Mary Journey To Ephesus

By Serkan Urgancı

Mary Journey To Ephesus: The miraculous journey of two women, who lived two thousand years apart, one who is the Mother of the two billion Christians and the other, a mother of a six-year-old child. 

Jane's journey of hope, as a mother seeks a cure to heal her son who is all she had left in her life but had contracted an incurable disease...
So how will this journey also turn into a miraculous story that will touch the hope of humanity and perhaps shape the future? More importantly, how will historical testimonies dating back two thousand years reflect on our day in this great adventure full of surprises?
Author Serkan Urganci transforms this adventure that takes place in Anatolia, which has been a venue for many civilizations, into a riveting story that blends imagination and reality, as well as history and tradition, in a masterful manner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serkan Urgancı
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201436704

Serkan Urgancı

Born in Denizli in 1978, Serkan Urganci started journalism in Bursa, where he had his undergraduate education in 1996. Urganci, who has worked in national, regional, and local media throughout his career, still provides publishing and consultancy services at the media agency company he founded in 2014. Serkan Urganci, who is also the Vice President of the Internet Journalists Federation and the President of the Denizli New Media Publishers Association, continues his active journalism.

Book preview

MARY

-JOURNEY TO EPHESUS-

SERKAN URGANCI

Translated by Tuce Anderson

......................

I believe that you will enjoy reading this epic journey story where imagination is blended with historical facts, and more importantly, you will see once again how important the Anatolian lands are for human history.

Greetings to everyone who is making an effort to move the Republic of Turkey, founded by the unique leader Ataturk, to the next level....

Serkan Urganci

Author: Serkan Urganci

Project Partners: Tamer Dulger, Umut Hosafci

Editor: Seher Atmaca Aytemiz, Omer Karabayir

Translator: Tuce Anderson

Proofreader and editor: Seth A. Anderson

Manager: Sedat Kirt

International Coord.: Moris Mantel, Alihan Baysal

History Consultant: Prof. Dr. Mustafa Das

Typesetting: Ozden Ozdemir

Icon Design: Gonca Ada Urganci

Legal Advisor: Bora Sartan

ISBN : 9798817833737

WIPO|MADRID INTERNATIONAL REGISTRATION NO. 878 537

TIMESTAMP SERIAL NUMBER: 1397316593747

................................

Acknowledgement

To my companions; Umut Hosafci, with whom I began this journey since the beginning of the story and who enlightened our way with his creative intelligence, intellectual vision and imagination and Tamer Dulger, who gave his firm support with a superhuman effort for this story to come out,

To my wife Banu, my daughter Gonca Ada, my mother Gonca and my brothers Gurkan and Unkan, who showed patience during the long working hours of the story for years, unconditionally supported, and contributed with preliminary readings,

To my dear friends, Seher Atmaca Aytemiz and Omer Karabayir, who undertook the most difficult part of the job,

To Tuce Anderson and her beloved husband, Seth A. Anderson, who showed great diligence by translating and proofreading the story with enormous skill and precision.

To Sedat Kirt, the organizational genius and the epitome of kindness, who honored us by accepting our management,

To Ozden Ozdemir, who supported us not only with her magnificent cover design and drawings but also with her genuine ideas,

To Moris Mantel, Alihan Baysal and Erdal Kirtas, who represented the story with great effort in international connections,

To Dervis Can Deda and Mustafa Ozeren, the young minds who had great support in the emergence of the story,

To my old friends, Sema-Mert Atalay, who are always by my side.

To the late Ahmet Tasdoven, who unfortunately passed away before he could read these lines I wrote for him, a Swiss Army Knife whom I have always trusted in my work life.

To our historical adviser, Prof. Dr. Mustafa Das,

To Attorney Bora Sartan, who undertook our copyright and representation operations,

To Mehmet Ali Dogan, Yusuf Urem, Ozkan Tokmak, Sedat Kurt, Cagri Sebzeci, Seren Aydogdu, Ilke Sucullu, Kemal Gurcan, Kubilay Gursoy, Selami Aydin, Huseyin Ozgenc, Osman Nuri Boyaci, Murat Acar, Fatih An, Ibrahim-Basak Cil, Cenk Ustunsoz and Serdar Baran who contributed to the story with preliminary readings,

Thank you.

The First Sign

In her hand, she is holding Haggard's Aisha, which she can't remember how many times she's read... She stretched out her feet on the white hospital chair she had pulled in front of her. It's obvious that she's tired, but she still has an hour to sleep. Because the nurse will come to the room for the last check of the day, take David's temperature as she has done five times a day for six weeks, change the drip bag and leave.

Life has never been easy for Jane. Of course, her biggest luck was her father, but Jane's expectations from life always pushed her to choose the hard way. She was just eighteen when she left her father's home in Helena for college and moved to New York. She earned a full scholarship at Saint John's University to study computer software, which had been her dream since her childhood. She had worked many jobs in her first years of schooling. Part-time waitress, cashier, babysitting... In the following years, she created small add-ons for the software of big companies in her spare time. She had an innate talent for software. As a result, she managed not only to study but also to save money by her own means. She had already started getting job offers from big companies even before she finished school.

But as usual, she chose the hard way.

After graduating from the university, she founded a small software company with the money she had accumulated while she was a student, and turned her firm, which she had grown inch by inch over the years, into a considerable software company.

With her relatively tall, well-proportioned body, Jane was a beautiful and successful woman. Her straight dark brown hair, which she collects from the top of her head during long working hours reaches her neck, her big brown eyes under the bow-like black eyebrows, thin but shapely lips that complement her slightly arched nose, and a pointed chin suitable for facial harmony. And a tiny mole on the right side of her chin adding to her elegance...

When it was time for her to leave a mark on the world, she went through with the decision she had made after giving it some thoughts and gave birth to her son David, whom she got pregnant from through the sperm bank. She had no enmity towards men, but she did not consider any man who entered her life to be good enough to be the father of her child.

It was difficult to be both a boss and a mother at the same time. But overcoming the challenge was Jane's way of looking at life.

In fact, whether it was luck or destiny, Jane's view of life almost competed with her by always pushing harder. Her little son was diagnosed with leukemia when he was only five years old, and their lives completely changed since that day.

Exactly one year after the diagnosis, David, who is now six years old, had spent the last year of his childhood life struggling with an inexplicable high fever, joint pain, and frequent infections. Although his tiny body showed a relentless resistance against leukemia with the support of doctors and his mother, the disease still prevailed. This was the biggest challenge for Jane to overcome.

Finally, a nurse came, and after she finished her check-ups and left, David's doctor Steve, showed up at the door.

Steve, in his 60s, was an expert professor of hematology. Years ago, after he lost his little daughter to leukemia, he devoted his life to working to prevent other children from losing their lives because of this disease and did his specialization in hematology.

With a nod, Steve beckoned to Jane to come out of the room.

After staring at David for a while in front of the window of the room facing the corridor, he turned to Jane and said, He's a very strong boy. He is doing his best to hold on to life. This is not easy for me to say, but David's condition is not improving. The next phase of the disease will be more difficult for all of us. We will never lose hope, you can be sure of that, and neither should you. Miracles are for little kids. Strong ...

There is no such thing as a miracle, doctor! snorted Jane. Looking at David from outside the room, she said, If there is a God, what could he possibly want from these little children? I expect you to heal him, not a miracle!

Jane returned to the room, ignoring the doctor's sorrowful gaze. She sat down on the couch and propped her feet on the chair. She could not accept that her son's health was deteriorating. She sighed for a moment at the blond-haired, blue-eyed David, then turned to the pages of her book. She had just read a few more pages when she fell asleep, succumbing to exhaustion.

***

In her dream, she found herself in a large, high-ceilinged, dimly lit room. In the center of the room was a white bed with ornate headboards and an elderly woman lying on that bed. Light penetrated through the large windows of the room to the bed, and the dim room was illuminated only from that area. The shape of the room, the furniture... They looked like they belonged to the 1800s. A middle-aged man was sitting on the chair next to the old woman's bed. The woman, who seemed to be in a trance, mumbled something, while the man beside her listened carefully and took notes in his notebook on the small coffee table in front of her.

Jane was standing almost in the middle of the room, and she flinched when she realized they couldn't see her. She walked slowly towards the notebook in which the man was taking notes. Our Mother Mary says, an open area, ruins, rocks on the summit, the mountain behind, the sea in front... From the top of the mountain where the house is located, Ephesus is on one side and the sea, which is closer, can be seen on the other side. The water here provides healing.

Even though Jane thought she was dreaming at that moment, she was witnessing history. The old woman lying in the bed was Anna Katharina Emmerich, who was later canonized and gave details about the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary through her visions. The man next to him was none other than the German poet Clemens Brentano, who wrote down Emmerich's story.

Jane suddenly found herself at the top of Mountain Bulbul in Seljuk, where the Virgin Mary's house was located, two thousand years ago. In front of the verdant mountain was a small two-story house situated on a cliff. The house was a stone structure and had obviously been built a long time ago. From a distance, makeshift tents and thirty or forty people could be seen. On the other side of the area, new houses were zealously being built.

When Jane turned around, she was met with a magnificent scenery. As the old woman described, Ephesus was visible in all its splendor on one side, and the deep blue waters of the Aegean were shining on the other side. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the sea breeze hit her face.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself inside a cave. A woman appeared at the upstream of the small spring water in the middle of the cave.

A young man was lying wounded on the lap of the woman whose face was not visible. The woman was pouring the water she had fetched into her palm on the young man's wound, while muttering words as if in prayer. Her mutterings echoed through the cavern. The blond-haired, frail young man seemed to be relieved by the water that was spilled onto his wound.

Although Jane could not understand what happened there at that moment, the people she saw were the Virgin Mary and Saint John, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ.

The Father’s Secret

I

Jane awoke in the middle of the night as her phone rang. The person on the phone was extremely sad.

Mrs. Jane Bradley? Yes, it’s me.

I'm calling from St. Peters Hospital. Mrs. Bradley, I'm sorry to say that your father, Reverend Bradley, was admitted to our hospital after suffering a heart attack. We did our best; but we couldn't save him. I am very sorry... We are waiting for you to come for the funeral arrangement.

All she could say was, It can't be...

When she hung up the phone and got over the shock of the news, she burst into tears. The news of her father's death was devastating for Jane, who was struggling with her son's terminal illness.

Reverend Andrew Bradley... lives in Helena, a city of its own, in the state of Montana, and he was a priest at St. Peter's Episcopal Cathedral. He lived on a farm in the Northwest Valley, ten kilometers from central Helena. In addition to the priesthood, Reverend Bradley was also a livestock farmer on his modest farm.

Jane's father was all she had in her entire family. She never knew her mother, who died during childbirth, and had accumulated all her memories of her childhood and youth in Helena.

Without wasting any time, she took the first flight from New York to Helena.

II

The news of Reverend Bradley's death also reached the Washington National Cathedral.

Anthony, the deacon, hurried down the aisle of the cathedral, and came to the door of Archbishop Frederick's chamber. He knocked on the wood-carved mahogany door and entered quickly. The Archbishop, reading the Bible in his hand, did not even look up from the table in his large room, far from the door, to see who had come. Anthony came up to the Archbishop's table. The archbishop looked at Anthony over the top of his reading glasses.

Your Eminence, we have received word from Helena. Reverend Bradley died of a heart attack! said Anthony in an alarmed tone.

The Archbishop closed the Bible slowly, putting a small piece of paper between it. He took off his reading glasses, placed them on the Bible, and slowly got up from his desk and came to the large window in his room. He stared silently at the blue sky of Washington for a while.

Sad news for our church, Anthony. Go there with an honorable person and send our condolences. And see if Reverend Bradley has left anything for us at his house. he said, without expressing any sadness.

Of course, Your Eminence.

Archbishop Frederick and Deacon Anthony had known each other for a very long time. Frederick found Anthony left at the gate of the church on a cold winter's day when he was just a baby.

The cardinal of the church at that time did not want to take this abandoned baby, but Frederick, who was only in his twenties, persuaded the cardinal with great difficulty so that Anthony could stay in the church. That is because Frederick was also abandoned by his family to his fate in the garden of a church.

Frederick became both the mother and father to this tiny baby, whom he named Anthony, over the years. Anthony knew Fredrick like a father until this age and never left him.

III

Jane remembered how long she had been absent when she saw the city from the plane just before it landed at Helena Regional Airport. The Helena Lake, the Missouri River, the North Valley where their home is...

She got off the plane and thought she was going through one of the hardest days of her life as she walked to the morgue in the basement of St. Peter's Hospital. She would soon see her father's lifeless body. How did her father, whom she last met in New York two years ago, look like now? Had the God of her father, to whom he had served all his life, really provided him with a peaceful death? If he died peacefully, was that reflected on his face? She had already entered the morgue as these questions were on her mind. The morgue attendant greeted her at the door with a sad expression on his face, understanding the situation the other person was in.

Mrs. Bradley, he said, taking Jane's hand gently with both hands. I knew your father personally. He is now in peace...

When the attendant, walking towards the morgue drawer, took the handle of the drawer, he looked at Jane's face and said, "You don't have to see it if you don't want to."

Jane slightly nodded, indicating that she wanted to see it. The morgue attendant opened the drawer and took out Reverend Bradley's body.

The fifty-nine-year-old priest had a peaceful expression despite being pale. As soon as Jane saw her father, she began to cry silently. She held her father’s hands and stared at him for a long time. She got answers to the questions in her mind.

How did it happen? she asked the morgue attendant.

In the church, right after the sermon...

The attendant took a black plastic Ziplock bag from the locker and came over to Jane.

These were what your father had with him when he was brought to the hospital.

These were the last things left of her father. Jane took the Ziplock bag and put it in her bag without looking inside it. She couldn't take her eyes off her father. Every detail on his face had a memory. The lines on his forehead would be more obvious when he looked hard. When he laughed, his eyes were almost invisible, but his dimple seemed to bloom every time he smiled.