Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 14, 2020 Letters
Dear Editor,
Guyana is very badly wounded. Her own people, who inflicted many blows upon her body, even after it had become severely damaged, may not at this time realise how much pain they inflicted upon her, and how much she is hurting. In the past, she moaned softly, privately, and hid her tears. Now her pain is a very public lament; the sound of her wail is like the siren which warns of a dangerous situation, blaring in the streets, and demanding everyone’s attention.
The blows Guyana received were of all kinds; ethnic, political, economic, and many others, which, if they were to be named, would evoke more pain because of the memories they would stir. The wounds and lacerations are on all parts of her anatomy, and she is suffering from internal bleeding too, haemorrhaging from her womb. Prosperity is the baby so named by the people who anticipate its arrival with uninhibited joy, but sadly, they are the very ones who beat her mother while she is pregnant. Now the baby is threatened with death, as the mother’s strength ebbs, and her will to survive is urged to succumb to her pain.
How do you heal a wounded nation? When someone has been beaten within an inch of their life by a rabid crowd, and that same crowd has to attend to her healing, the healing process begins with many complications. This is what faces Guyana now.
Today, good intention to help with healing is subject to contention from people’s instinct for self-protection. Perceptions abound, and innocent, well-meaning interventions are looked upon suspiciously, and “knowingly”, through prisms of race and politics. While Guyana was beaten in the spur of the elections moment, some motivations to inflict pain on her are decades old, older than she is. They were in place when her birth certificate was issued. Guyana was born in licks.
A desire to help does not mean that the dysfunctions which prompted the beatings have been cured. On the contrary, it highlights the dilemma of her healing process. Even when respected practitioners step up to administer care to her at the roadside of life, the beating crowd retain the right to tell them how to, and substitute raw emotion for helpful medication.
Guyana can be healed. It will be a long process to recovery but with adequate care, she will overcome, stand up strong, and deliver that baby her people long to see. The Guyana Baby will do very well; let mamma’s recovery begin now.
Her healing is tied to her people. Obviously, not some of her people, every one of them. There must be no more beating, or she will die. I pray. Guyana’s children, who beat her for a song yesterday, want to talk today. Saying something to others is not the same as having a talk with them. In the Kingdom of God, His subjects are told, “confess your faults one to another.” He says before you come to me with religious gifts, go and make up with your brother.
This is one of our greatest challenges at this time. Guyana’s children confess the faults of the other. To heal Guyana, the Master says, “Confess what you did.” That means individuals and groups must be open, honest, and public about their faults, both predispositions and practice, telling them to those who they have offended, with intent to heal. It is sometimes difficult to come to the place to do so but when we do, God purifies the soul that does it and puts a poultice on the one who needs it.
If Guyana’s children do not acknowledge to one another, the wounds they inflicted on each other, neither will they be comforted, and the gaping wound their words and deeds opened in their mother’s side will become worse, and bleed, and ooze, and smell, and embarrass all her children, to each other, to her many neighbours, and from that septic will emerge tomorrow’s children, contaminated from the womb.
The Messiah, who came to show us how we were meant to live with each other, says, “Make the Samaritan your neighbour: Live by doing whatever is necessary to heal your neighbour, and pay the price to make it happen.”
The context was racial tension. The practice was rejoicing at ethnic discomfort. The counter-culture example of the Good Samaritan was a new standard being lifted up for overcoming inter-ethnic strife, and the situation used to communicate that idea is where someone of the other race lay badly wounded. People heal people.
Guyana’s healing will come as her children are prepared to pay the price for her to get better. It is true that some did not inflict wounds on her, but like the Samaritan, God ordered your steps to the wounded because He knows you can help by picking up the badly beaten, transporting them to safety, securing the best interventions to ensure their recovery, and publicly committing to pay the entire bill to ensure the wounded’s care.
The Samaritan had to consider what his own people, and those on the other side also, would think, and how they would react to him when they heard of his “betraying” deeds. He did and chose to risk their derision and worse to himself and his family by going public with his mission to better humanity.
Be a healer.
Yours truly,
Marlon Hestick
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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