Walking was
an important aspect of Jesus’ ministry. According to biblical references he
would have walked not only in Galilee and Jerusalem, but as far West as the Mediterranean,
East into what is now Jordan, North into what is now Lebanon and Syria, and
South into the desert. Of course Jesus was not the only one in the Bible who
walked; Abraham journeyed all the way from Ur, near present day Iraq, and Moses
and the Hebrew people left Egypt and wandered in the wilderness for forty years.
Walking is a
component of religion whose purpose we have somehow forgotten. Walking is a way to connect with God, to
connect with the land, to connect with people. We already know that walking can
bring us good health, but what more can walking teach us? As I searched the
internet for clues about Jesus and walking I found a listing for the Jesus
Trail™. Thinking that this might hold the answer to my quest I began to plan a
sabbatical to further explore walking and its connection to religion, spirituality
and health.
I don’t
consider myself a walker. I have done some challenging hiking in my life in the
White Mountains of New Hampshire, but now living in New Jersey, I get in my car
to go even 3 blocks away. Nor was I ever fascinated with attempting the Camino
de Santiago in Spain. Rather than trudge the 500 miles of the Camino I would prefer
a guided tour for its educational benefits and ease in getting around. The
website for the Jesus Trail said you didn’t need to be particularly fit as long
as you took all normal precautions. You could self-guide, and it was safe for
women. It seemed to be a go, but not without some underlying trepidation to
attempt it alone.
So what is
the Jesus Trail? It is a 40 mile hiking trail in the Galilee region of Israel
which connects important sites from the life of Jesus as well as other
historical and religious sites. The Jesus Trail offers the hiker or pilgrim a
way to experience the footsteps of Jesus in a way that is authentically engaged
with the land and local people. It also offers the opportunity to hike through
some of the most beautiful landscapes in Israel. It runs from Nazareth to
Capernaum and can be extended to circle around the Sea of Galilee, up Mt. Tabor
and loop back again to Nazareth.
The trail essentially
starts at the Fauzi Azar Inn, a welcoming and youthful hostel where the volunteer
staff hangs out with the guests, bakes treats throughout the day for hungry
travelers, and offers advice where to eat, find a pharmacy, or how to take a
shorter or less challenging route on the trail. Guests are encouraged to take
an extra day in Nazareth to take an off-the-beaten-track walk through the city
to meet the locals, the millers of coffee and spices, and a personal highlight
of mine, the carpenters (Could any of them be related to Jesus’ father Joseph?).
They tell us about peace projects that are taking place in Nazareth that bring
together Muslims, Jews and Christians. We meet the local Imam who invites us to
tour and observe a service at the White Mosque, an opportunity that is not
always afforded to non-Muslims. The Fauzi Azar Inn is part of the peace
project, bringing together the Arabic family that owned the property that
houses the inn, the young Jewish entrepreneur, Maoz Inon, who made the Jesus
trail happen, and the Christian volunteers and guests who are there to follow
Jesus’ footsteps. Although you can hear in many parts of Israel the
incongruence of the Muslim call to prayer and the tolling of church bells,
somehow in Nazareth the bells of the Basilica of the Annunciation and the call
to prayer are complimentary music throughout the day.
I remained
at the Fauzi Azar Inn for two nights, in part because I enjoyed what was
happening at the inn and in Nazareth, and admittedly because I was apprehensive
about starting the trail. A Swiss woman, Esther, had just returned from the
trail and confided in me that she had been sleeping non-stop for two days.
Israel has had more rain than usual this year and the cloying clay mud of the
Galilee makes it next to impossible to slog through without stopping every 10
feet and trying to scrape your boots on a rock. She kept puffing out her cheeks
telling me her back hurt from lifting her feet through so much mud.
There
was no one else leaving that day for the trail, and with Esther’s experience it
was testing my resolve to go it alone. The next day the climate changed. The sun
shined brightly and there were four of us who were starting out on the trail. Mark,
one of the volunteers who knew the trail inside out walked us to the start of
the great steps out of Nazareth. When he said, “This is as far as I will be
taking you, just follow the steps up.” I had a moment of separation anxiety.
This soon disappeared because of the exertion of huffing and puffing up the 406
steps. Our party consisted of a woman
from San Francisco, Maria, who had walked the Camino de Santiago, and a Dutch
couple, Ludwig and Arja, who had hiked throughout the world. Ludwig was a
fanatical photographer. There were many times we were grateful for his stopping
to take pictures; it was a surreptitious way for us to take a breath.
The first
day of walking the trail was grueling. I had made several mistakes. My pack was
far too heavy, and so much of what I brought was unnecessary. Hostels in Israel
provide all the things you need, warm beds made up with sheets and comforters,
soap, towels and a good breakfast. The second mistake I made was multitasking.
Not more than a half hour on the trail (only 29 ½ hours more to go) and I fall
on my right wrist while walking and trying to put my camera away. The weight of
the pack made it difficult to control the fall and I heard myself thinking, “Oh
no, a sprained wrist and I only just began!” I was sure our small party was
looking at me as a liability on this journey.
Following
the trail was not always easy. The orange and white blaze of the Jesus trail
was sometimes hidden by the lush growth Israel had experienced this year from so
much rain. Sometimes local kids thought it was hilarious to turn the boulders
with the blazes in different directions. Sometimes we were laughing and
chatting so much we failed to see a turnoff. Backtracking was not a cheerful
proposition when you were walking between five and seven hours a day.
The trail
out of Nazareth to Cana had its moments of beauty and some piles of garbage,
the section that traversed the Zippori National Park being one of the
highlights. (Zippori is the location of an ancient, wealthy city named
Sepphoris, where Jesus and his father Joseph most likely worked.) There were children who would taunt us with
demands to “give dollar, give dollar,” and there were laughing children who
would say to us over and over, “hello, hello, hello” and we would chirp back
“hello, hello, hello”. We took our pictures with some of the children, who
loved to giggle and hold up their two fingers in a V. Maria said, “Look, they
are giving us the peace sign,” and I said, “I think they are donkey ears.”
We arrive
at the Cana Wedding Guest House after enjoying a tall glass of pomegranate juice;
the rewarding antioxidant melted away all the trials of the day. The
proprietors of the guest house fixed us a typical Middle Eastern dinner; a
variety of salads, dips, olives, hummus, tahini, shawarma, rice, cooked vegetables,
pickled vegetables and flat bread. We finish dinner with mint tea, fresh from their
garden.
Day two: We
visit the bustling Cana Wedding church where Jesus is purported to have
performed his first sign, turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana of
Galilee. It takes us a while to leave the tourist area where hawkers of Cana
wine fill the streets and encourage tourists to buy from their shops. Today’s
hike is from Cana to Ilaniya where we will stay at an organic goat farm. It is
a far more beautiful walk once we leave the city of Cana. Wildflowers and
Poppies are everywhere. The scent of the flowers are both soothing and stimulating;
nature’s healing aromatherapy for the walk. We could smell licorice (fennel),
cyclamen, and a ubiquitous plant with yellow flowers. Cows were grazing in the
most unlikely places, accompanied by white egrets that would fly up in the air
like silver streaks of light, and land a little further away from us. The bulls
tended to be a little more wary of us. At one point Maria and I realized she
was wearing a bright red shirt and we tried to calm ourselves by saying bulls
don’t really charge matadors because they have red capes. She never wore that
shirt for the rest of the trip.
It was a
long day of walking and I started to fantasize that there would be organic
goats milk ice cream at the farm. When we arrived we were crestfallen to learn
that, “No, we do not serve dinner or breakfast, and we do not even have goat
cheese as the goats are pregnant and do not give off milk.” We ate power bars
and nuts and dried fruits, happy that our packs would be a few ounces lighter. We
ask the woman at the goat farm how much she would charge us to bring some of
the items in our pack to our next stop, Moshav Arbel. The price of 100 shekels
or about $30 split between the two of us sounded perfect. No wonder Jesus told
his disciples when he sent them out, “take no more than one tunic.” (Luke 9:3).
Day three:
We are a little more cheerful this morning, lighter in packs and girth from no
dinner or breakfast. At the end of the Jesus trail when I weighed myself I had lost
5 pounds in 5 days! (Jesus and his disciples must have been quite trim.) We
meet Ludwig and Arja at Kibbutz Lavi, and head out for the Horns of Hattin, the
place where Saladin defeated King Guy and the Frankish Army in the Second Crusade.
This was a more rugged, rocky terrain with some good views of the whole area of
the Jesus trail. We followed the blaze of the Jesus trail through wheat fields
that were still green and I tell everyone the story of Jesus walking through
the grain fields with his disciples who are starving (must have just come from
Ilaniya) and how they begin to munch on the wheat. The Pharisees ask Jesus why
he allows them to pluck grain on the Sabbath and Jesus replies that he desires
mercy, not sacrifice. (Matthew 12:1-8). After 45 minutes of amusing myself with
this story we suddenly realize that we are back in the same place we started at
Kibbutz Lavi. At this point I pull out
my brother’s GPS and decide to follow the trail the good old 21st century way.
From that time on, I wasn’t going to depend on maps or my direction challenged
mind to figure out the trail. When we finally arrived at Moshav Arbel it housed
an excellent restaurant. I had St. Peter’s fish, a tradition in the Galilee. Everyone
says St. Peter’s fish is actually Tilapia and they do an excellent job of preparing
it.
Day four:
Maria leaves us. She is only in Israel for one week and wants to spend a couple
of days in Jerusalem. She gets up early to go up the Arbel cliffs and then
comes down with hugs and tears to say good-bye. She had become my newest,
dearest friend. We have slept in the same dormitories together, shared what we
had in our packs, laughed and read one another’s minds. Her leaving is a
reminder that at some point all of us will have to return to life as usual.
Ludwig, Arja
and I set out for the cliffs, Ludwig as always capturing every moment on
camera, and picking up the rear of the procession to make sure we are both okay.
It is an unusual day in the town. A young soldier died on Arbel cliffs during a
training drill. There were pictures of him at the entrance to the park and a
service was taking place for him at the top of the cliffs. In order to
celebrate his life, the day was proclaimed a holiday where the local people
were encouraged to hike the cliffs. Would that concept happen in America? A
town might proclaim a day to celebrate a soldier’s death, but most probably it
would be celebrated with food and drink and speeches. Something more we can
learn from Israel.
In order to
descend the Arbel cliffs the trail uses huge staples on the side of the mountain
that you can either hold with your hands or step on with your feet. It makes
going down tricky places a lot more secure. Arja did not like extreme heights
so she and Ludwig followed another longer trail down. I continued on my own,
armed with my GPS and somewhat looking forward to hiking solo. By now I was
quite confident. My mind and body seemed to get stronger with each day. The
view from the cliffs was spectacular. The cliffs looked down on Wadi Hamam, a
Bedouin town, with more springs and wildflowers in the valley. There were
hidden caves some of which surprisingly contained cows, and then the trail traveled
through olive groves, one of the most common sights in Israel. The long trek
was rewarded with close-up views of the
Sea of Galilee or Kinneret as they call it in Hebrew.
After
plodding along, one foot in front of the other for several hours, I reach Karei
Deshe, the hostel I was staying at throughout the Sabbath. Once you reach a
location on a Friday afternoon there is no way to get anyplace else until the
Sabbath is over. Buses and cabs stop running, sometimes as early as 1pm on
Fridays and do not begin again until 7:00pm or later depending on the time of sunset
on Saturday evening. My dormitory style room is shared with two young German
girls. One of the girls volunteers to work with the Palestinians in the West
Bank. She has the Sabbath off, and is using the time to explore various sites
with her friend. Living in a hostel, dormitory style, is so much more
affordable than a private room, $25-$35 versus $100 or more. It usually
includes a sumptuous breakfast, and an opportunity to meet fellow travelers.
Day
5: The hardest part of the Jesus trail is over. I stroll along the Pilgrim
Sidewalk to the churches commemorating Jesus’ ministry in the Galilee: Multiplication
of the Loaves and Fishes*, St. Peter’s Primacy**, Mt of Beatitudes***. I am
feeling gratitude that I can be in the presence of Jesus’ greatest moments in
ministry, and having walked to them; in some organic way they have become a part
of my history too. I finish the trail in Capernaum, at the church over St. Peter’s
house. I sit down to read and wait for Arja and Ludwig to arrive. When they
walk into the church we are overjoyed. We are like family hugging one another,
taking pictures of each other at the entrance gate, giving the thumbs up sign.
Thumbs up is popular in the Middle East so it seemed appropriate to complete
the trail with this sign.
We wanted to get closer to Jesus by walking in
his footsteps and we were rewarded by the people we met, the health we gained, the
fears we faced, the laughter we shared and the experiences that transformed us
in some small way. I celebrated this renewal of life with my final Jesus Trail
act, immersing myself in the Sea of Galilee.
 |
March
20, 2012 – We begin the trail in Nazareth
|
 |
Young
Palestinian Christians outside of Cana
|
 |
| Where are we? |
 |
Trail
through Arbel Cliffs
|
 |
Bedouin
cows in caves
|
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| Jesus Trail completed! |
*Feeding of the 5000, (Mark 6:31-44).
**The post resurrection appearance of Jesus to his
disciples. While fishing unsuccessfully, he tells them where to fill their nets
to overflowing, and then has breakfast with his disciples on a rock that the
church is built around. (John 21:17). It is also meant to commemorate Jesus
telling Peter “On this rock I will build my church” (Matt 16:18), though that could
have occurred near Caesarea Philippi.
***The Beatitudes are found in Matthew 5:1-12. Blessed are
the poor… the meek…those who mourn…etc.
The
Rev. Pamela Bakal is on sabbatical from Grace Episcopal Church in Nutley, NJ
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