Finding God and the erotic at the University of Guyana

The lecturer's wallpaper projected on the screen - it had Jesus Jesus tiled all over. The other lecturer who is also a pastor said that in saying the opening prayers, he had to be conscious of the University's ruling about no denominational prayers in the class rooms.. or as he said, he had to say the prayer without saying Jesus..

I said yes to Dr Paloma Mohammed to do the online journalism laboratory facilitation - because I cannot say no to her firstly, and if I had any stupid thought of making a lil raise from it, well yeah, a lil raise sounded good when i was not sure where my income was coming from. The Gita talks about renouncing oneself from the fruits of the labour.. and so, after renouncing myself from the money.. I realised what pulled me back to say yes this year.

At the orientation for the communication students, after the prayer which was not a prayer, there was a spirit in the heat and stuffiness, with all the 'bad' things of the university, not enough chairs, large classroom , incomplete registrations , etc of people who were trying to rise above the negativity and do something.. I realised that the thing which pulled me back is that the people there were interested in what was going to happen to the students and that the power struggles of who was better than who or the scam of rushing through higher education without much work was not going to happen. The other thing is that many of the students were there because they wanted to achieve better, and some of them are making sacrifices for it.

A facebook friend cussed up about the once a week Christians who now and then put up their holy verses on facebook and the thread led to the discussion of the hypocrites.. and that kind of thing. Yep, overt expressions of faith from people can be annoying, especially if the people do not seem to do anything else.

 Neil Marks writes on his blog about wishing he had more time to teach Bible study and to do the work.. I read it as though one has to make a choice. I have been wishing I had more time to learn about the scriptures and doing something about sharing it,, but then I thought, what is the point of that? The Gita talks about offering the work to God, so that even our 'work' should be God's work .

A very staunch Muslim friend told me a long time ago, when we talked about terrorists that the Koran talks about how people should want to become Muslim because of the behaviour of Muslims and not because of any pushing of verses down the throat.

The Bhakti tradition talks about the praising of God publicly too. The thing is, when some of the praisers are annoying otherwise, then it is difficult to want to come to God.

But today, for some daft reason, I thought that more than any religious gathering I had attended recently, this gathering represented what I think I am learning about God. There was hope in this room, of the students addressing their own Karma, taking responsibility even if they are forced to do so by parents or whatever. There was goodwill on the part of the lecturers, to struggle in the negativity and to offer their best to the students - no condemnation of anything or anyone. I do not know if it was fake, history would tell.

But somehow, in participating in moving this forward, working with people to get them to achieve their own potential and my own potential.. is a way I think of sharing God more than any prayer could.

Last year, it was hard, plenty hours, the frustration of infected flash drives and people doing late assignments and computers not working to speed and not enough time to teach..but which had me pushing my own boundaries and learning and being inspired. I am a part time lecturer so I guess that that I am saved from the travails facing the full time lecturers.

Audre Lorde in talking about the uses of the erotic reminds us that "And the lack of concern for the erotic root and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?" .. and I left UG this evening, feeling that I cannot wait for that work, that 'longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I could rise up empowered"  I  know, my head not good, there are many who cannot wait for that last trip from UG, never to go back.


On another note, I hope that the University has other conversations about faith and God - that the solution to recognising Guyana's multiple faiths is not to tell earnest people of religions, Christians especially that they should not be praying , but rather to find a way of accommodating which is not exclusive to any one religion.
But if every lecture had to start with prayers from all religions.. then.. well, you could understand the dilemma.