“This Land Belongs to You and Me: A Visit to “The Holy Land”

“This land was made for you and me”, so sang Woody Guthrie.

I have always been baffled by the idea that land or place belongs one set of people and that others are excluded for whatever reasons. A feeling that seems to intensify when the exclusion is for faith or lack of, gender, colour of skin, politics, or sexuality. Who decides what and where belongs to who and who not?

I recently spent a wonderful week in the “Holy Land”, Israel – Palestine depending on your point of view. A land that has been fought over for thousands of years. By the way it is unique in this is it? Much of the land of this world has gone through similar experiences.

It was an amazing trip, filled with some incredible experiences that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Some deeply spiritual experiences and trans-formative too, on so many levels. I also proposed to Sue and she accepted, what a beautiful blessing. I did not see the whole place and or experience all aspects of it. I saw very little of the Palestinian perspective, from their point of view. I am not going to talk here about the current situation, I’m not sure I’m qualified to do so. I will though reflect on the spirit I encountered as well as a reflection on holiness and the holy.

Our week began and ended in Jerusalem. We arrived Thursday night having flown direct from Manchester. The flight out was an experience in and of itself. It seemed like some kind of extended family outing. So many people on the flight knew each other and there was much conversation to observe and listen to. We were given some lovely tips on places to visit by a man who spends half of his life in Jerusalem and the other in Manchester. All of his children now live in Israel. He even knew one half of the couple we were staying with.

We arrived late Thursday night. The next morning we went to give the talk I had been invited to deliver, at an AA gathering there. It was a beautiful experience. What wonderful fellowship, we shared. Afterwards we went for a walk around Jerusalem before returning for the most beautiful Shabbat meal with Steve and Lynne, it was deeply moving and fulfilling experience. The food was incredible, but it was more than that. We connected deeply with the spirit of the occasion. During the meal and throughout the stay we were shown the essential Jewish teaching of "Kadmah derech eretz et ha-Torah", 'the commandment of good manners or considerate behaviour. This teaching predates the revelation at Mount Sinai and originated with Adam and the creation of humanity. It suggests that while God could imagine humankind existing without the Torah he could not imagine humanity doing so without civility. So it seems to be a law that trumps other laws.

It is a teaching that lays at the core of all the Abrahamic traditions, which teach respect and civility to the stranger, to the other. Something that humanity has failed to do these last two thousand years or more. We experienced civility and welcome and the most wonderful hospitality throughout the trip except perhaps in the driving habits of the natives, which are very different to those in this land.

It was strange walking round Jerusalem on the Saturday, during Sabbath, everywhere was closed as we walked towards the walls of the ancient city. We found a none Jewish shop open, so we stopped and ate in a small garden built in gratitude to the former American President George W Bush. We then continued on towards the city and climbed up the walls. As we walked round we observed the housing and the Dome of the Rock. We came down in the Muslim quarter and then walked towards the Church of the Holy Sepulcre, past the shops and the other tourists and pilgrims, some of whom we had observed at the museum earlier as walked round the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. We then headed back to be with our generous hosts.

The next day we returned to the ancient city for a guided tour of the the underground tunnels of the western wall of the Temple that was destroyed in the first century. Before spending time praying outside at the wall. Following this we went down to the ruins of the ancient city of David, just outside the city walls as well as visiting “The Burnt House”. As we were guided round the stories came to life as the ancient history of the Jewish people came to life with it.

Jerusalem is central to all three of the Abrahamic faiths. The temple both of Solomon and the second temple which the Romans destroyed during the first century rebellion was built on the spot where it is believed that Abraham took his son Isaac to be sacrificed as a sign of his obedience to God. This is sacred to Christianity due to death and resurrection of Jesus much of which it is believed took place on the site of what is today the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Dome of the Mount is built on the same site as the temple, the believed spot of Abrahams sacrifice, the same place where the Prophet Mohammed's “Night Journey” to heaven is believed to have began. So the whole place is Holy to all three faiths and has been disputed for centuries, going back to the “Crusades”. It has been a place of deep worship and so much violence and hate. Sadly so little hospitality and considerate behaviour towards others has taken place here.

For so long holiness and sacred respect for other people has not been practised by a variety of people at these holy sites. We humans have at times failed to be holy to one another. I remember as I walked round and took in the history the words of Wendell Berry, sang in my heart “There are no unsacred places, only sacred and desecrated places.” These holy places have been desecrated for centuries by the bloodshed of so many in the name of the holy. It makes me weep. There are so many wailing walls around these parts.

This brings to mind some words by Sarah York on sacredness and the holy.

"The Spirit reveals itself to us in our relationship with our world and its inhabitants; it is the source of all that is holy, sacred, and true. The word spirit comes from the Latin word meaning 'breath'; the word holy derives from before the Christian era from words for whole as well as health, good luck, and happiness. The holy intimacy of strangers, then, is an experience of the Spirit's promise and power, breathed into human interaction and calling us into personal and spiritual wholeness — into the kind of harmony that yields health and happiness.”

This to me is what it means to live in a holy way and to create sacredness in life. It is where I have known holy intimacy with others in my life and something I certainly experienced during my time in the “Holy Land”. It is also a principle at the core of all the Abrahamic faiths, although something that has at times been sadly forgotten.

Now while I experienced holy intimacy and sacredness in relationship with others and also in nature too as I connect to life, I began to experience something rarer in the “Holy Land”, something I have not noticed as intensely before. I noticed something happening to me as I visited the Holy sites and connected to the stories, history and people of the time. It came deeply as we walked around the walls of the city of Jerusalem, I felt as I touched the western wall of the Temple. I actually felt it more intensely underground than the exposed area outside,. I felt it deeply and powerfully as I walked up Masada and experienced the story come to life as I stood on the ruins at the top. I didn’t feel it as I floated on the Dead sea. I felt it deeply and beautifully as I gazed out at the Sea of Galilee, as we walked through the ruins of Capernaum towards the rocks on the sea shore and I knelt down by the rocks and proposed to Sue and she said “yes, yes, yes, yes” We had both felt an incredibly powerful connection to love that day, although Sue had no clue what was coming. All day long one verse from “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” had been singing in my soul. The verse was “O sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity interpreted by love, interpreted by love!” I found the spot and love came to life. There was also the despair of “Yad Vashem”, the Holocaust museum, a sacred place that marks our human history of desecration, a history that sadly still goes on, that we seem to hear ever louder echoes of throughout the world today. It is a powerful testimony to what happens when we see others as somehow different to ourselves, to the horrors of supremacy of any kind, the root of all evil.

There were so many deep and connective, holy experiences. There was one that was different though. This happened on the Saturday and it came unexpectedly in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was not while looking at any of the grand religious shrines but as I touched a humble slab that is said to be the stone that Jesus body was laid upon. I saw women wiping and touching the stone and emotion pouring out of them. Now I don’t know what happened to me, but something stirred within. So I knelt down, as the women had, I did not have a shawl or scarf and so I touched the stone with my hands and then my cheek and I just began to weep. I stood up and continued to weep. Something happened, something took over me in that moment. I have had several unfathomable spiritual experiences in my life and this was one of them. It was similar to others I have had in the past and yet it was different, it had a unique quality. I cannot explain or even truly describe it, but something happened. It awakened something in me. It was sacred and it was Holy.

It was a beautiful and incredible experience, no doubt you will hear more about it as I reflect over the coming months. Today I feel more connected to my own humanity and I hope that of others, I feel a deeper connection to the sacredness and preciousness of life, to the holiness of one another and what our purpose here as human beings is. This life belongs to you and me. We are connected to one another by a sacred bound of love and I believe it is our task to bring that love alive, to make sacred once again all those places on earth that we have desecrated by our inhumanity to one another. This is our holy task, our holy work, this is how we make all life Holy Land.

May it be so.

I’m going to end this "blogspot" with the following reflection “The Breath of Life Is Not Mine Alone” by Kristen L Harper

I do not wish to breathe another breath if it is not shared with others. The breath of life is not mine alone.

I brought myself to be with you, hoping that by inhaling the compassion, the courage, the hope found here, I can exhale the fear, the selfishness, the separateness I keep so close to my skin.

I cannot live another moment, at least not one of joy, unless you and I find our oneness somewhere among each other, somewhere between the noise, somewhere within the silence of the next breath.

Amen

Sabbath: Human Beings or Human Doings?

There is a story told of a workaholic businessman who decided to take an African Safari. He plotted a course and determined a time-table. He hired workers from a local village to carry the various containers and cases. On the first morning, the entire party roused early, travelled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the second morning, they roused early, travelled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the third day, the same. On the fourth morning, the local tribesmen refused to move. The man gestured irately and fumed at the translator to get them going. “They will not move,” the translator relayed.

“Why not?” the man bellowed, thinking of all the time wasted and dollars spent. “Because,” the translator said, “they are waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”

The pace of modern life can be quite frightening. People are always on the move. They always seem to be doing something or nothing, so long as they are not standing still or idling around. People always seem to be in a rush to be anywhere, but where they actually are, to be doing anything other than what they are doing and to be feeling anything other than what they are feeling. Seemingly we need to always be on the move; for fear that life might just catch up with us.

But what if it did? What if life did catch up with us? What if we actually allowed our souls to catch up with us? What if we actually paused for a moment and began to experience what was actually here? Would that be so terrible? Well seemingly for many it would. Certainly for the man in the story it seemed utterly intolerable to pause from the mission, to allow our souls to catch up with us.

Frank Sinatra use to sing of “New York, New York” about wanting to wake up in that city that doesn’t sleep. I think that we could sing that about most towns never mind cities these days. We are increasingly living in a 24/7 culture, that doesn’t sleep. Is this how life is meant to be? Is this really progress?

Well some would say that pausing for one second is getting in the way and you can’t get in the way of progress. You are moving too slowly, so get out of the way.

This doesn’t sound like progress to me, it looks more like insanity. It seems utterly dehumanising. If we don’t live with our souls, then surely we are not living fully as human beings, we become like machines, like robots. As the saying goes “We are human beings, not human doings”. We are not slaves, surely not.

Being busy and being constantly on the move eats away at us, until finally it takes away all that makes us human. Wayne Muller in “How, Shall We Live” said that “Our busy-ness becomes a kind of violence because it destroys the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful...the faster we go, the more we unintentionally mishandle the ones we love. When we work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we live like people who are at war...”

We need to allow our souls to catch up with us. We need to fully experience our lives, otherwise we do indeed become human doings as opposed to human beings. We need to pause and to make space in our lives, to truly appreciate what is actually there.

Those words from Bill Darlison that I heard at Summer School keep on singing in my soul “Spirituality is about increasing our sensitivity to life”. Well how can any of us do this if we never stop and feel all that we are experiencing? How can we increase our sensitivity to life if we never stop and even savour, with all our senses, all that is around us?

Maybe we are afraid to pause, to stop, to feel, to let our souls catch up with us; maybe we are afraid of increasing our sensitivity to life.

In the early years of the twentieth century Sandor Ferenczi, a disciple of Sigmund Freud discovered a phenomenon that he described as “Sunday Neurosis”. He noticed that seemingly normal healthy successful people would experience extreme mental and physical distress on the Sabbath. Ferenczi believed that these people, having been deprived of their normal busy routine by Sunday, began to panic as they feared that they would lose their usual self-censoring mechanism and therefore their wild impulses would reign. They felt out of control and this terrified them. It would seem that they began to suffer from extreme pain and or mental anguish as a way of staving off the anxiety of the pause.

Maybe they were afraid that their souls would catch up with them.

Now of course in 21^st century Britain we no longer have to worry about this. Today we pretty much live in a 24/7 culture. People increasingly work on Sundays and can certainly shop and pursue all kinds of other leisure activities all day every day. The Sabbath is no more; it has been discarded to the dustbin of history. We no longer have to worry about this Sunday neurosis; we no longer have to worry about stopping as we no longer have to stop; we no longer have to worry about our souls catching up with us. We can keep on going, onwards and upwards forever.

But is this progress and does it in fact increase our sensitivity to life? Do we need Sabbath? Do we need to rest? Do we need to allow our souls to catch up with us? Or should we just keep on moving forwards onwards and upwards forever?

Last year I was invited by a Jewish friend to Hale Synagogue to attend Friday evening Shabbat. It was powerful, beautiful and moving, especially the singing as Shabbat was welcomed, like a bride. During the ceremony I felt like I was allowing my soul to catch up with me.

The Sabbath relates back to Genesis I, which depicts six acts of creation and on the seventh day, the climax, God rests, looks at his creation and sees that it is very good indeed. He pauses; he smells the roses and allows his soul to catch up with him. Why on earth would God need to do this? Why do we need to pause and look at our own creations, our own lives? Well maybe because it is only when we stop and look at our lives and our work that meaning begins to emerge. If our hearts, our souls, are not in what we are doing it is unlikely that we will make a good job of it.

How often do any of us stop and look at the meaning behind what we have created, what we are creating? How often do we actually spend time increasing our sensitivity to our own lives?

Rabbi Abraham Heschel claimed that “The Sabbath as a day of rest is not for the purpose of recovering one’s strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labour. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life.”

Maybe welcoming the Sabbath is a way of allowing our souls to catch up with our bodies.

It was the Jewish people who invented Sabbath, but it didn’t make them popular. Again according to Rabbi Heschel “When the Romans first encounted the Jews and noticed their habit of keeping the Sabbath, of refraining from labour every seventh day, their reaction was nothing but contempt.”

The Jewish people had escaped slavery. Exodus recounts their wanderings in the wilderness as they searched for a home. They knew that slaves never rested and perhaps, during their time in the desert they never rested too. Maybe on Sinai they realised that although they had escaped Egypt and slavery, they were still slaves in so many other ways. Maybe this is why Sabbath was created.

So maybe the rejection of Sabbath is not progress at all, but a return to a more de-humanising culture, where human beings are seen as nothing more than commodities who do without ceasing; “human doings, not human beings”. Perhaps we have all become enslaved by this need to constantly be doing. By constantly doing have we actually enslaved our souls. Maybe we don’t actually need to let our souls catch up with us, what we really need to do is free our souls once again.

We seem to be a people who are constantly on the run, whether we do paid work or not. When do we pause and allow our souls to catch up with us? It would appear that busy-ness has actually become a badge of honour. I am no better than anyone else by the way. How often do I say to people “I’m sorry I can’t do this or that because I am just too busy”? I do not keep the Sabbath myself. How often can I say, hand on heart, that I spend a day truly resting and allowing my soul to fully catch up with me, for a whole 24hrs? Well rarely if ever. My diary is always too full. I know that this is not healthy. I know I must let my heart and soul catch up with me or I will not be able to do my work with heart and soul and if  that happens I know I will not be able to do my work well, if at all. The last thing I want to be is heartless and or soulless.

Now please do not get me wrong I am not suggesting that we return to ancient times and I am not advocating restrictive laws. Nor am I suggesting that the whole nation should shut down on one particular day. This sounds like enslavement of another type and I do believe in freedom. Instead what I am suggesting is that we create personal Sabbath’s of our own. It doesn’t even need to be on a particular day, it could be practised throughout our days. Maybe it could begin just by examining how we live each day, each week, each month and each year and to commit to times in our lives when we turn from our usual activities, pause, look at our creations and see that they are very good indeed and then give thanks and praise.

We need Sabbath. We need to stop and take in life. We need to feel our feet on the ground. We need to allow our senses to sense life and then and only then we will see the riches in our lives and give thanks for life. And then what ever our work may be, we will do it well, heart and soul.