It's a celebration!

The old zivis are beginning to depart, the first left Saturday night. On Thursday everyone from Church of the Multiplication (my monastery in Tabgha) was invited over to the Sisters’ house. There are five Benedictine Philippine Sisters who live about a 5-minute walk from us. They work in the office at the Church of the Multiplication and do a lot cleaning in the actual Church. They are the kindest and most gentle little ladies with huge permanent smiles. The night was a great time; the Sisters prepared delicious Philippine food (somewhat like other Asian foods) for dinner and then rich desserts. They were extremely hospitable, always trying to get you to eat and drink more. I got up from the table a couple times during supper for: a second helping, a new napkin, to pick up some flowers that blew over, and even when I cleared dishes off after the main course each time one of the Sisters literally made me take another beer. As soon as they saw me get up, they immediately went to the drink table and popped the cap off a cold beer (oh yeah unlike the Germans these ladies kept theirs on ice…I’m in heaven), grabbed my hand put the beer in it, and said, “Here Michael, my angel”, and turned and left before I could say “No thank you” (like I would). The Sisters call Leither and I “Their Angles”. I think it is because we speak English, can’t help but smile at them, and are the only non-German volunteers they’ve seen in their 10-plus years here. After supper the zivis gave “Thank you/ Goodbye” speeches. It was quite clear that these young men had made some great relationships and memories with the people of this community over the last year. They expressed how it was hard for them to leave, how they were not ready to go home, not ready to leave everyone here, and leave the work they felt they were contributing to. The Sisters had singing planned knowing the speeches would produce melancholy, and let me tell you it was a blast. I was laughing, dancing, and singing like I was with all my friends back home. Minus one or two, all of the songs were in English and had actions to go with the words. We looked to the Sisters to lead us in the motions. If you’ve ever seen a Sister in full dress singing and dancing, whirling and waving their arms and bodies you know what I mean when I say it just makes you feel good, puts a smile right on your face.

The next night the Monks returned the favor and invited the Sisters over for a barbeque in honor of the zivis. We had a couple extra guests: 4 monks from our Prior, Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem, and Abraham (our tremendous cook) and his wife who wanted to celebrate the zivis’ work. Let me quickly tell you about Abraham. I had a conversation with him at supper that night. His family is Christian Palestinians (3 sons and a daughter in their 20’s). His wife only speaks Hebrew and Arabic. He is fluent in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. He speaks well enough in French and German to hold conversations. This man is our cook. I kept asking myself, what is he doing with this linguistic ability as a cook? Well like I said, he is a Palestinian Christian in Israel.

Sidenote…Just after I was accepted into the Benedictine volunteer corps for Israel I was told to read a book by Elias Chacour titled Blood Brothers (Chacour spoke at my college graduation ceremony and is a Christian Palestinian Archbishop). Chacour writes about how his family (and whole village) was persecuted, men were tortured, and all were driven from their land, never allowed to return (if they were to return anyway they would see it was destroyed). Chacour notes how his village was like many other non-Jewish villages all around Israel after 1948 (being destroyed), how the country and people around the world need to change, and how we need to love and care for everyone regardless of race and religion.

Abraham’s story was just like Chacour’s. In 1948 the people of his village were told by the government they would be safer if they moved to some land (not as good quality Abraham notes) to the east and then the army would let them know when it was safe to return. They were not allowed to return until 1951 and when they did all that was left of the village was the church. “This country is not a democratic country”, he kept telling me, he has been working at Tabgha since 1987 and was unable to get jobs anywhere else in the country because of his race and religion. This Christian monastery was a Godsend to him, but I can’t help but think it is unfitting to the ability and potential he had when he was younger. Now he is 64 and pulling in a low wage having to work much longer in order to make sure he and his wife will be okay.

We went swimming in the Sea of Galilee the other day, me for the first time. The water was very warm (no salt) and the beach and bottom consisted of golf ball to softball size rocks until you get to your chest. There were a couple young families at the beach too. There were about 13 of us between the ages 18-23 (we all get along like good friends, joking and laughing) and from the way were acting in the water the families just kept laughing at us. I am glad we did not intimidate, as I would think a group of 10-plus young men could in some parts of the world, but not here in Tabgha…paradise.

Fishing with Dynamite

“You have to know languages when you go to sell something…But when you go to buy, everyone does what he must to understand you.” -Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.
Even though the setting is a church and historic Biblical site money seems to attach to anything it can and that is why Leither and I are so valuable. There was need for an English speaker again in the gift shop today because the usual person who speaks many languages, Sammi, is gone (Leither and I both worked in it yesterday afternoon). It is challenging because even those who speak English when coming in to buy something are using it as maybe their third or fourth language so they use short commands which are often very hard to understand. The shop gets extremely busy when a bus of tourists comes but then can be empty for 30 minutes again. I would much rather work outside, even in the hot climate, so Leither and I played paper-rock-scissors and booyah-kasha; I won, to the store you go Leither.

We were working outside at the back end of the compound, near the sea, clearing grass and doing some landscaping for future garden plots when all of a sudden BOOM…BOOM. We all stopped and looked at each other. Fr. Basilius gave a hesitant smile and everyone started talking to each other in German very quickly. One of the times I really wish I could understand them. After a couple minutes they started smiling and laughing a little and I asked one of the zivis “Auf English bitte” (In English please). His reply was “I think you call it ‘fishing with dynamite’”. No way are they fishing with dynamite in the Sea of Galilee I thought and asked “Seriously?”

“We don’t know what it is”, I was told by another zivi. Okay, whoever is reading this stop, take a breath, I’m alive and in one piece. Put down the phone because Br. Paul will only let it go to his answering machine if you are not an actual Benedictine Volunteer. If it were some type of military action, we are so far below sea level (and radar) there would have been fighter jets soaring by in the next couple of minutes. We went on working and every so often would hear another distant BOOM. Our mood was light and we would joke about it and I will tell you what Fr. Basilius told us with that same uncertain smile, “Try not to think about it.”

Sundays are our fundays!

We work six days a week here in Tabgha, with Sunday being our free day to lounge around. This last Sunday Fr. Basilius took all 11 of us volunteers on a day trip. We packed the little Mazda with 4 and the Jumpy (literal name of type of some Euro van) with lunch, swimwear, and 8 of us. Everyone has his or her own form of meditation. I find that I lose myself when staring out the window at the landscape. The best way to describe it is complete repose. I do not have to many responsibilities or burdens except for making sure I don’t embarrass St. John’s and The Benedictine Volunteer Corps (Br. Paul couldn’t stress it enough before I left “Just don’t embarrass me.”) so far, so good BPR. I do not need to make an income for the next year (my loan agency would hurt me if I did). A lot of my thinking is concentrated on those at home, how amazing all the history here is (Biblical and National), and using what I’m learning and trying to shape my beliefs.

Back to the vistas though, leaving Tabgha (200 meters below sea level-for running it is like the anti-doping) we wound up out of the basin having to slow down to 5-10 mph to take the practically 180 degree turns. Along the drive were many more valleys and ascensions (no religious connotation) along roads that were barely holding onto the steep sloped hills. Some of these roads were extremely narrow, had no dividing stripe, and a guardrail that I don’t think would stop me if I lost control of my bike. We would zip through little towns hugging these hills that were packed with people on the streets shopping at the food markets and shops. It is interesting to “people watch” in this unfamiliar country. On the streets were children playing soccer-mothers cleaning chairs, rugs, and more-and of course the people dressed in religious garb (there is such a large range of sects even in the Jews, Christians, Moslems, it’s neat to see all of them together in one place).

We first visited Yehiam Fortress (built during the Byzantine and Roman era partially destroyed but then rebuilt during the Crusades). Walking through it I thought about how I was touring a site that was used as a tactical point in many wars and countless people died here. Kind of makes my life even more trouble-free.

At last we made it to the great Mediterranean Sea at the city of Akko. I can only imagine that this is what smaller cities on the Mediterranean are like. A busy main street with lots of places for tourists to buy things, eat, and sleep; as you get closer to the sea the neighborhoods become more abundant and it reminded me of some west coast cities in the US. All the neighborhoods are on a hill leading down to the sea. The houses have a quiet feel to them, very small yards with fences, short trees, and old structure (stone or stucco). The streets are also very narrow with some cars parked on the sidewalk and it is hard to see down the street more than 50 yards. Then we came to the end of the block and there it was in front of me, the Mediterranean. It was beautiful. The water started out a light baby blue at the beach then became a dark navy out much deeper. The shore was not sand but large somewhat flat rock. It was hard to see where the sand ended and rock began but once you hit the rock it felt like walking on sandpaper (sounds synonymous but there was no give like on sand).

I love all the time I have spent at the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. The Mediterranean was no different. You can stand at the shore, shut your eyes, and just listen. The sun is shinning on you, you have the breeze in your hair (I am growing mine out again, sorry Grams), and you take into your lungs a deep breath of fresh air with a little hint of salt. We had a great afternoon of lunch, a game of soccer (its fun but I am bad and I swear these Germans start kicking a ball when they are in the womb), some swimming and then off for another scenic drive home. We took a different route home but the view was the same; spectacular, and my pictures don’t do justice.

The Golden Rule must lose something in translation...

It has not been hard to sense the cautious demeanor in some of the guests to Tabgha. I feel that those who understand the conflict or at least have a small grasp of its totality carefully choose their words when they speak around a multicultural group. Slips of tongue can be easily misunderstood here, and people are quick to backpedal and cover their mistake hoping a fuse does not get lit. I do not like some of the discrimination I have seen. So far it is only short remarks that go unanswered and I am left to be blown over by the wind (which there is very little of). The things I am talking about are discrimination in an indirect way. Trying to get me in the middle of a dispute, to pick a side, making a joke to make the previous crude comment seem like a joke, and so on. I would like to think this is just me in a new atmosphere searching for everything negative that has been disclosed about The Holy Land and reading way too much into words and actions, but I do not think it is so. “Actions speak much louder than words” and the body language of some people cannot be restrained. They can say one thing to the person's face and then when they leave immediately contradict what they previously said, which I know is not exclusive to Israel, it is in every population.

I am extremely lucky. My hometown has great lakes to run around, I was able to run next to the Indian Ocean in South Africa for 5 months, and now I get to run next to the Sea of Galilee for almost a year. The previous two have much more of a breeze associated with them. There is not much wind in the Galilee. It is a still, hot, dry run. I try to get up early and go to prayer at 6am (the volunteer corps would like all its volunteers to attend one prayer session daily with their hosts) and then go for a run afterwards because the day is deathly hot in the afternoon plus they do not leave much free time for you between 8:30am and 8:00pm. The Galilee is huge, there is usually a haze in the air that makes it hard to see across the widest point but in the distance you can make out the rise and fall of the mountains in the silhouette. There are trees all around it making the sight very green.

I was asked what the food was like. Tonight we had homemade PIZZA. It was not as good as my parents but I complimented it with a nice room temperature Israeli beer, Goldstar (which I swear has the same taste and label graphics as Castle from South Africa), and “its Pizza baby its good no matter what.” It was topped with fresh vegetables. The veggies, and fruits for that matter, are delicious. We get them fresh everyday from our garden. They are so fresh; I had to pull a caterpillar out of my salad this afternoon. I almost lost my cookies when there were some unexpected crunches in a plain lettuce salad.

Meet in the middle

Tabgha has a unique area for its guests called the meeting grounds. It is a huge outdoor patio connecting the guesthouse (you may hear me refer to it as Beit Noah) with other bungalows and tents. Running in the middle of the patio is a man made river (which the Germans insist on calling a pool yet it still has fish swimming in it) that runs down to the Galilee. It is called the meeting grounds because it is where two or more different parties can come and meet each other. It is meant to promote integrated religious friendships, and that is exactly what it does. Yesterday a group of mentally handicapped Arabs arrived, supervised by Mustaffa (who is an extremely sociable and amiable man with a huge smile and who barely reaches my shoulders when standing next to me but probably weighs the same) and today a group of Jewish kids led by a group of German volunteers turned up. As Mustaffa and I were walking across the patio, laughing at the story of how he learned German 8 years ago and now will only speak it to me so that I can learn it, one of the German woman volunteers came outside and we introduced ourselves and Mustaffa (who is a frequent visitor to Tabgha with a variety of groups) hugged the woman (he hugs everyone, a lot) and said this is what things should be like, this is what the world, what Israel, should be like; everyone together happy and peaceful.

When I meet people who come to visit Tabgha three things surprise them about me: I am an American, I chose to volunteer (not mandatory like for the Germans), and I will be here a year. It is an eerie feeling to live in a country where when you hear an aircraft coming or going by you immediately look to the sky to see if it has military signs. People ask if I am scared, and I don’t know what to tell them. Of course I am a little nervous about the tension (but I don’t see any of it from the comfy confines of the monastery) but there are people who have to live in it day in day out for their whole lives.

Let me try to show you how hot it is here. When I was at SJU I would average close to two 32 ounce mugs of coffee (Sean and Pete used to call me crazy, and Crest White strips became a great friend) and maybe one Nalgene bottle throughout the day. That put me at 3 liters on a good day. I drink three 2-liter bottles of water during the workday because I sweat so much. At meals I do not go for the food first, it is water or juice then food. I drink about three glasses of water at breakfast, lunch, and then again at supper and after supper before I go to bed I do another 2 liter bottle. Gonna get personal here, my pee still is still quite yellow. Water will become the next oil.

Foreign land...familiar feeling.

Sorry this first post will be extremely long (it covers a lot and I am learning what content to keep and what to leave out in a blog)

As Mike Leither and I walked out of the airport after just meeting Fr. Basilius and Benedict, a German Zivi (In Germany, after high school, you have the choice to either join the army for 2 years required service or volunteer for one, thus being a Zivi), at 4:30am Tel Aviv time I was brought back to the feeling of arriving in Johannesburg, South Africa. Both the present time and Jo’burg it was close to dawn, much hotter than I'd like (40-45 Celsius), and there was a haze in the air that made the lights glow in a way that is hard to describe. I wonder if it is from all the pollution, because of the fowl smell in both cities that gave the air that haze, or if it was the humidity. It is a very surreal feeling to be in another country. You are excited at what lies ahead of you but scared out of your mind at all the unknown.

Fr. Basilius gave us our first lesson in the Holy Land “Drink lots of water”. The only moments where I do not sweat are when I am sleeping because, and thank God, my room is air-conditioned. We arrived in Tabgha, which is more of a group of monastic communities than a town or even village, and were sent to bed to try to cure our jet lag. I slept most of Thursday and on Friday in the morning Mike and I explored some of the other monasteries in the area, around 2pm we left for Jerusalem. The “we” I refer to are the three Zivis who are just finishing up their year of work, one of the new Zivis, three other short-term German volunteers, Br. Fransiscos, Fr. Jeremiahs, Fr. Basilius, Abbott Benedikt, Mike Leither, and myself. Very soon six German volunteers will leave reducing the number in Tabgha drastically.

On our way to Jerusalem we drove through the West Bank and I could look out at one point and see the tanks and bunkers in Jordan. Traffic was bad so it took four hours to get to Jerusalem. Sebastian, one of the German volunteers, turned around in the van/combi (if you know what this is) and said to the Americans, “Welcome to Jerusalem”, and this moment will be forever ingrained in my memory. At that point I looked out the window onto the city of Jerusalem. White stone/stucco/slab buildings and houses covering as far as the eye could see up a gradual hill. It was a setting I was not prepared for: long high stone walls, cobblestone streets, giant Churches and Temples, huge Mosque domes, tourists, religious pilgrims, Orthodox Jews, Arabs, Catholic Priests, and police/military people armed with assault rifles and Uzis all walking the streets. All the things I only saw on 60 minutes or watching the evening news not ever really grasping how real this Israel was that everyone was fighting over.

Jerusalem was a blur. You must wear pants that cover your knees (so the kids who sag their shorts might be on to something or heading toward a monastic life...) when you enter a holy site. But it is deathly hot, they told me in Tabgha that Jerusalem was colder than Tabgha, colder was not the correct adjective, faintly cooler would better describe it. I am still not grasping what I have touched with my hands, seen with my eyes, or been a part of. I visited the Western Wall (I will say a prayer the next time I visit), we walked the Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows, Jesus’ walk with the cross), and walked through all four quarters of the Old City: Moslem, Jewish, Armenian, and Christian. Visited the markets, which are in narrow covered alley size streets with shops no bigger than a dorm room, where you must barter or be taken advantage of in the worst degree. Bare in mind when I say ‘supposedly’ that there is no correct story about Jesus’ life and it is not my skepticism of the Christian religion. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (supposedly where Jesus spent his final moments and was buried in the tomb) I knelt and blessed my Johnnies cap on a piece of rock supposedly from the tomb in which he was buried, Gagliardi owes me one of the rings they get this year.

The Abbey of Dormition (in Jerusalem) is the German Catholic Monastery in Jerusalem of which the one in Tabgha (Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves & Fishes) I stay at is an extension. At both churches German is the primary language spoken for all the masses and prayers (morning, noon, evening, vespers, compliment). I have three years high school and one semester college of German under my belt and I am lost. Slowly it comes back and I pick up new vocabulary. All those of you who know the story of me being asked to say a prayer at the Zion Church in South Africa, I had another one of those moments at Dormition. The Germans said I had great pronunciation (yeah that’s right dad, me) and asked me to read the second reading during one of the masses. Since everything is in German and I was nervous I asked two of the zivis to tell me when it was my turn to read. They thought I had the first reading so they told me to go up when it was time for the first reading (which was done in Hebrew) and I had to stand in front of the whole church for the first reading and following hymn because I could not make it back to my seat. Ahh Mike you idiot.

The work here in Tabgha is not the most glamorous: unloading visitors, cleaning, painting, gardening, and soon cooking. I am not saving lives everyday, I am not getting very far in making Israel a peaceful state (obviously I am not contributing to the violence, yet still), and so I don’t feel as though I am making a difference. Lutz, one of the departing Zivis, said something that really hit home though. “Remember who you are doing the work for.” Tabgha is mainly used as a retreat place for religious pilgrims, mentally and physically handicapped, the sick and dying, and those of the monastic life. To them this Biblical miracle site is a paradise/heaven of their own. Smiling and welcoming people with open arms (along with keeping the place in ship-shape) are important. I have trouble doing something when I do not feel I am making an immediate impact, but I am learning that I do not have to save someone’s life to make a difference in it. I should think this is a better circumstance also.