Peace of Mind

With two weeks left before Taylor and I leave Istanbul, I find myself spending more and more time on our terrace overlooking Tarlabasi. One reason for this is that spring has come, providing warmth outside from the moment I wake up until well into the night.

Another reason, though, is that from this terrace, my little corner of the city, I can experience some of my favorite things about Istanbul. I can soak in the little things that I will miss most.

I am going to miss the sounds of the city, the calls of the simitci and eskici. The jingle of the propane truck. Even the squaking of seagulls on our roof in the morning and the sexual exploits of our neighborhood cats at night.

From here, you can hear all 5 calls to prayer. The first one rolls over the terrace and through our open door finding its way into my dreams every morning at dawn. The last one comes late, after 10 pm during this part of the year prompting reflection of the past day.

At sunset, the horizon takes the shape of building roofs and minarets silhouetted against the oriental orange sky. For the last few nights the clear night’s sky has allowed us to see the crescent moon align with the brightest star in the sky to mirror the flag of the republic.

During the day, the faint construction noise reminds me that this neighborhood with bad reputation and good people is trying to rebuild itself from the bottom up. The same could be said of the entire country.

The packs of children running wild through the streets remind me that this country is young and nothing if not hopeful for its future.

I can see clearly up here, what Turkey has taught me: simplicity. A food basket descends from a neighbor’s window, filled by the corner store owner and lifted up for the family breakfast. A doner delivery boy waves as he leaves another building. A fruit cart and tea seller bustle below me as I write. They are the symbols of our lifestyle here: Relationships are more important than convenience, and we should not take more than we need. When we buy food, it is for the next meal we will cook. We visit and chat with a butcher, a vegetable stand, a spice man, a wine guy, and on the way home with bags in hand, we stop and have tea with our neighbors. Oh, and we walk to get that food too, because you can’t buy what you can’t carry. We are not ascetics, but we have become minimalists compared to ourselves a year ago. A supermarket will never be the same again.

Mostly, though, I sit on this terrace because I can. Here, I can read, write, study and think in peace. Not peace from the outside world, but peace from within. Turkey, if anything, has given me a different perspective. It’s given me wider view of time through its long history and rapid modernization. A different vision of success through the disparity between its lush opulence and tragic poverty. I have seen a better vision of a community and culture through hospitality and friendship. But, I have also learned that my place in Istanbul is not to judge it or to try and fix it. My place is to enjoy it and celebrate it.

This, is why for the first time in my life, momentary inner peace has come without hurry or worry about the future. I found it in Istanbul. My worst fear about turning back to the states, is that I will lose this. I hope the cultural white noise of billboards and television, of materialism and fear-mongering, of us and them and Armageddon will not strip me of what I have found.

So for now, while I still have them both, I will enjoy this city in peace.

Contemplating teachers and the scientific method

Get out of your comfort zone. Test your beliefs.

I have been thinking lately about teachers. About my teachers. About teachers I know or work with. About myself as a teacher. In my experience, a good teacher gives you knowledge but a great teacher gives you the ability and desire to acquire knowledge. Even after you’ve left their classroom.

I was lucky to have many great teachers. One that has been on my mind lately is my 7th grade science teacher, Mr. Rose. Mr. Rose was a balding, 30-year old hipster with an earring and a sense of humor. It was in his class that I first learned the scientific method. Observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. Repeat. I struggled to grasp the process at first thinking it was a step-by-step procedure that must be memorized. It wasn’t until he told me the simple essence of the scientific method that I understood. You have an idea about the world around you. You make a conscious effort to find out if it’s true. After that, if it doesn’t make sense to you, you change your original idea. Then, test it against the world again. Not a process leading to a definite conclusion, but a never ending way to seek better, more accurate knowledge. Usually, of course, leading to a realization that you are wrong. Always finding more questions that answers.

Science was never my best subject, nor math. Any subject with a clear, distinct right and wrong answer never suited me. So, even up to my last science class in college I never thought much about the scientific method outside of the laboratory. Then, when I began to travel a few years ago, I realized that what Mr. Rose had taught me was not a method of science, but a method for all knowledge.

You begin with an idea, a hypothesis, whether from your own mind, from your parents’ mind, or from a book. You make a specific effort to use your eyes, your ears, your hands, your brain and your heart to examine the world around you – your experiment. You will discover, either your idea holds up or it doesn’t. Your conclusion. You choose to hold onto the hypothesis or reject it and form a new or revised one. But, like in science, you are never finished. You must continue to expand your data base. You must test your ideas and beliefs again and again and again by getting larger and more diverse samples. How do you do this? By traveling. The more you travel, the larger your sample size. Get out of your town. Get out of your country. Get out of your comfort zone. Gain a larger sample size by seeing, hearing and experiencing as much as you can. You may find yourself constantly revising what you thought you knew, but you always be moving towards more precise, accurate knowledge of the world around you. A hypothesis, a belief, left untested or under-scrutinized is not a fact, but only a guess. You must test everything. Accept nothing blindly. Question anything that disagrees with your senses, with this experiment we call life. What Mr. Rose taught me, was not a method for science, but a method for life. Thank you, Mr. Rose for giving me that revelation, even 10 years after I left your classroom.

A Pythagorean Theorem

A^2 + B ^2 = C^2. The Pythagorean Theorem, a mathematical law every algebra student has stumbled over for the past 2500 years. Though we commonly attribute this principle to Pythagoras, we cannot be sure that it he discovered this himself. The Egyptians, the Indians and the Babylonians all seemed to have used this principle at about the same time as the Greeks. Yet, it still bears his name. It is certainly important to learn, and is used everyday by engineers and architects as well as mathematicians and students. However, I can honestly say that I have not used this formula a single time since I left a math class for the last time 4 years ago, despite the assertions of its importance in daily life by the teachers who lodged it in crannies of my cranium. Today, though, I discovered Pythagoras’ greatest work, one which actually belongs to him, and it has very little to do with triangles.

Currently, I am reading The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah. In this book, Karen Armstrong, a former nun, recreates the history that gave birth to profound spiritual insight and our greatest religions: Hinduism and inner spirituality in India, natural harmony and balance in China, monotheism in Israel, and the search for rational understanding in Greece. I am only halfway through this dense text, yet Armstrong has given me a lot to contemplate. Her theory seems to be that out of great violence and distortion of early religions came these achievements that still stand today – for better or worse.

The few short sentences Armstrong devotes to Pythagoras has given me as much to consider as the rest of her book. During the 6^th century BC, at a time when the Greeks were beginning to secularize their political life and gain an understanding of rational and practical pursuits, Pythagoras had a new vision. He devoted himself to the study of mathematics and science, not only as a means to pragmatic improvements, but as a search for divine understanding. He believed that the order of the Gods could be better understood through a exploration of the tangible elements of life. Pythagoras, unfortunately, taught through the oral traditions and we have no first-hand accounts of his teachings. However, it is clear that he influenced many Greeks who followed him including Socrates and Plato. His idea of divine understanding through science, though, was only accepted by a small band of followers. Most who came after him either aligned with his study of math and science or his study of religious philosophy. It seems what he taught as a single subject, what we would now call religious naturalism, was split into two disciplines, defeating his innovative idea entirely.

Pythagoras’ idea was not a new revelation to me, but one I have held for a while. It was only today I discovered it was originally his. To me, the notion came through other great men. Through Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein and others, who all spent their life’s work marveling at the mysticism and magic of the natural order while trying to reconcile the faith’s of their time with their new knowledge.

It should not be surprising that Pythagoras’ vision did not catch on. In his day, the vast majority of the public looked to the established Greek religion and rituals as a way to answer the grander questions of life. Pythagoras, though, was looking forward. Just as many scientific minds have done and still do. They choose to spend their energies searching for the next answer, rather than accepting insufficient ones. Today, too, these scientists live in a time when the world looks backwards, while they eye the future armed with the scientific method, mathematics, logic and reason. There are people out there who are still trying to champion this cause. Scientists and writers, most of whom are a little of both. My favorite being Chet Raymo. Still, though, the Churches, Mosques and Temples fill around the world while religious naturalists’ books and websites receive minimal attention. People still walk this Earth, believing it is only 5000 years old and are filled with wonder at this notion. Yet, the real creation story, the billions of years it took to forge our universe is much more imaginative and inspiring, while still leaving plenty of metaphysical questions to ponder.

I can’t help but feel slighted that in my public high school I spent great lengths of time studying the principles and history of the great religions and was repeatedly told of the importance of the Pythagorean Theorem and other math equations. But not once was Pythagoras’ greatest work, his attempt to meld the spiritual and the scientific, mentioned. Not a single sentence in a textbook or a side note from a teacher. It wasn’t until my last two years of college that I realized this was an established school of thought and not until today, that I realized its origins. Instead, I went through high school and college believing this was just an idealistic notion that I couldn’t shake. That it was somehow strange to feel that that science was our best bet to answering the unanswerable and that this, like religion, could also be transforming, awe-inspiring and magical.

But what can be done? We live in a world where some schools teach creationism in science class as an equal to Darwinism. Where people use the word believe in front of the word evolution. We live in a world where people forcefully push religion as science. Why then, is it so unfathomable and unpopular to push science as religion?

An Interesting Theory

If you read enough philosophy, metaphysics or any other discipline for people with too much free time and no job, you will come across an idea about time and dimensions. Specifically, that all time exists at once. Time as the fourth dimension. However, us humans, being three-dimensional creatures cannot perceive it this way and thus travel linearly through time. If you percolate on this concept long enough, it can become unendingly interesting. Just as the metaphoric two-dimensional Flatlanders can’t see depth, so too can we not see time. Except, as it turns out, in Istanbul.

Walking through this city, this crossroads of civilizations, you can see through the centuries. As you walk through the Grand Bazaar, to the superficial eye you see only knockoff handbags, apple tea and pushy salesmen. The only obvious hints at its age and experience are the tiles on the ceiling and the date on each of its entrances – 1461. However, as you let yourself sink into the place and get lost amongst the aimless corridors time can appear to fold on itself. You can see it not as item on the standard tourist checklist, but as the center of commerce and finance in the known civilized world, 500 years in the past. The obnoxiously ostentatious tour buses that park themselves along every neighboring street, like the Bazaar’s personal city walls, they fade away. Instead, you see them as modern-day camels, donkeys, horses and carriages. You can see the Indian tea leaves, the Persian saffron as they journey to the market, now manifested in the powdered and packaged apple tea. Chinese silk that once traveled across a continent to be traded here, has so too traveled through the centuries to become the soft and ornate scarves sold for a mere five lira.

At Aya Sofya and the Sultanahmet Mosque, the story is the same. Today the area is a mix of tourists who come to to take photos and Muslims who come to pray. However, if you take the time to pause, to breathe in the sticky Bosphorus air, you can see pilgrims. People who risked their lives to come and pray at these magnificent monuments to God. Byzantines and Ottomans stand outside in the courtyards and gardens awaiting the call to prayer or their Sunday sermon. You can feel them. That is, if you take your eye out of the viewfinder.

Everywhere you go in the city, the blue waters of the Bosphorus are not far off. You can feel its breeze and smell its salt. The ferries shuttle businessmen from Europe to Asia and back every twenty minutes. Men defy fate by leaping from the boats across meters of open space just to make their meetings on time. But these are not the only ships. Out of your peripheries, if you choose, you are sure to catch a glimpse of the ghosts. Greek and Romans explored these waters as they filled in the edges of their map. Byzantines used these waters as the trade center of the world. Alongside the steel ferries of today reside these timeless boards, beams and sails, just waiting to be acknowledged.

In 1453, the Byzantines, in a last effort to save their capital and their Empire, strung a chain across the Golden Horn to prevent the approaching Ottoman ships from entering the harbor. Mehmet the Conqueror, one of the greatest Ottoman Sultans, determined to take the city, ordered his ships out of the water. If you look West of Topkapi Palace and North of Sultanamhet, to this day you may see the sails of Mehmet’s navy being rolled across olive-oil soaked timbers into the Golden Horn, sailing across the land and bypassing the Byzantine Empire’s last defense, ushering in the longest lasting of the medieval empires. At least, I see it.

Walking down Istiklal Cadessi (Independence Street) in Taksim you will surely play human pinball as you bounce off the tourists and Turks that pack the street. But, that bustle is a relatively  sensation. As you walk by the Flower Passage, the Fish Market and the Alkazar Theatre, over the noise of the crowds you can hear the artists, writers, academics and politicians as they enjoy their first taste of true Independence in the early days of the Turkish Republic.

This city is alive with its own history. It is impossible to miss. Just as each person is a product of their own life’s experience, so too is this city’s character a result of each day in its history. With New Rome, Constantinople, Byzantium, Istanbul, the past is so rich and full that it is tangible. It hangs in the air. You can taste it, touch it and at times even see it as if all its years were layered over one another.

But, seeing the past, that is the easy part. The theory goes that all time exists at once. Past, present and future, as we see it. So, then, what can be seen in the future of this city? What is written in the cobblestones and what can be read on the faces of Istanbul? First, it is not too grand or too broad to say that the future of this city could be a microcosm for the future of the world. Collisions of cultures and people centuries old have forged this city into a global community. After all these years, it is still where East meets West.

Today, our metro ride provided a telling image. A woman in her early twenties, tattooed and pierced with a striking pink streak through her hair was jolted as the train came to a sudden stop and she bumped into the forty-something woman in front of her. The second woman wore a head scarf, long trousers and a trench coat – typical uniform for Istanbul’s devout Islamic women – and both women laughed while joking in Turkish. Only then did we realized they were mother and daughter.

This generation of Turks is not unlike this generation of young Americans. While their parents may have known only their own culture, history and religion, their children have access limitless information. A generation gap like none other in history. Thanks to the internet, no longer do you have to ask “What do I know?” Instead you ask, “how much do I care to find out?”

With that sudden influence of information, money, business and materialism, this city, like America, could be in danger of consuming its way out of its own culture and character. It won’t, though. Like the mother and daughter laughing on the train, the past and future seem to shake each other’s hand here in Istanbul, just to let one another know, “you’re alright by me.”

This city, this world, will find a balance between pay-day and piety. Istanbul has shown me that it is only a matter of when.

Now you`re speaking my language!

Right now, I am not only a language teacher, but also a language learner. From this, a few things have become clear. The most obvious is the immense amount of patience it requires to do either. English and Turkish have nothing in common. An English sentence is strung together by adding words, Turkish by adding suffixes. English is a language where you must learn the grammar rules, only to get confused by the amount of exceptions that exist. Turkish seems to follow its rules much more closely.

An example. In English, a simple sentence would be “You know.” To make it negative, we would say “You do not know.” But in Turkish, to say “you know,” would be “biliyorsun,” the present continuous form of bilmak (to know). To make it negative you add a suffix and it becomes “bilmiyorsun.” In English to make it a question, we would say, “Don’t you know?” or “You don’t know?” In Turkish, though, we would add another suffix representing a questioning inflection. The sentence becomes “Bilmiyormusun?”

Another simple and very useful sentence is “I would like to drink an Efes beer, please.” In Turkish you could say “Bir tane Efes içmek istiyorum lutfen.” Literally translated this would be “One each Efes to drink I am wanting please.” Almost an opposite grammatical structure.

Let me lay it out clearly – my Turkish is terrible. I have been here two months and know only a handful of vocabulary words. Most of them are useful only in a bar. But, because I understand some basic grammar, I can use a pocket dictionary to find the vocabulary I need and get by. My students are not as lucky, because with English, there is always an unknown exception or a misused preposition.

The thing is though, for me the language barrier is not much of an issue. The Turkish people have shown unending patience when I try to communicate in Turkish. Most of them are shocked to hear the language come from an American man’s lips. This is enough to get many of them excited.

Yet, would it be this way if I sent my beginner English students to America? Would my country appreciate the effort and courage it takes to communicate with native speakers, as their country has done for me? No. Not at all. I can hear the responses now. “You came to America, now learn the damn language!” There would not be much patience for it, if any.

Even those who are vigorously attempting to learn the language need a grace period. You cannot get off the plane or boat and magically absorb the language. Yet, that is what the majority of Americans expect. In some ways, this hostility probably turns people away from learning English and isolates them within a network of their own nationality and language. This forms places like “China Town” and “Little Italy,” where sections of cities have become dominated by one non-native culture and language. Well, here in Istanbul, there is no “Little America,” or “English Town,” quite possibly because the native population doesn’t force language learners into isolation.

As I travel more, it is becoming clear that hostility towards language learners is not typical. Most people seem to be surprised and maybe even flattered that you are trying to learn their language. If only we Americans could put our ego aside and see it the same way.

 

Shepherds of Men

“Teacher! You are Catholic?” one student shouted during a break between classes as I scrawled the next lesson on the white board.

My heart dropped. I knew where this was going. I didn’t turn around. Kept on writing.

“Not Catholic.” He concluded.

“Teacher! You are Orthodox!” A female student guessed.

I couldn’t help but snicker at the thought, but I managed to keep my face to the board and my pen moving. I had heard from other teachers that this would happen. Students will ask you questions you might find inappropriate, like what your religion is. The best thing to do was ignore it. Any answer you give would warrant a gasp from them. It was a trick. There was no right answer.

“Ah! You are American. You are Protestant!” the first student guessed confidently.

When I didn’t respond, he walked up to me, leaned in close until I turned to him instinctively. In his most serious tone he said, “What? You do not love Jesus?”

I started to laugh, at the lunacy of their expectations that I could express my religious beliefs through one word – Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant – especially to a group of beginning level English students. Would the word “Muslim” satisfactorily describe their beliefs? And then it hit me. Yes. Yes it probably would. Just as it one word could probably describe most people in the United States to their own liking. Then, just as my student exclaimed from the pages of his English-Turkish dictionary “Ah! Atheist!” I thought, who led these people into these boxes? Into these labels? And how can they be led out of them?

Over the last few thousand years it has been priests or scholars of different religions that have done the leading. They have taken God’s words, interpreted them and distributed them to the masses. The people, for the most part, don’t have to think much about it. They simply haven’t been smart enough, or inquiring enough to play this role for themselves. They must trust God’s middle man. A Priest, a Rabbi, an Imam, a Yogi, they all play this role as a Shepherd of Men, guiding them to God’s word. Or, at least, their interpretation of an oral tradition passed down over generations and written down years later as God’s Word.

But today, we are in a new age of scientific discovery and knowledge. We dive into the ever more detailed processes of our own brain and body and search the ever greater and expanding world of the cosmos. Tell me, who is to interpret this? These discoveries are profoundly more spiritually enlightening than the books that people look to today. They are not only more verifiable but they also tower over those books with their vastness, depth and stupefying splendor. The truth when it comes to the nature of our universe, to God and to the world around us – the facts – as it turns out, are way more interesting than the fiction.

Yet still, we remain in a world where these discoveries exist without a force to champion them. It took centuries for the great religions of our world to grow, develop and flourish. They did so through disciples, through missionaries and most often, through swords. So who then will be the disciples of the cause of science and what means will they use? Who will take this grandiose gamut of knowledge and relate it to the common man?

You would think, the scientists themselves would be the best choice. But if that is true, where are they? Why aren’t they more well known? A few do try. Richard Dawkins, a truly great evolutionary biologist, has become the champion of what is known as militant atheism. Though, that title seems a bit overdone. Militant Christians bomb abortion clinics, militant Muslims train in terrorist camps and all Dawkins does is ask questions and state facts. Go figure. But, it seems, despite his scientific reputation, he puts off more people with his proselytizing than he attracts. It is simple to see why. To a scientist, the importance of their work is obvious. To the common religious person convinced of their own path, it is irrelevant.

There isn’t anyone out there to be the middle man for science the way the holy men are middle men for God. There is a need for somebody to step in and show with clarity and charisma that this is relevant. To show that scientific understanding is the way to understanding our universe and therefore also God.

Who will step up in our 21^st century? Who will spread the gospel of science and how will they win the people’s hearts? They certainly won’t be using religion’s historical standby – violence. The use of missionaries at first seems equally as wrong. Until you consider this: would not a missionary of science be a teacher? An educator? And who could argue that the spread of factual knowledge is a bad thing. Or, that many places outside our first world (and some within it) would benefit greatly from more experienced and informed teachers?

As for the how, I believe if you can capture their imagination, the rest of them will follow. Knowledge isn’t only contagious, its addicting. If you put the Hubble Telescope’s photos against Van Gog’s Starry Night, the painting won’t even stand a chance. Van Gog may be able to show you the humility of the small town before God’s Night Sky, but its the Hubble that can put that humility directly into your heart.

The void in our world of a scientific middle man seems obvious. But what is not obvious is who will fill it. Who will be the next great Shepherds of Men and in what direction will they take us? Scientists? Writers? Artists? Philosophers? You? Me? Will anyone take up the challenge, and if they do, are they likely to succeed? Or, did the violence of times past entrench the great religions so deeply into the culture and geography of our world that to replace them with anything else, anything more progressive, anything more useful is impossible?

We are all Russian boys

Fyodor Dostoevsky

How have Russian boys handled things up to now? Some of them, that is. Take, for instance, some stinking local tavern. They meet there and settle down in a corner. They’ve never seen each other before in their whole lives, and when they walk out of the tavern, they won’t see each other again for forty years. Well, then, what are they going to argue about, seizing this moment in the tavern? About none other than the universal questions: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who don’t believe in God, well, they will talk about socialism and anarchism, about transforming the whole of mankind according to a new order, but it’s the same damned thing, the questions are all the same, only from the other end. And many, many of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk about the eternal questions, now, in our time. Isn’t it so?

Fyodor Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”

This morning, I was rudely awakened from my half-sleep as this passage flew off page 234 of “The Brothers Karamazov” and bludgeoned me with a small piece of eternal truth. As it turns out, we are all Russian boys. We settle in a stinking tavern, or in a stinking city, halfway around the world to seize a brief moment. We flow in and out from every corner of the world. A new face every week and a friend gone every month. We share witticisms and wine. Adventures and alcohol. We pleasure ourselves with mental masturbation, talking politics, religion, culture, and philosophy all in the ruse of being some kind of enlightened seeker. We share laughs at those who seem ignorant and simple compared with us, the great philosophers. Never admitting and ever skirting the possible truth. That maybe, this quietness of mind, this contentment of the soul that we trample on is a virtue. One that we were not blessed with. In the end, who is more foolish, he who asks questions with no answers or he who asks not at all?

Are you there, Universe? It’s me, Matt.

Writer’s Note: I try not to abuse your loyal readership by dropping heavy subjects on you too often. But in a middle-of-the-night moment of clarity and lucidity, I wrote this. And, as the scorpion said to the frog, it’s in my nature.

Image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, nicknamed the God's Eye Nebula.

I pick up my pen here, tonight, in my tiny Tarlabasi apartment, very warily. I am unsure whether my talents are up to the task I have my mind set upon, so I will proceed with caution. I intend to describe God as I have come to understand the concept. But, then again, perhaps I am not writing these words myself but transcribing them as they travel past me in the infinite time and space. Who knows?

I was born a Christian. Baptized as a baby, like so many others, by my parents and my Grandfather, who was a Pastor at our local Congregational Church. From what I know of him in this time of his life he was a true shepherd, acting as a Northern Star in the night’s sky to a flock who refused to look up from their Book to notice. He, to this day, is my unspoken spiritual guidance counselor. Always reminding me through his presence and character alone to trust myself, my instincts and my sense of wonder.

I was a Christian. After all, how can you say no to a man who only wanted to love everyone, and for everyone to love one another. It is the simplest and purest message. And one that should have stuck with more of his followers. I wondered, as so many who meandered out of the Church in pursuit of knowledge did – why was this not the central theme? Not accept Jesus or go to hell, but accept love as best you can or live your life devoid of it.

The questions I had and the answers I sought are standard for the intellectually curious and they don’t need to be repeated here. In fact, I couldn’t do them justice. That I found the process of questioning itself to be demonized by most was enough for me. God gave me a brain and I intended to use it to the fullest capacity.

Of course, in faith, questions lead to more questions and rarely lead to answers. Except when your faith is Science. In this I invested. Originally to mankind, religion was the answer to the unanswerable. The Sun was God. The Rain was God. They gave life each day, each season without end. But we learned. We used our brain, our eyes and mostly our time, and found out that we are not the center of our Universe. We orbit the Sun. The rain is the same recycled hydrogen and oxygen that has supplied us for our entire existence. So then, naturally, what of life and death?

Science has not answered all these questions and your guess is as good as mine. However, Science has shown us that we are but a small blue marble orbiting a tiny star on the outer edge of a spiral galaxy – one of millions of galaxies in existence over the breadth of millions of light-years. The idea of a giant man (or woman) heavily invested in whether a teenager masturbates or an African uses a condom becomes ridiculous with this knowledge.

So, I became an atheist. The big A. Became is the wrong word. I titled myself atheist. To show my rejection of the pervasive myth of the giant man in all his incarnations. Yet, here I am, attempting to describe God.

The term atheist was not nihilistic as many seem to think. Rather, it is empowering. It’s liberating. No longer boxed in by religious texts or preconceived notions, finding wonder was easy. People on this Earth search thousands of miles and many lifetimes to see God. Some go crazy trying, while others find him in Rorschach test tortillas shaped like the Holy Virgin. But how many of these people have sat and pondered the magic that is photosynthesis? Or the transformation of a caterpillar into a cocooned soup of matter and finally into a stunning butterfly? How many have thought of the evolution of a plant ovary into a deliciously crisp Granny Smith apple? If you want to find God, it is in the so-called little things.

Suddenly, and much to my own surprise, to deny God was insulting. I saw the organic harmony of it all, the connectedness, not only between people but between everything.

In the beginning… matter explodes. Stars form and stars collapse. Matter, molecules, elements, they travel the light-years and bond to one another, repel one another and create new, different and beautiful things. And around one of these fiery gas balls a planet forms, molten and destructive. After billions of years, it cools off with just the right amount of each element to create a microorganism – life. After another billion years, after failed experiment after failed experiment, a creature comes about with a mind of self-awareness. The machine has become conscious. Was it intentional? No. Was it wonderful? Was there God in the process? Absolutely. Or rather, the whole process is God.

A tree gives you oxygen. We give it carbon dioxide. Dead animals feed us and fertilize the next generation of trees. It goes on.

As humans, we come from apes. Admit it, its okay. Anyone who has seen a couple fight in another language can see it isn’t much different from watching two gorillas stomp around making angry noises at the zoo – it appears very important to them, you don’t understand what is going on and it really won’t matter to anyone in ten minutes anyway. But this evolution is our connection and it too is God.

As humans, this universal connection is mostly felt between us and other humans. Shared humanity. We love. We feel deep tenderness, sympathy, empathy and pity for others. We create babies. Our babies then love and then run the emotional gauntlet as well.

See, God is that sometimes tangible web of connections and relationships between everyone and everything across all of space and time. To acknowledge, accept and rejoice in each of these connections, that is to love. To deny or neglect them is to hate and divide. It is both infinitely simple and infinitely complex.

Want to experience God? Inhale, then exhale. Take oxygen, give carbon dioxide. Fuel your body. Fuel a tree. Same as the apes before you and same as the people next door to you. Inhale. Exhale. Infinitely simple. Infinitely complex. Just breathe…

Mother Nature’s Reminder

Istanbul floods.

On Monday night Taylor, myself and our two friends Chris (Mook Fish) and Bev sat at a sidewalk cafe less than a block from our lojman (temporary apartment) smoking nargile and drinking beer, like many nights so far. Except this time it was pouring down rain. Small rivers ran down the middle of the sidestreet carrying cigarette butts and ill-prepared women down toward Istiklal Cadessi, the main drag of Taksim.

Last night, I sat in bed with my windows open listening to the rhythm of the downpour and the bass beat of thunder as they continued into the second day. The lightning would flash, momentarily illuminating my new city. I was not thinking of the danger, but the beauty. I like the rain, especially after a week of humid Mediterranean heat. I kept thinking about the balance, that the rain and water and the heat were all necessary for one another and that the city was glistening from it.

Since my arrival here I have been madly in love with Istanbul and all of the magnificent things Taylor and I have seen and explored. Because of this and despite many opportunities to become pessimistic and frustrated, I have purposefully seen the city through the most glowing of prisms.

However, just as the rain and the heat must balance, so must the bad and the good. Today, as we walked through our dried-out neighborhood, trying to solve our petty personal problems, we stopped to ask for help in an upscale hotel. On the screen in the lobby were images from a third world flood, I thought. People were climbing out of cars as they swept down the street while others reached for the hands flailing as they were taken down the road with the current. The reporter then began speaking in Turkish, and I didn’t so much recognize it as know it instantly in my heart. It was Istanbul. It was the road we took from the airport to the city the first night. And, it was buried under water.

From the same storm that I watched from our lojman, the same storm in which I saw such harmony, nearly 30 people were killed. Most of them drowned in their cars under a flash flood from the hardest rain this city in 80 years.

I still believe there is harmony and balance in nature, even in this case. But, every so often the nature of the universe must remind us that it has these aspects — beauty, balance, harmony, agony and destruction — and it has them only on its own terms. This randomness, this unpredictability and the ongoing paradox of beauty and agony cannot be taken halfway. To see only the good is to see no good at all. It demands to be taken as a whole.

Today, it demanded it of me, at least.

For a better look at the flood, watch the video on this NY Times page:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/world/europe/10turkey.html?_r=1