YeKengalé

Beyond sensational headlines that attract blog readership, the problem of the outcast is real and prevalent throughout the Caribbean. Even if it’s the proverbial hole referred to in the children’s song that one digs to put the devil in, surely every creature in creation has its place. Jesus himself lamented the plight of the outcast, himself becoming one,

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

The habit of demonizing dissent that creates the out-caste is so wired into our psychological make up, we are unable to conceive a world where lamb and lion dwell together in peace. We resort to the spirit of war when the spirit of service might have found a solution.

People might consider that I advocate for a world without standards where every man gets to do what is right in his own eyes, without fear of sanction. The kind of new heaven and new earth John Lennon sings of in Imagine not John the Revelator saw. A world with neither border nor boundary. I think they would be entirely wrong (but who to tell? To the pure all things are pure, perhaps both the vision and the imagination seek the same.)

But my own experience tells me that the devil’s address is your own. Home is where the devil is, and apparently was meant to be. The few people in my life I’ve actually called devils were members of my immediate family. (Only my brother, sister and ex-wife have been spared thus far, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t qualify.) And for those who consider that I do not have both a beloved and blessed family, they would also be entirely wrong. You cant qualify as a devil unless you are celebrated, cherished and uniquely special.

My reading of scripture and experience of life does not allow me to conceive that there was any love lost between Jesus and Peter, or Peter and Paul, even after their very public spates of open rebuke and name-calling. Neither do I think that Christ’s intent, who is called Loyal and True, and the Prince of Peace, is to normalize public brawling. But the fact remains, there is some utility even to strong and vigorous confrontation, and healthy relationships and strong bonds are perhaps the only appropriate arena for such. Why bother with a stranger? How else can one understand

For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

Alas, home is where we learn tolerance, and intolerance, both important lessons to learn; though I am convinced by our human waste / nonproductive human resources that we are yet to strike the proper balance here in the islands.

Perhaps if as a society, we were more rooted and grounded in familial love, we would be secure enough to appropriately express hostility at home (and more importantly, process hostility expressed) and demonstrate genuine hospitality to strangers…strangers in thought, values and lifestyle, not just those we never met before. Then maybe we would cherish like Jesus the wounds received in the house of friends, rather than eternally whine about them, living broken lives, angry at the world, barking at shadows.

But instead, here we are, hiding in our social and religious cliques, having lost natural human affection, living coy and clannish in our niches of social engagement, often unable to find common ground for collective creativity, unless the impetus comes from outside ourselves. Vagabonds in castles, surrounded by a teaming sea of humanity we have almost completely dissociated with.

Somebody please, find a hole for that fox.