Traveling

It's Monday morning and I've less than 2 hours before leaving for the first class of my four month intensive teacher training program with Gioconda. Just before leaving for Jordan and Israel in mid October, I learned that she would be offering this training (beginning Nov 10th, today) so I enrolled, then had the following 3 weeks to think about it. This will be my 3rd time to enroll so maybe three's the charm.

Just as I knew it would be, the Jordan/Israel trip was a bit on the strenuous side, the rhythm of movement pretty intense, but I soon got into the swing of things and had a really great time. We walked many miles most days seeing as many sites as time would permit. It was pretty exhausting. We were a small group and for the most part got along beautifully, which I think is particularly noteworthy considering our diversity--3 fundamental Christians (Seventh Day Adventists), several Jewish couples (everyone was straight except for the 2 of us, which as usual was a non-issue), a couple of agnostics, and a couple of really super nice and worldly wise docents from Manhattan who were a total delight to be around. Their frequent injections of their extensive knowledge of the natural sciences into our discussions was absolutely refreshing. Our 2 guides, Mark and Marilyn, moved to Israel a number of years ago from California after spending their lives pursuing several interesting careers, including more than a few collective years with the Peace Corps in several countries. They are such good people. For me Jerusalem is a religious vortex that swirls with dogmatic and hence chaotic behavior. Religious conflict and fervor abounds yet simultaneously manages to find an acceptable level of slightly tense harmony most of the time. Unlike 15 years ago when I frequently prostrated myself before Christian alters throughout the city, called upon the intervention of St. John of the Cross, my patron saint at the time, to guide me into the depths of mysticism, attended mass daily and read the psalms with tears in my eyes, this time I found myself to be a far happier person, still a seeker with no absolute answers, but confident and accepting of things simply as they are without allowing the conditioned mind to interfere too greatly in the experiential. It was good, really good. I was photographed doing my more *advanced* yoga poses at Roman ruins, covered in Dead Sea mud on the sandy beach of the Dead Sea. We trudged along the banks of the Sea of Galilee, winding paths astride the Jordan River, and plunged many times into the salty waters of the the Dead Sea, dodged in and out of dark alleys and old, dusty churches, walked up and down ancient stone steps leading to obscure archaeological sites and marvelled at it all.

The above photos are, in order, flower arrangement in the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, St. George's Monastery on the Wadi Qilt outside Jerusalem near Jericho, man in prayer in front of the "wailing wall*, sunset over the Sea of Galilee, Gamala, Petra, Ron having an arabic moment, Bedouin dress as seen in the museum in the Roman theatre in Aman, Jordan.