Welcome
Prelude -- Bartok Folktune I

Words to Light the Chalice
A wise person once said: "Take from the past not its ashes, but its fire." Today we kindle this flame knowing that our presence forms a bridge between the past and the future. May the flame we light in our hearts today draw strength from the best of our liberal religious heritage. May it empower us to act boldly for justice in the present world. And may it shine brightly in our lives as a beacon for future generations. (The Rev. Dorothy May Emerson)

Bartok, Transylvanians and Unitarians
Our Unitarian Universalist history traces many of its roots back to Transylvania and the religious toleration promulgated by Isabella and her son King John Sigismund. Unitarian Churches have had a continuous existence in Transylvania, (modern day Romania, in prior times Hungary), since the 16th century. Our denomination has a Partner Church Council, through which congregations partner with other UU congregations around the world for connections, community building, learning and transformation.

The song we just sang, a Szekely Blessing, has traditional words from the Szekely Unitarians put to music by Beth Norton, a UU musician.“The Szekely were a sizeable minority in Transylvania, who are believed to have been descended from ethnic Hungarian troops that were sent to defend the Hungarian border against the invading Turks. An article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the Szekely people says that “according to their own tradition, . . . they were descended from Attila’s Huns. It is, however, now generally accepted that they are true Hungarians or Magyars (or at least the descendants of a Magyarized Turkic people) transplanted there to guard the frontier, their name meaning simply ‘frontier guards.” As the Reformation spread, many Szekely became Unitarians who rejected Christian belief in the Trinity.” www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org

What do the Szekely and Transylvania have to do with Bela Bartok, you ask? All will become clear. First, the briefest of information about Bela Bartok. Bartok was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Do you know his work? Born in Hungary, he studied piano and made his living as a concert pianist and a teacher. He created works for piano, violin, string quartets, which established his international reputation as a composer. In 1940 he fled Hungary due to political reasons and emigrated to New York, where he lived in relative obscurity. Bartok died in 1945 and the minister of All Souls Unitarian conducted his funeral. In 1988 his son, Bela Bartok Jr., president of the Hungarian Unitarian Church, had his remains transferred to Budapest, where a statue of Bartok now stands in front of the Second Unitarian Church in that city.

While one can say much about Bartok’s music, let’s just listen to part of one of his best known pieces, and my personal favorite, the Concerto for Orchestra, composed when he lived in New York City. I first encountered this work many years ago, when I was in school. My tastes in “classical” music range from enthusiastic about early music-- medieval through Baroque, to eclectic about the classical period, to not so enthusiastic about Romantic, to loving modern compositions. Thus Bartok blew me away. This is the first movement of the Concerto for Orchestra-- Introduction. Play music “In 1904, while staying in the Slovakian countryside in order to practice and compose, Bartók overheard . . ., a Székely Hungarian woman from Transylvania, sing the song Piros alma ("Red Apple"). He then interviewed her to find out what other songs she knew. This encounter was the beginning of Bartók's lifetime fascination with folk music.” A major focus of his work became the cataloging of world folk music. This according to Peter Hughes, who writes in Notable American Unitarians, www.harvardsquarelibrary.org,

“In 1907 Bartók made his first trip to Transylvania to study the Székely people who had developed in isolation from other Hungarians and might, thus, have preserved some of the more ancient traditions. While he was staying amongst these people, Bartók first became acquainted with the Unitarian Church. Bartok had been brought up as a Roman Catholic. The ethical legalism taught in the religion classes at school drove him away from his early faith. "By the time I had completed my 22nd year," he later wrote, "I was a new man—an atheist." In a letter written in 1905 Bartók claimed to be a follower of Nietzsche and expressed his skepticism about religious teachings: . . . Two years later, shortly after leaving Transylvania, Bartók wrote two letters . . . which contain his most detailed statement of religious belief. Bartók called the trinity a "clumsy fable" that "enslaves thought." "That mystical mumbo-jumbo" was not to be blamed on Jesus, who was only a moralist—though a great one.”” (Remember that the central idea of Unitarianism began as a rejection of the trinity in favor of an understanding of the nature of God as a unity -- Unitarian.) “He (Bartok) called the conception of God as "a bodiless, everlasting and omnipresent Spirit who has decreed all that has happened in the past, and similarly ordains the future," a "muddled notion." The existence of the universe did not require the hypothesis of a creator, Bartók thought. "Why don't we simply say: I can't explain the origin of its existence and leave it at that?" (In these thoughts Bartok exhibited another trait of Unitarianism -- the freedom of each person to use his/her reason to articulate individual faith structures and question established teachings.)

His interest in the music of various folk peoples garnered him accusations of being unpatriotic in the growing fascism of Hungary between WWI and WWII. Bartók himself dreamed of the "brotherhood of people, brotherhood in spite of all wars and conflicts." “Bartók thought life's meaning was not directed towards immortality or the afterlife, but to "give a few people some minor pleasures" and to "have a zest for life, i.e. a keen interest in the living universe." "If I ever crossed myself, it would signify 'In the name of Nature, Art, and Science.'" Does he sound like a Unitarian?

“Bartók declared his conversion to Unitarianism on July 25, 1916, and joined the Mission House Congregation of the Unitarian Church in Budapest in 1917. Formal church affiliation enhanced Bartók's prospects for additional employment and enabled his son to avoid otherwise mandatory Catholic religious instruction. Father and son attended the Unitarian Church regularly. Bartók was briefly the chair of a music committee, but was not a success in this role. He had strict and conservative ideas about church music and would have forbidden the use of any instruments other than an organ. Béla Bartók Jr. later wrote that his father joined the Unitarian faith "primarily because he held it to be the freest, most humanistic faith." (Peter Hughes) Let’s listen to more of his music. Donna will play some Folktunes. As an ethnographer, Bartok not only catalogued folk music, he also wrote compositions based upon folk music themes.

So what can we learn from Bela Bartok’s story? What can inspire us? Perhaps Bartok shows us the deep connections that can exist between a person’s beliefs and his/her creative work in the world. Perhaps Bartok shows us that when our beliefs and our work are congruent, when they are in sync with one another, then our lives have meaning. Bartok used his interest in folk music to promote peace, which he understood as, in part, a non-judgmental curiosity regarding other peoples. This in contrast to the extreme nationalism and the claims of racial superiority within the Hungary of his time. He offered music as a life enhancer.

I recently attended a study conference of UU ministers at which the topic was poetry. One of the papers looked at four UU poets: Walt Whitman, Judith Sargent Murray, May Sarton and Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno. The question that arose in me had to do with the connections between the writers’ Unitarian and/or Universalism and his/her art. We found no answers at the conference, but Bartok has now provided one. The freedom to hold our own beliefs and form our own thoughts, based upon both our minds and hearts, as well as our life experiences, the curiosity that seeks to connect with other peoples in ways that lead to peace, the desire to live a purposeful life, those values and ways of being which draw us to Unitarian Universalism also inform our creative work in the world. The example of Bartok’s life calls us to liberate our creativity, to explore, to learn and try new things, even as we remain true to our values and beliefs, our questions and doubts. I was interviewing a West Point graduate, Captain Paul Chappell, who now works for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in their Peace Leadership Program. His point was that peace requires commitment and training and discipline. One needs to lead by example and take responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions. As Ghandhi said, there is no way to peace; peace is the way. The point is that a life of meaning takes commitment and skills, persistence and a willingness to learn from others. Creativity also requires those things.

That’s what we have here in this congregation: a creative way of being together that calls forth the best in each of us and asks us to take it out into the world. Creative in that we do not aspire to behave exactly like a for-profit business, or the government, or a non-profit agency. We want to create something else here: a community that lives its values, in which people can flourish in healthy ways of relationship, peace and love. This does not mean the absence of struggle or conflict, but it does influence how we handle those. That is our commitment and we constantly learn the skills, persistence and willingness of leadership, of committee work, of small group ministry, religious education, social action, required to bring it about. In this community we unite our creativity with our ethics and we have something very meaningful.

The life of Bela Bartok asks us these questions -- What is our work in the world? What meaning are we creating through our lives? What does it have to do with Unitarian Universalism? How would you answer them?

Closing words (heard at First Unitarian Congregation, Toronto ON whose partner church is Second Unitarian Church in Budapest Hungary)

Whoever you are, whatever you bring, wherever you are on your journey--you belong here because you are here, and because in this special place, in these special moments, we bid one another welcome.