Worlds Apart, Side by Side November 26, 2011

Like Jerusalem, Istanbul is an amazing world class city in which the ancient monumental sites are literally a few steps apart but represent different eras of history and different cultural and spiritual worlds. While Istanbul's history has been one of being conquered lost and conquered again by Christians and Muslims, today this Muslim country has tried to steer a secular democratic course which includes religious tolerance. Half a century ago, this meant that the most visible ancient monument to the swirl of alternating Christian and Muslim dominance, the Hagia Sophia, was "secularists" and became a museum.

No longer an active mosque, the Hagia Sophia still sets aside a place for Muslims to pray at the insistence of the conservative Muslim leadership in the society. This does not limit the hours that they are open to the steady flow of tourists, who can move freely throughout this beautiful cathedral and admire the mosaics and the architecture. Hagia Sophia is preserved with it's Arabic inscriptions and Muslim architectural features added on to a Christian building filled with Christian art. We could not help but be transported back to the Mosque of Cordoba where the same thing happened but in the other direction, i.e. Christians preserved a mosque but set a Catholic cathedral inside it!

This is in all contrast to the Sultanahnet Camil, aka, the Blue Mosque, an equally impressive sacred space which is still an active worshipping community. There the hours for viewing are in three blocks, with the rest of the day devoted to prayer. The tourists are limited to one side of the mosque, which gives you a chance to appreciate the expanse of the mosque and beauty of its architecture without the tourists in every corner. The sacred quality of the space is easier to appreciate. As a result, the Blue Mosque made a deeper impression on me (Wayne).

We are looking forward to experiencing these sacred spaces again with the Starr King group before we leave Turkey and expect that this will be a different and deepening experience.

(a P.S. we are having trouble posting even single photographs with the blog texts this week, and haven't managed to figure out how to take time to post pictures to any of our Facebook sites. We have been taking some beautiful images of these places and look forward to finding time to organize them and appropriate contexts to share them when we return.)

Location:Istanbul, Turkey