A Prayer for Pathos

Former Prime Minister Patrick Manning is in the San Fernando General Hospital after a stroke and I’m willing to heed the call to pray for him; I’m just not sure if I’m meant to pray for him to live or die. Now I like Mr Manning as much as anyone else; no, wait, let me rephrase that: I actually like Mr Manning. Really. Despite the real hardship he put the country to, there was, deep within him (and, I believe, still remains), an indom-itable nub of decency. And, unlike so many who voted out Basdeo Panday’s UNC, indeed, unlike Mr Manning himself, I was not fooled into thinking Mr Manning was the Messiah any more than I was into thinking the People’s Partnership might “rescue” the country two years ago. So I actively wish the old Patos well; I just don’t know whether, to bring about those good wishes, I should beseech Mr Manning’s God to spare his life—which would, necessarily, extend his suffering in this vale of tears—or to lovingly gather his son, Patrick, unto his heavenly bosom and verily bestow upon him his eternal reward in paradise. Or something. Left to me, I would pray for Mr Manning to recover and live for as long as possible, even with partial or total paralysis, since this is the only life we can be sure we will have, and I’d rather read Stieg Larrson from a wheelchair for certain than possibly play lead harp on a cloud.

 

Well, I wouldn’t really “pray” for the old Patos since it would be pointless at best and risk both of us eternal damnation in hellfire at worst. First, you can’t sincerely pray to an allegedly omnipotent being you seriously doubt exists; that’s even more pointless than ringing a Trinidad police station to ask for protection. Perhaps. Second, if, unlikely as it seems, He or She really does exist, God clearly is neither omnipotent nor merciful; if he or she were, Haiti and Nigeria, the two most religious places in our hemisphere and on the planet respectively, would be blessed, not catching their national a-- with earthquakes and Boko Haram. Third, if, against the run of play, an omnipotent God capable of intervention does exist, He’d probably be mightily pissed off if I was hypocritical enough to pray for someone else when I have protected my children from the abuse of religious instruction; it would be like demanding a refund when you’ve never filed a tax return: you don’t want to provoke the Revenue into noticing you. If I prayed for Mr Manning, God might get damned vexed and do the opposite of whatever I asked.

 

And even if I had the power to skulls God into doing what I wanted by begging him to do the opposite—and reverse psychology works better on teenagers than deities, I would imagine—I’d still be in the same bind I was at the opening paragraph, because I still wouldn’t know if to ask God to save or kill him. Not that I think Mr Manning needs my help. He doubtlessly has more reliable divine connections. (But at least I wouldn’t be costing him, which might matter to a man whose last spiritual adviser’s name was pronounced “Paying Yuh.”) Mr Manning’s constituency office staff also seems to be high up in the divine chain of responsibility/command while I’m in the murky depths with the red meat sinners. On Tuesday, Mr Manning’s “protocol officer,” apparently without irony, claimed something called “immaculate healing” on his behalf. Now, since a protocol officer is concerned with the proper observation of niceties in inter-state relations—or, at the very least, on state occasions—I don’t follow how anyone can have a protocol officer without having office. (“Office” here means office of state, not a room in Coffee Street with two filing cabinets, a junior executive chair and a desk with “Patrick heart Hazel” carved into the top.) But Mr Manning apparently has a protocol officer and her media release about his hospitalisation ended with a bizarre sentence stating—no, declaring— “We believe in a TRUE and living GOD who is never changing and by his stripes we are healed. We claim immaculate healing and divine protection over the Honourable Patrick Manning.”

And I wanted to ask WTFWJD?

 

I just knew allowing my pardner Rubadiri Victor to write a 70-part Ode to Africa was the thin end of the wedge that would jam the whole PR pappyshow wide open. The pro-UNC e-mail loops have revealed, if not WTFWJD, what the firetrucking UNC would do. Almost to a man, the same people who have made a career out of (or at least secured a state board seat for themselves by) ripping Mr Manning to shreds, have, for the last 76 hours, been piously praying for him to recover. So that, presumably, they can go back to blaming him for all the ills of Trinidad; which Kamla & Co can apparently only redeem by taking lavish state trips to India, China and, one expects, the London Olympics. Only one person with a public profile has had the courage of his convictions to relate Mr Manning’s illness to his own previous positions (that all the fake Trini piety not only counts for naught, but is positively harmful); and it wasn’t me. It was Morgan Job, who has held several different offices but, unlike the majority of Trinidad-and-Tobagonians, appears to have only one set of principles. Everybody and his dog he used to sic on Manning is praying for the old Patos’ recovery now. And it makes you think that what Jesus would do is barf. All of T&T—except Job, me and the other usual independent suspects—are united, this week, praying for the recovery of a man they will despise, if he should survive. And we’d all be better off if we prayed for pathos than Patos. So I ask God to do whatever the hell He wants. Which is just what the mofo was going to do, anyhow.

 

BC Pires is an agnostic dyslexic insomniac who stays awake all night, wondering if there really is a Dog. Read more of his writing at www.BCRaw.com