{"id":56202,"date":"2024-11-27T22:11:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T02:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56202"},"modified":"2024-11-27T22:11:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T02:11:18","slug":"our-precious-jewels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56202","title":{"rendered":"Our precious jewels"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
\nNovember 27, 2024<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>Last Sunday morning as I sat in my usual pew at the back of St Mary\u2019s Anglican Church in Tacarigua, a dear friend, Claudette Grant-Gooding, drew my attention to a booklet, \u201cInspiration for Spirituality XII: From Advent to Christmas\u201d, that the Diamen Writers\u2019 Circle (DWC) produced. Grant-Gooding teaches religious instruction and writes occasionally for the Diocesan newspaper, The Anglican Outlook.
\n
\nGrant-Gooding was especially proud of Gabrielle Simon\u2019s debut article, \u201cForgiveness Promotes Peace\u201d, that appeared in the booklet.<\/p>\n

She introduced Gabrielle, a ten-year-old, to the congregation, informing us that neither Gabrielle\u2019s mother, papa, nor grandfather assisted her with this essay. I was impressed. My daughter, Gabriella, is also a pastor and writer.<\/p>\n

Gabrielle wrote: \u201cForgiveness allows us to show compassion towards someone, despite their behaviour. Sometimes forgiving is not easy. Refusing to forgive, though, is a sin because we receive forgiveness from God every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cForgiveness is the driving behind peacemaking and is at the heart of the ministry of the Prince of Peace. I\u2019m sure all of us have done something wrong, realised it, and asked for forgiveness. God, in turn, gave us his forgiveness as proof of how much God loves us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabrielle\u2019s message was simple, eloquent and touching. It reminded us about how much peace we need in the world today, both in T&T and in places such as Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

After Gabrielle returned to her seat, I asked her to autograph her essay, gave her a small present, and urged her to continue her good work. She anticipated me in this regard. Later, she handed me an essay on Simon\u2019s sermon that she had delivered at the youth service at the Church of Transfiguration, Maloney, in February of this year. It was written neatly and carefully in her exercise or copy book.<\/p>\n

Her essay on the sermon was more conversational than her earlier essay; more interrogatory than didactic. She began with the question, \u201cHave you ever noticed anyone in your life spiritually change?\u201d She contextualises: \u201cSay for example your friend is usually solemn because s\/he lost something important to her. All of a sudden s\/he is extra jolly and you don\u2019t know why. You feel extra joyful too.\u201d<\/p>\n

She answers: \u201cThat, my friends, was an example of God changing your friend spiritually. When someone you meet changes, it changes you too unless you always change and it\u2019s normal to you.\u201d She concluded her introductory paragraph with the following statement: \u201cYou see, my dear brothers and sisters, God made each and every one of us special and when he changes us he wants us to change just a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thereafter she asks her audience to obey God\u2019s commandments, to be more diligent when they pray and reminded them that Jesus and Peter left the crowd and went up the mountain to pray. Jesus did so, she says, because \u201cif he had gone up with all 12 disciples it would have been too noisy and distracting. Now think about it, when you need to pray and someone around is playing loud music, would you not ask him or her to please turn it down or you move?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, she drove home her central points with clarity: God changes people when they pray; seek a quiet place when you pray, and \u201cgive people the instructions that you get from God when you pray\u201d.<\/p>\n

I asked Gabrielle what inspires her to write. She told me she wanted to tell her listeners what God\u2019s word does for the world. She also believes that people will appreciate God\u2019s word when it is given to them. In this context I thought she associated \u201cthe word\u201d with the deeper classical meaning of \u201cthe logos\u201d, that is, its moral principles, thought, and the power of language.<\/p>\n

Her mother, Heather McIntosh Simon, a calypsonian in her own right and daughter of Llewellyn McIntosh (or Short Pants). Heather lectures in Portuguese at The University of the West Indies. She won the coveted National Calypso Queen competition three times. Gabrielle\u2019s grandfather is a master of the \u201cnommo\u201d, the power of words to create harmony and balance in the face of disharmony.<\/p>\n

Gabrielle is part of a literary family that is immersed in African oral literature where the word, in all its majesty, predominates. Think of how Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart) or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun) use language, and then it all begins to make sense.<\/p>\n

Thirty years ago I conducted a seminar, \u201cThree Caribbean Writers\u201d, in which Short Pants and 20 other scholars participated. Short Pants\u2019s essay was one of the best essays I received. I recognised Gabrielle\u2019s distinctive brilliance immediately without really knowing who she is. She represents a much larger literary tradition in which \u201cthe word\u201d is celebrated.<\/p>\n

May her literary light continue to radiate its beauty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe November 27, 2024 Last Sunday morning as I sat in my usual pew at the back of St Mary\u2019s Anglican Church in Tacarigua, a dear friend, Claudette Grant-Gooding, drew my attention to a booklet, \u201cInspiration for Spirituality XII: From Advent to Christmas\u201d, that the Diamen Writers\u2019 Circle (DWC) produced. Grant-Gooding … Continue reading Our precious jewels<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[171],"class_list":["post-56202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","tag-selwyn-r-cudjoe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56203,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56202\/revisions\/56203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}