I AM A CHILD OF THE WINDRUSH GENERATION - AND PROUD OF IT!

Bishop Jonathan Jackson

Let me introduce myself. I am Jonathan Jackson, born 15th May, 1969, to Isaiah Rupert and Eulalee Jackson, and I have five siblings.

I look back on the journey of life and consider what an amazing legacy we carry from this Windrush generation.

Every day in our house was a lesson of some kind, with ‘Jamaican proverbs’ being quoted to guide our little minds.

“If yuh cyaan hear, yuh muss feel!” comes to mind or “Yuh pick up a book from marnin’?” to combat idleness.

My parents created a family model we cannot ignore today: eating together around the dinner table; each person having a role to set or clear the table or set out the drinks and plates, knives and forks. No trays in front of the television nor taking your food to your room; we all sat around the table to eat, pray and talk — very much a missing part of many homes today.

Early Sunday morning you would hear a shout for morning prayers from my father — a faithful deacon of the New Testament Church of God for over 50 years, working alongside my mother to help build the great church we know today. We would sit on the bed, the trunk or the ottoman with sleepy eyes, reading Scriptures and telling Daddy what the Scriptures meant, and all of us praying afterwards. This simple form of gathering and praying with our parents built within us a seed of faith that I am sure helped me on my journey to choose Christianity as my faith today.

The culture of food, language and worship formed a critical framework for my life; the stories of life in the Caribbean helped give me a sense of belonging somewhere on the earth. This would lead me to later explore my faith and cultural roots in the life of Marcus Garvey and the deeper history of Jamaica.

In a hostile world filled with open prejudice, the idea of having a home where the power of the early reggae music spoke about Africa and Black heroes gave me a different kind of world view. My beautiful parents didn’t stop my cultural journey; they contributed to the Windrush legacy.

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots” (Marcus Garvey).

The openly joyful, energetic and completely prejudice-free church environment I grew up in, gave me life. I look back with romantic eyes to our ‘village’ called church, where everything happened. The funny thing was, our church wasn’t openly pro-Black but still presented Black in a positive and powerful way. We had no Black Jesus on the wall, but our teachers and pastors had a confident attitude towards life and work.

My father loved to work hard, and we loved to play hard at home, occasionally resulting in broken doors and furniture.

There were also times when my father decided we would go to work with him in the holidays. The first morning we got up was terrible, but my father had a manly lesson to teach my brothers and me: the value of having a work ethic. After a few weeks with my father on the building site, another level of my life began: that feeling of responsibility, of coming home after a hard day’s work and seeing food on the table because of a day’s work with my father.

should go (Proverbs 22:6). Now in my 50s, I am deeply rooted in the life of the Kingdom. Our parents understood the Pauline model of ‘Follow me as I follow Christ’ and they set the example of life, marriage, work and faith.

On reflection, the legacy of love and care from my Windrush generation parents must always be a resource we tap into in the spirit of Sankofa.

An amazing Windrush legacy from my parents was deep ‘faith in God’. They give me confidence that God is real and He always makes a way out of no way. The honour they gave to leadership, and the support they gave to pastors and members convicted me to follow their example.

They trained us as a family in the way we

The challenges we face today are great, but our cultural legacy is greater, so with great honour and respect we must record and pass on the gifts of faith, wisdom, knowledge, hope, joy, courage and creativity to our children. We must pass them on in church traditions, in songs, in poems, in art, in books — by every means necessary, we must pass the baton on.