Tomorrow is today

“Every society needs sacred places. A society that cannot remember its past and honour it is in peril of losing its soul.” – Vine Deloria, Jr., Lakota scholar

MY REIKI MASTER, Lynn Armor, now deceased, used to visit Barbados quite often in the late 1990s and early this century.

She had visited Farley Hill several times. On what I believe was her last visit in 2003 she had observed that the ley lines (energy lines in the earth) had gone from straight to wavy. In other words, that space, perhaps to some sacred, had become reflexive of the energies of the popular music and entertainment of the times.

People’s faith and prayers offered at a certain place seem to imbue that spot with healing or other positive potential. Consider Lourdes in France where, since the first healing of Catherine Latapie on March 1, 1858, more than 2 500 unexplained healings have occurred.

However, no healings have taken place at Farley Hill as far as I am aware. Indeed, I no longer get that, what I will call “total magical feeling” when I go there now. Others may disagree.

On the larger scale, many people have in the past told me that when they arrived at Grantley Adams International Airport and stepped off the plane, they felt a sense of positive energy. I gather that over the last number of years the feeling is less so. We as a people need to consider why that may be.

Last Thursday, planes could not touch down at all because of the withdrawal of labour by some staff at the airport in support of colleagues at the Barbados Water Authority.

Whenever there is a strike call, there undoubtedly have to be decisions made, to wit: solidarity, personal response and/or in some cases, national good.

Twice in the early ’70s I had to make a decision when a national strike was called. I was working at the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation and because of the volatility of the situations and what I considered to be the national good – the need to keep people informed – I did not withdraw my labour.

I am not suggesting, by reference to history, that the withdrawal of labour last Thursday was not in the national interest. Indeed, I want to make it clear that procrastination and the slighting of labour by management is undesirable in any circumstance.

What I am concerned about is that few in this Government seem to recognise that in putting matters off until tomorrow, they are forgetting that when tomorrow comes, it is today.

I hope we shall soon return to the time and place when and where we in Barbados can positively feel good about every today.

– MICHAEL RUDDER