By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 27, 2024
Last Sunday morning as I sat in my usual pew at the back of St Mary’s Anglican Church in Tacarigua, a dear friend, Claudette Grant-Gooding, drew my attention to a booklet, “Inspiration for Spirituality XII: From Advent to Christmas”, that the Diamen Writers’ Circle (DWC) produced. Grant-Gooding teaches religious instruction and writes occasionally for the Diocesan newspaper, The Anglican Outlook.
Grant-Gooding was especially proud of Gabrielle Simon’s debut article, “Forgiveness Promotes Peace”, that appeared in the booklet.
She introduced Gabrielle, a ten-year-old, to the congregation, informing us that neither Gabrielle’s mother, papa, nor grandfather assisted her with this essay. I was impressed. My daughter, Gabriella, is also a pastor and writer.
Gabrielle wrote: “Forgiveness 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.
“Forgiveness is the driving behind peacemaking and is at the heart of the ministry of the Prince of Peace. I’m 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.”
Gabrielle’s 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.
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’s 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.
Her essay on the sermon was more conversational than her earlier essay; more interrogatory than didactic. She began with the question, “Have you ever noticed anyone in your life spiritually change?” She contextualises: “Say 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’t know why. You feel extra joyful too.”
She answers: “That, 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’s normal to you.” She concluded her introductory paragraph with the following statement: “You 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.”
Thereafter she asks her audience to obey God’s 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 “if 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?”
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 “give people the instructions that you get from God when you pray”.
I asked Gabrielle what inspires her to write. She told me she wanted to tell her listeners what God’s word does for the world. She also believes that people will appreciate God’s word when it is given to them. In this context I thought she associated “the word” with the deeper classical meaning of “the logos”, that is, its moral principles, thought, and the power of language.
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’s grandfather is a master of the “nommo”, the power of words to create harmony and balance in the face of disharmony.
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.
Thirty years ago I conducted a seminar, “Three Caribbean Writers”, in which Short Pants and 20 other scholars participated. Short Pants’s essay was one of the best essays I received. I recognised Gabrielle’s distinctive brilliance immediately without really knowing who she is. She represents a much larger literary tradition in which “the word” is celebrated.
May her literary light continue to radiate its beauty.