“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” ~ James Baldwin. My father was a minister (parson, preacher) by education and vocation, but became a teacher when we moved to Jamaica. He had two jobs, his charge of three churches, and to be chaplain and parttime Bible Knowledge teacher at the high […]
“Where destruction is the motive, unity is dangerous.” ~ Ravi Zacharias. I may be prejudiced, but there is something special about Jamaica the country and Jamaica the people. When my mother was in the last decade of her life, after she had lost her life partner (married for 66 years, engaged for 3 years before […]
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre. I must have been in my forties when I learned something about my family I had never known before. I learned it around the same time as the rest of my siblings, although I […]
“Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths towards freedom and justice.” ~ Desmond Tutu. In Jamaica you can probably find somewhere called ‘Crossroads’ in every parish. Whether it is an official or unofficial name, it is of course descriptive. Where I grew up in Chapelton, there was a district known as Crossroads, […]
“In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.” ~ Jay Griffiths. December has always been a special month for me, since it is my birth month. There is also that special time they […]
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” ~ Edith Wharton. The first corny joke that I remember learning was a play on words. This is not as effective when you have to read it, but here goes: “What is black and white and red all […]
“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.” ~ Stephen Hawking. The world has changed so much in the past 50 years, or at least my experience of it has changed. Growing up in […]
“Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.” ~ Confucius. Before I knew my best friend very well, when we were both starting out at our new high school up in the hills of Jamaica, she had a very clear view of who she was and what she liked. She was not […]
“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore. One of the first concepts that puzzled me when I moved to Jamaica as a child, was the term ‘follow’. At the end of the school day, once it was decided that I could […]
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.” ~ Khalil Gibran. I was introduced to the poet Khalil Gibran in high school. I don’t know who was the first person to find and share ‘The Prophet’ but his prose […]
Friday Morning Messages 