Fr Richard Ho Lung, Contributor

Father Richard Ho Lung (right) with costume designer for 'YES!', Arlene Richards.- Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

YES!, I believe, is the most personal and powerful of all our productions so far. I release this to you on the 26th, 27th and 28th of September at the National Arena, St Andrew.

Theatre, being a music writer or a writer of drama, has never been my desire or expectation. Somehow it happened by someone else's plan.

I am a priest and I love people - especially the poor - and, people of all races. Made in the image and likeness of God, I find everyone fascinating. The distorted faces, the convoluted bodies are beautiful like gnarled trees formed and disfigured by nature.

communicate with people

As a priest I just want to communicate the marvels of God's creation and the beauty disguised under the appearance of ugliness; the cross and its profound and complex attraction for every man; the love of Christ for sinners (most of all myself) and the undying love He has for even those who forsake Him, and, for the poorest and most forgotten of us creatures.

I want to love as He loves. I fail in this miserably. But I have nothing and no one in life, but Christ.

sharing the blessings

I write because my mind is on flame with thoughts of Him and His heavenly kingdom. I want everyone to know Him and to be saved by Him. I want my fellow Jamaicans to be redeemed by Him.

I also want people to understand themselves, their feelings and passions, their failings and their beauty. I am amazed at people's capacity to love, despite the weaknesses of our nature - our fears, our sins, our infidelities, our worldliness. Yet deep in our hearts there is an innate desire for all that is true, good and noble.

YES! follows in the footsteps of Jesus 2000, Moses, Amazing Grace, Isaiah, Ruby, Sugar Cain, Praise Him, Rise Up, The Rock, Spirit and The Celebration of Life.

My writing of plays and music, I believe, is just an extension of my preaching. God and people, Jamaica and the world, Christ and the Church and Satan's never-ending and consuming hatred for all of us. That's what I write about in the dramatic theatre pieces. In rejecting Satan and in building God's kingdom here on Earth we battle, we struggle with Him by our side.

Drama and theatre, music, preaching, teaching and writing are the media God seems to have sent as instruments with which I communicate.

'YES!' I will dance and make a fool of myself once again - for that I truly am.

For 36 years Fr Ho Lung and Friends have been alive and performing, growing from strength to strength. Sometimes, if not often, struggling for new and beautiful ways of honouring the Lord and people, and giving truthful expressions to what is deep in my heart.