FROM THE BOUNDARY: Curtain
THE innings must close. The curtain must fall. The spectators must amble home. Yes, after five and more years, this column must enlist a hearse. After this, one to go and then ‘out’. The reason will come next week. For now, I must express my deep gratitude to this newspaper and all my readers. Maybe I’ll become a memory. As what? I’ll leave that to you. Poor Ricardo. You’ll have to find someone else to threaten with God’s wrath! As for me, I’ll take my chance.
There’s so much and so many to be grateful for. As you know, many of my columns were written in coffee shops. Bountiful ‘Coffee Bean’ at Cave Shepherd was the source of so much. Bless you Denell and Patricia always. But then with COVID, and considerably less time to travel home, I discovered ‘Eats and Treats’ at Sky Mall, chez beloved Margarita from Venezuela – she’ll tell you a thing or two about republics; with Nikita ever scintillating the coffee beans. Happy times.
On the republic, well of course it’s been on the books for years and it really is a matter for the people of Barbados. But I do not recall the proposal being in the last BLP Manifesto and so came as something of a shock, and most especially when the principle wasn’t to be put to the people in a referendum – unlike same-sex civil partnerships. Whatever happened to them? The other day, Ambassador Comissiong, our ‘Cuba-man’ who, strangely for an ambassador, openly talks politics, spoke on a ‘call-in’ programme. He told us that referenda – themselves democratic processes – might be subject to political shenanigans. How odd from him! And this week, we heard that a republic would vastly benefit the disabled! What’s wrong with NOW? What will they dig up next? Well, the ‘price of liberty is…’ and all that. It’s down to you, the people, and only you. Be vigilant now – very careful indeed.
My friends in Pentecostal and other places need have no fear. I shall continue to support the LGBTQ movement in every way I can, and continue to argue that two thousand years on, we’re really not bound by snippet biblical texts which, context besides, ignore the law of love in all our relationships. Hate has no part in our faith, rooted in the teaching and life of Jesus. The disciple whom he loved cutched to his breast and heard the heartbeat of God – for him. What really matters is becoming LIKE Jesus, manifesting his compassion for all life, and understanding that when he refers to loving our neighbours he means all that surrounds us, not just you and me but all creation. All life is sacred. “The compassion of God is for all that has been made” (Psalm 145:9). Does Jesus tell us anything we never knew? Or is he our soul’s memory?
Yes, the grace within. Sacred texts, the imme-diate work of man, are words on paper without divine grace, ‘chesed’, God’s gift. There’s its original self, the divine gift of itself at our birth, the grace of the heart, of Calon Lan, the pure heart, the authentic you and me. Let the Church not rubbish us with original sin, our total want of “health”, to pull us down and control us better. We contrive our own idiocies. Then the grace of illumination, of awareness, of waking up, when we see things clearly again, releasing our heart’s song, the melody of truth, oneness, love, birthing, resurrecting. And then the grace of compassion touches us, for ourselves and all troubled beings. The divine prompts us, a voice confounding the unbelievable, maybe a dream, something uncanny. Don’t speak of ‘luck’, a ‘one-in-a-million’. Listen for the voice of the Great Creating Spirit for YOU.
And remember this. ‘Paradise’ isn’t in some faraway, other-worldly, place. It’s a shifting experience born within, where the kingdom is. It’s breathing there the breath of Jesus, empowering us as light for all men. It makes you truly you and calls us to life, here, now. Darkness has no place there. Bless it always.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Fr. Clifford’s almost last thought, from the boundary: ‘Wake up, please. YOU CAN.’