I had already begun the habit of making copious notes in a daily diary of all the interesting events I encountered each day … and each night, I might add, for I also included the details of dreams. I might have started that habit in my teens, but it became a vital aspect of my spirituality by the time I was in my mid-20’s. Those daily notes helped me raise my awareness, not only of what was happening around me, but of what was happening inside, and led me to some startling conclusions before I arrived in my 30’s.
I had already experienced certain dimensions of prophetic unction. Something my God had said to me as a teenager had opened up a rapacious hunger to experience deeper dimensions of this consciousness. Although I’m unable now to repeat verbatim, I remember clearly the gist:
“In the present moment, if one is fully aware, one may grasp the keys that unlock the doors of the past, present and future”.
Only very few examples of forensic prophecy were known to me then and each one stoked the fires of that hunger.
What became truly startling was my discovery that my own journals evidenced trans-temporal consciousness. Looking back over the many years of my journaling records, once kept religiously and referred to daily, I was overwhelmingly convinced by daily proofs in my own writings, that some part of my spirit/consciousness clearly was involved in either perceiving or creating reality across time-blocs, sometimes of decades.
Almost daily, at one point, I recognized in past notes of dreams or reflections, or passages of scripture meditated on, certain circumstances recorded which undeniably anticipated, sometimes decades in advance, certain realities I would later encounter, often with specifics of detail, like names; or at other times, the general configuration of a circumstance.
By the time I had reached my 40s I had discarded all of my journals. They seemed to have become an idol. What frustrated me most was whatever ability there was to anticipate the future (at least in that season) did not seem to come with an ability to control it. They had become a crutch … a distraction. And about that time, I started to blog.
It’s always interesting to see the patterns emerge. What began over two decades ago with an interest in the person of Norman Manley progressed to the point that I said to myself “But this man’s spirit is following me around.” (I now have the keys to his house. Even the water bills are still in Edna’s name.)
Tommy Cowan recalled asking Bob Marley about his songwriting process. Bob said when he wanted to write music, he would go to his auntie’s bar and just listen to the talk. Like Bob and the late Carl Stone, I too have also found something akin to a sacred stream of consciousness that runs through Jamaican bars- The voice of the people, the voice of the streets. That’s what got translated into Marley’s songs, making his music timeless. He captured the people’s voice and set it to music. On some level, the truism: Vox dei, vox populi is true. The collective cry of a people which gives birth to their Moses, their Jesus, – that complex algorithm that calculates not only DNA but also Destiny.
The songs I heard today at a bar were all ominous, sung by young men with corn-rows, songs of lament, rebellion and retribution, garnished with guns; singing a more modern version of Jimmy Cliff’s “You can get it if you really want” but with darker chords, having shed Ivan’s (Cliff’s character in the movie- Harder they come) naïve, country-boy illusions. They were born and raised in the inner city. They saw how that movie ended. Something Ronnie Thwaites said last year speaks directly both to their pain and their ambition:
“I am of the view that our present system of political economy inherited from our colonial experience, and fixed in our geo-political context, can never provide reasonable opportunity for human flourishing for the majority of Jamaicans.”
That’s the decided view of a Christian politician of some 25 years! The cry of the hour must be not only for symbolic, but systemic change. I’m already convinced, not only has God heard, but ‘He’ has already answered … decades ago. The question now is, Will we hear? Will we answer?
YeKengalé 