“…affirming life…”

And there he wept when he remembered Zion

Cos the wicked carried us away, captivity

Required from us a song

How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?

I read my Bible and I pray every day; that I do so is a product of deliberate choice/ a choice made to keep the man that I am focused on the Christ within.

Just recently I reminded the self that is mine that, Genesis 2:7 explains that God "formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." As a result, Man became a "living soul."

As a consequence, humankind is nothing more and nothing else but the deliberate creation of God.

As Brian Tubbs notes that, "While the physicality of human life originated in Genesis, the Apostle Paul makes clear in his letter to the church at Ephesus that our soul was ordained before the "foundations of the world."

"In other words, we were conceived in the mind of God before the universe took shape. The Bible teaches that each and every human being is unique and highly esteemed in the eyes of God and that we are, as the psalmist declares, "fearfully and wonderfully made."

PLEASE GET THE POINT: every human being is unique and highly esteemed in the eyes of God…we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Yes Lord, Echo resounds.

In turn, this leads Minister Turnquest and Felix Bethel to that point where they both might recognize that, "Some of the most controversial and divisive issues today (abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment) pertain to the issue of human life."

And thus the question "Is it ethically appropriate and should it be lawful for one person (or group of people) to choose whether or not another person lives or dies?

And thus it was by this chain of reasoning that I reminded Tommy Turnquest of the Biblical injunction, Thou shalt not kill!

I predict that he will kill/ and not only will this man sign off on killing/ he will/ by his own choice unleash the flood-gates to more killing and the bloody beat will go on and on.

Like Tubbs and Jesus Christ, I am absolutely convinced that, "The life of a disabled person, an elderly person, a poor person, or an unborn person is of equal value and worth to that of a healthy, prosperous person able to make tangible contributions to society. This should be the operative principle of our government as it reflects the noblest traditions of biblical practice and human civilization.

Human life – as given By God – is sacred/ and as such it is to be affirmed. In truth, this is all that I wanted to bring to the Minister’s attention this Sunday past.

As fate would have it this Sunday past, I found myself in a position where I could get a chance to see and talk to a real government minister who was in a position where he could not tell his secretary that he would have to see, hear and somehow or the other attend to anything I had on my mind that I would like to share with him in his guise as servant of the people.

To make a long story short, when I got the chance/ because I was lucky enough to have had a grand-mother who not only was murdered in the long ago years/ but because I could and did curry-favour with Bishop Simeon B. Hall/ the name Viola Sands appears in all its spectral glory: VIOLA SANDS.

Death shall have no Dominion.

I begged the minister to obey the command of God which tells him and me and you/Thou Shalt Not Kill.

And I asked the minister a question about the police when they run amok/ asking him/Minister, who is there to police the police.

And for emphasis, I peppered him with the question to which there is a sensible answer/ Minister, who is there to police the police?

The Minister did answer, telling me that the Law will police the law.

I do not believe one word he said, so there!

Evidently, he believes everything he said and so might the man who sent him to the church on the highway this Sunday past/ here my reference is to Hubert A. Ingraham, the prime minister who appointed him/ and the beat goes on.

And some in the audience wanted me to tell them how it came to be that I was not afraid of what they thought would be and was the Minister’s wrath at me for speaking as God made me speak.

I shall try to explain.

PERHAPS it has something to do with the fact that I was born Black and a bastard sometime in the long ago years/or perhaps/ now this a-just-perhaps, it might have something or the other to do with the fact that as I examine things on the matriarchal side of the line that led to me/ I have identified one woman who was murdered and another who had nerve’ problems.

BUT YET AGAIN, it might have something or the other to do with the fact that I learned to read quite early/ and to the fact that my sainted mother/ herself the child of the murdered woman/ saw to it that I went to Church even when she and the Joseph-man stayed at home on what seemed an eternity of Sundays in the long-ago years when we lived on the corner of Lyon Road and Shirley Street, in the Eastern district of the nigger yard where niggers like us lived and where niggers like us thanked God for life and limb/ and from whose precincts we prayed release.

SADLY, very many people we knew lived and died in those environs as if those dread places were there by God’s ineffable command/ and so some stayed and prayed and lived out their days some besotted by drink/ others done in by time itself.

Some of my best friends perished in that place in those long-ago years/ some of them beaten senseless by parents of the male and female variety/ others took the easy way out by taking the door marked ‘madness’.

What I’m saying is that all of this and all that I have learned and all that I know and all who have helped me along the way are the times, themes and personalities that have made me the man that I am today/ and for sure, the man that I am is convinced that he is special, that he did emerge from watery baptism in the triple guise of prophet, priest and king/ that I am of a royal priesthood and that the day will come when I will see Jesus, face to face/ and that I will know Him since lo these very many years, I have walked with Him, talked with Him and He has told me that I am His own.

So help me God, this is what I believe.

And because I believe, I can tell you that when the time came and I had a word for the Minister of National Security, the Hon. Tommy Turnquest this Sunday past as he and his armed-to-the-teeth bodyguard obscured my vision as I sat and listened to God’s man in that moment, Bishop Simeon B. Hall.

And did this brother preach/ and did he wail and rail against injustice at the systemic level/ and as he railed like some crying Jeremiah, I slowly but surely incubated and formed the idea in mind that I would in my guise as prophet, priest or king share a piece of my mind with Caesar Ingraham’s representative.I

IN TRUTH, this is all that I wanted to bring to the Minister’s attention this Sunday past.