The Mountain of God

One of the additional bonuses of being here in Egypt for a year is the opportunity to visit many historical sites relevant to the faith tradition from which I hale. The relativity of distances here in the middle east has been a wonder to grasp:> Take Cairo: as my Arabic prof put it, "I love Cairo because every two blocks is a different city." Nothing is far away--its the traffic that makes it seem like it. Another example: what seems to me to be a relatively short drive of 5 hours to familiar Chicago through nothing but cornfields, will here, if you go east, take you over the great Nile and its fertile delta, past the Suez canal, through the barren Eastern Desert, across to the Egyptian-Israeli border, through whats now become essentially the world's largest prison otherwise known as the Gaza strip, and finally arriving in the one of the holiest and conflicted cities in the world, Jersusalem. I thought my sense of space was radically altered in China--The Nile Valley is giving the eastern seaboard of China a run for its money:> Everything seems greatly compacted here, where so many communities of diverse ethnicities vie for so little habitable land. Yes, I know--I'm learning that this is the middle east... Anyhow, if you go south, 6 hours will take you along the red sea and through desolate canyons to the foot of Mt. Sinai, of which this entry is supposed to be centered around. Last week we took a two day trip to the Red Sea and Mt. Sinai.

For someone who's childhood involved a slight infatuation with the story of Moses and the Israelites in the Sinai manifest through occasional backyard role-playing as Moses in the Sinai, the trip took on a bit of a special meaning--kind of like that childhood feeling of meeting Santa at the mall where the legend becomes quite real. For though the historical accuracy of today's location of Mt. Sinai, the burning bush, and the well are often cast in doubt, I was reminded that it is not the 'trueness' of pinpoint location that ascribes holiness, but the richness and depth of tradition thousands of years deep at these places that demand reverence. For it has been this very mountain that today we know as Mt. Sinai that so many have traveled to in adoration and worship. Such a legacy over the course of time comes to reflect a truth beyond factuality for it is here at Mt. Sinai where man has come throughout the course of history to relate to the divine. Though today the mountain is flooded by modern tourists with camera in hand, I think that perhaps the sincerity of pilgrimage is not completely lost for all. And I'd like to think its okay to play Moses even when you're 22:>

After a swim in the warm, incredibly calm and very shallow red sea (we were wondering if the Israelites couldn't have just walked across:>), we drove through a couple hours worth of the mountains of Sinai whose dark outlines were barely visible in the nighttime hours. In case you were wondering, the tradition at Mt. Sinai is to begin hiking between 12-2AM so as to arrive at the peak in time for the sunrise. And so we began our journey about 12:30 under the light of the recently risen and nearly full moon (like Moses, you still don't need a flashlight to reach the top: now its just contingent on the full moon) following our guide Salem, a local Bedouin who contracts with tourists to lead them up the mountain (the Bedouin are a historically nomadic people who call the mountains of Sinai home). On the surface, it was incredible to merely escape from the noise and dirty air of Cairo to a sky full of stars and a brisk and clean wind in the face. I have always enjoyed the ability of nature to impart terrific peace, and this was no exception. Yet, upon reaching the top around 3am and looking out across a barren moonlit landscape, I began to feel the depth of humanities' reverence for this land. It is a harsh land where on mountain after mountain little grows on little water. Yet, it seems that this utter emptiness of life accentuates the presence of life therein in its oh so fragile character. And indeed, one is able amidst the barrage of camel offers, the coffee houses around every corner, and the smell hot chocolate at the summit, to catch a glimpse of the meaning behind what is written in Exodus, "Take off your shoes, for you are standing on Holy Ground." Beyond visions of a God swirling in clouds of angry smoke around me and the magical touch of a pen of fire on two great tablets of rock, there was something wonderful and simple and utterly existential about the bridge between my experience on Mt. Sinai today and early humanities those thousands of years of ago. Simply put, I too felt small in the hands of something so much greater standing both at the foot and on the top of the mountain. Amidst a region of great expanses of desert and flat lands of fertile soil surrounded by bodies of water, it is truly an awe-inspiring mountain in an awe-inspiring land. As travelers we continue to search for the answers to those difficult questions of life, and as pilgrims we long for the sanctity of those answers.

I have to admit that the sun was a welcome site for I had begun to acquire a good chill sitting for three hours. The desert at 8000 ft. is almost downright cold with the wind factor. And no I wasn't going to pay 20 pounds for a dirty blanket and a mattress to sleep on:> Instead I ended up spending 10 pounds for two cups of hot dust tea. And when the sun rose all 1000 of us at the top looked to the east and welcomed the new day with songs of many nationalities and many a camera shutter click. And finding ourselves behind a group of Japanese nuns on the single file 3000 stairs down (constructed single-handedly by some pious, pious, pious monk as an alternate route of 'penance' to the top), Salem, my Canadian friend Nelson, and I spoke of many things and took a few pictures, content to take it slowly as we warmed under the young sun. And down to my original t-shirt by the bottom, I took a quick look at the big green burning bush and the marriage well well before boarding the bus for the six hour trip back to Al-Qahirra, of which I slept the entire way...