"WHAT WE DON'T KNOW"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, December 2, 2001

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

As you will see from the content, this sermon followed a trip to Transylvania where Nancy and I attended the dedication of a new Unitarian Church in the town of Sepsi St. George. The trip was made at the suggestion of the Partner Church Committee, and made possible by generous donations of many All Souls' members and friends. The sermon is shorter than my typical sermons. I designed it that way because I saved some time at the end for two way discussion about the topic I'm addressing. At the end, Nancy joined me in responding to the congregations questions, comments, and feelings arising from the sermon.

It was a challenge for me to come up with a sermon title a few weeks ago for today's service. It was required because of the newsletter deadline. What I should speak about, I didn't know for certain. Given the events of this Fall. I couldn't predict what will have happened in the country, or in the world by December 2. Will there have been another attack on this country? I was also aware that I would be freshly returned from a trip to Transylvania, where All Souls sent Nancy and me to participate in the church dedication of our Unitarian Partner Church in the town of Sepsi St. George. We were there with Russ and Francie Eberhart from this church, and knew that surely that trip would generate a number of sermon ideas. But what it would be, I just didn't know. So, three weeks ago, I just didn't know what my topic would be, so the only appropriate title I could come up with was "What I Don't Know." And since I'm not the only one in that circumstance, and I wanted to include all of you, it became "What We Don't Know."

Since returning home, Nancy and I have said to as many people will listen that this trip has been an "experience of a lifetime." We are deeply grateful to so many of you from All Souls who made it possible. What I plan to do this morning is not a travelogue or even a report on our trip. We will schedule more detailed reports in the near future, there will be a chance to hear every detail, but today it is my hope that we can share with you some of the depth of the experience, the impressionistic, some might call spiritual, parts of this trip that made it an experience of a lifetime.

It is frequently true that my greatest learning experiences have been the times when I thought I knew something and then learned that what I thought I knew just skimmed the surface of what there is to know. There is a little bird on my shoulder that perks up whenever I think I know what I'm talking about and whispers in my ear, "it goes deeper than that!" In every person's actions, in every person's perspective in very person's story there is something deeper than what is seen or heard on the surface. We might say, "it goes deeper than that." It may be that we don't know, or it may be that we need to observe something differently. We can guess, or analyze, or psychoanalyze, but we can depend that the answer is usually deeper than we thought, which is why Unitarian Universalism honors the search for truth as a religious principle.

As members of All Souls, and as Unitarian Universalists, we do know that we celebrate a continuing search for truth. We hope to continue to keep our minds open to new ideas, perspectives, scientific discoveries, and our own personal "truths." Therefore, "What We Don't Know" is an important part of who we are. In creative thinking it is not so much what we don't know, but what we do with what we do know. It requires an attitude that allows us to search for ideas, then manipulate our knowledge and experience.

When Nancy and I attended the dedication of the new Unitarian Church in Sepsi St. George in Transylvania, one of the most powerful impressions was the tears that flowed from church members, especially when the hymns were sung. There was something going on that I didn't know about completely, and whatever I thought I knew, it was apparent that it went "deeper than that."

I felt I was fairly well informed about the circumstances of Unitarianism in Transylvania. I'd even written sermons on the subject. I knew that Unitarianism there was different in many ways from Unitarianism here. For one thing, Unitarianism there is very much an ethnic religion, and all Unitarians in Transylvania are Hungarian, even though they live in Romania. I also knew that Transylvania used to belong to Hungary, but in the last century was given to Romania as punishment after World War I. And finally, I knew that the Hungarian Unitarians in Romania were discriminated against as an ethnic and religious minority by the Romanian communist governments since the second world war.

But all of that does not fully explain the flow of tears we witnessed or the lessons we learned in the following hours and days. There was something deeper than what I thought I knew from the mere facts of this history. What was deeper was the profound experience of freedom following oppression. For more than a generation, these people were forbidden by law to sing publicly the songs they sang freely that night. For more than a generation, the government controlled how these people could meet and worship. For more than a generation, religious freedom was denied to these Unitarians.

And now they cannot only sing these songs in public, they can build a new church to house their religious community and, most importantly perhaps, they can dream of a future.

And I began to wonder how it must feel. What if, for almost fifty years, we were forbidden here to sing our hymns that we love, forbidden here to say our covenant each week, forbidden here to raise our own money to improve this church. And then I try to imagine how it might feel to have that tyranny lifted, and celebrate the sweet fresh air of freedom. And in my imaginings, I began to understand the tears.

The experience was much like an "awakening," in realizing that in all I knew about Transylvania, the four hundred year Unitarian heritage there, and the Partner church project, there was so much I didn't know, and the truth was far deeper than I thought I knew.

Even if one omits, for a moment, the Unitarian piece of this experience, the personal experience, person to person, culture to culture, shows how much we didn't know, and how much deeper the truth can be. We went to Transylvania to visit colleagues we already had met, to represent All Souls, to attend the dedication of a church All Souls has "partnered" with for years, and to support fellow Unitarians in their celebration. In retrospect, that almost seems naive. What we did, in addition, was connect with people whose language we didn't speak and who barely spoke ours. What we also experienced was empathy and deep emotion with a community that had been oppressed for decades and finally had a celebration of newfound freedoms. We felt the pain of our new friends when learning how corrupt their government and economy is, and we found respect for the way they lived their lives without complaint about their situations.

The deepest lessons are always personal, and the lessons flowed. As a direct result of the personal connections we made, we completely changed the tentative schedule of our trip. We had already been there three days, and then decided to stay another day in that town before continuing on a more personal leg of the trip. And that wasn't enough, so we stayed a second extra day. And third extra day. And a fourth extra day. During that time the personal connections enriched us. Every day, we felt we dug deeper into the truth of their experience. We visited their businesses, churches, schools, and met even more people. Nancy was invited to speak to seven different classes in three different schools in town. We shared their food, music, and love for humanity. We learned that there were deep-rooted resentments because what is felt to be their real heritage is no longer the country they live in. We learned that even what language is spoken is a choice based on years of heritage and pride.

As I said, even hardly being able to communicate in words, we were able to learn of each others' philosophies, religious convictions, parenting, education, and music. We spoke to each other through their limited knowledge of English. We had knowledge of the Hungarian language, so we spoke in our second language: pantomime. We also used intuition and pictures and anything else we could to communicate. We made mistakes in our understanding of each other at times, and that nearly always resulted in uncontrollable laughter or heartfelt apologies. One such time we were invited to dinner at a home with new friends. The man was trying to describe what they were going to serve for dinner. He knew the word "pig" but it wasn't pork they were serving. He tried to describe the food the best he could, and he said, in stilted English, "It's the biggest animal there is". Nancy responded, shocked, "We're eating elephant?!" Our new friends became hysterical. He had meant the largest animal on a farm...a cow...beef. There wasn't a day left in the week, when ordering food didn't include some reference to elephant.

And finally, we left this town having found out that there was so much we hadn't known. We felt blessed and heartbroken to leave. We talked for hours about how the lessons of those few days could be used at home. We don't always speak the" language" of our family or acquaintances. We have misunderstandings when we don't communicate clearly with others in our daily lives, and what we don't know is the others' intentions or reasons for acting or speaking as they do. However, if the goal were to find out "what we don't know" instead of thinking we "know it all" our lives can be much richer and much, much more fun.

The lesson can be universalized way beyond what I learned there. I thought I knew about Unitarians in Transylvania, but the truth is far deeper than that. All over the world, we think we understand what people are like or what people are going through, but the truth is far deeper than that. And people closer to home. And people in our own neighborhood. And people in our own family. The truth, very often, lies deeper than we know.

Here's another thing that I thought I knew, but came to discover it's much deeper than what I thought. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the impact of the events of September 11. I've given sermons on that topic, too. But what I knew was known from a fairly narrow American perspective, for we had quite a number of conversations about that with the people of Transylvania. I did not realize how much this affected the entire world, and the fear of terror has few limits. It turns out that our Partner Church in Sepsi St. George held their own memorial service during that week to honor and remember the innocents who died.

So this trip gave us insight into so much we don't know, and to what lies deeper than what we think we know. What we don't know is often what we haven't taken time to think about. For us, it took the trip to this country to understand and live the experiences I have mentioned. How many times are we offered the same opportunity on a daily basis? Each day on a business trip or a vacation it seems easier to open up to a stranger or given them the benefit of the doubt. Each day we could do the same in our daily existence. After September 11, I believe we have seen a change in that direction. For the most part, people in America are warmer, friendlier, and better connected as a nation. I hope that tendency only improves as time moves on.

We need to continue to keep finding out what we don't know because it means we will keep learning. A book used in exercises about thinking differently was given to me by a church member a few years ago. Its title is "A Whack on the Side of the Head" and it has priceless examples of ways to continue to grow and discover ways to find out more that you "don't know." One exercise suggests that one think of pairing two people of different professions together, and imagining what each could learn from the other. Examples were: A politician and an automobile mechanic, a policeman and a librarian, a bull fighter and a gardener, or a choreographer and a bookie. I'm convinced each person in each of those pairs would find out much they had not known, and as a result, would grow from the experience. Those of you who have learned from experiencing another culture know about learning deeper truth.

We've had some harsh lessons this Fall, learning what we hoped we would never have to know about an attack on our country. We have also, through the experience, learned much more than we probably ever would have known about another world religion and another country's culture.

I could get out pictures of our trip, and already have many times. We can show them to any number of people and tell of our experiences and insights and strong feelings about this unique experience. We cannot, though, do anything that will allow the listener to experience it, or learn from it, in the way we did. In the same way, each of us has the ability to find out what we don't know, about each other or about our own individual lives, on a daily basis. And with the information that we don't know, we can find something "deeper than that," enrich our days, our friendships and our relationships. The best of what we know is the fact that we don't know...yet.