June 2007: Greece, Egypt, Israel

June 2007: Greece, Egypt, Israel

Dear Friends,

Over the last couple of months, our pilgrimage has taken us through Greece, Egypt and Israel. The time has been extremely full, but we offer a couple of highlights here.

In Greece, we visited a home for handicapped adults in Galaxidi. It is currently being run by two families from Thuringen, Germany. Their work is surely not easy, for it is pioneer work. Traditionally, the Greek, handicapped children are kept at home, and the idea of homes with education and occupation, although well established in Western Europe and America is still quite foreign in Greece. However, through patience, love and hard work, they are making headway and gaining acceptance and recognition for their endeavor. Afterwards we stopped in Athens and visited a “koumbara” (i.e. his brother’s Godmother) of William’s. We exchanged news about family members and friends, enjoyed her generous hospitality and got a taste of Athens, which has not gotten any less crazy over the years. She is a retired Colgate employee, and we said good-bye well fed, clean and supplied with good Greek food and cosmetics.

Soon after, we found ourselves in the Sinai desert in Egypt. Ferryboats between Europe and the Middle East have been canceled due to the political situation there. Therefore, we found ourselves without the bikes—which may have been a blessing due to the intense heat, lack of water and long distances from place to place. After a sleepless night of traveling, we found ourselves somewhere in the city of Sharm el Sheik: sweltering heat, dirt, chaos and a sense of disorientation left us feeling like strangers in a strange land. We saw a cross in the distance, walked toward it, and found ourselves at the Coptic church, where we were warmly welcomed and offered a room to spend the night. At midnight, we attended a service: the large church was filled with hundreds of people, mostly young men who work in the tourist business, but there were also two women besides Alexandra there. We were surprised to see how similar the service is to the Greek Orthodox liturgy. The Coptic language appears to be a dialect of Greek, with a very similar alphabet. We were even able to read some of the Coptic prayers in the psaltery (most, of course, were in Arabic, which is the mother tongue of both Copts and Muslims.)

Later, we were guests at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai. It is located on the spot where tradition says Moses came upon the burning bush. Of course, we also climbed to the top of the mountain, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. The monastery has a history of roughly 1700 years, and has remained an enclave of eastern Christian spirituality throughout the years. Tradition says that during the Arab conquest of the area in the seventh century, Mohammed himself was impressed by the holiness of the monastery, and wrote a letter of protection for the monks, which is still preserved today.

In the monastery, we saw the skull of St. Catherine of Alexandria. She was an early Christian martyr. As a young woman in the city of great learning, she mastered Greek philosophy and science, and appears to have been initiated into some of the ancient Greek religious mysteries. She heard about and accepted the Christian religion, which greatly displeased her parents. They brought dozens of the best scholars and philosophers to her to try to talk her out of her “new ideas.” In the end, the philosophers themselves were all persuaded and became Christian. This led to her being sentenced to death. The spiked wheel which was to have been her demise broke off the frame and rolled over and killed her tormenters. Thereafter, she was beheaded. Many years later, two monks on Mt. Sinai both dreamed in the same night that Catherine’s mortal remains had been taken to Mt. St. Catherine, the highest mountain in the Sinai. They found them there as in the dream, brought them back to the monastery and laid them in a place of honor.

The monastery and the story of St. Catherine were somehow instructive for us. Many Egyptians work there, both Copts and Muslims. Thus, the many layers of Egyptian life can be felt there, like layers of rock in an exposed cliff. The ancient Egyptian wisdom and its clear geometrical architecture can be perceived as a faint echo in some of the buildings. More visible are the layers of classical Greece, Byzantium, Islam, the Ottoman Empire—and modern western civilization with paved roads, autos, cell phones etc.

While on the Sinai, we met a group of nuns and priests from central Russia. The atmosphere within the monastery church was transformed by their deep and inward prayers. They brought us on their bus all the way to Jerusalem, stopping at the beach of Nuweba on the way. There, they took great delight splashing in the Red Sea (men and women strictly separated, of course) and some even went fully into the water dressed in their long black gowns. The prayer and silence on the bus, however, made it a true pilgrimage to the holy land.

In Israel, we took part in a conference for young people called “Walk your Talk”. It was part of a larger festival sponsored by a group consisting of Arabs and Jews called “Gateway of Humanity”. As our song “You will know” was chosen as the conference theme song, we were invited to attend. Participants in the conference were Israelis—Jewish, Muslim and Arab-Christian, Palestinians from the occupied territories and people like ourselves who are called “internationals” from Europe, North and South America and Australia. One of the other workshop leaders was from Africa, so that all five inhabited continents of the world were represented.

We had many deep impressions there. The reaction of many internationals to the walls and checkpoints built around many Palestinian areas was one of stunned horror. Many of the young people became physically ill right after a visit to a refugee camp in the West Bank. But the hope and the positive greatly outweighed the negative impressions. We saw a performance of 1001 Nights put on jointly by Jewish and Arab high school students in northern Galilee. Artistically, it was first rate (the director and musical director were teachers in a local Waldorf School). But far beyond that was the fact that young people--who are told by their society and the mass media that they are supposed to be enemies—were working, playing, singing and acting together to produce something beautiful . There was no hint of ethnic strife, and we experienced this performance as a miracle of healing.

Among the many other highlights was a talk by two men from “Warriors for Peace”—Palestinian and Israeli guerillas or soldiers who have renounced violence as a solution to the problems in the Middle East. Their stories were heart-rending, and their courage in the face of opposition from both sides of the conflict was inspiring. There were also meetings with religious leaders in Jerusalem: a Sufi Sheik, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, and a monk who had spent four years in the desert on his spiritual quest for example.

We were also deeply impressed by the people who organized the conference: a young man from Germany doing his alternative to military service went above and beyond the call of duty to bring people from around the world together in a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation, centering on the question of identity; three Israeli educators (including a former army officer who has become a Waldorf School teacher) who worked with heart and soul to provide a space where people could come together as human beings, beyond ethnic and religious boundaries; a Bedouin man—son of the local Sheik—who had studied in Germany and who merged the magnificent local hospitality and friendliness with a clarity and practicality characteristic of central Europe.

There was also time to meet some people who visited the festival, and to learn more about life in Israel, including the every-day life of family, school, work and popular culture. We spent a night at the home of a scientist and his family who impressed us with their friendliness and openness. We later found out that his grandfather had been Israel’s most famous writer, and is depicted on the fifty-Shekel note.

The situation in the Middle East is not as dangerous as one might think. Nonetheless, it has its difficulties and perils. I believe that the greatest danger is not poor hygiene or acts of violence, but rather the temptation to focus on the evil while neglecting the good. This inevitably draws trouble to you. It can also distract you from the fact that all of the evil in the world--terrorism (state-sponsored or not), political oppression, destruction of the natural environment—is merely a reflection of what is in our own souls, our own families, our own communities. The evil in the world is a wake-up call to transform ourselves, from the core of our hearts right down to every last bad habit. It is a call--as Ghandi put it—to become the change you want to see in the world.

Our deep, heartfelt gratitude goes out to the many people who prayed for us, who supported us with generous gifts, and who gave us moral support and encouragement. Our greetings go out to every one from sunny Greece. May God bless you all!

Alexandra and William
14 June, 2007