April 2, 2021 

Holy week 2021, Budapest

 
Dear friends,
 
As I begin writing this update and meditation, I can hear the bells ringing to mark the noon hour from the St. Stephen’s Basilica just a few blocks away from our apartment. We can hear them better today because the windows are open on a gorgeous sunny day with temperatures reaching the seventies. Today is Maundy Thursday, and also April Fool’s day, a combination which has not been lost on many reflecting on the upside-down nature of the life and friendships of Jesus. This is the day we remember that he washed the disciples’ feet, which is just as upside-down as it sounds.
 
Soon Julie and I will venture out carefully to do some additional grocery shopping before our evening curfew – we’ve been warned that the custom in Hungary is for shops to close for four days beginning with Good Friday, and extending through Easter Monday. The curfew runs from 8pm each evening until 5am each morning, and has been in place since November. Case numbers and deaths in Hungary from Covid have been at their all-time high in the month since we arrived, making our start here a very slow one since our March 2 arrival. But we are glad we are here, and we are trying to take advantage of the extra time in our new home to really study the language. We have a teacher we are very happy with, Anna, and we have been meeting with her several days a week for 90-minute sessions. We’ve learned how to talk (in very basic terms) about food, the weather, time, what kind of furniture is in various rooms in our homes, and how to describe people and things. Our challenge is to focus on what we know and build our vocabulary and grammar knowledge “brick by brick,” and not to focus on all that we do not know. We regularly have small frustrations, and sometimes large belly-laughs, with what we don’t know, or with what we still don’t understand. Hungarian is a very old, very singular language, and we are thankful to have many very willing friends who are also eager to help us learn. And our regular walks around the city commonly include attempts to decipher long multi-syllabic words by identifying parts within the words that include phrases or roots that look familiar. Sometimes it works, most times not so much.
 
Today’s anecdote comes from the great market, where I ventured recently to buy some authentic Hungarian salami, a national specialty. I remembered that for meat you can order in “deka,” or hundredths of a kilogram. Normally you might ask for twenty or thirty deka, which for salami would be in the neighborhood of a half-pound. For the first order, I remembered correctly, and ordered Húsz-deka (20), and I was feeling confident to order about half that much for the other kind of salami. I proceeded to mix up the word for 10 with the word for 1, and I tried to order a single decagram of salami, which is an extremely small amount people would never order, and I was able to learn that embarrassing fact by looking at the quizzical face of the kind woman trying to figure out what I meant to say. I punted, knowing that she knew English quite well, and I pointed to my first batch and I said in English, “about half of that, please!” We both laughed, and maybe next time I’ll remember to use ten instead of one. One more serving of humility, coming right up…
 
Julie and I have been listening to a daily podcast called “Pray-as-you-go,” a ministry of a Jesuit community in the UK; as well as virtually attending worship and Bible Study with our local church community here in Budapest. Lent has been a mix of inspiration and a slow slog toward faithfulness. As they were while we were still in Grand Rapids, our days here are spent in a routine that does not include most things we took for granted until one year ago, namely an in-person social (or work) life. We run and walk for exercise most mornings. After breakfast we either have our Hungarian class, or we do our Hungarian homework, and then after lunch we try to go on another exploratory walk around some part of the city. Now that the weather has turned nice, we can linger in parks or along the riverbank, and we’ve had a few outdoor lunches with take-out. Then later in the day we attend to communication with friends, supporters, and family who are just getting into the day six hours behind us, and then we work on something for supper. In the evening we read or play a game or study a bit more, and then we have our evening popcorn and usually watch something interesting on a screen before bed. Then we sleep and start it all over again.
*******
(Continued on Good Friday)
 
The news from the US seems to be all about the availability of the vaccine, and we are rejoicing that both of our kids have now either been jabbed, or have made an appointment for their first jab (“jab” is apparently euro-speak for getting a shot). Here in Budapest we will likely be waiting until sometime in the summer, unless some kind of surprise comes along – and we are fine waiting, and grateful for warmer weather in which to perhaps begin to meet new colleagues for outdoor walks. We have made progress on securing a more long-lasting place to live, and we anticipate a move to a more permanent apartment rental sometime in mid-May. There is plenty of other news as well from the US and other places in the world, about a trial in Minnesota, scandals in Washington DC, attempts to restrict voting in many places, on-going conflicts and corruption around the world, a massive freighter stuck and then freed in the Suez Canal, climate change and its drastic effects, civil war, hunger, and many many reminders that not only is all not well in the world, and that we, if we’re honest, are implicated in much of the injustice that happens, sometimes intentionally, but more often than not unintentionally. We need the reminders of Holy Week, all of us.
 
We were hurrying home at 6pm on Thursday when we heard the bells from St. Stephen’s again, and once again they played for longer than usual, helping us remember that we were hurrying because we were joining a virtual foot-washing and communion service with our church community here in Budapest. Due to the current restrictions as well as the new-found skills in technological community, we were able to meet simultaneously with people in Hungary, Italy, Scotland, and the US. It was remarkable and moving.
 
There will be another service for Good Friday tonight that we plan to participate in as well.
 
Author and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor concludes her exploration of the benefits of “learning to walk in the dark,” by writing: “endarkenment, like enlightenment, is a work in progress. The best thing I can say is that learning to walk in the dark has allowed me to take back my faith, removing it from the glare of the full solar tradition to recover by the light of the moon. Now the sun still comes up, but it also goes down…”
 
I have found it hard over the years to figure out ways to really dwell in the darkness of Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Holy Week – it is too easy to remember that Jesus has been raised from the dead, and Easter is coming.
 
The reflections below, among others, have helped me sit today in the reality of that darkness.
 
Wendell Berry 1980
 
I What hard travail God does in death!
 
What hard travail God does in death!
He strives in sleep, in our despair,
And all flesh shudders underneath
The nightmare of His sepulcher.
 
The earth shakes, grinding its deep stone;
All night the cold wind heaves and pries;
Creation strains sinew and bone
Against the dark door where He lies.
 
The stem bent, pent in seed, grows straight
And stands. Pain breaks in song. Surprising
The merely dead, graves fill with light
Like opened eyes. He rests in rising.
 
Finally, I discovered this series of sermons given by Rev. Dr. Sam Wells that dive deeply into the roots and story of Jesus’s suffering and death, which I highly commend to you.
 
"Good Friday isn't a magic trick by which Jesus used the special formula to produce the genie of salvation out of the bottle of sin and death. It's the day on which Jesus went into the cloud of unknowing and the tunnel of despair and the chamber of agony to show that God being with us is the heart of it all."                 
Rev. Dr. Samuel Wells, St. Martin in the Fields
 
Peace,
 
Jeff (and Julie) Bouman
 
https://www.resonateglobalmission.org/support/our-missionaries/jeff-and-julie-bouman