I stand at the edge of a cliff. With the eyes of an indigenous woman basking in the warmth and stillness of the morning, I look out at the sea. I see white waves anxiously rolling towards the jagged shoreline, some bunching aggressively into the scattered remnants of the land, and others cleverly making their way around them.
These scattered remnants were once part of the solid land. With centuries of persistent, consistent and insistent force, waves battered and shattered the land, breaking up the stubborn and resistant coastline into strewn tiny islands and rocks. The scarred face of the land is a sign of the brutal smashing of waves below precipitating land slippages and landslides.
As the Indian woman begins her day in contemplation, in preparation to face another brutal day at the hands and feet of her European conquerors, tears flow from the window of her soul, the window of her heart. She ponders, “Will I make it through the day?” “When will my weary body finally surrender to a foreign virus, foreign conquerors, foreign imposition of religion, foreign ideology, foreign people whom I welcomed with open heart and arms?”
Her inspiration in this early morn comes from the sea, what she sees – the persistent waves, the consistent waves, the insistent waves that are breaking up and eroding the seemingly unconquerable land.
Her God provides the waves as an icon of his power to conquer the conquerors. She remembers the preaching of Bartholomew de las Casas, “The sea has come over Babylon; She has been engulfed with its tumultuous waves” (Jeremiah 51:42). She rises from her morning meditation with hope, labours slavishly through day, but succumbs to this foreign virus, to the inhumane force, and sleeps away eternally.
In her eternal rest, she sees revelations of future tumultuous waves persistently, consistently, and insistently battering the Babylonian ideology. She sees black skin warriors, Baptist preachers, Rastafarians, trade union leaders and politicians, their wave-like spirit conquering the conquerors. She sees them using debris from the smashing waves to build identity, culture and language, to build a people.
Now, she rests eternally in the arms of a liberating God whose Spirit will engulf any Babylonian ideology with the tumultuous waves of liberation.
Beloved Reflections 