At noon, Csefko,, Juli, Huseyin and Yuksel and
I left for Ankara.
The trip was very calm and it gave us the
opportunity to rest.
The first impression I had of Ankara when I got
out of the bus and went into the metro was very similar to what I had felt last
time… something like: what are we doing here, in this place that, compared to
Istanbul, is almost dead… nothing will happen… As usual, impressions are far
from reality!
At seven, we had agreed to meet with our
friends from Ankara,
so we hurried a little to heat the house, which was very cold and to go
shopping.
Hulya arrived first, a while later Aylin came
and in the meantime Yalcin called. He is a boy we met at the Spanish
interchange table last November. We went to pick him up at the metro station
with Csefko and brought him to the Salita.
He had never been there before and was happy to
meet Huseyin, Aylin and Hulya and they started talking in Turkish.
We stayed in the kitchen for a long while,
because it was hot and it gave us the chance to eat and talk at the same time!
When we started talking about the Message with
Yalcin, he told us that he was a Sunni Muslim, and a strong believer. He
described to us his belief, his way of coming in contact with God and his need
to have faith in order to find meaning in life. Listening to him, I felt that
our paths were actually very close but, of course… there was the issue of God…
which seemed difficult to solve or difficult to solve during his first visit to
the Salita.
As a matter of fact, he commented that he liked
the atmosphere he perceived being with us but that he had inner difficulties to
participate in the ceremonies because it seemed to him he was doing something
against his religione.
So he stayed in the kitchen while we did two very
beautiful ceremonies which Huseyin and Yuksel read in Turkish.
When we finished the Well Being, Yalcin came in
to tell us that a very good friend of his in Istanbul would have to go the hospital on the
next morning to operate his brain. He decided to leave in that moment to say
good-bye to him before his friend went to the hospital. I started doing askings
for his friend, so that everything went well.
After he left, another interesting phenomenon occurred…
Hulya, who had probably not been in the Salita for a while, said she was moved
during the Well Being and that she had let go of some censorship and started
telling us about some personal difficulties she was having. She expressed us,
at the same time, the reference she found in that ambit and the intent she had
of bringing the Message inside her life.
On my part, I was very positively impressed by
what I lived in that evening and it seemed to me one could talk about the
Ankara Community as a reference place for those who have begun the path of
inner work and that there wasn’t a big difference from the ambits that we are
building in our European cities.
