At 3.50am I am awoken, nearly falling out of bed as the ship takes dramatic avoiding action, turning first to port then to starboard. I go out on the balcony – just open sea. I turn on the TV to see the ‘Report from the Bridge’ where our location is charted – nothing out of the ordinary. Over the following day or so, rumours circulate that we had a ‘near miss’ with another vessel that had turned into our path. One account blamed a fishing boat, another a container carrier. Crew members were reported never to have experienced anything like it in many years at sea. Thankfully the outcome was safe – but probably not good for Cunard to announce it too publicly.
Kusadasi is one of Turkey’s more significant ports, though not on the scale of Istanbul. It co-exists with the ancient site, or rather sites of Ephesus. Settled from the neolithic period, the city has re-located several times as the sea retreated and the port had to move. Once associated with the Oracle of Delphi, with Artemis myths and the many-breasted ‘Lady of Ephesus’, it is now a wonderful archaeological site in which to imagine what it was like when John (possibly) wrote his Gospel there and when addressed the Ephesians as one of the seven churches of Asia in the book of Revelation. When Paul lived there for more than two years and preached to the Ephesians in the great Theatre. And when (possibly) Mary, the mother of Jesus, lived out her latter years under the protection of John, to whom Jesus had left her protection as he hung on the cross.
We are travelling by bus to the ancient site of the basilica and tomb of John. It was fairly unadorned with a stone plinth and some pillars, but it marked the (likely) burial of one of Jesus disciples, and seeing it causes me quite a shiver of emotion. I think we were told he was the only disciple to die peacefully. And of course Jesus had charged him with the protection of his mother, Mary.
Mary’s House is some way on, up in the hills where it is alleged she spent her last years. Of course not everyone accepts this, and the site is associated with much Catholic dogma and is effectively of course a shrine to her. For instance I was not aware that some Catholics believe she was resurrected, just as Jesus was. Which is why there is no tomb associated with this place. There had been chapels here since the 1st Century, but the John connection is fairly compelling, and apparently local tradition has it that Mary had actually lived here (compounded no doubt by the ancient ‘Lady of Ephesus’ legends perhaps). Also, bizarrely, the exact place and its surroundings were very accurately described in a vision of a German nun in the 19th Century.
I would love to think this building is on the site of the actual house Mary lived in … but honestly does it really matter much if it isn’t?
