Spiritual Remembering

I received the information by postcard: Sacred Journey to Greece and Turkey, April 20^th to May 8, 2009.  Join this mystical journey of spiritual remembering. Printed over a photograph of some twenty columns of unknown ruins, surrounded by trees with vibrant pink blossoms, it continued: Embody the energies of gods and goddesses living within these sacred sites.  Listen to your own oracle. Be embraced by the friendliness and depth of wisdom from the people of these great lands.  It was led by a spiritual teacher who was known for her transformative retreats.

I was in at Listen to your own oracle.  I had recently left a ten-year meditation practice after my Buddhist teacher, the only woman priest at the Berkeley Zen Center, had died.  After feeling ungrounded, floating in my grief, I began to follow a religious practice based in mysticism.   

I had never been outside the United States, and at sixty-five I had a feeling it was time.  Though I was happily single, I continued to search for a kind of security beyond myself that I could count on.  Mysticism reminded me that the Absolute is within the human psyche and my practice had become trusting in my spiritual core to lead me and provide for me as my life unfolded.  I did, however, often forget.  

Within days of receiving the postcard, I arranged my flight, and six weeks  later met up with twenty strangers in Athens where we began the journey of visiting the ancient sacred sites of Greece.  It was a whirlwind of bus trips and climbs and endless lines to visit the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Oracle at Delphi, and other ruins and monasteries. I couldn’t get quiet enough inside to meditate or pray.  I was stuck in a left-brain torture chamber of guidebooks, informational talks, and the personalities and opinions of my fellow travelers.  Was this the spiritual remembering that I’d come for? Though we were given much historical information and a chance to explore and experience places I had only seen in pictures, I became weary and over-stimulated with the facts and travel details.  At times it seemed like I was more occupied with remembering what time and where the next bus was leaving and remembering to pee before I boarded.

Midway through the trip we reached Turkey, arriving in Istanbul at the height of the tulip season, where the city pathways were lined with stunning gardens of tulips in red, yellow, purple, pink, and white.  The horizon was graced by minarets, narrow cylindrical towers projected into the sky, from which, we were told, a call to prayer was amplified at dawn, midday, mid-afternoon, sunset and nightfall. We arrived in time to hear the mid-afternoon call. It was a haunting melodic chant that rumbled in my body, stopping me and creating an internal response of deep spiritual connection. My thoughts disappeared, and every part of my body came alive. I felt as if I was breathing in synch with humanity.  Feeling that way five times a day seemed like an impossible luxury. 

I felt excited anticipating the next call to prayer, which would be at sunset.

Along with my fellow travelers, I checked into the hotel. Once we deposited our suitcases in our rooms, our trip guide, Cassie, immediately gathered us together and made plans for an impromptu walk through the neighborhood.  Pappo, the oldest member of the group, immediately disappeared into the hotel’s bar.  A husky red-faced man with a white beard and ponytail, he was a philosophy professor from Philadelphia, and not one for small talk.  I wanted to be alone, so I returned to my room to take a nap. There were many ways to absorb a new city, I told myself.

After awakening a few hours later, I walked to the lobby, a spacious entry way with floor to ceiling windows overlooking tulip gardens. I looked around but saw no one familiar so I decided to explore the neighborhood on my own.  

As I walked through the narrow-curved streets shop-owners greeted me in the local language, of which I was ignorant, and I smiled, nodded and said the only word I knew, merhaba, hello.  I entered a small store to look at the wares of colorful pottery, copper pots, and exotic carpets.  I was particularly drawn to the round glass pendants which hung in the window catching the light.  They were deep blue embedded with a white circle centered by a blue dot.  Though I rarely bought souvenirs, I knew I had to have this.  I slipped some lira from my money belt and offered it in exchange. The shopkeeper took the bills, gave me change and helped me put the pendant around my neck.  Placing my palms together, I bowed my head in gratitude.

As I walked to the next shop I realized dusk was approaching and I needed to get back to the hotel.  I tried to retrace my steps but there was no hotel in sight, nor any response to my frantic efforts to communicate with passers-by. Even if I had met someone who spoke English, I didn’t know the name of the hotel, the address, or the phone number.  I had left the hotel’s card in my room as well as my cell phone. 

The streets were winding and all the shops looked alike.  There were no recognizable landmarks.  

I was lost.  

My thoughts circled back on themselves as I panicked at my inability to ask for help.  I feared that I was permanently separated from my group.   Alone in a foreign country, I was unable to visualize a solution.  I felt increasingly helpless as it got darker.

My heart was pounding so fast I wondered if I was having a heart attack. As I placed my hand on my chest my fingers brushed against the necklace I had bought earlier. I covered the pendant with my hand and in a few minutes my heart stopped hammering.  I focused on my breath.

At that moment the sunset call for prayer began.  The sounds echoed soothingly inside my head.  I sat on a rock under a tree covered with pink blossoms and tried to center myself as I listened to the deep chant-like mantra filling the air as the sun began to set. I felt embraced by the sound, as if a warm light had enveloped me. I looked down and saw a plaque at the base of the tree, written in English as well as Turkish.  Erguvan Tree, commonly called the Judas Tree. 

Suddenly I remembered the name of the hotel. 

The Erguvan Hotel.  

I jumped up and began walking, turning right, turning left with a clarity of intention that seemed to come automatically.  I arrived back at the hotel just as it got dark.

Over dinner, when I told my compatriots my story of getting lost, Pappo  squinted, taking in my words.

“I see you are wearing an Evil Eye amulet,” he said.  “That’s what led you back.  

“An amulet?  For what?” I asked, touching the necklace I had bought earlier.   

 I had no idea what it represented.  I had simply wanted to own it, to wear it.

“Protection.” he said.

It all made sense. My spiritual remembering was not what I had learned or experienced at the historical sites.  It was what I learned from trusting my intuition, my spiritual core, to lead me home.  

Ellen Gerneaux Woods is a San Francisco Bay Area writer of poetry and prose. Her book Warriors in Transition: A Memoir in Twenty-Eight Stories (Word Project Press) was published in 2014, and her chapbook The Watchful Heart Recedes (Finishing Line Press) in 2021. Her work can be found in Persimmon Tree, Monterey Poetry Review, Snapdragon, among others.

She is on the prose staff at The MacGuffin.

Image credit: Kelly Wright via GPT-4o, Ideogram, Midjourney, and Canva