tfd3@columbia.eduYes, to Andre Pierre's passing attention must be paid. And I am one of those who must pay it. My one meeting with him has lodged in my brain now 23 years and will go with me when I follow him one day through the narrow gate. My man Friday, whose name was Jean-Claude (no relation to Baby Doc) took me to Andre Pierre's compound, where we found him sitting in the famous chair near the easel that had on it at the time a nearly finished painting of Baron Samedi. I, a Protestant theologian and researcher of religious ritual, was there to learn what I could. The hungan/painter of world renown looked me over, poured us some late-morning rum, and settled in to conversation. It was the best, perhaps the only real, theological discussion I had throughout that summer of research in Haiti. After a while, I gestured toward the work-in-progress on the easel. "Who is that?" I asked? (I knew, but I wanted to hear what he would say.) "Jesus Christ," he calmly replied. "Why do you tell me that?" I asked. "I know that it is Baron Samedi, so why do you tell me it is Jesus Christ?" His reply was immediate: "Because he is the Lord of the living and the dead." This is not the place to explain what I made of that comment. I am not one to set religions quarrelling with one another. Suffice it to say that it was a comment so pregnant with layered meanings that I have returned to it over and over -- to think about it, and sometimes to preach about it. And every time I do, I see Andre Pierre sitting in his chair and talking in the dim light, except that his eyes emitted a light that seemed to come from somewhere else. Later he took me on a walk through the compound. At one place my foot stumbled over an object stuck in the ground. I jumped back in surprise. "Is that thing dangerous?" I said. He laughed. Then answered me: "Everything you don't know is dangerous. But if you know it, it's not dangerous." He knew a lot. |