Micheal Burke

The emancipation and independence celebrations have come and gone for this year. While it might be too late to plan an "emancipendence" meal for this year, it is the right time to make moves to do so for next year. My idea is built on the foundation of the Passover Supper, which is an integral part of the culture of religious Jews.

The Passover Supper is a dramatic way of recalling the history of the Jews from Abraham through the days of slavery in Egypt, then the crossing of the Red Sea, the 40 years in the desert and, finally, the triumph in reaching the Promised Land. It is also about giving thanks to Almighty God for emancipation and independence. Different items of food prepared in special ways depict the different aspects of Jewish history.

When I was a youngster, the Roman Catholic Church had a movement that had weekend experiences in Christian living for teenagers. One part of it was an agape (a love feast) akin to the Passover, only that it was about Jamaica's history and giving thanks for our freedom. Today, too many young people are not learning Jamaica's history and therefore do not appreciate the struggles of the past.

The Passover meal is essentially an annual meal of the Jewish family unit. The problem here in Jamaica is that we have too few family units to pass on anything. An "emancipendence" meal is the only way to give our youngsters a crash course in our history. More important, family and community are best organised around a meal.

Hopefully, the "emancipendence" meal would also eventually unite us as a people, especially if it helps, like get-togethers at Christmas, to bring families together. Indeed, there could be a National Emancipendence Meal where the leaders of state and other dignitaries are invited pretty much like the National Prayer Breakfast that takes place in January of each year. The "emancipendence" meal could take place anywhere between August 1, Emancipation Day, and August 6, Independence Day.

Following the example of the "National Emancipendence Meal", hopefully each family would adopt the idea over a period of years until it becomes a deeply embedded tradition in Jamaica. Then, and only then, would we start to appreciate that emancipation and independence did not come without serious effort, sacrifice, struggle, toil and sweat of the national heroes and others.

I imagine that today you might have wanted me to discuss something far more controversial such as the latest sculpture in Emancipation Park. It is my view that the people who have the greatest problem with the sculpture are the one-track minded who associate nudity only with sexual intercourse. Of course, this is not surprising in a sex-crazed society.

Traditionally, in rural Jamaica, men, women, boys and girls bathe naked in rivers. If this has lessened to any extent today, it is only because clothes are available so cheaply that many do not know what to do with so much clothes so they might wear some while bathing. It goes without saying that artists do sculptures and paintings. But artists, by nature, do not have any problem with naked bodies anymore than doctors and nurses.

I believe that most of the complaints are really disguised expressions of personal shame for sexual sins such as fornication and adultery, the consequences of which is the problem of unwanted children left to suffer. Hopefully, the proposed emancipendence meal would highlight the importance of families so that people would understand the need to confine the their sexual urges to their spouses or to control them totally.

As a Roman Catholic, I am mindful that my church teaches modesty. But what is modesty? The catechism of the Catholic Church says that the forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to the other. Indeed, we are the church of the famous Michelangelo nude paintings of the Holy Family and the angels that adorn the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

What is immodest are bikinis and G-strings or where the sexual areas are highlighted by skimpy clothing as well as special ways of walking designed to stimulate sexuality. This is also true of tight clothing for men and women where the genitals are "printed out".

Last Friday, I attended the Nigerian Association's barbecue at UTech. The entertainment was a mixture of African and Jamaican. African dances in the forms that they take are simply part of the African culture. But a Jamaican group of women singers dressed in very tight pants started their performance by asking the "the sexiest men" and "the sexiest women" in the audience to raise their hands.

Too many Jamaicans are unable to differentiate between a decent traditional cultural form and plain slackness. The Emancipation Park sculpture should not be equated with the wooden sculptures found at the Ocho Rios end of Fern Gully which are designed as sexual teasers. It is a sick society that does not know the difference.

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