A brisk Sunday morning just above freezing, the bell is ringing from the Unitarian Church steeple, competing with serious traffic noise. A fire truck whizzes by and finally the pedestrian light turns green to cross over to the church. The air felt like Connecticut, but the street scene was not like Rte 1 in Madison, except the speeding cars! The church bell persists at its steady, even rate. It's nice being rung to church. At eleven the church is filling fast, many more people than last week, grows to about full in the prime zone.
Look closely through the hats and coats, many flower and vases are on the communion table, and a steady of people of all ages are bringing them in.Young men are helping people with the vases. I recognize the young man from the desk at Hotel Transilvania is the leader.
More flowersand a line of about 20 children and adults come down the aisle with their flowers. Now I'm curious. Is what we know as Flower Sunday as started by Norbert Capek in Prague a spin off of a Palm Sunday tradition?
From about half way back, the minister almost looks like he is on TV in his raised pulpit. We stand through many parts of the service- about half the time. Of course everything is in Hungarian so I don't have a clue about the content. We sang about three hymns, but very few people actually sang- a small choir and the organ carried
music. I didn't recognize any tunes.
The hymns were slow, but not as dramatically slow as 10 years ago.
I found not understanding content freed me up to meditate on the tone and cadence of the minister's voice, the pacing of the service, and of course just looking up at the details in the arched white plasterceiling.
The detail of the pulpit is extraordinary, dramatic lighting, the red embroidered Szekeley trim, and carved plaster give the illusion of a wedding cake!
I could make out a word here and there on the stone, but, with the help of the Google translator I can get the last couple lines: "in 1658 ... returned (hazaérkezett) ... converted the whole of Kolozsvár to the Unitarian religion."
ReplyDeleteI also looked up the Flower Celebration as Čapek had envisioned it in 1923 (June 4, by the way, so nothing to do with the Easter season): he wanted a way to celebrate the universal beauty of nature and a ritual that would not offend UUs of different faith traditions.
Keep the fascinating posts coming, Claudia!