Saint Lucia
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April 2004 47th Year No. 4 Internet Edition Page 2 Click below for Page 1 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Home |
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On Sunday March 7th. The annual poverty meal in aid of the Marian Home was held at the Mount of Prayer, Coubaril. This was the 17th. Consecutive year in which this event has been held, and it is the main fund-raising activity organised to help the institution. As usual, the event drew many patrons, including quite a number of visitors to the Island. All were encouraged to make their participation apart of their Lenten observance, and in so doing, to contribute in a very tangible way to the upkeep of the Marian Home. This Home is run by the Carmelite Sisters, with the help of a very dedicated lay staff. Once again, the activities were held under the distinguished patronage of Her Excellency, the Governor General, Dame Pearlette Louisy, who is a staunch supporter of the Home. Also in attendance were a number of government officials, and prominent business people of the community. It was also most encouraging to see the relatively large number of young people among the attendants. It was obvious that they, the youth, also realize that they too have apart to play in helping the elderly in their community . The chairman of the Home's Management Board welcomed all those in attendance, after which Archbishop Kelvin Felix led the opening prayers and the blessing of the meal. He then donned his white apron to begin the distribution of the beautifully prepared soup. Mr .Clem Bobb was a very efficient and entertaining master of ceremonies for the afternoon's proceedings. The guest speaker was Mrs. Rufina Paul. She gave a very inspiring address by way of the answer to the question: "Is there a Poverty of Spirituality in our Lives?" She stressed that spiritual poverty is a deficit that often has its roots in an empty and superficial prayer life. Quoting Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, she said "spiritual poverty is a deficit we incur by failing to know, love and serve Jesus Christ". Towards the end of the day's function door prizes were presented to some 25 lucky participants. This was made possible by the generosity of several business houses hotels and airlines serving the country . A vote of thanks was given by Mr. Geoff Devaux to all those who patronised this year's annual meal, as well as the many others who helped to make behind the scenes to bring relief to the elderly. . IS THERE A POVERTY OF SPIRITUALITY IN OUR LIVES? (Address given by Mrs. Rufina Paul) I want to say thanks to the Board of Management of the Marian Home, for allowing me this opportunity to share my thoughts with you. In this moment, I want to engage you, in answering for yourselves, the question : Is there a Poverty of Spirituality in our lives? However, before I begin my discourse with you, I want to pay special tribute to the Carmelite Sisters, for their unyielding contribution to social development within the St. Lucian society. Within the ‘Marian Home, compound, due attention is paid to infants by way of the preschool and nursery .There is the Corpus Christi Girls' Vocational School, which provide for the training of some of our female youth. Then there is the programme that has brought us here today -the Marian Home for the Elderly. The programmes within the Marian Home compound are indeed a true reflection of the stages in life's journey. This compound encompasses care from the cradle to grave -a model of intergenerational guardianship. Sad to say, there are not many institutions of intergenerational networking remaining in our society. What we seem to have are vestiges of what once was. We seem to have engineered the collapse of our traditional intergeneration networks, such as the extended family, the multigenerational work environment, the multigenerational community interactive sessions. The question is - Have we all developed an aversion for a healthy mix of elderly experience and youthful exuberance: in the home, in the community, in our social grouping, in our schools, and in our churches as well? By so doing, have we inadvertently robbed our youth of the jewels of their lives -their self-esteem and an appreciation of their legacy. Our nation's history, our community stories, our family stories, our personal stories, all shape our persona. Intergenerational contacts allow for a grounding of the meaning of one's existence -one's self esteem. The ability to appreciate from whence you came, gives deeper meaning to the reality of the present and, without a doubt, boosts self- determination. Self-determination begets human purpose and dignity; and brings about spiritual wealth. Spiritual enrichment serves to build character and to deepen conviction and courage, so that each of us, can, by simply living a "good life", be custodians of justice and equity in our society. As we celebrate twenty-five years of independence, can we truly say that, as a nation, we have prospered -in this last quarter century. How do we measure prosperity and growth? .Is any attention given to measuring the rate of spiritual enrichment? Have we become spiritually enriched over the years? As we celebrate 25 years of Independence, are we able to celebrate, as well, a legacy of self-determination. Are the children of the post independence era- the youth of today, spirit-filled people and self-determinate people? Have we been able to inculcate the values and principles that encourages our youth to choose positive and healthy life styles Do we have the strength of character, which forces us to challenge the indiscipline, the contradictions, the injustice, the irresponsibleness, the inequity, the inadequacies within our homes, our schools, our churches, our government and most importantly ourselves? We need to answer for ourselves the question -Is there a poverty of spirituality in our lives? One may ask, is there merit in such a question. Do we feel the need to question our selves in this regard? One may opine by exclaiming -Is the measure of our GDP, our foreign exchange earnings, our income levels, our job creation opportunities, our banana exports volumes, our tourists arrivals not sufficient! As we participate in the drama of life, we need to question whether the traditional social and economic indicators that we impute, the necessary and sufficient criteria for giving definition and meaning to our existence? As the GDP grows, as income levels increase, as we become able to acquire "more things"; are we achieving the one thing that gives meaning to life -OUR HAPPINESS. Are we a happy people? What makes us happy? If we are happy, are we unreserved in sharing that happiness. How many of us live through days and even weeks without having the opportunity to engage in a real laugh. By this I do not mean, the joy the may be acquired from the misfortunes of others. I speak here of a happiness that is positive, self-generated, unconditional and giving. Happiness is a journey not a destination and there is no better time than now to be happy. Many of you may already be familiar with the following electronic message, which I want to share with you now. It reads: There is no better time than now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination. So work like you do not need money, love like you've never been hurt and; dance like no one's watching. Although we all experience and or encounter material poverty, it is our "spiritual" poverty" that. begs attention in this moment. .According to Mother Teresa, spiritual poverty is the deficit we incur by failing to know, love and .serve Jesus Christ. She said, spiritual poverty is a deficit that often has its roots, in an empty and superficial prayer life. What distinguished Mother Teresa, as a saintly woman, was her ability to see Jesus Christ in every person she touched. She once said, never give up this daily intimate contact with Jesus, as a real living person. We need to live your prayers. We need to let our daily living be our constant prayers - our daily conversation with Our Lord. We need to allow our selves to be always be led by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was led by the Spirit through the wilderness and was tempted there. This was the theme of last week's gospel reading -the first Sunday of Lent. As we enter the season of Lent, we must all take the time to reflect on the reality of our lives and to gain a deeper appreciation of many fundamentals in our lives. Do we really know ourselves. How do we answer to the question: Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I alive? Why am I living? Why did GOD put me here? What is my mission? When we are able to answer these self-searching questions, we naturally are better able to fight the many temptations that come our way each day. In the gospel reading that I referred to previously, Jesus was tempted by the devil, and like him we are all have our trials and tribulations. Jesus' example however teaches us that, being led by the spirit in the wilderness (in the wilderness he had nothing but nature for company); he however possessed all that was needed to overcome these temptations. All he needed was his self - mind, soul and body. We need to ask: Are we able to rely on our individual selves? Do we rely on self when the going get tough and the tough get going? Are we able to be like Jesus, when the temptations of life confront us? Are we able to rebuke the temptations, that decorate our lives? Can we distinguish the desires and the motivations that contribute to spiritual growth and those that deprive us of healthy spirituality? Do we know when we become spiritually diminished? Do we have the character and conviction to challenge our worldly "Gods"? Does our poverty of spirit cause us to give in to what we know to be unethical, unprincipled, immoral? We may then want to ask, what is morality? Are we able to describe the moral imperative that must guide each and everyone of us; as we journey through life. In today's society, what constitutes morality? Do we seek a nation where: "the common good" supersedes the personal gratification; do we seek a nation where co-operation and consideration for others overcomes selfishness and greed; where expediency gives way to principles; where a job is a vocation and not just a means of making money; where the "get rich quick mentality" does not stifle the spirit of volunteerism. Do we seek a society where respect and honour derives from the character of the person [the spirit] not from externalities that give definition to a person. I want us to pause for a while to reflect on the way we judge poverty. Is our judgment clouded by the manifestation of material poverty? How do we judge that one is poor and in need of assistance? Who is really poor? Essentially, poverty is firstly a state of mind. Like beauty, it is all in the eyes of the beholder! Our reality is socially constructed and, as we know, perception is ninety-nine percent of one's reality. Though, many of us may vehemently deny that we can make something true, by simply believing it to be so; we may readily agree that we can make something right by simply believing it to be right. We are all familiar with these circumstances. . Some people who are extremely rich do not know of their wealth simply because they do not have the things the society has defined as symbols of wealth. Can we truly say that we give credence to self-worth, honesty, and our many positive virtues that all of us possess. Our beliefs, our actions, our convictions, our attitudes are the drivers of our lives. If we believe that money will make us happy one day, we seek out money not matter how unhappy we become in so doing; in the hope that someday we will arrive at that destination. On the other hand, if we believe that happiness is created from within "me and me only"; whatever we have, will make us happy. In so doing, we live in the present, enjoying the moment and savoring the blessing that we already have. This is why it is called the present -a gift As I said earlier, there is no better time than now to be happy. That happiness must however come from doing that which is right. The central question then is "What makes an action right?" To answer this question there must be recourse to identifying the features that distinguish right actions from wrong actions. In this context, moral standards, moral judgment and experience of the "moral life" beg consideration. We may want to ask: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for an action to be said to be right? What social construct(s) helps us to differentiate right from wrong. Do the things that society qualifies as "good action" contribute to spiritual enrichment. We cannot escape the fact that we all make moral judgments, we all get into moral disputes, and we all may be perceived to be acting immorally on occasion. The question remains, who is doing the judging. Yes, who is judging? What are the standards that influence our judgment? What are the moral underpinnings of these standards? Is there a point for reference for "morality". Is morality absolute or relative. It is believed that persons with shared moral values may have different moral position on the same matter. For instance pro-life people believe that abortion is wrong, while pro- choice people believe that it is right -that women must be allowed control over their reproductive health. The absence of a unified position in this instance should not be interpreted as having different views about the nature of morality? Both "pro-lifers" and "pro-choicers", I think, believe that murder is wrong -Thou shall not kill! What they disagree about is the nature of the fetus. Is the fetus the sort of thing that can be murdered? Their disagreement then is about the reality of the fetus, not about the morality of murder. Moral judgments therefore follow from both a moral standard and certain factual beliefs, a difference in moral judgments does not necessarily imply a difference in moral standards. In all of this, the relation of morality to religion and spiritual enrichment remains a matter of keen debate for many, if not all of us. In some schools of thought right moral action is altogether independent of religion. Such is. the thinking of the Evolutionary , Positivist, and Idealist schools. On the other hand, the teaching of the (Catholic) Church treats the three -morality, spirituality and religion -as being essentially connected. In such a context, the logical deduction is that, outside of religion, the observance of the moral law is impossible. This indeed begs for an understanding of the nature of morality. It is said that moral law seeks to perfect our rational nature. Morality therefore is akin to the rationality that tempers our freedom of choice. Traditionally, the Bible has been the (one and only) moral authority. We grew up, regarding the Bible as the law book of morality. In this regard our ultimate obligation is to the will of the Our Heavenly Creator. One cannot help but notice, in our society, a practice which seeks to divorce morality from religion. The doctrine of original sin and its meaning seem to have no relevance in today's living. Once I am able to rationalise with my God -whatever I perceive him or her to be -1 do as 1 please\ While we have a morbid craving for independence, we seem to have become destitute of the strong motives for obedience to the laws afforded by the sense of obligation to God. In our society today, the sense of right and wrong is very puzzling, very obscure, very ambiguous, elusive! ! The sense of right and wrong at times gets interchanged. Apparently, the discernment of right and wrong is fashioned by the "authority" of the one doing the particular action, at a particular time, in a particular place and for a particular reason. If any of these variables change the same action may be judge differently. We seem to be heavily caught up in the messenger rather than the message. With all of this malay and in the struggle for existence, the right course is extremely unsteady and many a times mysterious. Little wonder why the youth cannot discover the "the right way" ! Has a poverty of spirit caused us to loose our way and to give misdirection to onlookers at well? Is our human intellect, causing us to weaken? Is the weakening a reflection of the lack of Divine intervention. As the process of our lives continue to unfold, and more particularly during this season of Lent, we need to give due value to the divinity of our lives. Let us take charge and use our God given talents to engineer the changes that are within our control, to so do. In closing, I wish to reiterate that self-determination begets human purpose and dignity; and brings about spiritual wealth. As said earlier, spiritual enrichment serves to build character and to deepen conviction and courage. In this way, each of us can, by simply living a "good life", be custodians of justice and equity. Being spirit filled, we treasure the blessings of the moment -the gift of the present! ! The question however remains: Is there a poverty of spirituality in our lives ? FRC holds First Saint Lucia Studies Conference The Folk Research Centre (FRC) founded 30 years ago, held its First Saint Lucia Studies Conference from 28 th -31 st March, 2004. The conference, on the theme “Research : A Critical Path to Saint Lucia's Development” was the climax of the Centre's 30 th anniversary celebrations which also coincided with the 25 th anniversary of Saint Lucia's Independence. The organizers plan to make this conference an annual event with the following objectives : * Open up research work on Saint Lucia to popular scrutiny and understanding; The conference brought together a number of local, regional and international participants, among them persons who had been involved with FRC from the inception. These included Dr. Lawrence Carrington, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, who was a pioneer in Kweyol research in Saint Lucia and one of the creators of the Saint Lucia Kweyol orthography; Dr. Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities & Education at the Cavehill Campus of UWI who has done a considerable among of linguistic research on Kweyol; Dr. Manfred Kremser, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology, University of Vienna, Austria and one of the signatories to the research co-operation between FRC and the University of Vienna in the 1980's. Also attending from the University of Vienna were Prof. Dr. Gerhard Trnka and archaeologist Marian Negrete. Other international and regional participants included Dr. Antonia MacDonald-Smythe The conference opened on Sunday 28 th at the FRC building, Mount Pleasant, but the working sessions were held at the conference room of the Cultural Development Foundation, Sans Souci, with the last session at the St. Isidore Hall, in the community of Soufriere. This was a deliberate attempt to make the conference sessions accessible to the public. The official opening ceremony reflected the style and spirit of FRC. The national anthem was rendered solo on the local violin by ‘Charlie' from the famed Manmay Lakay folk band. Founding Director of FRC, Msgr. Patrick Anthony, led the prayers in Kweyol, Swahili and English. Oral poet, George ‘Fish' Alphonse rendered his popular poem “Lucian Pride.” Her Excellency, Dame Pearlette Louisy, Governor General of Saint Lucia, and one of the researchers who helped shape the Kweyol orthography in the 1980's, delivered a brilliant feature address on the theme of the conference. Kendel Hippolyte read one of his poems “Going.” The evening closed with a multi-media presentation by Prof. Manfred Kremser on the “Saint Lucia Kele in the context of other African derived religious traditions in the Caribbean.” The first working session of the conference on the morning of Monday 29 th focused on education with papers by Royston Emmanuel (Lecturer in Information Technology) on “Globalization and Education Policy in Saint Lucia;” Eva Donally “An Investigation of the educational and occupational aspirations of students at a rural primary school in Saint Lucia;” and a paper on “Parental and peer encouragement to study for Common Entrance Exams: Class, gender and geography” by Andy Joseph (Lecturer, Tuft University, Massachusetts) who at the last minute was unable to travel to St. Lucia. His paper was read by a colleague, Laurent Jn Pierre. The second session continued on the theme of education with Dr. Rosamunde Renard's presentation on “Hidden Expulsion: Language and Literacy for the early years which embrace our Creole Language” and a fine report on her excellent research project “Creole influenced vernaculars and literacy” by Dr. Hazel Simmons-McDonald. There was a lunch-time multi-media presentation by Msgr. Anthony on “The architecture of a local philosophy,” a study of two indigenous philosophical concepts in art, Dunstan St. Omer's Prismism and Cedric George's Organometrix . There were two presentations during the afternoon session : “Portrayal of Women in the Novels of Garth St. Omer” by Dr. Antonia MacDonald-Smythe and “Images of Flight in the work of Derek Walcott” by Jane King-Hippolyte (Senior Lecturer, Division of Arts, Science and General Studies, SALCC, St. Lucia). That evening sociologist Sharon Trezelle ( Lecturer, SALCC, St. Lucia) spoke on “Dependency in a Banana producing community in rural St. Lucia;” environmental anthropologist, Laurent Jn Pierre, examined “Ethno Botany and Ecology of the Kweyol tradition in Saint Lucia;” and Embert Charles (Director of Information Services, Government of St. Lucia) brought the evening to a close with a multi-media presentation entitled “African influences on Saint Lucian Culture, Part II: Solo.” The second day of the conference began with a paper on “Development of Theatre in Saint Lucia” by Kendel Hippolyte ( Poet, Playwright, Director & Lecturer, SALCC, St. Lucia). Chief Architect (Ministry of Physical Development, Environment and Housing, St. Lucia) Augustine Poyotte made a multi-media presentation on “Vernacular Architecture” while Marcus Day (Director, Caribbean Drug Abuse Research Institute, St. Lucia) reported on a “Needs Analysis for Primary Health Care among the Street Drug users in Castries, St. Lucia.” The lunch-time presentation for the second day was the exciting report on the “Preliminary Results of the Austrian Archaeological Excavations (1983-1986) at the Pre-Columbian Site, Pointe de Caille, Saint Lucia” by Prof. Gerhard Trnka and archaeologist Marian Negrete. The second afternoon was free for participants to shop and visit friends. The evening session was in two parts. Dr. Hazel Simmons-McDonald first delivered her second paper on “The Afrogenesis of Saint Lucian French Creole Proverbs.” This was followed by a panel discussion on the theme of the conference “Research: A Critical Path to Saint Lucia's Development”. Panelists included Victor Poyotte, Dr. Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Dr. Antonia MacDonald-Smythe, Virginia Albert and Gregor Williams. The moderator was Cletus Springer. The St. Lucia Studies Conference was brought to a close with a night session in the town of Soufriere, organized in collaboration with the Soufriere Action Theatre, a popular theatre group from that community. The evening began with music and drumming by the Soufriere Action Theatre, followed by a presentation on “African traditions in the Diaspora” by Prof. Manfred Kremser. The session and conference ended with Laurent Jn Pierre's presentation entitled “Weaving the Natty Dreadlocks Poly-Consciousness into Caribbean Independence.” Remains of St. Lucians from 400 A.D. found St. Lucia Studies Conference told Prof. Trnka's presentation was the second lunch-time presentation of the conference, so programmed to permit interested persons to attend during their lunch hour. The Pointe de Caille excavations was part of the joint ethnographic and archaeology project undertaken in Saint Lucia by the University of Vienna in collaboration with a number of local institutions including the Folk Research Centre, the Caribbean Research Centre (now National Research and Development Foundation) and the St. Lucia Archaeological and Historical Society( A&H Society) in the 1980's. During the discussion following Prof. Trnka's presentation, the archaeological secretary of the A&H Society, Eric Branford, disclosed that remains dating to as early as 200 A.D. have been found at other archaeological sites in Saint Lucia. This would suggest that the first St. Lucians of Amerindian origin lived on this island some 1200 years before the first Europeans arrived.
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