Three Traditions

I got to travel to Israel and Palestine recently. In fact, I'm writing this from Palestine. Unless you completely don't pay attention at all, you'll know that this part of the world is a holy place for at least three religious traditions and billions of people. I was lucky enough to be there during significant religious holidays. 

Easter Celebration in Bethlehem

Since I'm a Lutheran pastor, I wasn't really able to travel before Easter Sunday - so my son and I planned our travel to visit my daughter just after Easter Sunday in the Western Church. This happens to be a year when Passover and Ramadan and Orthodox Easter celebrations all overlap with each other.

There certainly is significant inter-religious conflict and strife. Still, and not to take away from the problematic realities of this holy place, to my perception it's a beautiful thing to know that while Passover is being celebrated, and while Muslims spend the days of Ramadan fasting before they gather together at sundown for a communal meal, Christians are bustling about preparing for Easter festivities. The way I see it, the reality that each group is practicing the disciplines of their faith alongside one another is beautiful.

Of course I know that there are undeniable conflicts between these religious groups; the sociopolitical realities of Israel and Palestine are more complex than this simplistic reflection can address.

And still, I think that there are worse things in the world than different traditions practicing their own disciplines alongside one another.

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Traveling Before Sunrise

yesterday, out the rv window

clouds hung high in the sky

above our heads

their dark underside

contrasting the lightening sky

today, the horizon is hazy,

but the sky is clear, and

all I see out the window,

hung like a child's mobile

from the bedroom ceiling

is this momentary vision,

before the sun comes up

and overpowers

the waning moon, now

just a few hours past full

Amtrak, New Year's Eve

I used to take the train back and forth when I needed to go places. I rode the train from Chicago out to Montana one year for a summer job in the national park, but most often I'd ride the train between Denver and Austin when I was on break from school. The thing is (the train system in western USAmerica being unfunded and therefore inefficient as it is), the route between Denver and Austin went through Chicago. No one would mistake Chicago as being on the way from Austin to Denver, but it worked for me, 'cause I got to lay over in Chicago for a couple days with my folks, who lived there at the time.

Now, I've never ponied up for a sleeper car, always hoping for an empty seat next to my coach accommodations, so I could stretch out just a little bit more. But most of the time, especially as the skies darkened, I found myself in the club car. Often, I'd spend the time reading books I brought along ~ once in a while, I'd end up talking with whoever else was also on the train and not sleeping.

One year, on the way from Chicago to Denver, I had set my book down in favor of a conversation with the other people in the club car ~ one or two other Americans and a couple of Australians. The two Australians were spending a couple months exploring the US countryside traveling by rail. They'd been hither and yon, back and forth, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their travels. They told me they'd met some surprising and interesting people almost everywhere they went. We talked into the night about theology and philosophy and travel and culture and who knows what else.

At some point in the evening, someone looked at their watch and wondered aloud if it was really 12:15 in the morning ~ which triggered for all of us the realization that as we rumbled across the middle of Nebraska, the new year had caught up with us without giving notification.

It didn't take long for our new Australian friends to open up their cooler and crack open a bottle of celebratory sparkling wine. We toasted the new year and new temporary friendships with shared wine drunk from scavenged paper cups, and promptly fell back into the conversation that had been interrupted by a page turn on the calendar.

I don't remember if, after we wandered off to our respective coach seats for a couple uncomfortable hours of sleep, I ran into them again on the train, or if we parted ways without noticing. What I do remember is one unique and interesting new years eve on a train.

Reflections on not writing in fake Mexico

Last week, I went on vacation. It was a lovely vacation, complete with those items from a stereotypical vacation ~ tropical climate, sandy beaches, wonderful time with friends, and very little on the agenda other than reading books that don't really matter all that much. Not only that, but we even got to travel out of the country to a famous vacation destination. It was a wonderful holiday, but I found myself missing something.

For the last 5 years or so, I've felt compelled to write, and especially feel compelled to write when I travel. (Fortunately for my 7 readers, most of that writing doesn't make it on to this page.) I love noticing the differences between what I experience as normal, and what is ordinary for the place to which I have traveled. I love seeing people who are different from me, who have different life experiences and assumptions about the world. And I love the experience of moving through space, feeling the longitude and latitude sliding past as I make my way from one place to another.

Much of what I notice when I cross latitude and longitude forces itself into a journal I carry ~ which is why I was surprised in our recent travels by the complete and utter lack of desire to write anything at all. And I'm trying to sort out the reason why.

Most of the time, when I travel, I do what I can to not be a tourist. I don't think there's anything wrong with tourism; the thing is, though, that tourism seems contrived, and in some ways fake. I'm more interested in experiencing a place I've never lived while I'm in the company of someone for whom that place is their home. Of course I recognize that even this kind of travel experience is contrived ~ the only way to really and fully get to know a place is to live there, and then you're no longer traveling.

Part of what I like to reflect on in the journal I try to keep is how a new place affects me, and how that place is different from that to which I'm accustomed. Perhaps this is why I didn't feel compelled to write on our vacation last week ~ we were only sort-of in the place where we were.

The resort where we stayed was amazingly well run, our time was more relaxing than I expected, everything was beautiful and everyone was friendly and nice. In other words, it was wonderful, and it was not real life. Don't get me wrong ~ it was a wonderful sabbath time away, at the end of which, I was ready to be back home.

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