An Unexpected Day

            Today was unexpected. But I’ll get to that later. We started out our day with a quick lecture on Orthodoxy and finalizing our questions for our meeting with the Patriarch. I was wearing one of my bowties for the occasions and I was getting some compliment on my style. We left our hotel and went to the Cora Church. As you walked into the church the first thing you saw was a mosaic of Christ with the inscription something along the lines of asf asfa .  On the reverse wall was an icon representing the incarnation of Christ with the inscription containing the uncontainable. The church was small but absolutely beautiful! Every wall was covered with mosaics, icons, or frescos. In the first room there were icons form the life of Jesus, his birth, miracles, death and resurrection. The second room was mainly filled with icons of the Virgin Mary’s life, obtained from a few apocryphal sources. In the last room there was a beautiful fresco illustrating Jesus’ conquering of death, in which he was pulling Adam and Eve out of Hell, Hells gates were broken and the devil was bound up, as Jesus Stood in victory. It was a beautiful image of the power of the resurrection. We had some time to reflect and pray here which was good. Christ’s victory over death is something that we shouldn’t forget and we should think about and praise more often!

            We headed across town to the Church of the Patriarch. We walked into the complex of the Patriarch, and stepped into the small, beautiful and unbelievably ornate church. The images, gold, and interact details were absolutely stunning! After we had looked around the church for a few minutes, we were hit with our first piece of unexpected news. The Patriarch could not meet with us, he was in Athens on an unpublicized journey. We were to be meeting with the Patriarch’s English secretary instead. This was an ironic surprise and really unfortunate. We had all been excited and preparing for this meeting; we had learned about Orthodoxy and had prepared for a discussion with its head. The Secretary we spoke with was himself ordained in the Orthodox church, and happened to be from Chicago before coming to work for the Patriarch seven years ago. Our discussion was helpful and honest, but it wasn’t what we were expecting.  Most of our questions were tailored to His Holiness himself not his secretary.
            We went to the airport to fly to Izmir, in southern Turkey. We would be in Izmir for the next couple days traveling to Biblical cities such as Ephesus and Pergamum.  The flight was supposed to be a short one, maybe an hour long. As we took off a storm was starting to roll in, and there was some slight turbulence, making the take-off uncomfortable. As we reached cruising altitude and the stewardesses started bring out the drinks, everything went really bad. The turbulence had been going on the whole flight, but at this moment the plane dipped and we went into a moment of free fall. Everyone screamed. Almost instantly, the plane regained itself, and then almost instantly, it fell again. More screams. The plane regained a normal flight pattern. Everyone was looking around, talking nervously, or as in the case of one of the stewardess, still screaming and holding on to a seat for dear life.  In these few moments, it really didn’t look good, people were scared, things had moved all about the plane and there was still really bad turbulence. I first thought of God, then I thought of my loved ones, it was terrifying and yet strangely peaceful (this probably isn’t the best word, but I don’t know how to describe it) at the same time. The rest of the flight was very rocky, and the landing was rough, it felt as though we just dropped down.  The whole experience was not good for my neck. The constant and violent jostling really did a number on it; it hasn’t hurt this bad in a while. Beside the pain the flight messed with my head. After an injection in my neck a few months ago I started experiencing some vertigo-like symptoms. They had just started to go away by the time I was leaving for this program, but this movement of my neck brought the symptoms back with vengeance.  All in all, it was not what I wanted from the flight. I’m not excited to take the same flight back with the same airline. The day was definitely not what I expected when I woke up, and not in a good way.