The metaphysical foundations of the church were laid in a crucial conversation between Jesus and Peter. At the heart of this conversation were three questions. Two were stated explicitly and the third implied:
- Who do people say that I am?
- Who do you say that I am?
- Who do I say (and know) myself to be?
The third, though unspoken, was the measure and standard that the previous answers were weighed against.
If we can recognize that the human drama in its entirety is the mission to define self, (whether that self be individual or collective, and whether the measurement of self be against:
- the weight of either popular opinion or human history,
- the testimony of intimates, or
- the weight of either one’s own internal vision and estimation of oneself at any given point in time or the eternal vision of the Great I AM, (which it may be profitable to notice that within the context of the referred conversation, those two perspectives – i.e. the temporal I am and the Eternal I Am, were perfectly aligned in Jesus);
then we can also recognize the vital nexus between language (what is said) and identity (who I am).
Discovery and creativity are essentially the work and nature of the human spirit. Of course, both are related. Each informs the other. Creative purpose (such as Peter’s Apostolic mandate) remains creative potential until the moment of the enlightenment of identification and accompanying precision of language.
This ongoing conversation, i.e. Jesus’ interrogation of the culture through Peter and the responsive interrogation of Jesus and his claims through Peter and the structures founded upon his claims of revelation (institutionalized church), continues to the present day, and certainly one most vital frontier is represented by what we have come to call First Nation Peoples. Of course, ‘First Nation Peoples’ is merely an attempt at aggregation of the milieu of peoples that inhabited the age preceding the ascendancy of the current one, characterized by the dominance of what we have come to call Western Civilization. Our own Caribbean civilization entered this age with Columbus’ discovery of the West Indies.
The fact that we have come to reject that characterization of history is a reflection of the kind of cultural interrogation that attends every contact of diverse human opinion. Yes, of course, the people Columbus discovered on his venture into what is now called the Caribbean and the Americas, existed long before he came, clearly. That did not make it any less of a discovery for Columbus anymore than each new ‘discovery’ of stellar and galactic frontiers for us is also authentic experience, although clearly, these ‘new’ stars and galaxies pre-existed both our knowledge and naming of them. Others take issue with the name ‘West Indies’ as an indication that Columbus was lost; that he was confounding reality not clarifying it.
Of course, seeing this ‘New World’ through the eyes of Columbus might yield greater understanding. The peoples he and others from his world discovered at that time were indeed the descendants of India and other areas called by Europeans at that time The Orient. The entire area of what is now called the Americas and the Caribbean was peopled generations before the times of Columbus by Indo-Chinese migrants crossing the Bering straits around the time of the last Ice Age. This was long before the birth of European culture or its Greco-Roman antecedents, or Judeo-Christian informants. From the anterior perspective of these Original First World people, the New World would indeed be the one characterized by Columbus’ intrusion. That world incubated in the Caucasus mountains was definitely the new kid on the block to the ancient civilizations carved out in both hemispheres by Afro-Asiatic peoples.
There is some validity therefore to the assertion of Columbus’ discovery of the ‘West Indies’ for at that time, that would not have been an unfair characterization of this hemisphere. This was particularly striking to me after visiting the Barana Auté of the Kalinagos of Dominica and a Lokono village in the Guyanese hinterlands. Comparing their dance, fashion and even phenotypical features: complexion, average height etc with the Kalinga, an ancient coastal people from northeast India, each might be indistinguishable to the untrained eye. It seems reasonable to assume these are one people, separated only by thousands of miles and thousands of years. There was some merit, therefore, at the time, for the characterization of the lands of their habitation as East and West India. Sometimes, certainly not always, complete strangers, or even our own enemies may have deeper insights into ourselves than or before we do.
To say ‘Columbus discovered America’ or ‘Columbus discovered the Caribbean’ however, would be clearly erroneous. There were no such place names in Columbus’ time. America is the name derived from Vespucci who came after Columbus. Carib is the European corruption of the Kalinago word for person, Caribna. Both are a confoundment of sequence of events, or what I call chronfusion.
This muddying of waters created by the inaccurate depiction of the human story (choice and consequence), is at the heart of human conflict, giving rise on the one hand, to constructive conversation characterized by Peter and Jesus above: i.e. a conversation seeking clarity, precision and truth; as well as on the other hand, both obstructive and destructive conversation – subversive words distorting reality, promoting and escalating conflict, augmenting and accentuating differences, dismissing or denying congruencies, diminishing human value and collective creativity.
It is therefore refreshing in our time to see people’s rising up to tell their own stories and announce their own names. (In the case of the Lokono, who have been called ‘Arawaks’, no such word even exists in their language. They were called thusly by the Warao. It is not helpful to name what is not understood or to opine on the unknown; better to investigate and/or join constructive conversation.)
To expand the grand metaphor of the Jesus / Peter conversation recorded in the gospels, of some apparent interest to Jesus was what people said about him. Unsaid, and of equal interest, is what people say of themselves. Of paramount importance is the eternal perspective (symbolically represented by Jesus’ presence) on each person or people group, authenticated by demonstration of the ability to, in the words of the Samaritan woman, ‘tell (each person or people group) everything (they) have ever done’ and reveal to them (Rev. 19:10) the secrets of their hearts (The real Jesus knows my story). This authentication becomes essential in light of the unscrupulous and reprehensible impersonation and identity theft of Jesus, Peter and the church which is foundational to Caribbean church-planting from the very first clash of civilizations in the 15th century and up to the present day. Lest we forget, the apostles to the Caribbean were not Peter, Paul or any of the Twelve, but Columbus and Cromwell.
Both Caribbean civilization and the Christian Church within it needs to define itself in the midst of the web of conflict weaved by the diversity of opinion and intention from within and without. From the very beginnings of the encounter, each with the other, the stark divide of impressions and expressions has demanded a thorough interrogation of claims and counter claims.
YeKengalé 