The trains are running again

Hardly noticed and seemingly unimportant, there was a "brief" in today's Post Dispatch reporting that train service has been restored between Belgrade and Sarajevo. Anyone under the age of 30 reading that might wonder why it warranted a notice in the paper. That train line stopped running 18 years ago because the people on both ends of the line and everywhere along the route were killing each other.


Not only killing but raping, maiming, starving and torturing each other.


In the mid-1990's anyone with a sympathetic heart could barely watch the TV news reports from the former Yugoslavia. Under a communist dictatorship for many decades, Yugoslavia was held together by sticks and glue while the various ethnic and religious factions lived peacefully together or hated each other without means to act on that hatred.


When the lid of oppression was lifted in the late 1980's alongside the demise of the Soviet Union, ethnicity became more important than political cohesion which led to declaration of independence by Croatia and Slovenia in the early 1990's. In an attempt to quash these movements toward independence, the Serbian army attacked the capital city of Sarajevo.


Most Americans had little knowledge of the Balkans and could only shake their heads in dismay as the story went from bad to worse. After two of the worst massacres in 1994 and 1995, NATO forces beat back the Serbian military and brought the war to a messy conclusion.

When I saw a notice in a church program calling people together for a series of Lenten prayer meetings, I was drawn to the idea of being with others who were as horrified as I was and who felt just as helpless. The purpose of the meetings was to bring St. Louisans together whose friends and relatives back in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia were killing each other. The idea seemed a bit risky, but the organizers were prepared for potential tension.

The first afternoon prayer service was held at Eliot Chapel, Unitarian Universalist, in Kirkwood on the first Sunday of Lent. Someone said the reason the members of diverse religions were willing to come together in peace was because Quakers and Unitarians invited them, and they were on neutral ground. Those who came to pray together included Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Jews and Protestants. Leaders of each religion were given the opportunity to speak and pray.


Despite the obvious tension in the sanctuary at Eliot Chapel, those in attendance felt the spirit of reconciliation through the sharing of grief. The stories of young girls being raped and purposely impregnated were almost too vivid to bear. We had all seen photos of the damage done by the bombing of Sarajevo and knew that men, women and children were incinerated where those bombs fell.

One of the most touching stories was of a cello player who belonged to the Sarajevo symphony. A relative of his, possibly his brother, was killed by a bomb in the central marketplace. Each week, at the exact time of his brother's death, the cellist took his chair and instrument to the middle of the marketplace and played the hauntingly beautiful "Adagio" by Albinoni.

Despite the danger and warnings from his friends, the cellist played for peace each week.

On each Sunday of Lent, at various houses of worship around St. Louis, someone read that story and a local cellist played the Adagio. Focusing on that one life lost in a war everyone said they didn't want to happen fused the prayers and pain of those in attendance.

As we continued to witness the horrible things human beings were doing to each other in the Balkans, it was difficult to believe peace and safety would ever return to that part of the world.

But it has. And the trains are running again. And the Sarajevo symphony is performing again. For the moment, there is peace in at least one part of the world.

And the people said amen.