The Resurrection Gems Collection: Why I Wrote It

This is an experience I'm sure many of you can relate to...

I remember opening up a book — a history textbook, a collection of poems, a classic novel, or in this particular case, my bible, and reading what could, in its most basic form, be termed as a story. I remember flipping through the pages and finding myself drawn to the hidden elements: what Joseph's coat of many colors may have looked like, what the exchange might have been between two mothers who claimed maternity over a child... the frustration of Hosea in discovering his wife had again, broken their vows.

This interest extended to other stories, moments in history some of us know all too well: the royal wedding of 1981, what the quixotic-eyed nineteen year old may have felt. Or perhaps the fifteen-year-old Ethiopian general, Jagama Kello, who defeated the Italians in the war for independence in 1935 — what might have drove him? What were the factors, within the resistance movement, that molded their path to victory?

What kind of mind dynamics might've pulled between Hades and Persephone?

These were questions, moments, I sought to capture and investigate for myself. Immersing myself in a mergence of my own imagination where history couldn't fill in the gaps. I did this not because I found it enjoyable, (although it really, really was), but because I realized that these stories weren't preserved for nothing. Someone didn't take the time to record certain events because they were bored and wanted to make future generations' history class that just much more content burdening for students.

We think in sequences — our memories are told in narratives, our interpretations of the images that take place in our minds.

Our aspirations are possibilities of stories we hope to happen to us. Our dreams, even the ones we don't remember, have the power to influence the state of our moods, feelings, and perceptions of the world — how is it that a narrative too disturbing in our sleep, one forgotten a few minutes after we wake up, can change the pulse and rhythm of our entire day?

Stories are important.

Even the ones we hide inside.

Some are never told, but others are kept preserved until people are prepared to listen. Think of why secrets are kept and the weight of destruction when they are revealed before their time — stories are powerful. Their narrators enmesh lies and truth into them in bindings weaved by their own biases, obligations... and vulnerabilities. Think of the way you tell a story — who are you trying to protect?

What are you trying to erase?

That is why I write all these pieces with both carefulness and respect for what lies not only within them, but around them. Stories tend to elongate and swell from their boundaries, a lesson revealed just in the way people perceive them. There is always something repetitive about the way humans understand how to manipulate the sequence of their own narratives — and I've learnt that some of those repeats were never meant to be mysteries.

Like I said: it's because of the way we tell the story.

So I wrote the Resurrection Gems to bring back to life the lessons we may have forgotten. Or perhaps, bring to light those that have been hidden. I wrote them, and will continue to write them, in compact, uncomplicated moments — because that is what they are. At least to me, it's what I choose to make them.

I'm sharing what I've, and continue to glean from them with you — only, of course, I'm a writer.

I'm not just going to tell you.

Everyone, and I mean every single human being with a mind to interpret, has a precious way of telling a story...

The Resurrection Gems are mine.

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Until next time ;)

M.C. Mwaba