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24863: TFD3 (reply) re: 24841: Cosentino re: Andre Pierre: Attention must be paid



tfd3@columbia.edu

Yes, 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.