Journey to the East

This blog is actually occasioned by a pending trip to Transylvania. Some men from our church, the Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, will be travelling to Deva, Romania, to help our partner church with some remodelling. But mostly we're going to connect with friends from around the world. It's also a religious pilgrimage: the Citadel in Deva (shown above) is the martyrdom site of Francis David, 1510-1579, an early pioneer of Unitarianism and religious tolerance. It was David who said "We need not think alike to love alike."

The fact that in April (Easter weekend) we climb the hill to the martyrdom site in Citadel sends me echoes of Chaucer:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

We're heading out for to seke straunge strondes, ferne halwes in sondry londes & a martir! (seek strange shores, distant holy places in various lands, and a martyr)