Rev. Nayiri Karjian
By the Rev. Nayiri Karjian,
based on her sermon June 1, 2008 (Houston, TX)
June 1, 2008
The Rev. Nayiri Karjian is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ with Ministerial standing also in the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America. Currently she is the Interim Senior Pastor at The First Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Houston Texas. Since her ordination in 1985 she has served UCC congregations in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, Connecticut and Texas. She is the second daughter of the Rev. Hovhannes Karjian, Former President of the Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches of the Near East, who has served Armenian Evangelical communities in Aleppo and Beirut for over 50 years.
Everyone has a story. Every life is a journey. As a species with the capacity for reflection, we have always contemplated our life journeys. And we have always told stories to make sense out of life, find answers to life’s questions, ponder the meaning of things, and imagine beyond the mundane experiences of everyday life.
From the beginning, humanity has been puzzled by the non-rational aspects of our lives – experiences we cannot explain, truths that do not make sense through rational logic. Stories, legends, myths, even fairy tales have helped us deal with the “non-rational.”
The Biblical narrative as well, tries to make sense of who God is, who we are in relation to the unseen, and what life is about. These narratives comprise a powerful story of Love – an eternal, unconditional, unrestricted love for all. It is this Love that gives our lives meaning. And, it is in this context that I share with you the story of my journey last year to my ancestors’ homeland, Historic Armenia, which is part of modern-day Turkey, followed by a second trip this year.
I was uncertain about my trip last year. I was not sure that I wanted to go to “Turkey,” the place where my ancestors experienced a horrific Genocide, where early 20th century my grandparents and their neighbors suffered unimaginable terror. Armenians had lived for thousands of years in that land, which fell under Ottoman rule.
For years, I wanted nothing to do with “Turkey.” I was not holding a grudge or wanting revenge. I simply wanted to do my part in protest against the Turkish state’s refusal to accept the Armenian Genocide as such and to acknowledge the horror inflicted and the terror lived.
As a human being born on this earth I have felt at home wherever I’ve lived. I consider myself a citizen of the world. If there were such a thing as an international passport, I would have one. I feel strongly that we humans share the earth as our home, no matter where we were born or where we come from.
Yet as an Armenian born in Diaspora, I have lived with curiosity about my roots and about our rich history of thousands of years. I was born in the Arab Muslim world of Aleppo, Syria, where life was generally tribal. I lived in the Arab yet more diverse and open city of Beirut, Lebanon. I now live in the most pluralistic yet culturally Caucasian-dominated United States of North America. I never lived in a place where everyone spoke my first language, where my culture was the dominant one, where my ethnic identity matched my citizenship. As a result, I see clear distinctions between ethnicity, identity and citizenship.
Last year as I was planning for a Sabbatical, I considered a personal pilgrimage to Historic Armenia. As a country Turkey held no interest for me. Historic Armenia did. So I traveled with a French Armenian group, co-led by a close childhood friend, and directed by Armen Aroyan, an exceptional tour guide and organizer. I had never been in Istanbul, yet to my surprise, the moment we landed at the airport, I sensed something deeply familiar. The diverse languages, the manners of dress that surrounded me were familiar since I had grown up in a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern culture where variety was the norm – covered women, shalvared men, women in jeans, men in European suits… were all familiar sights. As we left the airport and began our drive through the city, additional feelings of familiarity crept into my awareness – feelings unexpected and unwelcome.
I began to feel annoyed. How could I feel such familiarity in the place where horrific violence was the experience of my forebears? How could I feel such affinity in a place I had never been before?
I found myself overcome with a variety of emotions, engulfed with feelings of happiness and sadness, peace and rage, joy and anger, love and hate, all simultaneously. For the next two weeks my emotions were blatantly heightened – body, mind and spirit were completely awakened and I was absolutely, keenly aware of every moment, every feeling, every thought, every touch, every sight, every smell, every taste, every sound. I was either on the verge of tears or I wanted to giggle and laugh.
I wondered. Perhaps even Genocide, the obliteration of a whole people, cannot sever the ties we feel to our own story, ancestry and land. Perhaps such an experience can bind us more closely to all humanity. For you see, any Genocide, any annihilation, is not only done to a specific people, it is done to all humanity. If one person in this world is violated, so are we all. If one person is oppressed, so are we all diminished by the experience.
The connection felt deep. The Mediterranean city of Istanbul looked quite a bit like Beirut to me. Some parts looked like Armenia, other parts like Aleppo, still others like the US, Europe or Canada.
The language, Turkish, sounds like Diaspora Armenian (Western Armenian) I grew up with especially by inflection and intonation. In today’s Armenia, which was under Soviet rule until the collapse the USSR, Eastern Armenian is spoken. Its inflection and melody make it sound like Russian. This was fascinating, for the Armenian and Turkish languages are very different.
My grandparents spoke Turkish. So from my paternal grandmother who lived with us until her death, I learned Turkish. She would speak to us in Turkish, we would respond in Armenian. She would, of course, like all grandmothers, speak words of love, comfort and care. No wonder that Turkish sounds intimate and loving to me – it takes me back to childhood!
The food was familiar as well, with comparable spices and flavors. While we in Diaspora share culinary similarities with Turkey, Eastern Armenian cuisine is influenced by Russian fare.
Our journey covered 3000 miles in 13 days in our first trip, and 2500 miles in 13 days this year. We visited the birthplaces of ancestors of all participants in the group, as well as towns of Armenian authors, poets and musicians.
It was in the east of the country, where a small part of Turkey borders with Armenia that I experienced most powerful and overwhelming moments. It was a clear day when we arrived at the foot of Mount Ararat, which with its twin Masis, was simply majestic. Looking at that grand sight, awe and wonder filled my heart. I had seen a clouded view of Ararat from Armenia, where I had been only once during a very hazy August, and only at take off I had caught a glimpse. But now I could see it clearly. It was an amazing moment!
Surrounded by mountains, Lake Van with its numerous islands, had a vast and exquisite presence. The Church Monastery of Aghtamar on one Island with its astonishing collection of paintings, sculptures and engravings, left me speechless. It was an awe-filled moment!
The city of Ani with its grand ruins and magnificent church buildings, all continued to awaken deep emotions of connection, admiration and thanksgiving as well as sadness, loss and sorrow.
The experience was so overwhelming, I could only observe, take it all in, breathe the air, and be grateful for the moment – moment of mystery, awe and wonder, moment of connection, majesty and deep awareness… even if I could not articulate all that it meant.
How could I express such deep feelings, intense emotions and acute awareness and awakening? How could anyone articulate the profundity of the mystical, the intensity of the spiritual? As I stood there wordless, I remembered how in ancient cultures specific sights were proclaimed “sacred.” I wondered if the ancients experienced feelings like mine… emotions that could not be expressed easily, moments of mystical, spiritual and physical connection, which they could not describe with words, and thus called the experience “sacred.”
Then we arrived at Antep and Marash. Many people in Aleppo, my birthplace, had come from one of these cities. Antep boasted a large, grandiose Armenian Church Sanctuary. Today the sanctuary is a mosque. We entered it, and as we did in many other church ruins, sang the Lord’s Prayer in Armenian. When we finished, we noticed our tour guide, a Turkish/Kurdish man, praying in his own Muslim tradition on the other side of the sanctuary. A sacred moment indeed! As sad as it was to have lost the church and the people, a sanctuary is still a place of prayer and mystery, where we connect with God and with one another, no matter the tradition.
In Marash I saw the German orphanage where my grandfather was employed and where my father was born. The building is now empty, half ruined, but standing. I called my father as I stood in the courtyard. Another sacred moment!
Then we were off to Zeytun where my maternal grandparents lived; a small, remote village in a beautiful mountainous area where much blood was shed. There, Armenian inhabitants as well as Turkish soldiers were killed. Our group experienced powerful moments of awareness and mystery there. More sacred moments!
In a remote town of Hamshen, not far from the shores of the Black Sea, we met Hamshenites who spoke old Armenian. These were Armenians who remained on their lands and are now Muslim by faith. Their language and presence, however, told our story and our connection to the land.
It was an amazing journey. An awakening of mind, body and spirit – a sacred journey that leaves me mystified even the second time around. I did not expect this year’s journey to be as powerful, as mystical or as enriching as the first, but it was. It is as if for the first time, in a very tangible way, the story of my ancestors has become mine, and my heart has found the link with the past, as well as the present and the future. The marks my ancestors left behind still stood on the walls of ruined churches, in the form of Armenian scripts and Khachkars, crosses engraved on stones. Sacred artifacts, baptismal fonts, painting all stood as witnesses to Armenian history, culture, and faith, and the people who lived there and died, whose children and grandchildren are now scattered all over the world.
The journey of both years was sacred to me as well as fascinating, exhilarating and heartbreaking. It was sacred to experience such richness of emotion and awareness – to be transported to a different yet familiar world – a world alien yet intimate, foreign yet home. It was sacred to stand where my grandparents had stood, to breathe the air they breathed, to have my skin be touched by the sun that touched theirs, to be refreshed by the water of the spring from which they had drunk, and to gaze at the majestic snowy mountains and the clear blue waters of the lakes and sea. It was sacred to be in the historic places Armenian authors wrote about, poets rhymed about, lyricists harmonized about and musicians sang about. It was sacred to see and touch those places, to physically stand on the land where my story had taken shape even before my birth.
There are no words in any human language that can describe such moments. “Sacred” comes close. These experiences are beyond words. To stand on that land, to realize once again that Turkish state denies the Genocide, claiming that the death of one and a half million Armenians, and the exile of thousands, was simply a side-effect of the war, that there was no intentional ethnic cleansing... that too is beyond words, beyond human expression. It is our history, our story and our experience denied.
I don’t know if you are now hoping for a conclusion. I don’t have one. This story is a journey still unfolding. Yet it is my sacred story, and in some sense, our collective human story, cached in the sacred story of Christ’s Love – that eternal, unending, unconditional Love, which gives meaning to our lives, as well as to the worst of human experiences. Without that Love our lives would be meaningless, and the “sacred” impossible to experience. To that Love I am deeply and absolutely grateful.