Beirut, Lebanon, is a city made beautiful by the Mediterranean sea and the hills towering over it in majestic beauty. Atop one of these hills are a school for boys and a seminary administered by the Armenian Apostolic Church where sits a huge statue with its arm lifted to God, as if to say, "These are your hills and your sea. Behold your glory!" When the sun shines, the hills and valleys with their closely cultivated fields come together almost like a rainbow announcing the presence of God.

On January 23, representatives of Oriental Orthodox and Reformed churches from all parts of the world arrived in Beirut for the seventh and final session in their international bilateral dialogue. To the surprise of participants who remembered TV pictures of the long years of civil war and destruction, the airplanes opened their doors to a very modern and attractive airport. Our hosts from the Catholicosate of Cilicia of the Armenian Apostolic Church were there to greet us.

Since 1993, bishops, metropolitans, very reverends, doctors of theology, reverends, professors, elders and seminarians have gathered faithfully in different places around the world for this international Oriental Orthodox-Reformed dialogue. When we first embarked on this journey together, no one could have envisioned that Beirut would be the place of our last session.

Every moment of our Beirut meeting, we were aware of the significance of our Mediterranean setting as the cradle of the Christian church. We were reminded too that it was in part along this sea that the Christian church was divided, between the Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox, between eastern Orthodox and western Catholics, between Roman Catholics and the Protestant family of which we Reformed are a part.

How could it be that our dialogue would end up talking about the unity of Christ's church in this place? Could it be because God ultimately calls the dance for the churches at the church unity party? Providence, yeah?

Agendas for dialogue are pre-planned, but what is planned is not necessarily what happens. No one ever knows in advance how a particular session will turn out. Beirut was an extreme illustration of this. We were not sure there would be enough people present to hold a dialogue. We were not sure that we should hold this final session at all. "Do we need to be together at this time?" we asked ourselves, not daring to voice the thought out loud. "What will we say to our churches? Can we say we found love among us? Will we put the unity of the church of Christ first, or will each participant hold to his strong doctrinaire position?"

Many of us agonized over what we would say to our churches. Throughout the course of our dialogue, we had managed to agree on only one thing - a statement on christology in which we recognized that, although our ways of speaking were quite different, our views were ultimately the same. Deep down no one desired it, but many of us feared that in Beirut we would walk away in total disagreement. So we went to Lebanon with ambivalent feelings.

The amazing thing was that, when we gathered and faced each other, we knew we were in the right place at the right time. Greetings were extended by handshake, embrace and the holy kiss. We had come to love each other and we knew it and could express it in spite of ecclesial differences. Even persons who had had extreme disagreements in the past, were appreciating each other in a new way. There were not-so-subtle pleas that we meet again. "I will miss you." "We will reconstitute the dialogue so we can continue our relationships, won't we?"

Have our churches, which for 1500 years have developed separately and in isolation from each other, come closer together as a result of the dialogue? "Emphatically yes," say we who took part in this dialogue - although we do not underestimate the importance, or the difficulty, of our churches receiving the results of our work. Were the Lebanon terrain and the host church factors in finding congeniality and respect between our two families? "Emphatically yes," we say again. One cannot ignore history and its capacity to reflect back to current struggles, illuminating our understanding.

In the end, we prayed together - for our churches, for our leaders, and for the faithful we seek to serve.

Eugene Turner, Presbyterian Church (USA)