“The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship”
July, 1994
Last August, during the annual Parish Committee retreat one of the stated 1993-94 goals was to have “...several of our parishioners visit our partner church and all return alive.” We've done just that. On Tuesday, July 5, four teens and nine adults returned to Bedford following an 11-day trip to our partner church in Abásfalva, Transylvania.
For many (perhaps all) the visit was a peak life experience. There were no dry eyes when we were welcomed by 300 villagers at the summit of the dirt road leading to their village. Their church steeple was visible about half a mile ahead. Some were on horses adorned with wreaths of flowers, some were outfitted in their Hungarian traditional dress, all were on foot or on horse drawn wagons. A rider on horseback delivered a welcome message which was translated by a Unitarian Theological student who spent the entire 12 days with us. Part of the message was that they had been waiting for our visit for a long time… like the star of Bethlehem. Old ladies and young people handed us flowers as we processed into their community. For four days we churched, we talked, we ate, we drank, we laughed, we cried… we communed with people we felt like we'd known for a lifetime.
A few in the community had indoor toilets, a few had tractors, a few had cars. Most started the day with the rising sun. They milked the cows and goats and fed the pigs, chickens and geese. When the shepherd blew the horn at 5:45, the cows and goats were let out to join the village herd for a trip up the mountain to graze for the day. Those who had geese drove them down to the river where they met all the other village geese for the trip up the mountain. Harnessed horses carried workers to the fields, where hoes, scythes, and three-pronged wooden pitchforks were used. Except for those families with whom we were staying, and those youth who taught us Hungarian dances and folk songs until the early morning, most of the village seemed to retire about an hour after sunset. We were lovingly tended to by 10-50 villagers… the number depended on whether we were eating breakfast with our host families, or were on a picnic, or were touring other Unitarian villages in the valley, or were sitting down to a traditional meal at the community center, or were eating in the minister's great room in his home. Daily life was a flashback to community a family centered rural America 60-70 years ago.
On our last day we attended an emotional Sunday church service with John Gibbons and Cynthia Kane sharing the pulpit with the village minister, sat down to a final meal, said good-bye, wept some on the way back to Budapest to catch a plane to Brussels, then back to Boston. We are sorting out the experiences. From the sorting will come a Sunday morning service early in the church year. Many of us have slides, video tape, and stories which we'll share informally over the next few weeks. We know the main message is that our partner church needs us to know they exist; that they are a Hungarian minority in Romania; that they wish to secure the precious right to maintain their culture and heritage; that this right will permit them to choose how their lives will progress.
From The Parishioner, July 11, 1994
At Budapest's airport. Back Row: Dot Ellis, Betty Blanchard, Barbara Smith, Mike Boczenowski, Jason Ingraham, Sarah Dorer, John Gibbons, [Csaba], Riff Mildram, Rich Daugherty, [Dénes], Nancy Daugherty. Front Row: Cynthia Kane, Kristina Montgomery, [Julia], Craig Wiley, Justin Safdie. Julie Turner must have been behind the camera!
