Dear Editor,
I took the time to read the message from His Lordship, Francis Alleyne, OSB, Bishop of Georgetown, which was published yesterday in those sections of the media I view. I went through it slowly and carefully, and came away encouraged, for it is the kind of appeal that is so direly needed in this country, and by all of us. I need it.
There was much to appreciate and embrace in what Bishop Francis took to the public to share. There were many messages embedded in his epistle, and all of which if adhered to in this society, could make so much of a difference. The way we view each other. The way we listen to and seek to understand one another, through our interest, our postures, our actions practiced and refined. I wish that there are more such messages, rich in the temperance, sobriety, and civility so absent in our local environment. I can only think of how infinitely better the possibilities if more church leaders, more civic leaders, more opinion leaders, and every other group of leaders that I have not mentioned, were to be concerned enough to find it in themselves to articulate publicly the same kind of messages.
I regret that the steady voices towards what is prudent, wholesome, and healthy for this society, have been largely missing. Instead, the few voices that venture forward are quickly overwhelmed and submerged by the relentless tides of rancor and rage, of hatreds and hostility, and the naked underbellies that point to the individual contaminations and contributions toward national self-destruction. This country needs calming voices that present the messages and narratives that give it some hope, some opportunity, and some energy to get us out of the gutter. When the civil and the measured presences in this society, those with and without the underpinnings of spiritual focus and priorities, retreat into silence before the barbaric, and allow the incendiary to take hold and dominate, then the herds of controversy and division gather and gain strength.
It would be so much better to hear more voices shifting the emphasis and primacy from who won, who lost, and who cheated. Because all that we succeed in doing is fueling more distrust and more animosities to the detriment of the greatest many. I say this because whenever one wins, so many others lose. This we know, but as to disowning this, just about every Guyanese shrink; somehow, there is the confidence that we can change our political and social world, while leaving it absolutely untouched in its foundations, constructs, and divisive promises.
I would like to hear more voices, see more people from our ranks of believers and unbelievers, show initiative and courage to take back this country from the few who have hijacked it and misused it for their own nefarious objectives. Those few in the political cabals (all are included) surround themselves with numerous loud and sturdy Praetorian Guards. They heavily influence, and for the worse, the direction, the thrust, and the mindless fanaticisms that consign those with minds to states of the narrowest thoughtless prejudices, and those without minds to think for themselves to still worse bigotries and partisanship that dilute national aspirations and lay waste national potential.
This is where church and civil leaders-significant societal presences all-need to shake off the shackles of weakening political allegiances and take a stand. A stand for what is right and rational. For what is different and idealizing for the peoples of tortured Guyana. The visions of the patriotic, the dogged strength of the altruistic should and must overpower political loyalties, which are forced to take a second chair to the wisdoms that all know could help us rise, make us truly live. Too many preach stirring messages in public, only to change clothes and assume the disfiguring cloaks of the fiendish and frightening in private.
It is why our politics is not easily (or willingly) separated from but attached to more fervently. We are too flexible with the falsehoods and hypocrisies that maim. It is why so many say so little. Why so many find cover under the spurious and dubious.
I think we can be and do better. But only if we want to, because it means so much more to us, than politics and its promises. I look forward to hearing more making such offerings, and then living all they say they represent. Only then, do we stand a chance to be a better society. Having walked through the fires first, we are then in a position to hold the feet of others to the purifying heat.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
