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Friday Morning
Worship Planning Committee |
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Friday Morning
Worship Planning Committee |
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You've got a Friend… in Transylvania
A sermon delivered by Rev. David Gyero at the UUA General Assembly in Cleveland
Friday, June 22, 2001
My friends, let me begin with a moment of a rare public confession, sharing something personal which speaks about you all: I love you. Yes, you heard me well, I am speaking about you: Unitarian Universalists in North America - not about myself. Loving someone is never about us, but about the "someone": the object of our feelings. Love is a sphere where not US are important, but YOU; love is where we kneel down crushed, acknowledging a miracle--something that is fulfilling our needs with an unspeakable power.
I have a personal philosophy to explain how love works. Basically, it works by itself. There is nothing that we can do for or against it, other than give ourselves to it, completely and without any reserves. The feeling is stronger than we are. It is more fatal. The instinct, this 6th organ of sense is often more exact than the sense of sight or smell. In some cases we don't name our feelings: we know that we are not brothers and sisters, or we are not lovers - but we dimly have a sentiment about something else. There is a binding that is denser than what the twins have in the womb: the friendship. A peculiar identity of interest, inclination, sympathy, tastes, education and temper chain two people together in the same destiny.
It takes a lot of time to understand that always this is the case. Love stories, marriages, friendships, and relationships all depend on this. On this oneness that unites lives and faiths into one. Sometimes we like different values from ours, we are attracted by them, those which complete us, which bring into our lives all that was missing before, which make us a whole. But I think that one of the biggest gifts of life is meeting someone who is the same. Who is like us. Who shares the same values, dreams the same ideals, and serves the same principles. Who is us.
I believe that this is true for communities as well: there are institutions, which were formed around the same basic values, answering the same needs, having the same vision. This incredible discovery must have touched our Unitarian communities in 1825: when the AUA was formed, our Transylvanian leaders have sent a letter to Boston in Latin, congratulating the occasion. Amazingly, the language of the American reply was also Latin. We didn't have a common language: but we had common ideals that created us. We both believed in the original purity and determination for good of the humans. We both practiced tolerance and acceptance towards the often hostile religious partners. We both put reason and conscience as the core principle of our theologies. We both named our communities - Unitarian, Unitarius - after the oneness of the supreme power, the one God. It was the first time in history that we have decided to enrich ourselves by sharing a community that unites us into one.
The same oneness was reassured in the early 1920s, when the American Unitarian presence in Transylvania was essential for the survival of our shared faith. After the 1st world war Transylvania was cut off from the motherland Hungary and given to Romania, creating a situation where the very existence of our denomination was endangered. The response of our American friends was establishing partnerships between congregations here and there. This was one the most important outcomes of our shared belief: to realize that the essence of friendship is service. For those of you who still consider this outreach a charity act, I can only say no: we didn't need charity. We needed you put your faith in action, and act upon your own ideals of a just and oppression-free world. And by reaching out to a far-away place where Unitarianism was born, you managed to contribute to the strengthening of the universal Unitarian community.
Unfortunately, these connections could not nurture the involved parts for too long. After the 2nd world war, the anti-religious and anti-minority communist government cut our exchanges. There were no visitors allowed to travel back and forth, letters got lost, packages confiscated. The aim was clear: to destroy us. For this, they confiscated our buildings, land and forests, closed our schools, forbade our social and cultural activities, and oppressed our religious education and youth work. Only the sanctuary was left: the seat of survival for our faith for 4 decades.
When communism failed and freedom came in 1989, you were there again to celebrate this miracle with us. The second generation of partnerships started in the early 1990s, in which congregations in North America and Transylvania found each other again with a joy that rediscovered the identical nature of their being. And if the first partnership wave in the 1920s was waived under oppression and persecution, this second one of the 1990s nurtured the parts involved in a period of transition.
During the 11 years that passed since, we tried to build back the integrity of our broken community in Transylvania: and what we did, we did together. Together we started to build up a viable development of the villages, providing agricultural support for the struggling businesses. Together we renewed the ministerial education, providing English training for ministerial students. Together we built new sanctuaries and repaired old ones. Together we revitalized the youth program by services, which answered the different needs of the younger generation. Together we fought for freedom of speech and minority rights, religious tolerance and ecumenical acceptance, as nationalism and exclusivity raised again in the post-socialist society.
I personally entered this fascinating scene by benefiting from the English language program during my seminary years. Later I served as a translator for partner church delegations: and I witnessed so many incredible moments when encountering each other's world we realized the unity that binds us together over lands and ocean. I witnessed how the most important part of this connection is not money, packages or letters and not even prayers sent over to Transylvania: but the living presence in each other's lives. Being there in flash and body, touching and hugging each other, worshiping together singing "Find A Stillness" both in English and Hungarian, sharing heavy meals together, drinking palinka and dancing csardas together, planning together with a love that made us one--was the essence of our friendship.
In 1998 I came to the US for the first time making youth connections, as a leader of our Unitarian youth program. I remember walking through the rooms at 25 Beacon St. in Boston as an amazed child, dreaming with open eyes about coming back one day to absorb the historic presence that filled the air in the rooms. Then I went to the Rochester GA, and my religious minority identity was overwhelmed by the power of the plenary worship services where thousands of people around me were all Unitarian Universalists. "If I just had a second to tell them how incredibly empowering feeling this is"--I thought at one of those meetings.
Guess what happened since. Yes, late last summer I was privileged to come back to Boston for a year and work in the very same offices, learning the secrets of the UUA administration; I also took management courses at Harvard University. At the end of this incredible year, I can state that spiritual and mental growth is not a far-away idea, which started the reformation of Francis David in 1568 and led him to establish the first Unitarian church in the world; but it is a basic condition of one's existence. Taking the subway daily to Park Street or Harvard Square, I know now that revenue up is a credit and expense up is a debit; but I also learned that fundraising, asking for money is not a shame, but a way in which one helps others to serve ideals that they always wanted. I know now that a strategic plan starts with having a clear vision; but I also learned that this vision must embrace everybody, those too who don't see as clearly yet. I know now that religion and church can be served as a bureaucrat as well; but I also learned that no bureaucrat can do a good job without deep spiritual life, nurturing human connections and strong moral guidelines. And finally, I know now that leadership is both inspiration and perspiration; but I also learned that leading the way is not about me, but about us, not about my ideas, but about our ideals, not about what I can do, but about what we can do together.
And yes, today I am here at the Cleveland plenary worship service, telling you about dreams that can indeed be fulfilled. For me, dreaming is not chasing after rainbows: it is walking through life with open eyes. Dreaming is not a romantic fantasy: it is a self-assessing planning of my own life. Dreaming is to connect myself to something greater than I am, to something that I am willing to serve with all my talents, something that gives me the unique perspective about how to spend this fugitive life. And then, get there, step by step, day by day. "Go for it! Dare to dream!"--my life tells me that I must always have something greater than pure living, that life in itself is not worth a nickel if I don't serve by it something more than I am.
During this year, I was especially active in making friends within our larger UU community. So far, I traveled to 36 states, visited and preached to more than a hundred partner congregations, and in all these tried to make friends more then anything else. My boss in the UUA International Office, Olivia Holmes, who has been my main teacher in learning how American UUs think and what they care about, also tried to expand my interests beyond UU boundaries, bless her heart. Then I explained to her that staying connected almost exclusively to UUs is not a choice for me, but a must: because I have invested MY future in these friendships. A future in which we probably will need each other more than we ever did. And what help us in these needs are not theoretical figures, but memories. Names and faces. Concrete life experiences. Boundaries. Meetings, shaking hands, exchanging stories; being engraved into each other's souls, being impressed into each other's minds. We have a long way to go, and I believe in walking together.
My friends, for this incredible year, for your faces, your names, your smiles, your stories, I am deeply grateful. I am grateful for everything that you shared with me, as they now became part of my own life. There are only a few things that I can give you in return: my name, my face, my smile, and my stories. But you have me, you have a friend in Transylvania. And I am not the only one, there are so many others who feel like me. You've got friends in Transylvania - friends who in spite of so many differences, feel like you, love like you, value like you. Who are parts of the same oneness. For this oneness, my friends, let me end by sharing the same thing again about you: "Dear friends, dear friends, let me tell you how I feel. You have given me all your treasures-I love you so."
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