The MHT 8, Part II: Lasting Impressions

The pilgrimage to the Holy Land, particularly once we crossed from Jordan into Israel on September 14, was in many ways more like a college class than a guided tour.  The usual routine was getting a very early wake-up call, making our way down to breakfast, and boarding the bus before 8:00.  On most days we visited as many as four or five different biblical sights, with a running verbal narrative in advance of, and during, the visits.  There was a lot of information to absorb, and I soon realized any thoughts I had of detailed journaling were strictly idealistic and unfortunately very impractical.  After a few days the recollection of churches, shrines and other holy sights we had visited seemed to meld together in my strained memory.  Good thing I took a lot of pictures to help me reconstruct what was one of the most unique short periods of my life.

I'm thinking of the number "eight" in honor of the eight beatitudes, so here are eight experiences that, notwithstanding the whirlwind pace, have left lasting impressions.

Mount Nebo.  Many of my fellow travelers questioned why we started our adventure in Jordan.  We arrived in the capital, Amman, and went directly from the airport to our hotel, the Crown Plaza, where our first meal together awaited.  We had been on the go since we reported to MSP at 2:30 p.m. CDT on Friday the 12th.  It was now almost twenty-four hours later, 9:30 p.m. Jordan time on Saturday the 13th.  We were grateful that the hotel kept its kitchen open for us.  The late dinner would turn out to be the only time all twenty-nine of us sat at the same table.  The answer to our travel question regarding Jordan became apparent the next morning.

When I was a kid I owned a beautifully illustrated children's bible.  One of my favorite stories was Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt across the Sinai desert.  You probably recall that, according to scripture, God allowed Moses to see the Promised Land from a mountain top, but due to a momentary lapse of judgment in the form of displaying a lack of faith, Moses was not permitted to enter.  The mountain was Mount Nebo.

In my illustrated bible, the Promised Land appeared in the vast distance, perhaps fifteen, twenty or more miles away across sweeping sands.  That is how I've pictured it for almost sixty years.  The first important sight of our Holy Land pilgrimage was the famous Mount Nebo, located about thirty miles south from Jordan's capital, Amman, where we spent our first night.  Looking west from Nebo, we could easily see the shores of the Jordan River, which appeared as a dark green stripe across the brown valley below.  The Jordan forms the boundary between the countries of Jordan and Israel, long-time enemies but, since a 1967 treaty, living in peace as next door neighbors.  The city of Jericho, about eight miles beyond the Jordan, is also visible from the top of Mount Nebo.  This is what Moses saw.

It turns out that the illustrator of my children's bible was a little off.  At most, the Jordan River is three miles from the mountain top, at the bottom of the rise.  Poor Moses!  Did his punishment fit the crime?

Wally, The Scholar.  There were two particular ingredients which were key to making our pilgrimage outstanding, and without which the trip could easily have been viewed as a long grind.  The primary key to the success of the entire venture was in the hands of our fabulous Israeli guide, Waleeb, affectionately called "Wally."  As we traversed the heavily secured Jordan River Crossing into Israel, Wally boarded the bus, introduced himself, and explained that he was more than just a tour guide; he was a scholar.  My immediate thought was that such a proclamation was rather presumptuous, but it did not take me long to come around to agreeing with his self-evaluation.  He wisely set us straight about the different ethnic and religious mixes in the country, placing special emphasis on what constitutes an Arab.  "The word 'Arab' has nothing to do with religion," he said.  "You can have Christian Arabs, Jewish Arabs and Muslim Arabs."  The term "Arab" is more akin to a race of people and the part of the world from which they originated.  Wally said he was a Catholic Arab.

As the week went on it was clear that this man, who attended college at the University of Miami and thereafter lived in the US for several years, was an expert on both the Old Testament and the New Testament, plus the fascinating history of his relatively new (since 1948) country.  Without fail, he had a wealth of information about every one of the many places we visited.  Some of that information would be delivered en route to the destinations, with the rest given on site.  Since the days were long it was important for us to know why a particular stop was included on the itinerary, and then what to watch for once we arrived.  He was the difference between our simply visiting a sight and actually understanding their respective significance.

I was amazed at the planning and coordination of the agenda each day.  No matter where we went, there was only minimal waiting in line.  Father Joe celebrated Mass each day, sometimes outdoors, sometimes on the main altar of famous churches, and other times in small side chapels.  This was all made possible by Wally's impeccable planning.

Throughout it all, Wally maintained a sense of humor, and welcomed questions.  It was apparent to all that he was a former teacher, and that his twenty-seven year career as a Holy Land tour guide was a natural extension of that vocation.  Since he was fighting a cold, sometimes he'd clear his throat without turning off his microphone, causing one of the women to declare with a chuckle that she thought her earphones became wet.  I will always remember how he would conclude many of his mini-lectures with the words, "Thank you very much," sounding (intentionally?) like Elvis Presley.

The Sea Of Galilee.  I must admit that, before I started planning for our trip, the name of the mountain (Nebo) from which Moses viewed the Promised Land had escaped my mind.  Not so the Sea Of Galilee.  When I first saw it out the bus window, a kind of chill came over me.  This is where the apostles fished and where Jesus walked on water.  We were now in the land of the New Testament!

One of the best highlights of the trip was an hour long Monday morning boat ride across the northwestern quarter of the sea.  The boat was called a "Jesus boat" because it resembled the type of boats which plied those waters two thousand years ago.  The "sea" is really a very large lake, approximately thirteen miles long and eight miles wide.  But as Wally explained, the ancient civilizations, lacking a frame of reference, often labeled any large body of water a "sea," and in similar fashion used the term "mountain" to describe what we would presently refer to as a very high hill.  A moving moment occurred a few minutes into the boat ride when the small crew hoisted Old Glory and played a recording of the Star Spangled Banner.  The picture I took of the US flag unfurled at the top of the pole next to Israel's flag is a favorite, although its presence did cause me to comment to a companion that I was glad the bad guys did not have drones like the USAF does.  Otherwise we would have been sitting ducks.

At the northern end of the Sea Of Galilee lie four noteworthy pilgrimage destinations, all of which we visited.  The first stop, the Mount Of The Beatitudes, was my favorite.  Once again, when we walked on the same grounds where Jesus rendered His famous Sermon On The Mount, the reality was gripping.  The atmosphere was serene and it did not take much imagination to picture Christ advising the throngs to live peaceful, merciful lives.

Also on or near the northern shore was the Church Of The Primacy Of Peter, where Father Joe celebrated Mass in a mini-amphitheater, Tabgha, famous for the mosaic of the Loaves and the Fishes, an emblem seen all over the Holy Lands, and Caphernam, the home town of the first pope, St. Peter.  Caphernam brought back memories of our visit to Pompeii, but on a much smaller scale; an archeologist's paradise.

The Scots Hotel.  We stayed three nights in the Scots Hotel in the seaside town of Tiberius.  From the small balcony outside our room, we could see the Sea Of Galilee.  The Scots, which had its origins as a hospital built by Scottish surgeon David Watt Torrance in 1894, is one of the best and most beautiful hotels I've stayed in during any trip.  For breakfast and dinner our travel group feasted on enormous spreads of food displayed on long tables in an area adjacent to the dining room.  Imagine having small -- or for that matter, large -- portions of top grade meat, fresh fish, pasta, cooked vegetables, salads, delicious soup, fruit and scrumptious desserts available at dinner.  The breakfast variety was just as broad, anything you could imagine in whatever amounts your heart desired.

A beautiful swimming pool, accessible via the hotel's private pedestrian bridge, gave some of us respite from the heat.  One floor above the dining area was a boutique bar where we gathered for a happy hour and recounted the days' activities.  Maybe best of all was the terrace on the hotel lawn, overlooking the scenic Sea Of Galilee.  A large group of us enjoyed each other's company there, sipping nightcaps as we gazed out across the glistening waters at the Golan Heights on the opposite shore.  I would not have been disappointed in the least if we could have stayed another night or two at the Scots.

The Garden Of Gethsemane.  On the second-to-last full night of our Holy Lands sojourn, we attended Mass which Father Joe celebrated in the Church Of All Nations, which is adjacent to the Garden Of Gethsemane in Jerusalem.  What followed immediately thereafter was truly unique.  All twenty-nine of us walked outside and silently meditated along the fence of the Garden, each person alone in her thoughts.  (I wish I could report that we actually strolled into the Garden proper, but alas, it apparently was not permitted.)  This was the first and only visit our group would make in the darkness.  The olive trees were softly lit and a moderate breeze made them seem almost animated.  Recollections of younger days, when as a grade schooler my classmates and I recited the Sorrowful Mysteries as we prayed the Rosary, came to me.  The first such mystery, the Agony In The Garden, when Christ asked His Father to "remove the cup from my hands," took on a deeper meaning.  I also thought about all the places we'd been lucky enough to see for the past week.  It was so nice to have the chance to ruminate quietly and without ceremony.  Sometimes it can be hard to find a good time, or any time, to pray.  This was our opportunity.

The Dead Sea.  The shoreline of the Dead Sea is 1,312 feet below sea level, making it the lowest spot on the face of the earth.  The trip there from Jerusalem took us across the deserts, past Bedouin encampments perched on the sandy wastelands.  We ate lunch in Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a series of caves, and spent an hour or so in Jericho, which Wally told us was the oldest city in the world.
 

Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho
And the walls came tumbling down!

From the hills outside of town we could, once again, see the Jordan River and above that, Mount Nebo.

The heat was stifling as we finally made our way down to the nearby Dead Sea.  I brought my bathing suit, but the thought of an uncomfortable ride back to Jerusalem dissuaded me.  Momma Cuan, ever the trooper, was not deterred.  Even if we lived to be a hundred years old, we'd never be back here again, she said, so she was determined to experience the sea.  About a dozen from our group joined her, while the rest of us took pictures and drank cold beer in the shade.  I have to admit, some of the best photos of the hundreds we took are of the "swimmers."  (You don't actually swim in the Dead Sea; you float.  It's impossible to submerge in the thick salt water.)

Fellow Travelers. I wrote above that there were two keys accounting for the ultimate success of our pilgrimage, the first being our guide, Wally.  The other, of course, were the individual travelers comprising the tour group.  If you think that the folks you're traveling with don't have a major impact on your level of enjoyment, think again.  As I noted in Part I, Momma Cuan and I were already comfortably familiar with seven of of the twenty-nine, so our gamble wasn't huge, but by the end of our eleven days together I can report that our circle of friends quadrupled.  We ate three meals a day together, spent hours on the bus as we rode from sight to sight across two countries, took each other's pictures and compared notes and observations as we walked around the various holy places.  What really got the group comfortable with each other aside from the prearranged activities was the opportunity to sit outside and enjoy a few beverages together, a scene repeated on the terrace of the Scots Hotel, at Decks, the seaside bar across the road from the Scots, and on the patio of our Jerusalem hotel, the Inbal.

The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre.  This particular place of worship bore significance for several reasons.  After spending over a week visiting churches, chapels and various holy grounds, the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre would be the final church on our itinerary.  Our visit was preceded by walking as a group along the Via Dolorosa, the actual "way of the cross" which Jesus endured on his way to His crucifixion on Calvary.  The route was not as I'd imagined it, as we made our way through the very narrow congested open air markets of the Old City.  Some, but not all, of the fourteen stations were clearly marked above the cobblestone street.  The bustling crowd and the need for us to stay together to the extent possible -- an unenviable job well done by our Magi travel companion, Ann -- made it tough to think very long about the significance of each station.
 

Once we got inside the church, Wally explained that the interior of the huge structure is compartmentalized into three sections, so that the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthodox and the Armenians can each have their own space.  Other than the crunch inside the Church Of The Nativity in Bethlehem, this would be the only real waiting-in-line we encountered all week, a fact no doubt attributable to Wally's connections.  Actually, there were two lines inside the church.  The first was to view the sepulchre where Christ's body was taken after being lowered from the cross.  The second line, on an upper level, ostensibly led to the spot where the cross was raised on Calvary.  As was the case with other sites we'd visited, it mattered little whether this was actually the very spot where Jesus died.  Regardless, this was the place determined by archeologists, bible scholars, historians and other experts to be it.
 

Father Joe selected Momma Cuan and two others from the MHT 8, Nancy and Julie, to be the readers at the Mass he celebrated in a side chapel.  He told us that he picked them because, until more modern times, women were prohibited from serving in any capacity at Masses celebrated in this church.  When Mary teared up while doing her reading, it made us think about what happened two thousand years ago along the Via Dolorosa and on Calvary.  Many of our companions, and Father Joe, expressed gratitude to Mary after Mass for showing her emotions, something they too were feeling themselves.
 

***

Almost all of the foregoing Part II could be labeled "The Good."  I am saving Part III for a small sampling of "The Bad" and "The Ugly."  Look for it in a few weeks.                  

              

The MHT 8, Part I: Intrepid Pilgrims

Commitments made while consuming pints of Guinness usually merit reconsideration in the light of the next day.  The roots of the Holy Land pilgrimage recently concluded by Momma Cuandito and me can be traced to last January's Trinity Night at Keegan's Irish Pub.  That quarterly event is hosted by Terry and Virginia Keegan, the pub's (now former) proprietors.  The folks in attendance are former members of Most Holy Trinity, the St. Louis Park parish where Momma Cuan and I first met as teachers.  Since the St.Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese, in its infinite wisdom, shut down MHT's church and school four years ago, the quarterly Trinity Nights at Keegan's gives the ex-patriots a chance to reconnect, catch up and talk about the good old days.

The conversation among several of the men that evening centered around a Holy Lands trip planned for September, to be hosted by Father Joe Gillespie, known to many of us as a well-traveled and humorous Irish priest who is also the brother of one of the women in the MHT group.  On that cold January night, a late-summer trip to any warm place sounded great.  Father Joe had been to Israel four previous times, and a number of MHT folks at the pub were strongly considering signing up.  To be honest, Israel was not on the short list of places Momma Cuan and I someday wanted to visit, but the more this particular trip was described, particularly the opportunity to travel with friends and Father Joe, the more enticing it became.  What clinched it in my mind was Terry's revelation that Father Joe had a reputation for "never passing by a pub."  Even though I wasn't sure how many pubs we'd run across in the Holy Lands, I was willing to find out.

Although many more expressed interest during Trinity Night, only four couples -- dubbed the "MHT 8" by Father Joe half-way through the trip -- actually took the plunge in the form of making a down payment to Magi Travel.  In addition to the Keegans and us, our fellow pilgrims included Nancy and Bill Koster and Julie and Tom Hart.  The eight of us have known each other for several decades.

Had any of us known back in January what troubles would ensue in the coming months in Israel, we may never have given the September trip any consideration whatsoever.  The headlines this summer were filled with stories of unguided missiles being launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip into Israel, the response by Israel in the form of an infantry invasion to destroy secret tunnels used by Hamas to attack Israeli settlements, and the aerial bombardment by the Israeli air force of suspected Hamas strongholds, some of which were in or near schools and apartment buildings in Gaza City.  The battlefield may have been in Gaza, but Jerusalem, which would be our home base for five days, is only forty-eight miles away. To add to the fragility and tension, the Sunni terrorists known as ISIL were on the move in next door Syria (and Iraq), slaughtering innocent civilians and decapitating foreign hostages.  We frequently checked the US State Department's travel advisories, thinking (hoping?) that travel to Israel would legally be deemed off limits for US citizens.  That never happened, although at one point Delta Airlines, our carrier, suspended flights to that country over the verbal objections of Israel.  The suspension lasted less than forty-eight hours.

In the midst of the troubling international news, Momma Cuan and I hosted a dinner party on June 18 for the other three couples and Father Joe.  As I expected, MC displayed her phenomenal culinary skills, preparing many dishes featured in her Jerusalem cook book.  The eight of us (not including Father Joe, who was unwavering) talked about the pros and cons of following through with the pilgrimage.  With so many wonderful places to choose as travel destinations, how smart was it to pick this particular time to visit the Holy Lands?  Were we all fools for staying the course?

 

Unlike the other three couples, Momma Cuan and I did not buy travel insurance.  Those who did found out later that their policies specifically excluded trip cancellation due to acts of war as a claimable loss.  I chose not to buy the insurance for a host of reasons with which I won't bore you here, other than to say that I approach many kinds of insurance with this axiom, which I learned during twenty-six years of practicing law, in mind: The insurance company is not your friend.

The biggest temptation to bail occurred a mere five weeks before we were to leave, when John Brady, the owner of Magi Travel, offered to refund all of our money if we decided to throw in the towel.  We had forty-eight hours to decide.  The eight of us exchanged e-mails back and forth, teetering on the brink of cancelling.  The position of Momma Cuan and I was that we would remain on board provided at least one of the other three Trinity couples did the same.  One of those other three couples actually contacted Brady to accept his offer, but then changed their collective mind a day later.

 

Things overseas had simmered down by August 26, when Magi and Father Joe hosted a "get acquainted" party at Joe's parish in south Minneapolis, St. Albert The Great.  This gave us a chance, among other things, to meet the rest of the tour group, plus our Magi travel companion, Ann Kolke.  We found out that evening that our traveling party would include twenty-nine people, including Father Joe and Ann.  Nine others cancelled, including two who told John Brady that their adult children insisted they do so out of fear for their safety.  (Our kids never took such a stance, probably figuring that if there was trouble, Momma Cuan would save me.)

 

I wasn't convinced that the travel gods would be with us until the day of our departure, September 12.  Our non-stop Delta flight to Paris was assigned MSP Gate G-9.  A mere three giant steps away was Flybar, where most of the Magi group hung out drinking Heineken before boarding.       

Dillon Hall Diaries: Kiwi Can Contests

I polish my black, dress big boy shoes twice a year, whether they need it or not.  But whenever I do, I think back to the Kiwi Can Contests we used to have at ND in Dillon Hall.

Dillon is situated on the South Quad, and runs east to west between Alumni Hall and the South Dining Hall (the emporium of haute cuisine).  From an aerial view, Dillon would resemble a capital H turned over on its side, with the vertical line, connecting the two long stems, a little left (east) of center.  Now picture a short offshoot corridor running south from the main east-west line near the southeast corner of the building.  That corridor, approximately fifty feet long and six feet wide, housed seven rooms, each a double, including Room 158, my junior year home.  That corridor was the scene of some of the best "killing time" moments for the fourteen of us who were residents of that den of iniquity. It's where we held our Kiwi Can Contests.

Rumor had it that Dillon's in-house rules supposedly called for quiet time between the hours of 7:00 and 10:00 p.m.  To say that decree was loosely enforced would be an understatement.  Nevertheless, for those of us who chose not to make the long, often cold trek to the library to do our studying, we did maintain some semblance of decorum in the evenings.  That is, until 10:00.  Then it was Kiwi Can Contest time!
 

One of the beauties of the Kiwi Can Contests is that it was free entertainment, meaning more money to spend on beer when the weekend finally arrived.  The only equipment needed were two cans of Kiwi shoe polish (color optional) and a frisbee. I don't take credit for inventing the Kiwi Can Contests; it was more of a collaborative effort from our band of fourteen.
 

Here is how the Kiwi Can Contests worked.  Two cans would be placed upright on the floor, thirty feet apart, in the center of our corridor.  Each contestant would toss a frisbee toward the can on the far end, attempting to knock it over. One point was awarded for each successful toss; first to get to fifteen points was the winner.  Just like ping pong, you had to win by two.
 

Sometimes we'd play doubles, to shorten the waiting time for the non-participants.  (The queue was always long.)  And, there were a couple of other wrinkles, such as periodically placing a barrier (usually a stack of books) a few feet in front of the target.  The upshot of that practice was to force the participants to carom their frisbee tosses off the wall. Even without the barriers, knocking down a Kiwi can thirty feet away with a frisbee is not as easy as you might think. Oh, we were so proud of ourselves when we became expert marksmen!
 

Of course, the concept of wagering on the Kiwi Can Contests would be the farthest thought from our minds.  Well, not really.  It didn't take too many nights before our little corridor resembled a raucous casino.  Guys from all over Dillon, at that time the largest residence hall on campus, came down to our corner of the building.  We were the South Quad's version of Vegas.  After this had been going on for a few weeks our rector, Father James "Flash" Flanigan, came around to check it out.  We took the fact that he didn't shut us down to be the same as receiving his blessing.  That would not have been the case with Cavanaugh's Black Matt.  (See my December 16, 2012 post, Black Matt Lowers The Boom.)

When I was in grade school at St. Joe's, one of our favorite pastimes was pitching pennies.  By the time I was a junior in college, I had graduated to Kiwi Can Contests.  What further proof needs to be offered as evidence of the furtherance of my education?