Turkey reflections
We planned a journey to Turkey ten years ago, just after leaving my career to found The Sophia Institute. But, 911 intervened and with all we’ve been doing to advance TSI, we’ve just made the pilgrimage. It was extraordinary!
Turkey-- the land where Constantine built the Hagia Sophia in the 3rd century, where Artemis, the Great Mother, was reverenced at Ephesus and her temple there larger than the Parthenon, where Mary sought refuge and made home for herself just after the death of Christ, where the mystic desert dwellers made underground cities, churches, and homes in the caves in beautiful Cappadocia, where pomegranates ripen on the trees in November and fresh squeezed juice is available in the streets.
We spent the first few days in Istanbul so that Henk and I could enjoy daily time in the Hagia Sophia, and we could meet with Sufi mystic Baba Serif and attend an authentic dervish ceremony. Leaving the ancient city once known as Constantinople, we journeyed to central Turkey where few speak English, traveling by plane and car, navigating ourselves on Turkish roadways (an adventure in itself). Doing so allowed us to go to Mary’s house twice, which archeologists recently discovered, to walk the marble streets of Ephesus and learn that St. Paul was run out of town because of his speeches against Artemis, to find Sophia in one of the four alcoves in the grand library, to see the ruins of the first church of Mary, 4th century. We returned to exotic Istanbul before departure. We had one more morning at Hagia Sophia. There I happened to see a short section of an hour long video in the museum shop to discover that Justinian in the 5th century, who built the temple now standing, known as the eighth wonder of the ancient world, had 8 beautiful columns brought from Artemis’s temple to be the central columns of Sophia’s.
We’re thinking of offering a pilgrimage to our Sophia Institute community. Let us know if you’re interested.
