Commotion on the platform – in a moment a fast train ‘Beskidy’ is arriving at the station. (In the summer season it runs from Gdynia to Jelenia Góra; from Kracow as a slow train).The end of June: the beginning of school holidays and the vacation season promise increased tourist activity. – I do not like crowds. To Nowy Targ I am going to spend about 9 hours on the train and later about one hour on the bus to Krościenko. I hope I will come to ‘the Oasis’, with God’s help, on time. (Moderate heat, considering the season, but clothes and luggage can make you sweat). For a moment I take off my rucksack and ‘inspect’ if I have packed everything: personal things, a sleeping bag, a foam pad, a small case, and food and the Bible on the top. (Anyway, we usually realise what is missing only at our destination.) I learn to limit my ‘equipment’ to what is ‘necessary’, but with age the luggage gets smaller. Is this the beginning of ‘smug’ habits?! (– Is it necessary to give up even a tie and a suit – I am going to celebrate!). I have explained myself to myself. Suddenly the train enters the station and pulls me and the other travellers out of laziness and pretended rest caused by the heat. The first wave of passengers get on the train as if running. What for to crowd? Take it easy. The platform slowly becomes empty. I get on and look for a right compartment. Everywhere is full of (usually) young people. – ‘The atmosphere’ of agitation spreads on me. I pass smoking compartments and those where is too much noise. Oh, they are even playing cards – it used to be forbidden in the public places, and here they are drinking beer. Young men looking like ‘reservists’. – I prefer to travel with students or school children, if I have a choice. I am going to read and talk. All day travelling is alone an attraction. I discover this again and again since I got a special blessing for the occasion.[1]If I remember well all that happened on the twelfth of March in nineteen eighty-two, when I was reading a meditation from a prayer book by Spurgeon: The Jewels of God’s Promises.
I enter a compartment. ‘Good morning! – Can I?!’ – ‘ You are welcome!’ – I hear encouragement. ‘Thank God I have got a seat!’ – I think; nine hours on the train will not make me tired too much. I peep at passengers. – Friendly young people – maybe students? They make an impression as if they knew each other. (– ‘A gang ‘?!) After freeing myself from the luggage I take off my jacket, pull out a book from the case and start reading. (I overhear conversations which prove that my co passengers are students. – later I found out that they were my son’s school friends. – The world is like a global village!)
Before the train starts one more student is ‘joining in’, but he is not from the same ‘gang’. – His ‘tropical’ look suggests that he is African. He wants to pay his footing in a ‘society’ of students very much, he is even offering ‘a drink’, but they ignore him. The Newcomer has not given up straight away, but I could see that he has been humiliated. (He seems a bit ‘tipsy’ and because of some reason is very eager to talk). He has shown them a riddle – a puzzle from matches – probably a mathematical rebus. ‘The students’ have not accepted a challenge. I observe the situation with the corner of my eye, and I can see how much it has hurt him, immediately I loose interest in reading. I put my book aside and ask the Newcomer to share with me his riddle. The proposition visibly cheeres him up. – The riddle is difficult and I cannot decide, which one of three possibilities is correct. – This clearly made an impression on the ‘mathematician”’– he suggests that all the answers are correct, but before he has thought that there is only one possible solution. ( Oh irony, such thinking has often ‘limited’ my freedom of choice too.) This occasion solves a bigger puzzle. – He has been looking for the company to drink, because an unusual thing has happened: his baby daughter was born. I congratulate him and explain that I am a teetotaller and I do not drink alcohol, no matter how important is the occasion. He has not really understood what it is all about. So I try to tell him about ‘a huge’ problem of alcoholism in our country, which the ‘ Light-Life’ Movement ‘struggles’ with, and The Men Delivery Crusade, which I have voluntarily joined, in order to help about 5 million alcoholics get free from their addiction. He has listened carefully and then briefly comments: ‘First with all force and in the systematic way you create a problem and later you fight it?! (– ‘I did not shoot from Aurora!’ Once said same Editor. I would like to comfort myself the same way; but inside I feel that it is not like that: where is my responsibility?!) – After a minute I say that I just go to the retreat of our movement to Krościenko on the Dunajec for two weeks.
The Newcomer says that his name is Ahmadu and, to prove it, he shows me his Polish ID. ( – As a Senegal citizen he would only have a passport, but because he has married Polish woman he also has got ID). He confesses that his wife Basieńka, who gave birth to his daughter, waits for him in Kracow, where they live. It becomes known during further conversation, that his mathematic studies on Mining Metallurgic Academy has been quite advanced ( – he just writes his doctorate.) He is so sincere that I am worried about his safety. (– How could that happen that an adult man retains a spirit of a child?!). Mr Ahmadu becomes very interested in this Krościenko, ( because there is another one in Bieszczady), and in the retreat, ‘Light-Life’ Movement and The Men Delivery Crusade. I try somehow, sensibly as much as I can, to satisfy his curiosity, although I do not know what can come out of it. ( I believe that this meeting must mean much more than only sharing a common space on the train, what passengers usually accept out of necessity of travelling. I will say more about it a bit later, on other occasion.)
Krościenko on the Dunajec – a national centre of ‘Light-Life’ Movement is a small, mountain town, situated almost along the valley of the Dunajec, surrounded by Beskidy, with a newly created, artificial lake in Czorsztyn in a close neighbourhood. About 6 km. far from Krośnica from one side, and down stream of the Dunajec with the same distance from Szczawnica, where are famous health resorts. For centuries there has been drown healing spring water (the springs are called ‘szczawy’). Krościenko with its landscape and simplicity of the style reminds of the Holly Land. – For many people it is, as if, the Holly Land. ( If it is all right to use such analogy, considering great things which happen there.) I mean not only a wonderful rest in the open space; – fast restoration of a body, regaining of health and energy, but also everything what happens in the spiritual area during the time of the retreat. It is a harvest time in the fields, and just next to them in the Oasis of New Life centres there is a joyful celebration, which lasts for two weeks. Incredible transformation happens as a result of the participants living by the principles described in the Bible. Often the faith in God’s Promises, although not always and necessarily, is confirmed through signs and strange events. The reality next to us: everyday events and the people, whose secrets we hardly ‘touch’ with words, the usual – ‘unusual’... Does it have to sink into oblivion, or ignorance, not noticed?!
A conductor has checked tickets and again walking along compartments he asks: ‘Has anybody got on?’ Mr Ahmadu, as it seems to me, is clearly moved in a new way. An interest, even excitement about something unknown, for the time being, calms down emotional tension of so active waiting of the meeting with his wife (Basieńka) and their baby daughter. The heat on the train is bearable. A stream of fresh air comes through the opened window. I make sure that I am not sitting in the draught: problems sometimes occur when it blows on sweated shoulders. The tipsy ‘reservists’ are behaving quieter – probably tired have fallen asleep? Just after the conductor, who has just left the train, another ‘official’ pushes his way through the corridor, carrying two enormous tourist bags, which look especially heavy... He does not look for a seat, he rushes to deal with his business while the train is on the halt. He quickly passes through, peeping into compartments and shouting: ‘Ale! Light Beer! Who wants a beer?! Some agitation and noise – Have the ‘reservists woken up’? – Apart from that, despite the heat, only single orders?! So he moves on! (Anyway, the price is not encouraging – more or less, three times the price in the shop.)
It is time for a snack. We offer food to each other. First, wonderful rolls with coffee from a flask, later early wine-sour apples. Delicious. Then filled mint sweets! To Kracow is about one hour of travelling. Five hours has passed like an entertainment programme... My interlocutor after some thinking has got a great idea. He will get off in Kracow to hug and kiss his wife and daughter, and later, if they agree to ‘let him go’, he will come to me to ‘the Oasis’ in Krościenko. The train from Kracow via Habówka to Nowy Targ crowles uphill for a long time, so he can ‘catch me’ by bus still in Nowy Targ, or better straight to Krościenko! I wonder if Ahmed’s enthusiasm will not die out as soon as last heat. Anyway I decide to give him time to cool down. He wants some ‘materials’ about ‘the Oasis’. I have booklets about four rules of spiritual work and notebooks written by the priest Franciszek Blachnicki and some ‘treatises’. I give him this things which I do not need, others are in the ‘Oasis’ shop in Kopia Górka. He is sacredly watching my Bible and ‘small icons’, which are used as bookmarks – they are usually some photographs. At the end he takes out money and wants to give me a 100-dollar bill. I say I cannot accept this money. Then he shows me a pile, which he can hardly encircle with his hand: $2000 ( his doctorate grant) later he explains: ‘I am giving from God!’ (Before he said he was a Muslim). He is confused and embarrassed more than me. I have a feeling he will not come...
Translated by Barbara Vujcic
[1] "About Zebulun he said. ‘Rejoyce, Zebulun, In your going out, and you Issachar, In your tents’" Deuteronomy 33,18 (Tanslation after: Holy Bible, the Gideons)
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