Strange Lands

   

Jaffa is strange.  We didn't know what to expect.  Suddenly we find out that it's the city that doesn't sleep.  It's a tourist trap, filled with peacocking hardbodies working out on the beach, bars,with  hookers' business cards littering the streets and graffiti.  Lots of graffiti is splashed across middle eastern cement architecture as it crumbles quickly due to the salt air.  It has a European culture that is the polar opposite of what we just experienced in Jerusalem.  It is permissive and liberal and most importantly it has the Mediterranean sea.  After our obligatory market crawl and our "Old Jaffa" exploration of history in its' Mosques, Churches and famed ancient port we braved the ocean.  It's so warm with tiny fish that go in like kamikaze to bite at your moles.  It's also crawling with people, so many of them.  They are everywhere, honking and yelling, reaching and hawking, chatting and eating ice cream.  They are just everywhere.  It's the place to be.  Who knew?  I came for the art museums.
      Amber and I have had some lively debates here about the cultural climate and graffiti as a type of protest, specifically the tags of "Utah/Ether," an artist couple devoted to blazing their pseudonym across anywhere they vacation.  We have seen them everywhere, they are ubiquitous and clearly busy with their sharpies.  On their website they maintain their identities as conceptual artists that reject notions of property and gain.  They pair their works with videos and it seems as though they don't make any profit.
      Now let me say this again.  Jaffa is smothered in graffiti.  It covers this place like honey on a profiterole, but not as sweet.  It is also a place where art is alive and well, with its tourists and rising cost of living there is a clear push against poverty and the divide in Israeli/Palestinian worlds.  Beyond just your well worn, cliche self agrandizing name tag, the graffiti can reflect this malaise.  It's angry, coercive and sometimes poignantly seductive.  It can provoke and has multiple times in our experience.  We've lookup up multiple hashtags and tags we've seen that have proven interesting.
     This city, Israel as a whole really is about history.  It's all been about history for me in my travels here.  The port in Jaffa is over 4000 years old and has hosted as many in creed and faith tying to its' piers.   This city is truly a melange.  The restaurant we sit at is Euro in style, hybrid in cuisine, Hebrew in language, British owned and has French, German, English, Arab and Israeli patrons.  As we grow more homesick, we look for our familiar beacons, watching dogs play, listening to the VH1 music channel, listening for English speakers.  I look for quiet.  I look for where people aren't.  There was a surreal moment yesterday where I stopped Amber in the middle of a downtown neighborhood asking her to listen.  For several moments, you couldn't hear a sound.  Then the familiar bustle started again, crazy as ever.  After floating in the Mediterranean in a lovely contemplative moment a fish leaped out of the water and struck my head with a loud "THWAP," yet another reminder of the volume we exist in and how beauty is so very fleeting.  Jaffa was meant to be my last perusal into art history and contemporary art, but what this place has done for me personally has reminded me of the chaos of life, the noise of even a simple existence.  And while we read the plaque outside the Savoy Hotel about a night filled with murderous terror at our own hotel

in the busiest city I've ever been to, it occurs to me yet again that it's impossible to fight when you stop making noise and be still.

Walking Tight Lines

      The Ramparts walk, a high catwalk meant for infantry, lookouts and archers in ancient times, felt like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, only with more belly sweat and dorky sock tan lines.  The steps were worn smooth by thousands of soldiers over the centuries under all sorts of governing bodies in Jerusalem, King David and Saladin being the most notable.  It served as the upper most defense position for the old city and is equipped with arrow embrasures and the narrowest of staircases.  It was a mild day and a fantastic treat with gorgeous and informative vantage points of the city.

St. George's

On Sunday morning, we attended church at St. George's Cathedral for their Arabic/English service, the place where I stayed on my first trip here. Stepping back into the refuge of their walls came with a rush of grateful familiarity. Hosam Naoum, the dean of the Cathedral and a fellow VTS grad, preached on fear vs. love in our lectionary's passage from Luke. They were particularly poignant words.

The movements and rhythms and melodies felt like home. Afterwards, we shared coffee with a wonderful old friend, Bishara, the logistics director (aka, the muscle and cat-herder of our wandering pilgrimage group.) We spoke about the plight of the Israeli/Palestinian impasse, and Melissa asked if Christians were stuck in the middle.

Shabbat

Friday night at sundown (over our nightly beers on the hotel balcony), we heard the sound of fireworks in the distance to celebrate the approaching Queen of the Sabbath. Loud reminders of religious ritual are the norm here. Friday during the day, the minarets had sounded the Friday sermon for the Muslim community and Jerusalem at large. The preacher's tone reminded me of the angry fundamentalists at home, but I have nothing to say regarding its content as I have no Arabic beyond basic greetings and thanks in my repertoire.

Some Thoughts and Nibbles

Cats:  There are cats everywhere here.  It's very much like Rome in that this ancient city is crawling with cats.  Here's the thing though, neighborhood cats are taken care of.  We see folks feeding them at every turn with leftovers.  One kind person in the old city took great pains to arrange a few plates in a painstaking manner.  The plates looked like Michelin star quality stuff.  They roam in clowders, mostly unaffected by passersby.  They meet up in secret clusters by the dumpsters, I suspect to plan a coup d'etat.  I suppose they are great for keeping vermin at bay.

Jesus' footsteps, part 2

The gates of the Pater Noster

We left the Chapel of the Ascension and walked a few blocks to the Pater Noster. We have been taken for a French women for much of the trip (I have helpfully replied by demanding baguettes and telling my name in French) and this lovely little cloister is actually owned by France and populated by a group of Catholic sisters.

Holy Holy Holy Moley

    Remember when you were a kid and you tried your Dad's shoes on for the first time? How absolutely huge they were? And the thought occurred to you that you would never ever fill them, metaphorically or literally? So, I walked in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. I mean that literally of course. You can't say that every day. I WALKED IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF JESUS CHRIST TODAY.

Jesus' footsteps, part 1

Scoping Mt. Scopus

This is Amber, checking in from Mount Scopus. If you're familiar with the area, our hotel is right next to Hebrew University and the panorama from the deck gives a view of the entire city before us.

This day was given to walking the footsteps of Jesus. When you read about places like Jerusalem, Bethany, the Judean hillside, Jericho, etc., we have this childlike association from the tales in Sunday School. They take on a fairy-tale like quality. "Once upon a time, there was a city so fair that people said God was found in her walls."

Israel Museum and Monastery of the Holy Cross

     It's hot here.  We are averaging 10-15 miles a day and I remember so clearly stating on the first day to my Mom that it was "really quite mild" and that there was a "light cooling breeze and not as hot as I imagined."  That was a total load.  It's hot.  It's at least 20 degrees cooler in the shade at all times and other than my new rugged ,winded desert complexion my hair is turning sandy.  It now means something very different to me when the good book says that the Jews wandered the desert for 40 years.  They must have had some serious calf muscles and you just know they complained of the gnarliest vericose veins.  At least they didn't have to deal with vendors at every corner trying to hustle you.  At least that....  

Holy stumps

Warhol from the Israel Museum

Melissa and I carry three different maps around with us when we venture out. The first is one the hotel gave me: helpfully bolding major streets with a big red line where the Light Rail runs and a list of interesting places. Another is one of the entire country of Israel we bought at the gift shop before realizing the hotel gives a free one. The last was purchased by my dear companion in the Old City, where a booth vendor saw her looking at the map, exclaimed excitedly that it was the best map ever and would fulfill her every wish and dream, and his aggressive exuberance frightened her enough to want buy and run away. "How much?" she asked. "Ten shekel," was his answer, and to my shock she handed it over without haggling and we skittered off.

No pictures

Amber here again. There are no pictures from our visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust history museum on Mount Herzl. Cameras aren't allowed. They shouldn't be. You should go.

I had nothing in my journal from my first trip three years ago. I remember the numb shock, the feeling as though I couldn't see one more picture of starvation and slaughter or I would break into pieces.

I remembered the first panel describing the rise of antisemitism in Germany. It was an eerily familiar call to national pride. But the next panel traced it further back -- my own St. Augustine was quoted in the next exhibit, commanding that the Christians should "slay not" the Jews in the 4th century, that they should survive but not thrive. I quote Augustine often, but not that.

Yad Vashem

     We reached Yad Vashem after an arduous yet beautiful hike up Mount Hertzl.  Yad Vashem is the Holocaust Museum for Jerusalem.  It is the most comprehensive and explicit Holocaust Museum I've attended yet.  The building was designed by Moshe Safdie, who interestingly enough designed Crystal Bridges in Arkansas.  He formatted the structure to jut out of the mountainside in Modernist geometric angulation.  The forms cut like sharp blocks, creating a jagged prism closely resembling the rocks so abundant in the landscape.  The building wounds the mountain, coyly playing with the visual devices familiar in modernism but metaphorically severing the body of the  mountain.  We hiked up a desert, rich with dry greenery, rosemary and olive trees as well as dust and marble gravel that proved unforgiving.  After we traveled through the historic, then artistic interpretation of the Holocaust in Europe to the settlement of the Israeli state in 1949, we spilled out into a landscape that embraces the promised land.  It astounds and refreshes simultaneously.

     The exhibitions were curated chronologically starting at the rise of antisemitism following World War I, moving through the Nazi Party's ascension to power and the humiliations and atrocities they committed against Jews, Romani people, gays and lesbians, Polish Christians, the disabled, and Jehovah's Witnesses.  Beyond the well known history however, curators provided exhibits showcasing Jewish resistance and militias that took to the forests.  Additionally, the museum supplemented each exhibit with interviews from survivors that both shocked and moved me.  These were the hardest things to bare I felt.  I almost lost my footing at a large scale photograph of a soldier shooting the back of a woman fleeing clutching a baby.  These things etch into my mind and creep in late at night.  The final culmination of this museum did not focus on the Allies winning the war but the aftershock of zealous antisemitism that rippled through Europe following Germany's surrender.  These accounts addressed the  orphans, rebuilding and emigration (legal and illegal) into neighboring countries.  Finally, an explanation on the rise of the Zionist movement and settlement of Jewish Diaspora by the creation of the State of Israel.

The most poignant of exhibits to me, surprise surprise, was artistic.  The Hall of Names holding the pages of testimony commemorating the millions of Jews murdered during the Holocaust exemplified metaphor.  It seemed both infinite and intimate.  A dome filled with photos of victims fit within a most substantial library of black binders.  At the bottom of this all-encompassing open sphere was a deep carved well with water.  Pushing our thoughts toward memory, the pool reflected the photographs of those above.  This space echoed with a resounding bong when I threw a coin in and silently said a prayer like many others had done before me, expressly making my physical presence apparent and concrete.  This was an interesting juxtaposition I thought.  The above and below, heaven and earth, death and life, dark and light were in pointed visual commentary.

Now Holocaust museums are never easy, nor should they be.  They fill me with a misanthropy that is almost impossible for me to dig my way out of.  Even though I spilled out from this space onto a landscape of hope, I walked through a city that exists in fear and conflict.  And to be perfectly honest I continually considered American congruencies of rising intolerance, especially to Muslims and illegal immigrants while walking through this museum.  I walked away stunned, disheartened and ashamed.   But I am reminded.  I am here and I have to push forward with the lessons learned from our past.   Yet again, I am reminded of this trip being about binaries.  That one can experience hope and loss simultaneously.  

What is a pilgrimage without a hike?

   

Today we hiked. We hiked like true pilgrims. I have a wicked neck sunburn to prove it. 23,000 steps according to Amber's cursed FitBit.  We schlepped up and down mountains on a road called Ein Karem, roughly translating to “Spring of the Vineyard” where the Church of the Visitation stands.  This little hillside town is the place where John the Baptist was born to Elizabeth and Zachariah.  This sight is where Mary recited her song of praise known as the Magnificat, one of the most ancient hymns.  The church was atop a hill that one scaled an abundant amount of steps to get to.  The church was very small and donned a long wall with the magnificat in about 100 languages each on their own hand painted tile.

     Upon entering the lower sanctuary, one couldn't help notice the fresco ceiling narratives that looked as if they were done in the style of Duccio, an early Sienese Renaissance painter.  The paintings were very well done but completed in the 19th century, 1895 or so.  The interior was very simple with a small offering table with a lovely mosaic of both Elizabeth and Zachariah.  Because they were "old" when they conceived, their wrinkles were even indicated funnily enough.  There was also the rock that Elizabeth supposedly hid John from the soldiers sent to kill all male infant children as well as a cistern that the family would've taken water from.   The experience was beautiful, Amber reading the stories to me from her well worn bible as we sat admiring the space.  (We snuck in when the church was closed so it was so quiet we were able to linger.)  The gardens immediately surrounding the church hosted a fecund bounty, with sculptures and butterflies to lead the path, which by the way was also closed and blocked.  Amber can hurdle a chain barricade, no problem. I on the other hand, am a half foot shorter so....

      I have feared that I wouldn't have any spiritual experiences while here to be honest.  That's been my worry to trump all worries.  But with today, I experienced not only delight in that space, but also hope.  Now it wasn't a hyperbolic moment of tongue talking religious fervor mind you.  I didn't see, or hear, or shake.  No fire in the sky for me, but what a rewarding moment in a contemplative, ancient place.  To know that so many have hiked those hills all the way back to Mary was leveling.  The pilgrimage up until this point in my life has been secular, to see the great achievements of artistic genius- and often in cathedrals mind you.  But today, the hike was meaningful in a way I didn't expect.  Not to sound like Captain Obvious or anything but it was almost like, her good news was our good news.

     We walked back down the hill finding a delightful corner cafe to share a dish called, Shakshuka and bread and cappuccinos.  Let me tell you honey, that Shakshuka was divine as well.  (Obviously not the SAME thing, but you get my zeal here I think.)  Now I'm a vegetarian, but on occasion, when the situation calls for it, I will enjoy a carnivorous meal.  But the one thing I always abstain from is veal and lamb.  TODAY WAS THE DAY I SINNED.  I ate lamb shakshuka and I won't look back.  This is a kind of middle easter Bolognese made with spices, peppers, a tomato base and of course BABY SHEEP that you dip into with crusty bread.  It may have been the trek across the desert, and I do mean DESERT, but I may have witnessed two holy experiences in one day.  Don't worry foodies, I'll devote a whole blog post about food culture here!  I promise.

     We figured out the light rail system.  THANK GOD.  We hopped off near a cosmopolitan market neighborhood.  We had dinner just outside of the old city near Jaffa Square at a Kosher restaurant separated on two sides, meat and dairy.  We ate on the meat side if you were wondering.  

   Just at dark, Amber and I ended the evening with 5,000 more steps, making a trip to the market where we found fruit beer to haul back to the hotel.  It was one more, yet far less wholesome pilgrimage to take.  

The Church of the Visitation

The wall of Magnificats in every language

Melissa and I mastered the light rail today, which took us from our hotel on Mount Scopus all the way to the other side of Jerusalem and the last stop at the top of Mount Herzl.

The village of Ein Karem was a short, hot walk down the mountain. We found the Spring of Mary, spouting out cold water despite being plugged with two kids who were crawling their way down the kid-sized tunnel that the water came from.

The Church of the Visitation was a peaceful church halfway up the next hill. So what's the Visitation? Luke records that when Mary heard she was pregnant, she went on a trip to visit her sister, Elizabeth, "in the Judean hillside." Someone in Christian tradition said, "Must be Ein Karem!" and so the legend grew. Like most places in the Holy Land, no one can prove this is really where Elizabeth lived (and therefore, where John the Baptist was born), but this doesn't bother me. That'll be a post for another time.

When Mary reaches Elizabeth, JBap leaps in Elizabeth's womb. That's maybe my favorite phrase in the Bible. Elizabeth asks how it is that the mother of her Lord would visit her, and Mary bursts into a song we commonly call the Magnificat:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel,
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
The promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.


Mary’s song is one depicting great upheaval. This is not a leveling. The poor will not only be lifted up, but the rich will be brought down. The charming and capable and beautiful and prosperous people will be surpassed by the downtrodden and the lowly and the rejected and the oppressed.

This song is about turning over the system.

People sometimes walk around with the idea that Jesus was born perfectly in touch with God. I'm not one of them. How often are parents afraid of the words they say that their children will repeat? Listen to the Sermon on the Mount and see if you don't hear Mary's words in there: blessed are the poor, the meek, the lowly. Listen to him teach others to pray that God's will be done. Who was it that taught him other than his mother -- the first to say to God, "Let it be done unto me." It was her prayer he repeated at the end, at the crossroads between taking the cup or pushing it from him.

We found quiet in Ein Karem, the perfect place to hear this song again that has echoed from its first recitation there out to the whole world.

First Impressions!

      We landed about 10:30am Jerusalem time in Tel Aviv.  No sleep, reading, movies behind a seat rest and lots of shifting in my seat is the long and short of the story.  The flight was a surreal 11 hour endeavor that surrounded me with the culture of the Middle East, Orthodox Jews and Arabs.  The woman next to me prayed rocking, with her talmud to her face several times throughout the flight taking a kosher meal at both dinner and breakfast.  My world changed as soon as the we entered the gate for the flight, which had yet another security checkpoint due to the geographic hotspot.  Upon landing, I had a strange unexplainable pain in my tailbone which due to my neurotic nature, I convinced myself was a boil.  So now I'd be a pilgrim in the Holy Land with a boil.  A game changer. But fear not, no boil exists.  Just neurosis.  I bobble about with a seemingly confident air.  No one suspects.   But really, no boil, I promise.
     Upon boarding the deadly bus known as a sherut, it was clear that all drivers take passengers' lives into their own hands.  If I didn't have IBS when we got into that van, I did when we arrived in Jerusalem.  In Israel, it's common to merge ONTO another vehicle apparently.  Upon ascending the hill Amber showed me a psalm used for a Jerusalem pilgrimage from her bible that we both incanted silently to ourselves.
     After a well deserved nap and shower, we trekked out into the old city.  I love walking with this woman.  She can handle a lot of miles.  I expected a heat like an oven but really, it's quiet mild to me.  No humidity and a lovely breeze.  There are palm and olive trees, rosemary and rocks everywhere.  There's also litter.  Its a dirty city.  I expected that in an ancient place with so many people moving about I think.  We found ourselves walking through the Damascus gate finally, one of seven that allow travel in and out of the old city which is separated into four quarters, the Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian.  There are checkpoints everywhere.  As we walked on cobbled stones worn smooth over the centuries from foot traffic, we are greeted by vendors.  There are so many vendors.  Juice, incense, turkish style coffee, scarves and Adidas.  Adidas, everywhere, and Hugo Boss.  We enjoyed a meal of chicken kebab, hummus and various salads in a narrow street as we watched teenage boys make crude jokes about the old men sitting down the way.  We compared notes on what we observed.
     I realized immediately on the bus while driving into Jerusalem, that neither Amber nor I fit in, at all, what so ever.  I've walked around this ancient city today with worry.  I wear a very large tattoo on my forearm.  I brandish this in a place where people don't get tattoos, for cultural and spiritual reasons.  I hear you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery with a tattoo.  I have short hair and wear a tee shirt and you guessed it, Adidas.  Really other than my gender, I channel the style of a cosmopolitan Arab teen boy.  Funny enough, you could say I fit right in, buy I feel apologetic about my presentation strangely.  I get lots of looks, but no rude exchanges or comments at all.  I am clearly American, amongst other things.  The surprise for me on this first day is how vital and important it is to the inhabitants of this region to wear the uniform.  Wether it be a Jew or a Muslim, that projection marks one's faith clearly.  The values are seen and understood.  I wonder what I may project?
      So we close the day with beer overlooking the ancient city of Jerusalem while listening to the call to prayer atop the many minarets.  I can't think of anything more haunting, ancient and beautiful.  Tomorrow waits!!!

Tired

In charge

I'm Amber and I'm tired. Here's a short post, since I am short on sleep and even shorter on words. I closed my eyes for about two hours on the plane last night while the turbulence shook me from the edge of sleep every time I approached. The fact that I'm verbally communicating feels like a win; I sat for literally the entire morning and tried to think of the word "Celtic."

Melissa has dealt with me kindly, patiently, as I've descended into the madness of exhaustion and my communication skills have devolved to angry glares and grunting noises.

After the unremarkable ordeal of passport control in Tel Aviv, we boarded a sherut (shared taxi propelled at terrifying speeds and the closest Muggle equivalent to Harry Potter's Knight Bus) for an hour's ride to Jerusalem, the city at the center of so much of what I pray daily.

It's hard to approach something like this feeling like I'm at the lowest level of existence. However, it must be some dim echo of what pilgrims have felt for thousands of years -- long journeys through desert and discomfort to lift their eyes to the hills and finally find the answer to the question: from where is my help to come?

I read the Psalms of Ascent from the prayer book as we came in sight of the city as my priest had done for me on my first visit, repeating the well-worn words of an ancient tradition. At our lowest, we are carried into this by others.

Psalm 121, from the BCP

I lift up my eyes to the hills;
from where is my help to come?

My help comes from the LORD,
the maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved
and he who watches over you will not fall asleep.

Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel
shall neither slumber nor sleep;

The LORD himself watches over you;
the LORD is your shade at your right hand,

So that the sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The LORD shall preserve you from all evil;
it is he who shall keep you safe.

The LORD shall watch over your going out and your coming in,
from this time forth for evermore.

This is not going on the blog.

“THIS IS NOT GOING IN THE BLOG!” I yelped as the moment passed.

I was recounting the most forgetful thing I’ve ever done as we drove to the Memphis Airport at 6am this morning. As I wrapped up my story about realizing how I forgot all my credit cards, driver’s license, AND the coveted passport, upon pulling up to the same airport in the winter of 2015 I laughed in embarrassment. (I spent a semester in Spain teaching 20 honors students. I had convinced myself I would be mugged and carefully scanned all my documents and credit cards for digital copies the night before flying. I left them there in the scanner the morning of my departure.) Suddenly, an uneasy feeling washed over me. I felt my chest tighten and the thought lingered that this morning and in THAT MOMENT, I should check to make sure my wallet and passport are safely stowed away in my backpack. I checked five times the day before and all was in order. Pulling out the passport wallet, I sigh a breath of relief when I see the familiar blue cover. I flip open the book and whose face is looking at me?  A 20-something Amber Carswell stares back. The sea of panic swells in my body to outright hyperventilation. “Why is your passport in my backpack?!?!?!” Somewhere in the weeks prior we had accomplished an absentminded switcheroo that sent me into an all out nuclear meltdown.

One day we will laugh about it. Amber already is.

I’m not a flake. But the worry persists as I trek through my day moving from place to place, airport to airport that I'm a bit of one. This seems to be a trip of binaries, apples and oranges. Amber is ordered, logical, and resolute. She does well with numbers, relishing in games of strategy. She comes back refreshed from a ten mile run in one hundred degree heat. She reads the instructions before assembling a vacuum cleaner or her new FitBit. She is devoted to a life serving God. I am fluid, easily moved by personal stories. I spend hours wandering through museums.  I change my mind often.  I’d rather sweep than groom the dog. I travel without a firm itinerary.  I am refreshed after a long day of quiet reading or painting in a 77 degree household. My spiritual road is bumpy and full of doubt. But this trip holds more than just opposing personality types.

For me, I don’t know what the next two weeks holds. Certainly it will be full of comparisons. It’s already started in fact. I took photos of the absurd Trump and Hillary tees in the airport gift shop. I made poop jokes privately at the Starbucks that went too far, knowing I’ll have to edit myself abroad. After sitting for a year in churches listening to spiritual journeys, biblical analysis, sermons on living a more meaningful life, I still wait. I wait to hear. Quietly, I listen for divine whispers. This fuss about God is something else. I mean, it’s big.

The grant was awarded to me by my University. The intention is to have an immersive experience, one with cultural exchange and primarily to build my creative work. A body of paintings influenced from the images I find in Jerusalem is the end goal.  I trust all that is about to happen. The rest of it? Like most of my life, something is about to happen. Albert Brooks, a comedian and director had a bit about being an escape artist who gasps for air and begs for help. I think that’s a darkly comedic image that might shine some light on me writing this blog. If you are reading for enlightening spiritual epiphanies, you might find someone struggling instead. But there will be poop jokes. Count on that.

Leavings

Amber here. We’re going to the Holy Land.

I’ve been once before, three years ago. It was in the summer after my junior (first) year of seminary and I was traveling with experienced guides, a flock of friends from my home parish, and had an incomplete but practiced grasp of Greek.

Now, I’m the "expert" of our two-person group, every bit the novice and still with only a basic grasp of the wrong biblical language. Folks have sent me off with their well-wishes, imploring safety. Translation: don’t get blown up.

A resilient dog

For my own part, there comes a point before every trip when a wave of dread hits me and makes me feel like this is the very last thing in the world I want to do, and I really shouldn’t be away from work or my garden and not only that, but my dog’s heart is going break in pieces without me, and I can’t live with the guilt of crushing his very feeling little soul. Plus, I’m going to cross an ocean by magically defying gravity for 10 hours?! It’s enough that if there were a big red ABORT button that would refund my payments and let me go back to everyday life, I would press it. This panic hits about 24 hours before departure, every single trip I take.

I blame it mostly on fear: fear of airplanes and large bodies of water. (And death, you know, but I’m promising Melissa not to get too morbid in this blog.)

But fear not, intrepid readers! Airlines have become a part of my moral and spiritual development in terms of fortitude, as they do not have any big red abort buttons. Whether it’s necessity or courage, I don’t know and won't parse it out, but as soon as I woke up today I was ready to go.

We drove to the airport watching a golden sun rising and I thought about Origen and how he thinks praying for the sunrise is a worthwhile action, for, "God has employed the free will of individual beings on earth for the service of beings on earth in arranging them aright, so we may suppose that He has employed the free will, fixed and certain and steadfast and wise as it is, of sun, moon and stars in arranging the whole world of heaven with the course and movement of the stars in harmony with the whole."

I murmured our words about being dust, and began to look forward to that dust swirling off in the Jerusalem sunset.

Farewell and blessings to you all from Newark.

peace,
Amber