Stowaways - Part 2

Mothering takes different forms.

When you can't be right there with or for your kids, it's always possible to pray for them. What has often comforted me is to realize their Father-Mother God loves and protects all Her children even more than I could if I were right there. Never absent, never on a coffee-break, God's mothering is a presence -- comforting, protecting, cheering, guiding.

There is never a moment when that spiritual mothering is lax, inattentive, bored, or distracted. The way I see it, Mother God nurtures and shelters, while promoting growth in all that is good, that will benefit the children and their world.

While Mom attends her meetings
the stowaways plan some adventures

Stowaways!

Stowaways discovered after take off!

How does a mom mother her children when she has to travel?

There are innovations. It takes creativity and a sense of fun.

What could grab a kid's imagination like planting a couple of small stowaways in his mom's travel purse?

What is there to do except record photos of their adventures?

Recommissioned

Nancy, Olene, and friend Katie

in Bet She'an

Our trip to the Holy Land was an amazing education. Our tour hostesses, Nancy and Olene, plied us with information whenever Mishi stopped for breath. Their pericopes (pronounced similarly to calliope) provided insight into Bible stories. Each pericope condensed several Bible commentaries. When telling us about Rahab, Olene balanced on her knees facing backward on the front seat of the bus, the scarf on her head definitely making her story more authentic.

At the biblical Sea of Galilee Olene reminded us of the second time the disciples went fishing – after Jesus’ crucifixion, when they were depressed and discouraged. Their whole world had collapsed, so they returned to what was familiar – fishing. Only their nets were empty.

Olene portraying Rahab, the harlot,
prior to the fall of Jericho

A stranger on the shore called to them, asked whether they had caught anything. Nope. He told them to cast on the other side of the boat, in fact to cast on the right side. So they cast, and voila, a net overflowing with fish!

Déjà vu. Suddenly the disciples realized this whole fishing scenario had happened before – about three years previous. Then their net had broken. This time it didn’t. Suddenly they knew who was watching them from the shore.

Olene pointed out they were reconnecting with the Christ they thought they had lost. They were rediscovering their spiritual purpose. They had learned something about the destructiveness of self-will, competitiveness, self-love. Get this – the negatives were not in the net to break it!

The disciples were recommissioned. They were no longer fishermen; they were to become shepherds.

A happy surpirse

Following our guide -

home!

On our last day in Jerusalem, our guide’s wife invited our whole busload of Americans and Canadians to have afternoon tea and cookies in their apartment.

What fun to be welcomed into their home. To be, for an hour or so, in a family – a warmth and affection worlds away from hotels and buses and tourist stops. To hear who’s who in family photographs, to inquire about vacations and hobbies.

Suddenly conversation ceases as the sobering answer to a naive question is the holocaust. Only our hosts’ grandparents survived. None of the grandparents’ siblings or family. Suddenly the barbarity of genocide past, hits home. We are talking to direct descendents of a few survivors. This country is full of such descendents.

The hosts deftly move the conversation to lighter topics. We snap their photos. It’s time to return to the bus, and dinner, and the airport.

--------------------------------------------

Picture this large tour bus on a small quiet residential street in Jerusalem, moving carefully between cars parked on both sides. We spill out, following Mishi like children behind the pied piper.

Police in a squad car, blocked behind our bus, beckon Mishi who they know is a tour guide. He has a brief conversation, then returns to the sidewalk grinning.

“What was that about?” we ask.

“They asked me, ‘What could possibly be of historical interest in this neighborhood?’”

“I said, ‘I am bringing them to my home!”

It was truly special.

I am smiling still.

Travel broadens

Sunrise on Galilee

(Lake Kinneret)

People ask, “What did you learn on this trip?”

I ask them, “How many hours do you have?”

I’ll try to keep it brief. Here are a few concepts that totally knocked my sox off. Some may be old hat to you, but they were new to me. Bear in mind that our guide in Israel was a Jew, so we saw history, geography, politics and peace through his eyes.

1. Israel is celebrating its 60th birthday as a country this year. In that short time its people have taken a desert and turned much of it into a garden. A “tree department” is reforesting the land. Thousands of years ago, the hills were forested.

2. Bible archeology sheds new light on some Bible “traditions” we have grown up with. For me that’s OK. Aside from the initial jolt, it doesn’t matter to me that Jesus’ dad, Joseph, was a stonemason rather than a carpenter – due to the fact that in his day there were not many trees to keep carpenters in business. Stonemasonry was an honorable profession.

3. The holocaust is recent and very real history for most of the Jews in Jerusalem. They can tell you the names of family members who perished in labor and extermination camps, and also the names of those few who survived – usually their grandparents.

4. One solution for Mid East peace is water. Our guide firmly believes, “Give me enough water, and people willing to work hard, and I can guarantee peace.”

5. The tinderbox of the Mid East, and thereby the whole world, is religion.

Temple Mount - built on the remains
of the Jewish Temple

6. Jesus’ Jewishness. I guess I knew, but it just never penetrated – Jesus was a Jewish boy who became a rabbi, and was crucified as a rabbi. There was nothing new in what he taught (he came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them). Rather he was highlighting what was important and rebuking what men had imposed on their fellows.

7. I became more aware of unfortunate translation errors in the King James Bible. Don’t get me wrong; I love King James. But it is sometimes misleading because of uninspired translators and uninspired scribes who made the copies.

8. This trip redefined “old.” In America if a building is 200 or more years old, it’s historic. In Israel we saw streets, theaters, aqueducts, and grain storage facilities constructed by Herod the Great – the brilliant engineer and ruthless ruler – who reigned during Jesus’ lifetime. We’re talking 2000 years ago.

2000 years ago, this aqueduct

provided fresh water

to Caesarea by the Sea

9. We saw mounds of cities built upon the remains of older cities until it formed a high hill. Sometimes as many as 20 civilizations had called one spot home over the centuries.

10. Americans really stand out. Is it our cameras? The Nike shoes? The baseball hats? Body language?

11. A Palestinian merchant surprised us on November 5, smiling and chanting, “Obama! Obama!” Our President-elect has indeed struck a chord of hope for peace overseas.

12. I gained a firsthand understanding, after a camel ride in Jordan, of why camels are called “ships of the desert.” When atop a camel, you sit high as though on the deck of a ship. Their gait rocks you gently, as a boat might rock on the sea. Of course camels also traveled as cargo caravans long ago, as ships carry cargo on seas.

There's more, but that'll wait for another post.

Generosity in Jordan

Amman,

bustling Jordanian capitol

At the border crossing between Israel and Jordan, our Israeli guide took us skillfully through his side of the passport crossing; on the other side, our Jordanian guide shepherded us through his country’s passport stamping.

The first evening we were very privileged guests of an American Foreign Service worker at the US Embassy in Amman. Her Muslim friend catered a meal of attractively prepared Jordanian foods for our busload of 28 American and Canadian tourists. Our hostess loves Jordan and its people.

Our hostess, caterers,
and a feast of local food

On the way to the capital, our guide had assured us that all Jordanian children go to school. Yet that day we saw school-age children herding goats; and the next day school-age children were hawking bracelets and necklaces in Petra. “Oh pretty lady, you have beautiful eyes! Nice bracelet for you, one dollah! One dollah, pretty lady!”

My friend, Emilie, didn’t buy any jewelry, but she took a chocolate bar from her bag, and offered it to the enterprising little girl. The child’s whole body danced, from her eyes to her feet, as she accepted the gift. The chocolate might not educate her, but it clearly brightened her morning.

Queen Noor, American-born wife of the former King Hussein, has been a strong advocate for the empowerment of women in Jordan from establishing health care services as well as institutions providing microloans and technical assistance for start-up businesses.

This desert country with a bustling capitol and Bedouin herders is now more than a place on the map on the other side of the world to me. It is real people I met and talked to; it's where I rode a camel. It's what you see when you stand on the West Bank and look across the Dead Sea -- the mountains on the other side are Jordan.

I gain a sense of how important peace is to this region of Jewish-Muslim-Christian neighbors. And how important prosperity is to peace. And how important water is to prosperity.

I will pray more intelligently about peace.

Barren and beautiful -- Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum formation, Jordan

Next time you watch “Lawrence of Arabia” trotting along on his camel, notice the background. Notice Wadi Rum. In Jordan we camped in Lawrence’s desert.

Wadi means valley. Rum doesn’t mean liquor; I don’t know what it means. Just Rum Valley . These eerie and beautiful rock formations remain from an ocean that once covered the whole area.

Wadi Rum Tent Village

The Bedouins provide tent villages for tourists. You can hike the dunes, or climb the rocks during the day, and come to your tent village for an evening of dancing. No kidding. The belly dancer invites tourists to join her. After she departs, Arab men start a round dance ending up with a long line of hand-holding, Europeans snaking merrily around the dance area.

In the morning we are awakened exactly at 7 by a bellowing camel behind our tents. Enterprising young men offer camel rides to early-rising tourists.

Bedouin alarm clock

Did the Children of Israel traverse this land in their forty years of wandering? It’s possible. Nobody knows for sure. The sandy desert would have been considerably harsher than the wilderness to the north.

O’Toole’s Lawrence had a horrendous ego problem that became his undoing. Moses didn’t. The Bible refers to him as the meekest of men. I take “meek” to mean Moses was a good listener. He listened to God because he couldn’t figure out how to lead his people on his own. Which is a pretty good reason!

So my lesson here is to learn to be as good a listener as Moses. That means silencing the inner chatter, silencing ego, silencing the desire to be right, silencing distractions. And listening to that one Mind who created all those stars glittering above us around 3:30 am.