This morning, after cleaning the ship’s “soles and bowls,” Heather and I went to mass at the Anglican Cathedral in Freetown.  Today is the Feast of Epiphany, which celebrates the wise men bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus and is the final day of the twelve days of the Christmas season.
    The cathedral, itself, is a beautiful building dating back to the British colonial period and is filled with plaques memorializing Britons whose lives were spent here in Sierra Leone.  The mass was a very impressive high-church affair, with incense, a huge processional and glorious music from the choir, which featured boy sopranos.  As a member of the United Church of Christ, much of the service was familiar to me, but with certain notable differences.  The congregation chanted at least a half dozen Psalms.  Many of the hymn texts were familiar but were sung to unfamiliar tunes.  The formal liturgy of the Anglican tradition was second-nature to Heather, whose father is an Episcopal priest, but I found that I was always just far enough out of my tradition that I had to pay very close attention to the flow of the service to keep from losing my place.
    The dean of the cathedral and his wife were celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary and they set aside time during the service to have the bishop officiate in a brief service where they renewed their wedding vows.  In his sermon, the bishop spoke of the gifts the magi brought to Jesus and how we also need to offer ourselves in service to God and the world in the new year.  There were numerous sung responses in the liturgy and the choir sang “And the Glory of the Lord Shall be Revealed” from Handel’s Messiah.  After the service, as Heather and I reflected on the service, we talked about how the service (which ran three hours) is reflected back in our US/Canadian cultures in a combination of the high-church Anglo-Catholic worship and the black church traditions that we have both experienced.  This morning’s worship was a very visible reminder that our shared faith bridges barriers of geography, race, culture and tradition.
    In the afternoon, Drew and I went into the city to do a little shopping.  Freetown is very quiet on Sundays and even the market stalls that are normally very busy are quiet.  It was a wonderful opportunity for us to wander the streets and get a better sense of the city’s geography without having to dodge traffic or fend off hawkers.  I’m becoming increasingly comfortable here and am looking forward to future expeditions and further chances to get to understand the people and the culture of Sierra Leone.

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