Faith Matters: The importance of waving: Recognizing one another, post-pandemic, pre-election

Hetty Startup in Shelburne Falls with the Deerfield River in the background.

Hetty Startup in Shelburne Falls with the Deerfield River in the background. STAFF PHOTO/PAUL FRANZ

By HETTY STARTUP

Leadership team, Interfaith Council of Franklin County

Published: 10-25-2024 10:12 AM

Have you, like me, noticed a spate of large, at least twice-human-sized skeletons appearing around the Valley in time for Halloween this year? They sure are creepy and quite threatening even if they are completely fake. As signifiers of our mortality, perhaps they need our protection? Propped up in our front yards, decked out for All Souls Eve, they still unsettle me. So, it is reassuring to recall a Sunday last month when I arrived at the door of our church pondering the luxury of not having any ostensible duties to perform. I was simply a congregant who might write something faith related for the Greenfield Recorder or the Ashfield News.

Before I went inside, I looked across to town common where two people were taking down a sign — the inventive and — as far as I know — completely original “Hillywood” sign that had marked another successful Ashfield FilmFest at Town Hall. I waved and they waved back.

There is no real succession going on here in this exchange of hands waving (although our national election succession is on my mind) as much as there is a sense of a created haven and healthy conversation going on between separate secular and religious entities in Ashfield center. Looking back at this moment I see each wave as a reminder of one of the time-honored marks of rural civility embraced in these parts for generations. I remember when I first arrived in Ashfield that a friend of a friend alerted me to the tradition there of waving when passing a car on the road. (What did I know, a city girl from the smoke, raised in London?) The ritual has stayed with me ever since.

Other people have made much more thoughtful comments about the significance of waving in other parts of our country — its significance is not just a Hilltown phenomenon. I read a story on LinkedIn from someone in Kansas who said they even wave at each other on the highway there.

I cherish my Ashfield snapshot of wavers between churchgoers and filmmakers. I loved that balancing of neighbors heralding each other around our commons on Main Street. The nurturing of filmmaking, the discussing and showing of films, the mentoring of young filmmakers in our town, has been undertaken for years by the Ashfield FilmFest organization.

Likewise, care and concern guide the work of our church and its ministries. We waved to each other, and this mutual waving thing feels especially good in an election season. We also forget so quickly about the impacts the COVID pandemic is still having in terms of collateral damage — that we are all just emerging, hoping against hope that a Commons still exists beyond the masks and the isolating that has taken place.

That there are havens that exist for mutual aid and cooperation warms my heart. Whatever happens on Nov. 5 and on up to the inauguration in January 2025, it feels good to have people still waving to each other in Ashfield and beyond.

Hetty Startup is on the leadership team of the Interfaith Council of Franklin County and a deacon at First Congregational Church of Ashfield/UCC.

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