Home, where our heart is…

Q: Archbishop J, what is the state of the soul of our nation?  

On January 8, my column addressed the question: ‘Archbishop J, how would you proceed if someone asked you to be the spiritual director to T&T?’ In response, the column explored spiritual direction and the toolkit of a spiritual director.

We examined T&T using different tools. In the end, we found that T&T was in “a spiritual condition of desolation and hopelessness.” Tradition knows this as acedia or the noonday devil.

The “noonday demon” is associated with the vice of acedia or sloth. Sloth is classed as a deadly sin in Christian spirituality. The key characteristics of the noonday demon are spiritual apathy, despondency and discouragement, restlessness and boredom, loss of motivation, temptation to sin and hatred of the place. This is desolation in an extreme form, a spiritual condition that requires a spiritual response.

When the soul is in a space of desolation, it often misses the blessings, whether subtle or obvious. The dark malaise also catches it, causing it to miss the movements of the Spirit.

I have frequently said that Carnival reflects the soul of the nation. To really understand the soul of T&T, you need to pay attention to the movements of the spirits (good and bad) in Carnival.

What a dream is to a person, Carnival is to the nation. A spiritual director would sit with the person’s dream and unravel the symbolic messages that may indicate the state of the soul. So too, if we sit patiently with Carnival, we will unravel the symbolic messages that speak to the state of the nation’s soul.

There are so many graces in Carnival: the panyards where people of every age, religion, ethnicity and culture sweat for hours every night to get the tune right; Children’s Carnival, the Extempo and Young Kings’ competitions, Dimanche Gras, among many others.

But, for many years now, costumes, dancing and parties have moved to the vulgar. This has displayed our unconscious need to expose ourselves and our true desire—pleasure, power, notoriety, hedonism.

This year, I heard sounds of hope emerging from our calypsonians. There is a new movement in our soul, and it needs to be recognised and celebrated. For Lent, I will reflect on some of these tunes that signal a new grace, a movement of the spirit—of our soul.

We need to acknowledge this grace that has emerged in the festivity. While we may be filled with negativity and, I dare say, hatred of the place, something else is emerging: seeds of hope that need to be nurtured.

A part of our soul yearns for something more, for homecoming: to determine where we are going, to answer the call with thankfulness, and, ultimately, to rise again. There is a movement in our soul, and we must pay careful attention to it.

Take me home

Freetown Collective’s ‘Take Me Home’ is a big song, big in musicality and lyrics. Listen with attention, and you will hear David Rudder’s ‘High Mas’ behind the beat.

You will also hear many other great Caribbean songs. It is building on a genre of slower, deeper Trini music that is aimed at the soul. The lyrics strike a chord because of their many layers and levels. The song opens with a lover’s declaration of an unstoppable journey:

Ah go cross any ocean to find it

Won’t let no mountain get in the way.

We come cross the water, been through the fire

Ah know that meh heart go show meh the way.

This is not the first big song to use the metaphor of home. Remember ‘Come Home’ by Nailah Blackman and Skinny Fabulous, and in Mical Teja’s ‘DNA’, “no place like home”. ‘Take Me Home’ makes the metaphor even stronger. It says: ‘We have been yearning for many years now for home.’

Home is not just a place or a space; it is most fundamentally on the inside that we find our true home.

To make that journey, we need the stubborn spirit, the relentless resolve of that first verse. No obstacle, ocean, mountain, water or fire can stop a lover seeking the beloved.

We have embarked on a journey that only a lover can understand and resonate with. There is no price too high to arrive at the journey’s end. The description of arrival is beautiful:

Everywhere you turn you see people smiling

We doh see no creed and race

Don’t want nobody tell we bout leaving

We fight for we ting and dis is we place

In the description of arrival, you see the future state of Trinidad and Tobago in consolation, the best version of our self. This is T&T when we arrive at nationhood and take responsibility for the 5000 sq km we call home. Then comes the cry of the heart, the yearning and the deepest desire:

Take me home X2

Take me to a place where me heart don’t feel no pain

Take me home X3

The next verse opens many different movements of the soul:

Wake me up before I fall asleep

Take me to a place where lovers meet

Marry me to the heart of Port of Spain

So if I ever leave, I bound to come again

“Wake me up” is a classic call for spirituality: “Stay awake, or your hearts will be coarsened by debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life” (Lk 21:34). That is the opposite of acedia or sloth. “Take me to a place where lovers meet.”

On the level of spirituality, this is where the soul meets God. When the soul is awake, the heart is yearning. The ultimate and deepest longing is for God: “As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, my God” (Ps 42).

Here, we understand the driving refrain in the song—“take me home”—in a more profound spiritual sense. In the Gospel of John, the Greek word meno means to dwell, remain or abide. Thus, “Abide (meno) in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (Jn 15:4).

The yearning for habitation is a yearning for God. We see this in the next line: “Marry me to the heart of Port of Spain.” This is a marriage of the heart, and it evokes devotion, belonging, identity and sacrificial love.

This love for Port of Spain brings a fresh spirit to T&T. It’s no longer about hating the place; it’s a bond of love and loyalty. This is the reversal of the old order of negativity and hatred of the place, acedia.

From a spiritual view, we talk about an inculturated faith—coming to know ourselves in our own skin. From this homecoming, we form a new relationship with God. It leads us to give ourselves fully, embracing all our ‘Trinbagonianess’. Marriage to the heart of POS is a permanent union with our culture, art, ethnic diversity, quirky polygon nation. It is to assume and find a home in all of who we are. Hence, the next line: “So if I ever leave I bound to come again.”

Or as Denyse Plummer would sing: “Nah leaving.”

This marriage is ultimately a permanent exclusive spiritual union, not just to the heart of the city, but to the one who gives the city a heart: God. Mystical union with God is at the very centre of the Christian relationship with God. The covenant with Israel was a marriage (Hosea 1:2 ff.).

This marriage appears again in the Book of Revelation. It shows the bond between Christ and His Church as the marriage of the Lamb and His bride (Rev 19:7). This is homecoming! This is when we are most deeply who we are. This is a new movement in the soul of T&T.

Key Message:

Something is stirring in the soul of T&T, and it needs attention.

Action Step:

During this Lenten season, move to gratitude for T&T and find things every day for which you are grateful.

Scripture Reading:

Rev 19:6-9