It’s hard to imagine that I’ve been back from Israel for almost two weeks now. It was an amazing time that will require a good deal of pondering to get my head around.
We left North Bay March 11 and flew to Toronto, arriving about noon. We had a few hours before our travelling companions from Calgary were to arrive, so we just wandered around the airport, read, had lunch, and generally relaxed.
Suzanne and I are fortunate in that neither of us have any particular flying anxieties. Strapping ourselves into a metal tube and hurtled through the sky at 2 kilometres a second (two thirds the speed of sound) doesn’t bother us a bit. This is the miracle of modern flight; not that a 250 ton plane can fly through the sky eight miles high, but that 200 otherwise normal human beings can be convinced to get into it. But clinging to the preposterous modern superstition that flying is somehow safer than walking, and to our seat cushions as flotation devices, we cheated death twice in two weeks.
As our friends arrived from Calgary, along with a few from other places in Western Canada (a group of about a dozen), someone in the group asked a young woman waiting to board our flight, if she would take our picture. She happily obliged, and in a few minutes we discovered she was on her way to Jerusalem University College to take part in the same two week program we were bound for. She had watched us approaching and had been wishing she was travelling as part of a group. Well, there you go. God answers prayers we haven’t even prayed yet. When you wish upon a star and all that.
I
always thought that the ancient notion that Jerusalem is the centre of the world was just silly medieval piety, but when you’re in the place, reflecting on the geography of the place, you realize that it’s an historical, geopolitical fact. This tiny land of Israel is situated at the crossroads of Africa, Europe and Asia, which is to say: Egypt, Persia, Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, Rome. As a result, it has been run over countless times by the great empires of the earth. This territory, if unfortunate, is certainly not obscure. Judaism, Christianity and Islam grew up in a cultural vortex of three continents amid the almost constant turmoil of war, travel and trade.
Landing in Tel Aviv was like landing in Toronto. It’s a beautiful, modern city. But the hour long bus ride to Jerusalem reminded us that this is an ancient place. There were ruins and camels and ruined camels here and there, but it was the names on highway signs: Shiloh, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jericho, Mount Carmel, etc., that kept turning my head. It was a bit like my first trip to Disneyland. How strange to see these places I’d heard about all my life. These are book and movie places, yet here they are as big as life.
We were very tired when we arrived and Suzanne was sick. Our hotel, the Gloria, in the Old City of Jerusalem, had no running water, and didn’t get it working until the next day. But these little problems in Jerusalem are different than the same problems would be in North Bay. When you have these problems in Jerusalem, you’re in Jerusalem!!!
How cool is that?
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