Israel February 2007 - One Land, Three Faiths

what an incredible, incredible time i am having here, guys. excuse the lower case, but i cannot figure out how to do caps on this keyboard. as most of you know i am here on a christian pilgrimmage. my friend barbara is with me. there are eight in our group - we are the only two protestants - the rest are catholic. they all live in houston and five of them have been in a bible study group together for 20 years and are all retired. the priest who is leading this pilgrimmage fell suddenly ill the day before we left and is in the hospital in houston - he will join us on monday. our tour guide is a palestinian catholic who is extremely knowledgable of christian history. we are learning a lot from him. the folks in my group are very nice - they are all highly intelligent - and even fun. they are all very strong in their faith as is my friend barbara. i am quite intimiated by them, but am having a wonderful time. the group consists of -finia and jule - a couple married 55 years - he is an attorney of some renown and she is a teacher. walter - who i find to be the most interesting of the group - he was a new york city policeman for 40 years and has seven sons. he is a widower and when he retired, he moved to houston to be close to grandchildren. he has since gone on to earn four university degrees, become active in local theatres and the art community, and travels extensively. masoko is japanese, but born in brazil. she is a retired research scientist living in houston with her husband. she is travelling with her sister, who still lives in brazil. anna is polish and is a geratic doctor in houston. she is the youngest of the group.i cannot possibly write in an e-mail everything we are doing and seeing, so i am just going to touch on some general kinds of things and highlights. barbara is keeping a more detailed daily journal which she is going to e-mail to her friends and i will forward y'all a copy of that. this is the holy lands - comprised of jews, muslims, and christians of which the christians are in the minority. no matter what your belief is about the divinity of christ, the fact is that he was the founder of christianity - one of the major religions of the world and the one on which our country was founded. it is absolutely fascinating for me to be here and to be going to the places where he lived and died. someone in our group today said this trip puts it all on a human level. and that is so true - that is what i feel going to the holy sites and hearing the stories - all stories that i grew up with in the church - but am learning more about now.

that said, much as i am enjoying visiting the holy sites of christainity, i would like to come back here some other time and visit the jewish and muslim sites. there is much, much more to this land than christianity.now, because we are traveling with a group of catholics, there is a lot of scripture reading, praying, and we attend mass every day. truthfully, i am beginning to tire of that a bit, but i am learning a lot more about catholocism than i knew before and i am enjoing the discussions among the members of the group. at one of the masses, the priest, father jack, also did an annoiting of everyone. barbara and i declined since we are not catholic, but he insisted on annoiting barbara anyway so she acquiesed. our guide had told us earlier that father jack is a healer. after the service, he told us that the reason he insisted on annointing barbara was because she had had a coughing fit when we first went in and had gone outside until it was over. he was concerned for her. amer, our guide, also told us that father jack has a piece of the cross that he carries in his pocket. nobody even questioned him about that because it is just too far-fetched. even our catholic friends i don't think were buying that. today, one of the sites we visited was cana, where jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding. julie and finis had their wedding vows renewed while we were there. it was a very nice touch. i went to the restroom while there, and the toilet paper is white with red hearts. i haven't really seen many muslims here, but i guess that is primarily because we are seeing the christian holy sites. i have seen a number of the orthodox jews dressed in the long black garments and wearing the sidelocks and of course the jews are the majority of this country. most of the christian sites are run by the franciscan or benedictine orders, so we see lots of monks and nuns. other sites we have seen this week are caesarea, a port city built by king herod, the stella maris church and cave where elijah hid from jezebel. nazareth where jesus grew up. here we saw the basilica of the annunication where mary was told she would be the mother of the jesus. now, keep in mind, the church was not there at the time as were none of the churches i am seeing. they were built later on the site of where these events took place. the most impressive thing to me about the basilica was the paintings of mary that are all throughout the church. more than 50 countries donated a painting of the mary they worhip. for example, mexico's is our lady of guadalupe. the one from the us is not a painting, but a metal sculpture. an interesting fact about nazareth is that no jews live there. we went to mount of beatitudes where jesus preached his most famous sermon and then to the church of the muliplcation, the shrine commenorating the miracle of the fishes and loaves. here we also saw an olive tree and olive press and got a demonstraton of the making of olive oil. today we saw a ship that was discovered in 1980 that dates back to the time of christ. it was buried in the mud and brought up and restored. fascinating story. tomorrow we head for the jordan river and jerusalem. will write more in a few days. oh - one more thing. yesterday afternoon, barbara and anna and i walked into tiberius - our hotel is just at the edge of town. we had a nice walk along the boardwalk of the sea of galilee and stopped for some refereshment. it was so beautiful and pleasant. i have not felt any fear here at all - everyone is so nice. but, when we did decide to head back to the hotel when it starting getting dark - after all, we are in the middle east. and speakign of the sea of galillee - my hotel is right on the banks - we have a beautiful view and saw a wonderful sunrise yesterday. and also, we went for a boat ride on the sea and then had st. peter's fish for lunch. don't ask me what st. peter's fish is - i do not know - just some kind of whitefish. we have been having lunch at kibbutzes - jewish communes. guys - just reading back through this - i realize it is not very well written and kind of scattered. there is just so much in my head i want to tell you, and i cannot possibly say it all. and not being able to use the caps key is really confusing. more later.