Now keep this in mind: it was you, not your children, who saw and experienced firsthand all the lessons the Eternal your God taught you. So let what I’m saying sink deeply into your hearts and souls. Do whatever it takes to remember what I’m telling you: tie a reminder on your hand or put a reminder on your forehead where you’ll see it all the time, and on the doorpost where you cross the threshold or on the city gate.  Teach these things to your children. Talk about them when you’re sitting together in your home and when you’re walking together down the road. Make them the last thing you talk about before you go to bed and the first thing you talk about the next morning. Deuteronomy 11:2, 18-19 The Voice

We must look back. We must not forget. We must not forget what God has done.  It is in looking back that we can see where we are coming from. Looking back helps us to see the errors of our ways as a nation as a church and as individuals.  Looking back allows us to reframe and reset to a better way of thinking, new ways of understanding that best reflects our Jamaican context.  Looking back is not just about focusing on the regrets or misfortunes, but seeing the hand of God’s faithfulness through the years.

The passage says we must tell our children. We must recite what happened in the past over and over again.  I too believe it is important.  We have lost so much of our history. So much of who we are, is now subsumed in North American culture.  The handmade peppermint candy, Asham, Jackass Corn, have all been lost to Donuts and fancy cakes. What of Jonkonnu bands at Christmas. Do we even know where that came from? We don’t see them anymore.

We are forgetting who we are as a nation. When we do that we also lose our integrity, our substance and authenticity .  We pattern others whose heart, DNA foundation and culture may be similar but it is not ours.   We are therefore forgetting who God says we are and who we are to be. We must keep what is ours alive. We must not forget. We must teach our children.  We must carry a reminder at all times.  

The Israelites had a strong oral tradition.  Unlike today, only special people in their society wrote, so everything was passed by word of mouth.  They would recount the stories. Even today the religious Jews repeat the story of God’s deliverance from Egypt when the family sits for the Sabbath meal –  The Seder.

We need some of that remembrance in our lives as a nation – the recounting of the stories.  It is for this reason I defend the Maroons. I don’t know if what they say is true. Their strong oral history says one thing but the written laws of the British say another.  The British wrote from a place of privilege and brutal authority. Not only that! Who says that those who signed the treaty could read it?  Why is it so difficult to trust and respect the Maroon’s oral tradition as an authentic source of knowledge? Instead we who are now the privileged, side with them instead of believing that maybe, just maybe the Maroons could be right and that for Justice to be served they too need to be heard and their views acknowledged.

We must as a nation come to a consensus about who we are and move forward, understanding that all of us must move together. Only then can true liberation and autonomy take place. We must know who we are and where the hand of God is guiding.

Your hand, O God, has guided your flock from age to age;
your faithfulness is written on history’s open page.
Our fathers owned your goodness, and we their deeds record;
and both to this bear witness: one church, one faith, one Lord!

God’s mercy will not fail us nor leave God’s work undone;
with God’s right hand to help us the vict’ry shall be won.
And then by earth and heaven your name shall be adored;
and this shall be our anthem:
One love, One faith, One Heritage, One Lord!