Reminiscing About An Old Vision

I have always been a person of ambitious imagination, and I wanted to talk some about that today.  One of the earliest recollections of that was around the time I was 10 or 11 years old, when I basically had proposed founding a political movement and fantasized about setting up my own kingdom in eastern Brazil.  It sounds a little crazy now, but keep in mind I was still a young kid at that point and kids do have vivid imaginations.  As at the time I was actually in a situation where we were in abject poverty, my vivid imagination was also a sort of coping mechanism that helped motivate me to rise above my situation at the time and dream bigger in a sense.  Of course, obviously those were just fantasies, as last I have checked I am not a sovereign ruler over a vast part of a large South American nation, and realistically that will never happen.  But, it is still interesting that my "dreaming big" instinct continued into my adult years, and as a young college student in my early 20's some years ago, I had another grandiose dream as well that may never happen, but this time it had a difference - I believed it to be in service to others to whom I believed I was called.  The vocation to these particular people is real, I believe, but perhaps my ambitions at the time were a little over-the-top concerning them.  It is that vision I wanted to discuss today.

When I was around 17 years old, I began to develop an interest in Armenian people, and I began to read up on the Armenian Genocide and other acts of violence that were committed over the centuries against this predominantly Christian nation in their own homeland by what were often hostile Islamic powers that ruled the region (Ottoman Turks, Persians, and various Arab Muslim regimes).   Around about 1988, I received a large packet of booklets, brochures, and other literature from the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church in America, and one of the booklets was on the subject of the Armenian Genocide.  In it, I learned of another fascinating - and predominately Christian - minority called the Assyrians.  From the time I was a kid, I had had an interest in both the Bible and in world history, and I was very familiar with the Assyrian Empire of antiquity from a very young age.  However, like so many, I also was under the incorrect assumption that Assyrians as a people were extinct, and I didn't even know at that point that there were Christian communities dating back centuries in the Middle East - public education had taught a rather revisionist view of history that everyone that lived in the Middle East was either Arab or Turk, and no other minorities existed.  Then, in taking an interest in the Byzantine Empire and studying its history, I learned first of the Armenians and who they were in 1987, when I was still a junior in high school.  I have told this story in varying degrees over the years, so I am just summarily mentioning highlights here.  My exposure to the Armenians, and later receiving literature from their Church in the US, led me to the Assyrians, and eventually I took up a trail that led to a very articulate (albeit verbose) priest in Chicago named Charles (or Qasha) Klutz.  Fr. Klutz was an ordained priest in the Assyrian Church of the East, and at that time he served as Chancellor to the bishop of their Eastern Diocese, Mar Aprim, as well as a priest at Mar Gewargis Cathedral in Chicago.  Over the ensuing years, I became very close to Fr. Klutz, and still consider him a dear friend to this day.  Although he pastored an Assyrian parish, Fr. Klutz was actually of Portuguese Converso heritage, and later I found out we shared that in common (I am also of Converso heritage as well, although mine is French/Spanish).  On the initial contact with Fr. Klutz back around April of 1988, he sent me a large package filled with copies of their Church magazine, Voice of the East, as well as a booklet with some pretty basic history on the origins of the Assyrian Church - I actually still have all of that today.  Unfortunately, in December 2001, his parish he was pastoring at the time, St. John Assyrian in Chicago, was the target of a hate-crime act of vandalism and arson which incinerated the parish.  It happened after 9/11, and was part of the hysteria that many dumbass people had against any Middle Eastern people regardless of who they were (as well as a number of Sikhs, who are from India - Sikhs were targeted because of their red turbans.  Sikhs are NOT Muslims, and are a separate religion and are also generally peaceful people), and it was characteristic of some of the hysteria many ignorant people in this country had regarding anything to do with the Middle East.  As of today, I am aware that Fr. Klutz is now retired and is still living in Chicago - I would love to get in touch with him, as it has been a number of years, and hope he is doing well.  By now, I am sure he is in his late 80's or even early 90's, but I owe him a depth of appreciation for introducing me to a remarkable people in the Assyrians.  That was the beginnings, so now let's move onto my college years and my involvement with these unique people.

In my first year of college, I had gotten involved in the Pentecostal movement and had become part of the Foursquare denomination.  As Pentecostals place (or at least they used to) a great deal of emphasis on supernatural gifts including prophecy, I experienced something on a November night in 1989 while retiring to my dorm room to sleep.  The experience involved what I felt was a personal word the Holy Spirit was giving me, and essentially it was along these lines - I got an insight that my involvement with Assyrians was no accident, and that God had ordered it for a purpose, and that purpose was that a part of my calling was to serve these people.  Naturally, as a ministry major in college, I thought this meant to preach to them and do mission work, but at the time I was confused about that too.  Although in that day I was part of an Evangelical/Pentecostal tradition that emphasized personal evangelism, a lot of things about the way this was carried out was a bit unsettling to me - for one, I could not wrap my head around why Evangelicals wanted to "convert" people who were already identified as Christian.  I was bothered throughout my college years by the rampant anti-Catholicism I encountered among many of my classmates as well as those I met in different churches that I ministered in then, and I was also bothered as well when this "missionary" guy came to a Missions class I had at Southeastern University at the time who was trying to "save" the Amish and had a "mission" to the Amish communities;  I confronted this individual in class over it, and it created a bit of a buzz honestly.  What I found out later - and also one reason why American Evangelicalism turned me off - was that many Evangelical "evangelism" and "missionary" efforts were not so much to make disciples of Christ, but rather to Americanize and create cookie-cutter clones of themselves.   This essentially meant disrespect for other cultures, as well as even trampling the Christian heritage of some ethnic groups - this was particularly true if the ethnic group in question was identified as Catholic, Orthodox, or Amish/Mennonite.  I could not reconcile that honestly, and as a result I eventually left the Foursquare denomination and in time that road led me to full communion with the Catholic faith.  Over the years, as I have seen a decay of American Evangelicalism both theologically and morally, it seems that it is the American Evangelical population that may be in need of evangelization, especially among its younger members who have embraced a lot of post-modern ideology as well as even supporting things older Evangelicals would not have dreamed of, such as "same-sex marriage," abortion, and even their missionary efforts have gone from evangelization and discipleship to a sort of "social justice" emphasis - on one hand there are positives to that though, in that now there seems to be a move to a more holistic approach to ministry, but hopefully they won't lose focus of what is important.  My own struggles with the American Evangelical missionary enterprise - in particular, its aggressive prosyletism - led me to explore some things that hearkened back to my ambitious childhood imagination.  And, that is where this vision came into existence.

Around 1994 or so, as the Iraq War was a central focus of the news at the time (and would be again post-9/11), there began to be some awareness of "Christian Iraqi refugees" and their plight, but the secular press refused to use the name "Assyrian" in reference to these people.  The intensity of events taking place in their homeland compelled me to contemplate the idea of a self-governing Assyrian village, which I called the "Saint Isaac of Nineveh Village Project," named after a 10th-century Assyrian Christian ascetic and Church Father.  Over the course of several weeks I meditated on the possibility of this, and came up with the blueprint for a village that incorporated a lot of other old ideas of mine.  Below are a few pages of the proposal I drafted at the time:

These 24-year-old manuscript pages give you an idea of what I was thinking then, and somewhere I still have the originals with a LARGE mapped-out diagram of the proposed village as well.  The idea behind this was that it would be a village governed by the Assyrian refugees themselves, including having their own churches, businesses, and other things, and in the more ambitious plan I proposed later, I was actually going to place a huge ecumenical cathedral church in the middle of the community, as well as a Parliament house, and a series of multi-story office buildings that would house the headquarters of various organizations, etc.   The original plans also included a zoo, a large aquarium, a university, and an agricultural district as well.  Looking back on it, the whole thing was a beautiful idea but also very unfeasible - could you imagine the millions of dollars it would take to finance such an undertaking??  If I became independently wealthy today, I would still probably consider doing it, and the thought has crossed my mind over the years as to "what if?"  However, it is also far beyond my own limitations to come up with something like that myself, but it still is not a bad idea when I think about it, which is why over the years I have even had some interesting dreams about such a place, one of which I would like to share now.

Some years back, I had a dream in which I was walking the Stations of the Cross on a Good Friday in a village made up of all Assyrians, Armenians, and other persecuted minorities.  The Stations in the dream were totally ecumenical - there were many churches of many sects throughout the route, and each one served as a place along the route to pray one of the Stations.  When I woke up that morning from that dream, I pulled out those old St. Isaac of Nineveh Village plans I had drafted so many years ago, and I could envision on a major street a route of the Stations, starting at the great Cathedral in the middle and ending at a small church on the other side of the community.  I have thought a lot of that over the years, and today as I was messing around surfing on Google I came across something very interesting that inspired me to write this today, as it is almost in perfect alignment with that old dream of mine.  

This morning I was reading an article talking about a 42-year-old Aramaic Christian in Israel by the name of Shadi Khalloul, and he is proposing a totally Aramaic Christian village in Israel.  Khalloul is the chairman of the Israeli Aramaic Christian Association, and was at one time a candidate for the Knesset in Israel.  Apparently Khalloul is of Maronite heritage, which would definitely place him as identity as an Aramaic Christian (although not Assyrian), and the village he proposes he wants to call "Aram Hiram," and the proposed location is on the site of an old village in Israel called Kafr Bir'im, which he asserts was originally a Syriac-Maronite village prior to a 1948 evacuation.  Khalloul is a man of vision too, and I love what he says in an interview when he is quoted as thus:  "We need to build bridges through a Christian positive attitude to ask for our rights in a way to lead towards coexistence with Jews and this can come by being positive citizens of the state, defending the state, and asking for our rights at the same time." (Kassy Dillon, "Meet the Christian Israeli Who is On a Mission to Create The First Aramaean Christian Town In Israel," published August 28, 2018 at https://www.dailywire.com/news/35162/meet-christian-israeli-who-mission-create-first-kassy-dillon - Accessed 8/28/2018).  I say that Khalloul is a man of vision, and he needs prayers for success in his efforts, as this could be a beacon for many persecuted Christians in the region.  I have said for many years that the Christians of the region and the state of Israel should be natural allies of each other, but at times this can be a touchy subject and I try not to emphasize it a lot as Middle Eastern Christians are a diverse group, and a significant percentage are not exactly fond of Israel (in some cases with good justification), so one has to tread lightly on those grounds.  I also plan on getting in touch with the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association myself, as I would love to maybe talk with Khalloul personally and tell him about my St. Isaac Village idea as it may inspire him as well.  It is definitely worth exploring more any way one looks at it. 

Aramaic-Maronite Christian leader Sadi Khalloul (right) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

I have noticed in recent years a sort of revival of the Aramaic language in Israel, even among some Jewish populations.   The popular Israel musical group Nash Didan is a good example, as well as a renewed interest in the Aramaic dialect that the Samaritan sect uses there.  Also, with a huge population of Assyrian Christians and Syro-Maronites in nearby Lebanon, the possibilities of all of this are exciting.  If Israel were to finally recognize the Armenian Genocide, that would be the icing on the cake.  We truly live in exciting times, and perhaps it is time to take note, as we may be facing an Isaiah 19 moment if everything continues to come together.  Bottom line, I have a lot to think about and rack my brain concerning this, as after many years of stagnation on my part, I have just recently re-awakened my own convictions regarding the Assyrians and others, which at one time used to be more passionate.  

My own ambitious dreams from many years ago may not be feasible on my own, but I am beginning to see that others have similar ideas, and perhaps someone can do what I only dreamed of all those years ago when I was younger and more naive and idealistic.  If that is the case, I only hope I can be alive to see it come to full blossom, as that would be a momentous thing.