He’s Back

Reflections on
Rev. John E. Gibbons’ Sabbatical

Delivered Sunday, February 15, 1998

At The First Parish in Bedford

Well, friends, there's no place like home. It's only been seven weeks, and yet so much has happened in my life and, I know, much has happened in many of your lives also. Eating a steady diet of colach and pork sausage, I've gained the 15 pounds which Marty has lost. And I do feel very grateful to all of you for giving me the opportunity of this sabbatical. And I'm particularly thankful to Marty who, despite the controversy in Washington, has given a good name to the word "intern."

I've actually preached and been in churches more over the last six weeks than I would have had I stayed home; and so I intend to re-enter slowly. I suppose it's a cliché, but if you ever step aside from your life for a while, it is striking how fast-paced everything is when you return. I'm thinking a lot about the sort of example my life sets and I plan to linger a while and not just hit the rat race running.

Today, as we get to know one another again, I want simply to tell a few retrospective stories of where I've been — not all the stories (I'd rather leave you hungry for more; I understand you've been in church quite a lot yourselves!). Today we'll talk about where you and I have been, then next week we'll talk about where we're going — what difference this sabbatical may mean to me and our ministry together (to which I remain very committed). Today, just some stories; next week what the stories mean to me and to our future.

I flew to Bucharest on the 22nd of December and was met by Aron Barabas, our partner church minister's teenage son, and by a family friend, the mayor of a nearby village. In thick fog, we drove six hours through the mountains to our partner village Abasfalva, arriving about 1 in the morning.

I stayed at the parsonage where, as always, I felt very much a member of the family. Young Aron was my translator, but my Hungarian did improve and we quickly developed a language that could be understood at least within the family. Of course, outside the family my Hungarian required translation into real Hungarian, and some errors of usage crept in. For example, the word for "hot" is "meleg;" the word for "I am" is "vagyok" — and only weeks later did I learn that meleg vagyok does not mean "I'm hot " but instead "I'm gay." Oh well.

Fortunately, I rarely had cause to say 'I'm hot' because I was usually cold. Heat is from ancient ceramic tile wood stoves, and wood is scarce — we often burned stumps and I spent lots of time chopping wood. I also hadn't realized that they don't heat their churches, and — especially during the 3-day church holidays like Christmas — it seems miraculous that anyone goes to church at all. Even gloves are not customary. The outhouse, as you may imagine, is also outside — off the barn.

For an American with soft hands, life in the winter is hard in Abasfalva. The diet is almost exclusively pork, some noodle or bean soup, heavy bread, pickled cabbage, kolacs (sweet bread), and — of course — home-made wine or the rocket fuel plum brandy, palinka.

By the way, Aron supplemented the toilet paper in the outhouse with paper from denominational publications — the Bishop's annual letter, for example. Churches tend to regard denominational pronouncements similarly, I discovered, whether they be from Boston or Kolozsvar. And when I laughingly called attention to these papers, Aron quickly removed them, concerned that I might tell the Bishop!

Christmas Day, like most days, began by pushing the Romanian-made Dacia car to get it started — there are only 6 or 8 cars in the village but everyone's battery is dead. Pushing cars in mud and ice is a tiresome thing. One day I preached in Abasfalva and was to preach in the afternoon in the next village, but our car wouldn't start. I borrowed the neighbor's, pushed it started, but later discovered that it lacked reverse. When I finished preaching, the villagers pushed me backwards so that I could drive forward out of town.

Another day Aron Senior and I were going to the city of Udvarhely where we were to sell five pigs at market and where I was also to do a radio interview. We'd caught and crated the squealing pigs, put them in the trunk, but en route the wheel bearings gave every indication that the front wheels were about to fall off. We stopped at the parsonage of the Reform Church minister — no one we knew — and asked for a lift. After pushing his car to get it started (his was a Russian-made Lada) we were again on our way. Hospitality to strangers is a prime value in the Transylvanian community.

These wintry experiences gave me the opportunity to pledge that Bedford and Abasfalva are not just summer friends.

Your gifts of medical supplies — aspirin, ibuprofen, antibiotic cream, reading glasses — were greatly appreciated. Most were distributed in church but for days after people came to the parsonage asking for more. Rather than give an entire bottle of aspirin, Aron carefully rolled paper cones and gave them away ten or twenty at a time. When I went for dinner at villagers' homes, I took a bottle of aspirin or ibuprofen — a treasured housewarming gift. That something so small could be so valued, gave me great pause.

The quilt which our Sunday School made now hangs in the school.

I visited the combine which also was a gift from Bedford to Abasfalva. It was used some in the last harvest and they hope to use it more this year. They're converting a barn to keep it in. Having it means they will not have to rent a combine and their farming can be more productive.

Bedford also supports three high school students with their annual tuition of $250. I gave this money to them personally and among the gifts they gave us in return are hand-made towels, embroideries, honey and palenka.

All that is on these stairs are gifts from villagers to all of us. One night the old women of the village hosted a party for me. It looked like it would be a staid affair until young people costumed as shepherds arrived with a gypsy band. The old black-babushka'd women, who danced far better than I, passed me among themselves until I pleaded exhaustion. They continued dancing among themselves long after I left, but also brought to me package after package of lacework and small gifts. I'm not sure what you do with lace butterflies and still more chickens, but they're ours and they need loving homes.

I ask that you take what you like from among all this, make a donation to our Partner Church Committee, and take it home. If you tire of it, bring it back and we'll do the same again. I warned the villagers to pace themselves in their handicrafts, that Americans would visit their village for the rest of their lives, but their gratitude and pride insist that we accept these gifts which they give to us with their love.

Hyper-inflation continues at 200%. With 9000 lei to the dollar, great piles of cash are worth little. Aron is paid $30/month for his ministry to Abasfalva; he also serves as minister to Kemenyfalva down the road where he is paid nothing—only wheat and potatoes.

Life in the cities is also spartan. While in Kolozsvar, I stayed with Csaba and Marika Bulbuka. Some of you may remember Csaba from his 1995 visit to Bedford. He has a good job as the bishop's driver, and he and Marika own their own one-room apartment (which they share with Marika's brother!). I also learned that Csaba and Marika have never been to a restaurant together — never in their life.

Young people still move from the village to the cities looking for work, but as the formerly communist government-run factories are privatized, some of the factories have closed and the cities are no guarantee of employment. As a result, some young people now choose to remain in the villages.

New Year's Eve is called Silvester—there are 365 name days that are celebrated as much as birthdays—and December just happens to be Silvester's name day. We lit fireworks, drank champagne and palenka, ate more sausage and at midnight stood for the Hungarian national anthem as played on Danube TV.

Televisions, cable TV, and rooftop "parabolas" are becoming commonplace. And, strangely, American rap music is most popular among teenagers. As a gift to Aronka, I took a cassette of Puff Daddy (purchased, I may add, from behind the counter at Tower Records, due to explicit lyrics and frequent theft). It was very odd listening to Puff Daddy while driving through a medieval countryside of ancient churches, gypsy horse-drawn wagons, and traffic-jams of oxen, geese and sheep.

Still, Abasfalva remains a museum of another century. Traditions that have died elsewhere there remain alive. On December 28, Holy Innocents Day, young boys visit girls' houses, I was told, "to beat the girls with sticks." With long saplings, they gently tap the girls thighs and recite a poem, wishing them a long life and money up to their ankles. In return, they expect money or candy. In Abasfalva, it is mainly honored by gypsy children (hoping for money) or boys interested in flirting (as they did with Boglarka, the minister's daughter).

As another exhibit in the Abasfalva museum: from time to time, I was awakened by an old woman beating a drum and shouting in the street outside my window. She turned out to be the town crier. We called her the Abasfalva Internet!

One Sunday in church, I listened to Aron preach and he kept saying something about Riff. Riff? I learned he was talking about our own beloved bellringer Riff Mildram. It was still Christmastime, remember, and he used Riff as an example of "a humble man, like the shepherds of old who tirelessly used his skill for the benefit of all." I also learned that the local harangozo, the bell-ringer, had been threatening to quit and, by using the example of Riff, Aron hoped to get her to stay on! Never underestimate the wiles of ministry!

For one week I visited church headquarters in Kolozsvar—met with the Bishop, professors and students—and I also visited youth groups (one sang to me in English — "Morning Has Broken") and I taught church administration at regional ministers meetings.

The ministers are still in the feudal/communist habit of having meetings with the commoners in rows down below and the president on an elevated dais in front. Subversively, I suggested that we all sit in a circle at the same level. They had never done it before!

It is a time of great change and anxiety, as local churches, ministers and youth seek independence from centralized church structures while simultaneously being wary of their own insecurity as an ethnic minority amidst a Romanian population that is often openly hostile and a growing religious right wing fueled by Mormon and Jehovah missionaries.

Romanian nationalism is sometimes frightening and sometimes absurd. In Kolozsvar, bright Christmas lights were strung along the streets. The only colors, however, were yellow, red and blue — the colors of the Romanian flag. Green, the Hungarian color, was banned! Romanian flags are also flown from every available lamp-post, another sign of a nation with severe problems of self-esteem. Driving at night between Abasfalva and Bucharest on my return, we were stopped four times by soldiers — routine but wearying security.

So what does it all mean? I'll save that for next week but I do know that Abasfalva, Transylvania and the family and friends we have made there will remain a part of my life always. We'll celebrate joys and sorrows together; we'll push the cars; and though the time's a long way off, if ever, I've been asked to perform Aronka and Boglarka's weddings. And in the summer of 1999, Aron Senior is planning a village homecoming — where Abasfalvans far and wide return to the town of their birth. With Transylvania as the birthplace of Unitarianism, the villagers want a large contingent from Bedford to be there. In a truthful deep-down heartfelt vital way, all of you are considered family. In body or spirit, you're invited, welcomed, hoped-for, prayed for, and loved.

I returned from Transylvania on January 13, and I've since attended UU churches in Portsmouth, NH; Ft. Myers, FL; and Brewster, MA. The Ft. Myers church deserved very thorough research and, it's true, Sue and I walked a lot of beaches, drove through the Everglades and went as far as Key West. At each of the churches, though, I really did interview ministers and lay leaders; and I think there are things for us to learn.

Diverse and creative music was a consistent feature (from a recorder group in Portsmouth to a Broadway show-tunes soloist in Ft. Myers), as was concerted attention to the deepening of their members understanding of Unitarian Universalism; as was strong preaching and strong ministry, both lay and professional.

All three, like Bedford, are experiencing rapid growth and each has or soon will have capital campaigns to pay for expansion of their buildings.

Unfortunately, in two of the three, building campaigns have been significantly encouraged by the sudden untimely deaths of their 40-something ministers — deaths not unrelated to the stress of their growth. Ft. Myers has even named their sanctuary after their martyred minister — a very nice oil portrait of him adorns the entryway with brass-engraved quotations from his last sermon. I think I'll pass.

In Portsmouth, I attended their Martin Luther King Sunday service where they talked about their commitment to a growing and changing city.

In Ft. Myers, they observed the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by honoring a woman doctor who had trained with pioneer Margaret Sanger. Because the local sheriff has labeled another doctor a baby-killer and because the church has appropriately called for fairness from law-enforcement, the church service was page one news on Monday. (I think we don't always recognize how controversial and threatening liberal religion can be in many other parts of the country and world.)

In Brewster, just last Sunday, I attended the third of their three services and heard presentations by their building chair, capital campaign chair and minister on behalf of their building project. I took notes.

In Florida, I also took a day off and went to a ministers meeting in Tampa. The best part was seeing our former intern Amy McKenzie Quinn who is now the minister in Tallahassee. She's happy, and vibrant, and excited to be serving a church.

Fort Myers, by the way, has the best UU building I have ever seen. I took photos of their sanctuary with crying room and grand piano; their screen porch larger than the entire footprint we in Bedford imagine for our addition; their kitchen with ample storage, central work table, and washer/dryer; their library, RE classrooms, conference room, offices, indoor and outdoor sculpture and artwork. In the service, we also gave a standing ovation to one old gent who donated 2½ adjacent acres, at the cost of $75,000, to add to their existing 11 acre campus. Oh never mind...but I must say that all these building projects contribute to the sense and confidence that these churches are about important work, and that it is understood that real meaning in one's life is to be found in contributing to actions that outlast our individual lives.

OK, India. I was on my way to the General Assembly of the Unitarians in the Khasi Hills. I flew for three days and two nights and was turned away for lack of a visa. Due to overtravel, simple inattention, and a things that might-have-avoided-trouble-but-didn't, I completely forgot about getting an Indian visa. I was placed under armed guard and put on the next plane to London.

Maybe it was el nino.

Maybe it was the well-documented shrinkage of the middle-aged male brain.

800 bazillion people in India, and they decide to draw the line with me.

Of course, I was — I still am — disappointed. One colleague told me he was sorry for my ill fortune, but he was also envious of the many sermon illustrations!

It's true. Disappointment is a teacher.

Some day — maybe some day soon — I'll get to that place. I will. In the meantime, I'll adopt this slogan: THE EXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH RELIVING. I'll get on with my life. Hey, nobody got hurt and it's time to move on. Next week, that's my theme: where do we go from here? You and I, we've got lots of living yet to do.