2 The fish fry at the town of Oistins on the south coast of Barbados is a Friday night favourite. Yes, styrofoam is used a lot here for food and beverage service.
3 Our farewell tea with the teachers and principal of St. Paul's school in Corozal. Delicious home-made goodies! I think the flan is my favourite (a kind of egg custard, also popular in Mexico)
4
The tiny little chapel of St. Joseph, Punta Gorda, an isolated congregation in the far south of Belize, contrasts starkly with the vast buildings and large parishes and congregations in Barbados
Winding up in the Windies
I’m sitting at my desk in the resource room of Codrington College, one of the two theological colleges for the CPWI (Church in the Province of the West Indies) with the relief of the air conditioning maintaining a viable climate for reading and writing. According ot our guide to Barbados, the temperature rarely if ever goes above 90F”,… except of course for the whole time while we are here.
This has been a feature of ministry in the Caribbean context that is significant for those not accustomed to navigating around serious heat, and even for those who do.
During our time in Corozal, we, along with most of our parishioners and most of the townsfolk, did not have a climate-controlled environment. How do you get things done, I would ask? BC tells me that she’s up by 5 am, and gets all the heavy chores done before 7 am, to ease things during the heat. Next year, she’s going to invest in air conditioning, she tells me. AG tells me that she gets up at 330 am to start making baking powder biscuits (powdah buns) and johnny cakes for selling at the market at 630 am. She goes for her walk at first light ~ it’s safest and most pleasant in terms of temperature. That way, when the sun is at the hottest, you can stay inside and the pressure is off. She needs the extra funds from selling at the market to contribute towards her children’s education. She also has an elderly mother living at home to tend to.
The harder thing to understand is that while Chetumal, our Mexican city just over the border generally shuts down between noon and 4 pm for a really good siesta, the Belizean way is generally just to keep going. So construction workers will be out in the heat of the day. I watch a crew at work doing a concrete roof. Whereas we might expect to see a concrete mixer pouring into footings in volume, I am told that the local men fear that this would replace their jobs, so they prefer to go with their traditional hand-pouring. A veritable ants nest of 50 or 60 men climb two-storey ladders with a carefully balanced bucket of concrete on their head, with a custom-made cap forming a flat base for the container, and beaver away from 8 am to 5 pm to earn their $30-50 for the day.
Meanwhile, I am lying shirtless on the bed with buckets of sweat pouring off me from doing nothing and simply trying to make it through the hottest hours of the day. All this, and vestments in church too, I’m thinking.
The month of April has no doubt been the hottest of our three-month stay.
As we start to wind up our time here, I think back over the joys of Easter, a trip offshore to Caye Caulker in the days following Easter for a little touring and R & R, and the long journey by car from Belize to Punta Gorda in the far south of Belize to celebrate with the saints there for the Sunday following Easter.
I look back with fond memories to our farewell service in Corozal on April 18th, the tears, and the gifts, and the sense of special connection that we made and know that it will never leave our hearts.
Our bus trip along the far eastern coast of Mexico took us to the very different world of Cancun, in preparation for our flight to Barbados. No contrast could be more pronounced than the villages of northern Belize and the 17-mile playground of luxury hotels and apartments around the hotel zone of Cancun. We opted to stay in a little home away from the tourist area, where we did not feel the contrast so keenly.
Barbados has given me the privilege of attending the first ever Province-wide clergy conference for the eight dioceses of the West Indies. I attended as a representative of the Diocese of Belize, realizing that many of my colleagues in Belize may not have the resources to make this trip.
Our theme was provocatively entitled “priestly vocation ~ called or hired?”, and we held daily sessions with speakers and with small group discussion over the nature of our ministry. Bishops, priests, lawyers, psychologists, were on the agenda to look at our ministry from differing angles, mostly from the perspective that we are both “called by God” to an office, and “hired” for specific functions. So many of the questions we have faced in Canada over recent years regarding professionalism, misconduct, employment standards and job description, are being discussed here articulately with clarity of focus and passionate feeling. And all surrounded by morning prayer and midday Eucharist. I love singing with these clergy ~ they have such fabulous voices and deep appreciation of hymnody. And we don’t spare any verses either. We may be running “late” (if there is such a thing) for lunch, but we will have all nine verses of the offertory hymns, and all 6 or 7 verses of opening and closing hymns, rather than keep an eye on the watch and wonder if the kitchen staff are doing the same.
James accepted the task of driving on the left-hand side of the road (RH drive) to drop me off at Christ Church parish education center each morning, and then pick me up when our sessions ended at around 3 pm, in time for a drive down the hill to Miami Beach, Oistins, for the family to take a quick dip in the refreshing Carribean waters. We love the water here, and we love to eat the fish that are caught and sold fresh daily in these waters ~ mahi-mahi, tuna, marlin, and many more.
Our first Sunday, I decided to attend St. Philip’s, the local parish church along the neighbouring country road. I was under the mistaken misconception, all of my own doing, that where the parish website advertised a “said Eucharist” for 7.00 am, that this meant I might be home for breakfast around 8 am. Think again! For one thing, there were fully 300 of a congregation, complete with a robed choir, the Church Army out in force, and the Mothers’ Union reps also decked out and sitting in a phalanx in the front pews on the epistle side. “Said” eucharist, it turned out, simply meant that the priest does not sing the Eucharist prayer or chant the Gospel. However, there will still be hymns and songs throughout the service (mostly from Hymns Ancient and Modern), plus 7 or 8 communion hymns, a 30-40 minute sermon, and about 30-40 minutes of blessings, announcements, birthday and anniversary greetings, and more. As we leave, we notice a large crowd gathering for the next service. I have this sensation that a country parish in Barabados might be comparable to a cathedral in many parts of Canada in terms of size, attendance, giving, and commitment and participation.
Barbados has one of the highest rates of literacy anywhere in the Western hemisphere, and Anglican parish life here has founded the basis of the educational system and of social cohesiveness since 1627. Parish groups and organizations flourish with clear structures and commitments. One of the other parishes I visit has an annual report available, so I peek at the annual budget of $729,000 (Canadian $365,000) and ponder the kind of stewardship programs and general economic activity that underlie these figures.
On my second Sunday here, I am invited by Canon Noel Burke to preach and concelebrate at St. David’s at the 745 am service. Noel spares me attending his 615 am service, and for that matter his 1000 am children’s service. This is solemn high mass in the classical Anglo-Catholic tradition, with all the trimmings of incense, candles, processions, choir and organist, and I need to keep my eyes and ears open for those differences from my own experience, so that I do my best to bow, genuflect, and generally move in sync with the Rector and the team of acolytes. Fortunately they have a cordless mike, so I bring myself down from the pulpit to my more customary position of wandering the aisle or standing at the chancel steps to preach on the new commandment of love.
I find it hard not to start to reflect on the differences again with Corozal. Anglicans in Belize may once have been at the center of national life, but now, for all that it may be true that the Prime Minister and Governor General are Anglicans, the church in terms of attendance, membership, and resources, is clearly a minority in a multi-cultural society. And in this sense they have more in common with the struggle of the church in BC to adapt to a multi-cultural but clearly more affluent and secularized society.
We are starting to wind down now, with the prospect of a day or two of being tourists, and a day at the 20/20 World Cup Cricket (yes we know the year is 2010, but the initiated in the cricket world will know why it is also 2020, and what 20 overs per side means anyway), before we pack our bags for the multiple flights to BC.
I am sure as I consider wrapping up my blog for this journey, that my inner reflections have only just begun, and that my learnings are going to be revealed in preparing to re-engage once again a context of ministry that somehow feels as if it will be very different from what I left, mainly because I cannot be sure that I am entirely the same person. (I’ll stick with the double-negative for the moment, because my Englishness is still sufficient to prod me towards that kind of self-evaluation!) Sandy and I speculate to ourselves, will “home” really be “home” when we get “home”?
Home, they say, is where the heart is, Andrew!
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