FROM THE BOUNDARY

Some would say we live in two worlds – God’s world and the world of man, of Caesar. Some would recognise other worlds identifiable by the colour of a man’s skin – as we might say the ‘world of the black man’ and the ‘white man’s world’. I reject both dualities. I accept that in each case there may be competing interests and claims and that in some respects these may be rooted in the way we order our societies, and in fear. The ‘nation state’ may have much to answer for. But just as a priest, I say there is no place where God fails to breathe, so also I say that no matter our history and the accidents of birth and geography we are yet one world and one humanity. This, you see, has been my defining experience.

For more than half my life I’ve lived in the so-called ‘black man’s world’. I was once married to an Itsekiri princess, the mother of my children, by native law and custom in Warri in Nigeria. With other academics, I’ve confronted armed robbers on the university campus at Ibadan. I’ve travelled alone from Lagos to Ibadan, Ilorin, Maiduguri and Benin as if they were in St Lucy. I’ve worn the coral beads of acceptance and respect. I’ve sat, as honoured guest, in the homes of Abiola, Akinloye and Ademola. I was once told by a Yoruba chief: “You are one of us”. I’m now married to a Jamaican and have lived here for more than 20 years. Next to my bed I keep a Bible, inscribed “God Bless You”, given to me in Ibadan by Ngozi, a student from Igboland. There’s so much more. Yet I’ve also been labelled “colonial master” after speaking what I believed to be true in an academic context by someone who later became a good friend.  It’s such an easy jibe.

So yes, of course I recognise that for some the black-white duality is a life-determining reality. Indeed, I’ve witnessed the most horrible incidents of it. Back in the UK, my former wife once had the words ‘Black b….’ written on her car. When I moved into this village in St. George, the words ‘F… you’ were written on the road outside my house and a new friend was asked ‘Why are you speaking to him? He’s white’. Nice. We saw it all rehearsed in the Karen Harris affair though I dare to say that for most Bajans racial differences are an irrelevance and not simply something you hide away. And let me say too that I will oppose to my last breath those who relentlessly push racial division here in the name of a spurious justice and the use of a heavily fallacious historical method and who, in the process, demean our people by suggesting that history has left them psychologically scarred. That is the grossest insult to them.

All of which brings me to the anonymous letter I mentioned last week accusing me of being a racist.

Do you remember, some ten years ago, the debate which dogged the press about whether the health risks in receiving from the communal chalice at Mass were too great? Many communicants then adopted an alternative practice – retaining the host and then dipping it in the chalice when it was offered. In other words, all those ‘dirty mouths’ were now replaced by ‘dirty fingers and hands’; but this, of course, didn’t worry the communicant because they were his/her fingers and hands and there was no mouth-sharing via the chalice. I have to say that, for good or ill, I didn’t approve of this new practice and I did what I could at St. John the Baptist to discourage it, though the incumbent seemingly  condoned it. It’s a practice forbidden in the Latin Rite of the Roman Church. If I was able, I would gently take the host from the communicant and intinct it myself – for my hands, having just been ritually washed, were relatively clean. It’s all changed now, of course, and the problem rarely arises.

One day at the Good Shepherd Chapel, the chalice assistant being absent, I administered in both kinds. There was an elderly white priest at the altar rail, a very senior person who I knew had been a benefactor of the Chapel though I didn’t know him personally – and I still don’t.  When I presented the chalice to him he dipped the host, which he’d retained, in the chalice. There was no way I could or would have discouraged him for he was far senior to me and the entire gesture happened too fast anyway. That’s the background to the anonymous letter.

At a meeting with the incumbent, the letter was pushed across the table to me. I opened it. The thing alleged that I believed that white hands were cleaner than black hands. Imagine – someone actually wrote that garbage. I passed the letter back to the incumbent and said, “Oh, someone’s sent me a love letter”. The incumbent took it, read it, and said – well, nothing. Her face remained blank. I asked what was to be done and suggested that I say something to the Good Shepherd congregation. I was told I shouldn’t. I asked why. There was no serious response. I asked what she would do. She told me she didn’t know. Now, in fact she was going to be away for two Sundays so that if the matter wasn’t dealt with it might fester. I spent most of the afternoon talking on the phone to senior people I knew. All said the allegation had been levelled at me and that it was really only me who could deal with it. One said the incumbent clearly intended to do nothing.

On the Sunday I didn’t know what I was going to do. However, the Gospel reading, whatever it was, seemed to urge me to say something – and so I did as humourfully as possible as part of the homily. And that, I thought, was that. Nonetheless, two weeks on I received a call from the incumbent who gave me a tongue lashing for it. I told her that it was my reputation which had been besmirched not hers. More lashes. At the end of it, I said: “Look – if this means we part company, so be it.” You’ll note I didn’t resign but left the ball with her. A week or so later, I went to collect my monthly pay cheque from Diocesan House. “There’s no cheque for you.” “Why?” “The Bishop’s stopped it.” I went straight to him. Obviously the incumbent had been to see him but he didn’t tell me what she’d said. He’d acted without reference to me. So much for natural justice. I told him my version. It made no difference. I was ‘out’ but, since I’d worked the month, he wrote the cheque. Now wasn’t that nice of him?
Go safely, then – until the next time.

Knowing Self from the boundary:        “Every time I go through the gates of a prison….I always think: I should be here. I deserve  (Pope Francis).