Today begins a trip with forty Torrey students to Istanbul, the coast of Turkey, the islands of the Aegean, parts of Greece, and Athens. Over the next twenty days, I hope to share some thoughts about where we are going and what I hope
Istanbul (the City) is a place that looms in my imagination. As a child the fall of Constantinople was a story, like Atlantis, that seemed more meaningful than most of what was on the evening news. It was important with repercussions that have still not ended . . . unlike most of what we call “news” which only has importance because (today) someone says it has importance. It is the end of the longest road, the Dorothy Lamour that every Bob hopes to find.
Constantinople or Istanbul sits uniting Europe and Asia and no person in the West can ever quite forget it. It is Minis Tirith and a lost dream. As the great city of the Ottomans and of the Ecumenical Patriarch it is not just a new Rome, but the seat of power, spiritual and temporal. As such it became a dream of adventure for generations of writers and artists in the West. Amazingly the real City is greater than the dreams, the true measure of its greatness. Whatever one dreams of the City, the reality is greater. Rome, Jerusalem, and the Constantinople are the models for what a Western city can be.
Some places are like this and have reality that is beyond simple “place.” There are fictional places, like Narnia, which are not real, but have a power derived from their creators and God’s world. There are cities, like dear La Mirada, which are real, but have little identity beyond simply being there. Hope and I have tried to create a home that is not just a “place,” but has character. We are trying to tell a story in our home and not just live in it. Too many people trade up to a faceless McMansion, but never have a home.
This same sort of person thinks Las Vegas is better than Constantinople.
Soon I will be in the City, the great city, of which I have always dreamed. I am flying to Istanbul, the great city of Constantine. Pray for us and for our time in the Great City, the city of dreams.