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TRAVELING LESSON: Who are our Partners in Transylvania?
Goal: To learn more about the history, customs, beliefs and practices of Transylvanian Unitarians.
Materials:
1. The Partnership Suitcase filled with materials for the lesson.
2. Game boards and card sets: one for every 4-6 children you expect to attend the lesson.
3. Playing pieces from commercial game boards: one for each player. (Monopoly is good since there so many different pieces.)
4. Dice: 1 die for each game board.
5. Map of the world. Pushpins and string or yarn.
6. Homemade passports for each participant (made in Lesson #1)
7. Page of stickers to put in passports. Date stamp (optional)
8. Copies of the founder story and the guided meditation to read aloud.
9. Snack from Transylvania
10. Black minister’s or academic robe for story telling (optional)
11. Copies of “Under One Sky”
Introduction: (15 minutes)
"This morning we are going to take a trip to visit Unitarians in Romania and Hungary. Transylvania, the homeland of these Unitarians, used to be its own country, then it was part of Hungary and now it is part of Romania. We’ll learn more about this later but for now, let’s find Romania and Hungary on our world map. Can you find the Carpathian Mountains? This is the region of Transylvania. Right now in Transylvania it is _____ o'clock on _____day.” [Look this up on the internet, or have a child look it up before this class and report what they found out.]
[Tie one end of a piece of string or yarn to the pushpin marking Transylvania and the other end to one marking your town.]
“Now that we know where we are going, we will all need passports.” [Take the passports out of the Partnership Suitcase, and show them the Transylvania “sticker” that they will receive when they return from their trip. Ask: “What should be done with the passports?” Ans: Keep in a clean pocket or give to you --their trip leader--until they're ready to return.]
“We decided to visit a public school in Transylvania, and this morning the Unitarian minister from the area is giving his weekly religious education class for all the Unitarian children. He is teaching the class about the first Unitarians in Transylvania: Francis David and King John Sigismund. After we hear a story about these two important figures in Transylvanian history, we’ll play a board game that tells us more and helps us think about how Transylvanian and North American Unitarian Universalists are alike and how we are different.”
“In Transylvania the children sometimes have snacks--just like we do. The drink would be fizzy water with a sweet fruit syrup added—currant or raspberry, grown here in the village. [Pass out the snacks—take Panko or Sos Rud –salty rods—out of the suitcase] We’ll eat our Transylvanian snack while we hear the story that begins our religious education class in Transylvania.”
Founder’s Story: Take out of the suitcase and read aloud. (5 minutes)
Game: (take out of suitcase) Partners! in Transylvania (20-30 minutes)
Set up:
1. Place the game boards on tables or the floor. Divide the participants into groups of 4-6 players. If you have a wide age range of participants, be sure to play the game with mixed ages so the older ones can help the younger.
2. Note: the Customs cards and Beliefs and Practices cards are numbered and should be stacked in order in their own pile, face-down with the #1 card on top.
Object of the Game: To move along the path from Start to Finish.
Rules:
1. Establish who will start by a roll of the die—high number goes first. Moving in clockwise direction, each player rolls the die and moves ahead the number of spaces shown on the die.
2. Players lift the flap of the square they land on and read the words under it. Follow directions, ie: Move ahead, move back, pick a Customs Card, or pick a Beliefs and Practices Card. Read or answer the question on the card.
3. The next player goes after all cards are read and questions answered.
Stop the game 20 minutes before the end of the session.
Guided Meditation (10 minutes)
We’re going to leave Transylvania after hearing a story about a girl named Bettje and a very special day in her village.
Make yourself comfortable on the floor. Spread out so you can lie down. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Feel your body relax into the floor. Take another deep breath. As I read, imagine that you are in Bettje’s village.”
[read Guided Meditation]
Conclusion (10 minutes)
Hand out passports and pass out stickers. “This is the symbol of Transylvanian Unitarians. In the Bible, Jesus says: “I am sending you out, like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” Transylvanian Unitarians believe their survival comes from having followed this advice. So you see a serpent (a symbol of wisdom) and dove (a symbol of peace). The crown on the top represents the crown of King John Sigismund, the only king in history who proclaimed religious freedom for all his people and the only king who was a Unitarian. [Pass around a small role of scotch tape or a glue stick so participants can paste the sticker on to the Transylvanian page.]
Sing “Under One Sky.” Then excuse the students one by one by stamping (or writing and initialing) today's date into their passports on the Romania page. Tell them next Sunday there will be a trip to ______and show them that page in their passports. Welcome them back to ______[their home country] and put all their passports back in the suitcase. Hand out fact sheet from the game for each child to take home.
Founders’ Story
"The First Unitarians: Francis David and King John Sigismund"
[Take the black robe out of the suitcase, if you have one, and put it on. Read the following as if you were Francis David. Or, put on a crown and adapt it to be told by Queen Isabella, his mother.]
"Hello, my name is Francis David. [In Hungarian, which is my language, it’s said Daah’vid Fair’ence.] Thank you for coming today to hear about my life 400 years ago in Transylvania. The most exciting part of my life was when I joined in the Reformation, the tremendous revolution that changed the history of Christian religious ideas for all times, by making it possible for "Protesters" to form their own religious groups. That is how our first Unitarian Churches were founded in the 1560's--by groups of protesters. In Transylvania I was their leader. Other people began to call us "Unitarians," because "Uni" means "one," and we believed in one God. We also believed that you and I are just as divine as Jesus was, and, you know, that is a wonderful thing. In just ten years 500 churches changed to be Unitarian. You could read the words "God Is One" over their doors.
"At that time the king of Transylvania was young John Sigismund. [Sidge'-iss-mun] He was crowned king when he was 21 years old, which is usually not old enough to be a king, but the people of Transylvania were lucky, because young King John was both brave and thoughtful. He needed to be. Our people had big troubles.
"The two huge empires on either side of Transylvania were fighting each other, and there was always danger that our small country would be forced to fight in their wars. But worse still, right inside Transylvania, King John's own people were fighting each other. They fought because, after the changes of the Reformation, Transylvania now had four different, competing religious groups. Sometimes the people in these different denominations fought each other with words, arguing and saying the worst things they could think of about each other, whether they were true or not. Sometimes they fought by taking people's jobs away, or taking away all their money, or by putting people in prison, or even by killing each other.
"King John thought long and carefully about these problems, and then decided what he was going to do. (What would you have done, if you were the king?) King John called the best, the most convincing, speaker from each of the four churches to come together at a place called Torda for a debate. The debate lasted ten days, beginning each day at five o'clock in the morning! There was a speaker for the Catholics, one for the Lutherans, and one for the Calvinists. (Can you guess who debated for the Unitarians?) That's right! It was me. (Can you guess who won?) Yes, I won the whole big debate for the Unitarians. Even King John, who had grown up a Catholic, decided to become a Unitarian.
"But... (and this is the most important part of the story, the part you must be sure to remember, and the part you can tell other people when they ask you what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist) ...but even though our Unitarian ideas had been judged better than all the others, King John did not make all the people of Transylvania become Unitarians. King John and his mother Queen Isabella said that the people of Transylvania could debate their ideas about religion, but they could never again fight, or punish, or kill each other over their religious beliefs. They issued a law called the Edict of Torda which said, 'Faith is a gift from God. No one should be able to force their religion, their faith, on others.' This was a new and strange idea. It was the first time a religious tolerance law had been declared anywhere in Europe. Today Unitarian Universalists remember King John because his law made it safe to be Unitarian, yet still left other people free to chose whatever religion they wanted to.
"And you learn about me in your church school lessons because for the rest of my life I preached Unitarianism, a religion that said all people must have the freedom to change our religious beliefs as we grow into new understandings. I was put into prison for preaching that, and for practicing what I preached. Just before I died I wrote a message on my prison wall. (If you were imprisoned like that, what message would you have written?) What I wrote was, 'Nothing will hold up the truth on its way.' The way you would probably say that today is, 'No force can stop that which is right.' That is why some Unitarian Universalist churches here in your country have signs over their doors that say, '400 years of religious freedom.'
"How good it is to know that you Unitarian Universalists are here to carry on, in your own way, King John Sigismund's religious tolerance and Francis Dávid's religious freedom."
[Note: This story began with Heather McDonald's story in the Pilgrimage section of Holiday and Holy Days, was shortened and rewritten by Gretchen Thomas, and corrected by John Godbey and Phillip Hewett.]
Guided Meditation
Adapted from Here They Come, A Visit to Transylvania, by Reverend Judy Campbell
in uu&me! December 1999.
Hello. My name is Bettje and you say it like ‘Bet-tay.’ I live in Transylvania, in the village of Kadacs where my Grandfather, Biro Josef, is the Unitarian minister. My mother teaches first grade in the same school that I go to. For the last three weeks, she has been teaching me and my friends a song in English called ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.’ We learned it so we could sing it for some American visitors who are coming to our village today. One of our visitors is a lady minister from our Partner Church in America. I’ve never seen a lady minister. I didn’t know there was such a thing. My grandmother, Biro Anna, has been writing letters to her for over four years. They are pen pals. She has sent things for the people in our village from the people in her village of Norwell, in Massachusetts. And she has been selling some of our folk art embroideries in America. The money from those embroideries really helps us.
We have enough to eat because we all have gardens and most of us keep pigs and chickens. Everyone works in the garden. Almost nobody has cars. We walk everywhere. It’s hard in the winter and spring because it’s so muddy, and the roads are not paved. Anyway, today is the day. We have all been practicing our English song. Every body has been doing some thing for the visit. The ladies have been cooking all week. The men have been repairing the fences and the beautiful carved gates called ‘szekley kapu’ that many people have outside their houses. The teenagers have been practicing folk dances so they can perform them. We don’t get to see the dances except at weddings and times like this.
Unfortunately, today is also the day the sheep are driven out to pasture for the summer, and they are going to leave a lot of ‘stuff’ on the road, My grandmother is worried that the visitors will think our village looks this way all the time.
Here they come! I can see the van and I can see hands waving out the windows. I wonder which lady is the minister? The van is stopping and they are getting out. Lots of people are coming out of their houses to greet them. They don’t look that different than us. Oh, that must be the lady minister, she and my grandmother are hugging and crying and another man is taking their picture. Wow, there are flashing lights everywhere!
The man taking pictures of the lady minister is her husband and in America he has a garden that he loves. Anyone who has a garden knows that you need fertilizer to make things grow well—and some of the best fertilizer in the world is the ‘stuff’ that farm animals drop wherever they go. The lady minister’s husband saw the sheep droppings in the road and explained that he doesn’t live on a farm so he has to pay for fertilizer for his garden. He thought it must be wonderful to live in a farming village with so much free fertilizer on the road for anyone to take. Well, I guess that’s one way of looking at it. It sure cheered up the people at my Grandmother and Grandfather’s house!