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?
