Circular No 805

Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.

Caracas, 8 April 2017 No. 805

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Dear Friends,

Let us take some time to read from my classmate Wayne Vincent Brown,

He was my tormentor during my first week at school at the refectory,

I was too stubborn to learn English at the table.

Looking back, I needed his stern words and actions.

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An Easter energy

Wayne Brown

Sunday, March 31, 2002

If revolution is the kicking down of a rotten door, evolution is more like pushing the stone from the mouth of the tomb. There is an Easter energy about it, a sense of arrival rather than wreckage

(Seamus Heaney)

As every good agnostic knows, it probably has to do with the time of year, but there's a stubborn insensate happiness about Easter. Spring comes like a blessing to temperate climes, and as for these islands, they were always 'loveliest in drought' (Derek Walcott), what with the pouis' fallen gold carpeting the grass verges, and the easterlies resuming after several months of capricious northers, driving the sky up, hazy and pale, once again. That must be why everybody I know either has had or is having a party around this time, or else at least is heading out of town for the weekend -- 'out of town' there being a euphemism for getting away from a workaday world which oftener than not squats like a toad on their capacity for happiness.

Seriously!  I am here to tell you that by last Wednesday there wasn't a single beach house/apartment/town house available in Ocho Rios or its environs -- even the trainee hotel in Runaway Bay, on the landward side of the road, was sold out -- and the only hotel with space left was Jamaica Grande, at circa $14,000 per room. No room at the Inn, I nearly wrote -- but that would of course be to confuse this weekend with Christmas, a more equivocal holy day.

As for Easter Sunday, that metaphor for death transcended, you can be sure the historical crucifixion didn't take place on what we now call Good Friday. But how naturally it and the Resurrection, which is its point, slotted into older, pagan festivals of springtime, of the return of life after death!

Now, for a certain species of believer, this is a dread Easter, the Easter of the terrible revelations of paedophilia on the part of American Catholic priests, and -- even eviller, perhaps -- the shocking absence of outrage, the purely political cover-ups undertaken by those priests' equally criminal superiors. As this week's Time magazine notes, in a cover story gravely headlined, 'Can the Church be Saved?': "The crisis gathers steam day after day, with perhaps 2,000 priests accused of abuse across the country and hot lines jamming with more victims' calls....How long does it take powerful institutions to learn that it's not just the crime, it's also the cover-up that damns you?"

The challenge to the Church of Rome today is as grave as the Reformation was, nearly 500 years ago. America is a land of litigation, and, by themselves, in and out of court settlements with the victims could financially threaten even such a wealthy institution. And that is to say nothing of the threat to enrollment. It's going to be hard now for an American male to choose to become a priest. That would be like choosing, post-September 11th, to look like an Arab on a Delta flight between Kennedy and O'Hare. Who wants to have to live with suspicious and baleful stares?

Moreover, a corresponding drought must now be threatening in the ranks of the laity. There're a great many American parents who won't let little Johnny play (American) football at school, for example, on the ground that it's too dangerous. It's not hard to imagine the same parents switching to the Baptist faith, say, rather than staying put as Catholics and risking little Johnny winding up as Father O'Shea's favourite acolyte.

The danger is that, faced with the culturally (though not doctrinely) difficult changes clearly and loudly recommended by the current epidemic of paedophilia -- such as permitting women to be ordained as priests, and permitting priests to marry -- Rome will decide instead to surrender its profile and parishioners in the developed world, and concentrate even more of its resources on mining the Third World -- for souls, of course, but not only for souls.

But you and I, reader, are not that species of believer. Easter is to us the time of Nature's rebirth; and we are a part of Nature. So we go to the sea, to bathe in or lie down by the waters of Life: the sea whence originally we came.

In his column this week, the Trinidadian columnist B C Pires adroitly caught the Easter mood of profound contentment. Wrote Pires:

"Walking in the street in the soft sunshine, just walking, not going anywhere, my infant son latched on to my right side, his left arm hooked around my neck. Birds in a sky so blue as to be nearly ridiculous. How much more blue could one sky get? Like Spinal Tap's black album cover, the answer was, 'None! None more blue!' Three-four white clouds drifting by, as if ordered while I was at my desk and delivered in perfect time for the after-work stroll, walking, just walking, my young son at my side.

"Who was trying to come to mind? Who hid in that blue sky? Jesus Christ? Yes, the hearts of those who love him will burst this weekend, in awe of a sacrifice exactly 2002 years ago today, give or take a couple of decades and a couple of dozen time zones. A sacrifice we all can make, if we but reject man (church) and embrace God (Love)...."

That, to me, the easiness of Pires' prose, is the real spirit of Easter: an irrational, calm certitude that, at the end of the day, Love is all there is. That, counterposing to the evidence of 'the news' the testimony of the spirit, the world is good.

Two days ago, re-reading Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet after half a lifetime -- I first read it here in Jamaica in the mid-60s, courtesy Edna Manley -- I came across an exact postulation of what would become my own eventual faith: that the Godhead lies in the future, not the past, and that we are all part of the long process of Its creation. Wrote Rilke (far more memorably!):

"Do you believe that anyone who really has [God] could lose him, like a little stone...? ...what then justifies you in missing him, who never was, like one who has passed away, and in seeking him as though he had been lost? Why do you not think of him as the coming one, imminent from all eternity, the future one, the final fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? What keeps you from projecting his birth into times that are in process of becoming, and living your life like a painful and beautiful day in the history of a great gestation? For do you not see how everything that happens keeps on being a beginning, and could it not be His beginning, since beginning is in itself always so beautiful?

"A painful and beautiful day in the history of a great gestation": for myself, I have no doubt that that's what our lives are.

So (Pires again, in his weekly column 'Thank God it's Friday', and aptly his focus is on his infant son!):

".... My son turns in my arms and searches above our heads for 'Bird!' his surest word. We look up at the tent of blue we mortals call the sky. 'And all men kill the thing they love/ By all let this be heard./ The coward does it with a kiss/ The brave man with a sword!' Every Friday is good, Godfather, if you're free."

And an Easter energy to you too, dear reader.

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WhatsApp

10-02-2017 Fr. Imash: Edgar moffie what years were you at mount?

11-02-2017 Ramsahai Winston: Welcome Anand

11-02-2017 I know Edgar. He was always cool. Used to swim as well. How are you man?

11-02-2017 Moffie Edgar: Ian.....sorry...didn't know Nigel passed away.....we all one day will go thru this.....Edgar Moffie #90....group 1967..1972....: Eloy was the swimer....joining with Johny Garcia.....and Kamal Khan.....

11-02-2017 Yes a tragic incident. He fell off a cliff and broke his neck (6 th vertebrae), 2 broken ribs puntured his lungs and he broke his chest bone. He was sober as a judge. He slipped on some wet slate rock in the dark and went down 75 feet.

11-02-2017 Moffie Edgar: Can anyone of you give me detail of Winston Copeland???....Puggy may be you can find out or Specs...pls forward his No 

11-02-2017 Yep in any pictures of agua lads at that time with Johnny Garcia, Eloy is the tall guy with glasses. 

11-02-2017 Winston is retired. He lives in Siparia and Prem Diptee may be able to assist. 

11-02-2017 Moffie Edgar: Yes....tall with glasses...: Will don

11-02-2017 Ramsahai Winston: Ian our sincere condolences .... the Mayaro seafood fiesta lememories left pleasant Nigel: Pleasant memories of Nigel: Post a pic of Mayaro: Edgar I remembered you courting the Neighbour at the beach house in Mayaro: Late 70s

11-02-2017 Sorry to hear about Nigel

11-02-2017 Probable hooked Up with calypso bandit in heaven may his soul rest in peace

11-02-2017 Moffie Edgar: Ohh boy...I still doing some smogling around here.....jajajja...can't let go that habbit......

11-02-2017 Ramsahai Winston: Men: Oscar trust you enjoying Panama: Aziz add Skippy no: Garth add Quan no from Galeots he was born in 1979 like Ron Hadeed

11-02-2017 Moffie Edgar: Tell me what about Nevel Tenia???.....: Oscar make sure if there is any crab left send some across....: Garth...I con still try the 100 meters....can you still make ii???....will need Winston as well.....

11-02-2017: Hi everyone. Happy New year and have a great carnival February.  This is Kelvin Khan. First let me convey my sincere condolences to Ian on Nigel's passing. This is a welcome WhatsApp  surprise and to let you know Kamal can't swim to save his life . I was the butterfly swimmer 66-70.

11-02-2017: Guys, I am still unbeatable in the 100 meters but I can only run 25 meters on the beach these days and I look for Tenia & Copeland I see Chin Cham and Kieron Pierre regular....

11-02-2017: Garth I have directions to Winston’s home. Maybe a Saturday we can go look for him. I know you busy so let me know when. Spoke to kieron on Thursday he seems to be doing ok.

11-02-2017 : Is Gerry Chin Cham in T & T?

11-02-2017 : Kieron above.

 11-02-2017 Hey Kelvin, how you going man?

11-02-2017 : Edgar I heard also that Eloy passed as well. My condolences brother.

11-02-2017:  What happen you guys fall asleep or what? Its only 11.40 am and all you taking a siesta already. It’s a wonder any of you could run 25 meters.😆

11-02-2017:  Moffie Edgar: Kelvin..Man glad to hear from sorry for the mistake swimmer.....yes Eloy will 10 years next March 26... time runs fast......

11-02-2017:  Hi to all the Panas from the Abbey!!!! I am Frank Ibarra

11-02-2017:  Moffie Edgar: Garth and Ian...pls do me favour if you happen to see Winston over next weekend..... pass me on his number...will appreciate, guys....

11-02-2017 : Hola Frank.... nice to hear from you..... where are you?

11-02-2017 : I am in Dominican Republic. How is your family?

11-02-2017 : Growing.... first grandson 6 months old..... how about you and your family???

11-02-2017 Congratulations! I am not there yet, I have 2 sons studying and playing baseball in the US and the older moved to Ecuador 3 month ago

11-02-2017 Gracias.... congratulations to you too.... we are in Katy/Houston... Salvador Coscarart is also here..... if you ever make it out this way let us know so we can get together

11-02-2017 : That will be great, one of my sons is in Fort Worth Texas

11-02-2017 : That’s only a couple of hours from here.... is he the ball player? What school?

11-02-2017 Yes, at Wesleyan, the other plays at Hannibal in Missouri

11-02-2017 Moffie Edgar:  Frank....cara e vieja....this is Edgar Moffie....long time don't hear about you....ok baseball player from Mount....how life taking you????....

11-02-2017 : Hello everybody

11-02-2017 : Hola Edgar!!! Cómo estás? I was just looking at a photo where we all together....jajajajaja

11-02-2017 : Hey sal I do not have Skippy’s #.  If u have it maybe u can add him

11-02-2017 Hola frank como estas. Todavia en republica dominicana.

11-02-2017 : Sí todavía por aquí, cómo estás?

11-02-2017 : I will Azi ,

11-02-2017 : Muy bien gracias a dios y tu.

11-02-2017 : Echando pa'lante!

11-02-2017 : Ayer nos comimos unos Rotis ..... salvador mandales la foto para q te vean lo bien q estas...😅😅

11-02-2017 Moffie Edgar: The pic I have is with both Garners, Francisco, Aitor, Alfredo, Giorgo, this other guy from Barquisimeto whose mother had a flower.decoration shop..

11-02-2017 El se llama Caraballos

11-02-2017 : Carlos si no mal recuerdo su nombre, un jodedor pana ...jajajajajaja

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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz,  kertesz11@yahoo.com,  if you would like to be in the circular’s mailing list or any old boy that you would like to include.

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Photos:

12LK2586FBWKE, Winston Kerry

16LK7136FBGKE, Gerard Kenny

15LK1585LKEGRP, Dinner Caracas, Bro. Dorset, Manuel Prada, Azier Atela, Ladislao Kertesz and Alfredo Montiel

58LK0001SCOUTSDEVO, Scouting manual