For the last month, Paula
and I have been feverishly (and stressfully) preparing for the St. Paul’s
Church annual meeting. (For those of you who may not know the governance of the
Episcopal Church, the annual meeting is a required gathering of all available
church members near the beginning of each year to approve the budget, elect
board members and attend to other important business matters). Paola and I
prepared all of the documents for the meeting, gathering more than a dozen
reports, having them translated between English and Italian, and assembling
them into a handy & beautiful multi-lingual edition of the church’s
quarterly magazine, Letters from St.Paul’s.
One of the things I learned in preparation for our
Latin-American community’s involvement in the event is that one Spanish word
for a meeting is La Reunión. Of
course, as an English speaker this left me really puzzled. Quite naturally I
associated that word with something like a family or school reunion – a joyful
gathering of otherwise dispersed people for recreation and catching up with
stories of all the years gone by. A canonically required business meeting for
financial and legal purposes didn’t quite seem to qualify as much of a Reunión that I would want to be part of!
On Sunday morning, having just returned from a wonderful two days In Orvieto, awoke
nervously excited for the day to come. To my surprise, I came down to our
normal pre-service breakfast gathering to find about 40 high school students
from Virginia visiting with their art teacher and ready to enjoy the Eucharist
at our parish! The day’s liturgy was downright superb and totally bilingual
(English/Spanish). We even chanted the psalm alternating languages by
half-verse with the help of two stellar sopranos and Fr. Austin preached a
tremendously on-point powerful sermon.
Then came time for the Reunión.
We all gathered at little tables around the room – both of our normally
separated worshiping communities – by choice not divided with English speakers
on one side and Spanish speakers on the other. Instead, virtually every table
was a joyous linguistic mix, often communicating in Italian to help bridge the
gaps between native languages. So there it was, a truly St. Paul’s affair with
three languages going on all at once! Fr. Austin even skillfully did the brunt
of the translating while also chairing the meeting. Going around from table to
table sharing blessings and goals for the year, virtually every group expressed
the desire for more events – more sharing and more fellowship among the two
communities!
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| The Annual Meeting underway! |
On top of it, we elected 3 new members of the vestry (the
church governing board). Now instead of having all 8 members be native English
speakers split between Americans and Africans, we now have a much greater mix
of folks variously proficient in English, Spanish and Italian among the group.
Now, like our weekly staff meetings, I hope and trust that the vestry Reuniónes will become a truly joyful mix
of the three languages and many cultural backgrounds!
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| proudly displaying the last 4 editions of the magazine! |
I had the great pleasure to sit at a table with mostly
Latin-American community members and one other USA native. To be fair, my
Spanish isn’t especially great (although I’m learning!) and my Italian is even
worse. But I was proudly able to get out enough decent Spanish to have a really
great conversation and share some great ideas about the church we all love. I
even shared a high five with Angelina, a Spanish/Italian student around my age,
about the suggestion of mas actividades
para los jovenes (more activites for young people). I could really tell how
much I’ve grown, not only in my confidence in a new language, but also in a new
community and with these incredible people I have the pleasure to love and
serve. Never before have I had friendships with people with whom I don’t
completely share a language in common – but now I do! Hopefully as my Spanish
improves, and as their English improves as many members have asked for English
lessons at the church, we’ll have even more in common than we imagined!
So yes, what I expected to be a drab business meeting really
was a Reunión indeed!
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