”All night, all day.
Angels watching over me.” ~ (Trad).

Although I was brought up in the church, I can’t say that the usual vision of heavenly angels was something I actively believed in.  Like fairies, elves and gnomes, they seemed to be a little too fantastical to be real.  Thus, the concept of life after death, where those I knew had been transformed into angels with gossamer wings, was also difficult to visualize.  Many of the stories I was told in Sunday School (and later told to my Sunday School students) involved angels appearing unto humans, most notably of course in the Christmas and Easter stories, often dramatized by willing children eager to dress up and participate.  I would have been one of them.  My mother, always creative and artistic, would fashion haloes out of wire and tinsel (very scratchy headpieces), wings attached to our outstretched hands.

On my recent trip to Jamaica, one of the most memorable features of life there relates to travel.  In the urban areas, you would almost believe there are more cars than people, but then there are plenty of pedestrians also.  The condition of the roads covers the spectrum from unpaved with potholes, through paved with potholes, to smooth and pothole-free. However, the last category is in the minority.  Add to that a certain style of driving which combines the attitude of a New York taxi driver with the skills of a Formula One racer but when you throw potholes, narrow roads, random adults, kids, goats, goat kids, and roadside vendors into the mix, anything can happen.

And yet people mostly arrive alive. Unfortunately there were 425 traffic fatalities in 2023, a rate more than three times higher than Trinidad and Tobago, which was ‘…fueled by indiscipline and social determinants such as excessive speeding and disregard for road rules’ (according to the Pan American Health Organization).  So when driving in Jamaica, the act becomes a very mindful one, on the part of the driver and all passengers.  Keep your eyes on the road, and the other drivers, and the pedestrians and the road surface and everything else! I was frequently reminded of my favorite PBS character Mrs. Bucket (that’s Boo-kay!) warning her poor henpecked husband “watch out for the cyclist!”

Having grown up on the island, a visit to Jamaica is a return to my childhood home, the place where I grew up.  Everything was so familiar, and in some places, you felt as if time had stood still.  Up in the hills, in the country (in Jamaica, it is referred to merely as ‘country’, as in “I am going to country”), the pace is still slower, less bothered by outside forces.  All around the countryside I saw lines of clothes like prayer flags adorning flat-topped houses, decorating the yards, announcing the range of ages of the occupants.  I myself revisited long forgotten habits of hanging a load of clothes on the line, hearing my mother’s voice in my head: now don’t hang them by the shoulders, they leave marks, make sure not to double up the thicker areas, they will never dry.  And then remembered the added advice necessary when drying clothes under a tropical sun: hang them inside out so the colors don’t fade.

It is not surprising that my edges were a little raw by the time I drove into the town where I grew up.  I had been having so many reminders of my childhood that my nerve endings were jangling.  We were going to the funeral of a past principal of my high school, and there was also a personal connection since my parents had been godparents to one of his children.  My parents had continued their friendship with the principal and his wife through the retirement of all. 

Up at the top of the hill of the campus of my high school stands a building which houses a library below, and a large hall at the top.  At the time it was built (1967) it was the largest auditorium in the Caribbean.  It is built into a hillside, so you walk into the hall from the road at the top, but climb a host of steps to access the library from the road below.  My father, as chaplain, was responsible for conducting Friday Assembly (as a Christian based school, each day started out with ‘devotions’) which consisted of a hymn or two, a prayer or two, and his famous Friday Morning Message (hence my own FMM tradition).  He was a ‘jokify’ man (loved to include jokes in his messages) and his stories usually provoked laughter.  I was immediately transported there when the female minister who was leading the funeral started off with a joke, making us laugh despite the solemnity of the occasion.

As we sang the first hymn (Angel voices ever singing round thy throne of light) I was again hearing my father’s voice, his strong Welsh tenor commanding the pace and the enthusiasm.  He had visited a patient at the local hospital once, and she had told him how she looked forward to the devotions every morning, to hear the singing.  The hospital was way across town from the school, but the way sound bounces around those hilly areas, she was able to hear.  So after that, my father always exhorted us students to ‘…sing so the patients in the hospital can hear you!’.  And we did!

The dead may or may not be flying around above our heads, on gossamer wings with glowing haloes, but I have no doubt that angels accompanied me on my comings and goings around Jamaica.  They made sure that I made contact with people my parents would have wanted to acknowledge themselves, if they had been there.  They pushed me to do and say the things they would have done.  And as I walked around the home I grew up in, on the grounds of the church where my father was minister, I could feel his spirit and know he was there too.

This Friday morning as I wake up to a cool South Florida morning, I am missing the cool breeze of the hills of Jamaica. As I hear the odd rumble of the train going by I am missing the early morning wakeup calls of the roosters.  And yes, country people still use the rooster’s call to know that it is time to get up! And yesterday as we drove to visit my family, we did not miss the potholes or the random animals, but the traffic and the crazy drivers reminded us that there are plenty of hazards in the USA too!

Have a wonderful weekend, Family! And look out for the angels that are watching over you.  They may come in forms quite unlike their biblical description!

One Love!

Namaste.