Aleppo

Abraham: Father of Many

It is the end of  day and time for sleep. My nightly ritual as I lay in bed is to say my prayers. As I expressed before in an earlier blog, most of my prayers are of gratitude. And those follow my prayers for peace. In between, I pray intercessory prayers for specific individuals. For the past fifteen months, since April 22, 2013, I have prayed for a father named Abraham.

With Bishop of Syrian Orthodox ChurchIn this case, the father is actually a priest, and more properly, an archbishop. He is in the center of this photo from my trip to Aleppo, Syria, in August, 2010. His name is Yohanna Ibrahim (Ibrahim being the Arabic form of Abraham) and he is the Syriac Orthodox archbishop of Aleppo, Syria. As I look back on this photo, he is surrounded by a group of women who made this journey together – faithful women, we were called for this trip – to travel to Lebanon and Syria and learn of our brothers and sisters in Christ in a land so far from home. (How is it possible that a woman who grew up in the middle of the U.S., in Omaha, Nebraska, could travel so far from home and meet such an eminent representative of a faith that can trace its origins back to the original apostles? On this side of heaven, I will never know!)

He is an important figure in that ancient church, a church that has schools and hospitals, and has a liturgy in a language that is similar to what Jesus spoke while he was here on earth. And after the war broke out in 2011, he was a voice for peace and reconciliation. His voice was silenced along with his Greek Orthodox colleague, Archbishop Boulos Yazigi, when they were kidnapped on that day in 2013, April 22. The story is they were negotiating the release of other hostages when they were taken themselves. There has been no evidence to this day that they are alive or dead. No remains found. No ransom demanded. Just silence. And so I pray nightly between my prayers for peace and my prayers of gratitude for their safe release. They are fathers of many and they are loved and missed. Their voices for peace and reconciliation are missed. Their example and their witness are missed.

Assis Ibrahim and Abuna IbrahimWe were introduced to Msgr. Ibrahim that day by one of his clerical colleagues in Aleppo, another Ibrahim: Assis (Rev.) Ibrahim Nsier, the Presbyterian pastor of the church in Aleppo. Before meeting the archbishop, Assis Ibrahim introduced us to yet another colleague this one named Efrem, a Syriac Orthodox priest (Abuna Efrem) who served with the archbishop in Aleppo. One of my most endearing and enduring memories of that day is this photo of  Assis Ibrahim and Abuna Efrem. They were having a conversation in Arabic together, smiling and laughing as they talked. I asked them what was so funny and they told me they were talking about the differences between different branches of our faiths. “It’s a language issue,” they said. “We split over things we don’t have the words to explain. How do you find the words to explain the mystery of the divine and human natures of Christ in one being?” To this day, it strikes me that I went halfway around the world to see a pastor of our reformed faith having this amazing conversation with a priest of the ancient faith that began in the Middle East. This faith had traveled from one side of the world to the other, reforming and refining as it went, and it still exists in all these expresssions so many decades and centuries later…and we can talk together about it even if we understand it differently. There was peace; there was reconciliation; there was collegiality and conversation. It was the most marvelous picture of the church I have ever experienced.

Abram was called out of his homeland by God and told his descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky. God changed his name to Abraham, father of many. And tonight I am thinking of his decendants that I met in Aleppo and praying that those who call them Archbishop, Pastor, Father, will be able to do so again in peace, continuing the reconciling mission of Jesus.

Amen.

Fragile

Aleppo porcelainI have been reading stories all day long about what is happening in Israel and Palestine, what so many of us refer to as “The Holy Land.” It’s awful. Horrendous. Unspeakable. Tragic. There are so many words to describe what is happening to actual flesh-and-blood human beings in an exchange of bombs and missiles between people whose family histories can be traced back to the same beginnings. They are brothers and sisters, just as we are with them.

I pray, I weep, I mourn. Some days I can’t do anything else. “How long, oh Lord?” is a constant thought.

There are wars going on in lands where I have walked with my brothers and sisters in Christ and they are holy lands to me. Syria. Iraq. Lebanon. The same bone-shattering weapons are flung back and forth between people who have shared the land for centuries. Homes lost. Churches and mosques blown to bits. Cities flattened. A generation of children who, if they haven’t already been killed, will spend their early years in shattered shells of buildings and minds. It’s all so fragile and tonight all I can think of is the broken pieces.

I wrote this poem after a visit to Lebanon when the only way I could visit the pastor I had met in Aleppo, Syria, in 2010 was to hear his voice on a phone. In that long ago summer – only four years ago! – we walked the streets of his city. We worshiped in his church. We saw the reconstruction of a high school for boys. We shopped for treasures in a souk whose aisles stretched into the eternity of the maze it was. I was looking for a set of the small cups and saucers that we were served coffee in everywhere we went. My shopping excursion paid off and I brought home a set of blue and gold china cups and saucers, which sit in my cupboard. Such fragile things, but they are a constant reminder of what has been lost. The church building has been destroyed. The school was bombed and ransacked. The ancient souk is no more. So many have died and the war continues.

Aleppo Porcelain

They sit ensconced upon my shelf
In glorious gold and blue
Perfectly matched for twelve of us
For tea and coffee too

We searched for them inside the souq
We went from stall to stall
‘twas in Aleppo, Syria
Me and Kate and all

We had been served so many times
In every place we went
Dark coffee with such sumptuous sweets
Hospitably, time well spent.

When I look upon the pictures now
Of Aleppo in the news
I see the shattered buildings
Broken homes and scattered shoes
People running for their lives
Their idea of normal is lost
Children crying, people dying
This is what war has cost.

The cups are gone, the saucers too,
The souq is history
All are now but faded scenes
Inside my memory.

But there is another memory
Of another cup and plate
A reminder of a sacrifice
Made on an earlier date
Of one who spilled his blood and life
That we might know forgiveness
The gifts upon these precious plates
Would remind us of the richness
Of life poured out for you and me
In sacrifice divine
Redeeming love for all on earth
For each of us for all time.

Each night as I raise prayers for peace
I ask this Lord of life
That he would send his spirit to earth
To end the days of strife
That he would show us how to serve
With fragile cup and plate
The kind of love he modeled
The love that conquers hate.