Blog #31. July 18th Pilgrimage to Mereya mana, Mary Queen of Heaven

Return to sacred travel.

I arrived in Seljuk about 7:30 PMand asked directions to my hotel, less than a mile from the bus station.  Still very hot, I carried and towed my baggage down several long blocks, then turned up a steep cobblestone street, rapidly soaking my shirt with sweat.I asked for directions along the way, two more times, and around two more narrow winding corners, I came to the gate of Hotel Nilya.  It looked very nice,with an ornate carved gate and fine metal mechanism for calling the man inside to open the gate.  I checked in briefly and then went into the almost over-decorated room and turned on the air conditioner.  I changed out of my wet shirt and washed up a little, before returning to the garden to meet with the proprietor, who was due back shortly to give me information about the hotel and it’s services.

The man behind the desk served me a cold beer while I waited for 15 minutes or so.  It was so refreshing they could have made an advertisement out of my enjoying that Turkish beer, named aptly enough, Efes. The proprietor, Elard, was a savvy man in his mid or late 50s, of great experience, who had been selling Turkish rugs and Iznik ceramics for more than 30 years.  In the past 5 years, he and his partner had opened a nearby hotel called the Hotel Bella.  There, they had also established a successful restaurant upstairs overlooking the town.  The hotel  had two well stocked, vividly beautiful showrooms, one for carpets and one for the hand painted Iznik tiles and ceramic plates, etc.  The hotel Nilya in which I was staying, had been their second hotel, opened less than 2 years ago.  They had thoroughly decorated with examples of their wares.  Hotel guests were given “special “showings and rates on the merchandise.  I was grateful that he was not very pushy, or only subtly so.

The hotel arranged transportation from the hotel to the ruins at Ephesus for free.  They also provided inexpensive transportation to Mereya mana, the home of the virgin Mary in the first century, where (according to the most popular account) she lived after the crucifixion of her son, Jesus, looked after by the apostle and gospel writer, St. John, as Jesus had requested in some of his last words on the cross.  John 19:26-27 “Woman, behold your son,” indicating John at the foot of the cross. And to John, “Behold, your mother!”  I had visited Ephesus twice before, on each of my two previous trips to Turkey, but never made it to Mereye mana.  It holds a special place of pilgrimage for me, and is today a well managed devotional site for pilgrims of all nationalities.

As I had begun my sabbatical in Ireland, a land that is spiritually feminine, by Celtic lore and belief, and have been seeking to understand the divine feminine in conjunction with the Christian God, as my ancestral tradition has known Him, visiting Mary’s home was a renewal of my focus on the divine feminine as Catholics have discovered her.  Gradually, over the centuries, the Catholic church, in it’s papal encyclicals and counsels has elevated Mary to the “queen of heaven”, and asserted that she was assumed into heaven, bodily as Jesus ascended also.  She is the “mother of God”, in Jesus Christ.

I visited Ephesus in the morning for about 3 hours, exploring its amazing expanse of ruins, frescoes, and mosaics.  It is probably the largest ruined ancient cities in the world, with marble roads and buildings extending for miles.  I returned to the hotel with some friends that I had met, from the hotel and got out of the sun before noon.  At 4:00, I walked over to the St John’s Basilica, only a few hundred meters from the hotel.  It was one of the largest Basilicas in the ancient world, 4th and 5th century, and if it were intact today, would be among the 5 largest churches in the world.  It has extensive ruins and walls, altars, and carvings, a sacred site of pilgrimage for many.  Further up, on the crest of the hill, is an intact Seljuk Turk Castle from the 8th and 9th century, when the first wave of Turks began to invade Anatolia.

At 5:30 PM, I joined the small group of folks from our hotel for the trip by van to Mereya mana, some 15 km away, up a steep hill.  It was a small stone house, now renovated into a chapel, with relics and statues of the virgin Mary on display for pilgrims to file in and pass by, then out again.  When I was there, several monks and two nuns were beginning to chant prayers in Latin, apparently a service was about to start.  After I departed the church, I paid donation for and lit several candles for prayer for loved ones and for those who are suffering, to whom Mary specially attends.  After meditating there a while, I walked down the slope to where a spring wells up from the ground that offers sacred holy water of the virgin, a healing drink or wash for pilgrims over the years.  I filled a small water bottle with the water from the shrine and drank and splashed myself well with it.

That night, I enjoyed dinner with my new companions, a professor of statistics at a University in Arizona and his wife a former professor of Museum Studies.  The professor  had a white beard over a foot long, a real candidate for Santa Claus and he wore a tie die shirt, hippy throwback statistician:-). They were delightful folks and we enjoyed breakfast the next morning before I departed.  I felt very complete, I had been able to visit or revisit some sites that I had long been interested in.  I want to struggle with and give importance spiritually to these shrines and special ruins from the early Christian world.

The next morning, I got a ride on a shuttle from Seljuk to the large city of Izmir (Smyrna in the ancient world and the bible reference) At the airport, my Turkish Airlines flight was held up for 2 1/2 hours. Instead of departing for Paris at 12:15, it  got off the ground at 3:00, making my arrival in Paris 7:30 instead of planned 5:00 PM.  24 days in Turkey had been eventful and both challenging and stimulating.  I was glad that my Turkish language skills had begun to return; it was fun to practice and see the startled looks from Turks when I spoke something more than tourist Turkish:~>). It had been very full, complete, but now I was fleeing north to escape the intensifying, debilitating heat of the Mediterranean in July/August.  The weather reports in France were more in the 70-80 degree range.

Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelley, (1792-1822)

I met a traveler from and antique land,

Who said, “two vast and trunk less legs of stone
Stand in the desert”. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkles lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch  far away.

Response To Your Question Rumi

Why ask about behavior when you are soul-essence,
and a way of seeing into presence!
Plus you’re with us!
How could you worry?
You may as well free a few words from your vocabulary.
“Why” and “how” and “impossible”.  Open the mouth
cage and let those fly away.
We were all born by accident,
but still this wandering caravan
will make camp in perfection.
Forget the nonsense categories of there and here,
race, nation, religion, starting point and destination.
You are the soul, and you are love,
not a sprite or an angel or a human being!
You’re a Godman-womanGod-manGod-Godwoman!
No more questions now
as to what it is we’re doing here.
If you want what visible reality can give,
you’re an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting that
what you really want is
Love’s confusing joy.

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?    Mary Oliver

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white feet
of the trees whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved slowly across Asia, then Europe,
Until at last, now, they shine in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
Outward, to the mountains so solidly there
In a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything:  the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there, beautiful as a thumb curved
and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring. As he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
In the garden of dust?