June 1, 2021
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Saturday, January 29, 2022
May 1, 2021
Dear friends,
Today is Saturday, May 1, in Hungarian “a munka ünnepe,” Worker’s Day. This morning the Jesuits who put together the daily devotional podcast that Julie and I try to listen to pointed us to the tradition in the church of remembering St. Joseph as “the worker.” This is the day when many European countries, including Hungary, remember and honor the work of everyday laborers, and many businesses close to allow some of those workers a day of rest and celebration. It’s a good day to remember the sacredness of work in each of our callings; and to ponder the question, “is there some aspect of your work that helps make the world more as God would want it to be?”
Our work lately has been full of new things, people, places, and questions. Our main work for now is language learning, and we are busy with that each weekday from 10-11:30am, on-line with our teacher Panka, speaking our elementary Hungarian, developing our vocabulary, and moving through the required endless mistakes that early language learners must go through. We enjoy it, even if it does work the brain pretty hard, and the 90 minutes go very fast every day. Then we usually have lunch, and take a short break before we get to our homework for the next day, and the many other communication tasks we have. Our work also includes learning more about each of the facets of our ministry here – at Kalunba, at the university, and within the ecumenical office of the church – in campus ministry and other areas. This week I (Jeff) had two very interesting meetings of note, one with the University Pastor, and the other with a seasoned community organizer who works to equip Hungarian churches to better embody and live out the gospel in their response to the needs of their neighborhoods and communities. Both of these new colleagues provide opportunity for us to come alongside good work, and to help extend it. We also have been slowly getting to meet with various staff, volunteers, and clients of Kalunba, the refugee-serving organization in Budapest. There are a variety of changes taking place at Kalunba currently, some as a response to Covid, some due to staff moving on or taking maternity leave, and others as a part of a new cycle of elected leaders in the church. We are grateful for the chance to more slowly and surely integrate into the life and culture of this organization. We have been meeting and staying in touch with a young client family recently arrived from the Middle East, here in Budapest for less than two months so far with their two pre-teen boys, after spending three years in a Serbian refugee camp.
We have also found ourselves working on the establishment of our new home here in Budapest. We have located an apartment we will move into in late May – the one we are in now was meant to be temporary until June 1. We are excited to have found a place that has excellent potential for hospitality – it’s size and location make it close to ideal for our hoped-for opportunities to host others in our home for meals, conversation, and fellowship. Last weekend we were given the keys in advance, in order to move some things in that we had purchased on-line at a US Embassy auction. And Julie has been busy monitoring various websites that advertise used furniture and other home furnishings. This morning we felt very successful when we navigated our way to the home of a family having a kind of estate sale, and we were able to buy two chairs, a large rug, and a beautiful old Hungarian wicker market basket. The work and humility to conduct even very simple business like this when you don’t speak the language is notable – the older couple selling the items did not speak any English and our basic Hungarian was not terribly helpful, so we had their grown daughter on the phone being passed back and forth in order for us to make the purchase. Another recent adventure came when we picked up the furniture from the Embassy sale last weekend. After a failed attempt to pick it up with a too-small borrowed van, we then rented a manual transmission extended length van that was very challenging (but fun!) for Jeff to drive on narrow downtown Budapest streets. The most challenging feat was conducting a u-turn on a very busy, very narrow street in a long van with no clear sight lines. No damage was done, and the mission was successfully accomplished.
Another element of our work involves our role within Resonate – we are part of a team of six couples and families that live in various parts of Europe, from Berlin, Germany to Klaipeda, Lithuania. Each week we meet on-line for conversation, planning, prayer, and support. We also stay connected to Resonate’s many other programs and activities. I highly recommend you check out the upcoming Glocal mission summit opportunity, free to register, and coming up May 13-15.
We also take very seriously our responsibility (and need) to stay connected with family and friends, and with supporting churches and individuals all over the world. Our support network now includes over 180 individual or family financial supporters, and another 20-30 who have joined our support team as prayer partners. Five churches have taken us on as partner missionaries with regular support and communication. We have received support from people in several countries (including several Hungarian donors), and many states in the US. There are about 65 recurring donors who have pledged to give monthly or quarterly or annually, and another 115 or so who have given one-time gifts for now. Fifty of our donors have come from within our sending congregation, Neland Avenue CRC; over sixty of our donors are former students, and more than thirty are former colleagues, faculty and staff at Calvin. Nearly every day we receive an email update reminding us of new gifts, and we remain mindful, grateful, and committed to the partnership and trust that these regular gifts suggest. Thank you.
Finally, just a word about what we see when we walk, run, bike and take public transportation around Budapest. The built environment here, as everywhere, is a reflection of the culture, the history, memory, hope and disappointment of a society. Everywhere you turn in downtown Budapest you see a plaque, a bust, a statue, a memorial of some kind to some person or some group who someone wanted to remember. Many are reminders of painful parts of the country’s history, but there are also lots of reminders of Hungary’s commitment to beauty in the arts, in music, and in architecture and design. Many others are inside jokes, playful ways of remembering people and events in creative and beautiful ways. Poetry and public art seem to be hallmarks of Hungarian culture, reflecting a depth of seriousness and intellect that weaves beauty and humor into the public landscape. Last night we went for a walk up to the “Vár” or the castle district, with its perched view over the bridges of the Danube, and the dazzling lights of the Parliament and other Pest buildings and squares. It was a perfect spring night, still in the upper sixties, and a quintessential dusk descended like a blanket from light blue to rose to purple to dark blue and then black sky. As Hungary begins to open up with over forty percent of its citizens vaccinated, there are glimmers of hope – both here and (hopefully) where you find yourselves. As we continue to live into this calling to work, worship, play, and serve in a new place, we covet your friendship, your prayers, and your visits; and we hope the spring unfolds for you like the opening up of the manifold lilacs that are just now gracing every neighborhood in Budapest.
A Blessing for Longing. From “To Bless the Space Between Us,” by John O’Donohue
Blessed be the longing that got you here
and quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.
May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.
May the forms of your belonging – dash in love, creativity, and friendship –
Be equal to the grandeur and call of your soul.
May the one you long for long for you.
May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.
May secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.
May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.
May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.
May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.
Points for prayer:
Please pray for our process of applying for residence permits, and then a speedy access to the vaccine once that process is complete (or sooner if possible!). We are glad that so many others have been able to receive the vaccine (including most of our friends in the US, and both of our kids), and we are not finding ourselves in a position of much concern in terms of our ability to stay out of harm’s way pretty easily. No indoor meetings or work yet, and very careful meetings at all.
Please pray for wisdom as we plan a brief return to the US in August to help our daughter Abigail pack up and move from her university home of Seattle back to Grand Rapids. We haven’t yet finalized the dates, but it looks like in the latter half of August we will be in west Michigan in addition to a cross-country drive from Washington to Michigan. We hope to see many of you then.
And we ask for continued prayers as we become more and more familiar with the Hungarian language. We are not young learners.
Finally, we would love for you to pray for clarity in the particulars of our ministry as it develops. We are grateful for many potential avenues of friendship and partnership, and eager to see how things develop in terms of specific opportunities.
In the blessed peace of Christ,
Jeff and Julie Bouman
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
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Sunday, May 2, 2021
Being a beginner
Julie with our bulletin board "cheat sheet"
We have been wrestling with the Hungarian language for a long time now. First there were the three Calvin College semesters in Budapest that Jeff directed, and I came along on. For each of these semesters we sat in a basic survival Hungarian class which the Calvin students took and tried to absorb as much as we could from the one-and-only Kati Fügedi’s lessons. That was especially challenging for Jeff because those lessons took place at the beginning of the semester when many other organizational details were on his To-Do list, many or all of them to be done in unfamiliar systems and organizations.
But we tried, and learned enough to sometimes communicate simple requests and thoughts, even if not perfectly. I’ll never forget the sense of accomplishment I felt in fall of 2011 when I said to the lady at the cheese stand in the market, “Negyed kilo sajtot kérek,” and we completed the whole transaction in Hungarian. I asked for a quarter kilogram of cheese – I don’t remember the kind of cheese anymore.
And we tried other learning supplements. We borrowed Pimsleur Hungarian language CDs from the library and later bought a set of them. (We still had a way to listen to CDs then.) By the time we were thinking about the 2019 semester, there were now such things as apps. We spent many hours trying to figure out Hungarian in DuoLingo. It was kind of like trying to learn how to use a computer with no instructions, just trial and error.
When we were seriously contemplating a move to Budapest with Resonate Global Mission as a career change for Jeff, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the world as we knew it. We learned that a Hungarian friend who teaches Hungarian as a second language was offering online lessons. So we signed up for classes once a week. It was great having one-on-two attention to our learning needs, and we started learning things we never had before. Still, it was hard to make time to do homework and practice enough to internalize much of it.
Then, thanks to God and many of you, we reached the point in this faith journey (beginning? Middle? End? End and beginning? There are so many ways of looking at it!) when we were able to move to Budapest. Since shortly after our arrival, we have been taking lessons multiple time a week. Still online, with a new teacher, and now 5 days/week, Monday-Friday. There are some concepts we are starting to really understand and “get”. We’re surrounded by Hungarian language in print and voice. We understand more and can say more than we ever have before.
And yet… we’re still just at the beginning. Any normally developing Hungarian 3-year-old can say and understand more than we can – probably even 2-year-olds! It’s humbling. We’ve been here before. In our mid-20s we spent a year in Mexico and learned to speak Spanish (with much younger brains, but still past optimal language-learning age). And we remember that we will feel like children in this language for a long, long time. Maybe always. Hungarian is much harder for English speakers to learn than Spanish. It’s hard for most speakers of anything other than Hungarian!
Frankly, I don’t enjoy feeling like a child, even though I am a teacher by training and have great respect and love for children. By and large, being a child is not a position of power in the world. It’s not a comfortable place to be. But it is a position of truth. Children know they don’t know everything, and while they are wildly curious learning machines, they don’t pretend they know it all, even to themselves. While they’re proud of what they learn to do, they don’t think they’ve finished and have nothing else to learn.
And really, even if we were to completely master Hungarian, wouldn’t all those things that children know of themselves still be true of us? Weren’t they already true of us in Michigan where we felt comfortable in our “adult-ness” and our positions of relative power? So maybe, being beginning language learners is just helping us be aware of who we always are as humans: beginners on the journey of learning, no matter how long we’ve been traveling.
Sunday, March 14, 2021
We left our home in Grand Rapids two weeks ago today.
We are still finding our home here in Budapest.
The attached article is about a Pakistani-Hungarian colleague at Kalunba, the refugee-serving arm of the Reformed Church in Hungary, whom we have not yet met, but who will be someone we work with closely. I hope it gives a good introduction to the ways this organization, and the Reformed Church in Hungary, is providing a place for flourishing for those who are displaced.
On March 2, the day we arrived, there were an average of 2, 764 daily cases of Covid being detected in this country of about 10 million (approximately the population of the state of Michigan). As of this morning, the seven-day average is now 6,380, a sharp and alarming increase. As a result, the country is in a two-week "pause," or partial lockdown, with all but essential business, and all schools either closed or on-line. Masks are required in all public spaces, with the exception of public parks and while exercising outside, and the streets are as empty as I ever expect to see them. Two close colleagues have been diagnosed positive with Covid recently, and both are recovering well after what appear to be mild cases. But the reality is that our arrival has been one with a very slow start, especially in terms of developing relationships with new colleagues, with students, refugees, and friends. We did have a recent (on-line) meeting with the education team Kalunba earlier this week, and we have had several other more personal meetings, both on-line and in-person (outside) where we have begun to re-develop our friendships and relationships.
Our hardest work to date, by far, has been our Hungarian language lessons. We began last Monday, and we are meeting on-line three times a week for an hour and a half with our new teacher, and the homework is significant. Thankfully our local context also requires constant attention to the language, and Julie's brain appears to be wired for picking up on the important vocabulary and context clues. An example comes from the local neighborhood news flier that gets put in our mailbox once a week - while trying to decipher it at the kitchen table last week, Julie excitedly reported that "in the winter, the water police do not rest;" because she had successfully translated the headline, "Télen sem pihennek a vízirendorök." I am lucky to have her around as a guide who is a few steps ahead along the way. Apparently, Budapest has a water police force, which makes sense, since the city is divided literally by a significant river, the Danube (or Duna - in Hungarian).
We have also enjoyed the benefits of having previous relationships with a significant number of folks who are either local and Hungarian, or are long-term ex-pats with significant experience in Budapest. During our brief quarantine, our former student Jane was kind enough to bring us some extra groceries and a yoga mat we had requested; and another former student Ye In has been offering suggestions for learning Hungarian along with insights into local culture and food. Our very kind and now ten-year friend Zoltán brought us our big haul of start-up groceries, and also took us out of the city last week Sunday for a hike in the nearby city of Göd, along the Danube just to the north of Budapest. Yesterday our friend Edit texted Julie to see if she wanted to come over to help get some bikes out from storage and take a ride in the nearby City Park, so we did that, and we had a good ride on a beautiful day. We have a new Hungarian teacher, Anna; but we also have seen our friend Viki, who spent an hour a week with us from last March until this past February on-line, patiently and skillfully teaching us the basics of understanding Hungarian. Last week Saturday Viki also invited us to the City Park, and we had a good walk and a coffee together. We were also contacted last week by a Swedish-Canadian couple that we had previously met through our church here; they had heard we would soon be looking for a more permanent place to rent. So, last Sunday we looked at the apartment they would soon be vacating to move back to Sweden. It was very surprisingly beautiful, and quite large, and located just a five-minute walk from our church, and very central to many places we will need to get to in our work. If we lived there, we can easily imagine it as a very hospitable place, close to the church, in which we could provide hospitality to many groups and individuals. So, while we don't yet have a final agreement, we are hopeful that maybe we can arrange to move in there when we leave our current place in early June.
I was quite proud of myself tonight for my opportunity to practice speaking Hungarian. Those who know me well might not be shocked to learn that my style of learning is much more relational and experiential than it is intellectual and cognitive. Details are difficult for me to care about, which is a severe deficit in language learning. But practicing, and social connection, these are things I care a lot about, and I am very willing to look foolish if it connects me to someone else. So, I realized this afternoon that we have been here in Budapest for nearly two weeks already without ordering the signature Hungarian dish in any of our takeout orders - the classic Gulyás (or goulash/beef stew). I decided to go to the restaurant around the corner from our apartment, called Tüköry Étterem (Mirror Restaurant). This place is unusual in our neighborhood in that you cannot count on anyone in the restaurant speaking anything other than Hungarian (which is good if you're learning Hungarian, right?) I went in and very successfully ordered, in my beginner's Hungarian, "két gulyás és egy sült krumpli." (Two orders of goulash, and one order of french fries). The very kind lady understood me perfectly, which is rare, and I even was able to use physical sign language to ask her how many minutes it might take before it was ready. She told me "tiz perc" (ten minutes, and I understood!) so I made a quick dash to the Aldi, around the corner, for some other supplies we needed, and I returned. We made the cash exchange for the food, and I decided I would embellish my farewell greeting, which is too easy in its simple form (Viszlát), and say a fancier version, "szep estét," or "good/beautiful evening." But instead of "szép estét" (evening), I said "szép értem," which may mean nothing at all, or may mean something like "beautiful, I know," or "nice for me." Stick with what you know, that's the lesson I learned tonight.
Tomorrow, March 15, is a national holiday in Hungary. We will be remembering the 1848 revolution, and the 1988 commemoration of 1848 that helped lead to the modern political changes in Hungary. Unfortunately, due to Covid, most of the traditional celebrations will not be happening this year, but we'll be there for the early morning ceremonial raising of the flag at the Parliament, since it is in our neighborhood.
We remain grateful for our clear calling, for the tremendous breadth of support and interest in our work, and for the beautiful surroundings in which we find ourselves. And we also remain challenged to find ways to personally connect with new colleagues, with old friends, and with the work to which we have been called. So much is on hold right now - we are trying hard to focus in on the language learning as our clear work right now, and to be disciplined in our efforts there.
Sunday, December 6, 2020
A Christmas Tree to Remember;..
It's been six years since we've posted on this page, so why start again now?
As it turns out, the name of the blog was a prescient one, and now nine years after its start, we are on the cusp of a move back to Budapest. Only this time, we're not going for a temporary stay of four or five months, as we did in 2011, 2014, and 2019... We're making what we're calling a "career move" with a new job, new partners, and a lot to say goodbye to in Michigan, where we have lived since 2002.
The image of bridges is one that keeps coming up for us, and of the necessary uprooting on one side of the bridge to prepare for the new rooting that will have to take place on the other. A part of this uprooting for me is the attention I have been paying this past summer and fall to the things I love about our house and neighborhood. Today is the day in Hungary when they celebrate St. Mikulás and his gift-giving, and I was pondering our Christmas tree, so I wrote a short piece to reflect on and remember the privilege of friendships that its decorations represent.
What I see when I look closely at our Christmas tree…
People in our neighborhood put up Christmas decorations and lit Christmas trees earlier than usual this year. Maybe because of nicer than usual weather, maybe because of so much pandemic time spent at home, I don’t know.
We picked up our Fraser Fir on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, taking advantage of a warm sunny November day, and our newly-back-intact family for the holiday break. And that night we decorated it together. And as usual we started with lots of energy, with Bruce Cockburn’s 1993 Christmas album reminding us of “Huron Carol,” and “Early on One Christmas Morn,” some of our favorites. And as usual, our energy slowly ran out before all of the ornaments were up, and our stalwart finisher, Julie, took care of the final touches. Now I’ve been admiring it for over a week, and I’ve been taking special note this year because it’s been two years since we’ve had it up and decorated (we were still in Hungary until Christmas last year and never got the decorations out..), and because we don’t know when we will get them out again – with an imminent “career move” to Budapest on our close horizon, it may be some years before we do this again. And I want to remember with some detail.
So here is what I see when I look closely at this tree in our living room at 852 Calvin Avenue. I see the paper angel at the top, a gift in the early ‘90s from our crafty RD friend at Calvin, Linda Boney Brandenstein. I see a white sombrero ornament from a market I can still remember in the summer of 1987 in downtown Mexico City. I see another hat ornament next to that one, a tiny Kyrgyz felt hat given to us while at the University of Michigan by a visiting scholar from Kyrgyzstan about twenty years ago, along with a gorgeous Kyrgyz “dreamcatcher” type ornament she also gave us. I see another sombrero from Mexico, this one a bigger mini-Mariachi hat, also from CDMX. I see about twenty painted tin ornaments from the Balderas artisans market in Mexico City, souvenirs from Julie’s and my year in Mexico in 1993-94. I see a wooden moose ornament from Silverton, Colorado, one of my favorites because of the memories I have of many trips to southwestern Colorado over the years. I see a white clay ornament that was a reminder to the Neland church community about a dozen years ago after our pastor led us through an insightful preaching series on the different images in scripture of God’s Holy Spirit – images of the dove, the down payment, the seal, the fire, and the wind. I see multiple clay ornaments, crafted and fired by Julie’s mom’s cousin Lucille, who died earlier this year – a teacher and an artist. Her ornaments say “Rejoice!” “O Holy Night,” and “Noel.” I see the Mary Engelbreit ornament with the child with arms wide open declaring “I love Christmas,” with wrapping and lights and opened packages all around – a classic. I see a glittery fish with colorful scales, a gift from our friend in Massachusetts Valerie McCoy when Bastian was born there in 1995. I see Hungarian felt ornaments, a rooster, a pillow, a star, and a heart that says “Budapest” inside a classic Hungarian flower design. I see a Petoskey stone in the shape of a mitten, a tribute to one of our favorite places to visit friends in northern Michigan. The word “Peace” appears over and over again in clay, silver, wood, and glass. I see several ornaments made from rings cut from Romanian trees beautifully decorated with wood-burned images and sayings from the Advent and Christmas tradition – “Silent Night,” “Merry Christmas from Romania,” “The light shineth in the darkness,” and more – we love these designs from the talented Maf Adrian in partnership with our friends Brandi and Dana Bates. I see an ornament from The Huss Project in Three Rivers, with the word “Imagine” stamped on a clay circle reminding me of creative positive energy that stands with people and community. I see my kids’ faces in ornaments they made at school or church, one of my favorites is Abi as a “little lamb” at Ann Arbor CRC around 2001. I see paper cut into ribbons and fashioned into colorful shapes that we bought at the Christmas market in Krakow, Poland, and I see a colorful painted wooden egg gifted to us from Jeffrey and Lisa Schra from Vienna. I see a gorgeous flower shape made up of wood and amber, a gift from Chris and Steve Van Zanen in Lithuania, and I see wooden maple leaf that came on the bottle of home-tapped maple syrup gifted to us by church friends, the Uitvlugts. I see plain shiny gold balls that are losing their lustre but we put them up anyway, at least the ones that haven’t broken yet, and I see pewter gifts from our wedding thirty-one years ago, some from Wendell August Forge in Grove City, Pennsylvania, where we met. I see the little green Mexican doll that was the recuerdo gift at our friend Sarai’s quinceaños in 2007, where I was privileged to offer a short blessing at her party. A colorful cross I bought at a Nicaraguan market in 2006 is up there, as is a full-sized replica of a s’more, which may have been a family gift some years ago. Lots of sheep ornaments are up there too. And there is the beautiful poinsettia ornament I bought at the Talavera factory store in Puebla, Mexico in 2007, (which we still refer to as the “Oh S***!” ornament because that’s what I said as I dropped it to the floor as I unpackaged it after carefully carrying it all the way home from Mexico…) There are more. So many more. The vintage Matchbox car ornaments, the glass hard candy ornaments, the electrical plug-in ornament the kids used to fight over who got to plug it into the string of lights, with a santa, an elf, and a reindeer in bumper cars forever darting about noisily in a circle. There’s a hot pepper from the Neland chili cook-off in 2013; a green and red beaded Hungarian shield; and a colorful red and green metal mushroom we bought at the Christmas market in Debrecen, Hungary in 2011.
These images serve as reminders, of a big story remembered year after year, and also of the many stories of lives that have intersected around that big story – lives of friendship, adventure, humor, care, comfort, protection, preparation, and love. I am grateful for these beautiful images, and for this reformed pagan tradition that now points to hope, love, peace, and joy.
One of my favorite Christmas poems is about a Christmas tree, by Madeline L’Engle.
Tree at Christmas
The children say the tree must reach the ceiling,
And so it does, angel on topmost branch,
Candy canes and golden globes and silver chains,
Trumpets that toot, and birds with feathered tails.
Each year we say, each year we fully mean;
“This is the loveliest tree of all.” This tree
Bedecked with love and tinsel reaches heaven.
A pagan throwback may have brought it here
Into our room, and yet these decked-out boughs
Can represent those other trees, the one
Through which we fell in pride, when Eve forgot
That freedom is man’s freedom to obey
And to adore, not to replace the light
With disobedient darkness and self-will.
On Twelfth Night when we strip the tree
And see its branches bare and winter cold
Outside the comfortable room, the tree
Is then the tree on which all darkness hanged,
Completing the betrayal that began
With that first stolen fruit. And then, O God,
This is the tree that Simon bore uphill,
This is the tree that held all love and life.
Forgive us, Lord, forgive us for that tree.
But now, still decked, bedecked, in joy arrayed
For these great days of Christmas thanks and song.
This is the tree that lights our faltering way,
For when man’s first and proud rebellious act
Had reached its nadir on that hill of skulls
These shining, glimmering boughs remind us that
The knowledge that we stole was freely given
And we were sent the spirit’s radiant strength
That we might know all things. We grasp for truth
And lose it till it comes to us by love.
The glory of Lebanon shines on this Christmas tree,
The children say the tree must reach the ceiling,
And so it does: for me the tree has grown so high
It pierces through the vast and star-filled sky.
Madeline L’Engle
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