It is truly an encouragement to behold how quickly the nation, Belize, has submitted itself to the necessary saving restrictions on personal freedom required by Corona. All around us, thousands have been plagued by the deadly virus. We have had only twenty confirmed cases, with merely two deaths. The nation, the people of Belize, has really proved to this world that we treasure our existence and life in this temporary time… and we are capable of submitting ourselves to the discipline that is obligatory for future triumph.
Let us now begin to dedicate ourselves fulsomely, wholeheartedly, to the task that spiritual discipline requires to preserve our SOUL. There was a time when our maximum leaders knew this, and they told us by what they enshrined in our most important law that heralded to the world that a new society, a new nation, was born. Review the annals of Western Civilization and we will again learn that a national society is born only as the result of a tribe, or tribes, gathered in one place who make a decision to plant themselves and grow into hearty future generations, defying both physical and spiritual vermin.
MAN, homo sapiens, has from the beginning, the dawn of his consciousness, suspected that the greatest force that must be defeated is like a ghost arising out of darkness that frightens him into accepting without questioning this yawning gulf of liquidity that flings itself upon him with cold claws saying: “don’t dare, go back to the solid hole of safety; stay safe there in your cave!” Might it not be sobering? Or really exciting? Or reassuring? To hear a gentle whisper piercing through the awesome wall of liquidity challenging: you must dare! To the end of time, we, every single one of us, will continue to discern that voice. And it is given, whether you ask or ignore, because you came not only out of the dirt but also from the sky!
Yesterday, two of my grandchildren leaped into what could have been a quagmire of hate, or paralysis, or victimhood, or, triumph. My grandson lived in the caricature land of VS Naipaul for two years. He was unaffected by the storied victims, assuring his sister and me, “I don’t need Ancestry .com; I know who I am!” I continued that dialogue in my mind, recalling that some people seem to feel trapped to follow ancestral customs instead of stepping forward as a uniquely, gently singular being, declaring: “here I stand; I can do no other!” It is possible that at the tender age of twenty I could be exposed to the greatness of countless heroes and pick them out one by one and think to myself “boy, he is great; I wish I could climb Everest, as he has done, but I won’t. It might kill me.”
As a youth, my most beloved boxer was not Carmen Basilio but Sugar Ray Robinson. These two guys for fifteen rounds would clobber each other with my hero, Sugar Ray, ending the square circle drama with a decisive knockout punch. Judging from the none-wisdom of victimhood, Basilio should have been my favorite one. Nope! I have never been a victim of my victimhood, for I am ME! But I could have become one at the age of four. I was the victim of terrible face-scarring burn. My eight years as a Jesuit helped me to focus on the better things of myself, concentrating on what I could become, and not what an accident had done to me. Good things… and bad, happen to all of us, Belize. The difference is what you make of what you get.
God did not give us the natural resources of America, but we have great potential. What we become depends on you and me! We Belizeans have been granted a great head start. The God of History has ordained that we should have the leading points of the greatest Constitution ever devised by man. But we must ignore the siren sounds of corrupting promises that tell you that you can have all the pleasures of your sexuality without paying the price — of your choice. In 1999 when I became Ombudsman of Belize I quickly realized that my unshakeable, immovable columns of MAN’s rights were not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proposed by the United Nations but the Judeo-Christian principles affirmed by the Belize Constitution in its Preamble, for already abortion was being championed by Women’s Rights groups, and there was the deadly activity of the horrible providers of brain-killing substances, and the abolition of the death penalty.
Every year I still quietly celebrate May 7, 8, 9 — the days when seventy-five years ago the Allies accepted the capitulation of Nazi Germany. I also commemorate 6th June, for on that day seventy-six years ago young men and women that I had never met and would never meet in this life, ignoring the love of here and now, plunged ahead into certain death, for freedom. All I can do now is admire what they did and aspire for a moment in my own history when I might say: greater love no man has than to give his life for a friend! The hope in me is still strong that in Belize we will not have to say to a judge or a tyrant: “Sirs, fully realizing the price that I must pay, I must tell you: Here I stand; I can do no other.”
What I mean seems far-fetched, right? NO! It is not far-fetched. BIG MONEY always tries to control power. They are doing a highly successful job in Europe and elsewhere — maybe China too. Perhaps Corona has exposed its tyrant’s claws. They are one of the two largest coming together of humanity; we are one of the tiniest. But we are one little piece of evolving homo sapiens that very often ignores looking into the sky and its mystical beauty, but we do sometimes look up and hear the whispering Spirit. Doesn’t it say sometimes: follow the Leader…Leader. Suspended between earth and sky He invites us to make a leap over the liquid mass of nothingness for us to rise up and reach for everything: TRUTH, LOVE, BEAUTY!