Recently a colleague, Pr. Irvine Pinney, passed away. He was one of my dormmates while I attended Caribbean Union College (now the University of the Southern Caribbean) in Trinidad back in the 70s. Pinney was originally from Nevis, and I am sharing here a tribute to him by one of his roommates, Peter Noel. I thought it was special. Bajan Yankees here may recognize the name Peter Noel as a popular NY black journalist and talk show host. LAMENTATION FOR PINNEY What a remarkable coincidence: that I’d happen on this provocatively titled video clip on YouTube as the violence rages in Gaza. Yet what I am about to share has nothing to do with the politics of the instant conflict. It is one of the last testaments of Irvine Pinney, my big brother at the old Caribbean Union College who, as “Mother Leader” would say, “went” before me, recently. That’s Pinney, friends tell me, theologizing in one of the more arousing sermons he’d delivered throughout his career as a pastor on the island of Nevis. I hadn’t seen nor heard from my erstwhile roommate since I left CUC in 1977. Yet Pinney remained in my fondest memories of life on the campus of the prestigious college/boarding school. I recall many a “holy war” with this devout Seventh-Day-Adventist, who was bent on “converting” a death-bed Catholic and former acolyte-in-training from the John John ghetto. “You’re washed in the blood of Christ,” he’d often remind this peripatetic penitent then contort his face with his trademark smirk to deliver the coup de grâce: “You DON’T drink his blood and eat his body.” We’d eyeball each other, bust out laughing, argue once more like erudite theologians then reconcile in prayer. One night, after staging one of his many Biblical reenactments of Our Lord’s defiance in the face of his impending crucifixion (Pinney always cast me as Jesus Christ), some poor devil joked, “Give us Barnabas!” Pinney, sneering at the not-so-veiled reference to Catholicism as “the Vampire religion,” apologized and booted the heckler from the room. It’s what I liked about Pinney: he never failed to give the devil’s advocate a swift kick in the ass. On several occasions, as Pinney recited by rote stirring passages from several of Sister White’s books, I would incite a new round of verbal jousting by asking him my favorite annoying questions: “Are you aware that only 144,000 people would be going to heaven? If you and I were the last two believers waiting, excitedly, on The Slab, to be caught up in Christ—but suddenly a voice bursts from the heavens declaring that there was room only for one more believer to make up the 144,0000—would you let me go ahead of you?” His quick repartee was the same as ever: “It is well with my soul, Peter.”Although Pinney was committed to a life of holiness through prayer and constant Bible-study, he was a glutton for punishing humor. Silburn, Goliath, Donalis and me tormented him for wearing that body-fitted, long-sleeved, jersey, which looked like it had been fashioned from the shedded skin of a Mapapie. Every Saturday night, as the raconteurs claim, Pinney would bathe his “serpent attire” (Goliath’s description) in Limacol (Donalis) and set out to entice (Silburn) the ladies of Linda Austin Hall. “Bai, hol’ you road!” he’d lash back in his distinctive Nevis lilt—at me. But I would block the Casanova’s path to the girl’s dorm. “On Christ’s solid rock I stand!” I’d proclaim, vowing not to move outta his way. He’d smile, bear hug the scrawny badjohn and deposit him on that “other ground” with “sinking sand.” Pinney now soars above roadblocks, “mamagism” and petty quarrels: he has gone to secure a place for me, because he knows, in the end, “I’d like to be in that number.”
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 19:40:25 +0000
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