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Letters from Timisoara, Romania From Rev. Dr. Rob Manning
The Quincy Unitarian Church Home
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The list of Selected Sermons.
A Selection of Sermons by the Rev. Dr. Rob Manning.
Letters from Timisoara, Romania Greetings to everyone from Romania. I hope everyone is very well back home in Quincy. I am very well and happy here in Romania. I live in a city called Timisoara, in the western part of Romania. Timisoara is an old city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, filled with beautiful Baroque architecture, most of it in dire need of restoration. Timisoara has a proud history, and I feel very fortunate that the Fulbright people placed me here. Timisoara has always been a multicultural city; before WW II it had more Germans and Jews than Romanians, and even now there are many Serbians and Hungarians and some Italians and Germans living harmoniously with their Romanian neighbors. Timisoara is not far from the borders with Hungary and Serbia, and in fact in a few weeks I will travel a couple of hours to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Timisoara is where the 1989 rebellion started, and the city has since then been the model for Romania as a democratic and multicultural society.
I am teaching at The University of the West. I have one course for third-year undergrads, Feminist Theory and Gender Studies, and two courses for two different Master's programs, both based on a course I taught last year at QU on philosophical responses to 9/11 and the Iraq War. So this gives me plenty of opportunity to talk with intelligent people about important issues, and I know this is going to be very rewarding and educational for me.
I live in a very nice apartment right in the heart of the historic center, directly across from the Opera House. I am enjoying the life of a European. My teaching responsibilities are light compared to my usual life at QU (Quincy University), and this gives me time for concerts and performances at the Opera and travel. I will be here in Timisoara until mid-June, when I plan to travel for a month or so, to Croatia and perhaps to Turkey and to Greece. I have room in my apartment for visitors, so this would be a perfect opportunity for anyone interested to explore Romania. You can fly directly to Timisoara, or you can fly to Bucharest or Budapest and take a train straight here.
You can send e-mail to me. And we will put more information about Romania and my adventures on the church website.
I am thinking of you often and hope you are having a beautiful spring. Hard to believe that it is already the month for the plant sale. I look forward to hearing all about it.
I just want to say hello to everyone and give everyone an update. I certainly consider myself to be very fortunate indeed to be here in Romania teaching subjects and issues that are important to interesting and intelligent students. It is a great experience for me to be able to teach feminist theory and gender studies to about 70 undergrads and also to do some Holocaust education. Even the short history of Romania book that the Fulbright program gave to us to educate us about Romania pretended that there was no Holocaust in Romania, so Holocaust education here is badly needed.
In addition to the teaching, I have also been able to travel a bit. Michelle and I spent two weekends in the wonderful city of Vienna and were also able to spend a quick day in Belgrade. I also just spent three days in one of the truly great cities of Eastern Europe, Budapest. I recommend a trip to Vienna and Budapest to everyone. They are both very interesting and are not very far from each other, so you can easily go to both cities on the same trip. If you come, just let me know and I will take the train up to Budapest and meet you if I am in Timisoara.
In May, I will travel throughout Transylvannia and spend some time in Bucharest before returning to Timisoara for the last two weeks of the month. Yes, I feel very fortunate, but as I do so I know I always feel very fortunate to live in Quincy at this time of year too. Few places can match the perfect beauty of Quincy in late April and May, when the dogwoods and so many other trees and bushes are in bloom. I am thinking about you all, and especially during this past weekend when all of you pulled off another successful plant sale. I hope you have a peaceful and beautiful May.
Also, I hope you are thinking about attending the GA meeting in June. It just happens to be in St. Louis this year, and it would be great to have several members of the church attend and represent our church. You will really enjoy the chance to interact with the national organization and with other UUs from all over the country.
When Americans think of Transylvania they think of Dracula, but they should think about Unitarians. This beautiful, mountainous area of northern Romania was occupied before the 20th c. mostly by Hungarians and Germans. When the Reformation started in Germany in the 1500s Lutheranism and Calvinism spread to Translyvania and most of the people became Protestants. There were some radical Protestants in Transylvania who were much more unorthodox in their theology and who denied the divinity of Jesus. Their leader was a Hungarian nobleman and clergy named David Ferenc, who was imprisoned by the very Catholic Hapsburgs in a town called Deva, about an hour from where I live in Timisoara.
Ferenc founded the first Unitarian Church in the Transylvanian city of Cluj, so when I had to be in Transylvania for Fulbright meetings I headed to Cluj in search of the Unitarian Church. It is a very big church right in the center of town, not far from the Catholic gothic cathedral which dominates the main square. There is also a Unitarian high school down the street. The language of the congregation is Hungarian, but fortunately for me the minister spoke English. It was a great experience to be in a Unitarian church here in Romania, and I hope to visit other congregations before I leave. There are currently about 70,000 Unitarians in Romania, about .03% of the population.
I have been to Bucharest three times lately, mostly because I have been speaking at workshops that are training Romanian high school teachers to do Holocaust education. I have had the amazing experience of meeting and talking with Holocaust survivors here in Romania and have videotaped an interview with Oliver Lustig, an Auschwitz survivor from Translyvania who has written several books on his experiences there.
My courses will be completed after one more week and then the students have a few weeks before their exams start. The first two weeks of June will find me with Michelle in Bratislava and Budapest. Then we will fly to Venice for a few days and then go across the Adriatic for a few hopefully sunny days on the Croatian coast. Tough life, I know!
I am thinking of you all and especially our graduates at this time of year. I hear Devin gave a great talk, which I look forward to reading. Hope you are enjoying a beautiful spring. I will see everyone when I pop back up in Quincy, probably around the middle of July.
peace,
rob
[Rev. Dr. Rob Manning]
It's hard to believe it is summer already. One of the great events of June every year is the UUA General Assembly, which of course this year is in St. Louis. I hope several members of our church have been able to go, and I look forward to hearing about it.
Even though it is summer there is still a lot going on here in Romania. The academic calendar here is much later than back home so I am still grading and will be grading into July. And I am leaving today for a Holocaust conference in a city on the other side of Romania, called Iasi, which is a mere 16 hour train ride away. Michelle and I enjoyed a week in beautiful Venice, and after the Holocaust conference and more grading we will be on our way to Croatia for about a week.
My Romania experience has been rewarding and frustrating all at the same time, both of them in many ways. I have been very fortunate to be able to be here and to teach, and I am very fortunate as well to have an intellectual community like our congregation to come home to. I feel at least that I understand Romania, the former Communist world, and the EU much better than before I came here. I look forward to talking with you about my feelings about being here and what I have learned, and I look forward to talking with you all about what has been happening in your lives, in Quincy, and in America since I have been gone.
I will be back in Quincy in late July, probably around the 26th or so. I will be going to PA to check in with my family for the first two weeks of August or so before returning to Quincy for good around the middle of August. I hope to see everyone when I return in July.
My thoughts go out to Sherryl Lang and to Steve and Devin and Delaney for the loss of Sherryl's mom. She was a woman of great grace and charm, and I am very glad that she was able to come to Quincy so we could get to know her. And of course Sandy and Ted were there as always to help out, I understand. It's good to know the best things about Quincy haven't changed!See you soon,
rob
[Rev. Dr. Rob Manning]
Yes, I am now back from Romania. I have seen several of our church members in the two days that I have been back in this country and hope to see many more soon. I will be in PA for the first couple weeks of August, but will be back in Quincy for the last two weeks of the month and the month of September.
You might have heard a rumor that I am returning to Romania, and this is one rumor that is true. The Fulbright Foundation in Romania asked me to return to Timisoara for another semester, and that semester turned out to be the first semester of their academic year there. I will be in Quincy most of September but will be heading to Romania the last week of that month and will be there until early February.
The possibility of teaching another semester in Romania has surprised me, many others, and I am sure the board memebers of our church and the congregation as well. So I would like to talk with everyone about what I have been doing there and why I have decided to return for four more months. I will be presiding at the Water Communion on the first Sunday our regular church year resumes. On the second Sunday back I would like to talk to everyone about my return to Romania and how that affects the church and about lots of other exciting things going on in our church community. I will give a talk called "Thoughts on the Future: Yours, Mine, and Ours." I hope everyone can come so we can all have a good, open discussion about the future of our church community.
Enjoy the rest of the summer and see everyone soon.
Peace and all Good,
Rob
[Rev. Dr. Rob Manning]
By Rev. Dr. Robert J. S.
Manning
Minister, Quincy Unitarian Church
Quincy, IL
I saw a different George Bush just the other day. Or I saw him differently. He was announcing Sadam Hussein's death sentence handed down by the court in Baghdad. Sure, there was still that familiar swagger and that controversial smirk, still that adolescent mask of fake confidence. But there was something else. Perhaps because it was outside and in the glare of the afternoon, but just then there was so much more to see in George Bush. There were decidedly grey hairs, an entire head of them, and so many lines in the face. There were several parallel lines that completely occupied his forehead. He looked so much older than he did when his friends stole the election for him. He looked, just then, as if he'd aged 20 years in the six years of his occupation of the White House.
At that moment a thought occurred to me that had never crossed my Bush-despising mind before. "Perhaps this has been even more of a nightmare for him than it has been for us," I wondered to myself. Perhaps he agonizes over every life we lose over there. Perhaps it kills him inside every time, everyday, Rumsfeld or Rice or Cheney tells him about how many soldiers we lost that day and how they were killed. Perhaps he insisted long ago to them--who would think, of course, that he doesn't really need to know about this--that he had to know about each and every death as each and everyone happened. So that he could stop right then and let it soak in, and ponder, and mourn, and think about the terrible consequence over and over again of what he decided, how his decisions so terribly affected other people. Perhaps he even said to them, from the very beginning, that he knew there were always accidents, collateral damage as it is called, but that for him they weren't just collateral damage, that they were people and he wanted to know about them too. Each time our bombs fell in the wrong place, or each time one of our soldiers wore down under the stress and killed or wounded someone who had no intention to harm anyone, he wanted to know about it, to at least know the number if not the names because numbers too can be mourned. And when things didn't go as well as planned, when things went spinning out of control, and Iraqis started killing Iraqis, Shiites killing Sunnis and Sunnis killing Shiites, when all this started to happen that was never supposed to happen, perhaps he said to them: "I want to know about every Iraqi who dies by anyone's violence. It doesn't matter to me whether they are Shiites or Sunnis or whether our forces killed them. I want to know, I need to know about everyone who dies by all this uncontrollable violence in Iraq."
And isn't it even possible that at the crucial time years ago, when people around the world were warning, and wary, and praying, and explaining why this war, the very idea of it, was not a wise thing to do, that he too, the younger George Bush without the lines and the grey hair, was warning and wary and praying. Maybe he was even saying himself right there in the White House what all the peace communities of the world, who assumed he wasn't listening, were saying to him. Maybe he was himself saying to Cheney, and Rice, and Rumsfeld: "But what if they don't greet us as liberators? What if there is no Iraqi government that could quickly take over? What if our soldiers have to stay there for months, even years, and be all that time exposed, vulnerable to sneak attacks with automatic weapons, and bombs, and even missiles? What if we start losing soldiers over there, one a day, even a couple a day, 40 a month, 60 a month, even more? How could I bear that? And what if the Sunnis start attacking the Shiites and the Shiites attack them back and Iraqis get killed by the dozens, by the hundreds, even by the thousands? What then?"
Isn't it possible that a much younger George Bush was asking these terrible, worrisome questions at that crucial time? And perhaps he was told then, reassured, by Cheney, and Rice, and Rumsfeld: "Relax. Don't worry. It won't happen. With the might of our military we will have a quick and overwhelming victory. In a few weeks, maybe a month, Sadam Hussein will be gone, history. A new Iraqi government will take over. The oil fields will be cranking and the revenues will pay for the reconstruction so the people will not be hungry, will not be suffering, will not be without electricity and basic services. And we will be out of there, in three months, maybe four."
And perhaps young George Bush was still wary, still warning, still worried, as he said to himself at the crucial time: "Look, these people are a lot smarter than I am. Rice even has a Ph.D. for God's sake. They understand this part of the world a lot better than I do. They have actually been to these places, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran. What do I have advisors for if not to take their advice and to listen to people who know a heck of a lot more than I do about these types of things?"
My congregation during these last difficult war years has sometimes been disappointed with me. I know there are some who have been disturbed, a bit, that when I talk about George Bush it's always with a sharp point, an angry edge. I've even said, and yes, all right, I admit it, more than once, that I hate George Bush,. Some members of the congregation, friends, who are wiser than I, have said to me that a deepening spirituality leads one away from hatred of anyone, brings to birth inside of one growing compassion for everyone, especially for those one disagrees with most strongly. I know, of course, they that are right, but I have never been able to do that, find compassion anywhere inside myself for that man, until that moment on that day, when the glare of the sun helped even me to see the grey hair and the forehead that was all lines.
They say that one day the Buddha, who understood compassion, was sitting calmly amidst the tumult of his contentious students. They were arguing about points of his teaching, advancing their own interpretations. Finally, after hours of arguing with each other, the students couldn't take it anymore. They had to ask the Master: "Tell us. Which one of us understands you the best?" "The one who doesn't argue," he said, "but who sees the flower that is right in front of his face."
As I write this Pope Benedict has just landed in Istanbul, which is not very far from where I am now in Romania. Neither is Iraq very far. Baghdad is only one hour ahead of Bucharest, and so living here in this very peaceful, multicultural city of Timisoara it is perhaps easier to picture what may or must be happening in that place for which George Bush made all of us so responsible. In my new and different apartment here I get on the TV the European version of CNN, which provides much more and better information about the world than one could ever get through the mainstream media in the USA. I think nearly everyday as I watch the continuing human tragedies unfold in Iraq about John Brigham's metaphor from 1966 for our involvement in Viet Nam: midnight in a dark well. I think also about those rabbis long ago in the Talmudic story we talked about in our church a few years in which the rabbis try to warn the conqueror that once he invades a country his biggest concern will be how to get back out (and if you want to renew your memory about this, check out the website, thanks to Mike Flanagan). These mid-term elections, so joyous for the Democrats, perhaps point out that the country has realized in 2006 that this path into Iraq has been a fiasco. It would have been much better, much happier for all, to have avoided the fiasco in the first place.
It will be difficult to be away at Christmas time and certainly on Christmas Eve. I will be thinking of all of you wherever I am exactly. Next week I will be in Hungary and then in Spain, and I hope to be in Africa later in the month.
Wishing everyone a peaceful December.
rob
[Rev. Dr. Rob Manning]
Though I am very far away, I want everyone to know I will be thinking of everyone connected to our church community this Christmas. The Christmas Eve service is always one of my favorite events of the year, and I am sure again this year it will be beautiful and peaceful.
Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas season and a healthy and happy new year. I am very much looking forward to being back in my house, back with my animals, and back within the home of our church community. I will be back around January 24.
Peace,
Rob [Rev. Dr. Rob
Manning]
The Quincy Unitarian Church Home
Page.
The list of Selected Sermons.
A Selection of Sermons by the Rev. Dr. Rob
Manning.