, computers, and cell phones emit powerful rays which are compatible with the electrical discharges from lightning. When lightning and thunder strike, we dash, shaken to our marrows, for whatever straw that can give us that momentary cover. Yet there must be lightning and thunder to moderate temperate and tropical atmospheric imbalance.

As I did state a month ago in the piece on the month of April captioned, “Spring, all over,” thunderstorms are meant to balance the extreme differences in electrical potential which has built up between the ground and higher atmospheric layers, an activity featuring electrical discharges which constitute lightning-caused between clouds and the ground. The essence is to engender and maintain a balance between polar and tropical zones. This is why thunder and lightning are prevalent in March when in the third week the sun arrives on the Equator crossing to the Northern Hemisphere and in September in our clime when it is back on the Equator headed for the Southern Hemisphere.

May comes with a weather that is a mixture of rain and sunshine, a signal of the rainy days ahead and the wet season of June. In these times, the failings of EKEDC and its bungling siblings at Ikeja or Ibadan and Benin, Enugu or Kaduna, do not get as much-trumpeted on rooftops as they are in January or February—the day and night can be refreshingly cool!

May, as the fifth month of the year, swings in the law of numbers as the month of love. Sandwiched between April, the fourth month, which swings in Nature featuring awakening and sprouting, and June, the month of power, the love of May is not to be interpreted in the narrow sense. For love is not indulgence. It is severity. The releasing power of love gives to everyone that which is of benefit to him. Thus, it is said true love gives benefit, not comfort. Ultimately in benefit lies comfort. The tongue of fire in a furnace, or on a candle head, for example, is beautiful and attractive. A child finding it irresistible only needs to touch it once in his life to learn the right lesson! In experiencing, therefore, lies knowledge, and knowledge rightly understood and applied leads to maturity and development. Instantly, the hearty, unburdened laughter of the child turns to a loud outcry upon touching the tongue of fire!

In May, regeneration in Nature, a gift of love, drives everything relentlessly towards its climax, particularly towards the end of the month. In this driving or forcing towards blossom, everything is animated and it regenerates and reinforces the good and the bad, to bring to their authors, in justice, the bountiful harvest of their labour.

What can we say has been amiss in May that ended last Tuesday? Practically everything, some would say. If anything, the standard of living has taken more heartless bashing and dipped beyond last year’s level according to the Federal Office of Statistics report. Never mind President Buhari beating his chest on the catalogue of his magical achievements in his seven years in the saddle—on the driver’s seat.

In the area of security, we have never had it this bad since the civil war. This has been starkly demonstrated by the abduction of the head of the Methodist Church Nigeria, His Eminence, the Most Rev. Samuel Uche, on Sunday. How is it to be explained that the Prelate of the Methodist Church, that is, the leader of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, was kidnapped together with two of his ranking officers, on Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, on their way to Port airport to catch a flight to Lagos? The other officers were his chaplain, the Very Rev. Abidemi Shittu, and the Bishop of Owerri, the Right Rev. Dennis Mark. But thank goodness, life still goes on. Perhaps in hope. Hope of a better morrow only if we ourselves as citizens change for the better. For only a completely different people can produce a completely different leader, thus a completely different nation since the people can only give what they have.

In a democratic setting such as the whole world sanctions and clamours for, leaders rise through the ranks of the populace to brandish before our gaze our mirror, which they constitute. Who has heard of cocoa being harvested where a seed of oranges was planted? Who has not heard of the Law of Sowing and Reaping?

This column has stated that our world is governed. We supply the threads for the weaving of our carpet of fate. April/May, for example, is the season of mango. A very reflective person may not discountenance the fact that one mango seed holds the promise of hundreds of thousands of mango fruits. Maize is returning to town in large quantities already. Anyone may venture to count the number of ears of corn on a cob of maize. Upon reflecting that there may sometimes be as many as five cobs on a stalk, and as many as four hundred ears sticking to a cob, the lesson rings home powerfully that there may be as many as 2,000 ears of corn generated from an only one maize plant. Then the picture gets clearer: whatever a man soweth that shall he reap in multiples and many times over. Is it not every year that an orange or cashew tree brings forth fruits until it is cut or it dies a natural death from old age?

Back to the subject of May and Nature reminds me of the memorable thoughts of Mikhail Gorbachev, the agent of reform of the old Soviet Union and liberation of its various peoples who constituted it from the unnatural Union held together for decades only by forces of coercion. Mr. Gorbachev said in 1994: “As an ongoing re-evaluation of values it is basic to the evolution of civilization.

In its early history, mankind treated Nature, regarding it as something superior and unfathomable: they worshipped nature as a kind of deity. Harming nature was a deadly sin. Later as man accumulated knowledge and practical skills, he began to see himself as superior to Nature, setting himself the goal of conquering it and subordinating it to his own interests. Soon it became apparent that the arrogance of technical knowledge scars Nature with wounds that will not heal.”

Mr. Gorbachev went on to blame the problem in the relationship between man and Nature instructively on “a crisis of the spirit.” He urged the world to recognize “the urgent need to reconsider the old views, and attitudes towards Nature and reach a new level in learning the laws that govern the system that incorporates man and nature.”

What then is Nature? This brings us back to the fundamental issue Mr. Gorbachev raised in his profound perception. What is Mother Nature? Like many human words, which have lost their original meaning in human perception long ago, the concept of Nature remains nothing but a vague expression for many people today. Many long to be close to Nature. They throng the seashore for its refreshing spectacle, the rippling of the waters, the undertows, the sheer breath-taking expanse of the ocean that bows the spirit; tides rising and falling. Some wander in the woods for the oozing of insects, the singing of the birds, and the ruffling of leaves. Some head towards the mountains for their rarifying effects on the spirit and others, to behold undulating hills. Many long for Nature when they are tormented by the plastic city life and flee to the beautiful greens of the invigorating countryside, even if only for a short while.

These days it also has suddenly become wise to be natural for the sake of good health. Medicine is advancing all right. But has it not created two problems where it tries to solve one? Natural spring water is thus the vogue. And there is a return in droves to herbal remedies once contemptuously discarded as having no place in modern medicine. Talk of beautiful Nature fills the air. We speak of natural beauty and everyone is enraptured by the beauty that is natural, which has moved away from artificiality. We are enchanted by the former that bears life but repelled by the latter, the artificiality that is not animated, that is dead. Yet, simultaneously, man has not evinced signs of being tired to tinker with his dream conquest of Nature, although before the works of Nature he still is forced to bow.

Any talk of Nature today is likely to evoke no more than images of coarse forms, that is, outward appearances. Pictures of landscapes automatically arise as do those of all that is perceptible by the physical senses. At best this picture conceives of the earth or the galaxy or the entire subsequent Creation as belonging to Nature. In a sense, this would not be an altogether false or incomplete picture if these manifestations called Nature are seen as no more than mere outward visible effects of the intricate natural activities behind which lie some beings! Yes, some beings! But not perchance human beings.

To be certain, Nature is the undistorted material effects of these Nature Beings. Matter, it should be remembered, has no life of its own. It assumes a living form only when it has been glowed through. These forms, glowing, warm, and active are then able to unite with other forms to produce power and even stronger forms. When the animating glow withdraws, matter collapses or dies or returns to its primeval state. Such is it that when the Nature Beings called Nixies and in Edo Mammy Water withdraws from a river the river dries up. Which human body, as an example, will not fall away when that which glows in him withdraws? That which animates him, giving him life. This glow is a healthy union of radiations and distinguishes what belongs to Nature. Engrained in the works of Nature also is the capacity for self-strengthening and propagation.

In the end, we will become aware that all of life is radiations and that the visible life is nothing other than the coarse replica of a fine animating core. It stands to reason, therefore, that man and woman are bundles of different radiations. It is thus revealed in higher knowledge spreading on earth today that a woman is defined by the nature of her activity as man is by nature of his own activity as well. This then means that the difference in the words must prescribe differences in roles. These roles are not interchangeable.

Thus, the tones in the radiations of the Month of May, most importantly, of the special outpouring of Power from On High, drive the month in all-encompassing, invigorating love. The Lord, Jesus Christ, when He was about to depart the earthly life said to His Disciples: “And behold, I send the Promise of my Father upon you: But tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from On High.” (Luke 24: 49). And in the Acts of the Apostles we are told: “And when the day of Pentecost fully came, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.” The Acts continue: “And they were filled with Holy Ghost…” (Acts 2: 1-4).

The stupendous Event is when the Almighty Creator of All renews His Creation. It is a yearly occurrence, and Christ being the Love Part of the Father would know about the Event, and the exact time this happens in May. And, of course, the Holy Spirit as the Justice and executive Arm and of the Most High, hence the Event is described as the Outpouring of Power by the Holy Spirit. So is it that with the Event mankind stands encompassed in the unrelenting driving power of the Month of May by the Holy Spirit. In the grip of its radiance, of that unfathomable love, we rejoice. It is love, which, in unswerving justice, lays upon no one nothing more than he has taken upon himself.

It is said in higher knowledge granted to mankind in these times that when we look at the world, every country and possibly as many men and women, the signs of the nature of the harvest of the future are self-evident, even of the harvest today. The month of May closed its cycle last Tuesday and we are handed over to the month of June, with rains rising and reaching a climax, what geographers and meteorologists call the first maximum in the equatorial belt. Glorious May, the month of love, how wonderful; how glorious it really is.