So I'm attempting to add two photos to this post and they seem to be rather skewed. If you read the post all the way down the pictures should make sense and the skew shouldn't matter. This has been a busy month and I'm very happy to be home for the month of December. So here goes the post begun far to the Southeast.
Greetings in the name of One Love from Negril Jamaica! A group of friends are finishing up a couple of weeks in this Island country working with the literacy program of Great Shape. This is a fine Non-profit humanitarian outreach started over 20 years ago from Ashland. We have spent a couple of weeks in the schools near this Westerly most coast of Jamaica. Working with the children of the world to me is one of the most Godly activities to which one can endeavor. Children are the key to transcendence to a higher plane of existence. I have noted here before the fondness I have for the island peoples and most especially the work and philosophy of Robert Nester (Bob) Marley. I feel his “One Love” concept focusing on a social justice and back to nature spirituality has a close connection to the “Emerging” movement I have so often espoused on this blog/journal. There is a concept of “Respect” operating on this island and in the Rasta movement worldwide which is very simple and offers a level of understanding for the “Other” which is very refreshing in this judgemental and polarized world of ours. This can also devolve into a kind of loosey goosey euphoria of “getting high” and every little thing will be all right mentality. It seems that this party attitude is not really what Bob was espousing in his life and work although in practice it seems sometimes that was his path as well. Ganga, or anything, in excess can have that effect. In this post I would like to look at some of Bob’s work and how it relates to the Gospel of Love which is my guiding light at this point in my life.
Brian McLaren has released a new book which I am finding very supportive and rich in Love. The title is “Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? “. I will include several snippets from my readings so far as I feel they are also in line with Bob’s work. I am a pretty simple man and not nearly as educated in theological matters as I would like. However I do respect scholarship and appreciate the cohesiveness of the beauty of the Spirits work “from age to age” spanning the entire history of man and including the dawn of creation to the present days of transformation. In spite of our incremental failures in becoming truly renewed or born again I am confident that God’s not done with us yet and a major transformation toward the Peace of the Christ is unfolding, and again children are a key to that movement. Brian is a great scholar but also is very grounded in the totality and pervasiveness of the Spirit working among us. If there is simplified common theme in this latest book I would have to state it as one of “respect for the other” and a willingness to see the movement of the Holy Spirit within all creation. He also seeks to define the need for a reframed and vibrant religious community (all of them) ….”the antidote to strong-hostile religion is not weak-benign religion, but strong- benevolent religion.”
In my work with the children of Jamaica I have framed my purpose for being there in the life and work of Bob Marley. Principle in that framework is the idea of “One Love”. One Love as he wrote it and One Love as it has spread around the world. At the turn of the century that song was voted the “Song of the Millennium” Primary in that acceptance was the impact it had in the ’third World” in the realm of social justice and peace. This accolade was granted almost thirty years after his death. I find that important. Bob was very influenced by social unrest in the United States as well as his native Jamaica. Of course there were many prophets during those years besides Bob from Peter, Paul and Mary to Bob Dillon but I’m seeing a more spiritual connection in the songs Bob Marley wrote and performed. His devotion to the Rastafarian faith most certainly framed his life and work. Rasta is a very Judo Christian based religion and his adoption of it makes a lot of sense. Its conceptualization around Halie Selassie I of Ethiopia would be natural after the blacks of the West were enslaved by the white kings of Europe. In light of looking at the “Other” nature of Gods Love it is almost as if Rasta was seeing Christianity from a more pure point of view. I’m sure I’m being naive in this evaluation as that movement certainly had polarized black power roots. A close friend of mine who is also a writer and performer wrote a song about a ‘black king”, (Come Again). I enjoyed the song a lot and told him so. But then I mentioned that in my opinion we didn’t need a black king, Or a white one for that matter. It’s still a good song. It seems to me that Bobs work really took the black power foundation of Rasta and turned it on its head into a One Love foundation. I would compare that reframing from polarization to One Love to what Jesus tried to do with the Jewish and Roman world of his time.
I enjoy Bobs work as an art form and also his philosophical focus. I have yet to really look at all his songs but just a couple have jumped out at me as I’ve listened and downloaded the lyrics. In “One Love” his first verse speaks of listening to the “children crying” which in my opinion is what Jesus asks us to do when He says we must all become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Children are the innocents of the world and must be taught to hate, fear, and fight by their “elders”. Not! Later in that song he speaks of ending this “holy Armageddon” (a very succinct and total repudiation of “Religious War”) and there will be no hiding from the “Father of Creation”. We need to honor the children and unfortunate of this world as Christ taught and we will be held accountable for our failure to do so. Not referring here to a hellfire and damnation accountability but of being taught in time through life’s lessons to be of One Love. Earlier in that song he asks the question “is there a place for the hopeless sinner who persecutes mankind and seeks only his own belief system (betterment)” He doesn’t aim to answer the question but his life and the growth of mankind seems to reinforce the idea of a totally loving and forgiving God. This element of the ‘emerging movement” is beneath the surface in most of these writers I’ve mentioned in this blog but it is at the very core of Rob Bell‘s “Love Wins”.
The other song’s lyrics which I’ll mention here are those of “Get Stand Up”. On the surface this one seems to be just focusing on standing up for your rights, social justice and basic human rights. Admirable focus of a song but Bob seems to take it a bit further in his spiritual framing. As does the emerging movement, among others, he is going against the somewhat commonly held view that religion is primarily an escape plan for the next life. We’re saying that Heaven, the kingdom of God, starts here and now with how we treat each other individually, sociality, nationally, globally. It includes all mankind, especially the innocent and the poor, and also all of creation. He comes down very much against the idea that “the great God is somewhere else or another time”. As I understand it he says very clearly that God is a “Living Man”, kind of a reframing of what St Theresa says in her prayer that “We are the hands and feet of Christ on this earth”. He also doesn’t seem to have a lot of regard for the “ism skism game” of the powers at odds in this world. He very much tried to be the peacemaker and avoided taking political ego driven sides in conflicts.
Here is a quote from Brian’s book attributed to the late Pope John Paul II. This was from a speech given in Syria four months before 9/11. “It is my ardent hope that Muslim and Christian religious leaders and teachers will present our two great religious communities as communities in Respectful (how very Rasta :0)) dialogue, never more as communities in conflict. It is crucial for the Young to be taught the ways of Respect and understanding, so that they will not be led to misuse religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence. Violence destroys the image of the Creator in His creatures, and should never be considered as the fruit of religious conviction.” It’s too bad that these two figures couldn’t put on a peace rally in the Holy Land today.
Playing on the possible tag lines to the theoretical question “Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed cross the Road” Brian answers a couple of different ways a) In the hope that we would follow and b) to get to the “Other”. Amen Brother! Let the children lead the way. Pax Christi! Roberto Vincente.
