Pilgrimage for Peace: Part 1 - Galilee

"So, did you enjoy your pilgrimage?", people ask.  How to respond?

Well, yes, certainly some bits were enjoyable, although others were disturbing.  It started well at 4.15am on Tuesday to discover that my taxi driver, Max, was a local Pentecostal preacher so we had a good conversation about prayer styles and sermon lengths which was a shame to end when we arrived at Luton!  Then a good flight out with morning shadows over the Alps, and eventually arriving in the early evening (having lost 2 hours across time zones) at the lovely Pilgerhaus Hotel on the shore of Lake Galilee, to meet the rest of our fine group of pilgrims.

Lake Galilee is wonderful, whether:

1)      on it - in a boat (no walking!) on which we sang “Dear Lord and Father of mankind”, starting the week by acknowledging our own faults and the British involvement in the area, e.g. the Balfour Declaration, (perhaps an apology is due in 2017?); this was a healthy tonic after the boat operator had insisted on playing our National Anthem – we had already counted so many Israeli flags on the way from the airport that we could have done without further reinforcement of national stereotypes blasting from the loudspeakers out over the waters, in contrast to the still, small voice of calm that we were seeking.

2)      in it - for a refreshing swim, including a chat with a long-distance hiker from Denmark which we continued over dinner about the spiritual power of places, which reminded me of old OS maps, tumuli, ley lines and dowsing;
 

3)      on the shores – including:

                                 i.            a Eucharist near the Church of the Multiplication of the Boy’s Picnic, and great to receive Bishop John’s familiar invitation, “Come to this table, not because you must but because you may…”

                               ii.            time at the Church of the Primacy of Peter – beach mission, Catholic style… an authentic feel here with very old steps leading down to the beach – could almost smell the broiled fish!

                              iii.            the archaeological remains of Capernaum and a later synagogue – didn’t really do it for me, too touristy, so much better later that evening on my 7 mile run around the northern shore (my own prayer space!);

                              iv.            the Church of the Beatitudes – an early morning visit after a rain shower with great views, not least of the Horns of Hattin, which I had only known from Microsoft’s “Age of Empires” game.  It was good to be reminded that “Blessed are the Peacemakers”, before we left for Nablus via the Jezreel Valley.

4)      or for Trips out, with a sense of returning back to the disciples’ home/base camp, from places such as:

                                 i.            Banias, in the disputed Golan Heights – name comes from the god Pan’s grotto/cave, but Arabic has no ‘P’ so became ‘B’an instead… but in the Bible Caesarea Philippi was here by the pure spring which feeds the Jordan where we renewed our baptism vows.  Looking at the caves and hearing of the Jews fear of sea and water, we understood Jesus reference to the “gates of Hades” not overcoming the rock, after Peter’s declaration (Matt 16:13-18).  Such explanations from our brilliant story-telling guide, Hani, made me realise why people call such a pilgrimage the “5^th Gospel”.  Anyway, I now have a bottle of this pure Jordan spring water (rather than the mucky stuff further down) which I hope to add to the next few baptisms I take, as long as no-one drinks it first…

                               ii.            Haifa, where we met Hatem, the Palestinian Anglican priest and his wife and heard a bit about their award winning Church School and its Peace Studies program.  It felt great to be in an ordinary church, where the attraction is the “living stones” rather than those inert, geological varieties with their claims to great events of the past - we had also visited a church which claimed to be on the site of Elijah’s cave on Mt Carmel, but as with many of these over-done pilgrimage sites, it didn’t really work for me with by low church upbringing.     

On a more positive note, the views over Haifa were superb, and, as an aircraft spotter, I didn’t mind the Israeli Independence Day fly past of several waves of jet fighters – these are not the sort of weapons that they use against people living in “their” land.  Interestingly, as we looked down on Haifa’s submarine museum, we would hear that Germany had “donated”(?) another nuclear sub to Israel during our visit – I wonder whether this is some strange manifestation of guilt for the Holocaust, but as this article suggests, the tide may be turning in Europe, especially since last year’s Gaza statistics…

                              iii.            In Nazareth, we met Mohammad Zeidan, the General Director of the Arab Association for Human Rights.  He represented the many non-Jews who have always lived in Israel (pre-1948), as opposed to the later occupied territories, but without the same rights that we would expect.  Sadly, I didn’t detect much hope here and came away feeling frustrated – a 2 state solution which we promote from afar wouldn’t improve the lot of the native Arab/Palestinian people, and why should they be ethnically cleansed from Israel to make it a purely Jewish nation – that’s about as welcome as asking the many Jewish settlers to give up their new homes on the West Bank.  Time for a reality check for our politicians, because while we and the UN do nothing to enforce resolutions, the settlers continue in the race to carve up the West Bank and the Palestinians are… hmm, how shall we say this… “encouraged to emigrate”.

Part 2 (Bethlehem) to follow in a while…