"Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem"

I was glad when they said to me:

‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’

And now our feet are standing

within your gates, O Jerusalem.

 - Psalm 122:1-2

I arrived today in Jerusalem, that great city at the heart of the Jewish and Christian faiths, and to a lesser extent, the Muslim faith (the holiest cities in Islam are Mecca and Medina, but Jerusalem ranks as #3). After praying about Jerusalem and Israel in the psalms and reading about them in the Scriptures for my entire life, finally, I was here, standing within the gates of the Old City, walking the very land that Jesus and the prophets walked. 

I will be staying at the Ecce Homo Convent, run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Zion and the Chemin Neuf community. I'm looking forward to being in an explicitly religious lodging environment, after staying in generic secular hostels so far for this journey. Although I've enjoyed my time in the hostels and met some great people, it's been harder to carve out space and time for prayer, or to just sit on the grounds reading Scripture or saying the Daily Office without getting weird looks and questions from the staff about what I'm doing and why I'm not out doing something. 

Ecce Homo has a wonderful chapel and a larger basilica where I can go to pray at any hour of the day, and their idea of "dorm-style accommodations" are not the large room full of bunk beds that the hostels provided, but a small private room, lacking total privacy only by the fact that its walls do not reach all the way to the ceiling, and that it has a cloth curtain instead of a door. (Pictured at right.) It's amazing to have this kind of privacy for $24/night. (Pilgrims, take note! This is a wonderful place to stay on your pilgrimage to Jerusalem!) 

I'm also glad to know that this is the last move I'll have to make before my departure for the U.S. a week from Thursday. After moving to a different city every few nights for the past 11 days, I'm looking forward to settling in a bit here. There's a closet in my room and I actually hung my clothes up in it! It's nice not to feel so much like I'm living out of a suitcase as I have been.

The down side of traveling alone

During my time here in the Sea of Galilee region, I've done some more "touristy" things, in addition to visiting the sites of religious significance and taking time for silence and worship in this sacred place. It's at the moments when I'm doing those more "vacation-like" activities that I most notice the absence of my husband and feel lonely traveling alone.

Sunday evening, I went down to Tiberias and walked on the boardwalk by the Sea of Galilee. I had dinner at a nice restaurant, sitting outdoors on the boardwalk and looking out at the lake. There I got my taste of "St. Peter's fish," a fish native to the waters of the Sea of Galilee that supposedly has been living in these waters since before the time of Jesus, and thus the fish that Peter and James and Andrew and all the other disciples who were fishermen before Jesus came along would have been catching. When the waiter brought my plate, I was in for a bit of a surprise -- the entire fish, lying on my plate, head and fins and all!

This really put my new fish-eating habits to the test! When I became a vegetarian, part of the reason was because it felt hypocritical to me for me to eat meat that was slaughtered and prepared by other people when I knew I wouldn't be able to do so myself. I felt like if I was going to eat meat, I should be able to catch it and kill it and prepare it myself. (Incidentally, this is why I've always had respect for hunters as a vegetarian, but not for those meat-eaters who give hunters a hard time ("Oh, don't kill Bambi's mother!") and then go order a Big Mac at McDonald's.) When I started eating fish recently, I reasoned that I could probably deal with fishing... I'd probably be able to catch and prepare a fish if I needed to. Well, here was the test of that! Could I eat this very un-disguised fish in its natural state? I did... and managed not to get TOO grossed out.

Sunday night I also went to a worship service at St. Andrew's Church near the Tiberias boardwalk. It's part of the Church of Scotland, in partnership with the Anglican and Lutheran churches in the Holy Land, and services are in English.

Monday I went up to Safed (Tzfat), the hilltown above the Sea of Galilee that is famous as the spiritual home of Kabbalah, the Jewish mysticism. Unfortunately, I didn't really know what I was looking for, despite the guide book I'd picked up from my hostel with map and all, and wasn't sure if I'd paid enough money for the parking meter, so I didn't spent very long in Safed. I walked up and down the main thoroughfare and had some ice cream, and observed all the very observant Jews walking the streets of Safed, many of them speaking English with American accents, interestingly enough.

On the streets of Safed

Then I went to Ginnosar and saw the "ancient Galilee boat," a boat discovered in the mud off the shore of the Sea of Galilee during a drought in 1986. Scientists have dated it somewhere between 50 BCE and 50 CE, putting it within the time range that Jesus and his disciples would have been active in the Galilee region. It was pretty amazing to see the boat and to think about the fact that this boat was an actual physical artifact from the time of Jesus -- regardless of whether or not he actually traveled on this boat, which of course cannot possibly be known, despite the boat's nickname as "The Jesus Boat."

After seeing the ancient boat, I tried to get a ride on one of the replicas of the ancient fishing boats that take tourists and pilgrims for sailing trips on the lake. (It was actually one of these boats, and not a real, authentic fishing boat, that I'd seen on my first day in Tiberias from the boardwalk.) One of my professors back at Sewanee had recommended that I spend more time in the Sea of Galilee region than I'd originally planned, saying that it is "more peaceful" than Jerusalem, and that "you can get a boat ride onto the Sea of Galilee that I wouldn't miss." And talking to my husband on Sunday night, he'd encouraged me to go for the boat ride idea as well, even if it was out of my travel budget, saying we could cover it from our own funds. So, despite the touristy-looking nature of the whole deal, I went out in search of a boat ride on Monday.

From some initial research on the internet, I'd discovered that the fishing boat replicas operated mostly just for groups, but that as an individual, I could approach one of the people in charge of the boats and ask if I could join one of the trips already scheduled for a group. I tried this in Ginnosar, but to no avail. A boat had just set sail, and there wasn't going to be another one until the next morning. So I went to Tiberias, where the "Holy Land Sailing" company's offices were, on the boardwalk, and figured I could ask there. Unfortunately, those offices were closed. Finally, I approached some vendors by the boardwalk who were renting out small motor boats and jet skis, and asked what the price was to rent one of those boats.

"125 shekels, half an hour. You drive," the man said.

I looked down at the boats bobbing beside the docks. This was probably the only means by which I was going to be able to get out on the lake.

"Okay," I said.

"You are alone? Or you have someone with you?" he asked.

"No, it's just me," I said, thinking, Thanks for rubbing it in.

"You must have someone with you," he responded. "Cannot go alone. It's not allowed. Must have someone with you."

"Oh," I said, my face falling. Great, I thought.

"But, it's ok, I send someone with you," he continued, thumping one of his employees on the shoulder and speaking to him rapidly in Hebrew, pointing to me, then pointing to the boat. The employee, who did not speak English, didn't seem thrilled about these orders.

So the employee begrudgingly led me down to a small white and yellow motorboat, motioned for me to get in, and then reached over me to start the boat and get it backed away from the dock. He then put the boat in drive and handed it over to me and sat back. I didn't know how to slow down or stop or anything, and I couldn't really ask him, since he didn't speak English, so I just took the boat out in one long continuous loop around the area in front of Tiberias. So much for my idea of getting out into the middle of the lake and stopping the boat and sitting and meditating and taking pictures.

I was supposed to have 30 minutes with the boat, but I probably only took about 15 or 20. It was just random and awkward to have this total stranger just like, sitting there in the boat with me, just so I had another body in the boat per regulations. It was kind of cool to be able to get out on the water, but mostly it was just lonely. If my husband had been with me, or my sister (with whom I've traveled a lot in the past), I would have had someone to share this experience with, and I wouldn't have had to take a grumpy   boat employee with me on my little excursion on the water.

On this trip, I've noticed that when I'm visiting religious sites and in prayer, I don't mind being alone -- in fact, I actually prefer it, not having to worry about anyone else or coordinate with anyone else and can see the sites and worship and pray at my own pace. But when I'm doing things that are more "toursity" or "vacation-oriented," they're really just not that fun alone. That's probably why I'm running way below what I'd budgeted for food on this trip, assuming I'd be eating out often. But I haven't really eaten out often, instead buying food at grocery stores or grabbing a quick falafel here and there for $4 or $5, because eating alone at a sit-down restaurant just isn't as enjoyable by myself.

Later that evening, back at the hostel, I had dinner with the geologists, and one of the American professors with the group was saying how even though he's traveled all over the world for work and gotten to see some amazing places, he always thinks how much better it would be if he had been able to share these places with his wife. It reminded me of Christopher McCandless's insight in the film Into the Wild: "Happiness is only real if shared."

Religious Sites or Tourist Traps?

Yesterday, I visited many of the religious sites along the Western shores of the Sea of Galilee: the ancient city of Capernaum, with the remains of what may have been Peter's house and the synagogue where Jesus taught; Tabgha, the site where Jesus may have fed the five thousand; and the Mount of Beatitudes, the top of a hill overlooking the sea of Galilee where Jesus may have delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

None of these sites are historically verifiable as the places where these events occurred (with the exception perhaps of Capernaum, which in all likelihood is the remains of ancient Capernaum), and the Gospel accounts themselves do not even agree about where these things took place: Luke has the feeding of the five thousand in Bethsaida (Luke 9:10), which is on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, not the West side, where Tabgha is. Matthew recounts the "sermon on the mount" ("When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain…" Matt. 5;1), but in Luke it is a "sermon on the plain" ("He came down with them and stood on a level place…" Luke 6:17). In my initial planning for this trip, I had written in my itinerary for my time at the Sea of Galilee: "Spend the weekend around the Sea of Galilee. Enjoy just 'be-ing' in this space rather than trying to visit all the 'historic sites.'"

There certainly was a wisdom to my instinct about this region. I felt a greater sense of awe and wonder on Friday afternoon when I arrived and went swimming in the Sea of Galilee at a camping and picnicking spot of no "religious significance" than I did in visiting these so-called "Holy Places," with their signs prohibiting shorts and dogs and guns and cigarettes. The "religious sites" were teeming with tourists, and the hillside dotted with huge charter tour buses blazing down the highway. The buses pulled in and deposited their passengers at the sites, and the groups filed out like obedient cattle, adjusting their backpacks and sunglasses and cameras and snapping pictures of everything in sight, speaking loudly and pointing. Tour group leaders stood by railings holding up some identifying marker, like a white plastic rose, to mark their spot and gather their group, and then began to give lectures on the significance of these sites, in Hebrew, English, German, Japanese… you name it. It was suffocating.

In some sense I am glad I visited these places, particularly Capernaum, but in some sense I could have done without ever having been to these spots. Just knowing that I am in the general region where Jesus spent much of his time teaching is significant enough for me. The sites themselves did not add anything to my "religious experience" of being in this place.

Most disappointing was Tabgha, which was a rather plain church centered around a large rock underneath the altar -- supposedly the rock on which Jesus performed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. As I stood there staring at this rock and watching the spectacle of people climbing over the chains that were supposed to keep people out of the area and going up to the rock to have their picture taken with it, I felt nothing. No sense of awe that Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish at this spot -- because I didn't really believe that it happened AT THIS SPOT, on THAT ROCK. (I don't even remember there being a mention of a rock in the Gospel accounts of the story!) And the obsession with which these people disregarded rules of proper decorum just to get their picture taken with this ROCK seemed nearly idolatrous to me. Are all these people who are so anxious to get next to this rock and have their picture taken also just as anxious to get next to the poor and feed them, to perform their own 'feeding of the five thousand?" I wondered.

This lady climbed over the chains to get her picture taken with the rock.

As was the case at many of these Sea of Galilee sites, the gift shop was a bigger deal at Tabgha than the actual "religious site." The mosaic of the loaves and fishes that is on the floor in front of the rock was for sale as a t-shirt, a cup, a mug, a pin, a magnet, and anything else you could imagine at the gift shop just outside the exit to the church -- and had been prevalent in souvenir shops all over Israel. You could also buy shiny jewelry in the shape of crosses that had been "blessed" by placing it "on the rock where our Lord fed the five thousand." To take home such a piece of holiness with you will cost you 45 U.S. dollars. I started to understand Jesus's outrage at those who were selling things in the temple: "My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers." (Luke 20:46).

Something about the fact that the prices were listed in dollars or euros instead of shekels in many of these gift shops bothered me as well. It was like, we're not even going to TRY to make these people realize they're in another country; we'll just cater to their every need and make them feel right at home, right down to making sure they don't even have to exchange their money for the local currency.

These sites were the first sites I'd visited so far on this trip that actually charged an admission fee as well. The Greek Orthodox church at Capernaum did not charge, but the archeological site of Capernaum where the Roman Catholic church was located did, as did the Mount of Beatitudes. Granted, these were not huge fees (the equivalent of about 85 cents at Capernaum and $2.80 at the Mount of Beatitudes), but there was still something off-putting about charging admission to a place of prayer. (I could understand Capernaum charging an entrance fee, being an archeological site and all, but the Mount of Beatitudes had nothing archeological about it.) The charge (and the guards sitting at the gates to collect money) certainly discouraged me from wanting to return another day to just sit and pray.

No, I felt more embraced in a sense of the presence of Jesus and his ministry in the Galilee region as I sat at dinner with the geologists staying at my guesthouse who are examining a fault line near the Sea of Galilee, or as I watched my hostess Yael make breakfast in the morning, scurrying about and making sure everyone ate well. It is in community that I find the presence of Christ, and the flow of tourists in and out of these largely abandoned sites seemed to lack a feeling of community -- at least for me, since I wasn't part of any of the groups.

Today I decided to stay put, spending the day in this retreat-like spot that is the guesthouse where I am staying, sitting in a hammock with a gorgeous view of the Sea of Galilee and reading the entirety of the Gospel of Luke. This feels more like a pilgrimage than the hecticness and commercialism of yesterday's "pilgrimage sites."

(Despite all the negativity here, I did get some decent artistic shots at some of these places... see my Picasa albums for more photos from the Sea of Galilee sites: http://picasaweb.google.com/twellsmiller/IsraelTrip)

Jesus becomes "real to me" at the Sea of Galilee

I arrived this morning in Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. It is so odd to be traveling between these biblical locations -- going from Nazareth to Tiberias -- which are both still places where people actually live, not just the ancient remains of what once was. It is this continuity with the past that is the most meaningful to me when visiting sites of historic significance -- the fact that those places are STILL places where people live and work -- like Istanbul and Athens and Thessaloniki and Rome all were on my foreign study trip in college in 2003.

As our bus crested the hill at the top of the mountains, I got my first glimpse of the Sea of Galilee, stretching out before me like a big blue glittering pool. After we arrived in the bus station, I walked down to the boardwalk area of Tiberias, and saw a large fishing boat sitting not far out from the shore. "Wow, here we are!" I thought to myself. "At the Sea of Galilee, with a fishing boat! How perfect!"

I picked up my rental car and drove to the northern shore of the lake, where the guesthouse is where I will be staying. Along the way, I passed signs for many of the religious sites along the shores of the lake.

I wasn't aware before arriving that the Sea of Galilee is located below sea level -- think Death Valley, California -- in other words, where it is VERY HOT. The outside temperature gauge on my car registered 33 ˚C when I left Tiberias, and by the time I got to my guesthouse, it was reading 38˚C. I wasn't sure exactly how hot that was, but I knew that anything over 30 was HOT. (I later did the conversions and saw that it was between 90 and 100 degrees Farenheit, according to my car gauge.)

After getting settled in my room, I debated about what to do with the rest of the afternoon. It was just too hot to do much of anything. I checked the weather and saw that it was supposed to be cloudy on Saturday and a bit cooler. That looked like a good option for visiting the sites, and today I could just be a bit of a tourist. All I really wanted to do was go swimming. It was the kind of day where the only bearable place to be was in the water.

I jumped in my car and drove back down the hill and fairly quickly came upon a place with access to the water. Although they wanted 55 shekels to park the car (about $15.50), I didn't even care by this point because I was so hot. Once I got down to the water, I realized that a lot of people were camping on the beach here, and I wondered if I had paid for camping with a car. (I couldn't read any of the signs and the people at the gate didn't speak much English. The extent of our conversation was, "Excuse me, do you speak English?" "A little." "Is this like, a beach where you can actually get in the water?" "You want swimming?" "Yes!!!" "55 shekels for the car.") One of my bunk-mates at the guesthouse told me later that it's illegal for people to charge entrance to the lake, since it "belongs to everybody" as a national treasure and they really shouldn't be charging admission to these areas, but people do it anyway.

Amnun Bay, where I went swimming. Photo courtesy of TripAdvisor.com

In any case, I got to enjoy the lake for a few hours. There was one section of the beach that said it was not an "authorized swimming area," but it was full of people, so I went ahead and got in. There were tons of college-age looking Israelis, sitting on rafts and drinking beer and listening to dance music BLASTING from speakers on the shore and laughing constantly. I swam around and looked out toward the middle of the lake and at the mountains rising on either side of it, and thought to myself, "I'm swimming in the Sea of Galilee! Jesus was actually HERE! This is where Peter fell in when he tried to walk on the water and didn't have enough faith. This is where Jesus calmed the winds and the sea…." All the Bible stories about Jesus in the Sea of Galilee region were floating through my head as I swam back and forth in this little area, the partying college kids behind me.

I realized, as I meditated, that I didn't really know what to do with these thoughts, that I didn't really have anywhere to put them. Jesus was actually HERE? What? That doesn't make any SENSE! I realized the extent to which, until now, I hadn't really thought of Jesus as a real person. Sure, I knew he was a real historical figure, and I considered that fact very important to my religious faith. But on a practical level, in my mind he was of the same category as figures in storybooks, of cartoon characters, of people in the movies. The places Nazareth and Galilee might as well have been the Land of Oz -- places that were in a storybook somewhere but not really real. And yet here I was -- visiting those places -- which were not only real 2,000 years ago but very much real today. What did it mean, then, that this Jesus who healed and walked on water and fed five thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread was a real, actual, flesh-and-blood human being whom the church claims was God incarnate and who once lived… RIGHT HERE???

Jesus Calling the Fishermen, Harry Anderson (1906-1996)

I know, this sounds like pretty basic stuff for someone who is in seminary to become a priest to be thinking about, but it was seriously a kind of revelatory moment. Nichole Nordeman sings about sorting through the "debates" and "doctrines" about Jesus, asking him to "be real to me now -- that's all I'm asking." This moment was the answer to that prayer… but in a different kind of way than I'd always thought about that song. I'd always thought the "realness" that she was searching for in that song was in a personal experience of "knowing Jesus in her heart," of that kind of "finding Jesus" or "meeting Jesus" moment that evangelical Christians speak about as crucial to their conversion experience. And it was with such a thing in mind that I'd often sung along with that song. "Be real to me" -- let me have an authentic experience of your (otherworldly) presence. But as I swam and floated in the Sea of Galilee, I realized that Jesus was becoming "real to me" in an entirely different way -- in his earthly, human presence, as a REAL human being who actually lived here, in this very area. It was an insight that somehow I'd missed until now, and it took swimming in the Sea of Galilee with a bunch of partying Israelis to figure it out.

Nazareth: Basilica of the Annunciation

I admit that after reading about the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth and learning that it was consecrated in 1969, I wasn't expecting to be blown away by the "sacredness" of the place. I don't know, something about "modern" construction in areas where there are places and things that are so old somehow makes them seem less desirable in my mind. I suppose I have a prejudice toward the modern and a preference for the ancient when I'm traveling in places with a history that goes back more than 2,000 years. And as I passed by the basilica on my walk to the hostel, it seemed a large, massive structure with a not-particularly-attractive dome towering above it. I thought visiting this place might be a case of what my religion professor at Furman called "ADC" -- "Another Damn Cathedral" -- as we visited church after church after church on our foreign study trip to Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

But my preconceptions were very wrong. The church was magnificent, gorgeous, a truly sacred and holy space. Just stepping inside the courtyard, it was amazing the sense of awe and peace that came over me as I made the transition from the hectic, busy streets of the market to this oasis of space and quiet. At least, it seemed quiet... I'm sure it wasn't actually that quiet -- the walls that surrounded the courtyard and basilica were not soundproof. But somehow there was a sense of quiet -- perhaps a spiritual quiet, an emotional quiet -- in that place.

The basilica's facade towered above me, massive and impressive in its stately white starkness. I watched as groups of people came and went from the entrance: tourists with their backpacks and cameras, pilgrims crossing themselves as they left the church, nuns in full habit with baseball caps to shade themselves from the sun. I stood in the courtyard for a while just taking it all in. I'd expected to sort of pop in and see the place and move right along to the next site, but I wound up spending the better part of an hour and a half or maybe two hours in this place, much longer than I'd expected.

Before I entered, I walked the length of the outer courtyard, looking at all the mosaics that adorn the walls -- representations of the Virgin Mary (and often Mary with the child Jesus) from different countries and cultures around the world. There were the traditional Roman and Eastern Orthodox style representations of Mary and Jesus, but mixed in with them were a Chinese Mary and Jesus, a Philipino Mary and Jesus, a Chilean Mary and Jesus, a Korean Mary and Jesus. I loved looking at all the different representations and the diversity of cultures represented here. This was certainly something that wouldn't have been there had these walls been decorated 1,500 or more years ago. Ok, ok, maybe "modern" isn't all bad.

Finally, I entered the church, on the ground level, where the "grotto" is that is believed to be the cave where Mary's house was 2,000 years ago and where the Angel Gabriel appeared to her. I was actually surprised by how well-done the arrangement was: the cave was central to the entire floor, which was mostly open space, with the cave in the center. In front of the cave was a courtyard area with an altar and space for celebration of Eucharist. Up on the main level, there was a fence-like barrier encircling the lowered courtyard and the cave, with kneelers all along it so the visitors could approach and watch and kneel as services were going on. The lowered area was closed off, with a sign that said "Closed for religious service." Down in the courtyard, there was a group of pilgrims with their priest in the midst of a service. The priest was sitting in the presider's chair and talking, presumably giving the sermon. It was in Italian, so I couldn't understand much of it, but I picked up a few words here and there: "Aqui," he kept saying, "aqui…!" (Here, here…) And I heard the word "familia" quite a bit. Presumbaly, he was talking about the fact that HERE, Mary received the message from the angel, HERE, the Holy Family lived, etc, etc.

I decided to hang around for the Eucharistic celebration, which I could not participate in since I wasn't one of the group and since I'm not Roman Catholic, I'm not supposed to receive communion in their services anyway. But remembering the time I attended a Catholic mass in Athens during my foreign study trip in 2003 and how powerful it was to realize that I could follow along with the service even though I couldn't speak Greek, because it was so similar to the structure of the liturgy of the Lutheran church of my upbringing, I decided to stick around.

That experience was repeated, but even more powerfully this time -- since I basically have the Eucharistic prayer memorized after attending Episcopal churches for eight years now, I was able to follow along even more closely than I was back in 2003, when I'd been attending a Baptist church and non-denominational churches, and it had been a while since I'd been in a more "high church," liturgical service. This time, I knew exactly what was going on -- from the sursum corda (the opening sentences, named for the "Lift up your hearts/We lift them up to the Lord" exchange that is part of it) to the sanctus ("Holy, holy, holy") to the elements of the Eucharistic prayer itself -- thanks to Jim Turrell's liturgics class that I just finished this spring, I could even recognize and name and elements of the prayer -- the anamnesis or remembering of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection, the epiclesis, or invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine, the oblation, or offering of the gifts to God, and the institution narrative, or the recitation of the famous words from St. Paul about how "On the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when he had given thanks…" etc). And I even recognized that the priest, being a Roman Catholic, did the epiclesis part of the prayer BEFORE the words of institution, which is the "Roman position" of that aspect of the prayer. (Most liturgies in the Episcopal Church follow the West Syrian pattern of putting the epiclesis AFTER the words of institution.)

I know, more than you probably wanted to know about Eucharistic liturgy, but it was really cool to be able to pick all those things out even when the prayer was in another language -- mostly through the order and through the "manual acts" (that is, the hand motions that accompany each step of the prayer, which were almost identical to the ones we do in the Episcopal Church).

As I was sitting (and standing) there watching the service, a priest in an alb and a purple stole who was standing around in the open area where I was came over to me and asked, "Where are you from?" I told him I was from the U.S. and was in seminary to become a priest. "Ah, bless you," he said, and stepped back to let me continue watching the service. After it was over, I noticed that another group had gathered and as the first group filed out one side of the courtyard area, another group was coming in from the other side and filing in to the seats. Someone in this group had a guitar they had brought with them for musical accompaniment.

I walked over to the priest, who was still standing in the upper courtyard area, and asked him, "So, do different groups reserve this space so they can have a Eucharist here when they come visit?" He nodded. "From all over the world," he said. "This is where it all started, you know. Who knows, maybe it was this spot here, maybe it was that spot there, but in Nazareth -- it is where it all started."

"Yes," I said, nodding. "It's amazing."

I spoke with him for a while and found out that he was from Italy but had been living and working as a missionary in Sierra Leone in Africa for many years.

Then I went upstairs, to the main church area (pictured above), which is where the local Arab Catholic community worships on Sunday mornings. It was a more "traditional" church layout, with the altar near the spot where the cave was below, and a glass window in the floor so that you could look down to the grotto below from the main church area. There were more mosaics in here of Mary and Jesus. I took my time in here, too, sitting for a while with my scarf wrapped around my head (I don't know, something just compelled me to do it) and reading some of the passages from the Bible about the Annunciation and about Jesus in Nazareth.

I felt deeply comfortable here, like I could spend a lot of time in this place. It felt like a spiritual home to me. If I lived in Nazareth, I thought, I would come here often just to sit and pray and meditate.

When I left Nazareth on Friday morning for Tiberias, I stopped by the basilica on my way out and slipped in to the grotto area, with my backpack on and everything, and made my way up to the railing. Another group was there, in the middle of a Eucharistic celebration. There was something very powerful and comforting about knowing that there is an almost perpetual celebration of the Eucharist in that place. Here, where the Word was made flesh 2,000 years ago, the Word is continually being made flesh in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. I bowed in reverence and slipped out the door to my next destination, carrying with me the sacredness of that space.

Nazareth: Muslim and Christian Arabs and interfaith dialogue

Nazareth feels in may ways like a step backwards in time. The narrow streets of the Old City, the hustle and bustle of the marketplace, staying in a guesthouse in a 200-year-old Arabic home, with an open-air courtyard and stone walls… well, perhaps "stepping back in time" is not the right way of putting it. It is definitely stepping into a different culture, one that is very much alive in other parts of the modern world: namely, Arabic culture.

Unlike in Tel Aviv or Haifa, Muslim women wearing hijab (the headscarf) are common in the streets of Nazareth, and the haunting call to prayer in Arabic is heard several times each day over the loudspeakers from the minarets of the mosques. "Allahu akbar!" call the muezzins. "God is great!"

The interesting thing about this city, though, is that young Arab kids playing in the street will look up as I pass by and yell, "Shalom!" -- the traditional Hebrew greeting. Although I've heard the Arabic greeting "Merhaba" used often, I've also heard many Arab people speaking Hebrew, which I admit caused a sort of cognitive dissonance for me. I've come to make an interfaith pilgrimage, but I'm getting an intercultural one as well.

Today I met with Ghassan Manasra, a Sufi shiekh who is involved in interfaith work in Israel. I got his name from the Elijah Institute in Jerusalem, an interfaith organization I contacted when I was planning my pilgrimage in order to make contacts with some people in the interfaith community.

Ghassan met me outside the Basilica of the Annunciation and after greeting me warmly, said, "Please" -- and motioned for me to follow him down the sidewalk. We walked a few blocks away and into an old home that was in the process of renovation. Ghassan explained to me that this place was to become the new -- and only -- Sufi center in Nazareth… and also a spot for organizing and promoting interfaith dialogue. As we sat and talked, there were many people, men and women, coming and going from the room, calling to Ghassan in Arabic and greeting him with wide, warm smiles. "These are our disciples," he said. "They are coming to help work on the center." I found it interesting how he kept referring to the members of his community as "disciples," a term with deep biblical connotations for me.

Ghassan told me a bit of his story: he has been involved in interfaith dialogue in Israel for 25 years, often in the face of real threats to his life. Although he was raised in Nazareth, he and his family had been living in Jerusalem until fairly recently, but he and his family had been attacked by "radical Muslims" who were opposed to the work he is doing within Islam (trying to bring the various groups together) and with "the other" (working with people of other religions). He himself had been physically attacked, and his eldest son, who is about 20 years old, was attacked and almost died -- he was in a coma for several months. After that incident, Ghassan said, they decided to move back to Nazareth.

I asked if his son was also involved in interfaith work, or if he was attacked just because of his proximity to Ghassan. "No, no," he replied, "He is also doing this work. And he wants to continue."

Interfaith respect has been a part of the family legacy for generations, apparently. Ghassan told me that his grandfather was the ruler of this region when it was under Ottoman control and that he had made the decision to give the Christians more land around the area believed to have been Mary's house. "This is Nazareth, the city of Jesus," Ghassan told me his grandfather said. "The Christians should be having a big church here." Although it wasn't until the 1960s that the Roman Catholic Church completed construction on the current Basilica of the Annunciation, it was many years ago that his grandfather first granted the large area of land around where the basilica current stands to the Christian community.

I marveled at the determination and tenacity of this family, who continue to work for peace among faiths even when it puts them in mortal danger. Ghassan is an incredibly positive and upbeat man, with a wide and sincere smile always on his face. Although I may have come across people who are suspicious of or not supportive of interfaith work in the U.S., I've never felt that my life was in danger because I advocate for dialogue. I said as much to Ghassan, and told him that I can't imagine living under such circumstances and being able to keep going as he has.

"But we must," he said, with a smile. "We must continue to work for peace. And, inshallah (God willing), I think we can reach it."

He told me a story of how he and his "disciples" had helped to stop a more extreme Muslim group from building a large mosque in front of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Apparently a few years ago, a Muslim group wanted to build a large mosque right in front of the basilica, at the site of a shrine to some particular Muslim figure. The planned mosque would have completely obstructed the views of the basilica from the landscape and the skyline of the city, and was clearly a political move. It was causing lots of tensions between Christians and Muslims in Nazareth (both groups are Arabic, by the way).

Ghassan went and spoke to the leader of that Muslim group, asking them to stop their plans for a mosque. "We don't need another mosque here," he said. "We have enough mosques." When the group would not listen, Ghassan and his group staged a protest march, starting at the top of the hill in Nazareth and marching all the way down to the city square. "We started out as four or five people," he said, "but by the time we got to the basilica, we were thousands."

"We stopped that mosque," he said with a smile of satisfaction. "Many of the Muslims in Nazareth were not for it, and when we staged our march, they joined us."

(Interestingly enough, when I mentioned the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy in the U.S., in New York City, he said that he was against it, and that he personally knows the man who is behind the Park 51 project. "He is a wonderful man," Ghassan said, "but he needs to be wise. The timing is not right. The location is not right. It would be better for them not to build it there... not now, not yet. I hope he will listen to me." Here's an interesting op-ed piece I found that draws parallels between the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy and the Nazareth mosque controversy. The interesting thing, though, is that the group in Nazareth who wanted to build the mosque were "extremist" Muslims, whereas the Muslims in NYC behind the Park 51 project are Muslims like Ghassan who are interested in promoting interfaith dialogue -- and yet they've been spoken about and portrayed as if they were of the extremist type.)

He spoke in more detail of his love for the basilica, and how it was as much a part of his growing up in Nazareth as any of the mosques were. He spoke of how he loved to go there and to pray, and how peaceful of a place it was, and how hearing the church bells ring was a part of his life and his childhood. The church wasn't just a holy place for Christians, it was a holy place for him as well.

This is why I think it's so important for us to visit one another's holy places, as I'm doing on this trip, and to have them become part of our own personal "religious landscape." Whether or not we agree with all the theology and doctrine that a particular group espouses, we can certainly find peace and a space to pray in our own way within the stillness and quiet that sacred spaces of all traditions provide. If our churches aren't just for the Christians, then it won't just be the Christians who will rise up to defend them and protect them if need be, and likewise for our mosques and temples and gurdwaras. If we can see our places of worship as places of collaboration instead of competition, perhaps plans to build a place of worship of whatever sort will not be met with conflict and anger.

"My house shall be a house of prayer for all people," was Isaiah's vision for the Temple in Jerusalem (Isaiah 56:7). May it be so for every holy place where God's name is invoked in the name of peace.

Arriving in Nazareth

When I studied the map of Nazareth from the comfort of my hostel in Haifa, I had no clue that the map would basically be useless once I got there.

I arrived on the bus, just south of the City Center and the large Basilica of the Annunciation, where tradition holds Mary used to live in a cave there and where she was visited by the Angel Gabriel to tell her that she would bear the Savior of the World in her womb. I'd looked at another girl's map of the city in a guide book that she had, and it seemed fairly straightforward in terms of how to find my hostel. Little did I know, the "roads" that were drawn on the map were not actually roads at all, but the narrow streets of the "Old City" area, much of which is a market, brimming with spices and fruits and televisions and scarves and shoes and toys and souvenirs, packed in so tightly that there's barely enough space for a walking path through the chaos. I'd read that Nazareth is a heavily Arab city, but I was surprised by how much the vibe had changed from Haifa. It felt in many ways like I was back in Turkey.

I also didn't know that not only were these streets narrow and tight and bustling with people and things and food and trash, but that they were mostly up-hill. When the Bible says Jesus was from the "hill town of Nazareth," it isn't kidding!!! My map was useless, and as I basically HIKED up these narrow streets with my backpack on my back and my side bag pulled around in front of me, I couldn't help but think, "Where in the world AM I??!??!" Finally I stopped at a souvenir shop and asked directions, since "Nazareth - Souvenirs from Holy Land!" was printed in huge letters on the top of the store and I figured they'd speak English.

"Ah, Fauzi Azar! That is in the market," the man told me. "But you can sleep here, no problem," he said, pointing to the Catholic guest house right beside the basilica.

"Well, I already have reservations at this other place," I told him, thanking him, and went on about my way. Once I got into the market area, I started to see signs for the Fauzi Azar Inn. And thank God for those signs, because it would have been hopeless trying to find it without them. The streets of Nazareth reminded me a lot of Venice, in that they were tight and narrow with no cars, and lots of little dead-ends and courtyards and totally disorienting -- almost like you're in a maze. I remember going out for a walk by myself one night in Venice and enjoying the peacefulness of the quiet in that city, only to suddenly realize that I might be completely lost! "Um, am I going to be able to find my way back to the hotel??" I thought, slightly panicked. I had the same feeling here. Luckily, in both places, I did indeed find my way back to the hotel.

Finding a restaurant for dinner was another story -- I went out Wednesday night in search of a restaurant supposedly close by to the hostel and that offered a discount to people staying in our hostel… but I wound up walking all the way up the hill to the other side of the city through the narrow streets of the Old City, often feeling like I was walking into people's backyards or garages, and once actually doing so! I made a HUGE loop around the city that took me nearly an hour and a half. (After it was all over, I realized I'd gone "off the map" that I'd had with me, so no wonder I couldn't figure out where I was!!) I eventually found myself back in the Basilica square, finally to something that looked familiar, and as I crossed the street toward a bunch of falafel and shawarma shops, resigning myself to a "fast food" dinner instead of the sit-down restaurant experience I'd been going for, a man walked out of the first shop on the corner and, smiling widely, said, "Welcome!" in English.

"Hello!" I said, with a sigh of relief. "I've just managed to walk all over the whole city unintentionally. I was looking for a particular restaurant and I couldn't find it. I'm ready to eat."

"Well, good!" he said. "I have the best restaurant in town! Come in, come in!"

Inside it was hot and greasy and smoky, as the grill where the food was cooked was right there with the eating area.

"You like sandwich or plate?" he asked. "Sandwich," I said.

"Shwarma or falafel?" "Falafel."

"Ok, sit down. You like to sit outside?" he asked, directing me toward the tables outside on the sidewalk. I decided to sit out there, and he came out, asking the requisite "Where are you from?" question, and telling me about an American man who'd come and sat there recently, who was studying Arabic and waited a long time for his Palestinian-American friend to arrive, who had gotten held up at the border and questioned for six hours, even though she had an American passport.

When I went in to pay (there was no cash register and no posted prices for anything, which I've noticed is relatively common here), he asked me, "What's your hurry? You want to stay? You can sit, it's ok!" "No, no," I said, "Thanks, but I'm ready to get back." He shrugged. "Okay. 15 shekels," he said, and then walked away. I looked around, confused, and saw the cook behind the counter ready to accept my money, for which he gave me change out of his pocket.

On hostels and traveling independently

Despite my freak-out at the beginning of this trip and my understanding of why people use tour groups -- for the ease and convenience and for the security of always having someone with you who knows the local language -- once I settled in to the rhythm of things, it only reaffirmed my preference for traveling independently.

On a tour bus, you don't get to watch young Jewish boys riding the city bus on their way home from school, yarmulkes atop their heads and their side curls just starting to grow in. (I was reminded of the young Sikh boys I've seen with their small turbans atop their heads -- an image of youth and adolescence beginning to mature into the full stature of their faith -- the long side curls of the Orthodox Jew or the full turban of the adult male Sikh.) On a tour bus, you don't get to pass runners out on their evening jog on the side of Mount Carmel. On a tour bus, you don't get to talk to a young boy, probably 8 or 9 years old, on the train, who tells you to go to the beach for the "REAL Israel," and who points to some men getting agitated and talking with much expression and gesturing, clearly arguing over something, in the next set of seats over, smiles at you, shrugs, and says, "Israelis!," shaking his head.

On a tour bus, you don't get to share a dorm with people from The Netherlands and England and Australia and Germany and talk about politics and religious diversity and the increasing secularization in Europe and the integration and assimilation of Muslim immigrants into society. On a tour bus, you don't get to meet other independent American travelers, a Jewish woman who is a Ph.D. student in anthropology and interested in Israel and the phenomenon of "making aliyah" (Jewish people returning to the land of Israel to live there), and her friend, a "spiritual but not religious" type, raised Catholic, blonde, sort of Irish but maybe not so Irish according to the family history, despite his sister's shamrock tattoo on the side of her ankle.

But probably most importantly for me, in a tour group you don't get the freedom and flexibility to see sites at your own pace, to sit and pray for a long time if the Spirit moves you, to stay and soak up the presence of the place. You don't get the privacy to actually pray as you visit these sacred sites. That was the hardest thing to me about my foreign study trip in college -- being herded around like cattle from site to site, with thirty-something other people constantly, no space to myself to think or reflect. It was that trip where I first began to re-discover my introversion, often intentionally going away from the group and turning my iPod on (a brand new invention at the time!) and tuning out the rest of the people in order to create some private space and time for reflection. It's nice to have that space and time on this trip, and to not be answerable to anyone but myself in terms of my schedule and what I decide to do.

Pictures, pictures, and more pictures

As I'm taking more pictures, I'm finding that I don't have room for them all on the blog, so I'm including here a link to my Picasa albums of photos from the trip.

http://picasaweb.google.com/twellsmiller/IsraelTrip

These are selected photos, so they're paired down from the total amounts I take, but there are more here than what will appear on the blog (although you will see a lot of repeats). But for those of you who'd rather have the photo essay than the text essay, you can bypass the blog and just go straight to the Picasa album. You can sign up to be notified via email whenever I post new pictures to this site.

Off to Nazareth

After a day and a half in Haifa visiting Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i sites (more details coming later -- keep checking the blog for new posts in the past -- I'm going to write about those sites and date the posts from the days I visited them -- Monday and Tuesday -- so you might have to scroll down to find the information), I'm about to head to Nazareth -- i.e., Jesus's home town!

I'm very excited to be moving into the more specifically Christian aspects of my pilgrimage, entering the places where Jesus lived and taught, but it's also interesting to note that Nazareth is the most "Arab" town in the state of Israel and there is a sizeable Muslim population there, who apparently co-exist very peacefully with the Christian population.

Hopefully, I will be meeting with Ghassan Manasra, a Sufi Sheikh who is working on interfaith dialogue efforts in Nazareth. This will be the first of my contacts given to me from the Elijah Interfaith Institute in Jerusalem, who I contacted for information about interfaith efforts in Israel as I was planning my trip.

Haifa: Baha'i World Faith Center

I'm posting this a bit after the fact -- I didn't even realize until the other night that I hadn't posted anything about the Baha'i World Faith Center in Haifa. Perhaps it was because my writing that day was spent reflecting on the death of my childhood pet, Snowy, I'm not sure. But I don't really have much to say about my experience at the Baha'i gardens in Haifa, except that they certainly were beautiful. I didn't find my visit there to be as meaningful of a "religious" or "spiritual" experience as it was to visit the shrine of Baha'u'llah, probably because I don't know as much about the Bab, the figure who is buried in Haifa, or about his writings, as I do about Baha'u'llah. What I do have to say I'll say in pictures...

Rest in Peace, Snowy

I just learned this morning via an email from my sister that our childhood pet, Snowy, died on Saturday, just a few days after his 20th birthday.

Snowy showed up at our house as a tiny kitten when I was 10 years old. I had been downstairs in our "game room" playing all morning and had heard what sounded like a meowing noise, but it was so high pitched it sounded like a bird. "Oh boy, the birds are meowing now," I thought to myself. When we (my mother, my sister, and me) left the house later to head to Toys'R'Us, my mother realized that there was a kitten under the hood of the car.

We spent the next several hours trying to coax him out using milk, bologna, and even a scare tactic of spraying water under the hood. We were pretty much stuck since my mom couldn't start the car with the cat up in there.

Finally, he came down, but was skittish and terrified of us. My mom finally got ahold of him and we took him in to our screened-in porch and gave him some food and water. We asked around the neighborhood to people who had cats to see if anyone was missing a kitten, but no one was. We put an ad in the paper -- "FOUND: BLACK AND WHITE CAT" -- but no one answered.

So, Snowy became ours. My sister and I were thrilled, since we'd been asking my parents for a while if we could get a cat, but they'd said no because it would be too expensive to have a pet. They couldn't turn Snowy away once he arrived, though!

For years, my mother was convinced that Pop, my paternal grandfather, had brought the kitten over and left him for us since he knew we (the kids) wanted to have a pet. He always swore that he did no such thing. We never did find out where Snowy came from; his origins remain a mystery.

We thought "he" was a "she" at first, so I wanted to call "her" "Snow White," because of the black spots on his head that looked like Snow White's perfect little "bob" haircut. We were going to call "her" "Snowy" for short. When we took him to the vet, we discovered that "she" was actually a he, and "Snowy" became his official name.

Snowy was a good cat. He was originally intended to be an outdoor cat, but eventually wormed his way into the house, partly because my sister, then 7 years old, kept bringing him inside and holding him in the living room (just off the deck), even when she wasn't supposed to.

Snowy put up with a lot throughout the years: my sister and I dressing him in doll clothes and pushing him around in a baby stroller and other such things. He never once reached out and swatted us or hissed at us due to this behavior, but would simply resign himself to his fate, sitting there looking peeved while we made him a part of our latest make-believe story. He was never a "lap kitty," but loved to sleep at the foot of the bed. (This was pre-allergies for me, so I could actually stand to have the cat in my bedroom.)

Snowy was the subject of my project for the school "invention" fair in 6th grade or so: the cat doorbell. My dad helped me wire up a box with a piece of plexiglass on it and a doormat on top of it, so that whenever Snowy came and sat on the doormat, it would ring a bell inside the house and we'd know he wanted to come in. We used that invention for many years and people who came over to our house were always amazed that our cat knew how to use the doorbell. We also taught Snowy to "sit" and "lay down" on command, although he always did it somewhat begrudgingly.

My sister, who was absolutely in love with that cat, gave Snowy an assortment of nick-names over the years, most of them having absolutely nothing to do with his real name: Meekus, Meekums, Meow Meow, Malch Palch, Mooch Pooch, and most notably, Mr. Moo Moo. This one actually stuck, and even my father started calling him "Mr. Moo Moo" after hearing Ashley do it often enough. Ashley used to bury her head in Snowy's fur and kiss him and say, "Mr. Moo Moo!!!" in a really high-pitched voice. (And this was at age 15 or so, not the 7-year-old Ashley previously mentioned.)

Although I have not lived with Snowy in over 10 years now (so for more than half his life I was not a regular part of his daily life), he will always hold a special place in my heart as my very first pet and as a member of my family.

Goodbye, Mr. Moo Moo. I'll miss you. Rest in peace.

Haifa: Stella Maris Carmelite Church & Monastery

After my time at Elijah's Cave, I took the cable car at the base of the mountain up to the top of the mountain, where the Carmelite Monastery is located. This was my first visit to a church on this trip so far. As I walked in to the church, I was struck by the familiarity of it all. A monk sat by the door in his brown robes, and statues of Jesus and Mary adorned the altar area. Beneath the altar there was a cave-like area with a place to light candles and a picture of someone -- I couldn't tell who it was supposed to be since the signs were only in Arabic and English. (Maybe Elijah?) But I lit a candle anyway, and said a prayer.


It was about 5:30 p.m., so I sat down in the church in a pew and said Evening Prayer, whispering to myself in the hush of this sacred space. I'd started the morning chanting Morning Prayer aloud in the silence and stillness of my room in Akko, and in the space of time between then and now, I'd visited a Baha'i sacred site, been given a ride to the train station by the Jewish hostel owner, who was on his way to a Hebrew lecture in biblical studies at a university in Tel Aviv, talked to several people on the train to Haifa, including a young boy who told me in English, "If you want to see the REAL Israel, go to the beach!," visited a site sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike (Elijah's Cave) -- although it was certainly Jewish-centric, and now found myself at the top of Mount Carmel in a church attached to a monastery, saying Evening Prayer.

Afterwards, I treated myself to dinner in a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean from the top of the hill and then walked back to the hostel, talking the scenic Stella Maris Road down Mount Carmel and passing locals running up the mountain, out for their evening exercise. I passed by the base of the Baha'i World Center in Haifa on my way back and got my first glimpse of the magnificent structure, much larger than the center in Akko.

Haifa: Elijah's Cave

The organization and structure of the Baha'i gardens, both in the careful and meticulous landscaping and in the way visitors were managed, was a stark contrast to the somewhat chaotic site of Elijah's Cave in Haifa that I visited next.

First of all, there were no signs in English directly at the site of Elijah's cave; the woman at the hostel had warned me that it was "not obvious" where the entrance was. I saw several tour buses parked by the side of the road and crowds of Jewish people with yarmulkes walking down the mountain on an elevated pathway. "Well, that must be it," I thought. I found my way to an entrance to a walkway and made my way up the mountain, following the flow of people.

As I neared the top of the ramp, I heard loud Middle Eastern music playing (it wasn't clear if it was Hebrew or Arabic to me) and smelled food cooking. Suddenly I worried that I was in the wrong place; perhaps I was headed to a restaurant or some kind of park area where these folks were all having a big cook-out party! I cautiously continued up the last flight of stairs, and spotted a small plaque to the right of the gate that had an English translation: "Elijah's Cave," it said. "O-kaaaay," I thought, and headed on in.

The courtyard area indeed looked like it was a public picnic area, with kids running up and down and a large grill area with some kind of food smoking on it and lots of people sitting down eating at tables. I followed the stairs up to the next level and saw a large elaborate chair with Hebrew written all over it -- "Ah!" I thought, "This must be Elijah's chair -- the chair that is left empty at every Passover dinner with the expectations that the prophet might return." There were stations for lighting memorial candles, although I'm not sure for what, since everything was in Hebrew.

I followed the steps up to the entrance to the cave area, and saw a large room with a divider down the middle of it. "Women Side / Men Side" said the sign, in Hebrew, Arabic, and English -- and that was the extent that there was anything written in anything other than Hebrew in the entire place. There was a box of scarfs by the entrance, and since I'd forgotten to bring mine (it was in my backpack back at the hostel), I picked one up and put it on and entered the women's side.

The area where the actual cave space was was covered with a thick velvet cloth, with a Star of David on the front of it. I assumed this meant that it was off-limits, that people weren't allowed to go in there. I looked at the displays on the dividing walls, since there were many pictures, even though I couldn't read the descriptions. There were depictions of Elijah from various biblical stories, and against the wall where the cave was, several tablets with the tetragrammon -- the four consonants of the Name of God in Hebrew.

Off to the left side of the large room was a smaller nook with an area where there was a Torah scroll, with a curtain drawn in front of it as well. Women were going into that space and resting their hands and faces against the curtain, saying prayers. There were pieces of paper shoved into the cracks in the walls -- like at the Western Wall in Jerusalem -- representing prayers offered by the pilgrims who had visited here. There were also all kinds of scarves and hair pieces -- clips, rubber bands, etc -- tied to the metal wires in the ceiling of this cave area. I wasn't sure what the significance of that practice was, but clearly it was a "thing" that people did here.

I sat down in the Torah nook area to read the story of Elijah fighting the prophets of Ba'al from 1 Kings, along with the prayers and reflections in my Jewish pilgrimage guide. After a while, a young woman in an Israeli military uniform joined me, sitting on the rug facing the Torah area and reading her prayer book, rocking back and forth in the methodical way Jews do at prayer. On the other side of the dividing wall, a group of men were praying together, loudly, a leader shouting phrases in Hebrew punctuated by the group's vigorous "AMEN!!"s. In the background, the blasting music from the courtyard drifted in on top of it all.

As I sat, some new women walked into the larger room area, and I watched them walk up to the curtain that I had assumed was sacrosanct and untouchable and grab it and fling it back with all the hutzpah and casualness as if they were pushing past someone that was in their way in a shopping mall, and step right inside the cave. "Oh!" I thought. "I guess we CAN go in there after all!" I watched as a whole group of women came in, a few at a time, paying their respects to this place where Elijah was said to have stayed, some with deep reverence, others casually, with a plate of food in one hand even as they stepped inside the cave.

After the crowd cleared away, I went and stepped in the cave myself. It was just me and one another woman, who was leaning against the wall and praying with her Hebrew prayer book or Bible. As I placed my hand on the wall, I felt the same shiver of holiness that I had felt as I stood beside Baha'u'llah's grave in Akko.

I was struck by how opposite this was from the utter silence and stillness that the Baha'is were so careful to protect around the shrine of Baha'u'llah in Akko. In place of structured, beautifully manicured and landscaped gardens, there was dirt and grime and trash and the scent of food. Instead of silence, there was shouting prayers and throbbing music. The Baha'i site reminded me of the "frozen chosen" denominations of Christianity -- valuing silence and stillness and order and beauty -- and Elijah's Cave reminded me of the Pentecostal or more spirit-led denominations of Christianity.

In reflecting on one of my "guiding questions" for the trip -- "How do I experience God in the sacred spaces of other traditions?" -- I found that I experienced both places to be sacred, in their different ways. The structure and order and meticulous attention to detail were beautiful, but so was the chaos. Just as I am not satisfied with one kind of liturgy or experience of the Christian faith, I would not have wanted to have visited all sites like the Baha'i gardens or all sites like Elijah's Cave. I like both… I need both.

Akko - Baha'i Garden

The Baha'i gardens in Akko, according to the informational signs posted there, is considered the "most holy place on earth" by Baha'is, since the founder of their faith, Baha'u'llah, is buried there. I have long been drawn to the Baha'i Faith, with its clear message of equality between all people regardless of race or gender. In this regard, it is similar to Sikhism, and I have often thought that it must be much easier for Baha'is and Sikhs to advocate for rights for women, for instance, than for Christians, when our tradition includes things like, "Women, submit to your husbands" (c.f. Ephesians 5) in our scriptures.

Since I first learned about The Baha'i Faith, I have felt drawn to it, and from my many engagements with the faith over the years, I have come to conclude that if I were not a Christian, I would likely be a Baha'i. (Baha'is do not see those terms as mutually exclusive, but the Church does.) The Baha'is I have known over the years have all been exceptionally kind, open-hearted, spiritually-grounded people. And the Baha'i Faith teaches that Baha'u'llah was the Second Coming of Christ. Even if this claim marks them as heretics in the eyes of the Church, it certainly provides food for thought on our own relationship with Judaism. We maintain that the Jews "got it wrong" as a whole in not recognizing that Jesus was the Messiah promised to Israel. In a similar fashion, Baha'is believe Christians have "gotten it wrong" in not recognizing the Second Coming of Christ when he was here on earth -- in the form of the prophet Baha'u'llah.

In any case, there were many reasons that I, as a Christian, felt drawn to visit the shrine of Baha'u'llah. Today was one of the days that the shrine and inner gardens are open to non-Baha'is, and I scheduled my visit intentionally so I could visit the shrine.

As I stepped inside the building where Baha'u'llah is buried, I felt a sense of peace and calm. The inside of the building has an interior courtyard with beautiful plants and flowers, and the floors of the entire building are covered in oriental rugs. We were barefoot, since it is required to remove one's shoes before entering. Off to the side of the courtyard are several empty rooms that the guide told us were used by Baha'is to pray when they come to this place on pilgrimage. I thought of my Baha'i friends back in Atlanta, with whom I used to share food and prayers and fellowship on Monday nights, and pictured them here, moving gracefully on bare feet from the side rooms over to the room where Baha'u'llah is buried, lifting their hands in prayer and praise, deeply absorbed in the holiness of this place.

I looked at the guide as she was directing the few other people in the shrine back outside.

"Would it be possible for me to stay and pray?" I asked.

"Of course," she said with a gentle smile.

I sat by the tomb of Baha'u'llah and read the Tablet of Visitation, the text that Baha'is read when they come on pilgrimage here. Then I closed my eyes and sat in my own silent prayer, thanking God for the witness of Baha'u'llah and for the people of this faith who have brought so much love and light to the world.

Although I had found the strict regulation of the flow of people into the shrine to be a bit intimidating and off-putting when I first arrived (I was told by a guard at the gate to the inner gardens that there were several groups inside the shrine currently and that I would have to wait 10 minutes or so before I could enter), once I was inside and praying I was very grateful for the regulation, which meant that each group of visitors were able to visit the shrine in a quiet and calm atmosphere, not amdist the hustle and bustle of large groups of people.