Dominican Mission Trip: “Once On This Island”
Beaver Island
When my daughter Caitlin was attending the University of
Western Michigan she played the lead role in a musical production called “Once
On This Island.” It was a challenging role, not the least because she is white
and her character, Timoun, was conceived as a Black West Indian with the
requisite accent. It is a measure of her ability as an actress that she was
entirely convincing in the role, starting with the accent.
In the play Timoun falls in love with a white boy who washes
up on the beach half dead. She nurses him back to health, and they enjoy an
interlude of ecstatic romance as he recovers. When he returns to his French
colonial family, however, they persuade him that he must cut all connection to
her. Timoun is convinced that, once he sees her, he will remember their love
and return to her. She stations herself at the entrance to the family’s grand
residence, and stays there so long the gods take pity upon her and turn her
into a beautiful flowering tree, where in future years her lover’s children
come to find shade and pick the fruit from her branches.
I find this story of undying and unrequited love to be
almost unbearably heartbreaking. The image of Timoun at the door of the
mansion, convinced unto death of the authenticity of her great love, evokes
every tragic and tender feeling of which I am capable. The cold hearted
shallowness of the aristocratic white people appalls and infuriates me. The
image of a generous and beautiful tree, sheltering the children, is a metaphor
for my experience of Christ and the nurturing communities that derive their
identities from him, and have sustained me throughout my life. I am often
oblivious to the passionate love and suffering that is their source, and our
experience among the Episcopalians of the Dominican Republic has brought it all
to the forefront of my awareness.
The love and kindness bestowed on us by our Dominican hosts
reminds me of Timoun, and her unconditional hospitality lavished upon the
shipwrecked stranger washed up upon the shores of her island. I am sorry to admit
that I feel something like Timoun’s
white lover, who returns to his privileged home and soon forgets all
about his experience with her.
Our experience in the Dominican Republic was more sweat
equity than romance, and had many comic
moments and none that could be described
as tragic. Our Dominican friends are not consumed with grief at our leaving,
nor are we guilt-ridden at having left them. This is tgrue, partly because we
are all preoccupied with events of daily life, but also because of the grace of
the flowering tree. We have returned to our privileged North American lives and
have been forgiven for it, both by our Dominican colleagues and by God, who shelters
us all under the boughs of that “faithful cross, above all other, one and only
noble tree; none in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit thy peer may be.”
Ti Moun
Those gods must have been crazy,
Thinking they could
Preserve her life,
Inspire her dance,
Observe her love,
Then watch her fling herself against the Wall
That separates
the hotel from the common street,
That separates
grandhommes from peasants,
Ti Moun from
him.
Those Caribbean gods must
have been crazy,
Thinking they could just continue on,
Their indolent
eons spent
Watching sleepy
islands for any sign of agitation,
Swatting, as if
at flies, at any trace of innovation.
Did they think they could go back to their old habits,
Tinkering with islands
And our hearts?
Those island gods must have been crazy,
And so was I,
Thinking our hearts would not melt when she cried,
“He must be wondering where I am!” and
“Don’t you remember when I danced?”
