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The Story of Hosay: Dancing the Moon
TriniSoca.com

Michael Goring Speaks on Hosay

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Staff Article
Interview Recorded: May 25, 2005
Posted: June 27, 2005

They say I am a spiritualist

Michael Goring
Michael Goring
There are two Moons on the streets and those are the two Sons, Hassan and Hussain. At one time we had as many as nine or eleven Tadjahs. When we were not as we are now, when there were a lot of different sicknesses, people felt I got results with what I was doing. So I made a promise to do what I have to do. We are seeing it now with the people who give Flags; the cloth. Some of them have been giving cloth for the past twenty years. They made promises. But we who know better do not ever make a promise. Promises are death, so we avoid doing that. I will not tell you I am going to do something for you if I didn't think I am capable of doing it, because the spoken word will come back. Some people make the silly mistake of saying, "Well as long as I am living I will do so and so." You are tied to it. When something goes wrong they think it is because they did not keep their promise, which is very wrong. Those promises can become burdensome.

I would try to use live things as examples for you. If you have a family or a friend who falls on hard times and you start to help them, you do not mind for the first month. But the mere idea you start to help him, he takes advantage of his privileges and is demanding of you to help him. Now when you are quite privileged to give to someone who starts burdening you, your life starts to take a different turn and you become fed up. Whenever people come here, they tell me they got baptized in the Baptist faith and they promise to do so and so. But have they been doing it? They will say, "Boy sometimes I want to go and do so and so" or "I want to go and give them what I have for them, but it is so out of the way." If you promised then you will know what I am talking about. If things were going beautifully, and all of a sudden it starts slipping, the first thing that comes to people's mind is, "I was to do so and so but I did not do it."

They say I am a spiritualist. I have a little knowledge for all the faiths. I have been born into a Muslim family but I am an Anglican. I have Baptist friends and people who are from different religions. We can sit down and we can talk, and we can agree to disagree. I am what you will call a spiritualist. I will go to church with my wife, but I do not need to go to church. My church is here (heart). I would not tell you I am going to help you if I have no intentions of helping you. I will do for you what I can do for you; what I will do for myself, I will do. They used to call me an elder and I couldn't understand it because the people who were calling me elder were plenty older than me. I can now understand what they meant. I can sit down and I can reason. I am a very good sounding board. You come and you hit me with everything, and you would never hear it down the street. If I were to give you information and I think it was wrong, I will get on the phone and call you and let you know so and so and suggest you rethink.

This is where we are hoping that we can get more communication. Some people are not privileged to be able to speak and some people are not privileged to understand. I like what you did just now. What you did not hear you asked me to repeat. Young people do not do that and they miss the essence of what we are saying. It is important for communication in everything. I trust when you all have used this article it will help some people out there to understand what it is all about. I am hoping that things will work out for our country because it is in dire straits.

Continue...

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