Louise Bennett-Coverly was often asked why she wrote in Jamaican dialect. She would always reveal that she had really no grand designs, except to gain respect for the Jamaican language.

But Miss Lou, as she was affectionately called, understood well that in giving respect to the language one was also honouring the ordinary folk.

Folklorist, poet, comedienne, social commentator, Miss Lou who died two weeks ago, in Canada, at age 86, spent some sixty years holding up a mirror to the Jamaican people, revealing with humour and wit, how they saw themselves and what they made of the world around them.

Miss Lou was well aware of the part language played in culture—a people’s sense of who they are. She knew who she was. When she was criticised for abandoning the land of her birth—having spent many of her later years in Canada—she responded with her trademark wit: “Wherever she was, Jamaica was.”

It is, too, in and through the culture that God meets his people—there he speaks to his people; there his people communicate with him.

This weekend the Church celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. It marks the occasion when Jesus leads Peter, James and John “up a high mountain” to go beyond what they had come to know of the Master and to recognise his divinity.

Very naturally the human tendency is to stay within the limits that the mind imposes. Miss Lou, through the Jamaican vernacular and the stories she told, challenged the Jamaican society to listen more deeply to the voices of the ordinary citizen and to move beyond the unjustifiable boundaries that the status quo can impose.  

Peace through Literature

This week the annual Caribbean School for Catholic Communication resumes at the Emmaus Centre, Arima. Over 50 participants from various parishes and other Caribbean territories will come together to learn new ways of communicating and how to improve the skills they already have.

The theme of the School this year, as it has been for the last two years, is “Communications and the Religious Imagination”.

In 2004 art was the focus, last year the School explored the medium of music. In the final year of this three-year cycle, the School will focus on literature and have as its sub-theme: “Creating a Culture of Peace through Literature”.

What the School, now in its twelfth year, makes clear is that every form of communication is an opportunity for God, for the proclamation of the Gospel.

It continues to help participants to listen more in a better way to the world around them, helping them to interpret the various signs and symbols in which God is already speaking.

Part of the Transfiguration mystery and message is that God is keen to offer his people the help they need to make sense of life’s journey. The disciples’ experience on the mountaintop served to sustain them in the bewildering circumstances of the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

Reflecting on the passing of Louise Bennett-Coverley, former Prime Minister Edward Seaga said she “uplifted the disdained Jamaica ‘patois’ from the backyard to the stage, at home and abroad.” She involved the whole nation in song and laughter, he said.

Miss Lou must also serve to remind all Caribbean people of the delight the Lord takes in them and that he truly desires to speak through the language and voices of his people.