Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), the building pictured here, can be used as a metaphor for my upcoming pilgrimage to Turkey and Greece. First built as a Christian Basilica by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 532-537 AD, the building originally offered a place to worship the Christian God. In 1453, four minarets and a fountain for cleansing were added by Sultan Mehmet II and Hagia Sophia was converted to the worship of the Islamic god, Allah. Most recently, in 1935 this magnificent structure was converted by Ataturk into a Museum, a building dedicated to the worship of the past. I guess the operative words in the last few sentences are "worship" and "wisdom;" humanity has always recognized the need to venerate the knowledge of what is good and the ability to act according to that knowledge. Hagia Sophia offers us a venue to practice the worship of wisdom, although it is not likely that some abstract higher power could simply endow us with such a gift. Maybe that's what life's journey is all about, worshiping wisdom? That's a good reason for travel--getting out of the ordinary patterns of daily life and trying to make some sense of it all in a larger context. The Greek playwright Aeschylus tells us: "Taught by suffering, drop by drop wisdom is distilled from pain." I have no intention of suffering any pain on this trip, but wisdom would be a nice goal. Having spent a large portion of my adult life in "foreign" cultures, I understand the value of immersing oneself in unfamiliar surroundings, although I'm not really a fan of "travel" per se. It's too uncomfortable, unsettling and generally stressful. Anticipation of the trip is perhaps the best part, with remembering the trip running a close second. The travel itself often rates a poor third. Humans have always been restless creatures, roaming from place to place in search of a scratch to alleviate the itch of living. I've got an itch looking for a scratch. I need to go on a pilgrimage; I'm becoming aged and I seek answers in antiquity. The timing is right, the destinations are right, the company is right, and the blogging turns it into a reflective activity with just the right amount of dangerous connectivity. I need to write with discipline again and bring order into a chaotic universe. Tomorrow I depart--Holy Wisdom is my goal.