An Alphabet for Theophany

It’s a strange kind of exile to be cut off from your own language. Growing up, my family’s world was tethered to an Armenian church that, like any other in the diaspora, wove together the social, cultural, and spiritual. One of just two in the Washington, DC, area, it was a place where Armenian immigrants and their children and grandchildren gathered, where traditions were nurtured, and where our mother tongue thrived.

The church ran an Armenian school that taught reading and writing. But after years of lessons that never stuck, I gave up my struggle to master the unique shapes and sounds of the alphabet’s thirty-eight letters. Still, the vernacular language surrounded me in the social life of the parish, while in the liturgy I encountered Armenian in its classical form—a deeper, more ancient register that carried theological weight and mystery. The very sound of Armenian was imbued not only with cultural meaning but also with spiritual resonance, seeping into me and forming a layer of identity beneath my more visible American self.

In hindsight, it seems strange that a child as inquisitive as I was never thought to question the church’s rites and rituals. The seeming endlessness of the liturgy made me fidget and drift, yet the aroma of incense, the trembling of candles, and the organ’s majestic hum made a deep impression, even if the meaning of it all was never explained to me. Standing within the congregation—a gathering of solemn adults and restless children obliged by their parents to attend—I sank into the swell of the celebrant’s prayers and blessings, while the deacons’ deep chants rolled over me, hypnotic and incomprehensible. But what most often drew my attention was a letterform inscribed across the altar. In my mind, it was always a five with an exaggerated stem. This single letter, Է, pronounced like the e in “bed,” held the layered enigmas of Armenian language and liturgy.

In this essay, published in Comment, I explore how the Armenian letter Է embodies a nondual vision of the sacred, where God is not separate from creation but present in every form. From altar carvings to manuscript illuminations, Armenian letters are a microcosm of Christian mysticism and a sign of the One in whom all things hold together.

Khachkar in the Form of the Letter Է

St. Mesrop Mashtots Church

Oshakan, Armenia