The Epiphany in Nassau

Our layover in Nassau until Phillip's airplane departure on Monday 1-7-08 allowed us to visit at St. Matthew's Anglican Church on the Feast of Epiphany Sunday 1-6-08. St. Matthew's was dedicated on 7-08-1802 and is the oldest church structure in the Bahamas. It is high church with beautiful stained glass windows, candles everywhere, white washed walls, and a church yard chuck full of old, interesting grave stones. Many date from the early 19th century and speak of interesting lives and often infant mortality.

Church started at 10:30 am and went on until 1 pm. We were never bored. There were processions with incense, a baptism, the ancient prayers of the old Anglican service with 3 readings and the psalms. In the middle was a vigorous sermon by Rev. Don Haynes that any Pentecostal minister would have admired. Anniversaries and birthdays were blessed. We sang every hymn in the Epiphany section and then finished up with a rollicking version of "This Little Light of Mine." The peace section carried on for 10 minutes. The ambassador from Great Britain was introduced. The communion prayers would have taxed a Cardinal. However, wild horses could not have kept us from the altar rail. We all expressed a sincere thanks to have survived the passages and to be worshipping in a ancient and honorable place.

There was a wonderful sense of modernity that gave me hope for the future of Anglicanism and Episcopalians such as me. The original builders and leaders of this church must have been as white faced as me and as English as Phillip. But here were Black priests carrying on vigorously and without the exhausted, homophilic, feel-good prosperity agenda that characterizes American and English religious/political life. All in all we had a great day.

There was a thank you celebration and send off for Phillip at the Poop Deck restaurant here in Yacht Haven Marina where we have been for the last week. He leaves tomorrow and will be sorely missed. I know that Jan and I could never have come this far without his help. We may not have even survived the Gulf crossing without his steady hand. However, we will carry on to Allen's Cay tomorrow somehow.

This will probably be the last post until a Wi-Fi connection can be re-established in the Exumas.