More of the Seven

Yesterday we continued our tour of the Seven Churches of Revelation with a trip to Philadelphia, the original city of brotherly love—named by an emperor who loved his brother. There’s not much from ancient times at the site, only column remains from a centuries-old structure of a church dedicated to St. John.

We proceeded to Sardis, in a gorgeous fertile area that reminded me of Oregon with its produce and lush green trees. There’s a temple to Artemis there that was later abandoned and a church added to the site. Before Artemis, people in this region worshiped Cybele, an ancient fertility goddess, and the remains of her temple are adjacent to Artemis’s. The two cults sort of merged, which is where I think a lot of folks get the idea that Artemis was all about fertility—which I don’t think she was by the first century. A couple of US universities and donors have also worked together to restore a fantastic synagogue site at Sardis, where we could still see mosaic floors.

We proceeded to Smyrna, which is modern-day Izmir—the largest city on the west coast of Turkey. Polycarp was martyred here, and Christians in ancient times were virtually destitute because the business guilds disallowed Christ-followers. Picture a layoff that never ends... The site is in the middle of the city and looked like an outside warehouse full of columns and arches stacked up and stored for future reconstruction. We’re staying at a hotel where the president of Turkey is also staying tonight, and we see security everywhere.

This morning we made a trek out to the city of Pergamum, where we wound our way up, up, up a narrow road (in a bus). A city on a hill, Pergamum has remaining arches from ancient aqueducts, the steepest theater from the ancient world, and remains from a temple dedicated to Zeus—which may be what Jesus was referring to when He spoke of a “synagogue of Satan.”

We ended our time in Thyatira, where Lydia—the first convert in Europe at Philippi—came from. We passed miles and miles of olive orchards, which I was told have been here for millennia. The only remains here post-date the New Testament by several hundred years and as with Smyrna and Philadelphia were in the middle of city blocks.

Turkey has surprised me in that it looks much like France and Greece, and I expected it to be more like the Middle East and barren. It’s lush and modern and I’ve seen only a handful of women with faces covered.

Tomorrow we’re scheduled to see Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Grand Bazaar. From there I’ll say goodbye to Gary as he returns home. I’m set to sail for Ephesus from Istanbul, and who knows when I’ll have access again.

Aphrodisias

We spent the morning in Aphrodisias, the former capital of the province of Lydia, built to honor the goddess Aphrodite. Artemis was reportedly immune to Aphrodite's love-arrows, so I didn't do any research today--just enjoyed. (Artemis was nowhere to be found--these chicks were apparently territorial!)

The city was built in the first century, and because it was the home of the ancient sculpture school, it had statue after statue depicting mythological themes, emperors conquering, and the Greek pantheon (except you-know-who).

The amphitheater ("two-theater") there was an ellipse-shaped structure (as opposed to a semi-circular "theater") that could hold thirty thousand people. I felt like an ant. On the top of the stone seating we found markings similar to backgammon boards, which apparently served as pre-game entertainment.

In the photo above we're standing in front of the tetrapylon, an ornamental gate composed of four groups of four columns. It sat at a major intersection of north-south and east-west streets. A bit fancier than what we have at intersections in Dallas...

The temple to Aphrodite was eventually converted to a Christian worship space and an apse was added. The city name was also changed to Stavropolis.

In the afternoon we visited a Turkish rug factory. We viewed the process of sink-thread-making, women's fingers flying on the looms, and enthusiastic sellers trying to help us lose our buying inhibitions. Nice try.

Laodicea (Spewville)

Colossae

Heirapolis

Turkey, So Far

I arrived in Istanbul yeseterday and crossed the river as the late afternoon sun cast shadows on the spires. We'll return later in the week to see the city. But this morning we had a 3 AM wake-up call and caught an early flight to the interior.

First we went to the tell at Colossae. It amazes me that no one has yet excavated that ancient city. But it's in a gorgeous, fertile valley with vineyards and the sound of a stream running behind us. The mountains towered in the background, and I had a new appreciation for the apostle Paul's description in Colossians 1 of Jesus Christ as the Creator of all. The Colossians were surrounded by breathtaking creation.

Then we moved on to Laodicea. It is the only city mentioned in Revelation 2-3 to which Christ had nothing positive to say. Everywhere in the ruins we saw the remains of structures related to water. Roman baths. Aquaducts. A huge fountain with statues.

Hot water came to Laodicea from nearby springs. Cold water came from different springs. But by the time both got to the city, the water was lukewarm and brackish. Jesus told the Christians in Laodicea that He wished they were either hot or cold, but because they were lukewarm, He would spew them out of His mouth. When I got back to the bus after walking in the heat, I took a big swig of water from my bottle and guess what--it was lukewarm and I wanted to spew it! Cold water refreshes. Hot water--love it every morning for my coffee. But lukewarm water, the tepid stuff, makes me want to hurl. God too, apparently.

The city was quite rich in its day. It suffered two major earthquakes in the first century, and when Rome offered to send in government help, they refused. Didn't need it. They could handle it on their own. Jesus tells these people through John's revelation that, though they are rich, they are really poor.

I was amazed at how extensive the excavation was in Laodicea. The past ten years have seen incredible strides in what's been uncovered, and the city left us with dropped jaws.

The best of all, though, was ancient Hierapolis. Huge calcium deposits make it like the Cliffs of Dover in the middle of the valley. Picture Mammoth Hot Springs (near Yellowstone) without the sulphur smell and multiply it several times over in terms of scale, and you get the picture.

The city also had a temple to Apollo, is where Philip was reportedly martyred, and has the best-preserved theater I have ever seen. You can see it behind us in the shot above.

More when I have e-access again.

Sitting in Frankfurt

I've spent the last ten hours sleeping at a 45-degree angle, watching He's Not That Into You and Slumdog Millionaire, and reading a few essays on aesthetics of the novel. Now I'm sitting in the Frankfurt airport awaiting my flight to Istanbul. Walking through the terminal, I've seen only one short newsclip and a single headline relating to Michael Jackson. Everything else focuses on Iran, the European Union, sporting events (swimming especially), the worldwide economic meltdown ...

I'm headed to Turkey and the Aegean for two weeks of research. My next Coffee Cup study is tentatively titled Sumatra with the Seven Churches. For the first week I'm in Turkey visiting the location of six of the seven churches from Revelation 2-3. Also on the agenda is Philippi, where the biblical Book of Philippians was sent. I have two new studies releasing July 27, and one is on Philippians. So hopefully we can shoot some photos and upload them to my web site.

The seventh and final rev-church site is Ephesus. That happens the second week, during which I'm set to sail from Istanbul and end up in Athens with Ephesus, Patmos, and a number of Aegean sites between. I hope to set my dissertation project in Ephesus, and this visit should give me a close-up look that will hopefully also give me some clearer direction. The trip happened through amazing provision from the Lord, and I'm still pinching myself.

I have about 3 more hours of sitting around plus three hours or so of flight time before meeting up with my hubby, who's joining me in Istanbul from Nairobi for the Turkey part.

He was in Kenya with a small team from East-West purchasing and delivering home-building supplies to destitute families displaced in last year's civil war. The team has experienced good weather (better than Dallas's 104 degrees!), smooth purchase and delivery of supplies, and obtained video footage of recipients expressing gratitude that they will now have homes. More about that in the days ahead.

Meanwhile, stay tuned here for photos and thoughts as I embark on what promises to be an unforgettable adventure.

In the News

Today's New York Times book review included mention of a book, The Whole Five Feet, by Christopher R. Beha, who set out to read all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics (known as the five-foot shelf) in one year. I could totally relate.

But I was struck by the fact that today's book review included nothing about the King of Pop or one of Charlie's Angels. I was an Michael Jackson fan, though less so after he started grabbing his crotch. But what a dancer!

And my freshman year I tried to cut my bangs ("wings") like Farrah's in the girl's bathroom, a fact I had forgotten until my best friend from junior high reminded me on Facebook today.

Anyway, my point being that I liked these people. Still.

When I turned on cable news last night looking for news out of Iran and could not find anything even on the bottom-of-the-screen scrolling from any of the three main news-providers, I felt like I had subscribed to Cable People Network and Fox Entertainment. Gimme a break. We have North Korea turning nukes at Hawaii, Ahmadi-nutjob (as one of my students calls him) in Iran squelching free speech, and a host of economic crises across the world. C'mon people! At least the NY Times demonstrated a little perspective here. But what does it say about our culture that they're going bankrupt?

Writers Who Endure

I've been taking part in an online discussion on writing with originality and authenticity, and I think part of learning to write with one's own authentic voice comes in part, ironically, from reading enduring (classic) works of writers who have found their own authentic voices. And many of these authors whose works have endured have written essays full of good thinking about how and why they write as they do. Here's a quick sampling of good essays by writers who endure:

**Flannery O'Connor's "The Element of Surprise in 'A Good Man is Hard to Find'" from the book On Her Own Work (excellent explanation of why she uses violence to explore grace)

T. S. Eliot's essays in Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, especially "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "Religion and Literature"
I have a link only to the first of these two: http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html

Nathaniel Hawthorne's preface to The House of Seven Gables
http://ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/sgpf.html

(And the Cliff's Notes commentary on that preface:)
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/The-House-of-Seven-Gables-Critical-Essays-Hawthorne-s-Preface.id-18,pageNum-35.html

D. H. Lawrence's essay on "Why the Novel Matters"
http://individual.utoronto.ca/amlit/why_the_novel_matters.htm

Emerson's two-part Eulogy of Thoreau, which appeared in Atlantic Monthly, 1862
http://www.rwe.org/pages/eulogy_of_thoreau.htm

Wordless Wednesday

A Day in Uncle Tom's Cabin

I didn't plan to include with this post the photo of Harriet Beecher Stowe that you see here. I intended instead to use a shot of the cover of her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Yet when I did a "Google images" search to find a shot of her book cover, I could not find one that included her name. Okay, I did find one, but it included the names of illustrator and annotator in such imposing print that their names crowded out hers, which appeared in about 7 point type.

It seemed unfitting that the brilliant, witty, insightful mind behind this work of lit should lose out on one shred of the credit rightfully due her.

As with Dracula, I feel as if I'm reading a book right off the CBA list. (CBA used to mean Christian Book Sellers Association, but then CBA stores added t-shirts and DVDs and such, so CBA now just means C-B-A.)

At any rate, both Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Grapes of Wrath beautifully flesh out biblical teaching on social justice. In reading UTC I have laughed out loud and cried and shaken my head and shuddered and then laughed again. Somewhere I once read that the strongest argument comes with a one-two punch, the second blow being humor. Harriet Beecher Stowe surely knew this.

Both books seem incredibly timely. As if written in our time.

UTC contains much wisdom, revealing insight into how the powerful twist scripture to their own ends. Beecher-Stowe shows how a simple, humble, uneducated soul can have more spiritual insight than all the wise and powerful of this world simply by asking "would I want someone to do this 'unto me'"?

Dracula Surprise

When I was in sixth grade, I invited my neighbor Sara to spend the night. We set up our slumber arrangements on the hide-a-bed in the basement, the only room in the house with a TV. And Sara announced that Psycho was on that night.

Uh-oh.

I hated horror movies. They scared the snot out of me. But I was too cool in the sixth grade to tell someone who regularly watched Dark Shadows and loved Barnabus Collins's character that I was too chicken to watch Psycho. So we watched it. Afterward Sara fell right to sleep. I, on the other hand, sat up in that hide-a-bed until 4 AM, constantly looking around the room to verify that I was safe. Making matters worse was the fact that our basement was only 3/4 below ground level, and up near the ceiling was a long horizontal window. That little ground-level window creeped me out even more. That was the scariest night of my life, and for the next thirty years (no hyperbole here), whenever I took a shower, I would glance outside the curtain to make sure no knife-wielding psycho was poised to get me.

Yes, I hate being terrified. So when I started reading Dracula, a requirement in my PhD aesthetics-of-the-novel reading, I expected to loathe the thing. I certainly did not expect to be edified! But it turns out Bram Stoker was a genius...the different points of view he chose for telling the story, the varying voices of his characters--some of whom were quite lovable, the brilliant way he handled chronology. Not to mention the gripping suspense. All of it--great. And the grandest surprise he delivered was that the novel's overall point of view falls in line with a Christian worldview. Crucifixes have power over evil as does the Host. The Father of all is the laughter-giver. Selfishness is more limiting than others-focused living. Evil is bad; good is worth dying for. Christ is the giver of eternal life. If I didn't know better, I would have thought I was reading the latest CBA release.

I've been told that Christian Horror is a newly emerging genre. But after reading Dracula, all I can say is that it may be emerging, but it certainly isn't new.

Happy Father's Day!

Today I'm grateful for a dad who raised me to camp, sang me to sleep, and never hesitated to get his arm dirty in a clam hole. And I'm grateful for a husband who believed in me before I believed in myself and does the same with our daughter.

Dracula!

I finished Main Street. It moved pretty slowly for the first 3/4 of the book, but the end engaged me. Still, The Grapes of Wrath proved a difficult act to follow.

I've now moved on to Dracula. I started reading it last night while I was home alone for a while, and it was dark outside, and the house creaked (it turned out to be the cat in the rocking chair). I think I'll limit myself to reading this one only during daylight hours!