TinyFunmi's Odysseys

  To react or not to react   Someone asked me about how to know when to show anger or hide it….   The first time I understood the importance of knowing when to react when angry was in secondary school. There was this very short boy. He was a terror in our form class. He was very aggressive, and everyone was scared of him. I had just moved to the UK, so he thought I was fresh meat. For weeks, he was subtly bullying me, and I was letting him. I was hiding my irritation and anger. I kept ignoring him but one day (I saw red- ti ile mama mi jeun lori mi), I just turned on him as he was doing his stupidness again, like, ‘are you mad?’, I pushed him… My guy fell! Come see shocked faces! He got up and wanted to fight but I didn’t back down. The teacher that had been ignoring us finally took interest- she pulled us apart and sent us to the deputy headteacher’s office!   It was totally the right reaction! Because of that one little moment of madness- till I left that secondary...

“Tell me something I don’t know but should know”  Someone responded “Jesus loves you” I replied: “Erm I know this!” And they said “You don’t cos you have always exhibited that you don’t. If you do, your countenance would be different.” I spent the rest of my evening thinking about this!

I remember one time my friend called and told me about this Portuguese restaurant someone took her too. She talked it up so much. Imagine my surprise when I got to  Nandos  and the food they sell is chicken and chips!!! I was in my late teens. That was one of the first times I had an inkling that I didn’t understand the art of bullshit but I didn’t worry about it. 

“ When we require women to pay over and over again for Eve ’ s transgression with their silence and submission, we negate the full redemptive power of the gospel ” ~ Ruth Haley Barton, Phd Div To begin to address the issue of gender bias we must first acknowledge its existence in society at large, as well as throughout Christendom.   This is not to suggest that it is either acceptable or justifiable but merely the recognition that gender bias is a part of our everyday lives. Gender bias refers to the common practice of holding the value of men above women such that women are treated as less important than men. On a very basic level, this applies to unequal treatment in employment such as promotion, pay and benefits. On a deeper level, gender bias affects people ’ s expectations and even their attitudes towards one another. When we talk about discrimination in Christianity the discussion revolves around perceptions of the role of women. In Ministry, women encounter limita...

I was online, just browsing (well researching cultural relativism- don’t ask- long story…) and my eyes caught the name Wangari Maathai so of course I had to ‘google’ her.   As I read about her, I started crying, her story is not a sad one- not all- she was the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize. Reading about her made me think about women… I discovered that I have never really given them the credit due to them Honestly, despite the fact that I am one- a woman (so I’m told sha) I have never really understood them, I think it is because I tend to focus on the crazy things they do… (covers face)… They do very very strange things!!!

I was having a chat with someone the other day, we were talking about my upbringing and Proverbs 22:6 was quoted. “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it”. For some reason this made me think of the bad habits my son is likely to and has inherited from me.

Person: Tiny you are a chameleon! I laughed at this outburst, especially because this same person had declared that they knew me more than I knew myself a couple of weeks before- now they are claiming that I just blend in and there is a demand to show my true self. So I decided to ask myself Tiny who are you?

  Two separate incidents made me understand the effect of procrastination, one involved the President of Ghana, the other involved rice and 2 pieces of fish. 

The last couple of days of 2014 were very calm for me outwardly but inwardly a lot was going on… it started when I heard the words ‘Tiny, you are underachieving’ for the billionth time…