Greetings from Teheran!

Greetngs everyone,

It is already the end of our first week in Iran, which we have spent primarily in Teheran; the internet connection is back on at the hotel, and there's a little time to send a letter home.

The first impression I've had since settling in here is that Iran is so....normal. Comparisons aren't always the best way to describe things, but looking around, it's pretty relaxed compared to several other places I've been. I am reminded of Geneva more than a war zone; or even Minneapolis more than the movie set for Not Without My Daughter. There are mountains covered in snow, maple trees and evergreens, traffic circles and traffic jams, hardware stores and fashion districts. There's several churches, and also movie theaters. There aren't very many pictures of government officials or clerics all over the place. In fact, you don't really see a lot of soldiers or police monitoring the populace, at least to the extent of other countries (including Geneva, or Chicago!) There are an incredible amount of gardens and public parks and fountains and multiple world-class museums.

I could speak a little to the role of women here--again, it's more relaxed than you or I might imagine. There are a few women here and there who wear the full black shroud, or chador; however, most women wear knee-length coats of varying styles and colors, and wear their headscarves lightly--usually with beautifully-styled hair showing in front. I should also mention here that women don't really wear skirts, but designer jeans and slacks are the norm under the garb. Most wear far more makeup than I ever have. Overall, most look like hip urban women might in the West, especially so now that it's winter.

Women drive, and work, and go to university; we've actually been politely inundated with female students who are on field trips to most of the places we've visited. We met a class of third and fourth graders along with their English teacher at one stop; and we also visited with art students and engineering students along the way. My farsi is limping along, but is definitely helped by these frequent encounters with the curious students. I keep trying to use my Arabic, but it's useless here except for a few cognates. My few words of Turkish and some French are far more helpful.

A highlight so far has been visiting the Teheran Peace Museum, which is part of the international network of peace museums, including those in Hiroshima and Chicago. Much of it is dedicated to the Iran-Iraq war, especially the victims of chemical warfare--several of whom we met while visiting there. These memories still loom large in the national consciousness, and Iranians are sensitive to talk of life in Iraq, so I don't mention this often. Many do feel a common cause with the victims of Halabja and are angry that Saddam was not tried for the chemical attacks against Iranians. They feel forgotten.

Iran is primarily a Shi'a Muslim country, however, it gets expressed differently here than it does in Iraq or Lebanon or Syria. You don't see the pictures of the Shi'a patriarchs that cover all the buses and houses and walls of observers in the other countries. Many of the customs that are followed in Arab Shi'a populations are not observed here. Iranian Shi'a pray three times a day here rather than five; and there is a Friday mosque, similar to a cathedral, that is different than the small neighborhood mosque that you might go to the rest of the week. You don't hear the call to prayer here in central Teheran as clearly as you might in cities of the Middle East. Some locals have remakred that they consider Sunni Islam far more conservative.

But perhaps the most noticeable thing to mention is how much pride Iranians take in being Persian. We hear constant reminders that Persians are not Arabs; that Persians have had their own beautiful culture for centuries and also before Islam; that they consider themselves a Persian country before a Muslim one; and I believe this has much to do with the quality of museums and public works and art and architecture. Iranians are quick to point out also that they are not part of the Middle East, but of Central Asia, and their language and customs and histories are different. And this is true; the landscape is for the most part quite different from the Middle East, as noted above.

Otherwise, we've had several long days and I get back to my hotel room completely exhausted. The food is for the most part wonderful and I've eaten more here than I probably have all semester. Fortunately, I'm also walking a lot. Some days I wear my black abaya (a long, narrower robe), but Iast night I also bought a manteau (the knee length coat), which either makes me look chic with its pattern, or also perhaps like a couch, but the price was right. The weather has been mostly cool, but sunny except for today's chilly rains. Tonight we fly to Shiraz, then work our way back north over the next week to Esfahan, Qom, and finally back here to fly home. I'll try to write if I can, but expect that most of my stories will have to be saved for my return.

peace to you all, and hope to see you soon!

Le Anne

Worshipping Jesus as Phallic Symbol

Have I really written this much all at once? I guess my mind-talk is going full speed and I need somewhere to disperse it.

I am up late on a Saturday night, which comes before Sunday morning, which I am beginning to dread. I am the young pastor who is less than excited to see my church, the source of many good jokes. I may have written about this before. But it's about this time of night I recognize how frustrated I am and that I'm in for a long ride between now and May. I also know it's dangerous to write about one's parish in public, but I'm also not saying anything here I wouldn't say to them directly. Perhaps this is a rehearsal for what I know I need to say.

Basically, when newcomers visit our church, they leave more depressed than they came in. When I introduce myself before the service and invite folks to social hour afterwards, they're interested. After service, they shift their feet and claim to have things they forgot they needed to do. Our congregation has a wonderful history of progressive social action, but this is not reflected in our worship service. Instead, our worship service emphasizes male-dominant language for God. We also use lots of thees and thous and thys and sitteths, even when modern-day translations are printed right next to these, and we're not a particularly high church. Most of our music and language pre-dates both the Civil Rights Amendment and the Equal Rights Amendment. Never mind that in our denomination there's a mandate to use language that is welcoming to all and a blend of music that is welcoming to all as well. Yes, in the PCUSA, you are required to be welcoming in worship to people who are three months old to three hundred, regardless of race or nationality or gender. That's one of the things that made me choose it. But that is lost on our church. No, upon first visit, even though our church is equally racially and gender-mixed, you would get the sense you have shown up at a stiffly conservative backwater. Worship here is like going to a funeral, even on the sunniest summer day: the tone is somber, the music often slow, lily white, and collapses under its own weight. Week after week after week.

This does not go over well among the student population it hopes to welcome. In my four years of living in Hyde Park, I've been to four years worth of parties where students who have had experience with the congregation proclaim that it should die because it is so unwelcoming and depressing. The congregation has many good reasons to be depressed, having survived white flight and gang wars and the devastation of a neighborhood and the loss of most of its members over the past generation. It faces many of the same realities of other urban churches. I had thought though for a while this fall it was beginning to come out of its depression, committing itself to an evangelism and outreach campaign. But, I think my hopes were premature.

What worries me is some of the nasty comments I receive from certain members when I suggest expanding our repertoire of music or using more inclusive language. "Anyone who doesn't like the way we worship here can find themselves another church." Yes ma'am, and I see that they have already done so, in droves. In a city of six million people and within one mile of a large university, only 25 people find our worship worth attending on a regular basis. "You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater." Hmmm...looks to me like the baby done drowned. Anyway, a few of these folks have gotten downright hostile. And you would normally otherwise call them progressives.

Now, before I go on, I need to say that not all people in the congregation favor this way of worship. In fact, I've been noticing the demographics of who is open to new material and who isn't. My congregation has no active members under fifty, and as I said is equally mixed in race and gender. It is the folks under 75 who are most vehement that we keep everything exactly as it is. The folks 80 and up are the most encouraging on the whole, and go out of their way to say so. The men are more willing to accept gender-inclusive language than the women. The women of the choir are up in front, ignoring the words printed in the bulletin, and enunciating every 'He,' "Him" and 'Father' and 'Son.'

This leads me to ask what happened to these women, who are clearly college-educated and lived through modern feminism. Why do they so insist that God is exclusively male? Really, are they only worshipping God for a phallus? Is that all God is to them? Are they really so lonely and unfulfilled?

And how do you ask them that? But, it might be that the absurdity of the question is what may finally break through the walls. Better to do so before we lose anyone else out the door. Including myself.

peace,

Le Anne

Spiritual Disciplines

My spiritual task for these days, as it ought always to be, is to try not to feel guilty about all the things I've failed to accomplish or just get done. For example, it's already 4pm on a Saturday and I still haven't saved the world. What was I thinking?

But, seriously, I do have a habit of beating myself up for being less efficient or task-oriented in my work, and it does me no good. It's what they say about workaholics, that eventually you're no longer more productive than anyone else, probably even less so. I gotta watch myself on that. It's hard to find a good balance, especially in the social justice organizing fields. Or in any field where you're doing what you love--because it will sneak up on you.

So, I will not feel so bad about only looking out the window at the pretty day, but electing to stay inside and do a sewing project, or read, or watch YouTube. I will appreciate those quieter moments even if they weren't spent enjoying nature or maximizing my health benefits through walking. I will not get grumpy because I let that mailing project slide "all day." I slept in. I listened to the radio. I read the Funny Times, and I drank coffee. Next, I'll be re-heating leftovers. Life is actually not too bad.

peace,

Le Anne