dual personalities

Our pilgrimage tour was made up of 39 members of two Episcopal churches, my own in flyover country and one from Westchester County, New York. We were a fairly diverse group, ranging in age from Millennial to Over-the-Hill. We had five priests with us, two padres and three madres (from the Caribbean, Colombia and Australia), and a Lutheran pastor. The rest of the group included a retired detective from the NYPD (gangland division), two recently graduated Georgetown lacrosse players,

In the Jordan River where we renewed our baptismal vows

an elderly WASP named “Bif,” a handful of former Catholics, a mother-daughter team from Jupiter, FL, and your run-of-the-mill Episcopalians like me.

We all got along remarkably well. Sure, the cool kids sat in the back of the tour bus and laughed it up, but I am old enough now that I could care less about such things. The good-humored lacrosse players served as sheepdogs and brought up the rear, making sure that no one wandered too far afield. We didn’t lose anyone and nobody fell (except our rector, twice).

We were up and at ’em at 6 a.m. every morning and saw more than I can ever fully digest.

The street where our Christian hotel was located in the Old City near the Jaffa Gate.

Two thousand year old olive trees in what “tradition tells us” is the Garden of Gethsemane

The greatest model/visual aid ever (ancient Jerusalem)

Our tour guide with his disciples

Sun goddess in Jaffa on the Mediterranean

Well, I don’t want to be accused, like Christian by Apollyon, that “when you talk of your journey and of what you have heard and seen, you inwardly desire your own glory in all you do and say,” so I will stop.

It was a great trip; I’m glad I went.