Sacred Ground

I joined a clergy orientation tour for my first trip to Israel. I suppose if the ministers get excited about their travels, they’re more likely to organize trips for their congregations, creating more business for the tour companies. The trip was fairly cheap and yet we still had very nice accommodations. My traveling partner, Aldred, was an acquaintance from seminary, also recently ordained and like me, wide-eyed about the difference we were going to make in the world. For Aldred and me this trip was about experiencing the Holy Land in a way that might inform our teaching and preaching, perhaps allow us to find the color, smells, and rhythms of this sacred territory that might help us invite others into a more committed journey of exploration: noble if not naïve aspirations.

We started our trip in Jerusalem. Aldred and I were put up in a beautiful modern high rise hotel with a view of the city and outlying hillsides that was staggering in both its beauty and the history exposed in the landscape: ancient ruins, excavations revealing layers of Jerusalem’s past lives, camels and their Bedouin owners within view of government halls, museums, and boutiques that rivaled those on Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive.

Aldred and I agreed to read Morning Prayer together each day to frame our experiences of the day, to ground ourselves in our Anglican practice, to honor the regimens we’d taken on in our recently completed seminary days, and I think as a way to be in relationship with each other, since in truth - the two of us were quite a mismatch. As if his name alone doesn’t suggest something special about him, my companion was a soft man with a gentle spirit, a real academic who found the Sacred in his research, who genuinely enjoyed Three’s Company, The Golden Girls, and the Village People and yet who’s life goal was to be an Army chaplain. Aldred’s wife was an academic, a brilliant woman who adored her husband, as he adored her. She loved the same things as he and it was if they were best buddies. I never understood their relationship or their likes that were as different from my own as one could get. Our mismatch went beyond our tastes. Unlike Aldred, I have never been described as a soft man with a gentle spirit notwithstanding my admiration of those who are of that construct. But in spite of our differences, he was a familiar face in a very strange land, and one couldn’t ask for a more trustworthy and genuine companion. I was fortunate to be with him and grateful for his friendship – a gift that would become more appreciated in the days ahead.

I had planned this trip with some care, envisioning my experiences before I left home. On the plane I put the finishing touches on my “been there – done that” list of places I wanted to see. Gotta’ see Qumran and Masada. Wanna’ float in the Dead Sea and cross the Sea of Galilee. Wanna’ see where Jesus was executed. Wanna’ walk the streets of the Old City. Gonna’ visit Bethlehem and Nazareth. I’ll even offer a “Hail Mary” prayer from my former Roman Catholic days when I’m in Nazareth. Yeah, that’ll be cool. I wanna’ take a bunch of slides, capture it all, sort of bring the Holy Land home in a box. Maybe I’d made such detailed plans so I could check Israel/Palestine off my list - as if one visit was all I needed to get a sense of the history and sanctity of that beautifully complex and tortured territory. At the time, I didn’t realize I was doing the same thing I often criticize others for doing: the brides (or more typically mothers of brides) who make weddings into Spielberg productions and attempt to “capture” the event in some way as if the event itself carries more significance than the relationship; those who put boxes around people by assigning neat little labels that never capture the rich complexity of another human being; and those who decorate their cars with those moralizing bumper stickers that pretend to capture some universal truth-in-a-box. I was planning to reduce thousands of years of human history into a ten-day trip and turn this rare opportunity into a photo album.

At another, perhaps subconscious level, I even planned out my transcendent experiences for each stop. I mean this trip was supposed to generate great sermon fodder. My congregation would be expecting some great stories and I was going to deliver! And so with my naïve, simplistic, and self-aggrandizing strategies in place we entered Israeli airspace. My first surprise occurred before we landed. The captain came onto the intercom announcing simply, “We are now entering Israeli airspace.” As his announcement stirred some of us from our sleep and one by one we opened our windows, the rising sun filled the cabin. As the light from the new day made its way among us I saw dozens of men standing, with prayer shawls across their shoulders, repeatedly nodding their heads and shoulders up and down in prayer – “davvening” it’s called. These were men who might be marginally observant Jews in their day to day lives in New York, Philadelphia, or wherever their homes were – but in this moment – they were embracing another identity – another facet of who they are – another piece of their history and sense of belonging. Even at 30,000 feet, these men had their feet planted on sacred soil. They claimed their sacred history and identity. They knew who they were and honored that identity in sacred ritual in a way that stirred me, and tore me away from my self-centeredness enough to take note.

There is no distinction between this sacred connection I was witnessing and any other sacred moment, except in language, color, rhythm, tone, and storyline. In a rare moment of quiet I was silenced and craned my heart to listen. The barely discernable murmurs coming from the man davvening directly in front of me soothed me. I was safe with him, because he was connected to something beyond us both – something in which we were all related. I cannot understand the full beauty of this apart from coming to know this man – which will not likely happen – but the taste alone has value – and perhaps there is no full understanding anyway. Perhaps it’s just like beautiful music that stirs us in ways that allow the mystery of that reality to be more valuable than any understanding of its source or consequences. In that moment I was changed. I better appreciated my inability to understand what I thought I knew. I saw more clearly how much I don’t know and may never know, let alone understand. And all that struck me as something to be grateful for. I felt held in my seat, content to observe. There was warmth. My face felt flush. My breathing became deeper and slower. I didn’t do that. This wasn’t on my list.