Did you ever have a dream that you were in a strange, dangerous, alien place only to awake and find you were safely tucked in your own bed at home?

No, OK, I must be insane. Sorry.

In any event, yesterday I was strolling down one of the greatest shopping malls in Istanbul; it's a street called Istiklal Caddesi and you can wander from Starbucks to the Body Shop to a Jazzersize studio to McDonalds to the Bambi Cafe to a movie theater showing "Journey to the Center of the World" in 3-D.

In Turkish.

I joined a large, diverse congregation celebrating mass in a reasonably familiar church, St. Antoine's. Except for the All-Filipina guitar choir, my inability to understand the Nigerian priest's accent and the rough, splintery hardness of the kneeler in my pew, I might have been in the St. Albans' Church of the Holy Angels.

On the off-chance that I would be able to find a variety of religious experiences on this hot, sunny summer morning, I shuffled aimlessly down hill until I stumbled on a small sign next to the Mehlevi (Whirling Dervish) Cultural and Religious Museum inviting me to the Union Church of Istanbul.

I found the entrance and greeted the guard at the metal detector in my cheerful, atrocious Turkish and he pointed to a small door and informed me, "inglish." By the way, I set the detector beeping furiously (probably my camera and handgun), but Erkut was completely unconcernd and waved me through.

The Dutch Chapel was built in the 18th century yet it was comfortingly as familiar as most of the churches I've ever attended in Vermont. They had stacks of The Pilgrim Hymnal and, unlike St. Anthony's, lots of cooling fans in the thick window sills!

When the sermon and singing ended, other than hearing a symphony of accented English - Scottish, Chinese, Africaans, Malgasy, Russian, Moldovan, Turkish, Farsi and Californian, it was eerily like the Congregational Church at 11 am on any given Sunday.

Coffee and conversation in the church basement was just as familiar - the same plastic cups, weak tea, children coloring, store-bought cookies, families catching up on vacations and mutual friends and a warm feeling of fellowship.

I am a terrible freeloader. It took very little wheedling for me to secure an invitation to the weekly church feast held at the Dutch Embasy.

The food was a delicious mixture of fried chicken, watermelon and Turkish salads.The genuine friendliness of the congregation actually made me wonder which was the dream and which the reality.

I was, in a very real sense, home.

Associate Pastor,Greg Lee-Parker and the Blythes, Jonathan and Juay, answered all my questions for nearly two hours. Juay, from Singapore and Jonathan ( a law partner in a Turkish firm AND an ordained minister) met at Seminary in Scotland and were called to Istanbul in 1991. They've raised two delightful children in this culture while keeping very grounded in their own past. Jonathan, from Bearsden near Glasgow, and I even chatted about my favorite Scottish football team, Parick Thistle! Juay told me that Jonathan is so fluent in Turkish, he earned his law degree here.

Greg, from Fuller Seminary in Southern California, is incredibly knowlegeable about the immigrant situation in the Republic and had many delightful stories about the "pressure" applied to Christians and other non-Muslims by the majority culture. He estimates there are fewer than 3,000 Christian Turks in Istanbul and many of them are afraid to tell their families and most dare not tell their employers

But that is truly another story for another time. I'm going to have some more fried chicken.

Ken