The Common Experience

I had an experience yesterday: my heart was full of the pain of my family, the families of others, my pain, the pain of others. My heart was full even of pain of people who had died before of family members who had died with stories untold, apologies unspoken, loves not experienced. For a small period of uncontrollable sobbing, I felt like the pain of so many hurts:

accumulated wrongdoings,

inherited poverty of love and circumstances,

ill-treatment and abuses

the negatives ... these coupled with the positives:

the healings,

the courage to do the healing work,

the forgiving,

the returning to,

the letting go of ...

I felt like all these were literally trying to surface and gain release through me.

It was a difficult and embarrassing experience. Made bearable by two main things:

(1) that I had been praying for sometime for God to use me as a channel of His will in the world, and to make me a clear and open channel for His purposes.

(2) that the people around me while I had this experience were supportive, kind, loving and patient with me.

This does not negate the fact that I felt (and still feel) more than a little weird about the whole thing; more than a little embarrassed; more than a little overwhelmed.

Physically the experience was like having a shrapnel bomb explode right in my heart. There were splinters flying everywhere - the splinters were like pieces of my own life, pieces of the lives of others - the painful pieces, the parts that could not be expressed, the parts that had never been allowed to be expressed. The shrapnel was both visual and experiential ... I could see snippets of lives, like snapshots - or single frames from a movie... Frames in which love, forgiveness, self-esteem, shame, abuse, punishment, hatred, anger - all of these were in play simultaneously. The frames were flying every which way inside, and like shards of glass they pierced me from the very inside of my heart.

Physically, as I sobbed, I felt heat radiating from me... from the top of my head, out the soles of my feet. I had on a scarf and I felt like it was choking me. It was hard to breathe because the physicality of the experience was so powerful. It was frightening. My heart hurt and my breathe hitched. Emotionally, I felt this heartbreaking sadness, the sadness of knowing all sides of the picture, the sadness of knowing all the reasons for the inherently fucked up nature of the human condition - not knowing in an intellectual, analytical way, but knowing as in the Hebrew sense "yaw dah" or "yada" - knowing through all one's perceptive capability, knowing viscerally, knowing beyond linguistic capability to articulate ... the knowing of the soul.

It was the sadness of knowing how full the world is of love, yet how unevenly it is all spread around. The sadness also of observing what happens when love is spread unevenly - like peanut butter on bread, the parts that don't get spread are unpalatable, we want to leave them on the plate, throw them in the garbage. They (seem to have) nothing to recommend them.

Except people who don't get love are not disposable like un-peanut buttered bread ends. We may not choose to eat them, and wisely so - those dry and crusty bread ends might choke and kill us. But, whereas they may be disposable in the eyes of humankind, they are not disposable in the eyes of God. Poor God has to find somewhere to put the bread end people who did not get any love. Whose very poverty of love or circumstance has made them evil, wicked, pitiable and harm-mongers in this world. God also has a whole other project cycle to deal with - somehow finding a way into the hearts of those who are damaged by the unloved ones, so that the cycle of unloving can stop ... so that hurt, damaged parents can stop raising hurt, damaged children; so that hurt, damaged partners can go into new relationships with new hope instead of old crust scabs of hurt that in turn create new damage, new hurts, new scars in new relationships.

I felt the enormity of the common experiences of pain and suffering; at the same exact time I felt the enormity of the common experiences of hope and love. The experience was really a hard experience to have. But it was also a powerful experience to have, and a blessing. I believe it happened because I was open to it, because I had prayed for exactly such an opening of my own heart.

What did it yield other than a pile of used Kleenex and a high sense of embarrassment and self-consciousness? It yielded a deepening of my compassion, a deepening of my soul's understanding of this human condition that we all live - with all it's pains and agonies, with all it's beauties and blessings. It also yielded a drawing closer to God in faith, because I got a glimpse as through a tiny tiny opening or keyhole, I got a glimpse of the enormity of the work at hand, and the exquisiteness of what happens when we are able to be open to the workings of a world that is so much bigger than us.

Each of us is like a bookmark in time - one hand reaching back into our pasts, the other reaching forward into our future. We all have the struggles of negotiating through painful histories into hope-filled futures. It becomes somehow easier when we do this with others - in koinonia - in community.

The common experience is both pain and pleasure, both love and hate, both forgiveness and anger. If we are courageous on our journey, the common experience will yield growth, and we can break the negative cycles of history and make peanut butter sandwiches of which no crusts need be thrown away.

Perfectly Fallen

If there is such a thing as obsessive compulsive seasonal condition I suffer from it in the fall. The beautiful majesty of perfectly fallen leaves is like a rain of tangible perfection just waiting to be picked up, handled, observed, admired. I have to stop and look, admiring God's passionate display of life passing onto death.

I walk a few blocks to the Route 7 bus stop. On that walk, I pass under a massive maple tree whose edges have started to turn the promising yellow, orange and red of fall. It's a signal of what is to come, and it begins like the blush of a shy virgin preparing to join with her first love. Before long, this modest blush turns into a raging, passionate flame of a tree, whose perfectly falling leaves are like the virgin throwing off her clothes, readying for the passion to come.

I couldn't resist picking up a leaf yesterday, it was so perfect: each single vein visible in highlighted red against the fading orange and yellow that had once been green. So beautiful. So perfectly fallen. Holding it's flawless majesty in the palm of my hand, I caught sight of divinity:

Like the perfectly fallen leaf, whose fall must precede the interlude with winter, whose death and decay will create compost for the new season of growth, so too must we each experience fall - the opening gambit in the cycle of renewal

In our fallen state, though we may feel ugly, failed, exhausted, worn out - we are still the beautiful children of God.

From our fallen state, God picks us up and holds us in the palm of His hand - a loving father still able to see the perfection of design and purpose in each and every one of us.

The God of my understanding suffers from an obsessive compulsive condition that knows no season; it's name is Grace.

The Sower Reframes History.

How much of where we sit spiritually is a function of our history? Do we see ourselves as worthy of God's grace, or as displaced from access to grace due to history? Do we nurture each other in love, or do we perpetuate the rocky soil and fallow ground experiences of others?

During the "down-time" of the week when Tivoli was under fire, I was mostly unable to sleep. I read a lot during that time, and one of the articles I read was about the systematic "breaking" of the African slave, to make the slave more pliant for the plantation economies. We think "history" and we think "a couple of hundred years ago", but the imprint of that breaking process continues to clothe the souls of our post-emancipation population.

In examining what exists now against the backdrop of the history of slavery and christianity, the following was observed: many women of African descent in the lower socio-economic bracket of the greater Kingston area have moved here to find work - often having already had a child or two in the rural parish from which they hail, usually children out of wedlock. Mothers often have children from at least two fathers. The fathers have often been (and in many cases continue to be) mentally, physically abusive and unfaithful to these women. The fathers often have no vested interest in the act of parenting - seeing themselves only as sperm donors, financial or material providers, burying their own emotional and spiritual needs in liquor, smoking, carousing.

Like clockwork, I see the imprint of the methodical, systematic damage on the family unit harkening from slavery days, and on the man-woman relationship. Loyalty and faithfulness are not relationship expectations; commitment, of the form marriage is built on is not an expectation; without such commitment, the entire family unit dangles like an unanchored boat in a tumultuous sea, threatening to capsize with every passing infidelity. The women experience physical violence with fists, board, machete, half-brick all endured with a sense more of expectation than of shock and abhorrence. The sensibilities of these daughters of slavery have not been freed from the expectation of physical abuse and violence as a systematic part of their relationships and their very lives.

The men experience the expectation of financial support, often without the emotional and spiritual support that would be part of a healthy relationship. They are seen only as providers, not as partners. In turn they behave as providers, demanding through violence and unfaithfulness that which they cannot seem to negotiate within their relationships: caring, love, affection.

Bear in mind that for a considerable time in the history of African slavery under the white European colonist, slaves were kept unbaptised and unexposed to the teachings of Christ, for to baptise them would have been to make them equals to the whites, equals under Christ, "neither male nor female, slave nor free" could have existed if all were presented with the pathway of grace. The delineations between slave and free were critical, to blur that line would have upset the apple cart of plantation economics ... so destruction of family and isolation from Christian spirituality became the prongs of the devil's fork that continues to stab us today.

Amidst all that has been cast asunder in the potential magnificence of the intimate male-female relationship, amidst the violence and hopelessness of families adrift,a beautiful thing has happened here in Jamaica. Seeping through the bedrock and cast concrete of systematic destruction of the family unit, seeping through is the word, love and grace of God. Fortunately, because Jamaica is NOT a country in which there has been institutional theological bleaching, these descendents of African chiefs and empresses turned slaves have learnt through whatever schooling, and whatever community involvement, about God. Everybody here had an auntie or granny, if not a father or mother who took them to church - and somewhere in there they understood on some visceral level that God is grace - so the seed had a chance to fall on them. In their hearts there is a yearning for connection to that which is identified as divine. Such a simple human yearning ... like a familiar song calling us home to the arms of a loving father.

The thing is, the Bible also teaches things that are converse to the "teachings" of slavery ... the Bible supports and encourages relationship in marriage, identifying "adultery" as sinful. So many of these women, though yearning for the grace of God made available to all through Christ, feel ashamed to step up to the table of God's grace because they are unwed mothers, have had children, sex out of wedlock - the anti-family ethos of slavery having taught them to earn their worth through their sexuality and child-bearing without the supporting family structures and marriage in place. The same reality applies for the men - their sexuality has become an armour through which they feel grace is held aloft, separated always from cooling the beautiful dark skins with the blood shed for them. This did not just happen without cause or reason - this is the result of the colonial manifesto for control exercised through the destruction of self-esteem and family (the hearth and cradle of self-esteem), the systematic destruction of the black enslaved.

When emancipation happened on paper, it did not happen on the soul - hundreds of years later the imprint of slavery remains. That human choice to damage humans has to be consciously undone by the human choice to repair and heal humans, in love.

The practical execution of theology in many Jamaican churches has done nothing to encourage many of these people subject yet to mental slavery with chains from history. Many churches still preach that one must get one's own house in order before entering the house of God (complete rubbish in my humble opinion since Jesus so specifically ministered to those whose houses were in disarray, perhaps as example to us to meet people where they are and walk with them, since he came heal the broken and as disciples we are encouraged to take up the cross and follow him). Anyway, the seed is fallen, but the ground has been made barren so to speak in our case by the teachings that supported slavery. Those teachings have ripped away the topsoil and planted in it's place thorn bushes. Those teachings have become the harsh sunlight that rapes the seed of the moisture necessary to germinate. Who is the sower here? And who takes responsibility for helping the seed to spring up from the unfriendly places created by the hand of man?

See for yourself, clearly, the intentionality of all the dots that create the connections that are at work - preventing the seed from taking root- and consider these dots against the parable of the sower (Mt 13:3-9 // Mk 4:3-9 // Lk 8:5-8 // Gospel of Thomas Logia 9)... where the seed falls on a rock, on barren soil, in places where the sun would scorch it, or thorns would choke it - those in the house of the Lord have a responsibility as their brother and sister's keeper to make the barren fertile; to shelter from the sun, to chop out the weeds and help the fallen seed germinate and take root.

The best asphalt on the road to emancipation from mental slavery is the teachings represented so well in scripture. The path of the disciple is as that of a farmer, supporting the germination and flourishing of all the seed, even those fallen in the harsh ground of man's making. Is God the sower? Or are we? Where we have dominion over harsh and unfriendly soil, can we not make it more suitable to supporting the germination of all the seeds of humanity?

Our modern world, our technological and educational advantage, our claims to awareness, our access to information - don't these oblige us to work towards increasing the fertility of barren soils, towards sheltering the seeds that threaten to die of sunstroke, towards watering the parched, and chopping out the thorn bushes, so that more of the seed strewn about can take root, grow strong, and prosper?

How many mustard seeds need to germinate to shelter all the birds of the world, shade all the weeping and broken-hearted, and feed all the world's hungry?

Can you help a seed, maybe a mustard seed, in barren circumstances, to take root, push up shoot and ultimately bear fruit?

Jelly Coconut Meditation.

A Jelly Coconut is a gift of hydration from God. The perfect jelly has a big cup, and it's husk gives way readily to the whack of a well sharpened machete. When the water is drunk, "spoons" are cut from the husk, and these are then used to scoop the jelly out of the split coconut. Complete self-sufficient coconut - perfect oral rehydration fluid.

The old time, traditional way of drinking a Jelly Coconut involved putting one's mouth directly on the chopped open nut. In order to not spill a drop, one faces down to place ones lips at the welcoming, heart-washing opening of the slashed Jelly coconut. Slowly tipping up, sipping up, gulping, guzzling as the refreshing water fills one's belly, cooling from the inside out, all the way down.

As the liquid nourishment changes location from jelly to belly, one's face and head move; with the coconut, one's neck arches back, until the final drops are drunk, with eyes facing the heavens, perhaps looking up through the leaves of a tree (if this is a rural refreshment stand); perhaps looking up between the columns of a concrete jungle in the urban setting. But the end of the coconut water included a look at the heavens. Perhaps a moment of thanksgiving, for the nourishment, the break from the rush, the cooling in the tropical heat, the heart being washed clean clean. Maybe on that day, without the jelly coconut, there wouldn't have been a look at the heavens and a moment to pause and give thanks.

Nowadays, the completely environmentally friendly and self-sufficient jelly coconut has been the victim of progress. Most jelly vendors provide you with a plastic, non-biodegradable straw. Lips no longer need to touch the organic husk of the green coconut - they can rest instead on the dubious chemicals in the plastic of the straw. Instead of tipping and sipping, gulping and guzzling the whole refreshment is now consumed via one long suck (or maybe a sequence of sucks). One's face remains face down, peering at the dirt below the coconut. Never rising to the face the heavens as the cup empties, never positioning oneself for an upward look in thanksgiving. When the jelly is drunk, belly full, heart washed yes - but heavenly meditation, environmentally friendly consumerism? No, not in this modern-day jelly coconut drinking dispensation. Not at all. Progress sometimes finds ways to make rubbish out of perfection.

I like it the old-fashioned way, heart-washed, and the grande finale of soul rinsing off with the last swallow of coconut water, hands embracing the green globe of refreshment, and a look at the heavens.

Action & Consequence; Reaction & Responsibility.

Sunday and Monday I followed the news and dealt with the primary reactions to what is happening in Kingston. How to summarize? The past has come home to roost. Inner city communities, turned Garrison in the period of 1979/1980, when Jamaica was looking like it might go the way of communist Cuba. Depending on what you read and who you believe, the USA has been identified as the source of the arms that allowed the bloody election of that era to return the leadership of this country from the left-wing PNP to the right-wing JLP. Communities like Tivoli Gardens were "taken" by force in that election. Nothing comes for free in life - nobody gets to open Pandora's box and skip all the way home ... the past has come home to roost.

In liberation theology we talk about the first moment, and then the second moment. The first moment is the experience itself, the act itself ... the experience of isolation, dislocation, subjugation - whatever-ation it might be. The second moment is the reflection on what happened in the first moment; the opportunity to examine what happened, and why ... how what happened might impact our preconceived notions of life, and how we might need to change those notions to include all the new information of the experience. Consider Sunday and Monday's experience the first moment. When the first moment is so awful as to boggle the very mind, as to threaten to pull one into despair - begin the second moment analysis - begin to look for what there is to learn, the why's and wherefores of the situation. This is what I did today.

I tried to put into perspective the experiences, and the discomforts of those experiences. I took in the debates happening all around me, the news reports, the discussions, the online forums. I observed anger, frustration, fear, hopelessness ... and then in the midst of this I heard echos of responsibility, faith and love.

I think it's fair to say there is a general sense of speculation - people here do not know what is going on and that is because the pieces which we are formally being presented by the media do not make sense. They don't add up. And where there is illogic entwined with propaganda and speculation, it is inevitable that fears escalate. Amidst fear, we are tempted to abandon logic and justice altogether - 9/11 and the War on Terror being prime examples of this ... today I decided not to be terrified ... so on the ground today, here is what I observed:

I'm here for a few months, "visiting" from Canada. I'm staying with my mom in a home that is in "a good part of town". The windows all have grills on them - standard practice in urban Jamaica. The house is surrounded by a 10-plus foot wall. The wall has barbed wire on top of it. We have a large double-gated entrance to this protected property in this good part of town. It is operated by an automatic gate opener. We have a rottweiler (Paris) and a pit-bull (Toby) in the yard. All the grills have vibration sensors on them. In the night we set an alarm. We have panic buttons. If we think someone is on the property and press the button (or the alarm is triggered), a security company (whose services my mom receives for a monthly fee) sends armed personnel to our home. They have a key to open the gate. They check out the premises to keep us safe. My mom pays taxes in Jamaica. When I worked here I too paid taxes. By the time all the deductions are made, these taxes approximate one third of one's salary. This is in "a good part of town." But we are "safe".

My sister, with her husband and children live in a gated townhouse community on Long Mountain. The gated community concept supercedes the need for individuals paying for their own, individual protection. But the windows still have grills on them. The gated community is patrolled by armed guards working with a security company. This is in "a good part of town." But they are safe.

We blithely call it protecting ourselves, but it is our response to crime - and for many of us unfortunately it is our only response to crime - to protect ourselves. We do nothing to address the root causes; operating out of the individualistic, capitalist philosophy of the modern-day western world, we look out for number one. The rest is up to someone else. Conveniently sitting with chains of our own making, staring at the darkness - the shadows cast on the wall of the cave - imagining the shadows to be a reality, imagining the chains to be of someone else's making. Imagining? Or conveniently choosing to see it this way?

We are not blockaded into our communities against our will - we choose instead to blockade ourselves, in order to keep ourselves safe in an urban area rife with criminal activity. Understand though that crime, like addiction, is a symptom of a problem - not the problem itself. A drug don, an arms dealer - these too are symptoms of bigger problems - not the problem itself. When weapons are being moved, someone is buying them, someone is using them, someone is selling them ... someone is benefiting from the power advantage that the weapons bring them. When drugs - marijuana, cocaine are being sold - someone is buying them, someone wants them, someone is numbing something they don't want to feel by taking a substance that takes them out of their reality for a little while. The illegality of trading guns and narcotics is the icing on a cake of the hollowness people seek to fill with power and drugs. If there is no cake, there is nowhere to put the icing. We attack the icing - the criminality - without addressing the cake - the spiritual and economic hollowness that comes from this unbalanced pyramid of values in which money and an imagined security is our god, and we place our faith in a panic button, crying "corruption" when the house of cards falls down around our ears.

Toby, our pit-bull, is a haunted beast with an appetite for plastic. On Sunday night, he gnawed a wire out from under my mother's car in hot pursuit of a rat (or the sheer pleasure of chewing on plastic - he's a haunted beast so who knows what his motivation was). So today my mom got a drive to work, and I went to pick her up at lunch time. I opened the electronic gate to drive out (in my little Samurai which Toby is also trying to consume); an ambulance sped by with a JDF (Jamaica Defense Force - the Jamaican Army) vehicle in front and behind - soldiers with large guns in all three vehicles. I drove to my mom's workplace which is on the University Hospital premises. It was quiet on the roads, with very little traffic for a working day (when according to Bruce Golding we should be resuming "business as usual"). As we were leaving the Hospital premises, another ambulance sped past us, again with JDF vehicles in front and behind. This time I could see the patient who was in the ambulance. We got back home, closed the gate behind us. Safe? You figure? How long is the rope called "individual safety" in a community that is under fire?

I checked online, listened to the radio news. What is happening here, is it a war on terror? or is it a war of terror? My sister and I talked about the responsibility that the people in West Kingston had to leave the area when the offer was made to them. I don't imagine it is a simple choice, if they had the choice at all. Some allegations are that they are being kept there by force, by the criminal element. News reports show residents who are claiming loyalty to the Don. Understand this - the Don provides the order in the community. He speaks into actualization crime management in these communities. On his word, robberies, rapes and assaults stop. Or go. People in these communities are always (and I don't mean just since the recent uprisings) complaining about police brutality. Police in turn always claim the assaults were initiated by the gunmen. Who do we trust?

And if we hold the people in these communities responsible for keeping the criminal element aloft, do we hold ourselves responsible when we did nor provide them options of other places to live where they could feel as safe as the Don makes them feel, even if only part of the time? Isn't a slice of cake with icing on it better than none at all? I never offered anyone any cake; never took the time to examine too closely their hunger and my capacity to bake something to fill their hollowness, so who now am I to complain that they took the cake from someone who took the time to offer it to them? Even if they did also take advantage of the disadvantaged in the process. Whether I blame today's Don, Bruce, Seaga or the CIA, it matters not; there is only one face guaranteed to look back at me in the mirror every day.

As an "upper St Andrew browning", I've experienced my own share of inappropriate police behaviour; enough to believe that people less empowered than I am would experience far worse than I have. I am lucky, I am blessed. I grew up in a home with two educated parents who were both employed, who put our education first; I grew up in a community of middle-class economic status, in a community where each home had it's own yard, with running water and light. Having been educated though, having received the opportunities, and furthermore, having read far outside my range of study and being aware of the situation in Kingston, what have I done?

When I taught at UWI, and encountered a student who came from West Kingston, who told me how he had to leave his books with a friend on hall, as people in his community would not have let him leave to come to university had they known that was his destination, what did I do? Not enough.

When I worked on electrifying inner-city housing projects in Trenchtown and Tivoli Gardens, and realised that our safe passage into and out of these communities depended on getting the Ok from the area Don, what did I do? Not enough.

When I came back from school in Canada in 1999, and realised that people were being held up at their gates in "the good parts of town", beyond installing an electronic gate opener, what did I do? Not enough. Certainly nothing to address the cake - just the icing on the cake.

So when I react now with empathy to the situation of my brothers and sisters in the communities of West Kingston now, I react also with the responsibility of realizing that, as a responsible, educated, aware Jamaican, I have not done enough to try to solve the problems I long knew existed here. I have not been my brother's keeper. I have not done enough to try to represent the under-represented, to try to defend the undefended. I have, like so many others, just worked towards maintaining my own comfort zone. So now, as I lay my head down to sleep tonight, for another restless night, wondering if we might be assaulted by gunmen in the night, I recognize too that my reaction of fear stems partly from my own lack of taking responsibility. No one person can do it alone, but also no one person can expect to see and know a wrong and, doing nothing about it, expect the wrong to peacefully go away. It must come home to roost. Pointing a finger leaves three more pointing right back at me.

In all this sense of responsibility I feel, tonight in Kingston we are blessed with rain. It is a gentle rain, falling like forgiveness, reminding us one and all that there is a Creator whose grace surpasses all understanding, whose night-time lightening illuminates the sky, and whose thunder rumbles loudly to remind us that not all rumbles are taking life ... not all rumbles are gunfire and mortar; in the new day that comes tomorrow we have a new opportunity to react with responsibility for the society, community and world we live in - rather than just looking about our individual security ... for the individual pursuit of happiness cannot create a peaceful country for us to live in. In this, my second moment on this subject, God reminds me that forgiveness and renewal is possible with this rain.

(And please dear God, speak to Toby so he doesn't eat my car again tonight).

Kingston Update - 9.30 pm, May 24, 2010 local time - Kingston Jm

We just came back from a drive to Long Mountain.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the layout of Kingston, we have a harbour. There is a strip of land called "Palisadoes" which is where Norman Manley International Airport is located. There is only one road leading to the airport after the Harbour View roundabout ... but the place where the police were shot last night is on Mountain View Road - one of the roads that gives access to the Harbour View Roundabout. Almost all International Media has reported the police shooting as though it was on the sole road leading to the airport - this is not accurate, as you will see from the map below.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=18.000121,-76.781216&spn=0.079671,0.135784&t=h&z=13&pw=2

Security forces came under heavy fire on Red Hills Road. The news footage this evening showed the police and army clearing the road blocks and returning the fire of the gunmen in the area. This is good number of miles north of the barricaded areas.

Coronation Market has been set on fire by "thugs" (report from TVJ). We could see that fire from Long Mountain. A bigger fire rages close beside it - which verbal reports claim are the Denham Town Basic (or Primary) school. The discussion amongst people who were looking at the scene from the hills suggested these fires had been set by gunmen on the ground in order to prevent the helicopters from dropping explosives on the blockaded areas.

From Long Mountain we could also see what appeared to be smaller fires in the areas of Spanish Town; there are few media reports and little camera footage from these areas; this might be because most media personnel are focused on the action in the Kingston area.

Although our local media has identified pathways (via Industrial Terrace) for persons residing in the areas that have been barricaded, a news report on TVJ tonight had a lady speaking from within Tivoli Gardens, claiming that she could not safely leave her home to get to the government provided transport, due to all the gunfire around her. She was in her home with her son. We could hear the gunshots in the background of her call, and she said explosives were being dropped on the area, blowing up places close to her. The media referred to this as an unconfirmed report - perhaps because it is happening in an area of Tivoli Gardens where the media houses currently have no access.

From where I am right now, sporadic gunshots can be heard to the north. The blockaded areas of the city are to the south of where I am. Helicopters are flying fairly low every so often. We are about ready to tuck in for the night - it's amazing how exhausting a day of following news like this can be, and I am sure our exhaustion is incomparable to that of the innocent residents of West Kingston who are perhaps too intimidated to even try to leave their homes to get to safer areas.

My nieces' school (which is north of the Tivoli Gardens / Denham Town area) has sent out word to the parents that they will be closed "until further notice". My sister's business place will not open tomorrow. These despite the Prime Minister claiming tomorrow will be "business as usual." Of course, one might debate what is usual for a Prime Minister who has been through all that Bruce Golding has been through since the extradition order came for Christopher "Dudus" Coke from the US Government in 2009 August. An extradition order that was only signed officially early last week.

There have been conflicting reports in the media about meetings between Dudus' attorney and the US Embassy here. Some claims were made of a meeting that should have happened this morning; counter claims were made by someone from the US Embassy that no such meeting had been scheduled. The US Embassy is about five minutes walk from my family home.

Kingston Update - 4 pm local time - Monday May 24, 2010.

Here are the reports we are getting on Jamaican local media:

Limited state of emergency across Kingston & St Andrew.

A statement from the Airport Authorities of Ja says that flights arriving and departing are doing so on schedule.

The Blood Banks are calling for blood donations.

We have NO LOCAL REPORTS about bodies lying unattended on the streets, although BBC online is reporting this (unsupported by photo evidence).

We in Kingston 6 & Kingston 7 areas are hearing explosions; from Long Mountain one can see smoke coming from the Tivoli Gardens and West Kingston area. Friends in Mannings Hill Road, Red Hills Road area have reported roads blocked and gunfire.

3 Jamaica Defense Force soldiers reportedly shot and killed in West Kingston a short while ago. The soldiers were shot about an hour after the security forces launched their operation. (JNN)

The USA Embassy in Kingston says there is no meeting planned for today with Attornerys for Christopher Dudus Coke. (JNN)

A JNN news article about 30 minutes ago reported sniper activity shooting into the Mexico area (near Jungle and Rema). The reporter and cameraman were safe but a member of the community had been shot.

In St Catherine, the Spanish Twon Police station came under heavy gunfire last night. there were no reports of injury. A police team was fired on near the Spanish Town bridge.

The Common Zit.

On the bus today - faces of different colours, shapes, sizes genders - high school youth getting on the bus - the common zit connecting them all.

They all look different: hoodies, blouses, tank tops, t-shirts, one guy in a brown corduroy jacket with dark denim patches on the backs of the elbows - making a fashion statement with their differences, but the message within the statement being the same:

- I need to be me.

- Will I be accepted for who I am?

- Does anyone love me exactly as I am?

- Will I make it in this cold, spiritless, misunderstanding world?

The worry lies under the common countenance of nonchalance.

Who me?

I don't care what you think.

I'm cool regardless.

Like their zits, some covered carefully with makeup, some lonely - the first pinpricks on otherwise flawless skin - the first break in the perfection of youth - the first bubble of the world's imposition on the innocence of which we all are born.

My eyes move over these youthful faces, their common coolness, their common yearning to fit in, their common zits - new to the landscape of their skins...

My eyes move over these youthful faces, resting on the face of a middle aged woman. No zits on her face but the signs of age - pits, just a few, where zits had been in her erstwhile days of hopefulness. She looks tired. And it's just morning. She is slumped in her seat. Staring straight ahead. Mind elsewhere ... oblivious to the frenzy of hope around her, and the life abundant waiting to spring forth from those faces ... this lady looks tired ... having long forgotten her own days of hopefulness, believing herself now to be not loved, not accepted, making it in this cold, spiritless, misunderstanding world ... yet wondering whether the making it she defined really was a making it. Or whether it, like her ancient pit, represented a long lost hope from a far away youth, a hope bursting forth in the common hormonal zit.

Blister on the Finger of God.

If God were writing always in his book - writing our transgressions,

Imagine the size of the blister on the fingers he would be using to hold the pen.

If God were holding always in his heart - holding the memories of our transgressions,

There would be no space left in his heart to love us!

If God kept records - of all humankind's travails against nature and Mother Earth,

His filing cabinets would overflow,

There would be no space for him to rest his feet,

Or even tiptoe towards us.

Is the concept of Rapture really a concept from God?

Or a concept from man, imagining:

Blistered fingers,

Loveless heart,

Overflowing filing cabinets,

Divine feet on tiptoe trying to get

Divinity a little closer to us?

Intentionality & Silence.

Silence leaves the door open - it leaves intentionality undeclared so one can claim "Oh, I hadn't realized that you thought / expected / wanted ... ". When one does not claim intentions, and one functions in silence, the door is left wide open for all unstated commitments (or the lack thereof).

Rupert's Land (sometimes called "Prince Rupert's Land") is a prime example of intentionality trumping silence; the taking of Canada from the First Nations by colonial powers is another prime example of intentionality trumping silence. Culture had a big part to play in intentionality trumping silence. The irony is that the culture of silence was seen as no culture at all - especially when you consider the culture of Mother Earth is a culture of silence.

We cannot take the earth with us when we die; and while we are alive we cannot fit physical tracts of earth, acreage, into our pockets, into our backpacks, into our carry-on luggage - boarding a plane with land and taking it to another country - it is possible only in the mind, and in the power-hungry eye of the person who thinks they can own that which they cannot even begin to try and carry: the Land, Mother Earth, remains as she always has been - present and immovable, available, but not really take-able. Get that. And get it good - you cannot take Mother Earth with you - whether or not you have a title, a piece of paper claiming your entitlement to her, you cannot take her with you. The best you can do is hope to return to her - ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She will win every single time, even if she has been ravaged and raped, seeded and succeeded by ownership changing hands on paper, she is un-own-able, un-capturable, solidly silent. She may be destroyed but she is indestructible, whether fallow or fertile, she will outlast all of our puny little human existences, all of our paltry power struggles on paper with ownership and titles. Mother earth will remain un-annihilated, long after each war-monger and capitalist is dead and gone.

Don't mistake her silence for a language in competition with this modern-day intentionality, this nouveau need to know what everything is about - the status of each and all. Mother Earth does not need Facebook to tell us her status - unlike us, she does not need to declare her whereabouts (for she is everywhere) and her what's-she-up-to's (for she's up to it all, about it all, around it all, in it all, through it all - through and through).

There is nothing we use, eat, buy, sell, trade, keep or throw away that is not of her, that she did not in some way provide the raw material for, the energy of, the coming into being of. There is no antique that she does not predate. There is no artifact that she does not supplant. There is no history whose truth she could not reveal were she to speak the language we speak. But she's not into the business of stated intentionality - she is silent, our Mother Earth. She leaves words up to us.

Who is this Christian God juxtaposed against this Mother Earth? The Christian God speaks intentionality into the silence of nature; speaks of the power concepts like sin, salvation, redemption and rapture. If language had not given voice to these power concepts, if the concepts of power had not been named so intentionally, would God be able to be as silent as our beautiful, ever-present, Mother Earth?

Yahweh, Jesus Christ, God, Holy Spirit - do you realize that Mother Earth predates your naming? No doubt you existed as force before she did - but you were not called into named form until humankind had need to put title to concepts of power and predecession. Before you were named, Mother Earth was the throne of all power. Language is a tool to name concepts, not always sound concepts. Language allows us to use words as metaphors, to hang titles on things our minds can scarce conceive. When our minds go to the powerless places, language allows us the words that, knotted together form the rope ladder that brings us back to a place of some sense of power.

Oh Mother Earth, I never saw you bear forth a dictionary tree or a thesaurus vine; Oh Mother Earth, your rivers never flowed with intentionality, your mountains were never sign-posted and billboarded with ads until humankind felt the need to compete with your huge and perfect nature.

It's not enough for humankind to spring forth from the earth, from you, Mother Earth, in silence. We need a drum-roll of intentionality to lay and pave the way ...

Think of the human relationship - man meets woman; they like each other, there is attraction, there is sexual chemistry, there is lust. They have sex. If there is no declaration of intentionality about their relationship, what do they have? If they declare their emotions (as love) and they declare their union (as marriage), then their sexual relationship is blessed. The declared intentionality has converted what would otherwise have been (perceived by some) as sin, into a beautiful act that is part and parcel of a blessed union of God. Words, words - how beautifully do you wrap sinful silence with the powerful presence of intentionality. Does the God who pre-dated spoken and written word, who created our silent Mother Earth, recognize a blessed union if it is a union of silence?

Intentionality - declared in words, on paper, was a big part of what was missing from Canada's First Nations'. The French and then the British would have been much harder pressed to justify their behaviour had they landed on these shores and been met by First Nations' people who handed them paper titles for land ... if intentionality of ownership had been declared in the language of sovereignty, the language of power, the only language the colonists understood. But the First Nations of these lands did not see land as something to be owned by individuals - they understood that a leaf, a seed, a feather, a bit of bark could fit into a pocket or a pack, but not Mother Earth. They saw no need for declaring intentionality over something they could never pack up and move with - something to which they belonged, rather than which belonged to them. They spoke the language of Mother Earth - a language of silence.

Colonial declarations of intentionality had no trouble trumping the language of silence. The lands the First Nations had occupied, worked, lived on, been supported by for thousands of years, these lands by the swipe of ink across some colonial parchment became "Prince Rupert's Land"! Ownership was declared and the logic of who was there first, who had the most rights to the land, those logics went the way of the silent sexual union - unblessed by declarations of intentionality into the sacrament of marriage. Declaring intention does not make it right.

I trust Mother Earth. I trust the God of my understanding to speak with me directly. I trust them both before I trust any words on any paper provided by any human hand.

In the silence, God speaks loudly, and Mother Earth holds me safely in the palm of her hand.

I Joined a Tribe.

Last week I had a cascade of days of frustration that forced me to examine a number of things.

I've joined a religious tribe that has a history replete with cruelty and evil executed in the name of God. Colonization happened under the steam of missionary work, often displacing original cultures with Christian rituals to prevent the ancient Aboriginal and African practices perceived as pagan. Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and British colonization were fueled by slaves brought in ships to the western world. Ships where they lay like sardines, skin rubbed raw and festering on unpolished splintery boards, ankles and wrists shackled - human beads forming a human chain.

I am now the product of three nations of colonization. And in all three nations I am the lower denominator - not the colonizing Caucasian race. In Sri Lanka, I am the brown-skinned Sri Lankan ... the product of an Anglican Sri Lankan father and a Buddhist Sri Lankan mother. One half bowed to the spirituality of the colonizers, the other half holding fast to the traditional religion of the nation of Ceylon.

I am Jamaican - I grew up in Jamaica from the age of three, amongst friends and peers whose predominant race was black - of African descent, of the slave ships. A tactic of managing the slave population was to get the slaves to disown their own, home culture. Removing identity was a tactic of control. Creating separation was a tactic of slavery also - systematically creating an attitude of distrust and fear amongst slaves kept the white slave masters safe in their homes at night, on plantations whose greatest numbers were the slaves, whose main labour force was slaves who were treated more like animals than human beings, by Christian masters.

I grew up in a Christian country that had been made Christian by the colonizers. The same colonizers who completely eliminated the entire race of native Aboriginals (Tainos, Arawaks) whom they found on the island. The Tainos were a friendly and peaceful people and when Columbus' landed his boats, with his syphilis bearing crew on Jamaican shores, the curious and friendly Tainos did not know that the end they were greeting with open arms and beads as friendship offerings would include enslavement and disease and culminate in death. Yes, a land can be discovered, so long as the race that was there when it was being discovered can be subjugated. Discovery by Christian colonizers is not about who was there first - it is about which Christian got there first.

The story in North America, where I now live, is similar. Colonizing missionaries came to these shores and discovered Aboriginal people here and destroyed a sustainable way of life that had existed here for thousands of years. But it is called discovery because for Christian colonizers it is about which Christian got there first. Aboriginal people who had an amazing relationship with the land and the environment were lured into the materialistic ways of the white man, the Hudson Bay Company; bears and animals began being killed not for their meat but for their pelts. The practice of wasteful use of the environment was begun. Families were torn asunder as missionary schools ripped children from the bosoms of loving mothers who were perceived as "savages". But these savages lived cohesively with their environment, and with an environmentally whole spirituality that was completely sustainable before colonization and Christ was brought to them. This Christ is not the Christ I know.

Being a Christian is joining a tribe with a history of cruelty and injustice, especially against people of colour - and I joined this tribe as a person of colour knowing that I have joined with this history. My decision to join this tribe came about after a long spiritual journey. And I confess I do not live primarily in my Christianity, but rather in the spirituality I knew before I became a Christian. I live constantly in relationship with God, but I often am angry and saddened by the tribe I have joined. I am often angry and sad at the way the Christian scriptures are interpreted to abuse and abase and isolate people, to exclude when Jesus' main message was one of inclusion ... when God's main message is grace available to all as gift.

This tribe still has in pockets the racist and colonizing mentality. This tribe still has in pockets members who want to be in the tribe because of the power it gives them over others, and not because of the opportunity it offers them to empower others in faith, and to introduce others to God's grace. This tribe still has in pockets people who think being Christians gives them the right to judge. These pockets make me want to dwell on the fringes of Christianity - it is the feeling one gets if one's own family behaves shamefully ... they remain your family but you are not necessarily proud of what you see.

God is a powerful, amazing God. After a long search, it was not optional to join this tribe. It was a calling, and a loud one at that. It did not happen through discussions with people, or through missionizing - it happened through long, genuine, often painful discussions, negotiations, pleadings, questionings and reasonings with the God of my understanding, the God understanding of me. I learnt that you do not turn away from a calling. Now I am having to learn how to live with the family members of whom I am ashamed, I am having to learn how to live with the history which makes me want to hang my head in shame ... this is my tribe that behaved so badly. This is my tribe that even now continues to behave badly, in what should be an age of enlightenment.

The only way I can make sense of it is through my belief that God works through us. We are His instruments, and in so much as we say "Thy will be done" and mean it, we enable His work to be done. I am only one person in the tribe. I am an instrument of God's will though, and I make the commitment to go where I hear God calling me. He called me into this tribe, and I won't let the grimy history and the power-hungry chase me out of this tribe, or displace me from my calling. "Thy will be done" is a very powerful formula for change. I believe in this with every fibre of my being, with all that is my soul. No colonizing missionizing Christian need tell me what God's will is for me, because as my father once said to a pastor who offered to intercede to God on my father's behalf, "I am not a step child of God, but a child of God, and as such I can speak with Him directly". Thank you very much.

Essential Solitude

We had a nice blustery snowfall last night. I walked to the bus stop by Central supermarket on King street, via Mount Hope cemetary. I began my walk before the sidewalks had been cleared, and the combination of wind and snow had made interesting mounds and hedges shaped like miniature snow cliffs. I ran my fingers along the freshly fallen show, making little lines in it, enjoying the feel of cold against mitten warmed fingers.

I made first footprints in some places.

Snowfall makes the world new and it feels to me like God's forgiveness, raining down on an often uncaring world, covering an aching, abused and bruised environment with a gentle cover of white, sometimes blown all about in representative fury ... yet after the storm it is settled, peaceful. Grace made manifest in a covering of crisp, crystalline white. How much we can learn from the simple snow fall - it's willingness to go everywhere, unrestricted by fear and judgement, unafraid to create newness over the old, the tired, the worn out ... unafraid to embrace everything in it's undiscriminating coat of white. Making cosy nests of our human warm places.

The cemetary is lonely, and the anonymity of death is magnified by the snow drifts ... ostentatious headstones whose names are hidden by snow, becoming as unidentified as the more frugal headstones ... creating a field of undifferentiated dead ... together and all alone under the frozen ground, under the undiscriminating snow - there is the resonance of solitude, lonesome crane ... this is how we will arrive and this is how we will depart. Knowing this is how we will all depart, names not mattering, how do we choose to live this day? How do we choose to love and be with each other this day?

"Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word, loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word, solitude to express the glory of being alone" - Paul Tillich.

Needing a Place

I found myself needing a place to write my rambling thoughts. Much of what is happening around me everyday goes over my head ... and then in between there are moments of amazing clarity; something I read or observe or experience resonates and just seems to fit exactly as it should, in a world otherwise askew. So I decided to create a place to place my thoughts ... anonymously. If you stumble across this I hope it enriches you in some way.