Singing at the Tomb by Wayne Arnason December 11, 2011

Our first obligation after our Rumi Immersion group stepped off the overnight train from Istanbul to Konya was to visit the great teachers whose lives had inspired this visit, Shams of Tabriz and Mevlana Rumi. Readers with only passing familiarity with Rumi may not recognize the name of Shams. He was Rumi's teacher and beloved friend, responsible for "splitting the cardamom seed" of Rumi's heart and opening up the spiritual gifts he gave to the world through his writing.

To visit these teachers and pay your respects, you go to their tombs. The tomb of Shams, unlike that of Rumi, is in an active mosque and not part of a museum that tourist buses visit. Those waiting to enter it are usually pilgrims from around the world and local people. As we approached, the leader of the Russian Sufis who were arrived at the same time recognized our teacher and leader Ibrahim Baba, and warm greetings were exchanged. We all went in together.

Group prayers and singing are discouraged at the tomb to keep the flow of pilgrims moving, but perhaps because of this pilgrimage week, no security officials objected when members of the Russian group began prayer chants. At their invitation, we all sat down and entered into twenty minutes of zikkr, or sacred prayer chant. The room fell still and all who were coming and going after us were caught up in this beautiful moment . It was a glorious way to begin our week in Konya.

Location:Konya, turkey

Christianity as the Land of the Living and Not The Dead by Kathleen Rolenz December 9, 2011

After seeing literally dozens of churches, mosques and synagogues in three different countries, spanning from the first century to the twentieth century, today's visit to Istanbul's Chora Church stood out as one of the highlights of the entire trip for me. The Chora Church was originally built as an Orthodox church in the 5th century and what it lacks in size it makes up for in the incredible beauty of the 15th century mosaics it contains.

What struck all of us about these mosaics, beyond their vivid colors and three dimensional appearance, was the lack of emphasis on the torture, suffering and death of Jesus. Instead, the narthex contained images of and references in Greek letters to Jesus as the Land of the Living and his mother Mary as "the container of the uncontainable." There is a tenderness in many of the scenes between Mary and Jesus; in Jesus assisting the ancestors to heaven, and a gentle intimacy between Mary's parents Joachim and Anna. One mosaic depicting the birth of Mary shows the women attending the birth, caring for Anna, and washing the baby.

As we looked upon the final mosaic, one of the few in the nave, titled "Mary's Dormition" (her bodily death) Rebecca Parker reflected on a question posed to her about the absence of the violent imagery we had grown accustomed to in the churches in Spain. Dr.Parker spoke about how western Christianity's use of redemptive violence as a theological position did not start to dominate their religious art and architecture until the beginning of the 7th century. We asked why? What might have been some of the factors that contributed to the difference between east and west, to the change from these beautiful, peaceful and life-inspiring mosaics to the broken body of Christ on the cross? Her answer was provocative. "This is still a theory, but I believe that fear of Muslims and Jews are connected to Western Christianity's use of violence in depictions of Jesus...". We remembered the history of the Visigoth Christians' anti-Semitism in the 6th and 7th centuries prior to being driven out of Spain jn the 8th by Muslims. In the four centuries that followed, western Christians crusaded to recover their lands, both holy and secular, and punish those who they believed had denied or killed Christ, the only way to salvation. Just as Christ died for us in a vicarious atonement, the western church taught that waging war and dying for Christ was redemptive. So western Christian iconography displayed the violence used to torture and kill Jesus to illustrate that such violence has a salvific purpose.

The images in the Chora church were beautiful not only for their exquisite craft work and intriguing stories, but because they represented the Christianity not obsessed with redemptive violence as the central message of the faith. The Eastern Christian theology and the Marian devotion we have encountered and learned about on our journey is a gift and a comfort we will carry back with us.

Returning Again December 9, 2011

There's a song by Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach we've sung occasionally in church that has the chorus: "Return again, return again, return to the home of your soul." The song is in our song and liturgy book for this Intensive, and has been on our minds as we spent yesterday exploring the buildings and culture of the Jewish community of Istanbul.

We "returned again" to a culture we explored in museums and older neighborhoods in Spain. Back on October 14, we posted a blog about a poignant visit to the artifacts of a once-vibrant Jewish community in Lucena. Our encounter with the Sephardic Jews ended with their exile from Spain when Isabella and Ferdinand decided to make it mono-culturally Catholic in 1492. We did not realize we would find out so much about what happened next to them two months later in Turkey. Many thousands of Spanish Jews were welcomed into Turkey by the Muslim Sultan Bayezid II after 1492, who saw not only a humanitarian need, but an opportunity to enrich the economy and culture of the new Ottoman Empire.

In contemporary Istanbul, there are 14,000 to 18,000 Jews left in a city of 12 million. The cultural and religious leaders of this community realize that there is a chance this unique Jewish culture could become extinct unless they take steps to record and renew it. So they are returning again, returning again to the home of the soul for this community, which is their folk and liturgical music.


At the Ottoman Sephardic Jewish Cultural Center we met Karen Sarhon the Director and Diva of this reclamation and restoration project. Her vibrant personality and persistence have been the engines driving the documentation and the performance of the music that immediately conveys the home of the soul for Sephardic Jews.

The home language of this community is "Ladino" a Spanish dialect that has absorbed elements of Arabic, Turkish, and Hebrew into their songs. Of course, the daily language of the Turkish Jews is Turkish, and the last generation of native Ladino speakers is almost gone. This made the preservation of the songs even more critical.

After hearing a fascinating two hour presentation on the music, culture and food of the Turkish Sephardic Jews, we were treated to an evening concert in which the music was brought to life by a band with Turkish instruments and two vocalists, Karen herself taking the lead. It was a wonderful day.

This culture has survived for over 500 years in a Muslim country, not only tolerated but to a certain extent protected by civil authorities. They have not grown because successive generations have succumbed to the attractions of other places to live, Israel among them. The last fifty years of struggle between Israel and its Muslim neighbors have made the Jews in Turkey a target for extremists, and so we went through a thorough security check before we could enter the Sephardic Center. We are not sure what the future holds for them in Turkey. But Karen and her generation are recognizing what they must do to sustain the flame of this unique and precious culture, and we felt honored to be present to their story. It helped us return again to the home of that soul we all share.

Location:Istanbul, Turkey

Ya Hazrati Mevlana! By Wayne Arnason December 7, 2011

For all the time we've been travelling, our e-mails about making arrangements to be part of the Starr King School for the Ministry's Intensive Course on the Sufi religious leader and poet Rumi have had these words in the subject line. The words loosely translated mean "Hail Saint Mevlana" (the name that Sufis and most Turks call Rumi.) Over the past twenty-four hours, we have returned to Istanbul and made the transition from being tourists roaming all over Turkey to being pilgrims whose eyes are turned towards Konya, where the annual Mevlana pilgrimage will be held next week.

We have wanted to join this Intensive ever since Starr King first offered it three years ago, not only because we have long enjoyed the poetry of Rumi, but because we knew there was a deeper story and context to the Rumi poetry translations popular in America, which generally skim over and universalize the Islamic foundation for everything Rumi wrote.

For those reading this blog who are unfamiliar with Sufism, it is described most simply as the mystical branch and order within Islam. Like so many mystical traditions, it resonates profoundly with the teachings of monastic and mystical orders within other religious traditions, especially with the Zen Buddhist and Christian forms with which we are most familiar.

Our "baba", or teacher these next twelve days is Dr. Ibrahim Farajaje, a Starr King School faculty member who has a home in Istanbul and is a practitioner in the Mevlana Sufi tradition. We are joined by Dr. Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King, and co-author of "Saving Paradise", a book on the early Christian understandings of Jesus' life and message and how they were highjacked by theologies of atonement and sacred violence. Seven Starr King students, seven auditors, and five scholar-artists make up our group, which also includes two lively toddlers!

Today we visited Hagia Sofia for the second time, enjoying Rebecca Parker's introduction to this Basilica/Mosque as a vision of paradise on earth as the goal of religious life, and hearing Ibrahim Farajaje's reflection on the "Holy Wisdom" within Christianity and Islam to which Hagia Sofia is dedicated. We also visited a Greek Orthodox church and monastery dedicated to the healing power of the Virgin Mary.
Tomorrow's program explores the history of Sephardic Jews in Istanbul, as we continue to find connections back to our time in Spain where we first met the Sephardic Jews whose exile from Spain brought them here to Constantinople.

So we feel richly rewarded by choosing this Intensive course as our last adventure in these three months of travel. It will tie together a lot of threads connecting Jewish, Christian, and Muslim practice at the deepest level. However there is one new thread we have experienced here already that we recognize we have missed personally as we have travelled, and that thread is worship and group devotional practice.

So much of our travel to sacred sites has involved intellectual learning, in history and theology, and aesthetic enjoyment of natural and artistic beauty. There is a devotional quality to learning and to enjoying beauty, of course. This is different from group devotions and worship through liturgy and song, however. Liturgy, recitation, scripture, and song are going to be important gateways to encountering the Sufi's wisdom on this final stage of the journey, and we welcome this with open arms.

This morning we began the day learning the recitation and chant that is included in the five daily prayers a Muslim may offer. We also learned to sing a Jewish song that includes the chorus " L'Haim Olahim " - "To the Life of the World" ! We sang it on the bus on the road to our destinations today. Wonderful!

And so it begins ! Ya Hazrati Mevlana! L'Haim Olahim!

Location:Istanbul, Turkey

The Power of Words. By Kathleen Rolenz. December 6, 2011

We stood on the spot where tens of thousands of Australians, New Zealanders, (ANZAC) and Turks were killed in the famous battle of 1915 fought on the peninsula between the Aegean Sea and the Dardanelles Strait known as "Gallipoli". The battle ground where so many lost their lives is holy ground for both Turks and ANZAC. Turks bring their children to Gallipoli to learn their history, to honor the courage of the the Turkish troops and to celebrate the leadership of the great military strategist and war hero, Kemel Attaturk. Australians and New Zealanders also are regular pilgrims here, and are warmly welcomed and hosted and honored by the Turks. It was very moving to stand on this beautiful peninsula held sacred by the former enemies who fought here.

Last week we visited the mausoleum and museum of Turkey's first president, Attaturk and read some of the same stories about this defining moment in Turkey's history. Attaturk's accomplishments were impressive and many; not only did he help to win the battle at Gallipoli, he moved Turkey from a collection of primarily Islamic tribes and nation states to create a united country from the ruins of the Ottoman empire. He westernized Turkish dress, adopted the Western alphabet and is given credit for the very sophisticated and modern country which is Turkey today.

Among these many accomplishments, however, we were particularly touched by one speech given in 1934 --22 years after the battle at Gallipoli. An excerpt from this speech was carved into a monument that stands near the shores of where one of the battles took place. It reads: "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives...you are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the 'Johnnies' and the 'Mehmets' to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our bosom, and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."




It was just a speech, but it made a world of difference in the way that the countries who fought at Gallipoli feel about each other. Attaturk's speech was more than an olive branch; it was a heart-felt acknowledgement of how all of us suffer in war; and that it matters not the nationality of the dead soldiers; they were all some mother's sons. The power, grace and elegance of his words made healing possible

On April 25, 2015, ten thousand Australians and New Zealanders are expected to come to Turkey for the 100th anniversary of this battle and to pay their respects to their war dead. These three countries, once fierce enemies have become united in their respect for this holy ground and for the sacrifices made by the young men of their countries.

Location:Gallipoli, Turkey

Myth Busting at Troy by Wayne Arnason December 6, 2011

Most of us grew up learning the story of the Trojan War, and so I was excited to visit the ruins of Troy. Our guide, Isa, is well versed an ancient history and delights in myth-busting, so we were not surprised when he scorned the tacky Trojan Horse at the entrance to the archaeologic site and started giving us the true story.

The true story is that Homer lived 400 years after the time of Troy and had no historical basis for his story, other than the knowledge that there had been a military excursion against Troy about that time. The true story is that the Trojans in the city were Hittites and didn't share a common worship of Greek Gods as Homer depicts. The true story is that the Greek ships couldn't possibly withdraw into hiding behind the little island we could see in the distance and that however the Greeks managed to get into the city, a wooden horse is an unlikely military strategy for them to employ.

The archeological tour was fascinating. We saw nine layers of Troy, covering three thousand years of ancient settlement at this site. It's a rich source of knowledge about the ancient world.

But the stories of wily Agamemnon and mighty Achilles, grieving Priam and brave Hector, and the legendary beauty of Helen of Troy, still fire our imaginations. It's good to know the truth but it's also good to enjoy the myth. The original archeologists who searched out this site had agendas that went beyond the pursuit of historical fact. They wanted fame and they wanted to use myth to support political and cultural agendas of their own.

With no agenda of our own save our own learning and pleasure, we were able to be in Troy as a place in history and a place in our imaginations, and enjoy both .

Location:Troy, Turkey

First Church! by Wayne Arnason December 5, 2011

There are dozens of "First Churches" among UU congregations all over the country, because that was the common, and optimistic, name for the first U or U church established in a city. Too often it has turned out to be the first and only.

Before leaving off our notes on the ancient Biblical cities whose ruins we visited, we had to mention that in Laodecia, we had the chance to see what might arguably be the real First Church, i.e. the first church building ever constructed, as early Christian communities decided they were big enough to move out of meetings places in caves or private homes. It was a thrill to see this ancient building.

We're going to save some more reflections on what we learned about sustaining and maintaining religious buildings and communities over the centuries for this year's messages about ( what else ? ) the Stewardship Campaign!

Location:Laodicea, Turkey