YeKengalé

I still enjoy friendship with those whose views on essential matters – politics, religion, cosmology, sexuality, ethics. aesthetics are diametrically opposite to mine, some which are admittedly high maintenance with the stakes being so high in our presently polarized culture on the verge and in some cases already in the throes of profound and perhaps apocalyptic change. But in others, the friendships are hardly affected, sometimes due to sufficient social distance being prophylactic to potentially toxic conversation, sometimes due to clearly defined boundaries being set as to avoid those potentially toxic conversations; neither of which I prefer, in that I firmly believe that friendship is the context for processing and evaluating life issues. No one has eyes in the back of his or her head, and so people with opposite perspectives can only enrich our understanding of life, of others, and if nothing else of ourselves. I greatly value opposite perspectives and more importantly, those who carry them.

Nevertheless, acute difference and difficulty require time and patience to process. Often we allow ourselves to unleash a barrage of problematic information on others still insecure in their own positions, or get caught in such a situation ourselves. Time out in any sport allows for the preservation of the spirit of sportsmanship. Every game, including the game of life is, in fact, simulated war. The only difference between a destructive explosion and creative combustion is controlled space and time.

What is true for me in every case I can think of is, due to God’s grace through my many trials, a deep appreciation for people, who are always so much more than their thoughts and dispositions at any one point of time. We are all in process. We are reminded of the eternal potential of the human spirit at birth and at death. Babies evoke that profound and deep felt affection, not yet programmed with all the pathological nonsense in our culture, and the prospect of death often gifts a filter to sift achievement from mistake and more importantly, an opportunity to decipher the subjective struggles of each soul, pre its emotional, intellectual and behavioral responses to them.

The most unproductive and unfulfilling thing we can choose to do in life however is to bury our heads beneath the sand and try to walk between the raindrops trying to please everyone or at least not trying to offend anyone. Life needs its ying and yang, and in fact, both define life, love and every useful human value.

Two places on earth to have established as identifying credo this thematic unity in diversity, and attendant creativity in confrontation, the USA and Jamaica – (USA: E pluribus Unum Jamaica: Out of Many One) have become national platforms on which to test the ideological claims and assumptions of our religious and political heritage. Is Christianity a force of reconciliation or a tool for divisive oppression? Can a capitalist democracy serve the interests of the common people or, like communism, is it destined for usurpation by oligarchs? High minded patriots in both countries scoff at those very questions, lost in the heady clouds of their received convictions, even while movements on the ground threaten to shake the foundations of the house we have assumed impregnable. Nothing on earth lasts forever. Nothing should be taken for granted.

This New Yorker article on Race and Religion is excellent information characterizing the critical issues at play threatening the American experiment. Too often what needs to be said in these conversations remains hinged between clenched teeth. Consider the clear contradiction of Dr. Tony Evans’ claiming with one mouth in a single sitting both the systemic implementation of theological instruction designed to enforce white supremacist objectives and later, with almost apologetic deference referring to white supremacist infiltration ‘of’ (not ‘by’) the church when indeed, according to his own testimony, church has been the tool of cultural infiltration not merely its victim.. Where is the prophetic ‘Cry aloud and Spare not’? Is the mantle now on a secular magazine?

Contemporary Caribbean luminary and Vice Chancellor of UWI, Sir Hilary Beckles’ bold and apparently hyperbolic proclamation of what he sees as the most central movement of the 21st century attacks the core of the issues most Caribbean thinkers have shoved under the carpet and are content to ignore. Race, class and power are intimately connected. People who forget their place in history are likely to ignore or outright deny the very real and regional vulnerabilities that can lead to upheaval of Caribbean Civilization as presently known, and in a relatively short period of time. Even if content to abandon the duty to honor our past, the duty to honor our future requires a creative approach to human and capital development in the Caribbean.

I would that every US and Caribbean church leader and political representative consider these above (highlighted in red) resources. Ignorance is expensive, yet idiocy…in leadership abundant.