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Back in 2010, the New Humanism online magazine asked me if I’d write an article introducing Unitarian Universalism to Humanists. I sent them a text titled “Unitarian Universalism: A Church for Humanists?”, which they posted under the title “A Church that Would Have You as a Member”.
So far so good. But recently it has been pointed out to me that the New Humanism web site no longer exists, and so links that used to point to my article now go to some page that’s trying to sell you something unrelated. I’ve googled lines out of my draft and haven’t gotten any hits, so I don’t think the article has moved somewhere else.
So I’m going to repost it here. I didn’t keep track of my agreement with New Humanism, so it’s possible I’m violating copyright by doing so. If so, and if that bothers whoever has a right to be bothered, they should just leave a comment. I’ll happily take this post down if you can point to somewhere else on the internet where the article can be found.
Bear in mind: What I have in my records is the article as I sent it to them, so it’s missing whatever edits they might have made, for better or worse. I fixed a mistake. (James Barrett died in 1994, not 2003.) Also, I’ve had to fix the links, which may not go to the original places anymore, but should go somewhere relevant. Anyway, here it is:
A Church That Would Have You as a Member
Unitarian Universalism has long had a unique relationship with Humanism. What other religious group would showcase an outspoken atheist at its national convention, as the UUs did when they invited Kurt Vonnegut to give prestigious annual Ware Lecture at the General Assembly of 1984? UU Humanists have their own national organization (HUUmanists) with their own journal (Religious Humanism). In a 1998 survey, nearly half of UUs identified themselves as Humanists. New Humanism's publisher Greg Epstein spoke at the 2008 General Assembly, and has been invited to speak again in 2010.
Unitarians were largely responsible for the first Humanist Manifesto, and in his 2002 book Making the Manifesto, former Unitarian Universalist Association President (and the AHA's Humanist of the Year for 2000) William Schulz claimed that there were more Humanists in UU churches than in the American Humanist Association.
Few other religious organizations have so consistently stood with Humanists in those battles where traditional morality and human rights take opposite sides. The lead plaintiffs in the Massachusetts same-sex marriage case took their vows at the Boston headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association, with then-UUA President William Sinkford officiating. About a hundred UU ministers -- a significant fraction of the entire UU clergy -- marched with Martin Luther King in Selma in 1965, and the murder of one of them (James Reeb) provided the white martyr that President Johnson needed when he urged Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Another UU (James Barrett) was murdered in 1994 while trying to protect an abortionist from religious-right violence. Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel laureate who led an international groundswell of scientists pushing for a nuclear test-ban treaty (and co-founded the International League of Humanists) was a UU.
UU General Assemblies have passed more than a dozen resolutions supporting the separation of church and state. People for the American Way founder Norman Lear was another Ware lecturer in 1994, and a Unitarian Universalist (Pete Stark) was the first congressman to announce in public that he did not believe in God.
Small wonder, then, that when Humanists go looking for a like-minded community -- a place to raise a child in humanistic values, look for social-action allies, solemnize a wedding or funeral, or perhaps just be reminded once a week that American consumer culture is not the only alternative to God -- the local Unitarian Universalist church is a prime option. There are about a thousand UU churches around the country (far more than Ethical Culture societies or other Humanist-friendly groups), and you can find at least one in every state of the union.
But is the humanist-community problem really that simple? Should we all just go join UU churches? As a Unitarian Universalist myself -- I am, in fact, more comfortable identifying myself as a UU than as a Humanist -- I wish I could make that sweeping recommendation in good conscience. But while many Humanists are happy as UUs, many others are not, and every year some number of UU-Humanists stomp out the door in disgust.
So would you be a contented parishioner or a stomper-out-the-door?
*
Probably the best way to get a handle on UUism is to understand where it comes from. Believe it or not, the story (or at least the Unitarian branch of the UU family tree) starts with the Puritans. When they came to the New World in the 1600s, the Puritans weren't any kind of Humanists or even particularly liberal Christians. But Puritan churches lacked two features that anchor religious institutions against the progressive forces of evolution: They didn't have a creed and they didn't have a hierarchy.
Each local congregation was supposed to read the Bible for itself, and no external authority could force a congregation to read it any particular way. Puritans believed that an external authority was unnecessary, because the Holy Spirit would keep pulling congregations back to Christian truth. What happened instead was that many of those congregations drifted towards liberalism.
The drift was gradual, but over the centuries the small changes added up. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, people like William Ellery Channing started interpreting the Bible according to reason rather than tradition, and noticed that some of the more unreasonable Christian doctrines, like the Trinity, were also un-Biblical. So they affirmed the unity rather than the trinity of God and became known as Unitarians.
By the middle of the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson was challenging the uniqueness of the Bible itself, which he saw as the record of one people's inspiration. People in other times and places (like us here and now) might hope for their own divine inspiration. And if that was the goal, why not look to Nature or Art rather than to scripture?
From there, each generation of Unitarians became a little more humanistic than the last, until by 1920 Unitarian minister Curtis Reese could announce to his colleagues (in public, no less) that God was "philosophically possible, scientifically unproved, and religiously unnecessary."
The fact that Cotton Mather was not rolling over in his grave was, in itself, powerful evidence against the Afterlife.
Reese-style Unitarian Humanism was controversial for about a generation, but by the time of the merger with the Universalists in 1961, it was the majority point of view in most UU churches. Since then things have drifted in a different direction, which we'll get to in a few paragraphs.
*
This unique history explains the otherwise bizarre combination of features you will find in a typical UU church. If you walk into a UU Sunday-morning service wearing earplugs, you might imagine you are in a Christian church. Families arrive together and children go to their classes. Adults stand up or sit down in unison. Sometimes they sing together or read something out of the hymnal together. There might be a choir and an organ. Candles might be lit. More often than not, a minister will stand up and give something that might be called a "talk" or an "address," but looks an awful lot like a sermon.
UUs might appear to be imitating the more popular Christian denominations, but they're not. Like the evolutionary product it is, UUism comes by all that stuff honestly through a common ancestor -- the same way that dolphins get their lungs.
No matter how naturally those Christian trappings arise, though, they provide the first test of whether you'll be happy as a UU: If they drive you crazy, independent of the the service's intellectual content, then your life as a UU will be difficult. Don't torture yourself.
But if you can tolerate the appearances -- I've grown to like them myself -- then take out your earplugs and listen. You'll hear a message that is not always capital-H Humanist, but is decidedly humanistic: People of goodwill need to look past their disagreements about metaphysics and start fixing the world -- where fixing means creating the conditions for human happiness and fulfillment here and now, not preparing our invisible souls for some higher happiness after death. The world's many scriptures are read for inspiration, not for authoritative pronouncements, so a UU discussion doesn't end when someone quotes the Bible. Prayer is a community meditation on human needs and desires, not a request for supernatural favors. Science's description of the physical world is accepted, and while UUs may at times be skeptical about whether technology is creating a Heaven or a Hell for us, they completely understand and sympathize with the scientist's desire to solve whatever earthly mysteries might be solvable. Unlike Bluebeard's castle, a UU universe has no locked rooms.
*
Before you say "sign me up," though, you need to consider the continuing drift of recent decades. There was a moment in the 1960s or 70s when Unitarian Universalism might have become an unofficial Church of Humanism. Humanism was clearly the dominant philosophy and all forms of traditional religion were in retreat. Many UUs felt that their centuries-long evolutionary journey was done now: They had shaken off the barnacles of orthodox Christianity and had arrived at Humanism.
Many still feel that way, but the community as a whole has gone in a different direction. Particularly among the ministry, there is a trend to view traditional religion not as an encrustation to be shaken off, but as a resource to be mined. The solid shore of Humanism is largely taken for granted, but from that shore many 21st-century UUs dive back into religion, to see what can be salvaged: community-building rituals, teaching stories, techniques of personal transformation, invocations of awe and wonder, and so on.
And so, religious words that once seemed to be on their way out -- worship, prayer, God, holy, sacred, salvation, divine, and many others -- are on the upswing again. If you tap on those words, if you ask what UUs are trying to get at by using them, chances are you'll hear an explanation largely compatible with an underlying Humanism. But if you view the words themselves as the carriers of a dangerous infection, you'll find today's UU churches to be unhygienic environments.
Finally, UU congregations are tolerant to a fault. Literally anyone can show up at a UU church, believing any kind of craziness, and will not be told to go away. (In fact, if you take it on yourself to tell someone he or she doesn't belong, you are the one who is likely to be reprimanded.) If you mingle at the coffee hour after the Sunday service, you may run into astrologers, crystal gazers, faith healers, and new-agers of all varieties. They won't be anywhere close to the majority and most of them don't stay more than a few months. But if one such encounter ruins your whole week, you won't be a happy camper.
In short, if you are allergic to the appearances and words of traditional religion, Unitarian Universalism is not for you. If you are looking for a community of pure and unadulterated Humanism, you won't find it at a UU church.
But if you want to be accepted for the Humanist you are, without any fudging or hypocrisy, you can have that. If you want allies in the struggle to make the world a better place, you can find them. If you are stimulated by diverse points of view and enjoy engaging people who frame the world differently (but not too differently), a UU church is a good place to meet them.
If you came to my church, you'd be welcome. You might be happy there, or you might not. Only you can judge.
Rev. Athalia Lizzie Johnson Irwin was one of the first women in the American South to be ordained to the Universalist ministry. Serving churches across the country she pioneered creative way to use print media for evangelical purposes. In this episode of Susan and Sean are joined by Gail Forsyth Vail, Adult Program Director at the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/pamphlet/content.blubrry.com/pamphlet/Gail_mixdown.mp3
If you think that drag is just about a man wearing false eyelashes and a pussycat wig, or it’s just a woman wearing a pair of glued-on sideburns and an Elvis jumpsuit, then you have not heard the Gospel of RuPaul.
If you’re a smart and sensitive soul, and your eyes are wide open to the ugly mediocrity and hypocrisy of this world, and you’re angry and bitter, then you have not heard the Gospel of RuPaul.
RuPaul’s Gospel takes the ordinary sense of what drag is and completely transforms it into a spiritual philosophy; and it heals the anger and bitterness. It “tickles the brain.” That’s how RuPaul himself puts it. “It gives people something to live for.” “When you become the image of your own imagination,” he says, “it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.”
Now, even if you happen to be a Jesus or a Buddha, you just don’t invent your Gospel out of nothing. Others are always helping, others are always contributing to the Good News vision that’s going to be born through you. One of these folks was RuPaul’s tenth-grade drama teacher, Mr. Pannell. “At the time,” says RuPaul, “I was going through a teenage drama of my own. My bad grades had finally caught up with me, and I was being faced with expulsion from the only school I had ever really enjoyed going to. My teacher, seeing how shaken up I was, calmly pulled me to the side and said with an even tone, ‘The most important thing to remember, RuPaul, is to not take life too seriously.’” Hearing this, RuPaul said to himself “Excuse me? … I am about to get kicked out of the only school I ever loved, and your advice for me is ‘don’t take life to seriously’? Are you for real?” “Of course,” says RuPaul, “the truth and wisdom of his advice was lost on me then, but I never forgot it. In fact, over the next thirty years, it would become the creed I live my life by.” It was “The best advice I’ve ever gotten”
How many of you tend to take yourself too seriously? Why did I even ask that question?
Someone was telling me about how he has a running joke with a friend. From time to time they look at each other and declare, thunderously, “Do you have any idea how important I think I am?” And whatever real struggle they may be dealing with actually gets a bit smaller, in proportion to how much they laugh.
Our lives always get tangled up, but if you are taking things way too seriously, instead of finessing things so they get untangled, the opposite happens. A tangle becomes a hard knot.
Stressing out is the worst problem-solving strategy there is.
But we do take our lives way too seriously. In part, it’s because we’re traumatized, and traumas tend to lock a person down. You were born, you had natural human needs, but the people who were supposed to take care of you, for some reason, could not. Trauma. Or, in growing up, you tended to draw outside the lines, and you got punished for it. Like RuPaul, you’re a guy but you liked to run around the yard with a pink dress on. And you got punished for it. You still get punished.
Trauma makes us take our lives way too seriously. And so do our social roles. They just tend to take over, and we end up thinking that their limits define the limits of our total potentiality. You become your gender, your skin color, your job, your politics, your marital status. That is what you are, and you are nothing more than that. You’re stuck in a box.
Growing up, like the rest of us, RuPaul heard the message, learned it, knew it by heart.
But again and again, lessons contradicting it came.
One day, when RuPaul was five, his sister Renata put some chocolate chip cookies in a paper bag, grabbed a blanket, and then led him out into the back yard, spread out the blanket, opened up the paper bag and gave him a cookie, and said, “Ru, Ru, this is a picnic!” It taught him that you can turn something that is completely mundane into something magical. Take the situation too seriously and all you have is a blanket and a bag of cookies. But imagination, unleashed, reveals that there’s always more than meets the eye.
Beyond this, RuPaul happened to see African American comedian Flip Wilson on TV, in drag. Geraldine. Oh how funny it was to him, fabulous. He wanted to sing and dance and do like that. Extravaganza eleganza!
On TV he also saw Diana Ross. It was on the Ed Sullivan show and she’s singing “Baby Love” and she scrunches her shoulders up and he does that too, he’s imitating her, he’s practicing her big eyes and big smiles.
All this is happening in San Diego in the 1970s and it was very white and very conservative and people wanted him to take his gender and his race and all the other labels way too seriously. But for him, that meant playing dumb.
You see, there’s an equation forming in his mind. As in: taking yourself way too seriously, just like a lot of people want, is equivalent to playing dumb. It’s a kind of deprivation. It’s nothing less than a denial of the fundamental freedom, creativity, and playfulness that is at the core of human nature.
And he’s just too smart for that.
So was David Bowie. About him he says, “Everything that I felt on the outside he was doing on the inside.” David Bowie’s genderfluidity was a symbol of something way bigger than gay or straight or male or female or any of the other labels or traumas that tend to take people over and make them forget their essential selves.
Thus the Gospel of RuPaul: here it is: “Drag isn’t just a man wearing false eyelashes and a pussycat wig. Drag isn’t just a woman with a pair of glued on sideburns and an Elvis jumpsuit. Drag is everything. I don’t differentiate drag from dressing up or dressing down. Whatever you put on after you get out of the shower is your drag. Be it a three-piece suit or a Chanel suit, a McDonald’s uniform or a police uniform, the truth of who you really are is not defined by your clothes.”
Do you see my drag? It’s this stole, this suit, these colorful socks.
Look at your drag.
And now think: what more could there be? What more wants to be, through you? Perhaps all you think you’ve been given in life is a bag of cookies and a blanket in the back yard.
But are you taking that way too seriously? Could there be more? Could there be different?
“The biggest obstacle I ever faced,” RuPaul says, “was my own limited perception of myself.”
And he’s not alone in that.
**
**
**
RuPaul says, “I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear seven-inch heels, four-foot wigs, and skintight dresses?”
He also says, “I don’t dress like a woman; I dress like a drag queen!”
You see, drag is bigger than just dress considerations. At least for RuPaul, it’s trying to get at something far larger. “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag,” he says, which means that human nature is at the core fundamentally free, creative, and playful.
Which leads to the big question: what will do with all our freedom? If, in some grand sense, we are all drag queens, what are we going to do with our drag?
One thing is to mock culture, which is really about taking back freedom. Culture wants people to play dumb, but no, RuPaul is too smart for that. Thus, the mockery. “And it’s not only drag queens who have blown the lid of culture’s lunacy and hypocrisy,” he reminds us. “Comedians, rock stars, and even Bugs Bunny have built celebrated careers on irreverence and challenging the status quo…. [A]ncient cultures … relied on drag queens, shamans, and witch doctors to remind each individual member of the tribe of their duality as male and female, human and spirit, body and soul.”
This is a great connection to make. Shamans and witch doctors and drag queens all were, in ancient times, living symbols of the fluidity at the heart of all humanity. And they still are. And they wake up the sleepwalkers by poking at them. By making fun. Seven-inch heels, four-foot wigs, and skintight dresses are all about making fun. Names like Jinks Monsoon, Pearl Liaison, Trixie Mattel, Acid Betty, and others that I can’t mention in this rated G context but they are hilarious! They are making fun of what too many people take too seriously, seriously enough even to hurt others over, even kill.
Matthew Shepard.
Pulse.
What will we do with our drag? Besides mocking culture, another thing we get from RuPaul is the invitation to look back at ourselves growing up from a drag queen perspective. Remember the clip from earlier, when RuPaul invited Pearl Liaison to do this? “You were born naked,” RuPaul says, “but you’ve grown to become a fierce drag queen. Here’s a photo of you as a little bitty boy. Now if you could time travel what would Pearl have to say to little Matthew?”
And Pearl says, “Ahhh god, I’d have to start with a warning. You’re about to enter the toughest years of your life and it’s gonna suck really bad for a long time and people are going to [mess] you up and take advantage of you and people are going to be looking at you from across the room for so many years and you’re not going to understand why.” And Pearl cries and cries….
And then RuPaul asks, “Do you understand why now?” Pearl nods yes, yes, yes, and then RuPaul says, “You’re a star baby.”
Two quotes from RuPaul will help make sense of what’s happening here:
“When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.”
And then this: “If you are trigger-happy and you’re looking for a reason to reinforce your own victimhood, your own perception of yourself as a victim, you’ll look for anything that will reinforce that.”
It all adds up to this: To look at yourself from a drag queen perspective is to remember the pain of your life and to feel the temptation to reinforce your own victimhood, but you don’t. You step back from that. You choose to become the image of your own imagination. It’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.
Today, I want each of you to look at yourself from that fierce powerful drag queen perspective. Because you are a star, baby.
And you are even more than that, according to RuPaul’s gospel. There is yet another level to all of this. The truth is that “You are an extension of the power that created the whole universe.” “The truth,” he says, “is that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. The human part of the experience is temporary. Think of it as a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Your spiritual being is not temporary. It is eternal. Think of it as the sun and the moon. That’s why the saying ‘You’re born naked and the rest is drag’ couldn’t be more true.”
And this is the full and entire Gospel. Our drag actually does not end with our nakedness but extends even to include our physical human body and our basic individuality that comes with a name and a history. Before all of that, you were. You are eternal.
A Vedanta Hindu would put it like this: Atman is Brahman.
But RuPaul just says: “You are God in drag.”
[Head exploding sound]
[More head exploding sound]
Perhaps you came this morning really thinking that drag is just about a man wearing false eyelashes and a pussycat wig, or it’s just a woman wearing a pair of glued-on sideburns and an Elvis jumpsuit. But now you’ve heard the Gospel of RuPaul.
Perhaps you came this morning with eyes are wide open to the ugly mediocrity and hypocrisy of this world, and you’re angry and bitter. But now you’ve heard the Gospel.
The biggest obstacle people ever face is their own limited perception of themselves.
Abundance is the truth of who you are. Extravaganza eleganza is you.
Don’t let anyone steal that.
Take that power back.
The story of the Universalist Korean mission is little discussed, surely because the Japan mission, on which it was institutionally dependent, is also little discussed and because there is no evidence that has come to light that it survived the Second World War. I’m hoping to add to the record, and follow up on the article I posted two years ago.
I was at the Library of Congress yesterday and scanned minutes and reports from the 1937 General Convention. This is from the section called International Church Extension. I’ve added links to outside resources for context.
Universalist General Convention. Universalist biennial reports and directory. Boston, Mass. : Universalist General Convention. (1938), p. 83-86.
Under the leadership of Mr. [Ryonki] Jio [or, Cho in the financial reports], graduate of Doshisha Theological Seminary, work was begun in Korea in 1929. Mr. Jio with another student from the seminary had done summer evangelistic work the two previous years. As he traveled all over the country he investigated possible centers for his future work. His final decision was in favor of Taikyu (Daigu—Korean pronunciation), a city the size of Rochester, New York.
In April, 1929, after his graduation from Doshisha, Mr. Jio rented a house and began his work. It was thought at first that no Sunday school could be conducted in such narrow quarters but on April 7th some 57 children came and three men and four women volunteered to help in teaching. What has come to be a very significant work was thus humbly begun.
There is a church building, and a pastor’s house on a small plot of land down a narrow alley building leading from one of the many wide streets in Taikyu. The buildings and land are being bought on the installment plan, with payments each month for something over two more years. The “church building” is an adapted ex-wrestling hall, now in quite bad condition, with uprights weakening and sinking to such an extent that the windows, which open horizontally, are immovable now, with the exception of one half of one window. A new building—one could almost say, a building—is needed badly, but the group is attempting this year a complete renovation with the limited resources these poverty-stricken people can manage to scrape together.
Here are all the usual meetings and some unusual ones —not only Church and Sunday School—but many other meetings throughout the week.
Mr. Jio has lived through some hard experiences since the start of 1929—experiences that would have embittered most men—but he has had his dream and has worked towards its realization steadily. To tabulate such activities as frequent preaching, Sunday School direction, prayer meetings, boys’ club work, Bible classes, does not begin to give one an idea of the work done. Mr. Jiu is fast becoming one of the best-known citizens of Taikyu.
In August of 1936, several months after his graduation from the Taikyu Government Medical School, Dr. Pak, who had for several years served as Sunday School superintendent, in cooperation with Mr. Jio and in the name of the church opened a medical-services-at-cost enterprise in a makeshift “attic” section of the “church building,” divided into a small laboratory, a small waiting room, and a somewhat larger consultation and treatment room, the whole comprising a space of about ten by fifteen feet. (Their original plan to build up the enterprise on a cooperative “shares” basis was prohibited by the police authorities.) For over a year Dr. Pak worked without salary patiently building the work. In August of ‘37, however, he resigned to take up a private practice in Manchukuo among Koreans there. Another young doctor was procured on a salary basis, and the work is going forward with steadily increasing numbers of patients daily and an ever-widening scope of influence in the city. In some months the average number of patients served has been as high as 40 to 50 daily. Last autumn, in answer to the need of an in-patient department for slight operation cases such as for trachoma, which is very wide-spread in Korea. Mr. Jio turned his house over to this work and took up a rented dwelling some twenty minutes’ walk from the “church.”
Handicapped by extremely limited equipment this “church and hospital” enterprise goes forward steadily.
Mrs. Onjun Pak, the first Korean to be trained at the Blackmer Home, has started a Sewing School for Women and Girls in connection with Mr. Jio’s work. Very little equipment was available, but it is hoped that interested groups in America may be able to contribute towards the purchase of a few machines and some necessary supplies. Until that time Mrs. Pak is carrying on with what is at hand and is making a real contribution to the people she serves. A portion of the International Friendship Offering received in Universalist Church Schools in November, 1937, has been a sign for this work of Mrs. Pak.
A church was soon started at Wulchon, some six miles from Taikyu, but owing to the persecution by another sect, it had to be suspended. But this misfortune has not followed another enterprise in Wulchon.
Some years ago people in the immediate vicinity of this small town faced a desperate unemployment situation. Mr. Jio resolved to do something about it. With his church group as a nucleus and on borrowed money, he purchased materials and begin a fibre-slipper manufacture, his own special service being the finding of markets for the goods manufactured goods during the long cold season when the ground cannot be worked. Today the Guild thus started has spread beyond this first group, gives employment to over eighteen hundred and manufactures over two hundred thousand pairs of slippers a year, selling some as far afield as Chicago and points farther east. This industry has become second in importance—after silk—in the district which Taikyu is the center.
A dozen miles beyond Wulchon is Kumpo, a small rural village of two hundred or more. Here, after some evangelistic meetings, a church of thirty odd members was formed. But it as was the case in Wulchon, was forced to suspend activities due to persecution from another sect.
After Dr. Cary’s address of the Buffalo convention in 1931, Rev. G. H. Leining and Rev. Ellsworth C. Reamon conducted a swift impromptu campaign for funds which resulted in enough to purchase a farm of some one hundred and sixteen thousand tsubo (a tsubo is 36 square feet) or over 98 acres—a very large farm for the Orient. Upwards of fifty families rent and work this farm, which has extensive rice cultivation possibilities as well as being in a good position for fruit. In the summer of ‘34 a great flood swept down and buried large portions of the farm under six feet of water, but it was reconditioned—at considerable expense (with money borrowed of the government on very easy terms). What was necessary was done and the slow process of making the land valuable by annually putting all returns back from it back into it was taken up again. More fruit trees are planted, more poplars about the edges to hold off sand and future floods. In August of 1936 an even worst flood came, wrecking property throughout the southern part of Korea. Once again the work of reconditioning was taken up but it was too expensive to do it as completely as was desirable. Nevertheless, more planting of fruit trees and protective poplars, which are pruned short, was done. A goodly number of the thousands of trees planted before the ‘36 flood, lived through it.
In the nearby town, Mr. Jio holds occasional meetings whenever an opportunity presents itself.
Mr. Jio maintains a constant communication with liberal groups of Koreans in Japan proper, especially among theological students to keep him exceedingly busy every time he visits Tokyo and Kyoto, where his alma mater, Doshisha, is.
He sees great opportunity for influence through a liberal magazine, but is compelled for lack of funds to postpone any independent action of this nature, submitting articles for publication in other magazines whenever opportunity permits.
Mr. Jio and the work he and his people undertake is financially aided by the General Convention and in constant affiliation with the General Convention representatives and the Japan Council.
I ran across the resolution of the 1937 Universalist General Convention, in Chicago, commending work and use of the Hymns of the Spirit.
VI. New Hymnal
Whereas, we note with interest and pleasure the appearance of the new joint Unitarian-Universalist Commission hymnal, “Hymns of the Spirit,” therefore, be it
Resolved, that this Convention expresses the gratitude of our people to the members of the joint commission for so faithfully performing the arduous task of compiling and editing this splendid and much-needed book, and be it further
Resolved, that we commend the use of this hymnal to all Universalist churches in need of new hymnals.
Universalist General Convention. Universalist biennial reports and directory. Boston, Mass. : Universalist General Convention. (1938), p. 22.
At some point in the mid-20th century, it came to the attention of demographers that the average American family had something like 2.something children. Now, most people understand that people don’t have fractions of a child. Most people get that this meant that some families had fewer than two children, and some had more. And yet. And yet, the statistics said this was the average American family, so as builders raced to build houses in suburbs following the example of Levittown, they built all these three- and four-bedroom houses. To accommodate all of those 2.something children families. Which was great, if you had a family with two or three children. But not really so much if you had seven children. Or five, even. Which wasn’t all that unusual in the neighborhood that I lived in as a kid.
But hey, it’s a formula. There are other things that we’ve learned from demographic statistics. Demographics have told us for a long time (although this is changing rapidly), that about 12% of the U.S. population was black. And it would seem that people in Hollywood must have gotten hold of this. That is the most charitable assumption I can make for how Hollywood has represented minorities on screen (I can think of nothing nice to say about how women have been represented).
Once upon a time, everyone on screen was white, unless there was a specific reason for someone to be a person of color (black slave, evil Indian, stereotyped Chinese guy with buck teeth who was probably played by a white guy anyway (see Part 1)). But eventually, more enlightened producers and directors caught on, and started including people of color. For example, in “The Mod Squad” – one default guy (you know, the “regular” white guy), one woman (i.e. a white woman, because we can only handle one variable at a time), and one black guy. So, boxes ticked. And there was “Star Trek”, which really was ahead of its time. But again, “Star Trek” had a predominantly white cast. The captain, of course, was a white human man. There was a black woman in a prominent role, which was truly fantastic. And there was a Japanese-American guy, and a Russian character (also a white man, but it was the 1960’s, so this was big – the two communist nations sitting there together). And there was a Scottish white guy, and an alien white guy. Boxes ticked.
But in the late 1980’s, when “Star Trek Next Generation” came around, things hadn’t changed all that much in terms of total diversity. This is supposed to be taking place centuries in the future. The captain is still a white guy. Of all the main characters on the series, two were black: LeVar Burton, who played a human, and Michael Dorn, who played a Klingon in heavy prosthetic make-up. Centuries in the future, and we were still envisioning people of color in token representation.
It’s no wonder that last week Tim Burton shoved both his feet down his throat when he allowed as how he’s bought into the whole idea that white people are the default for movies unless a character is specifically called to be a person of color (read more here). His exact words were, “things either call for things or they don’t.” Ew.
Here’s the thing — regardless of what the statistics say about the current population of the United States, we know from our lives that families don’t have 2.3 children, and we know that each school doesn’t have one black student, each office doesn’t have a single black employee, each neighborhood doesn’t have one black family. So why do we still represent the world this way on screen?
We can imagine better. When “Doctor Who” chose to represent the British Monarch in the 29th century, they gave us Liz X, a black woman. That’s a good start. I think we need to keep it going. And maybe Tim Burton ought to sit down and watch a few episodes.
That’s my mite. It’s all I’ve got.
…no, not one of mine. Read @EOrthodoxy (and the associated blog, Eclectic Orthodoxy.)
Grateful to @ignitekindred and @SideofLove for organizing tonight's event! We ready. pic.twitter.com/L1OTaM0Cee
(I was asked to speak at the No Moore Rally today at the Alabama Supreme Court Building in Montgomery, AL. Judge Roy Moore was being tried on six out of seven ethics violations when he urged Alabama Probate Judges to disobey US Supreme Court Ruling on the constitutionality of Same Sex Marriage. Here is what I said.)
We have been standing here for quite some time now awaiting the verdict that Judge Moore is found guilty of violating the Supreme Court orders to enforce marriage equality in this state. Judge Moore believes that he is above the law of the land. He believes he is called to impose his brand of religion onto the citizens of this state. He believes that his brand of religion is the one true faith, that he has the pure and unadulterated interpretation of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. That all other interpretations of these sacred texts are heresy and therefore should be purged from the state of Alabama.
However, Judge Moore does not live in a country where only one religion is declared the official government religion. Where only one interpretation of that religion is sanctioned. Where other religions are persecuted.
The United States does not have an official government sanctioned religion. Here we have religious pluralism and the promise of religious freedom for all religions to not only be practiced but to have their rituals protected and recognized by the Government. This protection is found in our nation’s most sacred of texts, a text that Judge Moore vowed to uphold in his role as judge.
From the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Constitution of the United States, 1st Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Constitution of the United States, 14 Amendment, Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
It is from these documents that I stand here today to proclaim that my faith, which teaches me to love one another, no matter who you are or whom you love is to be respected under this constitution. My religion, while a minority religion in the state of Alabama, has under the US Constitution the legal and moral authority to have its marriages recognized by the government of these states. This right has been denied the members of my faith and other faiths for decades. It was a right that was finally recognized by the Supreme Court as being fully constitutional.
Roy Moore and his ilk want to deny people, who do not agree with his religious faith, their rights as citizens of these United States. The followers of his religious faith are not hindered in any way by the practices of those who follow another faith or who follow no faith, just as my faith is not hindered in any way by the practices of his. Where hindrance occurs is when followers of his faith demand that I and others adhere to his faith tenets.
In countries where there is one sanctioned religion his approach would be legal but here in the United States all people are free to practice their faith. All people have the right to pursue happiness.
But here is thing; Judge Moore’s faith doesn’t even follow the tenets of his religion. His professed religion is Christianity.
Jesus declared that for his followers, and I am reading from the King James version, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Judge Moore violates this commandment. He is not loving his neighbor. His behaviors show no respect for the diversity of his neighbors. His behaviors show only contempt which goes against his very faith which insists on following the author of love, by doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.
I feel sorry for Judge Moore. I do. Truly. I feel sorry for him because he has no love in his heart. He has walled himself off from knowing the freedom that divine love gives to each of us when we are willing to be embraced by that love. He is afraid. And in his fear, he attacks others who have found the freedom that love bestows.
That love for one another is expressed in the Christian Scriptures of Galatians 3:28. Here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
We do not need to be afraid of each other any longer because when love is present, when love is placed at the center of our hearts, the need to separate us into categories falls away. The desire for ensuring mutual respect of our differences rises to the fore.
But Judge Moore has not experienced the very redemption his Christian faith teaches him. Redemption is more than just reciting a few words on a page. And the Redemption I am talking about is not just in the life to come, but redemption in this life. Freedom in this life which our founding parents of this nation in their wisdom codified into law—the redemption of being able to have life and the pursuit of happiness. He does not know this redeeming love. He only knows hatred for others who not only are different than he is, but have found happiness and love through that difference.
He is going to need a bit of a nudge from today to be told once again, that he does not have the right to enforce his hatred onto the citizens of Alabama. He does not have the right to impose his version of Christianity onto the citizens of Alabama—who have found the power of love through other Christian denominations, through Judaism, through Islam, through Buddhism, through Baha’i, through Sikhism, through Taoism, through atheism, through humanism, through Jainism, through Wiccan, through indigenous faiths, and yes, even through my faith, Unitarian Universalism.
Judge Moore, you have betrayed the trust of the state of the Alabama by violating our most sacred creeds as a nation. Not just once, but twice. You must be removed from office this day. And you cannot be allowed to serve a public office again because you have proven yourself as not being able to hold the people’s rights above your own interests and agendas. Perhaps one day you will realize that Love is Love and that all people have the right to experience love and have that love recognized by the government.
For #WhatCanWeDoWednesday check out episode 3 of @SideofLove's Fortification https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-3-reina-gossett/id1144982373?i=1000375851672&mt=2 …
#Atlanta - we are heading your way bringing the #ReviveLove Tour to ATL followed by #ManyRiversFest. Can't wait! @BlackLivesUU @SideofLove pic.twitter.com/CzUcEMnFdW
Is healing possible when physical healing is not possible? When Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie got her first call as minister to the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House in Provincetown, Massachusettes, she assumed it would be similar to the small town church of her childhood. Only a few days into her ministry Rev. Kim was thrust into the crisis that would come to dominate her ministry, the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Rev. Kim tells some of the stories of her time in Provincetown and shares some of the lessons she learned from ground zero.
Featured image of the Provincetown Meeting House used with permission of the painter Jeanne DeCoste. You can find Jeanne work on Etsy.
Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/pamphlet/content.blubrry.com/pamphlet/At_The_Meeting_House.mp3
Did you know that, in ancient mid-East society, where Israel lay, it was common for military men to establish deep and faithful friendships with each other—friendships which were so deep that, in truth, the men were lovers?
Did you know that, in the ancient society out of which our Hebrew Bible emerged, women had their own world, separate from though dominated by men? And that, in this world, women often offered each other support and affection, including sexual intimacy?
Did you know that, in the ancient society out of which our Christian Bible emerged, Roman householders would regularly establish sexual relationships with their male slaves?
It was commonplace, and no one raised an eyebrow. It was what it was.
So now listen to 1 Samuel 18:1-4, which describes what happened when David first came to Court—David, who would go on to slay Goliath and become King of the Israelites. He met Jonathan, the current King’s son. And sparks flew. As the Bible says, “The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David…. Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.” Clearly, Jonathan and David were military men, and an intense relationship between them started. A sexual one? Well, just listen to what David says in 2 Samuel 1:26 upon the death of Jonathan: “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” There’s more going on here than simple friendship, folks…
Or now listen to the story of Ruth and Naomi, as Daniel Helminiak, Roman Catholic priest and biblical scholar, describes it: “The Book of Ruth relates the very unusual commitment between the Jewish woman Naomi and her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth. After the death of Ruth’s husband, in contrast to the customs of the day and unlike her sister-in-law, widowed Ruth remains with Naomi. Ruth declares to Naomi, ‘Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there I will be buried.’” Here again: more is going on than simple friendship.
And then this: listen: In both the gospels of Matthew and Luke, we read of a Centurion at whose household a servant lies paralyzed and suffering. The Centurion goes before Jesus and begs him to come. He speaks of his authority over his servants and uses the word “doulos” which is the generic term for servant. But, very curiously, when he refers to the specific paralyzed and suffering servant for whom he’s going through all sorts of trouble, the word used is “pais” in combination with “entimos” meaning “my lover” who is “very valuable and dear.” “The most likely explanation of the Centurion’s behavior,” says Daniel Helminiak, “is that the young slave was the Centurion’s sexual partner. Undoubtedly,” he goes on, “Jesus was aware of such things. He was not dumb. He knew what was going on around him. So this seems to be a case where Jesus actually encountered a loving homosexual relationship.” And how did that encounter turn out? He praised the Centurion’s faith and he healed his young lover. No condemnation. Not one whiff of it.
Now, hold on to all of this on one hand while, on the other, we revisit Brian Murphy from our video today. His story of the first time he looked up homosexuality in the Bible. He grabbed his Bible off the bookshelf, he closed his bedroom door, he sat cross-legged on the floor and opened directly to the index. His finger traced down the page. He found the word. Homosexuality. He says, “Even looking at the word was terrifying. There were five pages listed. I flipped to the first one. It wasn’t a specific verse but rather a lesson box in my teen study Bible.” And that lesson box repeats the idea that homosexuality is a choice, and a sinful one at that. He keeps looking, “But it’s more of the same. Homosexuality is a sin. Gay people are choosing to live in sin.” He closes his Bible. He says, “I don’t know what to do. There it is written on the page. Crystal clear. […] Who I like is sinful, who I love is sinful. Who I am is sinful. Where could I possibly go from here?”
The underlying pain of that question is unbearable.
In response to such heartbreaking hurt, religious conservatives and fundamentalists often like to say, “Hate the sin and love the sinner.” They say that, to try to ease up on the judgmentalism. But it makes no sense at all when you’re talking about sexual orientation. Act and person are merged. Daniel Halminiak again: “Sexuality means much more than physical arousal and orgasm. Attached to a person’s sexuality is the capacity to feel affection, to delight in someone else, to get emotionally close to another person, to be passionately committed…. Sexuality is at the core… [So, to] have to be afraid to feel sexual … is to short-circuit human spontaneity in a whole array of expressions—creativity, motivation, passion, commitment, heroic achievement. It is to be afraid of part of one’s own deepest self.”
Brian Murphy knows exactly what I’m talking about. How many here know this as well: what it’s like to be afraid of your own deepest self? To say, in despair, “Where could I possibly go from here?”
All this is on the other hand. On one hand, we have Bible stories that, seen through the lens of history, tell of loving same-sex relationships without blinking an eye. But on the other hand, we have a Bible index that points to certain passages which are combined with lesson boxes, and in these lesson boxes are interpretations that converge on one idea: homosexuality is depraved. And because the Bible has such authority in our culture, the result is people like Brian Murphy who feel stuck in an evil that they can’t possibly escape because it’s who they are. The result is 30% of teenage suicides coming from the gay youth population. The result is a larger culture of hatred towards gays and lesbians (not to mention trans folks) which is NOT softened by statements like “hate the sin and love the sinner” and in fact relentlessly inflicts murder and terror and injustice and, in short, does the exact EXACT opposite of what Jesus did to the Centurion two thousand years ago.
How do we understand the existence of what’s on the two hands? How did that happen? Where do we go from here?
“I don’t know,” says Brian Murphy in the video today, “but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not seeing the whole story, that even though it seems so black and white on the page, there must be some shades of grey that I’m not seeing. There must be some explanation–there must be!”
And there is.
Let me start with some illustrations, which will take us to the explanation.
What if I were to describe a mutual friend—let’s call him Reggie—as a space cadet, and someone hearing that went on to conclude that Reggie must be a NASA astronaut?
But that’s not right—and so I try to clarify. I say, “Listen, what I’m trying to say is that Reggie is out there in left field!” But in reply, the person starts looking around for an actual field and for Reggie, who they think can be found standing on the left hand side of it.
What’s happening here? Simply this: our thinking goes haywire—our actions go off point—when our interpretation of words is literalistic. Things go wrong when we forget about colloquialism and culture and context. Being a space cadet has nothing to do with working at NASA and everything to do with loopiness. Being out in left field has nothing to do with where you are standing and everything to do with loopiness. I’m saying that Reggie is loopy—that and only that!
The reason why we have the existence of two hands—the Bible on both, but on the one homosexuality is affirmed and, on the other, it’s hated—is that lots of people still haven’t absorbed the message of one of our spiritual ancestors from almost 200 years ago: William Ellery Channing. In his sermon entitled “Unitarian Christianity,” he said something new about how to read the Bible: take history and culture in consideration. Here’s how Channing put it: “We find,” he says, “that the different portions of this book, instead of being confined to general truths, refer perpetually to the times when they were written, to states of society, to modes of thinking, to controversies in the church, to feelings and usages which have passed away, and without the knowledge of which we are constantly in danger of extending to all times, and places, what was of temporary and local application.” Maybe the Holy Spirit did breath inspiration into the writers of scripture, but Channing insisted that “a knowledge of their feelings, and of the influences under which they were placed, is one of the preparations for understanding their writings.” Without this, you just can’t be faithful to the Bible. The result is disaster. We apply Bible insights to our day recklessly, ignoring the fact that what the Bible writers are talking about may be very different or even absolutely different from the present concern on our minds. Or we overlay present meanings onto the past. We read into the Bible our own agendas and interests and standards and make it kill when its proper function is to give life.
Channing once said, “We profess not to know a book, which demands a more frequent exercise of reason than the Bible.” It’s true.
And unfortunately, it’s the folks who write the lesson boxes in teen study Bibles who aren’t exercising their reason. They just spread ignorance and prejudice. They point out the seven or so passages an all the hundreds of pages of scripture which appear to condemn homosexuality, and they give them a literalistic interpretation. As in, being a space cadet is equivalent to being a NASA astronaut. As in, being out in left field is equivalent to actually standing in an actual field on the actual left hand side. But if you read scripture the way Channing described almost 200 years ago, what happens is all those passages fall apart. We find that none actually say anything about the homosexuality that we Americans talk about today. They talk about male temple prostitution instead; or the Israelite obsession against mixing the wrong kinds of things together; or violations of the ancient hospitality code; or abusive and exploitative relationships. They talk about that and not committed loving same-sex relationships. It’s actually astonishing. When the Biblical basis for hatred towards gays and lesbians is in reality so completely vacuous, it’s amazing to behold the staying power of that hate. It’s amazing to witness how Biblical literalists continue to thunder on.
It is a tragic aspect of our time that there is the one hand, and then there is the other, and it’s hard to know how they might come together. It is equally tragic, that human psychology can make it so hard to change an opposing point of view. Even if you tell me all the true facts about life in ancient Biblical times and how loving homosexual relationships were completely common and accepted, I still might not believe you. Depends on how threatened I feel by you. It depends. If your approach doesn’t meet my psychological needs, there’s going to be a backfire effect and I’m going to cling to my false beliefs even more!
But even if there is no easy solution to this, still, we must not forget the consolation of knowing that, rightly read, the Bible is no enemy to homosexuality. I want all the Brian Murphys in here and out there to know this. “There it is,” he says, “written on the page. Crystal clear. […] Who I like is sinful, who I love is sinful. Who I am is sinful. Where could I possibly go from here?”
And what I say is, it is NOT written on the page. You want to know what’s written on the page? Go to the story of Jonathan and David in the scriptures. Read how “The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David.”
Go to the story of Ruth and Naomi, how Ruth said, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there I will be buried.”
Go to the story of Jesus and the Centurion in the scriptures, the Centurion who was so worried about his sick lover. The Centurion went to Jesus and Jesus did nothing to shame him. Jesus did not say, “My Father created them Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.” No. Jesus praised the Centurion, and he healed his lover.
In the face of hatred, in the face of the fire-breathing Bible-thumpers who are 200 years behind the times on how to interpret scripture, just go to Jesus.
Go to where the love is, because I promise, it’s there for you.
The Living Tradition of Unitarian Universalism has a geography. At certain places on this earth, the finest things it stands for—and the incidents and people that embodied what was best in it—are made visible. We can touch and see and even smell them.
One of these places is most certainly New England—Boston and its environs—which was the cradle of American Unitarianism and Universalism. Another is the deep South where the Civil Rights movement began and so many of our leaders joined in the struggle, hand-in-hand-with others, and some even became martyrs.
And then there is Transylvania, a word that literally means “the land beyond the forests.” Before the French settled Canada in 1604; before the English established a colony in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607; before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620; before all of these, the Unitarians in Transylvania had already been proclaiming a Jesus who was not a God but a great teacher who affirmed the inherent worth and dignity of not some but all. They had already been proclaiming the political right to religious toleration, so that they could affirm Egy Az Isten (God is one) in security and in peace and others could affirm their own vision of the Divine in security and in peace as well. They had already been doing this for over half a century, before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth!
Don’t let visions of “I vaaant to suuuck your blooood” cloud over the amazing thing about our spiritual roots in Transylvania. It’s much, much more than that. I know it hits a funny bone. The Dracula connection is kind of funny, and folks in Transylvania tolerate it or even benefit from the T-shirt sales. But the historical truth is sobering: everywhere else in Europe in the 16th century, our ancestors were hunted down and killed mercilessly. Transylvania was the only place our people were safe. Poland too, but that’s another story.
It was the only safe place. And even that proved fragile….
It’s 1568. The brilliant Francis David has just returned to Kolozsvar (which is the Rome of Unitarian Universalism) after winning a debate with the leading Calvinist scholar of the time, and the townsfolk meet him at the gates. Today, that would happen to a sports team. But back then, the heroes were the religious leaders. They meet him at the gates and beg to know what happened. Francis David starts to go through the debate but you know what? The brilliant and charismatic man was also a short man. So they have him stand on a boulder so more people can hear him. He goes into impassioned oratory and inspires his countrymen and, that day, the town of Kolozsvar becomes Unitarian. The boulder marks the occasion.
We saw that boulder. It was in a room of the First Unitarian Church of Kolozsvar, and our pilgrimage guides ushered us there and we stood before it feeling a bit stunned because the great Francis David had been there. He had stood on that rock. We are face to face with history! I also loved it because I never knew that Francis David was short. He was just a mere mortal, proclaiming Love. It made me care for him even more. It reminded me of all our mere mortal limitations and failures, and yet our task today is to stand tall, no matter what.
A time like this is when you know you are on a pilgrimage. This is not mere tourism, where it’s all about entertainment. Pilgrimage is about understanding where your basic values come from; connecting with the stories of your faith tradition in direct ways; and even being transforming in who you are, reaching new depths of knowing….
One of those transforming moments was in the Homorod Valley. There, the communities are all small villages of farming families, and these families have been Unitarian for almost 500 years. They got the message from Francis David, and the message stuck.
So UUCA’s little band of nine pilgrims found their way to one the Homorod Valley villages called Homorodkaracsonyfalva. The evening we were there, dinner was at the parish house, and it consisted of a slug of polenka, sour cherry soup, mashed potatoes with meatballs, and dessert. During our walk back to the bed and breakfast, we saw cows returning home for the evening. Water buffalo also. Enormous moos. Excrement everywhere on the street, and the sour/rich smell blending in with everything. Clop-clop-clop of horses carrying wagons filled with hay. Sun-weathered farmers who could not possibly read William Ellery Channing or Ralph Waldo Emerson, never mind the scientists or postmodernists of current day. And I thought: who are we to say that only smart people or cultured people can “get” Unitarianism? Who are we to limit the forms it can take? A people almost 500 years old are proving all our preconceptions to be lies.
The next morning, we had a conversation with the minister’s wife Enikö Benedik. In this ancient village of 500 people, in an area more rural than you can imagine, she spoke about Match.com and how several village marriages had come out of it, but nevertheless there seemed in it to be a cheapening of the mystery of two people coming together. She spoke about email and Facebook and smart phones and the Internet but what does that do to family time together? What does that do to relationships?
What I heard in all this was the echo of our own worries 6000 miles away. We are so far apart but we are also right together in some of our concerns. More unites us than divides us.
It was crystallized in a T-shirt I saw someone wearing, while walking down a street in Kolozsvar: “Be with someone who makes you happy” but the word “with” was crossed out. The message was that no one else can make you happy. That’s for you to do yourself. “Be someone who makes you happy.”
More unites us than divides us.
It was a pilgrimage we were on. I wish it for you. I wish it for all of us.
And I will never forget. The sounds of place names:
Kolozsvar
Deva
Gyulafehervar
Sibiu
Sighisoara
Homorodkaracsonyfalva
Szekelyudvarhely
I will never forget:
The smells that only thousand-year-old places can have.
Egg yolks that are the color of Orange Crush.
The sharp taste of palenka, and the burning that goes all the way down.
The richness of the Hungarian language, as when to say “welcome” is literally to say, “God brought you.”
The weight of the robe that Rev. Kedei lent me, to wear during worship.
And also this: Utterly unexpected moments of grace, as when the father of my host family explained why his family didn’t eat out very much, and he didn’t speak English very well at all but the limitations of language didn’t matter. The message was heart-to-heart. There are more hungers at stake than just for food. There is a hunger for belonging, there is a hunger for the feeling of being together, there is hunger for family. Home cooking has far more nutritional value, on more levels, than anything from a restaurant….
All of this. All of this and more.
There is only one way to end my message today.
From your sister congregation 6000 miles away, there in Transylvania, I bring you greetings. Despite the distance, we are at one in heart:
Where there is faith, there is love;
Where there is love, there is peace;
Where there is peace, there is blessing;
Where there is blessing, there is God.
Where there is God, there is no need.
Amen.
My sermon today is in two parts. Part one is what I preached at our partner church in Székelyudvarhely, although there I had to pause every once and a while for Rev. Kedei to translate what I was saying into Hungarian. I want you to hear what I had to say to them. Here we go:
I bring you greetings from your sister congregation 6000 miles away. But despite the distance, we are at one in heart:
Where there is faith, there is love;
Where there is love, there is peace;
Where there is peace, there is blessing;
Where there is blessing, there is God.
Where there is God, there is no need.
Amen.
Now, I begin by noting something perennially tragic in human history. Always the haves and the have nots. Always insiders and always the rejected, the outcast. Two thousand years ago, Roman rulers spoke of this as a kind of peace. The peace of Rome was a way of life in which the Emperor was at the top of the pyramid, then wealthy men right below. Only these had inherent worth and dignity; everyone else was a tool to be used, controlled, subjugated, humiliated. No compassion for these people: women, poor men, slaves, and the conquered.
But this was the way of Rome, the way to a unified empire, the way to true peace. Fight Rome on this—serve any gods that contradict the Roman way—and it’s war.
And now begins our Living Tradition. It begins with the grungy followers of a discredited rabbi whose teachings were judged as treasonous and he was crucified. Pontius Pilate thought it would have been enough to crush the spiritual rebels but it was not to be so. The love of Rabbi Jesus was too powerful to die. Rabbi Jesus died but his spirit was resurrected in the lives of his followers, who refused the peace of Rome. They refused to be pacified. They resisted and it was all about Love. Justin Martyr, one of these early Christians, who lived around 70 years after Jesus’ death, said, “We who formerly valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possession, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies.” That’s what the Jesus followers did. Religion wasn’t so much a matter of what you believed as what you did. To care for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the poor, the sick. Subvert the perennial tragedy of human history. Resist the peace of Rome. No more have-nots.
Everyone get inside the circle.
So you can imagine how Rome felt about the apostle Paul when he said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”—which is to say that everyone has inherent worth and dignity and not just some. Teachings like this made Paul and every person who received them into their hearts criminals.
Suffering is no stranger to our Living Tradition. One of the greatest gifts that our Transylvanian Unitarian Churches have given the world was Francis David. Back in 1568, he was warned by a debater from the Calvinist persuasion, “If I win this debate you will be executed.” He replied, calmly, “If I win this debate, you will be given the freedom due to every son of God.” Because David knew: faith is the gift of God. A person’s faith is their secret way of being with the mystery, and it cannot be compelled by any external force, it can’t even be compelled by the person in question gritting their teeth and trying to force themselves to believe. It comes from a place within that’s deeper than trying, it comes from the soul, it comes from God.
For almost 500 years, this has been our tradition. Tolerance is synonymous with who we are.
But suffering is no stranger. We know how the story ended for David. Tolerance met with intolerance. The power of Rome reincarnated. Rome rearing its ugly head yet again. The last book David ever wrote was one line scratched upon the wall of a prison cell, as he was sick and pitifully weak: Egy Az Isten. God is one. He died of neglect on November 15, 1579. His body was thrown into an unmarked grave, and not one person, to this day, knows where he actually lies.
But now listen to something else about our Living Tradition. It does not quit. It does not quit! Does not matter that the grave of the great Francis David is unknown. Does not matter how he died. The last book he ever wrote—those precious three words scratched upon a prison wall—are above the door of every Unitarian church in this land. They hang on the wall of my home congregation, on a beautiful banner which was a gift from you.
The spirit of Francis David, just like his Master Jesus, can never die.
And neither can the spirit of love that Jesus magnified and his followers caught and taught, despite the opposing power of Rome and every reincarnation of Rome up to this point in time, including Communism, including the Donald Trumpism of my own country. Despite all their promises of peace…
When Rev. Kedei visited my congregation back in May of 1998, he said, “Through centuries of persecution, of depravation of our rights, we learned well the lesson of history: we could survive only if we help and love each other. It remained a proverb from those times: ‘They love each other like Unitarians.’”
As we together–you here in Romania and we in the United States—navigate the complexities of the 21st century, let us love each other like Unitarians. Our partnership has lasted for 26 years, since 1990, and let it last for untold years more. We are both religious minorities surrounded by majority upon majority. We can feel so small at times. But our shared Living Tradition transcends geography and transcends time. It is like a river with a far distant origin and purpose and we are at the forming edge of it and it goes beyond us too, on and on. Our Living Tradition. All our heroes. All the stories. And also this: the something that is universal. How we are all one in the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Love, which bears all things, hopes for all things, endures all things, is greater than faith, greater than hope, never ends.
I don’t care how powerful Rome was, or its current versions.
Let us love each other like Unitarians, and all will be well.
Ahhh…SEPTEMBER. I have been writing a post in my head for the past several weeks titled The Fresh Start of September or something like...
The post The False Hope of Fall appeared first on Christine Organ.
John Murray set sail from England in 1770 bound for the American Colonies and by happenstance brought Universalism to America, right? Many of us have heard this story but is it the full, or even the true, story? In this episode of The Pamphlet Susan and Sean dive into the Murray story and unpack the hidden and not so hidden flaws in its traditional telling.
Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/pamphlet/content.blubrry.com/pamphlet/Universalist_Origens_mixdown.mp3
I asked a group of friends to review my newsletter post for the Universalist Christian Initiative and they asked me to share it generally, and so I oblige. If you would like to sign up for the twice-monthly newsletter, click here.
Fifteen years ago tomorrow, “the world changed” for many people, and through a particular lens, many people’s understanding of the United States and its position in the world changed, too. The hijackings that lead to the thousands of deaths in New York, suburban Washington, D.C. and in rural Pennsylvania were devastating, and even as I write this remembered how I felt that day. Such a low, grim day. I was the pastor of the Universalist National Memorial Church, in Washington, D.C. then. My apartment was on a hill and I could see a plume of dark smoke rising from the Pentagon. Living within walking distance of the church, I went down to open up the doors and try to support anyone who was confused, lost or upset. But the bewilderment was only planted that day.
While it is tempting to repeat the saying that the world changed on September 11, 2001, it is more correct to say that a large number of Americans began to know better the fear and uncertainty that others know before and since: that violence takes the innocent, that life is fragile and fleeting, and that it is far easier to destroy than construct. We would want the world to change and, in fact, on that day it didn’t. But that’s not to say that we are doomed to a past, present and future of violence and cruelty, whether “senseless” or “sensible,” by which I mean violence and cruelty we would be prone to defend or forget because it serves a stated national interest.
As Universalist Christians, we trust that God sees this and knows us apart from time and away from our biases and prescriptions. Where there is hurt and loss, we trust God is present to heal. And when we give ourselves over in ministry to this healing — “the ministry of reconciliation” as St. Paul put it — we must necessarily surrender ourselves to that part of God’s vision we can see, and do what God would have us do. We cannot, for one, weigh the lives of compatriots higher than other people. Not that everyone is equally little, but rather that each of us is equally great; that is, in the words of a Universalist profession also adopted in Washington, D.C., the “supreme worth of every human personality.” But this new way of living is not for us to build, but create with God’s direction and in God’s time. This last stricture is the more painful, but so much harm has come from those who have presumed to know more that they do, and act in ways that later prove harmful. It is enough to do good where can can, and to cultivate the ability to do more good than we thought possible. That is, we should step back from the a statement later in the Washington Declaration that we could “progressively establish the Kingdom of God.” The greatness in our lives does not extend that far. The change comes not by our own design, but from a force unseen. It will bloom when and where it will; let us be ready for it. Let us show this readiness in our love for one another.
Q10: Any space, be it physical or social media, where we're actively discussing work I feel hope cuz I'm not alone #ReviveLove
A7: Love in movement building is remembering who & what you are working for and always keeping them in front of you #ReviveLove
A3: Support in the movement is being able to BE. Without explanation and lifted in power. @SideofLove #ReviveLove
A1. Allowing ourselves and others to rest. Time to take care of ourselves is crucial, but guilt gets in the way #ReviveLove
It’s the Fourth of July, 2002. I’m in lower Manhattan, walking south. It is hot, even though it is still morning. The air around me is tight, the light a brilliant white bleaching out the colour from buildings, trees, sidewalks. The streets are deserted, most shops shuttered against the heat. The financial district of this city built on commerce pauses to mark Independence Day, and the empty streets—usually so filled with bustling hurrying crowds—seem strange and haunted.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m here. I had been visiting with family and, with some time on my hands before my train, I knew, somehow, there was something I needed to do.
I pass a closed off subway station exit and the acrid smell of burned metal, sharp and insistent, emerges from within its barricaded tunnels.
Ground Zero. Like thousands around the world, I had seen live video of the events of that terrible day some ten months earlier, stared in mesmerized horror at the destruction wrought on hundreds and hundreds of innocent people.
Why have I come here?
Even as I approach the site, I am asking myself this. There isn’t much to do except look through a chain link fence at where rubble has been cleared, at a cross made from steel beams pulled from the wreckage, to walk along a sidewalk memorial outside a church remarkably untouched by the destruction visited upon its neighbour, and marvel in silence at the photographs, T-shirts, flowers, drawings, candles lining the iron fence, to read silently the names of the dead.
The sign by the place where pedestrians can look out onto Ground Zero reads: NO VENDORS. But on every other street, here they are: hawking calendars of firefighters and police officers, NY Police Department memorabilia, framed photographs of the twin towers at night, US flags—lots of American flags.
More vendors are arriving as I continue to walk, setting up their stands in the growing July heat, selling lemonade and hot dogs, and T-shirts, post cards, bumper stickers emblazoned with UNITED WE STAND, emblazoned with GOD BLESS AMERICA, emblazoned with stars and stripes and bald eagles, a display of kitsch memorabilia, the tourist trinkets you can take home with you to say to the world: I was there. I went there.
Because the tacky tourists who—like me—come to this place will need something to remember it by. And there will be somebody here to sell it to you—there will always be someone to sell here in this very place of world trade.
I find myself tangled momentarily in a gawking gaggle of tourists, snapping photographs, talking loudly, pointing. Annoyed, I try to untie myself from them, walk out ahead of them, get around them, away from them. Then I realize I am one of them.
Come to gawk, to take pictures, to collect trinkets, to say a prayer, to feel something real, to listen for the echoes—death, pain, grief, disaster—reverberating in widening circles out from this very place, this very site, into an increasingly complex twenty-first century world.
Come for first hand experience, to see first hand the devastation, and not the record of the devastation. Come to see for myself, to experience for myself what depraved injury had been visited upon this place. Come to see it with my own eyes, the place and not the record of the place, the place and not its sign.
Come to mourn, to feel deeply, to untie the terrible knots my soul had been twisted into since the events of September 11, 2001. I’m here to be a witness. And take back whatever I experience here into my daily life and be illuminated by its insights. I’ve come here to be changed.
There are places in our world that seem to contain the powers of renewal, places to which people flock seeking healing, enlightenment, inspiration. There are places in the world toward which we are drawn, places of power that seem to offer transformation and wholeness. The spirit longs for what might make us whole again, bends toward powers of regeneration.
People throughout time and across many cultures have travelled to such places, made pilgrimages to such holy sites. Perhaps, filled with hopes and wounds, something within them is drawn to certain mountains and springs, temples and cathedrals, rocks and rivers, just that way that I, with my hopes and wounds, was drawn toward Ground Zero.
I had felt a need to go there, in my own pilgrimage of struggling to understand. I had felt drawn there, a gravitational pull I can only describe in terms of a journey toward insight, witness, transformation. Essentially, spiritual terms. Even as I questioned my travelling to that site, I felt compelled.
Pilgrimage is an ancient spiritual practice of leaving what is comfortable and familiar to journey across the terrain of the unknown to a significant place, the vision of which drives us on, the arrival at which powers us forward. To be present where it all happened, physically present. To experience, if only by proxy and approximation, what took place there, what was revealed there.
Pilgrimage is a practice that gives us our most enduring metaphors for spirituality, for the inner life. We speak often of being on a journey, of our spiritual journey, being on a path, of walking together.
In his book The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware tells the story of Sarapion the Sidionite, one of the desert fathers, that group of fourth century women and men who fled to wild and abandoned places to live ascetic, monastic lives. Sarapion was a great traveller before becoming a monk and once made a pilgrimage to Rome. There, he was told of a famous recluse, a woman who prayed and meditated all day, never leaving her room. Sarapion visited her and sceptically asked, “Why are you just sitting there?” To which she replied, “I am not sitting. I am on a journey.”
I’m not sitting, I’m on a journey. This summarizes nicely my own experience of my daily meditation practice. Outwardly, of course, I am just sitting but in truth I have been on a journey. I’m not the same man I was when I began years ago, and the discipline of contemplative prayer and meditation are what I attribute much of my own spiritual and personal growth to. Transformation, in my experience, is rarely dramatic and overnight but is rather a cumulative process of trials and errors, of intentional cultivation and slow, patient growth.
For me, being a person of faith is only partly about beliefs, religious philosophies, and theological ideas. Being a person of faith, for me, is a way of life. It’s a way of conducting myself in the world, toward others, and with communities of accountability.
Ideas, scriptures, creeds, philosophies, and theology are important, the way a map is an important tool for finding your way. They can be the map – the description of the territory – but they are not the territory.
They can be means by which we discern the path, but they are not the path.
Living one’s faith is a matter of daily actions that embody one’s aspirations – daily acts of compassion and care, of study and celebration, solidarity and service. It’s a matter of walking the talk. It’s a way of experience, of seeing for ourselves. The map is necessary for the journey but is no substitute for practice, for actually hitting the road.
Such maps orient our religious lives, providing a sense of direction toward where our hearts yearn to go. They provide a true north toward which bends the individual needle of our personal compass.
The pilgrimage to Mecca, for a Muslim, is a central tenet in the practice of Islam; pilgrimage (the hajj) is one of the five pillars of Islam. And just as pilgrims walk around the holy places in Mecca, rotating or circumambulating around the Kaaba, like planets orbiting a sun, so Muslims around the world are oriented toward Mecca in prayer. When praying, Muslims face toward the holy city.
What direction are you pointed in? What orients your spiritual and ethical life?
Such a cartography keeps us from being bandied about by spiritual fads, spiritual-but-not-religious fads. There’s always room for course corrections, to be sure. Yet remaining constant to essentials, to the very values and virtues that command our loyalty, is the surest compass we can have as we make our way.
As we make our way slowly, deliberately, trusting in the outcome that may yet be beyond the horizon.
Ours is a culture that assumes anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. If something is to be done, we assume it can be done quickly and efficiently. Why walk hundreds of miles through the mountains of France and Spain when you can fly to Santiago de Compostela?
Our attention spans are shortened, truncated by television’s and the Internet’s immediacy. We get abridged versions of the story. An authentic religious life is difficult to cultivate in this context because it implies a discipline and staying power that goes against the grain of a culture marked by the immediate and the casual.
In our religious lives, contemporary people expect the abridged version of the story, the record of the place and not the place itself. We are all too willing to collect the tourist trinkets of a holy place and move on to the next spiritual trend.
“The essential thing is that there should be long obedience in the same direction. There thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” Friedrich Nietzsche
A long obedience in the same direction results in something which makes life worth living. The fruits of a spiritual practice – and I include involvement in a faith community among those spiritual practices – don’t come instantly. Any more than running a marathon comes instantly after one’s first run. We live in a culture that instils in us a desire for instant results and impatience when these aren’t delivered immediately.
Staying on the path, even when the way gets difficult or the weather rough, is the mark of an authentic spiritual seeker. The one bound to find something, to touch the powers of regeneration and healing, is the one dedicated to walking the walk, to a long obedience in the same direction, to staying true to one’s intention. It’s the difference between being a seeker and a dilettante, between experiencing the holy and merely collecting the kitschy trinkets.
It’s the difference between being a pilgrim and being a tourist.
Being on the journey, walking the path of liberal religion, walking the way of compassion and peace and solidarity, deserves our attention and commitment. Being sufficiently committed to our congregations, to our meditation practice, to our prayer life, to whatever our daily spiritual disciplines include, is important and necessary. Having moments of clarity and insight, moments of transcendence and joy, are important milestones, meaningful experiences along the way.
Are those moments the point of spirituality? Do we wander aimlessly, accumulating them willy-nilly? What is the point of spiritual practice? If the spiritual life, the cultivation of our inner life, is a journey, then what’s the destination?
So here’s the thing. Here’s the difficulty I have with the metaphor of spiritual journey. We have a tendency to think that the destination of the journey is the holy city, the sacred site, the mountaintop experience. But then what? What happens when we get there?
Staying there is not the point of making a pilgrimage. That’s not pilgrimage—that’s exile.
The point of the sacred journey is to go home.
The true destination of any pilgrimage isn’t the holy place; the destination of every pilgrimage is home.
After the journey there must come the journey back.
Which is why, rather than simply journey, I prefer the metaphor of pilgrimage for the spiritual life. Because going to the mountaintop, and being with the teacher, and drawing near to the places containing the seeds of our own healing, is merely act one. Act two is coming down from the mountain, putting the teaching into practice, cultivating the seeds of our wellbeing. Act two is taking off the white clothing of the hajj upon returning from Mecca to begin again the daily round of one’s life. The second act of the pilgrim’s drama is coming home, retracing the steps that brought us to that place and arriving again at the place we began, our point of departure.
I prefer the metaphor of pilgrimage because the real test of whatever truth we learn, or insights we have, on our spiritual quest is what we do with it at home. The true test of any spiritual practice is whether it makes us better people, more loving and understanding and patient and curious.
Does your religion make you more compassionate? Does your religion compel you to live justly, creating and sustaining moral and truthful relationships? Or have you simply come back from the holy places with a handful of trinkets?
The true test of any religious experience is what difference it makes in our home, in our workplace, with our families and friends, with strangers and enemies. The true test of the mountaintop experience isn’t its intensity or brilliance but what light it casts on our daily life. Mountaintop experiences are not tested by their sanctity or how good they make us feel, but rather how they inform how we live our life down here in the ordinary world.
The pilgrim, the hajji, comes back to the village in Indonesia or Morocco or Pakistan, dressed in white. And a kind of aura surrounds them, an honour is paid to them as they recount stories of their journey there and back. And then they get back into their ordinary clothes to re-enter daily life. As the title of one popular book on spiritual practice puts it: After the ecstasy, the laundry.
Communities of faith, spiritual practice, religious experience – these can be ways of opening to new life-changing truth and insight, to the divine, to others in more authentic ways. These can also be ways of making ourselves feel good or self-satisfied and have no bearing whatsoever on our relationships and commitments.
It is completely possible to bliss out on chanting or singing or doing yoga and still be mean to people! You can go to workshops at the Omega Institute or Kripalu or go on retreat to a monastery, you can read every spiritual book that Oprah recommends and still be petty, lack generosity and compassion, and not become a better person if you are unable or unwilling to put any of the wisdom you have encountered into practice every day.
Have you ever felt a deep call within to experience a place or person or practice? How might you answer such a call? What is it that sustains you as you strive to live a good life, to be a better person? What can you do to maintain what sustains you?
We are all longing to come home to our best and most authentic selves. Finding our way as pilgrims we are gifted with inspiration and longing and adventurousness, direction and orientation, pathways and routes to walk to which we are committed. We are gifted with travel companions, who lift you up when you fall, who egg you on when you falter, and to whom you can be a companion, offering your guidance and help along the way. Our faith communities, at their best, provide us with a context in which we are challenged, edified, encouraged and in which we challenge, edify, and encourage others.
If you go to lower Manhattan today, you can visit the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in the space once occupied by the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. The memorial features two reflecting pools, each perfectly square, in what are described as footprints of the two towers. Waterfalls line the parameter of each square, living water feeding each reflecting pool, describing in their open shape an absence. Inscribed in bronze parapets bordering each pool are the names of those killed.
Mediating the space between these pools of water and the hustle and bustle of the busy city is a grove of oak trees. One tree that survived the destruction of the towers remains rooted in place there, surrounded now by a small forest of living trees offering up their sweet green leaves each spring, fading into amber colours each fall. You can walk among the trees, reminded of the powers of regeneration and growth, of cycles of life, death, and new life.
I’ve never been. I haven’t yet visited the memorial or the museum, put perhaps the next time I’m in New York City and have the time to go, I’ll visit.
Join us + @SideofLove & @BlackLivesUU for a #TwitterChat this Thurs @ 11a PST/2p EST.
#ReviveLovepic.twitter.com/ZsH3OreBfg
A single prayer in the services before Hymns of the Spirit beginning “Almighty God grant that the words” comes from a book identified in the index as the Theistic Prayer Book. What is this and where did it come from?
It comes from the Theistic Church in London, that lasts from 1870 or 1871 until shortly after the 1912 death of its founder and minister, Charles Vorsey, who was driven out of the Church of England. (He’s the father of the famous architech of the same name, if your mind goes to the Arts and Crafts.) At the church, the book was known as The Revised Prayer Book, and ran through three (1871, 1875, 1892) editions.
In both Hymns of the Spirit (p. 146) and The Revised Prayer Book, the prayer appears in a section for additional prayers (in the third edition); it appears, slightly re-arranged as prayer for the “close of worship” in Hymns of the Spirit.
Cross-posted at Hymns of the Spirit.
A single prayer in the services before Hymns of the Spirit beginning “Almighty God grant that the words” comes from a book identified in the index as the Theistic Prayer Book. What is this and where did it come from?
It comes from the Theistic Church in London, that lasts from 1870 or 1871 until shortly after the 1912 death of its founder and minister, Charles Vorsey, who was driven out of the Church of England. (He’s the father of the famous architech of the same name, if your mind goes to the Arts and Crafts.) At the church, the book was known as The Revised Prayer Book, and ran through three (1871, 1875, 1892) editions.
In both Hymns of the Spirit (p. 146) and The Revised Prayer Book, the prayer appears in a section for additional prayers (in the third edition); it appears, slightly re-arranged as prayer for the “close of worship” in Hymns of the Spirit.
Cross-posted at RevScottWells.com.
I’m on a pilgrimage to Transylvania! Hearing that you might say, Vaaaat? But Dracula vill suck your bloooood!
Actually, in Transylvania (which is a region of Romania, right below the Carpathian Mountains), we have 450 year-old Unitarian churches, which are the oldest in the world. These congregations were gathered around the same essential notion that today’s Unitarian Universalists are gathered around: religious liberty.
What turns laughter about vampires into a more sober mood is the knowledge that 450 years ago, Transylvania was the one of very few places in Europe where folks committed to religious liberty could gather without being murdered. Everywhere else, to be out of step with what the king believed or with what the head of the church believed (like the Pope or John Calvin or Martin Luther) meant torture and death. Not so in Transylvania…
So it’s a pilgrimage. I’m joined by eight congregants from the church I serve. It’s a big trip: two weeks long, 6000 miles away. A couple days in Budapest, Hungary, and then off to Transylvania we go.
Here are our guides: Csilla and John. They are completely wonderful, patient, and seemingly all-knowing. I say this last part without one trace of irony. Pretty much every question they get, they can answer. We are extremely lucky to share this adventure with them.
Thanks for checking out this blog. I’ll be writing as the Spirit moves me, about the historical foundations of Unitarian Universalism, about traveling, about life in lands far away, about my own life and history.
This is a pilgrimage: I am traveling 6000 miles, in both my outer and inner worlds…
Wednesday, 9pm, Budapest
Around 5pm, after having gotten off the bus that took us from the Hungarian National Gallery (where we saw a brilliantly designed exhibit of the works of Modigliani) to within walking distance of our hotel (the Hotel Belvedere), I ask one of my companions, June Lester, “What day is it?” I swear I felt like it was Thursday. The plane to Paris left Tuesday at 3:40pm and we arrived at Charles DeGaulle at 6:30am-ish Wednesday morning and we had just one hour to hustle through security and then a passport screening (which took so long that there was scuffling with police). But somehow we made the connecting flight to Budapest and THAT flight seemed even longer than the first (though it most certainly was not). So many hours of travel that the hours lost their hold on meaning. Just like what happens when you repeat a word over and over and over again. The word becomes mere sounds without sense. Thus: “What day is it?”
Go back to before the flight from Atlanta. It’s 1:53pm on Tuesday and I am sitting at the piano bar at the International Airport, with a glass of chardonnay. I realized that, in the past, I would just walk on by this sort of thing. I would smile at the music and just walk on by. Not today. Today I leave for two weeks in Eastern Europe. Today begins a new chapter in my life. Today I’m not going to walk on by. I’m going to sit and enjoy even if it part of me feels vaguely restless and unworthy of such pleasure…
During the flight to Paris I watch the map charting our progress. It’s a small plane arcing from ATLANTA on the North American continent to PARIS on the European continent. The map is displayed on a screen on the back of the seat in front of me.
It zooms out to show almost the entire planet and how this journey crosses over an enormous global distance, and then it zooms in to show the cities and mountain ranges near by Paris. And then I search the map beyond Paris–beyond France, beyond Austria, beyond even Poland. I realize that I’ve never been to a country that was once communist. I also realize that where I’m going is a hop, skip, and a jump from the land that my Ukrainian ancestors originally came from: villages outside of Lviv. The Transylvania communities we are visiting are just below the Carpathian Mountains; Lviv is just right above. In other words: I am going to the general region of the world from where my DNA ultimately originated. I’m going to where my blood comes from.
This pilgrimage has personal reasons behind it, too.
Thursday, Sept. 1, 8:29am, Budapest
Back from breakfast, refreshed after a lovely meal in a sunroom. Even though there was an American loudmouth jerk windbag going on and on about a misadventure related to cappuccino. Apparently he asked for a cappuccino and the reply he got was, What flavor? His response was not curiosity but indignation. He was sitting at a table with his partner and another couple. His incessant complaining was like a fishnet dragging his table mates down deeper and deeper into a drowning sea….
Me too, sitting within earshot, although I would not let him, since I was busy thinking about what I’d write about in my blog today. Writing makes me buoyant. I had not intended to write a blog, but a friend suggested I do so, and I am grateful. Grateful for friends.
Last night after my blog post I closed up shop and, as is always the case with sleep, allowed myself to be taken away. Dreams, dreams. Also thoughts–one about clustering travel experiences around themes. So that’s what I’ll do.
One theme: “Look for the helpers.” It’s a phrase that comes from Mr. Rogers. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.'” It came to mind not so much because scary things have been happening but because helpers are real and they come in such surprising ways and forms. One came in the form of the face of an infant, sucking on her pacifier, suddenly popping up between the seats in front of me, eyes big with curiosity and mischief, looking at me in a way that adults rarely look. This was en route to Budapest. I was beyond tired but reached out with a finger and the baby did the same and it was like a moment in the movie E.T. “Phone home.”
Another theme: surprises. The dry heat here in Budapest, combined with cool winds, reminds me of summers where I grew up in Alberta. My hotel room: how the master switch for turning the electrical system on or off is my key card. Breakfast: Orange Crush-colored egg yolks, tomatoes, cucumbers, bacon…
Yet a third theme: traveling. Realizing that you live surrounded by wonders but you can’t see them until putting yourself in strange places, like 12,000 feet above earth. Studying and struggling with unfamiliar food menus. Fat fingers fumbling to reach credit cards through the tiny zippered mouth of a money belt (take that, pickpockets!). Surmounting the dizzying heights of the museum cupola and right there sitting on a chair is the museum guard but he is sleeping… You creep past him and go outside where you are opened up to the wide blue sky and the scene of Buda on one side and Pest on the other and there is the Danube and the rooftops are like waves spreading outwards in every direction and it’s mind-blowing… But you think of the sleeping guard, and then you think of yourself back in Atlanta (or wherever you happen to live) and assume that it’s the same for you–miracles all over–but you are sleeping on the job too…
Thursday, Sept. 1, 8:12pm, Budapest
Our fantastic tour guide today informed us that Hungarian is the second hardest language in the world to learn (#1 is Latvian). The linguistic family it hails from comes from Mars; English’s family of origin is from Venus. It means that Hungarian words are practically inaccessible to English speakers. It means that my Left brain was rather quiet today since it could not grab hold of any words it saw, or any parts of words, to make meaning. All the work was by the Right brain, trained as it is on images and symbols….
The tour began at 9:45 when our group met the gorgeous and brilliant Agnes. Super knowledgeable, super smart. We are each handed a earphone which will help us hear Agnes while we are touring popular sites. No one will mistake us for locals We get on the bus, and immediately she’s filling us up with history and politics and gossip and it is all so interesting–but how much will be remembered? No matter–it’s tasty in the now.
Her words are quicker than the bus. The traffic is so thick that it’s as if we need some Moses to part the waters. Finally, we are off. The real miracle is that no curses spring off the tongue of our bus driver.
At one point she says, “The Magyar settlers carried on the lifestyle of their Hun ancestors, raiding and killing. But it’s not like that anymore, unfortunately.” Did I hear her right?
Budapest, she says, is in the middle: to get anywhere you have to go through it. So: it is the most seized capitol city in Europe. I carry this in mind as I wander the streets hours later and watch tall beautiful Magyar women and stocky muscular Magyar men and wonder about the depths at which ancestral melancholy flows through them…
We go the the Square of the Holy Trinity. There is a famous cathedral next door, but who cares. This Unitarian is fascinated by the depiction of the Trinity, atop a tall pillar. A European-looking Jesus, with cross; a European-looking Father God sporting a beard that puts to shame all those currently worn by hipsters; and the Holy Spirit portrayed as as a sphere with rays bursting forth.
I smile at Agnes after she tells us all about it. “This is pretty ironic you know,” I say, “seeing we’re a bunch of Unitarians.”
We walk and walk. Cobblestones. We bake in the sun. My hot face and forehead.
We find ourselves looking out over and across the Danube River, to the Parliament Building in Pest. But not ONE building–THREE. Evidently the top three designs were built. The Hungarians evidently have a healthy sense of self….
We talk politics. Agnes uses phrases like “the authorities.” “The current regime.” She says that new developments echo 1930 trends–she’s referring to Naziism. Donald Trump is a favorite of the President. We all groan.
Later we talk about the “Bottle Opener”–that’s what people call the sculpture that the Communists built post-World War Two. Of course the Communists had a different name: “The Statue of Liberty.” Agnes readily agrees that for some people, the coming of the Communists was liberating (i.e., the Jews were saved from total annihilation by the Nazis). But the 45 years following were also another kind of occupation. I’m taking this to mean that few were really sad about the fall of Communism. Something like a 7th or 10th of the population spied upon everyone else, and 25 years later they still don’t know who the rats were/are–and of course this implicates the “authorities” themselves. The public knows who the rats are, and doesn’t, and does…
On to Hero Square, which we travelled to via the Champs Elysee of Budapest–a hugely wide street, designed after the one in Paris. Hero Square is immense. Everything in Budapest is immense. Everything is big and romantic. … (Remember THREE Parliament buildings, not one?)
Something else interesting about Hero Square. Among other things, it celebrates the conquerers of the Carpathian Basin from a thousand years ago. In truth, these conquerers looked Asian and were probably no more than five feet tall, but in the 19th century (when Hero Square was built) Hungarians wanted their heros to look like tall, square-jawed Finns. Everybody’s a historical revisionist, right?
The tour ended around 1:30, whereupon our group had a late lunch. And then I struck out on my own. It took something like three hours walking to get back to my hotel…
Friday, Sept. 2, 2:13am, Budapest
Uuuuggghhhhhh…. Can’t sleep.
gghhhhnnnnnnUUUUUUU
uuuggnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnhhhhHHHH
Friday, Sept. 2, 8:25am, Budapest
Despite my bout of insomnia, I was very excited to get up and enjoy breakfast in the sunroom again. When I arrived and looked around me–saw once again the plenitude of breakfast items–I realized that there was no more need to take pictures. I had taken them all yesterday. I had already captured the sights. Today was just like yesterday, so why repeat?
The thought made me sad. And I went ahead and took more pictures anyway.
While I was reflecting on all this and sucking down coffee, in a magnificent sunroom, I was also paying attention to the family sitting across the way. The baby was going, “ma ma,” arms waving. She sported a pink headband with flower. Her mother was cooing French at her–it was a French family. The six-year-old son with straw yellow hair sat straight up in his chair and his nose was level with the table. There, a piece of toast waited for him and he was ignoring it. The dad was a big man, bald guy. Yesterday he wore a black shirt that shouted RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS. This morning his black shirt shouted RAMONES. Meanwhile his sweet baby daughter is banging away on her high chair, her mother sings sweetly back at her….
Friday, Sept. 2, 9:31pm, Budapest
Last night in this amazing city. Tomorrow, early, we are off to Romania. In the evening we will arrive in what the resident Hungarians call Kolozsvar but the ruling Romanians call Cluj. Aaaand immediately you get the politics of this trip. The Transylvanian Hungarians call themselves “Pathfinders” and identify as as indigenous to the region, unlike the Romanians, who came in later to settle. Thanks especially to the Treaty of Trianon (from World War I), the Romanians were granted rulership over the region, and ever since the Pathfinders have struggled to preserve their culture and traditions. The situation is somewhat analogous to Quebec’s relationship to Canada–except Quebec got what it wanted. The Pathfinders still struggle.
THIS is the political backdrop of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania. 450 years ago, Hungarians built our first Unitarian Churches around the vision of religious liberty; but except for three golden years, our spiritual Pathfinders have struggled to exist against the encroachments of the Catholic Church and others. The struggle still continues, but on social and political fronts. The struggle is for equal political rights to affirm Hungarian language and folkways, against “the authorities” who want to refuse them the right to name themselves (again, Kolozsvar vs. Cluj).
Talk about many layers, many wrinkles, to this 450 year old church.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We leave Budapest in the early morning, and I’ll miss it. Well, I won’t miss this:
But I will miss the friendly people, great food, amazing sights. The scale of the city is ridiculous–the width of the streets, the size of public squares, the span of monuments. A resilient people: despite being the most sieged city over the past 1000 years–despite the destruction of two world wars–it is beautifully alive.
Two stories: one has to do with the Shoe Memorial.
It’s mid- to late-1944. Up till that point, the Hungarian government has resisted colluding with the Nazis in exterminating the Jews. But finally they succeed in installing a puppet government and that fake government’s brownshirts (called “Aerocross”) raided the safe houses protecting the Jews. They are marched to the Danube River. It is night. “Take your shoes off.” Women, children, men do. They are shot and their bodies pushed into the dark waters below. They are swallowed up, they are gone, gone, gone. And they are NOT gone and never will be. The replica shoes are bronze and permanent. They testify. Some have candles in them, flowers, candy, coins.
Second story:
That’s the scene from my table tonight at Bocelli’s. A beautiful walkable street full of bars and restaurants and towered over by apartment homes. I walk through and see tons of people enjoying themselves, families together, lovers walking holding hands. I even see toddlers racing their tricycles.
I go back to the dark Danube waters, and the Shoe Memorial. Do they banish the right of the living to enjoy? The Bible says, “There is a time to laugh, and a time to mourn.” Can it be that such time is like a coin with two sides, and we are always both laughing and mourning simultaneously? Can the human heart be big enough for that?
Can a heart BE truly human unless it does exactly that?
Goodnight …
Saturday, Sept. 3, 6:13am, Budapest
Just needed to say that last night my dreams were in Hungarian. At least I think so: the music of the language of my dream figures seemed to match what I’ve been hearing the past several days. But my dream ego’s experience was precisely that of waking life: not understanding a word of it. The dreams unfolded as the complex dramas they always are, but my dream ego–closest thing to my waking self awareness–had no clue.
It was like I have a foreign TV channel within my own soul.
Saturday, Sept. 3, 6:02pm, Kolozsvar
Arrived in Transylvania! I’ll be staying at the Hotel Victoria during the two nights we are in Kolozsvar. We need to regather downstairs for our evening events at 6:45. Not much time, but enough to have a mini-panic about there being no towels in the room since I didn’t see any in the bathroom but just before I was going to descend downstairs and give someone a piece of my mind I spot nice folded towels on the ends of the two single beds. I can be so silly. Someone give me a drink to calm down
I hang up my grey suit. It’s the nicest thing I’ll wear all two weeks. It’s for the Sunday right before we leave. I’ve been asked by the minister of the Szekelyudvarhely Unitarian Church (our Partner Church) to preach, and I’m honored beyond belief. My 12 minute piece has been translated to Hungarian, so it will be a paragraph or so of me, then the minister (Rev. Mozes Kedei) speaking the translated version, then me, then him, back and forth.
I want my suit to be as fresh as possible. So it’s one of the first things I do: hang it up. Allow the wrinkles to fall away…
I unpack my beloved UUCA stole and lay it down, let the wrinkles fall away too…
Back in Budapest, my last afternoon there, I was enjoying a beer and indexing a book by Rev. Kedei. Don Milton III had brought it to me from the 2012 choir trip but I had not read it until now. It was splendid. A compilation of voices of many Unitarian ministers, sharing stories about their journeys into ministry, how the churches have been invaluable in preserving Hungarian culture in an antagonistic time, the fall of Communism and its aftermath, and so on. I’m indexing it, regarding major topics and passages I want to be able to easily access. It’s a thing I do with books I suspect I’ll need to draw on down the road.
So, I’m drinking a beer and out of the corner of my eye I notice a blow up sex doll being held high and then thrown about. The blow up doll body was standard plastic pink, but a man’s face had been taped to the head. The woman brandishing it like a flag and grinning like a fiend was the bride, and she was followed by around 20 friends. They all streamed out of a hotel across the street, to where I was, a bar. Laughter, shouts. They were going to get really drunk. And they are British! I was witnessing a destination wedding! I found myself right in the middle of it!
I bring this up because, here I am hundreds of miles away in Kolozsvar, and as we weary travelers roll up to the front, we see a wedding party stream inside the hotel….
As I sit here writing this, hunting and pecking away like the eccentric typist I am, I hear a steady thump, thump, thump from somewhere within these walls. Is that a Michael Jackson song? Boom boom UH boom boom UH boom boom UH. Our guide told us, “It’s going to be loud until 11pm, folks.” Right in the middle, again!
I like life.
Saturday, Sept. 3, 9:52pm, Kolozsvar
Politics (William Butler Yeats)
HOW can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
An hour or so outside of Budapest, the land has become as flat as Kansas. Our tour guide is telling us about the insurance system in Romania. Then the education system.
It’s interesting how tour conversation is so much about politics and policies and history and monuments and so on, but what about the more personal, vital aspect of life that Yeats addresses in his poem?
The issue of dress codes in Budapest culture is fascinating. Csilla tells me that she dresses in ways that feel inauthentic because Americans have a hard time tolerating a Hungarian woman’s more open sense of sexual expression. Women in Hungary feel comfortable with their sexuality and enjoy its strength and influence.
It means that I have totally related to the speaker in Yeats’ poem:
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
Although in my case I have not gone to poetry but rather philosophy. I have been reflecting on the rather remarkable difference between “lusting after” and “taking pleasure in.”
Taking pleasure in: an act of curiosity, a willingness to experience with openness.
Lusting after: an act of narrow focus, an investment in only a narrow profile of features. The wrong look turns a person off. The wrong time and place turns a person off!
Taking pleasure in: can happen with every person, no matter how “ugly.” This act of curiosity is endlessly open to variety. Abundance.
Lusting after: happens with relatively few people. Scarcity.
Taking pleasure in: endlessness. There never needs to be an end to taking in pleasure. Wants to allow.
Lusting after: wants a conclusion as fast as possible. Wants to possess.
Taking pleasure in: appreciates meandering.
Lusting after: a straight line, an urgency, an arrow.
Taking pleasure in: hurt is never involved.
Lusting after: can hurt terribly, especially when unsatisfied.
Suddenly I’m realizing that there’s connections between what I’m saying here and James Carse’s interesting book Finite and Infinite Games.
Reader, I don’t know how far I can take all this. It’s fascinating to see the ideas unfold and gain clarity and definition. What do you think? Is this your experience when you take pleasure in something, and when you lust after something?
Sunday, Sept. 4, 8:44am, Kolozsvar
I’m off to worship services at First Unitarian, Kolozsvar, at 11am. But first, a little blogging….
Breakfast this morning at the Hotel Victoria. The first thing that happens is I get punched in the face by rock and roll. It’s 7am on a Sunday morning and I’m eating my egg with an Orange Crush-colored yolk and the radio is on and blaring “all the hits.” An officious man comes in the breakfast room and there’s no smile, just a serious question: what is my room number? I say “#217” and he checks me off his list and I feel like I am meeting Communism for the first time. He wears a white shirt and tie. All the men wear white shirts and ties. They rush around, serious.
Is my sense of communism a construct of all the movies I’ve seen, from James Bond onwards?
No sunroom here. Everything is carefully laid out.
[“I need you, I need you, I need you right now // Don’t let me down….”]
Ugh, the WiFi is spotty. It comes in and goes out. In and out. Out and in.
A lot of bus time yesterday–early 8am start. I’m sleepy. I sit in the middle, and conversations in front and behind wash over me, roll over me…. Traffic is light and the bus flies through Budapest and breaks out of the city, flies along winding roads, up hill, down hill. We speed through one community after another, through individual scenes that each have a story that shall remain a mystery to me forever. Two men cycling–where are they going? A woman in a field, wearing a pink two-piece bathing suit, scything her way through wheat–is this her life?
[Oh my God, is that 50cent? Are we really listening to 50cent?]
Approaching the border, our guides warn us to be polite, don’t make political jokes, this is not the time to test your language skills and risk insulting the police…. You would think this is obvious, but no. One story has to do with another congregation that came visiting on pilgrimage and it was the President of the Board who would not move her legs to allow the police to proceed down the aisle so he could check everyone’s passport. He asked three times politely, and she refused. One of our guides asked, and she refused. The police took our guide (Csilla) aside and said, “You stay in the air conditioning; I’m going to cook the rest.” He directed the bus to park in the hot sun, told the driver to turn it off, meaning no AC. Three hour later, he let them go.
That President of the Board: talk about anti-authoritarianism. And how ironic she was that congregation’s authority…
But we got through without incident…
[Disco disco disco disco disco disco disco]
At one point, I think about how many things this pilgrimage has taken me into, how many things I’ve seen, how much knowledge I’ve absorbed, how many thoughts I’ve thunk This is all so amazing, and I am filled with gratitude. And then it strikes me that what’s happening in this tour is analogous, on a small scale, to the much larger experience of being a part of the Unitarian Universalist community. How being Unitarian Universalist is itself a kind of pilgrimage and does not allow me to sit and do nothing but gets me up, gets me going, pushes and pulls me into engagement with life, opens me up in truly distinctive ways. My life would be so less rich without Unitarian Universalism….
Finally, we are in Transylvania–literally, “the land on the other side of the forest.” Green rolling hills. Hay bales built upon wooden structures, which poke out of the sides of the bale. At one point we pass immense houses with complexly-designed tin roofs: the houses of the Roma. Only few are actually occupied. They symbolize the immense wealth Roma gather via the efforts of organized child begging rings working in London and other major cities. They also symbolize the dream of entire families living together under one roof.
And finally–FINALLY–we are in the Boston of Romania: Kolozsvar. Boston, because it is the intellectual/educational center of the country. Back in 1568, in one day, Francis David inspired the entire populace to embrace Unitarianism…
The hotel Victoria:
[Boom UH UH boom UH UH boom UH UH UH]
Sunday, Sept. 4, 3:36pm, O’Peter’s Bar in Old Town Kolozsvar
Jackson Brown just finished on the radio; now it’s The Cars. Smoking happens furiously around me and it’s giving me a headache. I’m sitting just off a fairly narrow walkway where a couple holding hands walks past. Someone with ITALY splashed across his green T-shirt. Three teenagers. One tall guy and one short guy talking very loudly. A man walking slowly with his hands crossed behind his back and his lips pursed. A man with a shirt reading “I may not be perfect but parts of me are awesome.”
A stone’s throw away is a building that’s been around for so long that it’s hard to know what to call it. In the 16th century it was a Dominican monastery, and in its topmost, center room (because it was the warmest room) Queen Isabella nursed little John Sigismund, who would become the first and only Unitarian king in history. Later the building would become a theology school and here is where Francis David had his first job, as the school’s dean. Later it would become the music school, and now it is a Franciscan monastery which is leasing space to a Calvinist school.
How do you talk about something for which so many vivid and important reincarnations are known? It’s not JUST its current name or function….
From here we went to the massive St. Michael’s Church, which was originally Catholic and is now back to being Catholic. But in the 16th century, it was the church from which Unitarianism was originally preached. Francis David was the preacher. What I wanted to see most of all was the pulpit. I squinched my eyes and tries to perform magic and see not just across space but time, to witness his rhetorical magic…
Afterwards, we went out to the square and saw a marked off space. Close up, we looked down to see uncovered Roman dwellings and artifacts. They had been dug up, covered up with plexiglass so they would remain undisturbed. This is what the entire area of Cluj-Napoca would look like if 6 feet were suddenly removed.
I wonder what it is like to grow up in a place where, just a few feet below, there’s an entire Roman civilization. Roads, dwellings, artifacts, bones. And then the other civilizations in between….
Sunday, Sept. 4, 5:28pm, Karolina Augusta Pub in Old Town Kolozsvar
What? you ask. He’s at another bar? Well, in my defense, this is how I’m getting free WiFi. I also have free time before tonight’s educational events and there’s still so much more to process from this morning… … …
That’s me from this morning during worship at First Unitarian Church in Kolozsvar, together with some of the group. June (beside me) is giggling because I just made a crack about how, by taking a pic during worship, I have just demonstrated I have the manners of a Visigoth. UUCA people, do not do as I do!!
Worship started at 11am, but we came earlier to be welcomed by the Intern Minister there at First (Jùlia Jobbagy). Here she is, sharing a little about Unitarianism in Transylvania:
I liked how Jùlia articulated the 1568 Edict of Torda, in which King John Sigismund legalized religious liberty. The practice beforehand followed the rule of “whoever owns the land owns the religion.” THIS is what the Edict of Torda reversed, and it did so in a time when oceans of blood were being spilled over religious conflict…..
The thing that immediately jumped out at me about the interior (finished 1796) was the lack of visuals. It could have been a mosque.
Here’s what the worship was like:
About 15 minutes before 11am, the organ started up. The music is measured and slow and grave. People are gathering, of all ages. At 11pm, the three ministers in robes process up the aisle, to sit at the front.
At this point we all stand and sing a hymn. (I mean, everyone ELSE sings–the language here and throughout the entire service is in Hungarian.)
Then we sit. The organ continues playing its slow, sad song. Then it ends and the Senior Minister goes to the Communion Table at the front to greet people and share announcements. LOTS OF WORDS. Don Milton III, I know that this would be your favorite part of the service!
Actually, a nice part of the service was when the Senior Minister greeted us in English. It was like a little door opening, and a ray of light shining through. Then BAM, door is shut, and all the rest is Hungarian.
After announcements, the Senior Minister sits and the organ comes on again. We all sit. Then there’s special music from the cantor–a singing piece by one voice.
The Intern Minister ascends to the pulpit. (I should say at this point that the pulpit is raised above the ground. It’s something like a little space ship, and the minister speaks out of the window to everyone else below. A unique aspect of Unitarian religious architecture is that the stairs heading up to the pulpit are hidden, so as he/she starts to climb, she disappears and then, POOF, she appears at the pulpit. M-A-A-G-I-C!)
She appears (POOF!) and we all stand there. There is quite a long, quiet pause at this point and I’m wondering what the heck is going on. But she’s praying! The people around me have closed their eyes, but … but … (and this is why I was confused) her eyes are open. But I see she is looking up, she is speaking to “Good Father God.” I can’t understand a word but I shift my focus from meaning to emotion. I close my eyes and sense moments of urgency that swoop and swell; I experience moments of letting go and vulnerability that are soft and sweet; I feel moments of resolve that are firm and strong.
Now she shifts her gaze downward, and she says AMEN. She leaves the pulpit (GONE!) but we are still standing, the organ comes on, and now it’s another hymn.
Throughout, the tone of the music is measured and slow and grave and deep.
Then the Assistant Minister appears in the pulpit (POOF!) and we are still standing! (All this standing, together with my complete inability to understand anything of what’s being said, take me back to my experiences as a kid in the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church.) She does a reading (later on I learn it’s from the Bible, and of course it would be–the Bible is read from in every Transylvanian Unitarian Church). The emotional tone is solemn solemn solemn.
Finally we sit. Is it the sermon now? It is! It is! And here is where the emotional range of the service finally expands beyond solemnity. Finally a bit of personality shines through, a bit of individuality. Everything else has been a full immersion into something collective that is old and deep and sobering and grand and sad. I realize that through the liturgy people are connecting with this collective something. But even during the sermon–this single foray into something more personal–there is NO LAUGHTER, NOT EVEN ONCE.
I look around me and some folks are listening, other folks have their eyes closed. There are families with three-year-olds and the kids are sitting very quietly through this. Not one peep from them.
The preacher says AMEN, we all stand (standing again!), she says a few more words, we continue standing and the organ comes on, very gently….
AMEN, again. The organ stops but she talks some more. is she praying? He eyes are closed. I look around and everyone’s head is down. We ARE praying! Yikes!
AMEN, once again. She holds her palms up and open to the people. Benediction. AMEN and AMEN.
Everyone else sits, but at this point our guides usher us out of the sanctuary. We have to begin our tour, but on the way, they take us to see this:
It’s 1568. The brilliant Francis David has just returned to Kolozsvar after winning a debate with the leading Calvinist scholar of the time, and the townsfolk meet him at the gates. Today, that would happen to a sports team. But back then, the heroes were the religious leaders.
They meet him at the gates and beg to know what happened. Francis David starts to go through the debate but you know what? The brilliant and charismatic man was also short. So they have him stand on a boulder so more people can hear him. He goes into impassioned oratory and inspires his countrymen and, that day, the town of Kolozsvar becomes Unitarian. The boulder marks the occasion.
I am delighted. I knew the story, of course. But I did not know he was short and that the boulder actually had a very practical use!
I like him even more now. Short people gotta stick together!
Monday, Sept. 5, 8:41PM at Hotel Sarmis in Deva, Part 1
Reader, it’s been a full FULL day. Also, WiFI sucked in Kolozsvar, so this installment is NOT about my adventures today but yesterday in Kolozsvar. Part 2 will focus on today.
Check out examples of Kolozsvar graffiti:
Monday, Sept. 5, 8:50PM at Hotel Sarmis in Deva, Part 2
First day it’s rained. I’m on the fourth floor of the hotel. A window is open and the sound of cars zooming past is like bacon sizzling in the pan.
I am overwhelmed. It was a day of visiting various important places for the Unitarian Universalist faith community. My heart is full.
The day started at Unitarian headquarters in Kolozsvar where we chatted with Maria Pap, Secretary of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania.
For me, the conversation was incredibly rich, and what I have to take away from it will go into a sermon. For now, check out these extremely cool pics:
After this, we hopped on our bus and drove to Torda, where King John Sigismund affirmed, in 1568, the Edict of Torda, which was the first official statement of religious tolerance in the West. In part it says this:
In every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel, each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well; if not, no one shall compel them, for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve. Therefore none of the Superintendents (Bishops) or others shall annoy or abuse the preachers on account of their religion, … or allow any to be imprisoned or punished by removal from his post on account of his teachings, for faith is the gift of God.
In other words, a person’s faith is their secret way of being with the mystery, and it cannot be compelled by any external force, it can’t even be compelled by the person in question gritting their teeth and trying to force themselves to believe. It comes from a place within that’s deeper than trying, it comes from the soul, it comes from God.
Just to provide a bit of historical perspective: This is happening at the same time the Inquisition was trying to crush the Protestant Reformation in Wester Europe; Protestants were put to death by thousands in the Netherlands and in France; deniers of the Trinity were burned as heretics in Catholic and Protestant countries alike.
In other words, the Edict is an absolutely remarkable achievement for its time and place.
Here is where it happened, where King John Sigismund embraced the Edict as law 448 years ago, through this gate:
The marker at the site reads:
But I want you to see something very curious:
The church is Catholic. Am I being paranoid, but why is it that the statue is half-covering the plaque? Aesthetics would dictate that the statue should be in the other corner to balance things out. But instead, it crowds out the marker that affirms something the Catholic Church tried to murder off for hundreds of years. (Think of how the American government treated the Native Americans–that’s how Unitarians were treated after King John Sigismund died. I am not kidding you.)
Sigh and tears.
On to the next holy spot. To Gyulafehhervar [pronounced hu-la-hey-far, I think] which was the royal city, where King John Sigismund and his mother Queen Isabella reigned. Take a look at this church, which was built in 1009:
How do you enter such a place? How?
I come in, and this is what I see:
Francis David was the Court Preacher: 450 years ago, he was in that pulpit preaching Unitarianism. King John was seated somewhere. His mother too. Once again, I’m wishing I had magical sight to see him….
We wander around and eventually come to see this:
These are the resting places of Queen Isabella and her son. They are buried in this cathedral. But the moment is spoiled when I learn that there are no plaques to indicate to the viewer who these people are. Why they matter. The Catholics have plaques up to honor their folks. The Presbyterians do. Others do. But what about the Unitarians? I don’t know what the story is, why nothing has happened, but I vow to find out. I will find money to pay for the plaques. It is an outrage that no one gets the news about who lies here. Hopefully I’ll find out more of the story in a few days, when I meet with some Transylvanian Unitarian officials. I don’t want to be an obnoxious American. But it hurts that the story is not being told.
From here, we go on to Deva. Deva is where Francis David was imprisoned in a military facility high up. Can you tell that today was heavy with remembrance and grief?
When I say high up, I mean high up. It’s 1579. Francis David has been tried as guilty for “innovation.” In other words, the government found loophole in the Edict of Torda and used it as a way to persecute. So off to prison for him. They take him to Torda because, in all of Transylvania, it is the most remote from his Hungarian Unitarianism.
Francis David is ill. He had been at a theological debate around this time and he couldn’t even stand. He died in just six months. When we were up there, the winds cut through our clothes and to the bone. And it was just September. He died in November, 1579
Here’s the prison, closer up:
When I got to the top, I found myself reflecting on all the many highpoint of Francis David’s career. Literal highpoints: preaching from the pulpit in St. Micheal’s and as court preacher at the church in Gyulafehhervar. Or how about standing on the boulder right at the city gates of Kolozsvar, passionately preaching God’s love as he understood it? Lots of high points in his life, and now this moment in his life which is literally the highest of all…
In a small chapel there on the site, the minister of the Deva church, Zoli, leads a service. He sings a song written by Francis David, says a few words. I say a few words. We gather in a circle and I ask folks what they are feeling. The moment is prayer. I lead us in singing “Spirit of Life” and the room vibrates.
Once we are back down I take a selfie with Zoli:
Zoli takes us on a brief tour of his congregation. Here are some scenes from the sanctuary:
The evening ended with a magnificent dinner and this dessert:
Thank god for dessert (called Papanasi–“traditional baked donuts with cottage cheese”).
What a day.
Tuesday, Sept. 6, 8:22am at Hotel Sarmis in Deva
I look out my hotel room window and the day is moody. Rainy. Clouds drift low among the hills and distant mountains….
Before the day’s adventure begins, though, I want to double back to an event in Kolozsvar. During our last evening, we were treated to Hungarian music and folk dancing:
This was the best thing ever. The singer (to the right of the man playing violin) drove the dancing with a high-pitched voice sounding somewhat like yodeling. The male dancer’s athletic routine was fascinating by the way he slapped at his feet and thighs so that his movements were punctuated by sharp snaps. At times he was joined by a female partner, and her role was not athletic or showy at all. Just fluid, graceful.
After about an hour, we travelers were invited on the dance floor. Our job was to follow the steps of the dancers. Smiles, lots of laughter. Such things cross all borders with ease.
Later I thought about growing up in Canada, and how my parents wanted me to connect with my Ukrainian roots. They had us take Ukrainian language lessons and also dancing, and while I have forgotten anything I might have learned about the language, I still remember some dance moves.
I also thought, “How about that. My faith tradition is just like me. I am Canadian/American, but my family comes from the Old Country. The congregation I serve is in Atlanta, Georgia, but its larger family has Old Country roots, too.”
I never made this connection before.
Tuesday, Sept. 6, 9:03pm at Hotel Sarmis in Deva, Part 1
There’s just too many interesting sights! Here are just a few snaps that I think are interesting/funny/ironic. More about my day in Part 2.
Tuesday, Sept. 6, 9:21pm at Hotel Sarmis in Deva, Part 2
As of today, Tuesday, it’s been officially a week since I’ve left Atlanta. By now I’m sure the plants on my porch are dead, dead, dead. Sorry plants–I couldn’t find someone to take care of you….
I must say, I’m glad to take a break from my hummingbirds. At first, having a hummingbird feeder was the coolest thing. A little guy would speed up to it, hover like an alien spaceship, look left and right and up, and then dive right in. Pull out, look left/right/up, then feed again. Repeat until it’s done, and then go into warp. GONE. It would be sweet, it would be quiet.
Until recently.
Recently, what started to happen was several hummingbirds found out about my feeder and each of them wanted it all to itself. As it turns out, hummingbirds are insanely territorial and masculine. One would zoom up but then another would suddenly break out of warp and that’s when they’d start to bark at each other. There I am, drinking my morning coffee and wanting to enjoy the quiet but it’s not quiet anymore, I’ve got West Side Story happening on my porch, the Sharks and the Jets, and there’s lots of noise.
NOW I know why South American cultures symbolize the warrior spirit with the hummingbird.
So that’s how my romantic vision of sweet quiet hummingbird enjoying nectar at my feeder died. They are not sweet. They will CUT YOU.
But it’s been a long week since I’ve been on my porch, or since I’ve been in my house, or since I’ve been in the office, or since I’ve been coaching skating, and on and on. There’s a sense in which all of this is exoskeleton, and now that it’s gone, I’m feeling like I’m losing my shape. Feeling lumpy, wobbly.
But don’t think I’m complaining. Oh no, it’s all good. Things are happening. Connections are being formed…
So: today. We said goodbye to Deva and drove to Hunedoara, where the attraction is the amazing 13th century castle of Corvinilar. Apparently the folks who created the Harry Potter attraction in Florida visited here to get ideas. I mean, it’s the real deal.
But I was also caught up in the tension between this and the reality of the surrounding town. Hunedoara is a steel town without the steel–all the iron mills (except one) have been shut down. John (one of our guides) calls the area a “moonscape” because of all the sites where the earth is gashed. It is not pretty. “The Pittsburgh of Romania.”
So I am struck about how we drove straight through the poverty and the tragedy of the town to a sightseeing stop as only tourists can….
My Unitarian Universalist superego is showing
Afterwards, we stopped off at a children’s home founded and operated by a relative of one of my fellow group members. At one point, out of the corner of my eye, I saw our driver Istvan leaping at a tree. What is he doing? Our other guide, Csilla, was there with him. He leapt and leapt and it looked like he got something, which he promptly started to crush under his shoe. What? Turns out he was collecting walnuts! Peeling the skin, cracking them open, getting to the meat. Turns your fingertips greenish. Leaves a stain. Csilla shared a story about when she was a kid starting school, the expectation was that your hands would be clean, but she and her friends would go after the walnuts and they would fail all the expectations. I love stories like this. Growing up in a communist world, she said, meant having little to nothing….
Near Sibiu Csilla goes into the corruption of the Romanian government, during communism and post-communism. It’s the #1 corrupt government in Europe. I am nauseated, hearing all the stories.
But now we are in Sibiu, this town that was built out of the energies of German Saxons (whom, in this century, the Romanian government thoroughly screwed over)… I love it. Beautiful.
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 9:28pm at DoubleTree by Hilton in Sighisoara, Part 1
We spent this morning exploring Sibiu and then at 2pm left for another adventure: the Saxon fortress church in Biertan (a UNESCO World Heritage site). Do you know what a 1000 years smells like? A very distinctive smell.
Some images for you:
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 9:47pm at DoubleTree by Hilton in Sighisoara, Part 2
Let’s talk about walking. Solvitur ambulando: It is solved by walking.
Walking is something a tourist does a lot of, especially when they are a part of a group. Is something solved?
I think of all the kinds of walking I’ve engaged in over the past week: striding to some official place; hurrying up only to wait; wandering aimlessly; fast-walking, trying to fly somewhere; shuffling in some kind of queue; I will even include the lack of walking, as in my ass stuck in an airplane seat, or in the seat of a tour bus.
Don’t let me forget the kind of walking that’s in concert with a group, and we are following our guides like ducklings follow their mother. At times the group has used headsets, so as the guide speaks, his/her voice is in our ears, and we can even be ahead of the group and still be with it….
Perhaps the worst is the shuffling in some queue kind. Dehumanizing.
My favorite is wandering. I love walking for hours in a new place. Allowing a new world to wash over me. Feeling the energy.
Walking: carpet, brick, pavement, cobblestone, dirt, grass, linoleum.
The gentle agitation of the motion of walking, loosening things up.
One of the first words in the old Dick and Jane readers: LOOK. We are walking and looking. A whole new world pours into our senses.
Is something solved, or is it dissolved: one’s sense of certitude, one’s sense of complacency? The exoskeleton of habits that closes you off to something new?
Tomorrow: Vlad Dracul! Sighisoara is his birthplace!
Thursday, Sept. 8, 11:20am at Teresa Scara in Sighisoara, Part 1
Sighisoara turns out to be this amazing walled medieval city, and so very well preserved. Age oozes out of everything. Here, in fact, is the height of irony in this place:
I mean, any wall that does NOT have this on it is lying….
Thursday, Sept. 8, 11:23am at Teresa Scara in Sighisoara, Part 2
While I’m here drinking a latte and resting after running up 144 steps to the Biserica din Deal (the Church on the hill, built in the 13th century, with catacombs underneath and churchyard next door), I’ll say a few words about “you know who.” Yup, that guy: Dracula. His namesake, Vlad Dracul, was born here.
Only in two other places have I seen anything referencing that most famous Transylvanian:
I found the wine in Kolozsvar, and the cartoon Dracula was off the square in Sibiu.
But here in Sighisoara, all restraints are off. References everywhere:
Isn’t that something?
I suggest a quick read of Wikipedia’s article on Dracula. At one point, it says (and note especially the underlined portions):
Between 1879 and 1898, [Bram Stoker, author of Dracula] was a business manager for the world-famous Lyceum Theatre in London, where he supplemented his income by writing a large number of sensational novels, his most famous being the vampire tale Dracula published on 26 May 1897.[5]:269 Parts of it are set around the town of Whitby, where he spent summer holidays.
Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, authors such as H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H. G. Wells wrote many tales in which fantastic creatures threatened the British Empire. Invasion literature was at a peak, and Stoker’s formula was very familiar by 1897 to readers of fantastic adventure stories, of an invasion of England by continental European influences. Victorian readers enjoyed Dracula as a good adventure story like many others, but it did not reach its iconic legendary status until later in the 20th century when film versions began to appear.[8]
Before writing Dracula, Stoker spent seven years researching European folklore and stories of vampires, being most influenced by Emily Gerard’s 1885 essay “Transylvania Superstitions”. Later he also claimed that he had a nightmare, caused by eating too much crab meat covered with mayonnaise sauce, about a “vampire king” rising from his grave.
The Dead Un-Dead was one of Stoker’s original titles for Dracula, and the manuscript was entitled simply The Un-Dead up until a few weeks before publication. Stoker’s notes for Dracula show that the name of the count was originally “Count Wampyr“, but Stoker became intrigued by the name “Dracula” while doing research, after reading William Wilkinson’s book An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with Political Observations Relative to Them (London 1820),[10] which he found in the Whitby Library and consulted a number of times during visits to Whitby in the 1890s.[11] The name Dracula was the patronym (Drăculea) of the descendants of Vlad II of Wallachia, who took the name “Dracul” after being invested in the Order of the Dragon in 1431. In the Romanian language, the word dracul (Romanian drac “dragon” + -ul “the”) can mean either “the dragon” or, especially in the present day, “the devil”.[12]
This is all super interesting: the invasion literature bit, the last-minute name changes.
Also super interesting is the fact that “too much crabmeat covered with mayonnaise sauce” was the physical trigger for a story that has captured people’s imaginations for more than 100 years.
Crabmeat/mayo combo, anyone?
Friday, Sept. 9, 11:56am, Homorodkaracsonyfalva, part 1
We are in the Homorod Valley and it’s been years since I’ve been somewhere so remote. Internet access is very limited and I’ve just a small window of opportunity to post some items. Today we will travel to Szekelyudvarhely and begin our home stays–I don’t know if there will be internet access there either… Just know I am thinKing about you!
For now:
Unitarianism in the Homorod Valley: it is a religion of farmers. After dinner at the parish house in Homorodkaracsonyfalva (consisting of polenka, sour cherry soup, mashed potatoes with meatballs, and dessert), and during our walk back to the bed and breakfast, we saw cows returning home for the evening. Water buffalo also. Enormous moos. Shit everywhere on the street, and the sour/rich smell blended in with everything. Clop-clop-clop of horses carrying wagons filled with hay. Sun-weathered farmers who could not possibly read William Ellery Channing or Ralph Waldo Emerson, never mind the postmodernists of current day.
We American Unitarian Universalists completely underestimate the reach of our religion. It is far more adaptable than we know.
It is time we cease our judgmentalism and engage in more curiosity about what our faith might become, and who might be interested in it.
Friday, Sept. 9, 11:56am, Homorodkaracsonyfalva, part 2
My encounter with religion in Hungary and Romania has resulted in a fascinating discovery. Over and over again, I’ve heard that, here, “ethnicity trumps theology.” I’ve heard that “if you don’t like your church, you just stop going. You certainly don’t go elsewhere else, because giving up the ethnic ties is unimaginable.”
This suggests that the deep meaning-making of Transylvanian religious community is inextricably tied up with preserving and transmitting Hungarian ethnicity. And, as ethnicity is intersubjective by nature, religion is felt as a dynamism between/among people. The word “God” does not so much point to an individual’s private experience of something divine as it points to sacred architecture, music, prayer, scripture, stories, seasonal celebrations, ethnic traditions, and all the other ways that people publicly manifest divinity.
This, by the way, is why Communism’s attempt to erase religion was so thoroughly destructive. To erase public manifestations of the divine was to take both God and ethnic heritage from the people. It was a one-two punch. People felt erased to the depths of their being.
Another way of getting at all this is to ask, Where do people feel most real? A self-aware Transylvanian will say, In the dynamism of community. A self-aware American, on the other hand, will say, In the dynamism of my private self. For Americans, the locus of personal reality is INTRAsubjective. People in the land of “bowling alone” can easily give up ethnicity or heritage without feeling fundamentally diminished. They can easily give up certain public manifestations of divinity, as they see fit. That’s why, if they grow to dislike the church they grew up in, they can move on. They don’t leave anything critical to their identity behind them, as is what would happen for a Hungarian Transylvanian or a Romanian Orthodox.
My pilgrimage to Transylvania has taught me something important about the gospel of free religion: the very different ways it gets refracted through different cultural lenses. In Transylvania, people experience their freedom as they exist within a shared language of religion/ethnicity. In America, people experience their freedom as they engage individual feelings, thoughts, intuitions, and experiences and as they try to create a workable sense of self while also being in right/creative relationship with others.
A powerful illustration of this comes from a conversation with Maria Pap at Unitarian headquarters in Kolozsvar. She described an incident when she was at Starr King in California, our Unitarian Universalist seminary on the West Coast. She started to talk about the God of her Unitarian understanding, and various Starr King students pushed back at her, hard. “Don’t use that word,” they said. “That word triggers all sorts of hurt. People have suffered tremendously because of that word.” What trumps theology for Americans, in other words, is intrasubjective factors (feelings, thoughts, intuitions, and experiences). If God doesn’t agree with them, God goes.
Something is always trumping theology, right?
Maria’s response to the students was outrage. She said, “Love hurts like hell, too, but no one wants to remove that word from the language.” (What a mic drop of a statement!) But the reason why no American Unitarian Universalist would want to remove “love” from the language is because its intrasubjective reality is readily available to everyone. Everyone has felt love. Not so with God, if that word is pointing to a kind of inner experience. Only few people have experienced God directly, as the mystics do….
But for a Transylvanian Unitarian, this is missing the point! God is fundamentally known intersubjectively not intrasubjectively. God has as much energy and presence as the ethnic traditions, architecture, seasonal celebrations, sacred music, prayer, and all the other ways that people publicly manifest divinity. God, from this perspective, is not so easily kicked out….
Reader, where do you feel most real? Among people, or within your solitary self?
Reader, tell me: where is God?
Saturday, Sept. 10, 3:43pm, Székelyudvarhely
Listening to Nora and Samuel sing. Nora is the middle daughter of three in the Kosma household; Samuel is her boyfriend. I met them yesterday when our bus finally reached our partner church town of Székelyudvarhely. Kati Kosma is the President of the Board. She and her husband, Errno, own and operate a printing business. Their youngest daughter is named Kristina.
I am taking lessons in how to offer hospitality. The Bible is a great source for stories about hospitality, and so is this trip. The Kosma family is so very welcoming and warm. These are beautiful people.
Last night before d… <I am interrupted by the family. They want me to see a video of their family trip to Montenegro. I come and sit on the couch. Samuel (who will be starting film school in Koloszvar this fall) created the video. It’s just excellent. The family embraces him and loves him. It is a thoroughly surreal experience for me, as I remember my own family situation and how worlds apart it was.>
But as I was saying, last night before dinner, the family took me to go see Samuel perform traditional Hungarian folk dance with others from his school.
Watching this blows my mind. It’s the sort of thing I did growing up, except it was Ukrainian dancing, not Hungarian. I know this. I believe in this.
This was not on the itinerary. Not for this first time am I finding myself returned to my family. It was like this the day before, at the bed and breakfast in Homorodkaracsonyfalva, where the treated pine wood walls of my bedroom, glowing gold in the sunlight, took me right back to my Baba and Dido’s house, where the walls were identical.
I hadn’t seen something like this for 20+ years. This, as well as the down comforter. It brought me back to Baba’s down comforter which, I swear, was four feet tall at the center. It was full and soft like a huge marshmallow. You would nestle underneath it and it did not matter that the entirety of Canada wanted to freeze your bones. The down comforter won every time. How could I have ever forgotten it? But I did. Until Transylvania.
Sunday, Sept. 11, 7:55am, Székelyudvarhely, Part 1
Friday afternoon we were greeted at the Székelyudvarhely church. Rev. Moses Kadei and a group of congregants met us with wonderful warmth, and they ushered us into the church building, where we saw this:
The group then sang some songs for us:
And then we were ushered into Rev. Kedei’s study, where, among other things, we saw a great framed picture of Francis David, preaching Unitarianism at the Diet of Torda in 1568:
And it was underneath his gaze that we were offered a traditional greeting meal of bread and palenka (which is distilled fruit brandy, often clear but it can come in any number of colors–delicious but deadly). The bread was passed around, shot glasses of palenka were handed around. Mozes offered yet another greeting and then I said a few words. I said, “All throughout the world, the very basic things that people need to sustain life are symbolized by bread and water. But today you give us your special version of that, and we are honored and grateful to be here.” It got big laughter, and I’m glad.
This is one of the scenes around the table, after the first round:
To say “welcome” in Hungarian is literally to say, “God brought you.” It felt like that.
Sunday, Sept. 11, 7:55am, Székelyudvarhely, Part 2
Saturday morning before breakfast, Errno and I are in the kitchen. We are talking about Friday night’s meal at the restaurant and I ask him if the family goes out a lot. He does not speak very much English, but the meaning of what he’s trying to say is clear. There are more hungers at stake than just for food. There is a hunger for belonging, there is a hunger for the feeling of being together, there is hunger for family. That is why they don’t go out to restaurants very often. Something being made at home has far more nutritional value, on more levels, than anything from a restaurant….
Breakfast is eye-poppingly good. I find myself worrying that, from all the consistently excellent food I’ve been eating, together with a radical drop-off of my usual exercise regimen, Sunday morning will roll around and I’ll need to wear my suit (since I’m preaching) and the pants won’t fit!
Aaaand, I go ahead and take another bite! I guess the worries aren’t big enough to stop me
During breakfast, I find that I’m having a hell of a time cutting one of their delicious garden tomatoes. Errno gestures that I should use the other side of the blade. I had been using the side that curves, as we do in America. That’s the sharp one. But here, it’s the OTHER side of the blade that is the sharp one–the straight one that ends at a point. And that does the trick. Tomato, you are MINE!
But what’s funny is that I caught myself reverting back to the American side of the blade, and the entire family saw too, and we all laughed. Then I just decided to come clean about how goofy I felt about the whole thing and I turned the blade completely around and started cutting my tomato with the handle. A slapstick moment.
Sunday, Sept. 11, 5:44pm, Székelyudvarhely, Part 3
Worship this morning with the church in Székelyudvarhely. My heart is full:
Tuesday, Sept. 13, 3:05am, Victoria Hotel in Kolozsvar
Down in the lobby at 4am, we’ll call some taxis to take us to the airport. Our flight leaves at 6:15-ish. To Bucharest, to Munich, and then to Atlanta, with a scheduled arrival time of 3:30pm.
No more 7 hours ahead. Like entering into a time machine. We go back in time.
Endings and beginnings. Or, as I like to say, endBeginnings.
Our entrance into our partner church town, Székelyudvarhely, was interesting. From out of the Homorod Valley, we had taken some back roads, risky roads. Coming upon a bridge, we all got out because our driver Istvan was unsure about the bridge’s strength. We walked across, and then came the bus. Soon after this, a rock got stuck between the right double tires in the back and the sound of our passage was THUMP THUMP THUMP. Ivan got out with a hammer. BAM! BAM! BAM! The damn thing wouldn’t budge. Our beginning in Székelyudvarhely, our entry song, would sound like THUMP THUMP THUMP.
But it was not to be. Still a couple miles out, all the physical forces of our arrival were too much. The rock flew out and our sound was solid and clear.
And it continued to be so. The visit with our partner church families was amazing. More stories than I have time to tell right now. I was so sad to leave.
Monday morning my hosts Kati and Errno were both in the kitchen preparing breakfast:
Reader, you have no idea how good these breakfasts were…. And it was a busy morning, too. Nora and Kristina were starting another year of school that morning. Here is one of Nora’s notebooks:
I wish all these things for her, for Kristina as she begins her new year, for their parents, and for us all. GO FIND YOURSELF. GRAB THE CHANCE. LAUGH LOTS. BE CLASSY. STAY AWAKE.
Be bacK home soon–
The services before the Hymns of the Spirit include prayers and litanies from various sources, including the 1903 Devotional Services for Public Worship, by John Hunter. He was the minister of King’s Weigh House Church, then a Congregational church, in Mayfair, London.
You can read it at Archives.org.
I’ll see if there’s any commonalities, and if so I’ll note them below.
Crossposted at HymnsoftheSpirit.org.
The services before the Hymns of the Spirit include prayers and litanies from various sources, including the 1903 Devotional Services for Public Worship, by John Hunter. He was the minister of King’s Weigh House Church, then a Congregational church, in Mayfair, London.
You can read it at Archives.org.
I’ll see if there’s any commonalities, and if so I’ll note them below.
Crossposted at RevScottWells.com.
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Does the true origin of the flaming chalice go back to 1949 in the eccentric mind of a far out Universalist minister named Rev. Ken Patton? Sean and Susan dive into this question and more as we climb aboard the Charles Street Starship and venture where no podcast has gone before! P.S. Yes there are a few Star Trek references in this episode!
The Chares Street Meeting House
Attached media: https://media.blubrry.com/pamphlet/content.blubrry.com/pamphlet/Vol-2.mp3
There’s a shortage of historic works — Unitarian or Universalist — on the preparation and exercise of the ministry. So — while researching — I was happy to see a printed set of lectures by William Phillip Tilden (1811-1890) to the Meadville Theological School, in June 1889. So we can consider these the mature words of a respected pastor.
I’ve not read this, but will put them on the list. Thought you might like to read it, too.
The Work of the Ministry: Lectures Given to the Meadville Theological School
After about two years, I have added a new liturgical element: the shorter communion service, meant to be used “immediately after the Order of Morning Worship” and with the unusual option for “no distribution of the elements.”
This last option was once more usual for Unitarians than you might suspect. The service was conceived in spiritual terms, and in a creative alternative to individual glasses in the generation after fears — precipitated by typhoid — of infection.
The practice — a non-distributed or “spiritual” communion — deserves consideration.
When I was a college senior, I met the woman I would be married to for many years. It was not easy going. I was still very early in my process of just beginning to understand my birth family circumstances, just beginning to name it as dysfunction and trauma, just beginning to start the journey of recovery. Every day my heart hurt. You don’t emerge from a life-long chronically threatening environment in any other way. I was anxious, cranky, and judgmental. I never felt like I belonged, I always felt like a bother. I felt unworthy. I felt withered.
I was 22 years old.
I did have a friend, though, who never failed me. My journal. Writing was asbestos to my burning heart—it helped me handle the flames within. But it wasn’t enough. I wish it could have been. It would have made everything simpler. But the deep craving for live human contact persisted. I could not shake it. I was like Vincent Van Gogh when he said, “A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.” I wanted someone to see beyond the wisps to the great fire! I longed for that! It did not matter that from my earliest years I had learned over and over again the lesson that people are dangerous and the ones you love and most depend on hurt you.
Still, I craved.
Invariably I’d find my way to busy places: entrances to buildings, or inside cafeterias. I would be alone, standing, sitting. Sounds of conversation washing over me, sounds of crowds and sounds of laughter. I was in it but not of it. And the one thing I rarely did was look people in the eye. I shied away from eye contact. I kept my face flat, I kept my face closed, I kept my face cold. Nothing to see here. Just walk on by. I don’t need you. Even though in truth I was like Vincent Van Gogh!
One day, Laura, the woman I was to be married to for 20+ years, found me in the cafeteria. She came up to me, and though I was scribbling furiously in my journal, eyes trained on the page, I could sense someone. She just stood there. I kept writing, hoping she’d go away. She didn’t. She just stayed there. I wondered what was happening. Finally I looked. Laura. Irritation flashed through me. Then I did what I normally didn’t do: look into her eyes. And what I saw was this: that she saw beyond the wisps of smoke, to the fire. She saw that! She saw me! I was seen!
It was the start of feeling like, after everything, I might yet belong to something actually good…
And THIS is how I come, today, to the question of belonging. Acknowledging that no one comes to it as a blank slate, tabula rasa. Acknowledging ambivalence. On the one hand, we have all been hurt before—to one degree or another. We’ve all been let down. But on the other hand, the deep craving for human contact persists. We cannot shake it.
But why? Let’s go a little deeper here. Exactly why is the longing for connection indestructible?
Now I want to point out that this is just not any congregation. This is a Unitarian Universalist congregation, which means that (among other things) we believe religion and science go hand-in-hand. The conversation going back and forth between them can be a positive one. So, to answer the question before us, we’re going to look to a scientific discipline known as “relational neuroscience.” In her book Four Ways to Click, Dr. Amy Banks M.D. says that relational neuroscience shows “that there is hardwiring throughout our brains and bodies designed to help us engage in satisfying emotional connections with others. This hardwiring [she says] includes four primary neural pathways…. [W]hen we are cut off from others, these neural pathways suffer. The result is a neurological cascade that can result in chronic irritability and anger, depression, addiction, and chronic physical illness.”
That’s it. The longing for connection is indestructible because it’s not a choice. It’s an intrinsic part of our design as human beings. We can’t NOT long as Vincent Van Gogh longed. OF COURSE I positioned myself at entrances to buildings and inside cafeterias so that I could be among people, even though I was also afraid of them…
Dr. Banks mentioned four neural pathways, and it would be good for us to get acquainted. Briefly, they are
That’s the four neural pathways which give structure to the human instinct to belong. And did you notice that, with each of them, I said, “when it’s working right”? This takes us right back to ambivalence. Because when a neural pathway’s functioning is under or over or is in some other way compromised, as it was for me, given the circumstances I grew up in, belonging becomes a problem.
Relational neuroscience shows that when the smart vagus is underfunctioning (or has “poor tone”) what happens is that a person has a hard time seeing and hearing what is actually happening around them. They misinterpret neutrality and even friendliness as aggression! They also make things worse by avoiding eye contact and evincing other nonverbal behaviors that come across as uncaring and even hostile. They are chronic blamers. They are on a short fuse. The smart vagus is not so smart after all…
Or take the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Problems happen when it overfunctions and the “I’m being left out!!” alarm is constantly screaming. The endless alarm digs a deep hole in your heart until you could swear to God that you are completely unworthy of belonging and fated always to be left out. Often the result is living a paradox: you hide whatever parts of yourself you feel you need to so that you can be more attractive to others; but by hiding anything about yourself you just trigger more pain and also further reinforce the feeling of being unworthy. But (you counter) if I just let it all hang out, I’d drive people away, and that’s also pain. And there you have it: the insane paradox you get stuck in, because your dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is messed up.
Equally troublesome things happen when the mirroring system and the mesolimbic pathway aren’t functioning right. With the former, you feel cut off from others; with the latter, your brain has learned to UNpair feeling good with belonging. Shots of dopamine are triggered by gambling instead, or drinking, or workaholism, or video gaming, or some other kind of addiction. The dopamine-based motivation to experience real, live human connection has gone underground.
Now at this point you might be wondering whether this is a sermon or a lecture in neuroscience! So let’s go straight to a big part of the sermon message: you are not to blame. You have a hard time recognizing the friendliness of friendly people and your nonverbals are so off-putting that you can make friendly people less friendly, even unfriendly. It’s not your fault. The soul crushing feeling of being unworthy and a bother never seems to stop, and hiding parts of yourself makes it better and makes it worse. It’s not your fault. You don’t feel the mirroring effect with others; you feel caught behind a stiff mask, and others appear the same way to you. It’s not your fault. Long ago you stopped relying on other people to be a source of pleasure, and you go elsewhere, maybe to unsavory elsewheres. It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
There are things to do to make it better, and I am about to get into that. But I really want you to hear what I’m saying right now. Some of you are survivors of family situations as bad as mine, or maybe even worse, and it’s not your fault that you bear the scars in nothing less than your neural pathways. But it’s about all of us too. All of us are members of a larger culture that force-feeds us a mythology of lone rangers and going it alone and heroic individualism and “you are mature to the degree you can stand isolated and alone.” That leaves a scar too. It is not your fault.
It means that when we’re struggling with belonging, don’t see yourself as pathetic and broken. Don’t blame. Reframe. Don’t blame. Reframe! One or more of your neural pathways is in a rut. We all know this: our brains are sculpted by the early environments we grew up in. But we also know or should know the genuine good gospel news of neuroplasticity, which means that old ruts are never permanent. They aren’t like sins which require supernatural blood of the lamb to erase, otherwise they persist into all eternity and condemn us to everlasting hell. No. Hear the gospel of neuroplasticity, which says that brains can change. It takes time, but they do change. Just work at it.
Work out your salvation with diligence!
To this end, Dr. Amy Banks and other relational neuroscientists offer any number of things to do. Here, I’ll suggest just a few, and they are all things we can do as part of our belonging to this Beloved Community.
One is to take our Covenant of Healthy Relationships seriously. The short form is right inside the front cover of the worship bulletin.
We will be mindful of how we communicate with and about others.
We will seek a peaceful and constructive resolution process when conflicts arise.
We will celebrate the diversity within our community.
We will build the common good.
This is just another way of saying, let’s hold dangerous people accountable for their actions. Let’s make this place less dangerous and more safe. And guess what the recipe is for strengthening the smart vagus? Exactly that!
Another solution is to get involved with a covenant group, where you can know others deeply, and be deeply known in return. The neuroscientists say that one of the ways of soothing a hyperactive dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is to start to unveil hidden parts of yourself, progressively—to take the risk of revealing who you really are, one piece at a time. Covenant groups are ideal places for that.
Yet another solution is to participate in worship rituals. You know when I ask you to put hand to heart in the Embracing Meditation? The neuroscientists say that such physical rituals also calm down a hyperactive dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that’s screaming you are unworthy, that’s screaming you don’t belong… But every time you put hand to heart and you say “I will love myself, I will love others, and that love will heal the world,” you are working to heal a neural pathway in your brain.
Also don’t forget the receiving line after worship. Hugs given and received—when they are safe—heal neural pathways. And they are absolutely safe. They come with simple love and no strings attached.
This is your Beloved Community. And I want you to know that the meaning of that is fundamental. Belonging to this place changes our brains for the better. You can’t do it all by yourself, all alone. Our bodies won’t allow for it. Only through belonging can we work out our salvation with diligence!
Look someone in the eye today. Let them know that you see beyond the wisps of smoke to their fire. Let them know you see them.
And let yourself be seen. Believe that you are worthy, and loved. Loved by a love larger than you can know. Believe, and then act.
Lift up your face,
look back at the person looking at you,
see and be seen.
AMEN
I had some site problems this last week. My old main blog, BoyintheBands.com, was badly hacked and in the process of hardening the other sites against attack, I ruined the WordPress install for my homage site to the 1937 “red hymnal” HymnsoftheSpirit.org.
I had to trash the old system and completely reinstalled it. Easy, but I misplaced the theme (no great loss) in the process. So the site is there, if plain.
WWUUD stream 
