One aspect of this trip has been well-nourished without any choice in the matter: That of intellectual stimulation and fresh experiences.  Those were scheduled and booked; all I needed to do was show up!

But another portion of this trip is quite different.  It is the finding of space to breathe.  It is quiet and stillness.  It is what differentiates between a journey and a retreat.  To be sure, this experience has been a rich journey, as I knew it would.  But my soul came needing the other as well.  And this weekend has provided enough room to carve out just such a spot. Continue reading →

Today or tomorrow marks the halfway point of this trip.  And I am glad for it.  While I’m extremely grateful to be here, I am certainly missing my family.  Besides that, it seems that a portion of our group, myself included, have hit something of a wall.  I seemed to be running on empty until mid-afternoon today.  Some of it is simple physical wearniness; some better sleeping would cure that.  But another part of it is more mental.  There’s an intensity to most of our days that one cannot sustain indefinitely.  Basic processing of this experience is neither quick nor easy.  Part of the wear lies in this realm too.

But time wasn’t waiting for us, so we plodded on.  Back to the Old City.

Right near the Old City is the City of David, a fascinating area thought to be the earliest portions of Jerusalem.  Continue reading →

I’ve fallen behind by a couple days on this travel journaling exercise.  In an effort towards complete records, I’ll type this one up but without any promises of quality of detail.

This was our first official experience of the security barrier that separates Israel from the West Bank.  In fact, the barrier is visible right from Tantur.  We are the last stop before Jerusalem hits the wall and Bethlehem begins.  And this portion of the barrier is the wall in its “full glory”, a monstrous concrete divider, comparable to what used to cut through Berlin.  One real blessing of this class is that Charles has a truly uncanny list of contacts.  During our time here, we will interact and dialogue with Christians and Muslims and Jews, along with people living on both sides of the wall.  They range from religious to secular in their mindsets and from high scholars down to “common folks” in terms of their education.  The spectrum is wonderfully diverse, and I’m grateful for it.

Our first stop took us beyond Bethlehem, where the fertile land begins to turn to wilderness, to a place where Herod the Great once again exercised his architectural genius. Continue reading →

A year go, we bought ourselves a Nikon D5000, as nice of a camera as we’ll likely ever own.

A month ago, we bought a new lens for it, “new” meaning “new to us”.  We bought it from our friend “Photographer Cody”, who had upgraded.  Our new lens is 18-200mm, and it looks fairly long when you’ve got it zoomed in.

I asked a co-traveler to photograph me at a site recently.  She zoomed in tight on me, lengthening the lens to its extreme.  One of our resident “funny men” exclaimed, “That’s not a camera; it’s a cannon.”

Without even missing a beat, she replied, “It’s not a Canon; it’s a Nikon.”

Clever and quick people make me smile.