FROM THE BOUNDARY: Buffalo soldier
I’VE just come in from giving my little flock their mid-morning snack. I didn’t mention it before, but for the past two months (maybe – I’m suffering Wimp-blank) Snow-Snow has been sharing the chapel with two black companions, Coco and Poco. They were Tit’s babies, born with 12 others in the yard in the shadows of statues of Mother Mary, St. Francis and the Buddha. For some reason, Tit, who’s also black, tried to kill them and so I carried them to join Snow-Snow – black with white. They now have fun in the yard every evening, and get on pretty well together. Mind, if I show Coco or Poco too much attention, Snow-Snow is apt to get jealous, and either ignores me completely or starts pecking me wherever he can. And yes, he is the ‘boss’ and typically lets the others know it. Well, he is the oldest. Yet despite the appearance, they perch together at night in a very cutchy way.
When Snow-Snow starts to peck me, at times I have to show him who’s the real ‘boss’. I understand him completely, of course, and love him to bits as you must realise now. So although I can’t exactly condone his antics, I’m not ‘against him’ either, even if I have to smack his tail feathers. Sometimes I simply ignore what’s going on and give him a long leash, but I don’t think the onlooker would say that that shows I don’t care for him or about what he’s up to. It’s a bit like correcting your kids. Oh how you love them, but you can’t always let them ‘get away with it’. Yes, and sometimes you give them a long leash too. You know what I mean?
At the heart of it is love, oneness. As I’ve tried to show over past weeks, that’s a Divine thing. Our prayer is ever, “May we know that we are in You and of You – all of us. ‘One love, one heart… as it was in the beginning.’” So ever let it be.
Over past weeks we’ve moved from a world of pandemic to pan-protest. That can be a very noble thing. Yet, with what I’ve said of Snow-Snow in mind, let me begin by questioning Minister Colin Jordan’s remark, in the recent parliamentary debate on race and Nelson, that “silence becomes complicity” (Nation, 24 June). I suppose he means that if we don’t expressly support the protesters’ line we must be racists, or fellow-travellers, or uncaring about issues of race, or be prepared to suffer it (doubtless, as they say, from our ingrained sense of victimhood and inferiority). At its most primitive, it means we want to keep Nelson where he is despite the supposedly overwhelming arguments of the protest leaders for his removal. Well, remember Jesus? “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters abroad” (Matt. 12:30). Well, yes of course. There aren’t two ways about love and forgiveness, are there? You can’t pass by on the other side in silence and yet claim the law of love as yours. When it’s about Jesus’ ‘protests for love’, there’s no room for silence. But the arguments about Nelson are different. You don’t inevitably become a racist because you don’t ‘buy’ Minister Jordan’s, or anyone else’s, arguments about race and the column. That’s not necessarily letting the side down. The issue is open. There’s more than one way to…
The Church has been silent. What’s new? Is it a racist Church? Tongue-in-cheek, maybe it’s because LGBTQ people haven’t been marching! I did wonder whether those beautiful young people, identified so enthusiastically as “the children of professional black men and women” (Trevor Prescod, MP, Debate, Advocate, 26 June), who marched in protest were really having their version of Pride Month! But dear me – authentic anti-racist feelings, authentic protests, are now all about age, education and class! That’s a good one.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Selfhood, from the boundary: “You’re in control of you. I’m in control of me. Why have enemies when you can have friends?” (my friend Merlene).