Stardate: January 22nd, 2020
The day started early. I didn’t really want to eat breakfast, which is kind of a downside when you know you’re going to have a busy day. I was quite unprepared for what it would feel like to cross out of Jerusalem and into the countryside. The countryside is far more what I expected to find here. The expanse of land and seeing the cities in the distance was just absolutely amazing. In some ways it felt very emotional because I felt like for the first time I was in Israel.
I feel like we turned a corner and there was the Dead Sea and somehow the connection of water and how water seems to be playing a role in this trip was significant. I talked in my first days reflection how it rained on us all day and how that quite possibly that felt like a purification of a sense; that in some ways it was washing me clean to prepare me for this journey and yet I’m not quite sure what the preparation for this journey really is. I really want this to be an intellectual, historical understanding of the place, and the people, and the politics and the current situation and yet there’s this deep seated amazing portion that is related to history and to biblical text and to who might have been here before. I keep coming back to the point that Rami made on our second day when we were at the Dome of the Rock and how there is something about this place, the place where all the Abrahamic religions come back to. And in this one place there’s something to be gained and it is something that is existential and that is spiritual and that is beyond what I feel qualified to name or even beyond what I feel that I have the language to explain.
When we got to where Jared said, “This is the area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found”, it felt so profound to me, when we got out I just wanted to touch the Earth and be in that space, in that connection to something very ancient. It makes me really want to understand more of the Dead Sea Scrolls and understand more of the text that is written there because I don’t feel that I know enough about it. Even in my evangelical time I felt that the scriptures that have been canonized have left out so much and I don’t trust that canonization process and who got to choose what was important and what wasn’t important. Who got to determine what we know and what we don’t know and what we believe and what we don’t believe? Being in that place I think I just wanted to sit quietly and stare at the mountain and contemplate what that means and what that feels like and what that is. Something about this journey, there are so many places where I just want to be and this journey doesn’t allow the time for that. Next we moved on to Masada.
Masada, wow, how do you describe that? The beauty of that place is just breathtaking. We went up on the cable car – I wish that I had the lung capacity to walk it because the beauty of the steps going up and the way that I imagine it would feel to be able to have the time and to be able to make my lungs work and make my human inability be what it could be to make that climb was something that I greatly desired. It wasn’t available to me, but I was very grateful for the cable car that got me to the top.
As with most things I wanted to touch everything, especially everything below the black line, the things that had been there, that were a part of the history that was this ancient community. Even though there are places and things that we don’t know about that community, about whether or not the stories are correct or not, I’m not sure it even matters. I just wanted to touch it all. I wanted to soak it all in.
I was very glad that there was a church there and I wish that we had taken the time to stop and pray in that spot. To have that moment of connection to the Holy One and to recognize that there is something beyond who we are and something beyond this place and space and even though it is beautiful and it is ancient, It is still just a place.
I just want to say that I especially noticed it from the top of Masada just how blue the water was in the Dead Sea. I don’t know what I expected it to look like but I didn’t expect it to be the blue it was. Blue that is so rigid, so deep and so what I expect to see in the Caribbean, or other tropical places. Anyway, the color of the water was one of those amazing discoveries that I just was not quite prepared for.
I was very excited to float in the Dead Sea and although it was chilly out and I knew the water would be cold, I knew that it would not be as cold as some other waters I have been in. I was perfectly prepared to experience that moment and although intellectually I knew that the water was very alkaline and the ability to float was very high. However, when I got into the water I was unprepared for the way that it affected my skin. It was very reminiscent of how I feel when the spirit of God is on me, when the spirit has enveloped us. It is soft yet powerful, this amazing buoyancy that keeps us afloat even when we might not want to stay afloat. One moment, when I went to put my legs down and it was maybe the third time I stood up and so I wasn’t quite prepared for the fact that it might be difficult that time to stand. And yet it was difficult to put my legs down that time and I almost started to feel a little panic but I remembered to pull my legs close to me and push them down with force and I was standing. Again it reminded me of how it feels when the spirit gives us this buoyancy that we may not be quite prepared for.
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