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Echoes of The Right to God
Second Place Essay
The Right to God
Alone With Your God
By Frances Melling
Alone With Your God
By Frances Melling
It's Sunday. The roads are quiet, businesses and schools are shut and people sleep late on this day of rest. I am dressed a little
more formally than usual, and I am waiting.
The mosque calls the faithful to prayer. Am I expecting church bells? So am I not one of the faithful? Is it a sin to register the Moslem call as a reminder to pray? Do I offend the church if I remember alone in an alien land? What if I do? Don't I have the right to worship as I wish? No, lady, you don't. Not really. Not here. They could put you in prison for it, and at least make life very difficult. A colleague lost his teaching job instantly when the police caught him handing out Bibles in Turkish on the street in Istanbul. Actually, that was probably deserved. We are not here to proselytize. No matter how right we feel it that people should encounter Christianity.
Encounter? Hardly an adequate word for this country which provided a home for Christians in the very earliest days. John is said to have brought Mary to spend her last days in Ephesus, and in Antioch beleaguered early believers met secretly under the name of Christianity for the first time. Cappadokia's beautiful painted rock churches still attest to faith under pressure. The island of Akdamara in Lake Van shelters graves that seem uprooted from Celtic Ireland, in the shadow of a tiny Armenian church where the story of Jonah and the whale is carved in relief on the outer walls. The seven churches of the New Testament are still pilgrim sites though often precious little remains of an original building. The lukewarm waters of Laodokia give reality to Paul's reproof. But when I have to fill out an official form that asks religion, there is no space in the boxes to write Christianity, though Islam fits perfectly. What does that say about my rights or belief?
That word 'right' has always made me uncomfortable. It seems to imply that someone else does not have that right. Here, technically I have the right to worship freely. There are no other Christians in this little town and no open church, though there are everywhere picturesque ruins of the basilicas and churches of earlier civilizations. I have developed the habit of singing a hymn or a kyrie when I am alone in these places. It makes me feel less lonely and is a kind of tribute to the lost worshippers.
I wonder if it feels right to God. It feels good to me as church buildings generally have flattering acoustics and, at least when alone, making a joyful noise is a release for me, silenced by custom and practice from speaking of my belief. I also fancy that the crystals in the stones are touched by the sounds of worship. Arrogance is easy when alone.
The fellowship of religion is different here. For ten years in Tarsus, when St. Paul's church ---formerly Orthodox--- had been transformed into a car repair shop, we found fellowship in our home-church. We took turns to prepare a service in our home on Sundays. But it always seemed a little ersatz. In Gaziantep, I found a group of international misfits who invited me to join their worship in a bare seventh-floor flat. Speaking in tongues ---many tongues--- these people would sit and pray for hours. Surely little different from the first Christians. They seemed to give no importance to form or theme. My Scottish Presbyterian upbringing did not allow me to find fellowship or peace there. I was disturbed and shocked by the rawness of embattled Christianity, and slunk away.
In the hospital in this alien land, my lovely daughter was dying alone. And I was alone with that. Alone? I was distressed about how to find God, and suddenly the answer was there ---clear, the breakthrough that kept me on my feet.
You just go right to God! God is there for certain. That's the promise. There? Where? Here. Here where I am, however I am, wherever you are. This is the right to God. He gives us the right to find him everywhere ---whatever we call Him. My neighbours, so certain of their Allah are also entitled to the certainty, the right to God. Their message too is love.
As I sit and wait for Sunday to manifest, I am listening to a CD from a friend in Poland. The upbeat gospel choir bounces and bubbles and manifest their own certainty. Theirs is now a Catholic country. Families go to church together and guests go with them. This choir puts out is message in shopping malls and on the streets. A different world, but the same reality.
We do not have to earn it or deserve it. For that is the real right, the God-given irrevocable promise of love, in Islam, in Sufism, in Christianity, in the world. God will not leave us alone.
When everything else is formless or uncertain there is no equivocation about God. We have a God-given right to him ---anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
Even here and now.
The mosque calls the faithful to prayer. Am I expecting church bells? So am I not one of the faithful? Is it a sin to register the Moslem call as a reminder to pray? Do I offend the church if I remember alone in an alien land? What if I do? Don't I have the right to worship as I wish? No, lady, you don't. Not really. Not here. They could put you in prison for it, and at least make life very difficult. A colleague lost his teaching job instantly when the police caught him handing out Bibles in Turkish on the street in Istanbul. Actually, that was probably deserved. We are not here to proselytize. No matter how right we feel it that people should encounter Christianity.
Encounter? Hardly an adequate word for this country which provided a home for Christians in the very earliest days. John is said to have brought Mary to spend her last days in Ephesus, and in Antioch beleaguered early believers met secretly under the name of Christianity for the first time. Cappadokia's beautiful painted rock churches still attest to faith under pressure. The island of Akdamara in Lake Van shelters graves that seem uprooted from Celtic Ireland, in the shadow of a tiny Armenian church where the story of Jonah and the whale is carved in relief on the outer walls. The seven churches of the New Testament are still pilgrim sites though often precious little remains of an original building. The lukewarm waters of Laodokia give reality to Paul's reproof. But when I have to fill out an official form that asks religion, there is no space in the boxes to write Christianity, though Islam fits perfectly. What does that say about my rights or belief?
That word 'right' has always made me uncomfortable. It seems to imply that someone else does not have that right. Here, technically I have the right to worship freely. There are no other Christians in this little town and no open church, though there are everywhere picturesque ruins of the basilicas and churches of earlier civilizations. I have developed the habit of singing a hymn or a kyrie when I am alone in these places. It makes me feel less lonely and is a kind of tribute to the lost worshippers.
I wonder if it feels right to God. It feels good to me as church buildings generally have flattering acoustics and, at least when alone, making a joyful noise is a release for me, silenced by custom and practice from speaking of my belief. I also fancy that the crystals in the stones are touched by the sounds of worship. Arrogance is easy when alone.
The fellowship of religion is different here. For ten years in Tarsus, when St. Paul's church ---formerly Orthodox--- had been transformed into a car repair shop, we found fellowship in our home-church. We took turns to prepare a service in our home on Sundays. But it always seemed a little ersatz. In Gaziantep, I found a group of international misfits who invited me to join their worship in a bare seventh-floor flat. Speaking in tongues ---many tongues--- these people would sit and pray for hours. Surely little different from the first Christians. They seemed to give no importance to form or theme. My Scottish Presbyterian upbringing did not allow me to find fellowship or peace there. I was disturbed and shocked by the rawness of embattled Christianity, and slunk away.
In the hospital in this alien land, my lovely daughter was dying alone. And I was alone with that. Alone? I was distressed about how to find God, and suddenly the answer was there ---clear, the breakthrough that kept me on my feet.
You just go right to God! God is there for certain. That's the promise. There? Where? Here. Here where I am, however I am, wherever you are. This is the right to God. He gives us the right to find him everywhere ---whatever we call Him. My neighbours, so certain of their Allah are also entitled to the certainty, the right to God. Their message too is love.
As I sit and wait for Sunday to manifest, I am listening to a CD from a friend in Poland. The upbeat gospel choir bounces and bubbles and manifest their own certainty. Theirs is now a Catholic country. Families go to church together and guests go with them. This choir puts out is message in shopping malls and on the streets. A different world, but the same reality.
We do not have to earn it or deserve it. For that is the real right, the God-given irrevocable promise of love, in Islam, in Sufism, in Christianity, in the world. God will not leave us alone.
When everything else is formless or uncertain there is no equivocation about God. We have a God-given right to him ---anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
Even here and now.
Frances Melling writes that she moved to Turkey on a two year teaching contract to work at the Tarsus
American School, because the country fascinated her, "And what a thrill to be in Tarsus!" That was in
1981, she is still there and still fascinated. Frances is involved with the British Community Council
Pantomime in Istanbul and is a lifelong writer with three children's books published.