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Reflections of the August 2008 Visit to Our Partner Church
The Unitarian Church in Torda
Transylvania, Romania
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From Sarah Smith. . .
I was asked to speak to you today to give you a “young” perspective on the trip to Torda. To be honest, I was first interested in traveling to Torda for two reasons: 1) to say I have been to Romania, and 2) my mom promised me that we would make a stop in Rome on the way back. I couldn’t really resist. But before I give you the details of the trip I want to tell you a little about myself. At sixteen-years-old, my favorite food is pasta and my favorite drink is Coke. My usual breakfast is macaroni and cheese, and I have my first coke of the day around 10:30 in the morning. I am  a huge fan of the Jane Austen books and films. My favorite class is history. Although some people might disagree, I am also a shy person. I am not the biggest social bug in the world. I was really nervous about what the teenagers were going to be like over in Torda. What freaked me out even more was the fact that there was a possibility that our host family had teenage kids. I remember the night when we first arrived at the parsonage after our long 12-hour bus ride, I saw three kids who were about the same age as me. All I could think was, “Sarah, just please don’t embarrass yourself in front of them.” As it turned out, one of the three kids was the older son of our host family. His name is Lehel, and he is eighteen years old. Only after a few minutes of talking to each other, my worries about self-embarrassment flew right out the window. Let me just say that there is no eighteen-year-old at Weston High School who is more gentlemanly, polite, or courteous than Lehel. During our trip to the salt mine the following day, I slipped and almost fell flat on my face in the cold mud, but Lehel caught me at the last second. He offered to stay behind me after that to make sure I wouldn’t lose my balance again. If I were to trip on the stairs at school, everyone (guys and girls) would probably get a few laughs in before attempting to pick me up. Lehel’s individual actions were not unique in Torda. Everyone in the community cared a great deal whether we were comfortable, well-fed, and happy. It was more than any of us could have ever asked. When Tundë, Lehel’s mother, found out that my favorite food is pasta and my favorite drink is Coke, she woke up early the next morning and made two full bowls of pasta for breakfast, accompanied by Fanta lemonade and Coca-Cola, of course. Apparently, the fact that I have an obsession for Coke spread throughout the Torda community. The final night in Torda, we had a huge dinner with many guests from the congregation. When people finally grew tired of singing drinking songs in Hungarian, an older man named Endrè told me not to leave yet, because he had a present for me. Through the translator, he asked me, “You’re the girl who likes Coke, right?” I nodded and said yes. He quickly ran out of the parsonage. A few minutes later he returned with a Romanian Coke glass in his hand. I swear that he ran down the street to the pizza place and bargained for the glass just for me.
In all, I can certainly say that I got much more out of the trip than I expected. And I can also tell you that I was somewhat disappointed by my stop in Rome. It had no personal connection like Torda did. In Rome, everyone looked at you kinda in a strange way. I think I know what I miss most about Torda. I miss all the smiles from all of the people.
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From Tracy Carlson. . .
A few vignettes:
I am sitting at the breakfast table with my host family when someone knocks at the door. A neighbor hands over a 2-liter Fanta bottle full of fresh milk, direct from a nearby village. Do you often get milk this way, I ask Ibi, my 40-something hostess? Yes, she answers. It is much better quality and much less expensive than buying it in a store.
At our meeting with the Unitarian bishop in Kolosvar, Paul Penfield asks him about the church’s policy on homosexuals, an often divisive issue in the US. The bishop seems a little uncomfor  table with the question. He is not a young man: he sports a glorious head of white hair. Hungarian culture is traditional, and decidedly macho. He answers. The Orthodox and Catholic and Lutheran churches here have all condemned homosexuality. As Unitarians we believe that we are all created equally by God. We Transylvanian Unitarians are a minority, and we must protect other minorities. Homosexuals are welcome in the Unitarian church.
Meg and John Himmel tell us about their host family, Levante and Margot. Levante is a jovial barrel-chested builder. They live next door to an 80-year-old man permanently estranged from his adult son. Their elderly neighbor sold them the property on which his son had started to build a house, and Levante completed the house. They had never met him before. Now, they bring him an evening meal every day. They invite him over to share supper every Sunday. What will happen when the man can no longer live alone? Well, then they’ll take him in. Where else would he go? This is what people do.
The Torda church: In a downtown sky pierced with steeples, the Unitarian church is the only one without a cross on it. Inside the church, carved into the elaborate wood decoration above the pulpit, are the words Egy az Isten: (phonetically - edge auz Eesh-ten) “God is One.” I am struck by the thought that “God is One” is a pretty radical idea for a church, one that sometimes feels a little radical even here at First Parish.
When we visit the large, beautiful Catholic churches in Torda and Koloszvar, we learn that these used to be the Unitarian churches. They were seized by the Catholics when political power shifted. I am reminded that freedom of religion is largely an abstraction here: First Parish is unlikely ever to be seized. The people we met in Torda are proud to be Unitarians, proud to reside in the place where religious tolerance was born 440 years ago. They face on a daily basis tougher lives and tougher choices than most of us have ever faced. Yet there is something remarkably familiar about the people: an openness, a generosity, a deep commitment to things that matter. I like to think that these are the people we would be if we were Unitarians in Transylvania, one generation removed from the village.
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From Scott Nelson. . .
People who know me well know that I never let my young age get in the way of my love for travel. One of the reasons that I, as a youth, enjoy travel so much is moments like this one: Torda. A hot day in August. We all climb down into an old, cold, salt mine and explore the mineshafts and gigantic caverns together. Lehel and Alpar, two youths from Torda, go off with Sarah Smith and me to walk along a wooden balcony, high above a deep salt basin.
“I dare you!” says Alpar. “Dare me do what?” I ask back. “I dare you to walk along the handrail, like on a balance-beam over the salt basin.”
Now that’s scary! Anywhere! – but especially overseas. It makes you examine yourself, your courage, and what you stand for. Was this a risk I wanted to take?
“It’s okay,” said Alpar’s friend Lehel. “We’ve never done it either. You don’t need to do it.” Phew! I wasn’t going to have to convince them this was a bad idea. But Lehel and Alpar already knew a lot more about risks, and courage, than many people our age do. They know what smart risks are – what real courage is – and which risks are silly to take.
Consider Alpar, for example. He doesn’t need to go walking along wooden handrails above salt basins to prove himself. He commutes each week to the Unitarian high school in Kolozsvar, a hard hour’s drive from Torda. He lives with his hard-working single mother and helps her keep the house in order. He is a minority Hungarian in a Romanian area still recovering from Soviet domination, where the memory of repression against Unitarians is still recent – and discrimination is still ongoing.
You see, if I were asked to say in one sentence how I thought youth like me can benefit from travelling, I would say travelling teaches us about risks – and it teaches us not just about the silly ones, but about the real ones too.
One of the very real risks ever seen in Torda is precious history for the Torda Unitarians: I am speaking, of course, about the Diet of Torda in 1568, when the Unitarian preaching of the minister Francis David inspired a proclamation of religious toleration in Transylvania. In the centuries since then, the Transylvanian Unitarians have stood up for their Unitarian beliefs, very bravely and often as a minority, again and again.
Nearly all of the Unitarian churches we visited – and there were many of them! – were decorated with a wall-hanging that illustrated the Proclamation of the Diet of Torda. Usually Francis David is shown speaking in front of an animated crowd, walking the narrow line between dangerous heresy and honest faith. Now that is a real walk on a real balancing beam! And that is real courage!
Courage of that kind pervades the daily lives of our friends in Torda. It has been less than twenty years since the end of Ceaus¸escu’s rule, and life in Transylvania is still not easy. When we send our First Parish youth to live for a week with our host family friends in Torda, our youth learn something about that real courage. We learn from the great history in Transylvania, and we learn from the local youth who are living that history today. This helps us grow as Unitarian-Universalists, and it helps us grow tremendously as young people. |
From Barbara Penfield
As we were about to end our final gathering with our Torda friends to board the bus that would start our journeys home, I stood up to speak. I had not planned to do so, but my words came straight from the heart. I will try to capture here what turned out to be the final summation of our Torda experience.
Barbara Coburn, who traveled to Torda with the 1993 pilgrimage, , said to me during one of the planning meetings for this year’s pilgrimage, that the trip to Torda, quote, “… changed my life.” I heard what she said, but I don’t think in those terms, and I certainly didn’t believe I would ever feel that way. I was wrong! The people of our partner church in Torda poured out to us all that they could, unstintingly, joyfully, and lovingly, and they asked only that we accept their offerings.
 It all started when we arrived in Torda, tired, hungry, and more than two hours late. We were welcomed by a crowd of people – few of whom who spoke English – two translators, and a table laden with food for us and for those who would be our hosts. Paul and I sat rather awkwardly with our hosts Arpi and Erzebet, as we worked through introductions, language and fatigue, and then finally went on to their home and quickly to bed.
Our host family, like probably most hosts, squeezed their bedroom space so that we would have the best room in their home. We had a breakfast with them each morning of fresh vegetables from their garden, meats, and cheeses. Throughout our stay, we came to know them and their family quite well and establish a bond of friendship.
What changed in my appreciation, though, was not just the interactions with our hosts. It was also the selfless involvement, dedication, and sacrifices of time and energy on our behalf made by the women and men of the Torda Unitarian Church. It was the women of the church enduring temperatures above 90 degrees, to provide us and our hosts excellent, well-prepared, delicious dinners and suppers, with a final celebratory supper on our last evening for us and at least 50 to 75 parishioners. It was their freely pouring at those meals their very best home-brewed pálinka, a delicious and strong fruit brandy, for the many before-dinner toasts. It was the shared smiles and hugs that erupted from each one of us, Transylvanian and American alike throughout our stay. It was the pleasure that the Torda people showed us with each expression of our appreciation and gratitude.
The people of Torda offered us their care and love. They opened their homes and their arms, and they shared their lives and talents with us for our entire stay. We transcended the language barrier when we sang, and laughed, and hugged and kissed. They showed concretely that true hospitality comes from the heart.
As I look back, I still savor and cherish each moment and feel great joy and gratitude for those moments. I hope others from this church will be so moved by sharing a few special days in a special place with very special people. There WILL be other pilgrimages. I will be happy to help promote this congregation’s relationship with Torda and encourage you, listening to our messages, to get involved and to be changed by our Torda partners.
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