Who needs sleep when you have an Archbishop to meet?

It is 5 p.m. in Iran, 8 and 1/2 hours east of New York, and I am sending a first brief report from our civilian diplomacy delegation. It has been an exhausting and invigorating two days, only a few hours of which have actually been spent here in the country.

Eighteen of our 21 delegates gathered at an interfaith chapel at JFK Airport on Tuesday afternoon, April 29th, to spend a brief hour meeting one another in person and learning some final cross-cultural tips from Leila Zand, FOR's Iran program coordinator. (E.g., Don't try to shake hands with someone of the opposite sex, unless they put out their hand first. Take off your shoes in someone's private home. Don't show your thumb, like "Thumbs Up!" because that is a bad sign in Iranian culture.)

Then we went through check-in and security, and headed off to the first of our two international flights -- flying overnight to Frankfurt, and then after a 6-hour layover, taking another several-hour flight to Tehran. (Some of our delegates had already taken one or two flights in the previous 24 hours, of course.) We arrived in the middle of the night, at 1:30 a.m. Unfortunately, we were then forced to spend two hours waiting at Customs while our passports were reviewed at length, and all of us were fingerprinted.  We have a bunch of sets of ten blue fingers to show for it today!

Since this fairly-new airport, Imam Khomeini International, is well outside of the city, we did not arrive at our hotel until 5 a.m. After another 45 minutes of getting all of our stuff together and rooms assigned, I received a surprise phone call from our host -- we had an 11 a.m. meeting set up at the Armenian cathedral! So our group was given three hours to sleep -- after 2-3 days of travel -- before we had to be in the hotel lobby, prepared for the start of our program. It was a bit brutal on the body, and three of our delegates didn't make it to the meeting.

For the 15 of us who did go, it was certainly well worth the lack of sleep. We met for two hours with Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian, the Primate of the Armenian Prelacy (or diocese) of Tehran. It was an honor in and of itself, and the conversation was rich and varied.

I was asked to introduce the group -- why we were in Iran, who we represented. I spoke of our interest in peace-building and people-to-people relationships, and stressed that we were an interfaith group, with Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian members from a variety of churches. I said that we had hoped to be in Iran one week ago, in time to participate in Passover ceremonies with the Jewish community here and with Holy Week observances in the Orthodox tradition. And I stressed that we knew that last week was the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, and that our prayers had been with the church here and the Armenian community around the world -- noting that my family's home church had commemorated the observance of the 1918 genocide in worship last Sunday.

Archbishop Sarkissian was gracious and expressed deep appreciation for the words about the genocide. He noted that "any act against human beings is an act against all humanity," so the crime of the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians was not just against his community, but against all of us. He said that this genocide in 1918 was tragically the first of several in the past century, including the Jewish Holocaust -- "Hitler, when he was killing the Jews, said, 'Who is remembering the Armenian genocide?'" -- and also Rwanda more recently. And he called on Turkey to atone for this tragedy, saying that "The blood of Armenians is still on the fields of historic Armenia."

We also discussed the topic of interfaith dialogue at great length, something which he is committed to doing, especially with Muslims and Jews. Interestingly, he indicated that it is often easier to discuss their common concerns for social issues -- poverty, injustice, human rights, moral issues, the family, etc. -- than theological ones. But while he stressed the common commitment of the three Abrahamic communities to peace and human rights, he noted, "I should say that there will never be peace [in the Middle East, and beyond] until there is peace between the religions." The Archbishop noted that there are fundamentalist extremists in both the Christian and Muslim communities, in particular, who do not want peace or dialogue, and that this is a major obstacle.

After a visit inside the beautiful cathedral, we returned to the hotel, and a short while later were surprised in the lobby when a television crew walked in and prepared to interview several of us! The TV crew was apparently for a show focused on young adults -- people in their 20's -- and I am told it airs on Channel 1 here in Tehran. Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and I, the delegation co-leaders, were interviewed along with three of our young delegates: Alicia Cattoni, Lily Tinker Fortel, and Charles London. The host was particularly interested in getting our perceptions of Muslims and Islam, and what we hear back in the United States about that religious community. I hope we will be able to get a clip of the segment that airs.

Our itinerary is very much in flux, but it appears that tomorrow's agenda should include a visit to an Armenian cultural center, a hike up the beautiful Alborz Mountains, conversation with some young Iranians, and a meeting at the Jewish Hospital. Two or three of our delegates may have dinner with a member of Parliament -- if that happens, we will certainly blog on that topic this weekend!

A couple members of the delegation are also writing their own blogs, and we will try to highlight those blog sites -- and news stories that have appeared on the delegation this week -- on FORpeace.net soon too.