Fishing In The Bahamas

Well I have been remiss in not blogging my first real fishing trip while here so this is it.

After Easter, but before Fr. Martin's departure, one of the parishioners in Cargill Creek offered to take us fishing and we took him up on it.

Jim Johnson is a local Bahamian who has a boat and offered to take us out. Fr. Martin and I met him at the dock in Behring Point and off we went. This is a pic of Jim at the helm as we cleared Cargill Creek and headed out to sea.

When we first arrived on the boat there was another man on the boat, his name was Christian and, after we had cleared the Creek and were out in the ocean Jim stopped the boat and Christian donned a snorkel and mask and slipped over the side. We weren't sure what or why this was happening until Christian slipped below the surface of the water and came up with two big conch shells. Now these were not the pretty pink conche shells you see in the tourist shops. They were dirty and covered with sea grass - conche in the wild.

We trailed Christian for what seemed like 40 minutes and he kept handing us conche after conche and (since I'd given Jim $50 for gas) I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever actually toss out a line for fish. Turns out this was part of Jim's plan - conche was bait.

With a boatload of bait off we went to fill our coolers with fish. We caught several variety but by far the most common was the Bahamian Porky. Isn't he cute? Let me tell you, once we fileted this little cutie it was great white meat. What a fish-fry!

One thing about this fishing trip is that while I used my 9' Ugly Stick and fancy Daewoo reel with all the bells and whistles, Jim and Christian basically used a spool of line, a rust nail for weight, and a hook - regardless of what equipment we used, we all caught fish - you can guess who caught more (I think the secret was their rusty nail sinkers).

Nothing better than a drop line and knowing when to yank it.

Suffice it to say we had a great day and weeks later, Ginni and I are still eating fish from this one fishing trip.

Undocumented Aliens - and a car inspection

I was driving from Cargill Creek to Fresh Creek and was waved down by someone wanting a ride. This is not an uncommon occurance driving the Church van, people wave us down for rides often. This time however, the person was wearing a police uniform. Not to worry - he just needed a lift to the Fresh Creek police station for work so off we went.

During our conversation he told me that in North Andros the immigration office had asked the police to assist in a sweep for undocumented aliens in the North Andros bush. In the Bahamas, this means Haitians.

Haitians arrive on Bahamian shores in a variety of ways, usually the stop in the Bahamas is a short one, with the US being their preferred destination. However, some set up house by squatting on the plentiful, but remote, land in the interior of Andros. North Andros has been home to Haitians in the past. I even found a Baptismal register for the township of Mastic Point where a section of the register was set apart for 'Haitian Baptisms'.

Anyway, as part of this conversation the policeman told me where they did the sweep and that they found cottages all throughout the bush where a small village had sprung up. When they arrived people scattered but they did arrest about 40. I found out that all of them, when asked, claimed to be Catholic and its giving me qualms of conscience. Where these people were is not that far from Mastic Point, where we have been asked to come and start holding services for new Catholics that have moved in. Time will tell, but this is a new dimension to what might happen if we start ministering to the undocumented aliens of North Andros.

On another, lighter topic - the Church van needed an inspection sticker - and when I looked into that, it also needed its registration renewed. I also knew that my tires were getting threadbare (the roads here do a number on tires in a short period of time) so I started by going to Rev. Hinsey'[s Garage and got myself some new tires to replace the bald ones, then I felt I was ready for the inspection.

In the Bahamas to do this you need your insurance policy as part of the process so, after digging out all the appropriate forms I headed off to the Police Station to get it done. I went into the Administrator's Office and we paid the fee for the inspection and registration and she gave me the new stickers for the windshield and license plate, and then typed up the new registration. She then gave me everything I needed and sent me off. I asked where I should go for the inspection and she looked up at me, blinked twice, and said, "Does everything work on the car?" I said yes, and she said, "Well then your all set - here's the inspections sticker". I was done.

I guess its not always that easy, but when its the Church van, maybe it is.

A week on Nassau

With the Easter holiday behind us, and this being a school vacation week (and thus a CCD vacation as well), Ginni headed off to Massachusetts to deal with our son Mike's move to Sag Harbor NY to be with his brother. Mike's departure will be good for him since he'd had his fill of working in public access television, and his brother needed his help - so new horizons and new opportunities for Mike.

Meanwhile we still own our home in Massachusetts and now we need a renter for the apartment Mike had been renting. So my saintly wife hit the road to help with the final clean up, move out, renovate, and clean up yet again effort - all the while advertizing, interviewing, and running credit checks on potential renters. Time will tell how this plays out.

While all this is going on in the States, I am still here plugging away. With the Easter school vacation I have no CCD to prepare for, making life much, much easier. An added plus, however, is that the following week was the annual Archdiocese of Nassau Clergy Retreat. Consequently, I cancelled CCD for two weeks and for this second week I flew to Nassau for the retreat.

Once more I flew GlenAir, and once again I was in the co-pilot seat of the 5 seater. We arrived safely, despite the white knuckles on this tiny plane, and headed out to the Emmaus Center for the retreat. Now I must tell you that, since I had worked at running a retreat house for 7 years in Wareham, whenever I visit another retreat center I am pretty observant. Suffice it to say this was very nice. The food was fantastic, and there was always more than we could eat (although we tried to eat it all).

The retreat director was Fr. John O'Grady, a diocesan priest from Albany. He is also a world-class scholar on St. Paul and, with this being the year of St. Paul, our retreat had a Pauline-focus. Fr. O'Grady has taught all throughout Europe, studied with guys like Karl Rahner, just to name one. I have come to realize that one of the benefits of being in this Archdiocese is that our Archbishop was sent to the very best theological schools in the world and is very well connected.

With that said, the retreat had more of a bible study format than a retreat - but I did come away with a few gems. Fr. O'Grady, as a bible scholar, loves words. Words are important in scripture study since, to truly understand the text, you need to understand the meaning of what was intended in the original Greek or Hebrew. So, the word I came to appreciate much more on this retreat was PEACE.

Lets start with PEACE. In each of the resurrection appearances we are reading during Easter Jesus begins by saying PEACE to the disciples. In Hebrew peace is Shalom - now I knew that, but Fr. O'Grady explained that a more accurate translation would be 'may you have the very best of everything'. So if I were to say Shalom to a farmer, I would be saying 'May you have the best of everything, may your cows all have triplets, may your harvest fill 2 barns, may you have the very best of everything'. So Fr. O'Grady explains it like this, and I get it, but then it occured to me that each of us is a multi-faceted individual, I am Deacon, Father, Husband, . . .

When someone says Shalom to me, they are wishing me the very best of everything - they are wishing the very best of every aspect of me - the very best of everything as Husband, as Father, as Deacon, and the list goes on until every facet of my-self is covered. Whew!

But it doesn't end there, when we pray, when we hear at Mass the words, 'May the peace of the Lord be with you' - what we should hear is 'May the Shalom of God be with you' - think about it in the context I just described - May the SHALOM OF GOD be with you. May the very best of God be with you - isn't that incredible! Peace. Shalom.

Good stuff, huh.

I returned on Saturday, just in time for the 6PM liturgy at the Navy Base. Having had very little time to prepare a homily I was a bit concerned until I read the Gospel and realized the first thing Jesus says in this Gospel, when appearing to the disciples once again is - Peace. I had a homily ready to go without having to write down a single word. God is good.

The Triduum & Easter

Well after having experienced a Bahamian Palm Sunday we moved on to Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter.

St. John Chrysostom hosted a combined Holy Thursday celebration for all three churches we serve. There had been very little planning since I wanted to see what they have done here in the past and Fr. Bill Martin has been coming here to celebrate Holy Week for over a decade. Knowing that, I still wanted to try to set up some of the preliminaries - such as what 12 people would have their feet washed on Holy Thursday. Unwittingly, I created a bit of a stir when I told people I'd try to get that done early. People kept saying that members would be hurt they couldn't get their feet washed, and I kept saying, "Who? Tell me and I'll include them." The response was, "well, we don't know, but if they want to come up and they can't they'll be hurt". I went around and around on this one until someone explained that instead of 12 people, Fr. Bill always opened it up to the entire church and whoever wanted to have their feet washed could. I was amazed that they were this open, and a bit concerned that Holy Thursday could run into several hours if everyone came forward, not to mention the logistics of how many towels, how many pitchers of water, basins, etc. we'd need. I'd been told not to worry about it - they'd use a common basin and clean water from the pitcher, tossing the dirty water if we needed to - we didn't need to use a clean basin for everyone since their feet were dirty anyway.

Well, as it happened we had a low turnout but all 3 churches were represented. At the invitation people came up to the sanctuary where a long bench had been prepared. Fr. Bill started at one end and moved right on down the bench, using a common basin for all and changing towels every 2 or 3 people. All in all it went rather well. One thing that I changed this year that seemed to go well was reposing the Blessed Sacrament. In prior years Fr. Martin would simply process out to the Sacristy with it, but the people had no opportunity to worship there. This year, since Fr. Martin was living at the Navy Base I converted the priest's apartment attached to the church into a small adoration chapel and installed an old wooden tabernacle I found in storage and cleaned up. It felt perfect and we processed out of the church, singing our way through the parking lot, and into the chapel - incense and all.

After the service I helped our sacristan strip the altar and do what set-up we could do for the Good Friday service. When we were done, however, someone turned off the main power switch to everything, rather than the switch to the ceiling fans. An easy thing to remedy except whenever we lose power, we lose our internet. Our router is a bit sensitive to that and this was no exception, so for the rest of the Triduum we had no internet (those no internet telephone to wish happy Easter to our friends and family).

Good Friday was a marathon, the first Good Friday was at 10:30AM in Cargill Creek. Now I realize that Good Friday shouldn't be a morning celebration, but when you need to do 3 of them you adjust. The second service was at 12:30 at AUTEC and we barely got there in time for that, followed by a 3PM service in Fresh Creek for the third service. Then there were Stations of the Cross at 6:00.

What spiced this up a bit was that at the third service, the one in Fresh Creek, we have no music since our drummer has become unavailable. Consequently Ginni had pulled out her guitar and was planning to lead a few of the songs. As we read the passion (in 4 parts to include the laity), and as Ginni is worrying about what to play and when, there was a huge crash as one of our parishioners passed out and fell to the floor. Now our floors are tile and a risk of his being hurt from the fall was very real. Coincidentally, the Doctor was in attendance, as was my wife the guitar-playing nurse. All thoughts of music were replaced by blood pressures and pulses, and get a cold drink, and let's sit him up over here, and ... Once it was clear he was up, and we had a Doctor and a nurse, we resumed reading the Passion and our healthcare team took over. The Doctor called the clinic and they called in the nurse practitioner while Ginni and Leonard, another parish volunteer, took him to the clinic. Suffice it to say they missed the rest of Good Friday services.

Holy Saturday was silent, until the Easter Vigil that night, and I liked that. It's Holy Saturday, Jesus is in the tomb, and we wait, expectantly - there is an anticipation to Holy Saturday that is, well, Holy.

The Easter Vigil was at St. John's, then Easter Day we did a service at the Navy Base at 8:30 and in Cargill Creek at 11:30. The Christ Candle I found in storage was good, but had 2 cracks in it that made it rather unsteady. I patched it up as best I could so I thought it'd work, but it made inserting the 5 rosettes into it during the candle blessing a bit tricky. Fr. Martin sang the Exultet (I will try to do it next year). We had no RCIA or baptism candidate (that too will be different next year since we already have 2 in RCIA formation with 3 others considering joining us). All in all, the Easter Vigil was wonderful, but we did miss what we have come to enjoy so much at St. Timothy's in Norwood.

Anyway, the Vigil was over around 10PM, we showered and got to bed and were up and out for the 8:30 service at AUTEC, then the 11:30 service in Cargill Creek. We were joined by vacationers from one of the local fishing lodges - from Italy!

Arriving home we weren't done yet. Once home we did our communion calls to those who couldn't make it to church due to illness. While tiresome after the services we had just led, it was special to continue serving in this particular way - bringing the Body of Christ to those too ill to celebrate the Risen Christ.

We were rewarded however. For Easter, the US Navy served lobster tail in the dining hall. Somehow we were able to drag ourselves back to the base and have Easter Dinner with them.

All in all, we put in alot of hours and we can see several things we think we could improve on for next year - but this first year we needed to learn their traditions, their methods of celebrating the resurrection, and so we did. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead on ANDROS - AMEN!

Palm Sunday

Hello again, I thought I would share our Palm Sunday celebration with you. As I said in my last post we are blessed to have Fr. Bill Martin visiting us from Palm Sunday, through Holy Week and Easter. It is a blessing for me to be able to sit back and see how Holy Week is celebrated here. Fr. Martin has been coming to Andros for Holy Week for over 10 years so I am watching and learning.


The first thing to understand about Palm Sunday here is that palms are everywhere AND they are a bit different from the single stalk that we use in Boston. Here everyone gets an entire branch of a type of palm that you can really see being used in the bible story of Palm Sunday to blanket the street before Jesus as He entered Jerusalem.



All three parishes had a palm blessing service and an enterance procession. This is a pic of the blessing and procession at St. John Chrysostom in Fresh Creek. Fr. Bill Martin visited us from Vermont. A retired Air Force Chaplain he stayed at the AUTEC Navy Base while with us and led services on Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter.







The procession at Christ the King in Cargill Creek was a bit different from the others in that, down the road a piece, there is a tiki hut so we started there and processed down the street into the church. Rather impressive I must say.









Each church read the passion in four parts, with the people included in the readings. Every time the crowd shouted "Crucify Him" I literally got the chills - every time. I don't know why but that one line of the people shouting Crucify Him really struck home with me this year.



Suffice it to say Palm Sunday on Andros was a wonderful experience for Ginni and I and we are looking forward now to Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and the feast of feasts - Easter Sunday. I am sure I'll have much to say after what will be both exhilarating, and exhausting Triduum.

Chrism Mass

Well in my last post I promised to tell you about the Chrism Mass on Nassau, so here goes.

Suffice it to say, for me, this was a fantastic liturgy.

The Chrism Mass is an annual liturgy where the local Bishop consecrates all the holy oils and chrism to be used over the next year. This includes the Oil for the Sick, used during the Sacrament of the Sick; the Oil of Catechumens used during Baptism, and Holy Chrism used during Baptisms, Confirmations, and Ordinations.

In Boston the Chrism Mass has always been held mid-day, on a mid-week day which meant that Permanent Deacons with jobs pretty much could not attend so while ordained for 7 years I have never been able to attend a Chrism Mass. In the Archdiocese of Nassau clergy must fly in from islands all over the Carribean so they hold it during the evening so all can attend.

I should explain the logistics for those of you who have never visited the Cathedral. St. Francis Xavier Cathedral is a new building, absolutely wonderful, built next to the old cathedral that was built by the founding fathers of the diocese. The old cathedral is a fantastic historic building, still a great worship space, but we used it to vest prior to the procession entering the Cathedral. Here priests and deacons from all the islands were present, and the Archdiocese provided matching gold and white Deacon stoles and Priest chasibles for the liturgy.

Parish choirs from throughout the Archdiocese joined forces and the music was glorious as we processed in. Chairs were set up around the rear of the altar for us and after processing in I was struck by this overwhelming sense of community, or commradarie with the priests and deacons that I now serve with.

Archbishop Patrick Pinder led the worship and, at the appropriate time, the pitchers of oil were presented to him for his blessing and consecration. During his homily he spoke about the significance of the oils and, in particular, the Holy Chrism, used for ordination, would for the 2nd year in a row not be used for that function since there were no priests to ordain in this diocese. "We have the chrism, but no one to ordain", was an incredibly sad moment in the service.

Bringing the oils to the Archbishop

After the consecration of the oils Archbishop Pinder asked all priests and deacons to stand and we re-dedicated ourselves to our ministries by renewing our vows. This was very special to me and I was amazed I had been missing this in Boston. Mass continued with Archbishop Pinder presiding but during the Mass, at the sign of peace, I had an experience that made this liturgy even more special. I hug the deacon on my right, the deacon next to me, shake hands with the priests in front of me and then turn to the altar servers who were standing behind my chair. With them was the Rector of the Cathedral who came over to me, reached across the back of my chair and hugged me and said, "Peace Deacon, I want to thank you for being here, we appreciate all you are doing on Andros, peace". Blew me away.

During all this Ginni was sitting in the community with a friend and a little Bahamian girl began asking Ginni about what was happening and why. Ginni ended up making a new friend as she helped the girl follow the program to understand what was happening.

When it came time to distribute the oils to the parishes each parish in the Archdiocese was called up one by one. Andros was the 2nd alphabetically so I didn't have to wait long. They call "St. John Chrysostom, Fresh Creek, Andros" and up I go to recieve my 3 bottles. As the Archbishop hands them to me they call, "Christ the King, Cargill Creek, Andros" so I stay there and the Archbishop hands me 3 more bottles. Then they call "AUTEC Navy Base, Andros" and he hands me 3 more bottles saying, "You have alot of people out there", and at this point, with me juggling 9 bottles of sacred oils, the Cathedral breaks into laughter.

I made it back to my seat wondering if the people made the connection that the reason I was juggling 9 bottles for 3 churches was the lack of vocations. When I made it back to my chair the Rector of the Cathedral met me and helped transfer the bottles to a side table.

As the liturgy ended we began to process out and the Rector caught my eye and told me to hurry back and get my oils, else the altar servers would gather them up and put them away. It dawned on me that once we got to the rear doors of the church I'd be battling to crowd to return to get the oils. But I wasn't about to let them be picked up by someone else.

The Recessional Procession

When we reach the door of the church our line of priests and deacons go outside but in an orderly line formed a circle in a covered area right in front of the Cathedral doors. After we are all outside the Archbishop comes out as part of the procession and goes to the center of the circle and stands there with his eyes closed as the last 2 verses of the recessional song are song (Bahamians sing every verse of every song). When the song ends he opens his eyes, looks at all of us, blesses us, and says "My brothers, have a holy and blessed Easter", THEN we disperse to disrobe and head home.

I, of course, dive back into the crowd now pouring out of the Cathedral to get back to retrieve my oils. It was like a salmon swimming upstream but I did it and juggled my 9 bottles back to the old cathedral to disrobe and then connect with my ride.

An absolutely wonderful experience for me, for Ginni, and for anybody I could get to listen to me. I think I must have told anyone who would listen for days about how great it was. We returned on Friday where I was to lead a holy hour at Christ the King in Cargill Creek and we were 20 minutes late starting because someone asked how my trip to Nassau went!

Hope you enjoy the pics. Thanks to Jeanie McLean from Rochester who was with us and emailed them to us once she got home. GOOD JOB JEANIE!

Inter-Island flights

Well we're in Nassau and last night we participated in the Chrism Mass, which was absolutely wonderful - that's a blog entry all by itself. What I want to tell you about in this entry, however, is our flight from Andros to Nassau Wednesday morning.

Usually we fly a small airline called Western Air. They fly to and from Nassau daily and are pretty reliable, however the last few times they've been late so we decided to try one of the smaller flights. GlenAir (owned by Glen), has daily flights as well, but its a 5-seater or a 10-seater plane. From what I'd seen though, they always were on time so we took the plunge.

We arrived at the airport at 6:30 for the 7:00 flight and the plane was waiting. We met the other passengers, handed our one bag over to Johnnie, who carried it to the plane (no radar machine or baggage exam here), and all 5 of us walked onto the tarmac to board (it was the 5-seater plane).

The pilot stood by the wing and took our $60/person fare (cash only please but $10 cheaper than Western). Then came the task of getting into the plane. There was a step sticking out of the side of the plane, then the next step was the wing, then into the plane. There was no aisle, those in the rear 2 seats stepped over the first 2 seats to get to their seats. The pilot wisely had the two more athletic-looking men climb into those seats. An older woman struggled with the stepping on the wing deal, but she did it and got into the first seat, then Ginni was next - up onto the wing, ducking into the body of the plane and into the last of the 4 seats in the body of the plane. It was then I realized my seat would be the co-pilot's.

The pilot looks at me and says, "let me get in first." He needed to get in first because there is only 1 door and his seat was on the far side of the plane. So in he goes, then I follow, plopping myself into the co-pilot's chair, complete with steering wheel, pedals, and the windshield right in front of me.

I tried to close the door and he told me to leave it open so we'd have some ventilation. Propellor #1 gets cranked up (on his side of the plane), then #2 (on my side). I try to close the door with the prop spinning about 4 feet away and he says, "Not yet, leave it open", and I do while we taxi down the runway. So we taxi, and taxi and taxi and I am holding onto the door by the arm rest, leaving it open a few inches with the sound of the prop, and the associated breeze, filling the plane.

Once we finally reach the end of the runway and turns the plane into the wind, reaches across my body and pulls the door tight, pushes down the little button to lock it (just like your car door lock), then off we go into the sunrise. I a few minutes we're flying through clouds, I'm trying to read the altimeter and speed and compass and the tiny GPS screen - and 15 minutes later we're descending into Nassau. As we taxi toward the terminal the pilot's phone rings and its Johnnie back in Fresh Creek. I hear the pilot say, "Yeah, I can get back to Fresh Creek this morning, how about 9:30?" and I wondered if the Western Air flight had been cancelled again and Glen Air was going to pick up the slack.

Getting out, this time I am first and the whole boarding procedure takes place in reverse, with me helping everyone go from the wing to that little step sticking out of the side of the plane, and then the ground. The door at the nose of the plane is opened and we all take our bags and head out to the taxi stand to go into town.

As we walked across the tarmac I look at Ginni and say, "Its just one little adventure after another isn't it" and she laughed and said "I just prayed really hard the entire flight".

Bottom line - we were on time without a hitch and our visit to Nassau was off to a flying start - literally.

More about our visit here and the Chrism Mass in the next post.