Sheldon Bennett's sabbatical

2003-08-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

I am safely returned from my travels in the Middle East, as of Thursday, August 14, with many memories, rich insights, and wonderful stories to tell. And it’s good to be home. It’s good to be home where people have at least heard of Unitarian Universalists. It’s challenging enough explaining our faith to ourselves. Try explaining it to an Orthodox monk at an ancient monastery in the wilds of the Judean desert and who speaks only a little English. I tried.

I had hired a Palestinian driver in Bethlehem to take me out to Mar Saba monastery. The monastery is very old, founded in 482 by St. Saba. It is at the steep downhill end of a dusty, gravel road in the desert high above the Dead Sea. Perched over the brink of a deep gorge of the Kidron River, the monastery is an awesome sight. It is very quiet at Mar Saba except for the sound of the river far below, a small but rushing stream actually, and the wind of the desert. These monks have preserved their faith and rituals essentially unchanged from the beginnings of Christianity. They have preserved them here in this remote place through rises and falls of empires, attacks and massacres. Even for Orthodox monks, the monks at Mar Saba are conservative, not allowing women even to visit.

I pulled the bell cord next to the small, heavy entrance door, painted bright blue, at the base of the massive stone wall. Eventually, a young man in the traditional black dress and stove pipe hat opened the door and quietly welcomed me and my driver to enter. After cordial greetings in broken English, he asked me what tradition I was. I said that I was a Unitarian Universalist minister and started to explain our faith. His eyes glazed over, and he interrupted me politely but decisively, “So, you’re not Orthodox.” “.... Right,” was about as much intelligence as I could muster.

Once that was settled, which seemed to be quite OK, an older monk gave us a gracious tour of the monastery, but probably not quite the same tour had I been Orthodox. We walked down several flights of steep stone steps, through archways, across an ancient courtyard, and entered the dimly illuminated church with its hanging lamps, odors of incense and candle smoke, walls and ceilings hanging and painted with wonderful icons, and I was shown the mummified remains of St. Saba. After looking down into the gorge from a rampart and having the caves in the cliff on the far side pointed out to us, where St. Saba and others had at first lived as hermits, my driver and I were invited into a large and ancient room where we sat at a long table and were served cold fruit juice. The breeze through the open windows in the stone walls was pleasant. I felt the powerful silence of this place.

Back up at the entrance door, I talked again with the young monk who had admitted us. I explained that Unitarian Universalists seek the truth in all religions. “Why do you seek?” he asked. “Do you read the ‘(Church) Fathers’? You can stop seeking. It’s all here.” Trying another approach, I explained that in the end what is important is our work for justice and peace in the world. My friend didn’t miss a beat. “What matters,” he said, “is inner peace. The world is full of fighting and wars. Seek inner peace.” Smiling gently and bowing slightly he wished me farewell and closed the door behind me. My driver was waiting for me patiently at his car.

My friend the monk and I represent such very different understandings. We have so much to learn from each other.

Striving for peace,

Sheldon

2003-07-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from three days in the Sinai. What an amazing
experience! I'm still processing it. The traveling itself was most
remarkable. The bus from Jerusalem to Elat goes down to the Jericho plain
and then along the Dead Sea to Elat on the Gulf of Aqaba. Then I took a
taxi to the border crossing at Taba, Egypt, and after some hard negotiating
(from $150 down to $50) got a taxi to take me the 120 miles to St.
Catherine's Monastery out in the middle of the desert. Early the next
morning - at 1 AM -I climbed Jebel Moussa (The mountain of Moses,aka Mt.
Sinai, elevation about 7000') by the pale light of a waning half moon with
a Bedoin guide, Hussein. We climbed by the more difficult route "less
traveled by" which goes straight up a deep cleft in the mountain, the
traditional route of Moses. It's like climbing a two mile steep staircase.
Looking back down from a pass I could see framed by the mountain cliffs on
both sides of me the monastery softly bathed in moonlight at the head of
its narrow valley far below. It was a mystical experience.

The mountain is impressive and dominates a range of many similar mountains,
very rugged red granite peaks and ridges thrusting up from the desert. The
actual climb is about 2 miles and a total elevation gain of 2000 feet or
so, since the monastery is already at about 5000 feet. We reached the
summit area about 3 AM, about an hour before other climbers began arriving,
had a cup of turkish coffee in a Bedoin hut in a hollow 300 hundred feet or
so below the summit took a bit of a snooze on a blanket covered stone bench
until 5 AM while a number of Bedoins came in and out, chatted and smoked
and tried to sell coffee, water, hot chocolate, or soda to the other hikers
as they passed by the hut on their way to the summit. Then at about 5 AM,
I climbed to the summit to watch the sunrise with a couple of hundred other
people who had come up mostly by the easier but longer and, for me, less
"spiritual" camel path route, which merges with the route I took about 400
feet or so below the summit. There were people from all over the world
perched there on the mountaintop to watch the sunrise - many languages,
Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Italian - including a group of happy
young Muslim women from Malaysia - they had brought a large flag - in
traditional dress complete with white head scarves. I heard no English
being spoken, although I had chatted briefly with one Britisher as he
passed by the hut, and to my knowledge there were very few, if any,
Americans there with me on the summit. The sunrise was magnificent.

On our return, Hussein invited me to his house, a stone hut and compound,
out in the desert a few miles from the monastery. His friend Muhammed drove
us. Hussein lay down some mats on the gravel floor and we sat cross legged
on cushions. Hussein's wife, Sabaha, in traditional Bedoin dress with her
face veiled, served me turkish coffee, habak (a strong herbal tea), and
fatil (a flat bread). Their ten month old son, Mahmoud, found me
fascinating and kept poking his sticky fingers in my glasses. There were
goats belonging to a neighbor wandering about and lots of flies that nobody
seemed to notice. Hussein knew a little English, although it was difficult
to communicate very much. All the way up the mountain he had been trying to
teach me a little Arabic - he failed. Muhammed and Sabaha knew very little
Engish, if any. But with body language and Mahmoud to carry the weight of
the socialbility, we all had a wonderful time.

Then I stayed inside the monastery, built in 527 C.E. That was another
amazing experience - Greek Orthodox monks, Order of St. Basil, who have
been keeping the monastery here in the desert for more than 1450 years. The
Basilica, built by Justinian in 527, is in remarkably excellent condition
and is a splendid example of Byzantine architecture, with the original and
beautifully carved wooden doors, a huge and very rare collection of ancient
icons, and all the many hanging lamps and chandeliers, the iconostasis and
so forth of the Greek tradition. I was the only guest and how I managed to
stay there is another long story. The monks are probably still talking
about this curious stranger. I didn't even try to explain Unitarian
Universalism. They spoke very little English in any case. I attended the
liturgies, including the 4 AM Sunday morning liturgy that went for 4 hours
complete with much ritual, rapid intoning of texts, incense all around many
times, changing of vestments, lighting of lamps, extinguishing them and
lighting them again, and the tower bells ringing loudly at a critical point
in the liturgy. Anyway, the great liturgy in the dark basilica as the dawn
slowly broke -it comes slowly at the bottom of the valley - was another
mystical experience. It probably helps even more not having much a clue as
to what is happening. I found myself in something of an altered state of
consciousness.

Enough for the moment. I am going up to Galilee this weekend and
then to the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank if the situation permits.
I have a savvy multilingual guide through Sabeel, the Palestinian
Liberation Theology Center in East Jerusalem. Things are relatively
quiet here in Israel and Palestine for the moment as most everybody is
holding their breath over the current peace negotiations. There have been a
few terrorist incidents, but they have involved only single individuals.

2003-07-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Jerusalem. The Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological
Studies is a most beautiful place. It sits on top of a hill (Tantur means
"hilltop" in Arabic) on 35 acres of olive groves, gardens, and wooded
areas, with easy access to the center of Jerusalem - a wonderful place for
sabbatical time.

Tantur is dedicated to interreligious dialogue and understanding. It has
the capacity for 100 guests and has the largest Christian theological
library in the Middle East in beautiful facilities. I am the only person
here at the moment, except for staff and a few more or less permanent
residents - a sign of the times. The food (Palestinian cuisine) and
conversation with staff are excellent - we sit at table together (myself, a
Paulist priest, a Lutheran pastor and his wife, and the Danish housekeeping
manager, whose husband is Palestinian) and then have coffee or tea together
in another large room with high windows and a balcony overlooking
Bethlehem. It is wonderfully fully quiet - up here.

Tantur is located at the southern edge of Jerusalem on the Hebron Road
right at the Israeli military checkpoint into Bethlehem and West Bank. The
front gate opens into Jerusalem and the gate in the back wall enters into
the Palestinian occupied territories. On Friday, I walked into Bethlehem
through the checkpoint (I tried the back gate but was stopped by Israeli
soldiers just outside). As part of the temporary ceasefire truce announced
on June 29, the Israelis turned Bethlehem over to Palestinian security
forces only that Tuesday and pulled military equipment out a little ways.
When I went in on Friday, Bethlehem was very quiet. There were very few
people on the streets and many shops were shuttered closed. I had the
ancient Church of the Nativity (centuries older than UFPC) all to myself
and a couple of Orthodox priests. In normal times, it would be jammed with
tourists lined up for hours. People I spoke with, including one shop owner
who invited me in for tea, are cautiously hopeful, with emphasis on
"cautiously."

I have been into Jeruasalem and the Old City several times and on a drive
through the area surrounding west Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a most
remarkable city and an incredible experience. I have a number of contacts
in Jerusalem and the West Bank I am looking forward to meeting.

More later.

Best wishes,

Sheldon

P.S. It gets really hot during the day. But it is a dry heat, and the
breeze that comes up the hilltop in the evening is cool and wonderfully
refreshing. My room opens out into a large rose garden. The air is also
fragrant with herbs, cedars and pines.