MARKETS AND MYSTERIES

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MARKETS AND MYSTERIES

Fr Bobbie Gilmore SSC

"The history of salvation has known unpredictable and mysterious
integrations of peoples, cultures and races." (Cardinal C.M.Martini, 1991)

As I casually walked into the nursing home where my mother resided a Filipino carer was at the door of the day room. Seeing the Filipino carer, I instinctively said, Si Mrs Gilmore. The carer replied in her Filipino dialect, natulog pa, meaning, she is asleep. Hearing her reply I turned around and set out to leave. Then I quickly caught hold of myself and became aware of the encounter. Here was a Filipino lady speaking the same dialect in an Irish nursing home that I understood from my time in the Philippines. Just imagine, I thought to myself, that this lady has come halfway around the world just to care for my mother and I went halfway around the world to pastorally care for her relatives in the Philippines.

Some months later, again visiting my mother, the African male nurse came into the day room to serve afternoon tea to the residents. We greeted each other. He introduced himself as Patrick. I asked him where in Africa he hailed from? He replied, Ghana. I had been to Ghana where my aunt, Theresa, a religious sister, lived and worked for a large part of her life. The town she lived in when I visited her was Elmina. This place is still very vivid in my memory and in much of the way I see the world and European history. Elmina is a seaport on the Atlantic from which slaves were captured, bought, sold and shipped to the Caribbean to produce sugar and spice for the European commodity market. The slave castles situated in the seashore are a stark reminder of one of the horrible, shameful episodes of European history-the Atlantic slave trade-that set the foundations for the wealth of a large segment of a European aristocracy whose mercantile greedy ambitions knew no bounds.

Anyway, I asked Patrick where in Ghana was his home? To my great surprise he replied, Elmina. I was delighted to tell him that I had visited Elmina. So when he finished serving tea we talked for a while about Elmina, it’s history and my aunt’s work there in the schools and community.

Later, reflecting on my conversation with both Patrick from Ghana, and my previous encounter with Maribel, the Filipina, both of whom cared for my mother, I thought to myself how small the world had become and how I, my mother, my family and indeed Ireland were interconnected with its diversity of peoples and cultures that modern communication has facilitated.

Daily we are confronted with all kinds of events and encounters. However, few of those remain in the live memory. But, some do. That these events remain in mine is because later I was able to connect these encounters with the quotation of Cardinal Martini at the Vatican Conference on Migration in October 1991. It is difficult to imagine that people from what were described as foreign missions and my family through my mother were linked in such a mysterious way.

Sure, such events can be objectively explained away by changes in the Irish education system that concentrated on technology to meet the needs of inward foreign investment in high-tech industries following Ireland’s entry to the European Union leaving a deficit in the caring professions. The presence of diverse cultures in Ireland can also be explained away by the indexing of a housing mortgage to two salaries. This has coerced both parents to earn salaries thus putting an end to generational care for the young and for the old. One could also say that immigrants were recruited to do tasks that the Irish and Europeans generally did not want to do.  Lastly, immigrants are coming from countries that have demographic surpluses to regions of the world, like the European Union, that are experiencing demographic deficits particularly in the caring, manufacturing, construction, agriculture professions and other public services.

But, however one looks at the presence of diversity in Ireland, one has to accept that it is not all a one way street. Over centuries Irish people have brought their talents and gifts to people in far flung places.  In the vast majority of those places Irish people were welcomed, appreciated for what they offered. They were cared for and memories and signs of their presence linger long after they have passed on.

I am sure it will be the same in Ireland. Irish people have the capacity to recognise the gifts that others bring. And if they don’t wish to analyse the impact of market forces on modernity, demographic pluses and minuses, the death of distance in modern communication, they can always revert, as I do, to Cardinal Martini’s transcendent thoughts on this phenomenon of diverse human interaction that catches the eye everyday. Such events have to be looked at as points of personal development, better human understanding and mutual respect. The demise of the Celtic Tiger has not brought about the end of history. A new future daily challenges our nationalistic, cultural and isolated complacency.

"We must recognise that the laws of our societies have not necessarily
reached the highest possible level of civilisation, and that our path is
not necessarily the only one."
(Cardinal Martini, Vatican Conference on Migration. 1991) 

July 20th, 2010