Seeds of Hope in Slovakia

The Catholic Thing

By Randall Smith Everyone else has written about the transsexual parody of the Last Supper at the Paris Olympics, so I don't need to - other than to say, thank God they didn't add a transsexual Mohammad to the scene. That would have meant real trouble. Christians are an easy target. And there are fewer riots. But while that ignorant bigotry was unfolding in Paris, I was experiencing another side of Europe, one filled with more hope and less intolerance. I was privileged to be teaching twenty-two young Europeans and Americans in the 22ndannual Free Society Seminar in Slovakia sponsored by Robert Royal's Faith and Reason Institute. It's an intellectual feast but also a social one. Last year, I wrote about the joy of watching Americans during "culture night" learn traditional Slovak dances and hearing Slovaks and Americans together sign "God bless America." The American students this year didn't sing "God bless America." They put on Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." and belted it out like their lives depended on it. This, after showing the group how to dance the "Cotton Eye Joe" (aka, "Cot'nine Joe") and explaining that the most popular recording was performed by a Swedish group, something that made the Swede in our group happy. The young American woman who taught everyone the dance is, as it turns out, a ranked Irish dancer. All this was alternated with a local Slovakian group with violin, bass, accordion, and hammer dulcimer playing traditional Slovak songs, all of which, to my ear, sound as though they were composed to be sung by a room full of loud, drunk Slovaks. Our Slovaks, though not even moderately inebriated, knew all the words and showed that singing one's heart out with pride in one's country does not require alcohol. A wonderful young woman who does pro-life work in Hungary, whose father is British and speaks with a mesmerizingly delightful English accent, gave us a lecture on "how to make the perfect cup of tea." You must warm the cup first, then pour boiling water into the cup, cover it for exactly five minutes - no more, no less - then uncover it and add just a little milk. There are, you see, "TIFs" and "MIFs": "tea in first" vs. "milk in first." Our young Hungarian-Brit (Brit-Hungarian?) was "tea in first," and she had a very good explanation for this, as she did for why tea should be drunk in a Bone China cup with a curved lip. Each step of the process was emphasized with a cheery "Brilliant." During a break in the singing of traditional Slovak songs, a young Polish woman told us about the famous Black Madonna at the monastery of Jasna Gora in Częstochowa. Everyone laughed, including our Swedish student (who later demonstrated that he could get work as a stand-up comic) when she mentioned that the monastery proudly resisted a forty-day siege by Swedish forces. One can still see the cannon balls imbedded in the walls. Then she sang, without instrumental accompaniment and in a heavenly voice, several verses of her favorite love song to the Black Madonna, accompanied during the chorus by two of our young Slovakian men, who either knew the words because they're dedicated Catholics and love Mary (both, though young, are already married) or had learned them shortly before. One of these young Slovakian men had earlier shared his apple liqueur with us made from apples in his neighbor's yard. It turns out people in Slovakia can harvest from their yard whatever they want to distill, take it down to their local distillery, and they'll distill it. Now that's a culture! So, it was quite an evening! But what does any of that have to do with a "free society" and the seeds of hope? Well, first, there are seeds of hope in seeing young people form close friendships over several days with young people from other countries, each proudly, unapologetically sharing his or her own culture and discussing the challenges they face. There is a long history between the Slovaks, Swedes, Poles, and Hungarians, not all of it pleasant....