Hey Friends,
I'm back from our two-week pilgrimage to the Holy Land and, now that my bags are unpacked, I'm also eager to unpack the experience with you! What with three countries visited, almost 500 slides taken, countless bowls of hummus consumed, this is no small story to share!
Actually, the trip was both heartwarming and heartbreaking, inspiring and depressing, ancient and modern, grueling and relaxing, hopeless and hopeful, poignant and profound. I suspect the best way to get the story across will be in little snippets, with themes and impressions shared in bite-sized pieces. So stay tuned--and now that I'm getting over jet lag a bit, hopefully I'll have energy and time to begin the tale.
More to come!
Carl
2 comments:
Carl,
I've just come from the 11 o'clock presentation of slides and stories by members of your group and immediately came home to look at what you'd written so far on your blog. I was moved to tears more than once by the experiences and epiphanies the trip participants had, rendered so powerfully in some of images shared (the photo of the 'control-alt-delete' graffiti on the wall is seared in my mind). This was, to use the definition from your previous blog entry, an ec-centric trip, as far as many church Holy Land tours go. And I am struck afresh by how utterly eccentric Jesus was, in his day and in the way he works in the world at present. I hope your time in Israel and Palestine was the enlightening counterpoint you sought to the more mundane challenges of a privileged church in a much-insulated setting. Travel among 'living stones,' especially those who are suffering, has a way of wrenching our perspective off our more conventional center and realigning our priorities and concerns so that they may be more in line with those of Jesus. Not that the issues at our own church are not important, but I am sure you are seeing them in a very different light. I'm going on too long for a blog response here, but my mind and heart have been lit up powerfully this morning, and I am grateful--once again--for your willingness to do things "atyically," despite your penchant for order and the greater ease of being "Carl-in-control"!
Wendy R.
I really enjoyed your blog posts thank you
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