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The Transylvanian Unitarians

A Sermon by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
March 9, 2003

There is one thing I’ve learned in my varied travels so far in the world, and that is that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I read up on a place or hear stories or see slides, I can never imagine what it’s really like. Everything I think I know about a place or people changes when I get there. The place is more beautiful, more vibrant, more exciting than I could imagine, and the people are more interesting, more like us, and more different. The food is always far more incredible, more delicious, than I could foresee -- well, except for Poi in Hawaii. Nasty is the descriptive term for that, but we take in all the experience, what we appreciate and what we wish we’d never put in our mouths.

Travel is not hardly imaginable. It is its own experience, a rich, alive experience of the earth’s treasures. I wish everyone could go out and see the world. International travel promotes intercultural appreciation and understanding, at least, I believe, for those whose hearts and minds are open. And intercultural appreciation and understanding, I believe and hope and pray, is one deterrent to the horrors of war into which the world seems to be constantly plunging.

My husband, Curtiss, and I wanted to give our children an intercultural experience during my sabbatical last Fall. The International Association for Religious Freedom was having their World Congress in Budapest in late July. I had always wanted to go to that, and I realized we could go to Transylvania from there. Ever since I had read during Seminary Earl Morse Wilbur’s two books on Unitarianism, I had been fascinated with the stories of the origin of Unitarianism in Transylvania, of the Catholic Priest Francis Dávid who became the first Unitarian Bishop there, of King John Sigismund who was the first and only Unitarian King and proclaimed religious toleration in Transylvania, all during the years of the Reformation in the 16th century.

So we arranged to take a tour organized by the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council. The Partner Church Council helps congregations in the United States and Canada (and possibly Britain) match up with Unitarian churches in Transylvania for financial support, cross-cultural connections, and mutual understanding. The Phoenix Church, of which my father is Minister Emeritus, is partnered with the Unitarian church in Szekelyudvarhely, and we planned a family tour that included my parents, my nephew, my teenagers, Ben and Kat, and Curtiss and me. Seven of us in a nine passenger van, along with a driver and an interpreter. I prepped the kids (and myself) with the possibilities that it might be swelteringly hot, that the van might be old and ricketty and hugely uncomfortable with all of us squished in together with our luggage, and that we should think of it as a great experience of a lifetime.

It turned out to be none of that, except the last. It was wonderful weather, the van was new and roomy and did hold all of our luggage, and it was, for me, the best travel experience I have ever had. I will admit, though, that I had a nickname for the actual traveling we did in the van, borrowed from Disneyland: “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.” Our driver, Farkas Dénes, or Dénes, (they put their last names first) was either the worst driver I’ve ever experienced or the best. I decided he was the best because we survived. He told us later that one Partner Church tour group had given him some sort of award for not crashing them. In the video I made of our tour, Denés introduces himself by saying that of all the chauffeurs, he is the best minister, and of all of the ministers, he is the best chauffeur. He is the minister of the Unitarian church in Kolosc, is one of the key organizers of the Partner Church tours, and responsible for raising the money to buy two comfortable vans so the American guests could ride in comfort. He was a delight.

Denés didn’t speak English very well, so we had an interpreter, Kolcsár Csilla, or Csilla, whose father was a Unitarian minister in her town. She was also a delight: short blond hair, blue eyes, quick to laugh and most wonderful of all, truly interested in the teenagers. Needless to say, there was some maneuvering to sit in the front seat next to her, where for five days, conversations took place on such issues as the political situation in Romania (Csilla, what did the communists do to the country?), the differences between Unitarians in Transylvania and the U.S. (Csilla, do you all believe in God? Do you use the bible in church on Sundays?), theology (Ben and Kat and Nick, what do you believe in?), and future plans (Ben and Kat and Nick, are you going to be Unitarian ministers when you grow up? I think you are!).

You cannot buy that kind of experience -- such precious interaction! You can’t plan it. You are simply blessed with it. The tour was absolutely wonderful, but if everything had gone wrong instead of right, just those conversations between Csilla and the teens was worth all our effort and money. I sat there in the van, awed and incredibly grateful, listening to my nephew, my son, and my daughter: three young, smart and interested people whose identity as Unitarian Universalists was strong and deep, who were curious and concerned, compassionate and amazing.

I think that the main reason this tour was the best travel experience I have ever had was that it was about meeting the people. I had never been on a trip that was planned for me and guided by our interests. At almost every Unitarian church we visited, we were met by the minister and given a tour of it and an introduction to its history as a congregation in Transylvania. They had been notified ahead of time that we were coming, of course, and each minister was warm and welcoming to us. The hosts of the Lutheran hostel where we stayed in Kolozsvár were warm and welcoming as well, and plied us with plum brandy at the end of each day, and cooked for us a wonderful Hungarian family-style meal.

The food was just great! Transylvanians make the best soups I have ever tasted. Denés kept taking us to these little cafés for lunch as we drove around the countryside from village to village, saying my friend so-and-so owns this place, or the owners here are Unitarians from that church over there and they are the best cooks! The best soup I ever tasted was in the craft town of Korund (where I bought this altar cloth and the embroideries), in a simple little café, whose Unitarian owners had picked fresh, flat, whitish beans to make a soup that tasted of lime or sour cream and butter, or something I couldn’t identify but which I would have liked to keep eating for the rest of my life. Paprika was in it, I’m pretty sure. I bought a Hungarian cookbook which appears to have a recipe similar to that soup, and someday I’ll experiment in the kitchen and try to recreate that taste. I’ll probably fail, but all the more reason to go back to Transylvania some day.

I know, we went on this tour to see great historic Unitarian sights, and we did that, too. We visited the Unitarian Church in the rather large city of Kolozsvár. That church houses the stone upon which Francis Dávid was said to have stood and proclaimed “God Is One,” or, in Hungarian, “Egy Az Isten,” One is God. Some of his words are listed in reading number 566 in our hymnal, which you heard just before this sermon. Francis Dávid had already converted King John Sigismund to Unitarianism through his debates at the Diet of Torda, and “they” say that when he proclaimed “God Is One,” the entire town of Kolozsvár converted to Unitarianism right then and there. We have our own miracle tales, even in this rational religion.

Francis Dávid was also a Unitarian martyr. He was a product of the Reformation of the 16th century, morphing from Roman Catholic to Lutheran to Reformed to Unitarian as he read the bible and wrestled with the truths he pondered. He advocated tolerance and the use of conscience in religious matters, and the four religions I just listed were able to co-exist somewhat peacefully in Transylvania due to King John’s affirmation of the Edict of Toleration. That was an unusual situation back in the mid-1500’s, when people in other places in Europe were being burned at the stake for heresy and such. Francis Dávid’s freedom died with King John, and the resurgence of conservative views led to Francis Dávid’s imprisonment in the citadel on the top of the hill beside the town of Déva. There he became ill and died in 1579.

We climbed that hill. It was a beautiful, old trail under tall, bushy green trees. The ruins were really ruins, crumbling and somewhat dangerous. As Csilla explained to us, there was no way to tell where Francis Dávid was actually buried, so they put his memorial in the only cell which was still intact, behind a locked gate. For me, to visit such places gave Unitarian history a place, a context, and substance, as much as 450 years distance could allow.

What is so precious about the Partner Church tour, besides all that I have mentioned, is meeting the partner churches. Domi, the minister of the Unitarian church in Székelyudvarhely, welcomed us in the way the other ministers had, but he also had prepared us dinner, and we stayed the night in a pension in that city to spend more time with him. As I said, his church is the Partner church to Phoenix. In Székelyudvarhely, they have built a very large, beautiful new church, in the shape of a giant A-frame. My parents had raised money before our trip to deliver to Domi, and Domi was very grateful. Our money goes a long way there in Transylvania, where the economy is still struggling after the devastations of their former communist dictator. I, too, had some money to give, from people in this congregation, and I gave it to Dénes to go to a needy church that doesn’t have a partner yet, or needs it anyway. Someday, I hope we will offer to be a partner church to one in Transylvania. I believe it could enrich our understanding of our heritage and give us a broader perspective on what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.

I received an email this week, forwarded by my parents, from the Partner Church Council chat list. The Pacific Northwest District had had a meeting with the theme “Tributaries to Peace,” and Julie Jos of Spokane got to thinking about ways that being a Partner Church could help build a more peaceful world. I want to share her list with you:

We find what we have in common with people in other cultures.

We learn through appreciating differences.

Partner church contacts are between ordinary people, not just officials or staff. We each get to practice meeting the new culture.

We have first-hand knowledge of an area, its people and culture which helps us evaluate rhetoric and media coverage we hear.

We make lasting friendships, and we can’t abide an attack on their country!

We meet our own religion expressed through another culture and enlarge our vision to appreciate it -- not reject it as wrong.

I’m not the only one who sees international, interpersonal connections as a way to heal our world of war. As I traveled on the tour this summer, I kept thinking about how we, the United States of America, could have come in a little over a decade ago and bombed Romania for having the terrible dictator she had. I was grateful we hadn’t, and that the country had found its own way to survive and go forward. I was grateful that Csilla and Dénes and all the wonderful ministers and folks we met were healthy and alive, and that the countryside was still beautiful.

Transylvania means “beyond the forest.” It’s a beautiful land, and many of the Unitarians are peasants, working their fields every day. The villages hire shepherds to herd their cattle and bring them in to the villages at night where each household milks their own cows. We watched them come in on our last evening in Transylvania as we stayed in a quaint village hostel run by Laszlo who works at the Unitarian headquarters in Koloszvár. Green, lush, ripe, Transylvania is rich in beauty and heritage, our Unitarian heritage especially, and it is a treasure I hope you can travel to and come to cherish, as so many have who have traveled with the Partner Church Tour. Let’s work on becoming a Partner Church someday, and strengthen our connections with Unitarians around the world, with continued hope for peach throughout all lands.

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson