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I have been at Holy Trinity for just over two weeks now, and am settling in nicely. It is already so clear to me that this community is very special, and you all have made me feel incredibly welcomed.
On my first morning in this role I attended the Wednesday Daytimers group at HTLakeview. I got a taste of my first Lutheran service (I grew up Antiochian Orthodox), and sat down for the potluck afterwards. Some of the first to introduce themselves were Carol and Ryan LaHurd, Ryan having read my bio and saw that I was Jordanian, introduced himself with “أَهْلًا وَسَهْلًا” “Ahlan wa Sahlan.” I was pleasantly taken by surprise.
Ahlan wa Sahlan is an Arabic phrase that means “Welcome”, it is so common that it is used in place of “Hello.” All my life I have heard that phrase while in the embrace of countless relatives and their doorways. As a third culture kid, it is one of the few Arabic exchanges I could utter in my sleep. I had never thought much of a literal translation of it, I just thought it meant Hello, Welcome, How are you? It’s nice to see you. When I was telling my partner about the exchange, he asked me “What does it really mean?”
For my fellow grammar enthusiasts: Ahl means “family” or “one’s own-people.” By adding the tanween (‘an’ sound) at the end, it forms a locative adverb, meaning “among the family.” Therefore “Ahlan” would mean “the greeted has come across their own people or their family, the person is not a stranger or among strangers.” Sahl means “easy”, also used to mean “flat land,” referring to land that is easy to walk in contrast to mountains or badlands. Similarly, by adding the tanween (‘an’ sound) to Sahl, Sahlan comes to mean “the greeted has come into a place where they are welcomed.” The meaning of the full phrase then becomes: You have come across your own people, your family, and you have come to your own dwelled land.
I was guided to this position through pure coincidence, a seemingly unrelated web of connections. In the days before she left I described this to Claire, how serendipitous it was that this position required the precise and disparate set of skills I have randomly accumulated over the years, how I never would have come to know of it had I not made a thousand prior insignificant decisions. Her response was “I don’t always want to assume that God has a hand in everything, but. . .” and offered a knowing shrug.
When I moved to Chicago just shy of a year ago from the only place I have ever lived, the anxieties rolling through my mind weren’t just of making friends or finding my way, but if I could find family and really build a home. I would have never expected to find myself at Holy Trinity, to find a family here, but I am so grateful I did.
Warmly,
Raneem Salem (they/them)
Director of Operations
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