Tony Deyal EVERY TIME I believe I have the future covered and I am in control of my destiny, or every time I say that I would not repeat a particular error or do something that I consider repugnant, guess what happens? I realise in retrospect that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
An old priest once gave me the solution, which I sometimes choose to ignore. He said that what you are is God's gift to you. What you make of it is your gift to God. Right now, God is way ahead in the gift-giving department. My reflections about God and the shifting sands on which we humans plan the future were precipitated by another sudden and sharp twist in my personal fortunes.
Twenty-nine years ago I left university with a First Class Honours Degree in Journalism, full of hope for the future, planning to make my name as a Caribbean journalist working for regional causes. In spite of all my optimism I never worked a single day as a journalist until about a month ago. Unexpectedly, I ended up in a newspaper when all the voices of reason and foresight told me to get out of Trinidad and once more seek my future elsewhere.
REALITY CHECK
Perhaps, before contemplating any next steps, I should accept the moral of the following story that almost every journalist is supposed to know. When we get too full of ourselves, as is often the case, the story serves as a reality check. William Randolph Hearst, newspaper editor and magnate, needing someone to cover the great Johnstown flood in the United States, had nobody else available but a young cub reporter. It was the young man's big break. The next day the novice cabled back this lead to Hearst's paper: GOD SAT ON A LONELY HILL ABOVE JOHNSTOWN TODAY, LOOKING DOWN IN SORROW AT NATURE'S FIERCE DESTRUCTION. Old-timers swear that Hearst did not hesitate ten seconds before cabling back this response, FORGET FLOOD STORY. INTERVIEW GOD.
Perhaps that is the way to go. Some youngsters were asked what questions they would like God to answer. They asked questions like, "Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't you just keep the ones you have?" and I read the Bible. "What does begat mean? Nobody will tell me." One asked, Is it true that my father won't get in Heaven if he uses his bowling words in the house?" Another, "Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?"
Geography so confused one little one that he asked, "Who draws the lines around the countries? Another was concerned about appropriate behaviour, "I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that okay?" One had the future all planned out if God agreed with her, "Did you really mean do unto others as they do unto you? Because if you did, then I'm going to fix my brother." One was thankful but not grateful, "Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy." Another child seemed to have got the whole business right, "I think about you sometimes even when I'm not praying."
It is not always that easy or funny. Robert Owen, the Welsh manufacturer and social reformer, once talked to a twelve-year-old boy working in the coal pits of England who was weary from digging shale from broken coal. "Do you know God?" asked Owen. Puzzled, the boy replied, "No. He must work in some other mine."
While that is a tragedy, sometimes people who know God can get on your nerves. Peter Sellers was an extremely difficult actor to work with. Blake Edwards, who directed Sellers in the Pink Panther films had major problems with him. One night, after wasting an entire day on one particular scene, Edwards was awakened by a phone call from Sellers who said excitedly, "I have just talked to God and He told me how to do it." The following day, Edwards set the cameras rolling to capture the results of his actor's divine inspiration. The results were disastrous. Peter, the frustrated director said, "next time you talk to God, tell Him to stay out of show business."
I recognise that, like Blake, sometimes God frustrates me. However, I also realise that I might frustrate Him even more. Perhaps I am not yet ready to relax and go with the flow. This, according to Sidney Lovett, a former Chaplain of Yale University, requires someone who has come to be less at home in the world of sense, less moved by the things that appear, less confident in the weight and power of sheer material force and more assured of those verities that are hidden from the wise and prudent but revealed unto babes; more aware of those things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, more at home in that greater and better part of life which is out of sight.
I can see myself asking God, "All these problems in Trinidad with kidnappings and murders. The problems in the Caribbean with my friends in Jamaica, Guyana, even Barbados with an election imminent. The world itself. Why not return to earth and set it right?" And he would look me in the eye and say, "Earth? You crazy or what? The last time I went there I got this woman pregnant and people still talking about it."
Tony Deyal was last seen saying that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who, when they wake up, say, Good morning Lord and those who say, Good Lord it's morning.
