YeKengalé

This peculiar phrase, oft repeated in ritual prayer privately and publicly by adherents to the Christian faith encodes a key understanding, vital to all humanity, regardless of faith or lack thereof.

Properly understood to be addressing a personification of the progenitor and source of the cosmic order, when stripped of gender and paternal assumptions, which can be attributed to anthropomorphic metaphor perhaps essential to the theological groping of a civilization generations removed from modern scientific insights; it nevertheless directly captures that most basic human instinct that has characterized our species throughout all our generations for hundreds of thousands of years, and moreover to our antecedents and verily to all related cellular life forms in space and time, who all share the common need of self-orientation necessary for organized and fruitful life expression. It speaks to those basic  questions of spirituality/consciousness: Who am I? Where am I? How did I get here? What is my purpose?

(This insight may arguably be lost upon those who have not yet deeply reflected on the vital nexus between the concepts of god and that of the self.)

But this (hallowing of the name of god)  is the impulse that has led to those grand industries of human memory and imagination: history and religion, both of which were absolutely necessary prerequisite enterprises to embark upon the journey of curiosity spearheaded by human intellect: science. Each of those capacities and the grand enterprises they spawned speak directly to this essential hunger: an accurate understanding of the nature and process of Being – the comprehension (not just contemplation) of the ‘holy’.

This prayer designates location of the demiurge  ‘in heaven’. This is as open to a more enlightened or properly detailed interpretation as all three enterprises arrive at greater sophistication along the human journey through time as is the concept of ‘father’. What was once understood to be the ‘sky’ (a literal translation from the original language of the script)  could today perhaps be more appropriately termed the ‘electromagnetic spectrum’, now that greater knowledge of earth’s atmosphere in detail has been apprehended. In fact, perhaps the most appropriate modern cognate for ‘heaven’ might be the Planck Scale, to keep up with the insights of the new physics and its Super String theories.

 That these new notions have literally capsized original theological conceptions, (i.e. the ‘sky’ has now fallen to become the ‘ground’ of Being) is perhaps entirely tangential to the deep seated urge to rescue the name of the creator from profanity (understood as the void which truth and meaning fill). The metaphorics of metaphysics need not be bound to notions of geography.

Where the creator /source of creativity is is perhaps as vital knowledge as why/what/who  the creator / source of creativity is, but my immediate focus, geographically at any rate, is the relevance of those questions to Caribbean civilization at present.

The Caribbean is peopled by a diverse amalgam of cultural identities, each connected to diverse strands of religious tradition, and deeply invested in modernity, which is constantly being molded and shaped by an unprecedented, exponential explosion of  scientific knowledge and its revolutionary (or metastatic, take your pick)  applications.

These internal contradictions are heightened when placed within the context of a region emerging from the cauldron of colonialism which exacerbates differences amongst  a variegated polity locked into polar opposite positions and vested interests. Regionalism requires harmonization for the flourishing of the three aforementioned enterprises. The 4th dimension, human will, when translated in a collective context, Politics and Governance, must be clear-sighted and balanced should these existential tensions be kept in creative strain.

This already daunting challenge is significantly complicated and obstructed by the considerable external pressure of neo and post-colonial global powers whose share in the region’s past and present often inclines their politics towards the support and enhancement of the internal divisive paralysis from which the Caribbean seeks to escape.

I am currently aware of several earnest initiatives within religious and political groups keenly aware of this complexity from various standpoints, seeking to move the needle forward in galvanizing common interests where they may be found to create a viable unity of focus and action . The vast creative potential of the region however, can only be unlocked by the unshackling of those two domains (religion and politics) from crippled, cloudy, confused and compromised memory and intellect.

New approaches and attitudes to historiography and science can only be gestated within deep reflection on the purpose and power of public education.

I am constrained to use theological metaphor to strike resonance. There is no power nor glory until the Kingdom of heaven is translated down to earth. The bane of the religion and politics of ancient Israel that we have so come to identify with through our religious linguistic programming, was as the record shows so clearly, that malicious compulsion to copy and mimic surrounding nations.