Dominic: The Bread and Butter Saint?

You are at an anniversary dinner. The table is ready, and the guests enter and are seated. Your eyes take in the marvelous feast before you. Now be honest. Do your really pay much attention to the bread and butter? So it is with the Church's rich saintly fare. There are flamboyant dishes like Teresa of Avila, replete with Spanish dancing and castanets. There is the delightful little poor man of Assisi who would preach to the birds if no one else would listen. But St. Dominic? Who even knows who he is!

We need bread-and-butter saints. They are the staff of life, and Dominic is rich fare. God in Catherine's Dialogue says Dominic's ship is "well ordered." Rather than understand this as "running a tight ship" I'd like to suggest otherwise.

First, Dominic made sure that nothing in the Dominican rule of life would bind under pain of sin. This differs from other religious communities. Freedom was utmost in Dominic's vision. This means the brothers who would join him to preach the Word would be responsible for their own faithfulness to the Dominican way of community life. No one was going to police them. This allowed the Order to flourish like a marvelous garden with scholars and lawyers, artists and teachers, mystics and administrators. First and foremost, the Dominican, clergy or lay, is a man or woman of the Word, not just by imitation, but by identification. The mirror and measure for all one is and does is the incarnate Word.

Next, the Dialogue refers to the Dominican habit as a gift from Mary, the Mother of God. To be exact, Dominic probably took the white habit of the Norbertine canons when he served as a canon. It is the scapular given by Mary to Blessed Reginald that makes the Dominican habit unique. Mary's assurance was that it was a sign that she protected them, front and back. Dominic chose a belt rather than a rope, because a knight needed a belt on which to hang his sword. The Dominican was to be a knight of the Word, and his sword was the rosary because that was the only way the faithful could access the gospel life of Jesus before the printing press was invented in 1442. Many were not able to hear preaching regularly, for before the Dominicans, only the bishop could preach at the liturgy.

Finally, we need to remember why Dominicans came on the scene in the first place. Dominic could not stay a canon regular in Spain because the Albigensian heresy spreading throughout France haunted him. This heresy was a recycled form of a gnostic hatred of matter as evil. To Dominic this was an affront to the incarnate Word who had entered our history and pressed our humanness to himself in an unbreakable union. Dominic had a grace-permeated mind. All of creation spoke of God to him, and I suggest this is the challenge this very unshowy saint presents to us. In our day we have a different heresy. We don't hate matter. We worship it. We idolize it. It consumes us. This humble preacher-saint calls us back to the simple "bread and butter" of our baptismal identity with with incarnate Word who heals our dis-ease. Dominic points us to whose we are. All our material goods are negotiable. Dominic challenges us to reclaim our sacramental worldview as Catholics. Pressured by our consumerist culture we can slip into spiritual dementia and forget that all is gift. We can't take any of it with us when we go. Our focus needs to be to remain safely in the arms of the Shepherd. So simple...so ordinary...so "bread and butter." May this feast of this very ordinary man challenge all of us to keep our eyes in the right place to live our very extraordinary ordinary lives.

The Place of Imagination in the Religiously Differentiated Consciousness

From the Interdisciplinary Conference

Collective Memory in St. Louis:
Recollection, Forgetting and the Common Good,
“Memory and the Religious Imagination”
Fontbonne University and the St. Louis History Museum
October 21-23, 2010

Shaping an Adequate Human Anthropology

What is imagination? If we are to answer this question, it will be helpful to provide an adequate human anthropology as a context for our answer. The popular trilogy is body, mind, and spirit. But is this adequate? Where are the emotions in such a triad? Are they included in body, or perhaps they a part of what we call mind. More, where would we locate the imagination in this familiar trilogy? Is the imagination part of what we call body, or is it better located in what we refer to as mind. And precisely what do we mean by the human spirit? Is it a natural part of the human being or some kind of ghost in a machine? The lack of clarity as to what we meanby the words we use, I suggest, comes from a lack of clarity of what weunderstand by the words we use. The ambiguity of the terms body, mind, and spiritpresent a real block to understanding the dynamic roles of human emotion and the imagination in the full creative function of the human being as we struggle today to develop full human potential for the progress of human culture.

Do we have an alternative? Is there a way of clarifying both what we say and what we understand what we say to mean? I suggest there is. First, we will clarify the words we use. I suggest the terms organism, psyche, and spirit might be clearer and more inclusive. [1]

By organism we will mean all the physical systems that belong to our embodiment: circulatory, digestive, auditory, visual, neurological, respiratory, etc. By psyche we will include our capacity to image, whether in dreams, fantasy, or in the complex linking of images we call imagination, and the human emotions. Aristotle and Aquinas differentiate what we will call the spontaneous emotions (love, hate, desire, aversion, joy, sorrow) and the considered emotions (courage, fear, hope, despair, and anger). Spontaneous emotions are much more rooted in feelings and bodily sensations. Considered emotions are influenced more by thought. Finally, by the human spirit we will specify those operations that distinguish the human from the animal realm. We experience wonder and awe. We question for understanding and meaning. We judge the correctness or lack of truth in the factual data given us. And finally, we evaluate, choose, decide, and act. These functions are performed by an attentive consciousness that can be aware of itself doing each of these operations.[2]

With this new anthropological framework we have a possible new way of thinking about the soul. Operationally the soul would be our psychic energy and our human spiritual functions. Body would then be psychic energy and the organism with its systems. This enables us to locate both imagination and emotion. Both are part of our psychic reality. They are differentiations of psychic energy in a distinctive human soul, and both play key roles in cognition and decision. Imagination and emotion are the stuff of therapy, for the psyche can become as wounded as our organism can become ill because of disease. A strategic question for our purposes is what relationship imagination and emotion might have to the spiritual operations of attentiveness to experience, intelligent inquiry, reasonable judgment of fact, and responsible decision making.

The Religiously Differentiated Consciousness

What is consciousness? Perhaps the simplest reply is human awareness. It is psychic energy become aware of itself. When we are conscious we are aware that we are aware. We can be conscious that we are questioning. We can be aware that we have reached a judgment of fact, true or false. We can be conscious of making a deliberate choice and carrying it out. This is intentionality. We can intend these operations or not intend them.

We are conscious to some extent even when we dream. It is only in dreamless sleep that consciousness rests. When we attend to ourselves experiencing, questioning, judging, and deciding, we are fully conscious. When we attend to the Holy, we experience awe. Contemplative wonder is evidence of the spiritual nature of the human being.

The consciousness is religiously differentiated when it experiences the Holy. It might question that experience. It might reach the judgment that “God has moved in my life!” It might prompt a change in behavior or life direction. This experience will be stored in the psyche, imprinted on its feeling memory, and either lapse into forgetfulness or become the motivation for my new choices and behavior. Religious experience thus changes the psyche; it opens consciousness to what is beyond the human, beyond matter, to that which is transcendent; it expands what experiences or images the psyche holds. What is stored in the psychic memory can be called up later or repressed. What is stored can influence how we do self-reflexion, or refuse to do it. The experience of the Holy, stored in the imagination of the psychic memory can greatly influence the levels of operations of the human spirit: what we admit into attentive awareness, what we allow to be questioned, whether our judgment is reasonable, and whether our decisions are responsible.

Where does intentionality come from? What is its source? I suggest that it is the very life force of the soul. It is released from the human love energy of the parents in conception, and this love energy is powered by the very Personified Love we call God, whether acknowledged by the parents or not. Life comes from the One Who Is. Materially we are made from star dust. Spiritually we are spun out of Love.

This origin of the life force flows from the very ground of the soul, the center, core, apex,[3] name it as you will. When the human becomes aware that it has been grasped by the Holy (Rom. 5:5) the relationship that is grace begins. The person is religiously in-love. The person is different.

The Place and Role of Imagination

Our capacity to image and imagine is thus different. The Holy and our relationship to this Holy One is now in our conscious horizon. The religiously differentiated consciousness is a seedbed for images no longer limited by material boundaries. The new limit is the Transcendent. The imagination has become the fertile ground of possibility no longer held captive to empirical measurement. Its measurement is what is appropriate to a new relationship of love. The law, be it of physics, the body politic, or social mores, is respected but can no longer limit possibility. Like some transparent membrane, the imagination is free to draw images from the past, from present natural and human science, from poetry, art and literature, from history and economics, and from the richness of revelation and faith to spin future possibility. Like a drunk on a binge, the soul dances with the intoxication of one who is in love and this “condition” will deal with the human woundedness and blockage that stunts cognition.

But, you will say, what about our biases, our propensity to ruin everything? This is where we need to honestly face the particular bias that cripples the imagination and thus severely limits attentiveness and intelligent questioning. This bias we will call dramatic because it infects us in the drama of life as we encounter crisis, hurt, and pain.[4]

Therapists know the scene well. A client cannot entertain certain images because they are like asking the consciousness to touch a hot stove. The images are buried, repressed in the psyche, and so “shoot from the bushes” unbidden and without permission. The result is a form of emotional crippling, the avoidance of images that bring memories of violation, hurt, or pain. The term scotosis refers to a blockage, a covering over, or we might say a psychic callous.[5] To touch it is simply too painful. A bit of reflection brings home the clear understanding that images that are too painful to entertain will never become fertile images for new ideas. The cognition is thus crippled at its earliest stage, the forming of the image or phantasm needed for fresh thought. In the area of the pain, the thinker is effectively shut down. This bias needs to be dissolved.

Dramatic bias dissolves under the skillful care of the therapist who will bring up the image from the recesses of the psyche and empty it of its toxicity. The result will often be tears of release. Being grasped by religious love can also dissolve this psychic blockage in the intimacy of contemplative prayer. The result again will often be tears of release.

Few if any philosophical or theological thinkers address this issue. It is clear that left unaddressed, dramatic bias can abort clear and creative thinking related to the topic that has caused the bias in the first place. The subconscious memory then becomes the tomb of the imagination, binding it in the depths of repression and making it sterile in the initiation of creative thought. It is the imagination, free from bondage, that offers the fertile possibility for creating a new understanding and a new future. It is the unbiased imagination, unrepressed, that can draw from memory’s storehouse the stuff to dream possibility. As the feeder of our cognition, the imagination is the creative architect of our human future.

Bibliography

Crowe, Frederick E. “The Role of a Catholic University in the Modern World”-An Update. Communicanting a Dangerous Memory, Soundings in Political Theology.Fred Lawrence, ed. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1987: 1-16.

Doran, Robert M. “Psychic Conversion,” The Thomist, 1977: 200-236.

—– “Soul Making and the Opposites,” Psychic Conversion and Theological Foundations. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981: 137-154 (especially 148 ff.).

—– Subject and Psyche. Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1994 (Second Edition): 197-228.

Lonergan, Bernard J. F.  Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, eds., 1992: 210-219.

—– Method in Theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971.

—– Collection. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, eds., 1988.

—– A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., William F. J. Ryan, S.J. and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S.J., eds. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974.

Schepers, Maurice. “Discovery of Mind and Psyche in the Development of the Theologian: The Conjunction of Intellectual and Affective Conversions,” African Christian Studies 7:3 (September 1991): 36-45.

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[1] This triad was suggested to me by the Jungian and Lonergan scholar Robert M. Doran, S.J. of Marquette University.

[2] The differentiation of consciousness into distinct levels of operation that can be empirically verified by self-observation is the unique contribution of economist, philosopher, theologian Bernard Lonergan, S.J. Insight provides an introduction to only the first three levels dealing with cognition. The fourth level of evaluative judgment and decision appears in Method, chapter one, and the impact of religious love can be found in chapter four.

[3] This term is used by Lonergan in chapter four of Method (107) and his explanation of it is “the peak of the soul.”

[4] Lonergan treats dramatic bias with more length in Insight than the other three biases (individual egoism, group egoism, and general or theoretical bias). Establishing its capacity to shut down inquiry, he then drops it. It took Doran to approach him on this, only to be told, “You do it; I was interested in cognition.” So the treatment of dramatic bias through psychic conversion became a focus for Doran’s work as is clear from the entries in the bibliography below.

[5] The term scotosis appears several times in Insight (e.g.215). Lonergan describes it as an unconscious process, a blind spot, a censorship that  “governs the emergence of psychic contents.”

Turkey - A Concise Journal

June 30 – July 10, 2011

June 30: Three of us, Harvey Schneider, David Oughton, and Carla Mae Streeter, flew
American Airlines to JFK where we met Michael Schneider, Harvey’s son, who joined us for the trip. Harvey is Jewish, a lawyer in St. Louis and form president of Interfaith Partnership, and Michael is a reporter in Orlando. David is a professor of World Religions at St. Louis University. Together we searched out Turkish Air, for the next leg of the journey to Istanbul. We will meet the other six members of our party in Istanbul.

The service aboard Turkish Air was remarkable. Gifts of slippers, a travel kit with socks and eye shields, and those hot towels before a meal! And such meals: real silverware and more than one can eat. The plane is large, seven across, with very advanced technology: a full entertainment center for each passenger that folds out before the passenger like a tray table! By some chance we were upgraded and assigned to the business section where the leg room was better. This was much appreciated by all of us for the ten hour journey ahead.

It is 12:30 a.m. as I write and we are passing directly over Munich, Germany. Breakfast is being prepared. Rest, with ears plugged and eyes covered, brought no real sleep. Hot towels are being passed…such a nice touch!

Our group met the mayor of Istanbul (mayor of both the European and the Asiatic sides of the city) in a park, where he was kind enough to pose with us for this picture - He is the man in the gray suit, second row.

July 1: We landed in Istanbul at 10:45 a.m. Turkey time. (The middle of the night in St. Louis!)
Aydin Danaci, our tour director, and his wife Handan were on hand to meet us, along with Henry (Hank) Rowold, a Lutheran professor at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, and Natalie and Eve, two black blood sisters who enriched our group of ten immensely. (Their mother, who worked with county executive, Charlie Dooley, had made the trip earlier.)

We traveled by van from the airport to Tahir Mutlu College Guest Building, our lodging place while in Istanbul, where we settled in and had a lovely lunch. We then took a walk to a nearby mall where we watched Turkish young people ice skating and visited while Aydin returned to the airport. Our group of ten was complete when we were joined by Jim, formerly a New Testament professor at St. Louis University, who is now teaching in Sweden and Rabbi Ari Henden from St. Louis and her friend Lynnsie Kantor, a Real Estate Sales Associate. Supper at the Pirpirim Restaurant was enjoyed by all. We returned to the Guest House and turned in for the night.

July 2: After a hearty breakfast (eggs, cheese, bread, honey, tea, juice, instant coffee) we
Traveled by van to Topkapi Palace, the residence of the former sultan of Turkey. The spacious quarters of the sultan and his government is now a museum and tourist attraction since the 1934 birth of the Turkish Republic. The palace includes government rooms used by the sultan, specifically a private room with a flowing fountain and deaf and dumb guards standing at the entrances, where confidential matters were discussed and decided. The kitchen area included food tasters to thwart any poisoning attempts! When the sultan left with his family, he took none of his wealth with him. Among the items left behind was the famous 86 karat diamond that is still on display among the palace jewels. A harum section of the palace, overseen by the Queen Mother, was off limits even for the sultan, where young women were educated, groomed, and dressed.

Next came a visit to the famous Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom to Christians. The icons of this famous Church have recently been recovered by the removal of the plaster that once covered them. Used as a mosque when the Ottoman Turks took the city, it was later replaced by the Blue Mosque and became a museum which it is today.

Hagia Sophia - Istanbul

What Aydin calls “a light lunch” followed at Sultanahmet koftecisi. We all wondered what a full meal would be! Lunch was followed by a visit to the Basilica Cistern, an underground water supply (with fish!) built by Justinian to serve both as water storage and a place of worship for Christians underground. It is famous for its beautiful columns, resembling a basilica. Then on we walked to the Blue Mosque, so named because of the blue tiles of its interior. Larger than Hagia Sophia, it has four turrits, and its huge bulk dwarfs the nearby ancient Christian church now museum. Nearby was the Roman Hipodrome, the ruins of the location for the once famous chariot races. A drive through the textile center of the city brought us to a quiet restaurant and the generous evening meal. By 9:00 we were more than ready for the beddy!

July 3: Breakfast began the day at the Guest House, followed by a visit to St. Anthony’s
Roman Catholic Church for Sunday Mass. The priest and Mass servers were black, the assistant priest and preacher was from Brazil, and the choir was Filipino, and the liturgy was in English! The experience was indeed a cameo of the universal catholic community in Turkey.

A walk down Taksim-Istiklal Street was next, full of people walking both ways, a trolley clanging its way down the middle when it wanted to get through. Lunch was at Taksim Bereket, providing a variety of foods many of us had never tasted. A ride down the hill by way of “The Tunnel” brought us to a Jewish Museum and former synagogue for the Sephardic Jews of Spain who received a warm welcome from the Turkish sultan when they were expelled from Spain in 1492. Returning by way of “The Tunnel” to Taksim-Istiklal Street, we were given time to explore its many shops. Jim and I wandered the side streets looking for towels and scarves for loved ones at home. Some of the group gathered around and played games…vying with one another for wins. A bag of Turkish bagels, and we were off to the airport for the flight to Izmir and nearby Ephesus.

July 4: All of us were aware that this was Independence Day back home. The day began with
Another fine guide, along with Aydin, filled us in on the land and its history. First we visited the House of Mary Shrine. Under the care of the Italian, this location was pointed out by the stigmatist and mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich (whose writings guided Mel Gibson in the production of The Passion) as the house where Mary, the mother of Jesus lived with St. John after the ascension of Jesus. The foundation of a house was found where she indicated it would be, and the present shrine was reconstructed upon that foundation.

Next, a visit to a pottery artist studio revealed the most beautiful pottery, hand crafted with unique designs.

Just a short distance away were the archeological ruins of the city of Ephesus, the largest excavation in the world today. We walked it with our guide, learning what had once gone on in this city, once a busy harbor on Turkey’s west coast before the land shifted, leaving it inland with a rich valley for the raising of olives, apricots, pomegranates, and corn. The city eventually died as its commerce dried up. From the patrician section of the city to the section of the commoners, we walked, noting an excavated tavern with its attached “love house,” the latrines of the men’s bath, and it once beautiful library of scrolls. Last was its stadium and gladiatorial quarters and nearby cemetery. The trumpets sounded, and we caught a reenactment of a gladiatorial contest just as we were leaving. We breathed a sigh of relief at the “thumbs up” at the exit of the group!

We then moved on to visit the ruins of the Basilica of St. John the Apostle, destroyed by earthquake, and the nearby Jesus Boy mosque.

A stop at our hotel and we were off to have supper with a family in Izmir. The delightful evening included a meal prepared with great generosity and the warmest hospitality. First, the lentil soup, then the varieties of salads. Then came the rice and lamb. We shared information through Aydin who translated for us, and learned of each others’ work, hobbies, families, and sports. Then came a magnificent surprise concert by two fine musicians. Using a guitar-like instrument called the tamber and a bamboo flute, the musicians shared both religious and secular music with us. Then came Turkish coffee, ice cream, and our own little production of the United States national anthem sung with gusto to mark the day. Then came the baklavah and watermelon! We ended the evening with the traditional exchange of gifts, each guest presenting the host family with something from the United States. We returned to the hotel and got a bit of sleep before our 5:30 a.m. trip to the airport for the flight to Kayseri, the trade center of Turkey in the Cappadocian region.

July 5: Somewhat bleary-eyed with the early hour, we made the one-hour and 15 minute flight
to Kayseri, stopped for a lovely lunch, and checked in at the hotel. We rested, caught a nap, and some of us took a swim until 2:00 when we met our guide and headed for Goreme-Organ and “the stones with lids on.” We learned with amazement from out guide the way this valley had been home to Christian hermits in the second and third centuries, holy men (and women!) who had made this valley and its caves their homes, carving out space for prayer prior to the monastic movement. We saw the chapels with their icons that fed the faith of these early ascetics until the Christians left as a result of religious conflict. We had supper at the hotel and then an evening to catch up a bit on sleep!

July 6: A breakfast fit for kings and queens opened the day. We left at 8 for a hike in the Inhara
Valley, descending about 500 steps to follow the river for a little over a mile. The weather was beautiful. As we walked Queen Anne’s Lace and poppies lined the path. The cliffs were on our left peppered with the cave entrances now abandoned.

We then traveled to the site of the “underground cities.” Carved out of the soft volcanic rock, these five story underground dwellings are difficult to date. Recently discovered, it is clear that the early Christians used these hidden hideouts because of the orthodox art found in the rooms used as chapels. Wine cellars, kitchen spaces, and even stables for animals were part of these underground tunnels and rooms.

Lunch was at a unique restaurant recently carved into the rock to honor the underground city site nearby. The serving was elegant, and included local fare prepared especially for us.

Next was a visit to the Turkish Rug Cooperative. We heard the explanation of how these magnificent rugs are made. Persian in design, these rugs are Turkish in the unique double knot technique that identifies an authentic Turkish rug anywhere in the world. The rugs are made of wool, cotton and silk. We handled the cocoons from which the silk is taken and learned how the cocoons are “unwound” to provide the silk strands for the weaving and then dyed beautiful colors. The rugs were then displayed with great pride and opportunity given for those who wanted to purchase them.

A trip back to the Hotel Conference Center gave us time for supper and visiting, even getting in on a Turkish wedding! The wedding party welcomed these visitors from America.

July 7: We left at about 8:30 the next morning for the trip by van to Konya, the center of the
great Sufi poet, Rumi. The trip was about 3 hours through the flat agricultural section of west central Turkey. The soil appeared grayish white, and wheat fields spread far and wide. Konya is an ancient city and gives the appearance of renewal everywhere.

We visited the beautiful college (primary and middle school) and the Mevlana University that is part of the movement that has sponsored our trip through the generosity of its members. This movement is working through education, hospitality, and dialogue, both within and outside of Turkey, to restore Turkey to its original cultural and religious values. With the Republic came the secular viewpoint that religion of any kind, including Islam, is not compatible with scientific and technological progress. Consequently religion is merely tolerated. The salary of imams, for example, is paid by the government, and the government supervises what they say. They are regarded as simply performing a civil service. Religious marriages are not recognized in Turkey as legal. The movement of which the Niagra Foundation is a part in the United States is funded by Turkish citizens that believe this must change. The European Union agrees, and with recent elections in Turkey there is hope that the writing of a new constitution for Turkey will now proceed and become a reality that will include human rights. Presently the military has too much power, creating more of a military dictatorship than a democracy. The genuine Turkish spirit warmly welcomed the Jews expelled from Spain back in 1492. Turkish economic, scientific, architectural and technological innovation can be seen everywhere, advanced by devout Muslims, presenting a counter vision to the dualistic viewpoint of the present secular government.

The Rumi Museum in Konya is a former mosque. Rumi and some of his family are buried here. Whirling dervishes are trained here in an 18 step disciplinary program that admits both young boys and married men. We attended a program of whirling dervishes in the evening after supper with a delightful family. Once again we were warmly welcomed by the host husband, his wife and three children. A second family came over to help (we were 12 guests!). By adding needed places around 2 tables we finally all fit, and after introductions in Turkish by Aydin, we did quite well as Aydin and his wife, Handan interpreted for us. The food was wonderful Turkish fare, including yogurt soup, tomato and cucumber salad, rice and stew, fruit, and a honeyed dessert. In the midst of our meal the landlord of the building appeared with gifts for us all. To add to the excitement a fuse blew, leaving us to the natural evening light. We shared the gifts we too had brought to share with the family, and then we were off to see the whirling dervishes at the Rumi shrine. The evening ended with welcomed sleep at our Konya Hotel in anticipation of our 6:00 breakfast and departure to the airport for our flight back to Istanbul in the morning.

Whirling Dervishes - Konya

July 8: We arrived at Pegasus Airlines by 7:00 a.m. and ran the gauntlet of security checks. The
unique experience of this airline was its on board pre-flight routine: the video presentation was done completely by children from how to put the seat belts on to life-vest use! I was delightful, and needless to say every passenger was paying attention!

We landed on the Asian side of Istanbul, the city twice the size of New York, and our 8th day began. Our first stop was Neve Shalom Synagogue, twice attacked by terrorists: once by Hamas who were attacking several other Turkish sites as well, the second by Al Queda. About 30 Jews died, and the security for the synagogue was extremely tight. One reason Aydin chose this synagogue for our visit was the fact that the Jewish community in Baltimore helped the synagogue rebuild as they mourned their dead.

After a delicious lunch we visited The Journalist and Writers’ Foundation, and learned more about the quiet movement for a truly free Turkey inspired by Dr. Gülen, who is now in the United States for health reasons. The movement has no formal membership, yet inspires various organizations within and beyond Turkey, including the Niagra Foundation in the mid-west United States, China, and elsewhere. Two young women, both wearing the Turkish scarves so common here, explained the movement and showed us a video. At our request, some of us were able to obtain a copy of the DVD to take with us. The movement is financed by businessmen and volunteers. We understood from this that it was these unnamed persons who had helped finance our trip.

We then toured the Sakirin Mosque, also called the woman’s mosque because it was designed by a Turkish woman architect. The structure and interior were modern, emphasizing a water theme. There was a fountain at the entrance and a tear drop motif in the interior. The curved lines and soft beauty of the structure were a clear signature of the woman whose creative imagination created the building.

Supper was enjoyed at Izhar, where we had enjoyed a meal once before. We settled in once again for the night at the beautiful and simple Guest House where we had stayed our first two days.

July 9: Our final day permitted a bit of sleep catch up, as we gathered for breakfast at 8:15. We
then left for the unforgettable experience of the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. A maze of covered shops provided us with a final chance to pick up items for loved ones at home and final remembrances to take home from so rich a Turkish experience.

We then gathered fish and beef sandwiches for our boat trip on the Bosphorus and headed for the dock. A turn of events resulted in our boarding a private boat, captained, we learned later, by the owner of several of the cruise boats at the dock. We had a wonderful trip up one side of the Bosphorus and down the other, at times narrowly missing an encounter with much larger ships. The breeze was delightful, the sun was just right, and we were content to return to the hotel after the trip for a nap before joining our final family for supper. We bid farewell to Ari and Lynsee, two of our Jewish companions, who extended their visit a few days to the south of Istanbul.

Our hosts

Our third family welcomed us along with two other couples and a spunky little six year old who added much to the visit. Grandma and Grandpa were there, the host parents of the six year old, and the sister of our hostess, married just 8 months. The meal was lavish, consisting of several courses. First there was the yogurt soup, then a tomato and beef stew, then the main dish of rice, chicken and potato accompanied by stuffed eggplant and a variety of salads. When we returned to the living room area it was announced that we would be marking several celebrations: our host husband[s birthday, the birthday of Hank, our companion from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, the coming birthday of Natali, another of our companions, on July 21st, and finally, the new emerita status of Carla Mae. I big two layered chocolate cake with candles appeared as the lights were dimmed, and with gusto we sand “Happy Birthday” in both Turkish and English at the same time! Cake, fruit, and ice cream followed, the ice cream made from goat’s milk to be eaten with a fork it is so firm! The family presented each of us with a gift, and we shared with the families the little gifts we had brought with us for them. Then we headed home for the final packing.

July 10: Aydin arranged breakfast for us at Guest House even though it was Sunday, a
thoughtfulness only matched by his and Handan’s care in staying with us at the airport throughout the entire check-in process. We all boarded safely, and began the journey home after a remarkable week of generosity, education, and dialogue!