Tuesday 21 August -- 2018 Holy Land Day 9: The Journey Home

Well, as you may notice from the date stamp on this post, it's actually the next day. That's because Tuesday was a whirlwind with no chance to set up, log in, and blog. Even though it was a loooong day.

04:15: My alarm went off -- note that this is Bethlehem time ... eight hours ahead of US CDT, which was still Monday 20 August at 22:15.

05:15: I had my bags outside the door and headed down to a pastries and coffee breakfast set up in the lobby. A few of my fellow pilgrims were already there, and the others trickled in over the next few minutes.

06:00: A little later than planned, our bus had arrived, was loaded, and we departed the St. Gabriel Hotel. To our surprise, our driver was not Wael, which was disappointing since I for one had not properly bid him farewell and thanks for the fantastic job he did over the past week. We left Bethlehem and settled in for the drive to Ben Gurion Airport.

There I got special treatment again because of my pacemaker. Not the pat down, but "many questions" about my arm sling and pacemaker card. Kristal had waited behind for me as the others went on toward our gate, which seemed miles away. We were worried we'd miss loading -- but it turns out our plan was late in loading and late in leaving for Istanbul.

Istanbul was ... mercy! -- I don't know where to start. It's all a blur, but we went through at least three security checks, a mad dash across what seemed like an airport that had to, like Istanbul itself, span the Bosporus over into Asia Minor, long lines, etc. We had arrived late, of course, so were feeling the pressure on that count -- then at the gate a seemingly longer line for boarding that included two back-to-back, within-sight-of-each-other, security checks, one including a pat down. There was then a long wait in airplane. There seemed some confusion or something regarding some passengers. I wondered if there was some kind of heightened security alert level for some reason (although I found out later that one of the disturbances had to do with a family scattered from one end of the plane to the other, with at least one barely-toddler child isolated from the rest and the father not going to stand for it.

Frankly, my impression of the Istanbul airport coming or going was not favorable, although at least this time we seemed to be in a more modern part. Last week it was more like a third world country, with even more people, and uncomfortably hot as well. And I'll spare you a description of the bathroom....

The flight from Istanbul to Houston was supposed to be longer than it was. I'm not sure how, but the pilot made up most of the lost time and we landed less than a half an hour after our posted time, about 19:40 US CDT. But it was still a long flight, and I was stuck in the very center, the middle seat of the middle rank of three narrow seats, the middle of three men, none of us small. It was agony.

Finally, we landed. As I expected, suddenly we were all going our separate ways and I never got a chance to properly bid farewell to some of my companions for this pilgrimage. Later, I did send a general WhatsApp to the group: "As I knew would happen, in the rush of deplaning and getting thru the Houston airport, I did not get a chance to say proper farewells to some of you. This past week has been a pleasure and a privilege. I especially thank all of you who were so solicitous of me in my debilitate state. Fr. Emilio, thank you for putting this pilgrimage together. I hope all our paths will cross again sooner rather than later. Kent"

Kristal, Robert and Kathie, and I managed to stay together to the doors, where Kristal awaited an uber to take her to our mutual in-laws' where she would spend to night to fly home tomorrow and I departed with Robert and Kathie to retrieve their vehicle, drive out of Houston, eventually to find a hotel in Cleveland, Texas, to crash for the night.

... Over 24 hours from when that alarm went off in Bethlehem.

It's now the next morning. Don't you know I woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep!?

I will be backfilling the days of the pilgrimage in the next few days, and loading up lots of pictures and even some video. And I will write some kind of general summary of how wonderful this experience has been. But that will be later. I've got to finish getting packed to be ready at 07:00, when Robert said we were headed home to Louisiana.

Tuesday 14 August – Holy Land 2018 Day 2: Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Tiberias

I managed to nap for a short time a couple of times along the way, maybe an hour or two each, but really I never sleep well on a plane. We landed in Istanbul, Ataturk Airport, at about 09:00, almost on schedule despite our late departure. My phone international plan kicked in almost immediately after coming off "Airplane Mode," but with no Internet, which was frustrating. But it did mean my time shifted almost immediately to the local time of about 17:00 (the same time zone as Israel, so I'm going to report that from now on). Flying eastward as the sun progressed westward meant that we had a very short “night.” [By my calculations: We crossed the dawn terminator in the mid north Atlantic at about 50-55 degrees North latitude at bit before 03:00 CDT.] I let Anne know I was on the ground.

Just a note: Ataturk (“Father of the Turks,” recte Mustafa Kemal) was the first president of modern Turkey after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I. A secular nationalist, his anti-Islamist philosophy dominated the country for most of the 20th c., only recently giving way to increasing Islamization and increasing friction with the western world. 

The airport itself was, as I heard a rather irate woman describe it, "crowded worse than a Mumbai train station." It was also very hot in there. And we had a 2h50m layover. Ugh. Although we had been supposed to meet up with two other members of our party who flew directly from New York – Maria and Angela -- they never showed. I later found that there were medical emergency issues on their plane as well which set them back; we would not meet up until Tel Aviv.

We were scheduled to depart at 19:45 local time on Turkish Airlines Flight 864 for a 2h10m flight to Tel Aviv. We did not leave for almost an hour after that, for reasons I do not know. But we were finally off for the second and last leg of our trip.

+ + +

     Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." ... and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, … the LORD appeared to Abram, and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. (Gen. 12: 1-3, 5b, 7) 

So did the Father of the three Faiths calling this land “holy” first come to it. As pilgrims we too are answering the call of God, although our journey has not been so far nor will our presence here, at least physically, last so long. (Well, at this point our journey seems to have been pretty long!)

Photo from Kristal

We arrived in Tel Aviv at Ben-Gurion International Airport, Terminal 3, at 22:30 Israel time.  It’s now 14:30 CDT, approximately eighteen hours after leaving Houston … and about 31 hours since I left Natchitoches, I think…. A kind young man in the passports line helped several of us get on the airport wifi, and immediately Internet and data kicked in. 

This airport was named after David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), the wild-haired first prime minister of Israel. An ardent Zionist, David Ben-Gurion was for all intents and purposes the founder of the modern state of Israel. In May 1948 he personally proclaimed the new State of Israel even as the British withdrew from the Palestinian Mandate which they had hitherto overseen and the armies of the surrounding Arab powers invaded. He united the various Jewish militias into the new Israeli Defense Forces and oversaw their successful defense of the fledgling nation. He is rightfully called “Israel’s Founding Father.”

We met up with the last members of our party, Brother Miguel (“Mike”) from Costa Rica as well as Maria and Angela from New York. Maria is the president of Radio Maria (Fr. Emilio is the national director of Radio Maria USA).

As an aside, I must say that these are all incredibly nice people. Not that I doubted they would be, but I am really touched by how solicitous they are of my semi-handicapped state at this point, unable to use my left arm for much of anything for fear of "unplugging" myself -- pulling the leads from the pacemaker out of my heart before they have had a chance to "scar" into place. I could not ask for better companions!

As late as it was, we still had miles to go … well, maybe not before we sleep. About midnight we boarded our Nativity Pilgrimages bus north to Tiberias on the western coast of the Sea of Galilee – 150 km, about 1hr45min. Part of the way, Padre gave us an overview of the history, peoples, and cultures of Israel and Palestine, which he considers two separate countries. Tiberias itself was a Roman city, built and named in honor of the Emperor Tiberius by Herod the Great, about the time of Jesus. But it wasn't too long before the bus settled down to quiet and I'm sure others, like me, dozed a bit despite the excitement of being in a new land -- even at night when we really could not see much.

We got to the Ron Beach Hotel – right on the beach – about 01:45, I think. This is, of course, the same hotel Steve Ray’s pilgrims frequent, which (because of his video blogs I’ve watched) imparted a somewhat disorienting sense of familiarity – even deja vu – when we pulled up and entered the lobby! 

By the time I hit the sack it was after 03:00, having unpacked what I needed, set up for tomorrow, and showered ... and eaten a very light snack left for us since we were arriving so late. It was much appreciated! We had arranged to meet for breakfast at 08:00, to head out for our first day's adventures at 09:00, so it was going to be a short sleep!

But I was in the Holy Land -- and even at night the view out across the Sea of Galilee from my balcony was impressive.