Rising to Life: Thoughts from Caribbean region Rev. Dr. Michael Jagessar
Beyond the tourist myth of the Caribbean as ‘paradise’, is a constant struggle of ‘rising to life’ – to overcome or to ‘overstand’ the forces bent on denying fullness of life. This is not only about history. It is about the ongoing legacies currently seen in social, economic and political ills. One of the most indebted regions, the Caribbean’s vulnerability is not by accident. It has been and is intentional: one borne both from centuries of extractive colonialism and international debt obligations that drain regional resources to fund the rich of other nations and within the Caribbean. The Caribbean is ‘paradise lost’ with the region struggling to emerge from the Covid-19 hurricane that battered Caribbean lives, economies, structures and spirit. What has never been lost, however, is the Caribbean ability to survive, overstand, overcome and (a)rise up always finding some space(s) to breathe before the next set of battering. Yet in the face of such unrelentless onslaught against full and flourishing life for all in the Caribbean, it will boggle the mind to see and hear the stories of courage, compassion, openness, resilience, solidarity, hope and transformation. No wonder Philip Potter aptly described us as the “in spite of people and region”. Caribbean peoples and churches know fully well what it means to rise up for their humanity – to arise from being labelled nobodies to affirm in style and tempo their humanity and distinctive some-body-ness. Faith and faithfulness, from the treasures of ancestral religions and the colonising mission of Christianity has been at the heart of such. We are here and will continue to be here however others wish to misrepresent, brush-off, and discard the region and its people. Be it the Caribbean’s gift of intellectuals that shaped Black Radicalism, Pan-Africanism, Non-Aligned Movement, Critical Cultural Studies, and post/decolonial overtures, or the many giftings from the region offered to sports, music, keeping churches alive in the Europe and North America, global, missional and ecumenical institutions, the Caribbean has been and continue to rise to the occasion. Our ancestors have been the ‘rising up-people’ and their progeny continue to embody that spirit.
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