Holy Land Day One

Eventually I will add pictures, but I am short on time…

Day One:

I’ve never been to the Holy Land before. Being a novice has its blessings and curses, and it’s always good to start with the blessings.   As a first-timer, everything is a new and exciting experience, and I stand in awe of some of the simplest things.

Our double-decker bus (also a first for me) was filled with such an interesting mix of people. On my right sat a newlywed girl from Tel Aviv, eager to get home to see her husband again.  She was a graduate of the University of Texas, where she studied marketing and advertising. On my left I spoke with Rabbi Kate from Cornell University.  She was leading a group of Jewish students on their “Birthright Tour.”  Rabbit Kate’s community receives a grant each year to send Jewish students to Israel, which as Rabbi Kate puts it, is a birthright of all Jewish children. She was newly ordained in the reform movement of the Jewish faith (I’m guessing your figured as much since women are not ordained in more Orthodox movements of the faith).

The flight was long and not as comfortable as I would have hoped, but I did get to watch “Moneyball,” an epsiode of Doctor Who, and I nearly finished Angry Birds. I decided to begin the trip with lighter intellectual stimulation.  I’ll leave heavy meditation,  prayer writing, and biblical study for the trip home. Also a new for me was breakfast on a plane.   It wasn’t IHOP, but I still thought it was pretty cool to be eating breakfast over the Atlantic.

We arrived at our hotel after what seemed like days of travel.  We pulled into the Royal Plaza Hotel in Tiberias, a simple, modern establishment full of people  people from all over the world. Dinner was a spread of fresh fruit and vegetables, several different kinds of bread, hummus, $3 Pepsi and fish which still had their heads  (called “Peter’s Fish.” I guess Peter didn’t know how to clean fish).     The real thing I remember about dinner is how thirsty I was.  I was careful not to drink hardly anything because of some of the horror stories I had heard about drinking foreign water, so as soon as I sat down for dinner I drank like a camel starting a trek across the Gobi. But I wasn’t only thirsty for water.  I was anxious and excited, thirsty for the life giving water this trip would bring.  Of course, now that I’m in Galilee with a sense of awe and that out of body experience oh my God I’m hanging out in Galilee feeling…I have to sleep. Little did I know that the next day I would find the water after which I had been yearning in a small grotto in a small town at the top of a modest hill called Nazareth.