Jamaica: Again & Again

The morning after the aforementioned rowdy and loud party at the Blue Mountain Guesthouse and Cafe (see last week's blog post), I was sitting out on the cafe porch, drinking coffee, and a reggae song was playing on the sound system. 

I took a video/audio recording of it because it seemed to restore the proper Jamaica vibe over the environs, replacing the specter of the sappy 80's pop music from the night before party. Be gone!

Now that I have two iPhones, thanks to AT&T no longer offering a discounted new replacement, I downloaded the Shazam app on my older phone to use it to identify the song on my new iPhone. I brought my old iPhone to  Jamaica as a back-up in case my new iPhone was stolen, damaged, or etc. I also used the old phone to take pics when walking on steep paths and out in the wild and sweating a torrent.  

I was chagrined to find out that the song playing was by a Jamaican musician Mavodo (who genre is a combo of Rap and Rasta, plus auto-tuned Pop), a gangsta life character. 

         

I looked up the lyrics for the song Again and Again which was the tune playing out on the patio that beautiful and peaceful Jamaican morning. It was a good lesson to not romanticize life/nature in the mountains of Jamaica.    

Movado seems to have same spiritual/biblical references in his lyrics and titles of his songs and his music has a tone of searching  for something more. A torn soul. He seems weary of all his troubles...his friends' dying. 

God, in His grace, allows our idols to return to us again and again with the hope that we will weary of them. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a thousand times, shame on me. I had the opportunity to be revisited some idols of my past in Jamaica. I asked myself the question, what would be the consequences of embracing them again:

1) I would resume past worship (all idols become objects of worship)

2) I would be ambivalent about them

3) They would terrorize me, which is why I ran from them to start with

So, I thought through why I should re-idolize and came to the conclusion that every consequence was not what I wanted. The temptations passed. 

What were the idols? Use your imagination. It matters but doesn't. Since this is a public forum, just take my word for it and trust that I speak the truth--yet vaguely--to protect me from those who would perhaps misuse the information. 

It reminds me a story that St. Augustine tells about his life. He ran into one of his former lovers and she said something to the effect, "Augustine, it is I."  He replied, "But it is not I." He had been changed. Soren Kierkegaard wrote wisely, “God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.”