Babylon, Gate of God

I love the lights when they come through the clouds. It gives me the feeling of hope and some kind of strength. The words of our beloved bishop Mar Sarhad Y. Jommo Bishop of Chaldean Catholic Diocese, were like that light go through my heart especially when he said Babylon as a word mean “Gate of God” in our Chaldean- Aramaic language, we all must raise the lion inside us and look forward up to the Gate of God.

I amazed with the view of our Chaldean people when they participate positively for the whole evening. Last night, at the first ever Babylonian Day Festival was really fun. What I experienced yesterday at the festival was a group of people coming together to celebrate our ancestors in our heritage as Chaldeans.

As much as I didn’t see lots of the festival because I was one of the helpers but I did see one particular thing which was the passion of the Zakhota Association that set up the festival and the faces on all of those kids and all the smiles.

Their desire to be there in the hot weather, explains the word” community “clearly. The singers (loay yousif, Adnan Mansoor, Mouaid, Essam Araboo, Monadhil Tomica, Wissam Al-Iraqi, and Susan Gazi) did a spectacular job as well. Not to mention the cool guys of DJ Aghanina, the Attendance was consistently dancing with joy, the adults loved their folklore dancing and every time a dance was over they would come and rush over and basically just make the singers give them an encore. the happy and enthusiastic kids standing in what seemed to be a 45 min long line that, still the kids didn’t even care about the wait they just wanted to have fun and get their faces painted.

Another thing that I highly observed was that many members of our community donated their money and time to make this big event happen. All these things add up to be another reason to be proud to be Chaldean. Thank you Zakhota members (Joseph Goryal, Toma Khawaja, Issa Iskander, Najeeb Khawaja, Moafaq Al-sanatee) and me. Many thanks to the our church leaders who raise good priests, who really know how to lead their people to God’s Gate.