Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land (15 page)

JoAnne says, “My spiritual director gave me a piece of advice
that was helpful today. I'd like to share it with you.” She unrolls a well-worn scrap of paper and reads: “
Live in the middle of the conflict, knowing that you cannot fix a thing.
I thought about that today as we walked through that refugee camp. Because she's right — I can't fix this. But I can take it in. And maybe that's enough.”

“Now we've seen it firsthand,” Ashley agrees. “We haven't exactly lived it, but we've tasted it.”

“It reminds me of the first day,” Jessica says. “Stephen said that a tourist passes through the place, but the place passes through the pilgrim. Remember that?”

“How can I forget it?” Michael responds. “This place has been passing through me for days.” As if on cue, both Michael and Charlie make farting noises. There's a moment of incredulity as the rest of us look at each other, wide-eyed. Then we burst into giggles. 

“He's right,” JoAnne says. “I haven't had a normal poop in days.”

I nod in agreement.

“Don't worry,” says Charlie. “Because tonight's menu is chicken and — ”

“Yellow rice!” we all shout.

This strikes us as so hilarious that our giggling turns into laughter, which becomes so overpowering that we clutch our bellies. The day's emotions — sympathy and helplessness in the face of profound suffering — overflow in tears of laughter, which are simply another form of our earlier tears. It's a relief to feel the surfeit of emotions drain away.

Brian signals the cameramen to stop. “Let's not waste any more film,” he says quietly. “This is part of pilgrimage too, but I think you'd have to be here to understand.”

Masada and the Dead Sea

CHAPTER 13

Suspension

In my distress I cry to the L
ORD
, that he may answer me.

P
SALM 120:1

T
ODAY IS DESERT
day. The bus departs before sunrise, so I don't bother to eat breakfast. I stare out the window as the sky lightens into pearl and wish I'd taken time for a cup of coffee, even that wretched Nescafé. It occurs to me that becoming a pilgrim has intensified my addiction to caffeine. That would have surprised me when I thought pilgrimage was like prayer, something that helped a person become less polluted. But now I know differently. Pilgrimage may be holy, but it's not particularly pure. For that matter, neither is prayer. Both are hard work — and messy. Both require sweat and tears. Coffee helps. Lubrication.

As the bus lumbers east, the desert's scraggly green growth peters out. All that's left is the beige of rock and sand. Even the sky becomes a blue so watery and washed out that it's almost beige. God must love beige. A land of milk and honey, yes, but to my eyes it's a land of beige and beige.

Why, out of all the possible palettes, would the Creator choose this one? I want to argue with God's color choice, but as a young child I was schooled not to question the divine, not even to quibble or joke. “Don't make light of holy things. Don't be presumptuous.” So, when an unanswerable question arose, I
learned to prick and deflate it. I don't do that anymore, but it's disconcerting that questions multiply. I'm still processing yesterday's trip to the refugee camp. Why did this Holy Land end up in such a mess? Why do people treat other people inhumanely? What's religion got to do with it? I want God to explain this to me. Or better, I want God to fix it.

Maybe this urge to quarrel with God proves that I, too, am in the grip of this Holy Land. The Hebrew patriarchs are famous for taking God head-on. Perhaps the covenant gave them the necessary status. Didn't Abraham argue with God over the fate of Sodom? Didn't Jacob wrestle a blessing from an angel? Didn't Moses negotiate the terms of his spokesperson deal with God?

The Jews have a tradition of arguing with God, and I feel a bit envious. We Calvinists don't do that. We elevate God so high that we dare not approach. Instead, we assert our adoptive claim as God's elect, then scramble to prove ourselves worthy of its benefits and blessings.

Will I still be a Calvinist when this pilgrimage is over? The bus rolls along while my thoughts tumble. It's ironic that I want to tussle with God over problems that started when people felt they had some sort of special dispensation that allowed them to tussle with God.

Most of the people in the bus are dozing or staring vaguely out the windows at the few signs of life. Occasionally we pass a primitive building, and I wonder if it shelters people or animals. I look for evidence of vehicles, cook-fires, clotheslines. I see none. The buildings seem too huddled to house people. Occasionally a lone sheep or goat drifts across the sand, untended.

Someone shouts and points out the window. In the distance an entire hillside is moving. As the bus gets closer, it seems that the sand is flowing alongside us like a river. There's commotion as people crowd to one side of the bus. The flowing hillside isn't sand, but a herd of sheep, their rounded, wooly backs rippling like water and parting around rocks like a current. Near the back of the herd is a lone Bedouin, his red-and-white scarf a spot of color. In a moment we've left the scene behind us. Just when we've
been lulled into thinking this is nothing but a boring desert, we are surprised and thrilled. This is what a pilgrimage is, this up-ending of what you think you know to be true.

The bus continues south. The land flattens, and I doze. As we approach the Dead Sea, I wake, just in time to see a grove of date palm trees, unexpected and flamboyant. These tall trees have orange nets strapped beneath their feathery umbrellas, like girdles, to protect heavy clusters of dates.

The enormous plateau of Masada is visible from a distance. It's a stunning formation, a geological oddity. Imagine you're an ant in a sandbox when a toddler, or some other God-like being, drops a gigantic, flat-topped rock next to you. What could you do with such an object?

Our guide for the day, Rula, is a Christian of Bedouin ancestry. Her long hair is light brown, settling on her shoulders with a curl. She is knowledgeable and well-spoken. Now she takes the microphone to give us some background before we arrive. She tells us that the earliest record of life at Masada is from the Hasmonean kings, a hundred years before Christ, who used the plateau as a sort of royal retreat. This sounds uncreative, but also unsurprising. I suppose the mighty have always felt the need to escape the riffraff, even before Queen Victoria built Buckingham Palace or Rupert Murdoch bought a jet. Privilege is not a new concept in human history.

As the bus pulls into the parking lot, I'm happy to see that the sky has cleared and is properly blue. Tourists like a blue sky, and today I'm a tourist in hiking shorts and shoes.

“Divide into groups,” Rula says. “There's an introductory film, and then you take a cable car to the top. Once you get up there, the tour is mandatory, and the guides are provided by the site. The tour takes about an hour and a half. After that, you're on your own. You can stay as long as you choose. Just don't miss the last cable car down!”

Climbing off the air-conditioned bus, we're assaulted by the heat. It must be over 100 degrees. A steady wind blows the hot air straight into our faces.

“With this sun, it'll only get hotter, right?” Kyle says. “So let's go straight to the top and see the film later.”

It makes sense. A group of us climbs aboard the cable car for the six-minute trip to the top. The car swings precariously, and the mechanism creaks. We clutch the handrails. I don't have any fear of heights, and still the ride is discombobulating. The steep walls of the plateau seem to cruise past our swinging toes. No wonder people chatter, plotting their descent even while we ascend. Someone noticed signs for ice cream in the gift shop below. I understand their urge to return to level ground, to air conditioning. It's unnatural to be dangling like a spider on a thread in a blast furnace.

We disembark into a blinding sun. I touch my temples to make sure I'm wearing my hat and sunglasses. Even with those, I'm still squinting. After our group gathers, a guide tells us the history of this place. King Herod — the one from the Christmas narrative — decided to use Masada as a fortress, so he built reinforcements. It flourished for a while, but not long. A group of Jewish rebels, or extremists — the Zealots — took possession of Masada during the Jewish Revolt around 70
CE
.

Eventually the Romans retaliated by laying siege to Masada. They built a ramp up one side of the plateau, shovel by laborious shovel. I look over the edge of the plateau and imagine the drama. Did the Zealots peer down from their fortress and watch the Romans make their daily encroachment? Did they grow hungrier and thirstier each day? The story goes that when the Romans finally breached the wall, they found that all the Zealots — some 900 people — had committed mass suicide rather than be taken.

“For this reason,” our guide emphasizes, “Masada has become a powerful symbol of determination, heroism, and freedom.”

The sun is so strong that I can believe this story. This is a place where death seems inevitable. Why not engage it head-on instead of letting it hunt you down?

We trudge from ruin to ruin while the guide explains what the various buildings were used for over the centuries. In Herod's time there were palaces. Residences. Kitchens. Storerooms.
Bathhouses. Saunas. This last is so bizarre that I laugh aloud into the dry heat. Did she say “sauna”?

Someone asks the obvious question. “Where would they get water?”

“Water came up by donkey,” the guide answers. “A caravan from the oasis below.”

“That must have been some caravan,” someone says.

“It was endless. Imagine a giant loop.”

I look over the edge and, instead of picturing Romans with shovels, picture donkeys wending their way, nose to tail. The guide is explaining how the water was heated by solar power, but I'm still picturing the donkey caravan switchbacking up the trail. I suppose some slave had to unload each beast's precious cargo. I suppose the donkeys didn't get to drink the water they carried — it was too valuable. Yes, the life-giving water had been hauled under duress simply so it could be heated by the desert sun and steamed away into the thirsty air for some fat king's moment of pleasure!

When the tour is done, I mosey along and read the helpful interpretive plaques, hoping to find some bit of information, some scientific fact, some Bermuda Triangle-type hypothesis that would explain why this place is the locus of so much excess. Instead, the plaques say that the clues unearthed by archaeologists don't support the most dramatic stories. For instance, that cache of bones from a mass suicide of 900? It's nowhere to be found. Instead, a more modest but verifiable number might be thirty. Maybe it's comforting to realize that truth is elusive, that history collides with legend everywhere in this Holy Land. I think about that as I plop down in the shade of a massive rock.

A desert vista spreads before me, crumbly and colorless. The silence is vast. In the far distance is a shimmer, the Dead Sea in a bowl of whitened hills. As the sun climbs, the shade grows smaller and smaller until it is gone. I think of Psalm 121, one of the Pilgrim Psalms: “The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.” Was that just a preacher or poet's hyperbole? Or had the Psalmist never sat in this particular patch of desert where
there is no reprieve? Maybe everyone needs to experience a place like this, where the sun is inescapable, the world enormous, and a human being so small. This place thins out the veil between human and divine — you can feel it. This is a sacred spot even if there's no shrine, no candles to buy and light. Perhaps the lack of human meddling makes this plateau seem even more sacred. I cup my hands around my sunglasses and peer through slitted eyes at the ruins encircling me, imagining the events these remnants once witnessed.

In the distance I hear a loud sound like public-address static. It occurs every twenty minutes or so as the cable-car deposits another load of tourists, and a microphone announces the car's imminent return trip. My watch says that this is the last call before my bus's departure. I get up and brush sand from the seat of my shorts. I'm a little sorry I stayed so long, even if it wasn't long enough. Not only did I miss my chance to see the film and soak in some air conditioning; I feel off-balance from being immersed in such stretching silence.

The cable car is full. With our arms raised over our heads to grasp the swinging straps, we're packed body to body. Body to stinky body. We cast our eyes discreetly down, the way people do on subways, waiting for the trip to end. About three-quarters of the way down the steep incline, the cable car comes to a lurching halt. Inside, a chorus of exclamations erupts in every language. We are suspended over a gorge, swinging. Camera Michael attempts to shoot some footage of shocked faces, but it's too crowded for him to use the viewfinder. Undaunted, he lifts the video camera above his head and points down. Like him, I want to document the drama of the moment. I want to record this taste of terror before it evaporates into the desert air.

I look around at faces. Most are strangers, but I spot a couple of my documentary teammates. Michael catches my eye and winks. He's good at finding humor in situations. Ashley's eyes are huge. Her mouth is working as if she wants to spout words too awful to utter. She's sweating, but we're all sweating — we've been sweating all day.

What a terrible experience this must be for someone with claustrophobia. Yet I can't help but feel elated. The feeling is irrational, of course. Something awful, something irrecoverable might happen. Yet I love this feeling of not knowing, of waiting for the deity to make up its mind about what to do with us.

Each minute stretches. The ride that was supposed to take six minutes stretches to twelve, then to eighteen. The mechanism makes creaking sounds that we can't interpret. Occasionally there's a jerk, followed by a sliding movement as the car slips along the cable. I realize that the cable might give way altogether, and I imagine that we will drop to our death.