Wadi Rum—put that one on your travel bucket list! Wow! I’ve had more-than-average chances to travel; I feel like I’ve seen a fair bit. But I’d never seen the desert—not like that!
The village of Rum puts the “off” in “off the beaten path”. From there, entering the Wadi involves leaving the bus behind for a 4×4. Once you reach the end of the road, you just drive off the end and into the sand. And that’s when the journey begins. Continue reading
It has been a day! A few years back, Petra was named one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. If you’ve ever seen it, you know why. It is massive, and it is stunning. And it’s no less so the second time you see it. Two years ago, we visited this place with great friends. At that point in time, the site struck me like THIS. Today was certainly not diminished. Continue reading
One of the books with me on my trip is Joan Chittister’s “Called to Question”. In this spiritual memoir, she wrestles with many aspects of her life, one of them being the relationship between religion and spirituality. Here a couple quotes of how she perceives the differences:
1) “Religion gives us the structures that weld the habits and disciplines of the soul into one integrated whole. Those same structures can also, however, smother the very spirit they intend to shape.”
2) “We can make the mistake of thinking that God and religion are synonyms and make religion God. We can, as general semanticists teach us, mistake the way for the thing and the thing for the way.”
3) “Spirituality is about the hunger in the human heart. When we develop a spiritual life that is beyond some kind of simple, unthinking attachment to an inherited canon of behaviours, the soul goes beyond adherence to a system to the growth of the soul.”
4) “Spirituality is not what we do to satisfy the requirements of a religion; it is the way we come into contact with the Holy. However we do it, whatever form or shape it takes… spirituality makes real what religion talks about.”
Finally, in looking back on her own Catholic heritage, she muses about how any of us become who we are:
5) “What forms us lives in us forever. The important thing is that it not be allowed to stunt our growth.”
Any of those resonate with you and your journey?
How has religion contributed to your journey toward God?
How has it smothered life when it should have been giving it? W
hat do you do with it now?
On our way out of Amman, we were bus-toured through the newest and wealthiest part of the city. Many of the homes in that area are worth over $1 000 000 US. Mingled among the homes are a number of embassies from around the globe. The American embassy is especially large, and especially guarded as well. Several blocks away, an even larger embassy is being constructed by Saudi Arabia. Then it was highway time. An hour south on the King’s Highway, the world’s oldest and most continuously used communication route (first mentioned in Genesis 14), would deliver us to Mount Nebo.
Last night, I was flipping through the hotel’s TV channels in a restful moment. I’d noticed on a paper that they had three sports networks. Might I catch some NBA Playoffs? Surely not hockey. Even the Middle East’s version of Sportscenter would be a great.
Channel 1: Soccer
Channel 2: Soccer
Channel 3: Camel Racing (with no riders!)
So whatever you’re watching tonight, enjoy it on my behalf!