58: Sometimes you need to let baggage go

Episode 58  Jude talks about journeys, from Nigeria to the UK, from Paris to Lourdes to Rome, and his 'very beautiful' ongoing faith journey. He shares how setbacks have been transformed by trying to understand what God is saying to him. 'And now I  focus on living simply,' he says.

Find out more

National Justice and Peace Network Conference

Nuclear Morality Flowchart

A new episode, a different conversation, every Wednesday!
Email me: theresa@KindsofCatholic.co.uk
Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and X/Twitter Give me a follow @KindsofCatholic
Find the transcript: https://kindsofcatholic.buzzsprout.com

Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey. And Pope Leo, quoting Saint Augustine, reminds us, ‘Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.’ I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed, and maybe challenged now and then. I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening. Thank you. 

Listeners, thanks for joining today. I'm joined by Jude, and we're gonna see where this conversation takes us today, where the Holy Spirit leads us. Welcome, Jude.

 Thank you so much, Theresa. 

So I often start with people's childhood and just see whether, you’re somebody who was born into a Catholic family and brought up as a Catholic or whether it's something you've come to later in life. 

I was born into a Catholic home. My parents, both Catholics. I would say we were born into a very religious family. So I have five siblings. So I have an elder sister who's the oldest, and then I have two older brothers, two younger brothers. So when I say we grew up in a Catholic home, it wasn't just me. It was the whole lot. So we had to be baptised. That's why I have my English or Catholic name, Jude. I do have my native name as well. So this was all the way from there.

Was your faith important to you as a little child, or is it something that became more important over time? 

Good you asked that question because, you know, as a child, I would say from four to about eight or ten, it was more like a chore, you know, having to go to morning Masses because we had to attend morning Masses with our mom at the time. And this was back in Nigeria. And we lived in Anambra, which was Onitsha. We used to go to morning Masses around 6/ 06:30 in the morning. We did every day, and we prayed our rosary. We're introduced to the rosary. And in the evenings, we go to catechism classes. So it was wake up, pray, go to church, then go to school, then come back, play at home, do your little chores, then off you go to your catechism classes as well. That was my upbringing when we lived in Onitsha. I think when I was about eight years old, we moved over to Lagos, one of the big cities in Nigeria. 

I'm reminded listening to you, Jude. I had a guest from Nigeria another time who grew up in Nigeria, and he spoke too about how important the rosary was in his family and children gathering in in the block to say the rosary each evening together outside. 

Yes.

I feel like I can understand something of the strong routine there in practising your faith, in being at things, and doing things through childhood, which can seem very stringent now, can't it? But I guess you learned your catechism well. 

I would say it was a very solid foundation for us. So I did receive my communion when I was in in Lagos, and then I also became an altar boy, which we had to go for altar boy services or practices every Saturday evening. So it was a good time also to kind of form friendship and brotherhood and comradeship with all the younger generation as well because I also had people my age and people older than me forming a community as well. Such friendship stays with you over time, for life. I would like to add as well, when I was in my primary school, my classroom teacher at the time, she was also the chaplain, and I volunteered. I was the one who made sure we had the prayer rooms ready for the morning assemblies, assisted with any of the preparation needed to conduct those spiritual lessons. So, yeah, I enjoyed it because for me, it felt like it was part of the natural growth of life knowing how we were brought up, solid religious background. 

And I think there's something to be said, isn't there, for a family who is committed to their faith actually having lots of time put aside to practise their faith together. You can see how important their faith is to a family if their time is spent practising it. You mentioned that it maybe felt like a bit of a chore when you were very young, but it sounds like it became something that you valued, that you recognised the kind of friendships and community that you were building through that, quite young. 

As I got older, maybe it was my teens where you get a bit rebellious. Sometimes I discussed with my mom. She sometimes sees it as a challenge or, like, I’ll be challenging her, and she sometimes says, I don't like you doubting God. And I was like, No. I don't actually doubt God. I wanna be in the same situation where you have an ultimate belief in, where nothing wavers in your faith about God. So I wanna get that level of understanding for myself, not just, yes, say or do this, this way, or because my parents' faith never wavered. And I saw that in our lives as well. As I got older, there's a number of distractions in life as you grow up, so I had to find my own way as well. Very beautiful journey and still on that journey. 

So you were in Lagos, and now you live in England. I know that much. Where has God been in your life then? Where can you see God working and leading you to different parts of the world and to the things that you are doing with your life as an adult? 

I'm an engineer by trade. Mind you I think I maybe I have a bit of OCD as well, so I like structure. But I also have to sometimes intentionally get out of structure, not to be too intense. For me, I believe in making plans. This is what I wanna do, and this is how I wanna do it. And most times, they work the way I want, and sometimes they never work or they might work, but I learn a different lesson from it. My relationship with God has got different levels. So maybe I'll start from a different time. When I was quite young, I  could have a feeling or have a dream, and potentially that dream would come true. So I always sometimes tap into that. We went to a military boarding school back in Nigeria at the time. And while I was there, I was offered the chaplain post, which I declined. I declined it for a reason. Like I said, as a teenager at the time, I was also exploring different things as well, getting to know myself. I didn't wanna be a hypocrite where I did like to go out and have a drink and this and that. I didn't wanna be seen as - or I didn't feel it was right for me - I would feel like I was not representing God the right way. 

Well, that's quite thoughtful, isn't it? I'm quite interested in that, that at quite a young age, you knew enough about yourself, what the role of a chaplain is to just think, well, not that you were going off the rails, but just that you want someone who was a chaplain to be really representing Christ.

Yes. Christ-like. 

You just weren't sure that was for you at that time. Thank you for sharing that. So you had a little look around at all the other things available in the world. You seem to have stayed quite steady in your faith. Would that be fair? Or have you had quite a big wobble and return over time?

I have stayed very stable. So I came into the UK when I was about 17 years to study, do my college, or my, university, and now it's left to me to look after myself spiritually. The culture in Africa in terms of going to Mass and attending Mass, in the UK, totally different ballgame. Because the UK, within an hour, it's over, which is good, like that. But then sometimes the sermon, the priest might be reading from a book or handwritten or maybe a message from the bishop. Sometimes it doesn't necessarily resonate at that time what I might be feeling, and it just felt very recited. It just felt like a repetition of things. But while back home, you felt like the message was directed at you, and sometimes the services of the sermon could run for a while, and it just felt a bit more intense and more committed. Being in this country, I did attend Mass, but then sometimes I felt like I wasn't gaining anything from it. So I got to a point where I decided to stop being religious, but rather be more spiritual, to understand myself and my relationship with God. When I said to you about saying to my mom, Look, I don't doubt God, but rather I want to understand Him the way you do. Sometimes she used to give me an example saying that she feels I remind her of Saint Augustine who enjoyed the things of the world but still had to come back. Everything I do, I like to balance things. God is the provider of everything. What would it cost me to give him an hour a week? So even if I don't attend Mass, I have to make sure, me personally, I'm there for His work in any way. So is it, maybe helping someone or just advancing myself, reading the bible, or doing my normal prayers? So I always have my rosary in my pocket. So I know there is God because I was born into a Catholic home, and I've always felt Catholic Church is the biggest community in the world because anywhere in the world I go to, I just have to look for a Catholic church, and it will be the same proceedings. But sometimes I get too comfortable or it becomes too easy, and then I fail. And then, I now propel back up again with a higher intensity, and then failure brings me closer to Him again. If I think of something, I wanna do something, then I say, Okay. Well, this is what I would like to do. If it's Your will, then make it happen, and I forget about it. So I've got to a point where I just rely on him to lead. I focus on the basic things. I just have to treat others the way I want to be treated. We're trying to reach God. And then, obviously, like Jesus said, Love your neighbour as yourself. 

I can hear you making sense of your life before God and raising up to God the things that you would like to happen and seeing where the Lord leads you. Now you mentioned at the beginning there that you had become more spiritual rather than practising your faith. And I'm wondering, is that still the case? Or have you kinda returned to practising your faith now? 

Oh, no. I do practise my faith. I kind of stopped attending the Mass because, like I said, I just didn't get some of the personal connection. But I then started attending another Mass. It was an African priest. Because what I noticed is the African priests, I think, appeal more to me sometimes, maybe because of my upbringing. But then there was a church I attended. It was an Irish priest, or a white priest, and resonated massively. So it's not just, I'm just trying to explain it. Sometimes it might just be the individual who takes the priest's role as the way they understand it. I do attend Mass, sacraments. You have to receive communion. You have to do your confession. I'm also married. I got married in the church. What I meant, there was a period where I wasn't attending Mass every Sunday. So I enjoy being at God's house. I enjoy just being in the presence, the quietness. You know, sometimes when nobody's there, you just come in, pray your prayers, celebrate Mass. After Mass, say your rosary or your Thank you, Jesus, or your novenas. And, you know, when you're going through some difficulties, it's good to hang onto that. You know, maybe your Saint Michael prayer. And now sometimes I don't go Mass every Sunday, but I know if I'm there, I'm there because I want to be, and I'm very intentional about it. Yeah. I'll tell you a story. One time, my parents and two of my brothers, we went to the States, went to the US for holidays. I was working during my holiday. We're in different rooms. Me and my brother were in one room. My parents were in one room. So we wake up, we'll join them in prayer, morning prayer, have Mass, then we eat afterward. After Mass, my dad was like, Let's do the rosary. Let's pray the twenty decades of rosary. And after that, we do some other prayers. And now this is almost twelve noon. So the first day I did it. The second day, I said, Oh, I have to do some work. Then the third day, I was like, You know what? So after the after the Mass, I said to my dad, Dad, we're on holiday. Let's go on holiday. Let's go sightseeing. Let's enjoy. God hears our prayers. You can be walking and praying in yourself. You can pray every second. Let's not just be stuck in here. So sometimes I'm usually - not a rebel - but a word of reason. When sometimes I travel with my parents, we get into the car, we're praying the rosary, and I'm like, No. Come on. Let's have conversations. You know?  Let's talk. It's all part of it. You know? He knows what you need. He knows what you want.

I think there's a lot there that will resonate with people. You mentioned being in the car there with your family, and I know you're recently back from a road trip across Europe. So tell us a bit about that. I know in particular you were in Lourdes and in Rome, and I think listeners will be interested to hear more about how that went. 

My sister-in-law and her group of friends were planning a trip. Particularly, they wanted to visit Lourdes and try at the same time to visit Rome and pull Paris in there as well. So I got involved in helping out with the itinerary and the planning of everything, and I made a suggestion. I could also be your driver and your tour guide. And so they started the trip. They went to Paris for a number of days, so I joined them. And I haven't been to Lourdes. But few years before, I had sponsored some Catholic kids to go to Lourdes. One of my parish priests requested, and I helped. So it's always been at the back of my mind to visit Lourdes. So this was a great opportunity. We drove from Paris to Lourdes. We got to Lourdes just before midnight, but we were quite hungry. And everywhere was shut, but there was just one restaurant open. It was an Indian restaurant When we got to know the owner and the sister, there were statues of Virgin Mary everywhere, Our Lady of Lourdes. They told us they actually weren't Catholic, but their life story when they got here, everything changed because of the presence of Mary as well. We just created a very good friendship, and they offered to take us to Lourdes the next morning and show us.  So we got there. I was amazed at the whole structure, the place, and the presence and the amount of people there as well. I bought a rosary because I do like to have a rosary on me. There was a Mass going on at the shrine. So we decided to go ahead to the candle area to light up the candles and say our prayers. So everybody was in in a very good spirit. We got some holy water, and then we went inside the church. That was beautiful. Just being in there, just sat for a little while and just reflected on myself and the journey. And the rosary I bought,  we already had a priest bless it. We now went to the next level, and this was another Mass going on. Because we'd been trying to celebrate Mass that day, so I received communion, which I was very happy about. As we were leaving, we met another young priest who gave us another blessing as well, so that was really sweet. We came across a lady who, she had come from the diocese of Birmingham, which was 700 people. So we had a bit of conversation, and, you know, when you're in spirits and you're feeling the blessings and the spiritual presence of Our Lady. Reverence. I don't know the best way to put it. So it was very intense and emotional. I was very happy. 

So I guess lots of people listening today will have been to Lourdes. If not this summer, another time. And I'm sure you recognise some of the experiences Jude has spoken about. But let's move on to the next bit of his road trip. 

So we convened, and then we, we left. Got on to our journey. We got to Genova. Then the next day, we drove down to Rome. When I got to Rome, in the apartment room, very beautiful apartment, but I had very interesting, vivid dreams. And then my sister-in-law, she's been going through her own spiritual times as well. She's been guided by a priest who has been teaching about the dreams. I did talk to her about it. So this is when we're now, we're driving to the Vatican. I was like, Okay. I need to find where to park. Got into the street. As we got into the street, a car just pulled out from that specific slot, and I parked in there. Now everything works amazingly. Right? As we go to the Vatican because I've been there before, but just being inside Saint Peter's basilica again was just amazing. I mean, I know how, what I felt the first time. First time was more like, you know, in shock or in awe, but now it's like, I'm happy to be here again. And I came in. I sat on one of the stones, and I was just, people came over, sat beside me, and we just chatted, and we're exchanging blessings and healings. It was just a beautiful feeling. Picked up the car. As we were driving away, Hold on, Jude. Why is the window open? Our car had been broken into, and my suitcase was taken. 

Oh, no. 

Now I wasn't upset. You know, sometimes in life, you lose things because of Oh, how do I put it? You need to let baggage go. You need to let things go. 

Yeah. Material things. Yeah.

It means a lot more to me as well. Also, the dreams I had kind of started resonating as well because I could have been accepting something or saying no to something. And I believe I said No to it, which is good for me. And I think that was - Okay. Let's clear this mess. Let's start afresh. You know? That feeling. So I just wanted to add that there - because I never planned to be robbed, but it was also part of the message. You know? And there were so many things as well that I had while we've been driving, like, there was a particular shirt that was gone. And there was a perfume I had bought, which I think I really, really liked it. You know? But then it's like, vanity upon vanity is vanity. Right? So it could be that message as well. But it could also be, I had a difficult three years from 2020 up to maybe about 2024. So it maybe could feel like a cleansing of things as well. My passport was also in my suitcase at the time, but I was able to get an emergency travel document from the embassy when we got back to Paris. So everything worked out.

That is really interesting, Jude. That you pieced together what your dream seemed to be telling you with, you know, something concrete that happens that you were really not expecting. But maybe if you hadn't been prepared for, like you say, by the things that happened in your dream and trying to make sense of that, you might have found having your suitcase stolen from the car much more annoying, you know? That it could have made you very angry or very distressed. But, actually, it made sense to you in a different way and and helped you to feel comfortable laying aside some things. I think that's really interesting, actually. 

Yes. To understand the journey or the dreams I had because, like I said, I used to have dreams in the past where they took, come to reality or have a feeling, and that happens as well. 

It's certainly scriptural, isn't it? That God talks to us through our dreams. You know, many people would see examples of that in the Bible. It's really interesting that you already knew that about yourself in a way before having those vivid dreams in Rome. There's a bit of a key change coming up just before we draw our conversation to a close. Jude's been doing some work on the nuclear morality flowchart with Martin, who was, diligent listeners may remember, a guest in my third episode way back last year. So I asked Jude about this work, and we talked about the National Justice and Peace Network conference where he first met Martin and became involved. Just as a reminder, the nuclear morality flowchart is a kind of decision tree. It helps you to think through what you really think about nuclear weapons and what the consequences of different ideas about nuclear weapons really are. 

We're drawing to a close in some ways, Jude, but I just wanted to see if you wanted to speak about the nuclear morality flowchart. 

It fits so well because part of me understanding myself was saying to God, Look, I'm not going to seek for opportunities. But if an opportunity presents itself, I'll take it. Even someone said to me, Everything you lost, you'll get again, but you have to use it for good and for community. In 2023 I was invited to the NJPN conference. And I when I was there, I saw this beautiful presentation about disarmament. So that got my attention. And that was when I met Martin. Showed me the flowcharts. I'm an engineer by trade. The flowcharts, it just made so much sense, so much logic. And then we started talking to each other, and I became very interested. I was also very nervous about it and anxious about it because there's so much, so much, going on in the world. Who would listen to us? You know, sometimes I'm like, This must be how Moses felt when he had to go speak to Pharaoh. It's impossible. So I got involved with the flowchart. We've been having fortnightly meeting with myself and Martin. Religions for Peace has been very active. So we've been trying to create awareness of the flow charts. But why do we need this? It's like, why would you create something that could destroy everybody? We're self destructing ourselves. Let's train the next generation to find a way to make this world a nuclear weapon free world. So it doesn't make any sense to me. We're supposed to be loving each other and looking after each other, not finding ways to destroy each other. We have our next NJPN conference in July which, we'll be running a workshop on this actually. 

That sounds great, Jude. I'll put a link to the National Justice and Peace Network conference in the episode notes so that people can see because this episode will go out in time for people to find out more and maybe even be there. And certainly people who are already booked in to go will be glad to know they can meet you there and hear more about it. I really like you saying, as someone who has been trying to make people listen to ‘Please can we get rid of nuclear weapons’ for many decades myself, I like the analogy that this is how Moses must have felt trying to go and talk to Pharaoh. I think that's fantastic because that is what it feels like that, Aren't I saying what's the gospel that we are not to destroy each other with weapons? And yet I feel like I'm talking to somebody who has no time in their life to listen to me, this little flea, blathering on about something. And I also like the fact that, you know, Moses is going to talk to Pharaoh, he is bringing God's word to Pharaoh. And I think when we are coming from a Christian perspective, trying to say, This is not the gospel. Nuclear weapons are immoral, We aren't being naive or childish. This is the life God is calling us to. A world in which, as you say, we care for each other and look after each other and find ways to right injustice, not ways to destroy each other. So I'm glad that we've had a chance to crowbar in speaking about nuclear weapons into today's episode. Thank you. 

For me, I'm a servant of God and friend of Jesus. So I'm able to work for Him, and now I focus on living simply. 

That will definitely resonate with listeners, too. Listen, we are coming to the end of this conversation. It's been really interesting hearing your perspective on things and hearing from you today. I know listeners will find lots there to reflect on and to connect with in the way that you've, that you're making sense of your life, as we all are, and feeling ourselves to be in the presence of God while we do that. So thank you very much for making some time to talk today. 

Thank you. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, @kindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.