Melville Cooke/Columnist Expression is all in the punctuation, whether written or spoken. And if you think you cannot speak punctuation, check out the difference between when a Jamaican says 'murder!' in appreciation of a joke or a good song and when they say the same thing for a drive-by shooting.
The punctuation in Tuesday's main headline of this newspaper was very telling, not in what was included in the three word headline but in what was left out. The headline read 'God help us!', over a story about the police turning to the church for help with the crime problem in Jamaica.
Not for divine intervention
However, while there was an exclamation mark, there was no comma. And the absence of a comma, which would have gone after 'God', made the headline a cry of despair and not the plea for divine intervention that it probably was meant to be. 'God help us!' is very different from 'God, help us!'
What came out, though,
was quite correct, as the police turning to the Church for help with solving crime is certainly a sign of desperation. And if the comma had been included, to make it a plea, then it would have been futile, for if there is a God who is remotely interested in our affairs, certainly She has provided us with all the tools that we need to take care of ourselves.
I am reminded of a story of a man who was living in a flood-prone area. There was a storm warning, which he ignored even as everybody in the area fled. When they asked why he didn't get the heck out of there, he simply said, 'God will provide'. The rain came and started flooding the town.
Someone came by in a rowboat when the man was still inside the house and begged him to come along and he said "no, God will provide".
The water got so high that he had to go on the roof. A
helicopter came by and somebody let down a rope, signalling for the man to hang on and be lifted to safety. He refused,
saying, 'God will provide'.
So he died and went to heaven, but while he was being fitted for his running shoes in the arcade (for heaven is a place where you run and keep fit, not fly around and drink milk) the ICI (Informal Celestial Importer) noticed that he looked dejected.
He asked why and the man said "I trust' God an' trow my collection an' de bredda still mek me dead". There was a sigh of wind and a gentle female voice said: "Yow, me gi yu radio warning, mi gi yu cyar, mi gi yu boat, mi gi yu helicapta like PJ, a whe de Nicene Creed more yu coulda want?"
Similarly, if the headline had had a comma which made it a plea for help it would have been a waste of time.
For the police already have their intelligence, their guns, their cars, their bikes, their spotchecks and, it would seem, almost carte blanche from the courts to do as they please.
So what the hell more could they want? Some manna of will to use the tools at their disposal to fall from the roof of the Commissioner's office? (Look, yu see if de roof pop dung a no me, alright?)
A cry of despair
As the headline reads though, without the comma as a cry of despair, it is totally correct. For how can the police be turning to a set of people who have largely ignored a central part of their main prayer - 'thy will be done on earth' in favour of pie in the sky dreams of milk and honey?
The police and the Church are not interested in solving crime as much as they wish to quell the violence that is making all those disturbing statistics that pop up on the newscasts.
Is the plan to stop graduating illiterates and near illiterates from our primary education system? Is the plan to have politicians really disassociate themselves from murderers dubbed 'community leaders'? Is the plan to teach people about their history and raise their level of self-esteem so that daily life is not a competition for 'stripes' and a 'dis' is cause for death?
I really, really doubt it. The plan is to ask the youths to 'hold strain' and concentrate on God.
And there I was thinking that the prayer breakfast was the
ultimate in holy futility. God, whoever and whatever that is, help us for real.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
