Arriving in Ankara

This is going to be an amazing grace, being in Turkey!

Actually, it feels quite amazing to be here after leaving my friend's apartment in NYC at 1 pm on Wednesday and arriving here at the hotel on Thursday at 4:30 pm. Yes, there's a 7 hour difference, but still.... I'm on an Elderhostel with 30 other folks, and am glad to have a guide to get us around and university faculty to give us lectures.

Ankara is the capital, and it gets its name from the goats that used to be here in abudance--Angora goats. It's in the central region, about 3,000 feet above sea level, and it's in the ancient Hittite Empire. (We go the the Hittite capital Hattusas tomorrow on our way to Cappadocia.)

This area has been ruled by Phyrygians and Lydians, too, before the Greeks and then the Romans got here. Doesn't it sound like the Pentecost Sunday reading? Now I know where these real people lived, and today we got to see some of their art and artifacts. It's truly amazing stuff. At the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations this afternoon, we saw things thayt have great detail and personality. I got postcards with the pictures of the Mother Goddesses, and they are as varied as women are today.

I thought Scotland's Neolithic age was old, but Turkey's Neolithic age was 8,000-5,500 years BCE (before the common era)! Again, I have to pinch myself to see if I am actually here.

And why am I here? Because of two reasons: personally, because of my daughter-in-law's having been born here, and professionally to look at Sufi Islam. I read the New York Times world edition yesterday (at SOME airport!) and Sufism was mentioned on the front page. They were looking at a town in Afghanistan where people learn this tradition, and the paper called it a gentle Islam. More later.