SETTING THE STAGE
I am here this morning because I received a call from our Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Errol Brooks several weeks ago. The purpose of his call – he wanted me to deliver the address for Mothers Day 2014 at the 8:00 am service here St. Mary’s Church. Of course I readily accepted his invitation and so here I am this morning.
My thoughts have been all over the place in the intervening days following my receipt and acceptance of the Bishop’s invitation to speak to you. In the process however, my mind has returned again and again to a particular theme more than any other as a focus for the words I should speak today and the meditations I should share with you from my heart.
The essence of my thoughts can be summarized thus:
“Speak about the damaging impacts of the high tide of violence in our society, especially among young people. Remind one and all that gun violence has caused grave impacts that have wreaked havoc on many families and robbed too many of our young people, mostly men, but also women of their futures, taking their lives or maiming them for life in body and spirit. Lament this sad truth about the violence in our midst:
It is this: that the majority of the perpetrators and of the victims of gun violence and of physical violence in general are our young people, our children.
“We cannot blame this terrible predicament of an increasingly violent Anguillian society on outsiders. We cannot scapegoat those who are not from here. Yes, people of all places and nationalities, all races and cultures engage in violence and criminal behavior of one kind or another and to varying degrees. We the people of Anguilla are no exception, those who were born here, whose roots are from here and those who have adopted Anguilla and planted new and fresh roots here.
“This violence is not imported with those who have migrated here. It is homegrown, influenced by the regional and global trends in society and the uptick in violence. But sad to say we are largely committing the violence on each other. The facts speak loudly and clearly for themselves. The undeniable truth is that the perpetrators and the victims of violence are our children, your sons and my daughters, born here, from here, grown up here, know no other home but Anguilla even if born abroad. They are all from Anguilla, no matter where they were birthed, by the accident of time and place. They are our children, young men and women, teenagers and adolescents, our children, yours and mine.”
“Trace a strong link between this destructive behavior of our youth and our failure as the adults in the Anguillian Community to properly prepare our children to live together in peace, in love, in harmony as a unified community, who care one for the other and place the highest value on life and have the greatest respect for each other as fellowmen.”
“Use the occasion of the celebration of Mothers Day to once again shine a light on the serious threat that the epidemic of youth on youth violence poses to the very fabric of our Anguillian society.”
This is the issue that has been constantly projecting itself into my thoughts in the days leading up to Mothers Day. So I have surrendered. And so this morning, I will be coming at my Mothers Day address by seeking to draw a strong link between the scourge of youth on youth violence and our failures in the department of child raising. Specifically, because it is Mothers Day, my focus in on what I have observed, even if casually, to be areas of failure by our mothers to effectively carry out their role of mothering our children and indeed mothering our Anguillian society and nation.
Let me hasten to say that by and large the vast majority of you our womenfolk, our mothers have done well, as you have given of your best and continue to do your best to raise your children to be great adults, valued and contributing citizens of Anguilla and the world. And you have managed to perform admirably in a world and in a time that is marked by rapid and major change, socially, economically, politically, culturally and technologically.
MAIN PRESENTATION
Proverbs Chapter 22 and verse 6 tells us:
“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it”
Again Proverbs Chapter 13 and verse 24 states:
“He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him”
Ephesians 4 also tells us:
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
These three verses of Scripture are extremely clear in their instruction to us as followers of Christ about the critical duty we have as parents to instruct and raise our children in a wholesome, positive and godly way. We are not merely responsible to bring up our children in any way we please. No, if we are to produce God-fearing, responsible, productive and well adjusted adults of whom we would be proud, we have to observe certain timeless values and follow suitable guidelines adjusted and adapted to the cultural conditions and the times in which we live.
Today as we celebrate Mothers Day, we should pause and ponder on the state of our parenting in Anguilla and especially on parenting by mothers and surrogate mothers, be they grandmothers, aunts, sisters, great aunts and even males who not only father their children, but find themselves having to mother them as well. It is a good time to ask ourselves whether we as a society and especially the women of our society have been and are placing sufficient emphasis and the right kind of emphasis on their roles as mothers and their duty to mother their children in these times.
The fact that our community, our Anguillian society has been and is now beset by a rising tide of physical violence among our youth is cause for much concern. The fact that the violence includes a quite substantial amount of gun violence is and should be even more alarming. But the physical violence is only the most visible and obvious evidence of the iceberg of violence that is besetting our community. Verbal and psychological abuse and sexual abuse and predatory behavior are also far too commonplace in our society, just to name a few of the more significant forms of violence that are hurting Anguilla.
It is always easy to identify the problem. It is more difficult to analyse its root causes and still more difficult to formulate effective responses to the problem. This is very much the case in Anguilla as we confront the problems of violence in our society. So today, on Mothers Day 2014, I have been constrained to add some words and share some thoughts on the problem of violence and the challenge to all off us to do something about it and ultimately to minimize this scourge. I would like to say stamp out the violence, but as we are dealing with human nature, we know that there is a constant battle between good and evil, between right and wrong waged in the heart of men. For as the Bible tells us we are born in sin and our sojourn here on earth should be aimed at overcoming the power of sin through the redeeming grace of Jesus Christ, whose instruction to us is to love God wholeheartedly and to love our fellowmen, as we love ourselves and as we would want them to love us.
When I was growing up, the African cultural standard for raising children was still very much alive in Anguilla. what is that standard? It is best summed up in the statement:
“It takes a village to raise a child”.
Even Hilary Clinton found it necessary in addressing the challenges of raising children in America to refer to and paraphrase the African proverb to make the point that child raising is not just the responsibility of the nuclear family in which a child is born or into which he or she is adopted. The wider circle of relatives, neighbours, friends have a role to play, in addition to parents. When the household has one parent, then the rest of the circle of the community should step up and play a bigger role.
When I was growing up, there was an unwritten bond and agreement between parents and teachers, that teachers would stand in the shoes of or in place of parents, when we as children were in school. And so the conflicts that are legion nowadays between parents and teachers over students who behave inappropriately for whatever reason, did not exist or at least was extremely rare, in my generation.
Parents were respectful of teachers and teachers sought to impart the knowledge they had, the best they could to the children entrusted to them. Today, I call out parents and teachers and challenge you to restore the bonds that have been broken between you two, who have such a major impact on our children in shaping their personalities and characters and in giving them the tools for living as adults in a rapidly changing global society. Until parents and teachers get back on the same page, until parents place a high premium on the education of their children and until teachers in general seek to be the best teachers they can be and not treat the profession as some do as a meal ticket and a cheque at the end of the month, we will not stem the upward trend of violence over the long term.
The Bible requires us to train our children in the faith, values and morals of Christianity. This places the primary burden for spiritual and religious instruction on parents and on the Church family, the Church as mother to train and guide our children. Today, materialism has made huge inroads and has taken over in many instances. Money and things have become our gods. Too many of us have come to love money more than we love God. The results of this change that we reap include a succeeding generation that is secularized, in which the age old standards of right and wrong carry less weight and the god of hedonism, that is of having a good time and caring little about tomorrow takes hold and begins to dominate. We have to wake up and stem this dangerous slide. The best examples of this dangerous trend towards debauchery and moral decline is the growth and persistence of illegal gambling and the trek to St. Maarten for legal gambling, the growth of night clubs and entertainment spots where illegal red light activities are available, in open secret. And most recently, the phenomenon of the party bus has reared its ugly head. When we are a society that shows little or no outrage and does little to minimize these forms of behavior and practice that are contrary to Christian principles, then it is a short step to the open violence that has claimed too many of our young people. But mothers and fathers can do something about it, teachers can and ministers and social workers and the whole village, but only if the village does not condone the behaviours that are harmful to our society and seeks to minimize their existence.
We need a moral crusade, we need a values reformation and a return to those values that build and sustain unity, harmony, peace and morality. But it will be a slow reformation in which the battle lines are the minds of our children from their infancy, when their personalities are largely formed in the first three years of their lives. It will continue in childhood and into the teen years.
Providing our children with things as baby sitters will not achieve anything more than what we have seen in the last two or more decades. You have to be present in your children’s minds and there in the shaping of their thoughts, there in guiding and directing them and teaching them right from wrong and in modeling appropriate behavior. Though you and all of us we fail sometimes, we must be humble enough to use failings as opportunities to teach our children, so that they can learn and not repeat our shortcomings.
All of us tend to look to the Government to fix what is broken in our society especially when it comes to our youth. And yes the Government is a critical player. But more critical is the home and family and in the home setting, the mother is or should be the empress when it comes to leading the process of child raising. Her mothering instinct is central, even though the role of fathers is also basic. But the special bonding that flows from the physiological and psychological act of carrying a child for nine months, gives a mother a unique perspective.
Mothers, you must rededicate yourselves to mothering, despite the changed economic, social and cultural environment. You must balance your own ambitions against your purpose as a mother to bring up your children. If you fail in this mission, all of us will suffer, the society as a whole. And this is what we have been experiencing with the violence that has infected some segments of our youth in recent decades.
Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, godmothers, great aunts, female teachers and all women, I challenge you to reexamine your roles, your actions and behavior in light of the African proverb and the biblical instructions concerning our children and ask yourselves whether you have properly discharged your role in mothering our children and if not consider what you can and should do to correct that situation.
The methods of mothering and child raising may have changed. Lashes and corporal punishment are a thing of the past in most households and in our schools. But that does not mean that we have to ignore our children’s transgressions. Not do we have to be abusive. A positive strategy must firstly surround a child with love. A genuine line of communication between mother and child needs to be established. Mother should be sure to allocate quality time for the child, that she is teacher at home, that she is present with the child in church, present at social and school events where parents are expected to attend, that she sets clear boundaries and limits and then enforces them with love, compassion and at the same time firmness and quietude.
The next generation is at stake. And the frontline warriors in that battle for the next generation are mothers. And fathers too.
A blessed Mothers Day to all womenfolk here in Church and in general. Step up your game, no matter your age. The whole village must again become engaged in turning the corner on the violence besetting our Anguillian society and save the two or three of dozen of our children, whose lives otherwise would be lost or maimed permanently as a result of the violence of the gun, the knife or other lethal weapon.
I close by saying to you:
“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it”
“He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him”
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
AMEN
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
