Yes, I Do Feel Fear

Do I often feel anxious when I am traveling away from home again? “Yes,” and “No.” The possibility that I will be overcome by unidentified fear in a new setting is always there. But most often, in my 62nd year, I can travel anywhere without worrying about what I will do with my fear when I get there.

This is a substantial, and welcome, change. In the past, when I went away for a continuing education conference or a convention or whatever I could count on being assaulted by anxiety for about the first day. I did not know where this foreboding came from and never could come up with an explanation for how the nervousness went away. But, away it went! Away the unease went when it wanted to go away.

I rarely have these feelings anymore. I did not have them when Kathy and I arrived in Instanbul, Turkey together five weeks ago. I did not feel any apprehension—quite the opposite, I was filled with excitement—when I arrived by myself in the Cappadocia region of Turkey nor when I drove alone to the Mediterranean Coast. Traveling to the Biennial Meeting of the American Baptist Churches, I recall no doubts or fears. But in the past, let’s say 1990, plus or minus ten year, I always had misgivings and a disquiet feeling that there was something to be afraid of.

My spiritual Journey over the past 30 or so years has changed all that. Having grown closer to God I now find myself remembering, whenever and wherever I am, that I am protected by and loved by God. When apprehension apprehends me, I remember God and as soon as I remember God the fear fades. (Please note that the word “remember” is not a “head thing.” “Remember” is a spiritual event. We remember with all that we are, body, mind and spirit.)

However, this week, arriving at the Trappist Monestary in Gethsemani, Kentucky, I definitely felt fear and it did not go away quickly. I can identify a number of reasons that I may have felt this foreboding and I did not pass through it easily or quickly. One problem was that I could not use my usual defenses against fear. I was not supposed to talk and besides I had no friends to talk to. I arrived a day late and so did not experience the orientation meeting. And, the reason I was a day late was that I began on this past Monday, the first day of my retreat, to experience some unknown ache in my upper abdomen. An afternoon of tests and exams in the ER did not identify the cause and so I am in the middle of dealing with this worry. Also, in the midst of the silence of this retreat it also entered my consciousness that my sabbatical is almost 2/3rd over and that soon I will have to confront all the challenges of reentry.

I just took a few seconds to pray. I found myself reciting Psalm 121:

I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord
Who made Heaven and Earth.

As I prayed I found my tears taking over, along with a feeling of being safe in the arms of God. That is what I need most to experience and remember no matter what the challenges of life are or will be.

More Bells, More Prayers, More Services

Do you recall an earlier post when I emphasized the significance of all of those loudspeakers atop the minarets in Turkey? Maybe you also recall the story I shared about helping to ring the church bell, when I was around seven years old, at the Federated Church of Busti, New York. I was trying to accent in that blog the value of these loud and undeniable calls to prayer and worship. Everyone who hears these reverberations knows they are being reminded, or in some cases warned, to create spiritual rhythms in their life.
This evening, from the window in my small but private room at Gethsemani Abbey, a Trappist Monestary in Kentucky, I can see the building where the Monks live, a parking lot and some of the grounds. And in fifteen minutes the church bells will ring calling us to put aside all work to attend the 7:30 service called Compline. The Monks will then retire to their quarters so they can wake up around 3:15 A.M. for the first service of the new day, called “Vigils.”

The offices of the day are:
Vigils 3:15 A.M.
Lauds 5:45 A.M.
MASS 7:00 A.M.
Terce 7:30 A.M.
Sext 12:15 P.M.
None 2:15 P.M.
Vespers 5:30 P.M.
Compline 7:30 P.M.

I probably will attend six of these services (between 15 and 30 minutes long) and you can probably guess the two that I will avoid. Still, the bells will ring to signal the opportunity that belongs equally to the Monks and the Guests, to organize our days around prayer and worship. What would it be like to organize our days around prayer and worship instead of around work or details or obligations or entertainment or chatter?
Well, that is what I’m here to find out, to spend five days experiencing what it is like to seek a life that centers on prayer and then to find a way, should I so choose, to elevate being in the presence of God to time commitment # 1 in my life.

By the way, Compline is my favorite office of the day. I discovered this during my first retreat at a Trappist Monestary, in 1984. Two other Baptist pastors and I went for five days to the Spencer Abbey in Massachusetts. I found the songs and prayers of Compline to be peaceful and reassuring. Here is one chanted song:

Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray,
That with thy gracious favor thou wouldst be
Our guard and keeper now.

From fears and terrors of the night
Defend us, Lord, by thy great might,
And when we close our eyes in sleep
Let hearts, and Christ, their vigil keep.

Also, I’ve started thinking what I could do to have some kind of reminder announce to me each day when it is time to pray. Maybe there is a Trappist Monk somewhere in the world who could take it as his vocation to call me seven times a day? Would an alarm on my sort of smart phone accomplish this purpose? Could the alarm on my phone sound like Trappist bells or the bells of my childhood?

I'm Thinking About Culture

The two signs in these attached photos point us in the direction of beautiful and healthful walks. We all need to be guided by more signs like these while, at the same time, being led away from aspects of our lives, like mind numbing and endless entertainment, that diminish vitality.

My first mission trip to Romania, in 1982, was the most transformational experience of my life. I experienced God there, many times and in many ways. Baptists survived under communist oppression by trusting God. I longed to experience such faith and the rest of my life, up to the present moment, has been lived in pursuit of this goal.

I observed this faith and hope and trust the first night in Romania in the city of Arad. Before the dinner and service at one of their churches we stood around outside our hotel and observed hundreds of Romanians walking past us. It was a gruesome sight!!! They walked like Zombies. Rigid. Emotionless. Saying nothing. Apparently frightened. Turning neither to the left or the right. It was a gruesome sight--walking was an expression of their barren emotional lives and their dead souls. However, later that night as we broke bread with our Christian brothers and sisters, and later as we worshiped in a standing room only church--with dozens more crowded outside near the windows--I began to understand how Christianity can transform culture, how faith can overwhelm despair, how life inside the Body of Christ can resurrect the death outside.

I wish you could have been with me ten years later when I returned to Arad, Romania to lead Evangelistic services at the Golgatha Baptist Church. The peaceful revolution and the overthrow of Communism had also overthrown many facets of Romanian culture. People walking by the river laughed and played. Even outside the church newly free Romanians we drinking deep from the fountain of liberty.

I tell you that story, and posted the two photos of trail signs at the beginning of this blog, in order to make a point about culture. CULTURE CAN CHANGE. People can change. People can learn to walk with joy in their hearts and appreciation for the creation in their souls. We can learn to walk and talk again, even after years of sitting around seeking entertainment. In fact, the church, in its responsibility for discipling believers, is exactly the place people can be taught such transformations. Worship can teach how to live in the world without being dominated by the world.

All in all, it seems to me that there is plenty of time for all of us to learn how to be in the world without being of the world. Just reduce the time we dedicate to entertainment and assign that time to building community.

What aspect of your life is lived too much "of the world?" Are you interested in transformation? Maybe we should keep in mind those gruesome Romanian walkers from 1982. Maybe we should ask where in our lives we look like that.

Turkish Tea or Time for TV?

The third photo I have posted with this blog entry has my guide,Gokhan Yaramis, and his friend hanging out and about to share a cup of tea. Gokhan was a "guide's guide" and other guides often called him or stepped up to him seeking information or insight for the tourists they were leading. Every time we visited a new sight our visit would include tea and time with friends. One evening, when I was staying at Gokhan's house, we got back from a dinner theater event about 11:30. I was totally exhausted but he politely asked me if it would be OK for him to go next door to spend some time with friends. Gokhan returned two hours later.

Six nights of my last two weeks in Turkey were spent staying in the homes of friends. Hospitality was extraordinary. Often the evenings were spent in the town with groups of Gokhan's friends, talking about everything. A national election was coming up and everyone was taking seriously their responsibility to think about politics and to vote. In other words, these conversations over tea or Turkish coffee--and sometimes the national alcoholic beverage, Rakhi--meant something. They meant friendship and they meant dialog about decisions that counted.

On the other hand, no one in any of the homes I visited, ever turned on the TV. Rarely were Turks too busy for each other and rarely were they too busy for tea. Even long trips in the car were punctuated by tea breaks. I myself took a couple of these breaks while driving across the mountains to the Mediteranean Sea. Everyone has time for Tea but within present day Turkish culture, few people have time for endless and meaningless entertainment.

What does this cultural difference between the USA and Turkey suggest to you about your life? To me about my life? I've been wondering if I could declare Fridays, for example, to be Teadays by setting time aside just to be with the tea, and with you. What do you think?

This photograph was taken on Kathy's camera so I just found it and thought you might like to see us eating ice cream on what felt like the top of the world; actually the top of the cliff on which the village of Santorini is built. This is one of the Greek Islands we visited while on a three day cruise on the Agean Sea.

Beautiful places discovered when they are not expected are one of the reasons Kathy and I love to travel.

Soon,
Ken

POSTSCRIPT TURKEY

 
Postscript Turkey. 

 On the last day of my driving adventure in Turkey, experiencing as much as I could of the 560 miles between Cappadocia and the Mediterranean Sea, I battled my way through the traffic of the magnificent city of Konya in search of the Mevlana Museum.  I had known a few things about the 13^th Century Sufi Muslim mystic, Jelaluddin Rumi, for many years.  But of late I had been turning to him more and more as I sought to understand the soul of Islam.

Rumi is said to have said:

                “The past has vanished.

            Everything that was uttered belongs there.

            Now is the time to speak of new things.”

These are simple and beautiful words and they are also wise and hopeful words.  Something different is needed in our world than the thoughts and actions of the past.   Looking only to the past we will likely find plenty of reason for fear and mistrust.   A future of prosperity and peace requires that we strive together to find every possible good reason to believe in each other and to respect what the other believes.

Did I find such good reasons in Turkey, which was after all my primary goal for traveling there?  Absolutely!  The first day to the last my month in Turkey were filled with experiences and people and insights that declare loudly that we can COEXIST with our Abrahamic brothers and sisters.  I learned that the people of Turkey can and desire to have a very significant role in the future we are building together.

Also, and very important, I have discovered in the past ten days back in the states that my interest in Turkey and its people and its role in the world, and my interest in Islam have not declined since my return.   I have continued writing to friends in Turkey and I have continued reading books.

My new favorite book on Turkey is entitled, Crescent and Star; Turkey Between Two Worlds, by Stephen Kinzer, who for five years was the bureau chief for the New York Times in Istanbul.  Do you recall how many people asked me, “Why go to Turkey?”  This is KInzer’s answer to that question:

                “When the first edition of this book appeared in 2001, Turkey was the most fascinating country in the world.  It still is.  Other than that, almost everything about Turkey has changed.”

Kinzer believes that the future of the world is as much in the hands of  the people of Turkey as any other people.

            “For centuries they shaped world history and the not so distant memory of Ottoman glory allows them to believe they can do so again.”

Among many meanings of this affirmation are that Turkey and its people are probably the strongest force in the world for illuminating the way for Muslims who hope to be both faithful and democratic.

Will I return to Turkey?  It’s certainly possible and I would love to do so, but on the other hand the answers to questions like this—question about the purpose of our lives and our destinies—are hidden in the stars, only to be revealed at exactly the right time.  One thing I do know, if I do return to Turkey and if I do value my life I had better take my wife, Kathy, with me to be overwhelmed by the sights of Cappadocia.  Some things do not take a lot of insight to understand.

Far From Home

“Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three, Lord I’m four, Lord I’m five hundred miles from my home.  Away from home, away from home, away from home, away from home, Lord I’m five hundred miles from my home.”

The above words were from a folk song we sang in my growing up years.  The  essence of the song was whether or not the traveler could depend on God in the new circumstances of his life.  Well, could he?  Can we?  Or are we afraid to begin the journey because we don’t know how help will be given along the way?  How often do people not start out on a journey because they are afraid they will not have the necessary resources to complete their travels?

In effect that was the  motivation for my final travels across Turkey.  I was in the Cappadocian  region of Turkey and I wanted to get to the Mediterranean coast, specifically to visit a mountain gorge in the small town of Saklikent.  I also just wanted to spend some time besides the sea.  The challenge was that Urgup and Saklikent are five hundred miles apart with no direct public transportation.  I would have to rent a car and with very limited language skils navigate the roads between the cities, across a very wide and high mountain range and through two major cities, Antalya and Konya.  Wanting to minimize my  spending of remaining Turkish Lira, I would also need to get off the beaten tourist path for lodging.

Everything went very well.  I drove more than a thousand miles in three days and spent two nights beside the Mediterranean in Kemer and was surprised by the height and breadth of the mountains and took time to have tea with many strangers along the way, and spent most of a day in the very lovely and roaringly beautiful Saklikent Gorge. 

And I learned once again that I could both find my way and find help whenever it was needed—though I did have to give up on figuring out the wireless internet at my Turkish hotel.

I returned the car to Urgup in Cappadocia and stayed overnight with my new friend Gorkan and the next morning flew  back to Istanbul for my final four nights in Turkey.  Friends here are providing me a place to rest and write and work on photographs so that I can arrive back home more ready to set off on the next adventure.

I have learned more in Turkey than I could ever imagine but one thing I am certain of is this is a beautiful, safe, welcoming and amazingly diverse place for anyone to travel and to learn to trust the goodness of others and the provision of God.