BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

"God's Will—a bi­og­ra­phy and au­to­bi­og­ra­phy in one…"

That's the de­scrip­tion giv­en by for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing at the De­cem­ber 12 launch of God's Will—the bi­og­ra­phy of re­tired arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris.

Of the book, writ­ten by GML's for­mer sports ed­i­tor Valenti­no Singh, Lee Sing, who pre­sent­ed the re­view at the launch held at Nalis, said the book had two au­thors—the “ar­chi­tect” and the “builder”.

“I wish to point out, 'Tino (Valenti­no) de­scribes the book as an au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, but a bi­og­ra­phy, of course, is the sto­ry of one's life writ­ten by some­one else and the au­to­bi­og­ra­phy is the sto­ry writ­ten by that per­son (about him­self). But on the re­view, I could not help but try to dis­cern whether the book qual­i­fied to be an au­to­bi­og­ra­phy or a bi­og­ra­phy, be­cause, in a sense, there is so much giv­en to the book by arch­bish­op emer­i­tus Har­ris. I want to say it is both a bi­og­ra­phy and an au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, and so 'Tino and arch­bish­op Har­ris, you have ex­celled in bring­ing to life a new genus in­to so­ci­ety,” said Lee Sing.

La­belling it an ex­tra­or­di­nary book, Lee Sing said it was well writ­ten and pre­sent­ed and pro­vid­ed a com­plete pic­ture of the life and times of a wor­thy man.

“All 18 chap­ters of God's Will car­ries a unique­ly re­veal­ing colour of the char­ac­ter of the man Joseph Har­ris.”

Lee Sing added that the book was not to be not­ed as a sto­ry but rather a nar­ra­tive giv­ing an his­tor­i­cal ac­count of one whose am­bi­tion was wrapped up in the ser­vice of the “great­est of all pow­ers”. A life lived, lived for the church, of the church and with­in the church.

Mak­ing ref­er­ence to the book's first chap­ter ti­tled Gen­e­sis, Lee Sing said it gives a clear un­der­stand­ing of the na­ture of Har­ris's younger self, grow­ing up in a very struc­tured home where each mem­ber of the fam­i­ly had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sist in the day-to-day man­age­ment of the Har­ris house­hold.

He high­lights the tight­ly knit­ted fam­i­ly's fer­vent prayer life at home, where prayer of­fered up con­tin­u­al­ly in­clud­ed the re­quest of Har­ris's moth­er for one of the boys she birthed to be­come a priest and the girl to be­come a nun. Need­less to say, both prayer re­quests were an­swered with Har­ris even­tu­al­ly choos­ing to live an or­dained life and his sis­ter Clare, who was present, be­com­ing a nun, re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ing her 50th Ju­bilee.

“We have arch­bish­op Har­ris and sis­ter Clare this morn­ing, so the pow­er of prayer, must be re­al,” said Lee Sing.

He al­so spoke of Har­ris's “reg­u­lar” teenage years where as a youth he would en­joy the oc­ca­sion­al par­ty or af­ter-work lime at a “good” restau­rant on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.

But Lee Sing first re­ferred to Har­ris's con­ver­sa­tion in the book about his re­la­tion­ship with his God, as an ado­les­cent, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­ter­nal con­flict with his thoughts of be­com­ing a priest.

This is re­flect­ed through­out the many chap­ters of the book—the feel­ings of con­fu­sion Har­ris of­ten ex­pe­ri­enced which he could not ex­plain but would lat­er re­solve through much coun­sel by his men­tor­ing priests.

Lee sing al­so spoke of Har­ris's ac­count in the book of the lov­ing fam­i­ly in which he was raised. Spe­cial em­pha­sis was placed on his revered fa­ther, al­so a school head­mas­ter, who in those days of­fered coun­selling as prin­ci­pals would have cus­tom­ar­i­ly act­ed in such roles. He talks more of the de­scrip­tion of Har­ris's fa­ther, an in­flu­en­tial and “go-to man,” in the vil­lage of Lopinot.

From the land­mark amend­ments to the Catholic Church, in which Har­ris had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to wit­ness and ex­pe­ri­ence, to the over­com­ing of his un­cer­tain­ties and be­ing the vic­tim of racism both in and out­side the church as well as his ex­pe­ri­ence in Chica­go and Paraguay—where he brought peo­ple back to church and to God, Lee Sing felt this man of the cloth could teach “our” politi­cians, a thing or two.

He un­der­scored what he de­scribed as a sound analy­sis by Har­ris in the book of what the Re­pub­lic T&T is to­day, say­ing it points to a lack of na­tion build­ing be­ing put in place at In­de­pen­dence.

“This analy­sis though suc­cinct­ly doc­u­ment­ed is re­quired read­ing, be­cause in a sense we won­der why we re­main a group of tribes in T&T. Had we moved to put the kinds of pro­grammes in place to bring the na­tion to­geth­er, to­day we may not have on­ly been sad­dled with “red and yel­low” but we might have had mul­ti-colour,” said Lee Sing.