This morning, we made the acquaintance of His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople at the Orthodox Christian Patriarchate. Patriarch Bartholomew is, perhaps, the most genuinely warm, positive person I have ever met. That any of us have ever met, in fact. What can only be described as pure good will seemed to radiate from him from the moment he entered the meeting room, where we had been neatly ranged on two parallel rows of cushy red chairs. Marie set up her tripod with Olgu, who was acting as our temporary production assistant even though he owns his own production company. We had been instructed to have our legs uncrossed and our collars buttoned, and Krzysztof had a box of Turkish chocolates on his lap, a gift for the Patriarch, and was anxiously rehearsing a brief missive of thanks. We waited for about 20 minutes before being informed that a meeting with diplomats had run longer than expected, and we would have to rearrange the schedule to explore the Patriarchal library and cathedral before our meeting rather than after.
Environmental Consciousness via Patriarch from Ross Institute on Vimeo.
This wasn't the worst thing to happen, we were all nearly breathless with anticipation, having only ever seen this leader of 300,000,000 orthodox Christians worldwide before in a 60 Minutes interview filmed last December during His All Holiness’s visit to the United States.
An orthodox priest and deacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Father Nephon gave us a tour of the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George the Tropiophoros in Constantinople, somberly explaining that few relics remained after the 4th Crusade. A native Chicagoan, Father Nephon’s accent disguised his English enough to prompt us to question which part of Turkey he hailed from. He laughed and told us he had family in Gary, Indiana and had gone to College of the Holy Cross before moving (permanently) to Istanbul.
We were allowed to explore the library which was filled with priceless manuscripts and books preserved carefully in boxes. The archivist selected a 12th century manuscript, The Lives of Saints, to show us. By coincidence, it just happened to be what Father Nephon had just finished reading, in its modern form.
His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew welcomed us warmly around noon reading a warm and congratulatory letter to our delegation and Mrs. Ross about her contribution to the field of education. He told us he was happy to meet with ambassadors of the Ross School and expressed admiration for our mission, to promote global awareness and tolerance across faiths and cultures.
The following is the basic script for my podcast, about Patriarch Bartholomew’s environmental activism:
His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, or Bartholomew, as he prefers to be called, was dubbed “The Green Patriarch” in 1996. This title is well deserved, as Patriarch Bartholomew has worked extensively with environmentalists, climatologists, and religious leaders in efforts to overcome differences and unite people in cooperative environmental action. From the Amazon to the Baltic Sea, His All Holiness has held symposiums for religious leaders and preeminent scientists, providing them a venue to discuss issues of climate change, deforestation, overfishing, and toxic waste management and to formulate potential solutions to these problems.
He is the first religious leader of his stature to have made environmental issues a central issue in his campaigns. It is a sin, Patriarch Bartholomew says, to harm God’s creation; every living thing and ecosystem is sacred and must not be abused or destroyed. The issue of global warming…
His efforts are based in a vision of a scientific and theological communities coming together over a common reverence for nature. His symposia become an arena for both communities to give each other the time of day: for the scientists to voice their empirical data and propose a course of action, and for the religious leaders to voice philosophical ideas about the way such science should be conducted. Patriarch Bartholomew hoped the fragile state of the environment would help to reconcile the two communities who have long been at odds over issues such as the creation theory, stem cell research, and human cloning. Because there is no separation between nature and religion, just as there is none in nature and science, the natural world is common ground over which politics, religion, and science might unite to face threats that affect the entire human community.
Following this meeting, we went on a walking tour, and then to lunch at a restaurant that felt like it went three miles into the building. The lobby was filled with preserves marked with dates, carrots from 1976, figs from 1984… The food was great, as usual, and there was lots of it. We finished with five kinds of dessert, several of which were infused with rosewater, and Turkish tea and coffee.
The remainder of the afternoon we were free to explore the Taksim, regarded by locals as the city center, with chain stores as well as small shops and restaurants. In the evening we went to see a performance of Whirling Dervishes at a venue for ethnic dance concerts that, personally, I thought was fantastic. It was really beautiful to see the dancers in such profound meditation, spinning and spinning and then stopping short and moving back into formation with no dizziness (evident) at all. Their dance expresses the mourning of the death of Rumi while the spinning allows these Sufis to release from this existence into a mystical state of ecstasy and union with the divine.
Shola:
The second best part of today in my eyes, after meeting the spiritual leader of more than 300 million people, was a little snack Sylvia and I enjoyed in the Taksim neighborhood. While walking down a side alley we became entranced with a woman rolling out and cooking flatbread. We decided to share a taste at the restaurant. We ate a cheese, spinach and onion filled crepe of sorts. It was so delicious! No single component overwhelmed any other, the blend was superb. It was a nice taste of Istanbul from the street!
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