Ad Orientum

The other day in one of my history classes, a professor showed us a powerpoint slide of a typical Medieval church floor plan. "The apse faces East," she said in passing. "Priests would pray oriented Eastward, to be ready for the return of Christ." Judging from the deadpan expressions on the faces of most of my fellow students, this didn't really mean anything significant for their lives.

But I felt like I'd had an epiphany. I'd been reminded of an experience I'd had in Istanbul, and I began scribbling emphatically in my notebook.  

Orientation is, obviously, very important to Muslims. The mihrab in a mosque indicates the direction of prayer towards Mecca (in the early stages of Muhammad's revelation, his followers prayed facing Jerusalem...anyways, later on Muhammad changed that). 

As a Protestant in the West I had never really given much thought to what direction I was facing when I prayed. In my ignorance I hadn't realized that for many Christians this is highly significant. 

Of course orientation matters for Muslims and for Christians in the East. 


We had reached the first week of March. The sun warmed our faces as we stood outside Chora Church, known in Turkish as the Kariye Müzesi (the word “Chora” in Greek refers to the original chapel, which was outside of Constantinople’s city walls back in the 5th century AD). The pure ancientness as well as Byzantine essence of its structure were striking. The church sat there in the midst of an Istanbul neighborhood, cobblestone streets, new park, and touristy restaurants as if it ended up there by a subliminal accident -- and yet there was something determined in its timeworn existence and integrity, even if it was tinged with a little bit of melancholy. 

As magnificent as the Hagia Sophia is (and if you know me well you know of my obsession with that particular place), its mosaics and frescoes are no where near as incredible nor as numerous as those of Chora Church. Every single direction we craned our necks were new Biblical (predominantly New Testament) scenes depicted in a spectrum of colorful tiles. The gold glinted here in the fanned tail of a peacock, there in a sullen emperor’s crown; here on the book Christ clutched in his hand, there around the head of a martyr, saint, or apostle. We saw Peter holding the keys to Paradise, the child Mary taking her first seven steps, angels swooping down from every corner... it was breathtaking. Chora church still served as a Christian place of worship even following the conquest of Istanbul in the famous (or perhaps infamous, depending on your background) 1453. Only in 1511 was it converted into a mosque (try to imagine how contentious that was!); then to a museum at the end of World War II. 

In what was once the sanctuary of the church, I stood staring at the mihrab, off-kilter from the orientation of the original chapel (which faced towards Jerusalem) in favor of alignment towards Mecca. I turned my gaze away from the mihrab, squinted my eyes and tried to imagine an altar there. I looked down at the marble under my feet and started saying something to God. I was almost immediately interrupted by the harsh voice of a security guard. It took me a moment to even realize what he was telling me and what I was doing wrong: “NO PRAYING,” he said. “MUSEUM ONLY.” Rattled from of my quiet thoughts, I nodded quickly and he waved me away from the spot. We heard later that while we were in the church three Christians had gotten thrown out for offering up prayers to some iconic saints depicted in the mosaics. 

I was disoriented by this experience in a way I hadn’t anticipated. There was something intrinsically affronting about starting to pray in an ancient church and then being confronted so abruptly, especially when I hadn’t thought that anything in my body language conveyed what I was actually doing or thinking. I felt like a hermit crab who tried to retract inconspicuously into its shell only to be followed into what should have been a place of safety -- my own mind. It was a strange encounter, and made me even more thankful for the solace of some thoughts and prayers that are too deep to ever be drawn out from inside my shell. There is solace, even if it’s under threat, in knowing that your mind is free to pursue God.

What direction are you facing when you pray? 

Are we oriented towards Christ's return, no matter where we are in the world? 

Maybe we should be more intentional about how we orient our lives, especially when we are in a place that makes in difficult to do so.

May our faith be deliberately oriented, intentional and devoted even when it's hard and our values are extremely countercultural or alien or not accepted in a certain social group or atmosphere. May we remember how we ought to orient ourselves no matter where we are... 

Near to You

My mind is buried in Pascal's Pensées and a thick stack of readings on Fascism, my heart is graffitied with Poison & Wine lyrics and the dark ink of bad News, my hand is aching to be held, my head is gravitating toward my pillow...and my whole being is longing to be living abroad again.

Mind, heart, and head are heavy. 

Hand and being are reaching, reaching. 

Love and death and happiness and purpose and suffering and God...I try to comprehend them then shrink back and want to stay in bed and not get up for a long time. 

The intentionality with which I wish to conduct all the nuances of my thoughts, my intentions, my prayers, and my actions has been replaced by tumbleweeds of weariness and distractions and apathy and irritation. 

Everything and nothing is under our control. 

Everything and nothing is as God intended it to be. 

May every soul disquieted and discomforted turn in the right direction, to the right person...

No matter how buried or graffitied or aching or weighted or filled with longing.

Dragon Skin

"I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know -- if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy -- oh but it is such fun to see it coming away." -- Eustace Scrubb in C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

My friend sat on the edge of her mattress, on the verge of tears. The hopelessness and frustration in her voice made my heart ache for her, made me want to reach out with more than a hand or the consolatory words I could muster up in the moment. The words she used to describe her struggle snagged on my memory of words I knew I had spoken or written, months previously. On impulse I scampered away and returned with a small journal in my hand. "Can I read to you?" I asked. She nodded. 

It had been a few months since I'd opened that journal, and I loved the feeling of it in my hands. It wasn't just a travel journal I'd filled with pencil print from Germany to Turkey to Jordan to Israel back to Germany again; it was a receptacle of personal thoughts, emotions, and observations that I've never let anyone read. I hadn't even read back over most of these myself since the time I'd written them. 

I wondered if starting to read from that journal would be a horrible idea.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I leafed through the pages, propelled by memories of bleak hours when I, too, had sat on the edge of somewhere, on the verge of tears. I could tell when these times had been by the subtle alteration in my handwriting. And I read. Where it applied, I read through the messy bits, the confused bits, the frustrated bits, the scathing critiques of myself, the questions to God. 

But I knew there were hopeful bits coming, answers to prayer that were a long time coming but infinitely better answers as a result. A major aspect of those answers were in the very act of getting mucky and wading through the questions. Transformation doesn't always happen in clear water. Eustace had to have his dragon skin scraped off. 

I continued to thumb through, to the culmination of particular struggles and stories, the ones I'd chosen to compose coherently in that little travel journal. Embedded there I rediscovered verses, quotes, prayers...and metaphors of sinfulness, forgiveness, and grace I could hardly remember pressing into those pages.

It was as if my past self had written a prescient letter to my current self, to the current self that now sat in front of a good friend, self-revealing in the hopes of healing. 

Somewhere in the course of this I started crying, struggling to keep it together and keep reading, because in that moment I saw a glimpse of God's work in my life over the last several months, felt his ever-present love. I looked up, and the tears were now streaming down my friend's face too. 

Writing has this power to surprise. To drop in our laps what has been lost through the holes in our pockets of memory. To soothe current wounds with the salve of past processes of healing and the wisdom that comes from this whole operation. To apply to several people in myriad different ways, but in simultaneously, bewilderingly pertinent ways. To tear into us deeply and painfully and pleasurably -- again. To pencil on our hearts remembrance of and thankfulness for God's transformative work in very broken beings. 

Shared

I'm going to make a confession. 

The act of "sharing" certain things has never been my forte. (Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, please don't smirk). Just see what happens when you take a huge chomp out of a burrito I just bought or when I realize that you borrowed my favorite dress without asking me. I hope you are aware that this vice of mine makes me feel terribly ashamed and that my penitence is genuine....It's just amusing to me that I'm going to write about this. Because, let's be honest, what do I know about this subject?! But, with that disclaimer, here we go anyway.

During those winter months when it actually snows in our town and our house is framed with Christmas-postcard-perfect snow and icicles, the snowfall inevitably coats the sidewalks of our neighborhood with thick layers of white. Then the snowplows clear the streets, spewing more snow and gritty slush onto the pathways which avid dog-walkers and reluctant school-goers alike trudge along every day regardless of the cold and bleakness of winter. Around the time of our first Christmas in that house (which happened to coincide beautifully with the first substantial snowfall), I remember that I decided to go out and shovel our large circular driveway as well as the sidewalk. Decked out in cold-weather gear that I'm pretty sure made me resemble James' Giant Peach, I spent what was maybe an excessively long period of time shoveling the sidewalk that ran the length of our lot. 

Sometime in the hours that followed (when you couldn't tell that anyone had ever shoveled our driveway or sidewalk at all, let alone in recent history), I stood indoors gazing out the window and I saw one of our neighbors with a small snowblower, dutifully clearing the sidewalks of snow in front of all the neighbors' houses. For some reason I felt a surge of affection for him, a thankfulness for his neighborliness and consideration that most people don't own a snowblower or have the time or energy to shovel away the snow constantly. I don't think we had to shovel our sidewalk for the remainder of the winter.

What if we broadened our concept of "neighborhood", or of sharing in common, daily or irregular tasks? Does every home in American suburbia need to be individually equipped with all the tools and gadgets to make a household completely independent and selfishly self-sufficient, or (heaven forbid) what if we actually had to ask to borrow things from our neighbors, and loaned to them what they do not have? What if we curbed our self-absorbed anxieties and consumerism and instead loosened our parsimonious tight fists? In whatever context we find ourselves in, what if we made it our habit to conscientiously and constantly shovel the snow from our neighbors' sidewalk for them? 

Back in Turkey, during the time we lived in the dormitories of a private university in Istanbul, I had retreated with my computer one morning to the basement of our building, which offered students a cold, echoey, institutional (I think in my journals I called it "austere") environment for studying with limited natural light or aesthetic joys of any kind, hard plastic lime green chairs, and internet access. I sat there, chilly and cheerless, without human connection other than that which Facebook can provide. I couldn't decide if I wanted to talk to people or if I just wanted to be alone. 

Two women (evidently employees of the university) in janitorial garb came into the study lounge (if that's what the frigid, echoey hospital dungeon basement with uncomfortable chairs could be called), munching on pretzels from a snack bag and holding bardaks of çay. They began trying to speak with me in Turkish. They didn't appear to be in particularly good moods and, to be honest, I don't think I was either. Our communication failed on both ends. One of the women kept pointing to the door and asking me a question, and I thought they wanted me to leave. But then they left. When they returned to my table two minutes later it was with three boxes of different kinds of tea, a cup of hot water, and a paper bowl with pretzels in it. 

Their act of sharing had a profound effect on me. I think I might have teared up, which maybe confused them a bit as I was also smiling and thanking them profusely in Turkish. I wrote later in my journal that "I was touched by their kindness and how little acts of thoughtfulness maintain a level of humanness that is a lifeline in a new and unfamiliar place." They had shoveled my sidewalk. They had shared the little that they had. They had shown me, some morose-looking, apparently anti-social American girl in her flannel pajamas, the profundity of neighborliness. 

So snowblow someone's sidewalk if you own a snowblower and they own a shovel. Make tea for someone. Share your pretzels. 

And I'll try not to be immoderately irritated when you take an immoderate chomp out of my burrito.