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A group of volunteers from Nazareth Village decided to go to the beach on Sunday afternoon.

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I’ve been spending some time this week scouting out the route for the Jesus Trail, using GPS and Google Earth to provide a hiking route available on the internet for travelers and groups to walk between significant sites in Jesus’ life. These photos are mostly between Nazareth and Zippori, with a few from Cana.

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We had a professional come in and restore part of the painting on the ceiling, and then Gabi patched up the rest of the hole caused by water damage. We had a fun time assembling and climbing the scaffolding after carrying it up the steep stone stairs into the salon in the main hall. We discovered that the best view we have of Nazareth is 25 feet up off the floor.

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Visit their website at http://www.kreideryoder.org/blog.html

Greetings from Nazareth! After a full week in Israel, I am settling into into this new location, adjusting to the time change and reconnecting with old friends. It feels good to be back here again, as this is one of the familiar ‘homes’ that has become a part of my life. It’s nice to feel familiar in a place that is miles away from the ‘home’ that you grew up in.

When I was traveling to the Middle East in 2005, I was searching for hiking information in Israel on the Internet and found a blog by an Israeli guy named Maoz Inon who had recently hiked the Israel National Trail. Maoz was just returning from an around-the-world trip and was looking for a way to begin a backpacker-style hostel that was open to independent travelers as a way to promote hospitality and peace in his own country. We talked about Nazareth as a good place for tourism and where Israeli Arabs and Jews could interact and learn to know each other. What was a dream two and a half years ago is now the Fauzi Azar Inn, which has become a part of my life and involvement here.

For a few months, I will be based out the Fauzi Azar Inn in Nazareth, where I will helping out with guests, working on Internet projects and getting myself oriented to various connections around the country. I will spend a bit of my time this month developing the Jesus Trail, a route for independent hikers to walk between the places in the Galilee that were significant to Jesus’ life. Winter rains begin more regularly in December, so I’m trying to spend a lot of time outside before the seasons change.

The Fauzi Azar Inn is tucked into the winding streets of the old market in a large, restored house of a wealthy Arab family. It’s a very beautiful space, full of interesting guests from around the world and from within Israel, many who have never experienced the rich Arab culture that exists in historic Nazareth. It’s a great place to meet new friends, continue building my skills in both the Arabic and Hebrew languages and get to know to local families here.

Yesterday, the staff and volunteers of the Inn went out to the Sea of Galilee to get to know each other better. We are from different backgrounds—three Israeli Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, an Israeli Jew, an American PhD student, a Spanish Mormon and me. We visited the Arbel cliffs, enjoying the view from the top, scrambling down the steep slopes and stuffing ourselves at a barbecue lunch of lamb chops and vegetables on the shores of the sea of Galilee. Even though our respective identities are from various backgrounds, our vision and goal is to make the Fauzi Azar Inn a place for travelers to pass through and experience the best of the Galilee.

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The Fauzi Azar Inn took a staff day, hiking on the Arbel Cliffs and had a barbecue lunch by the Sea of Galilee

Acco and Rosh Hanikra

Haifa

Shabbat, the Hebrew word for the Sabbath, begins at sundown on Friday. During this time many religious Jews in the Jerusalem area migrate to the Western Wall to offer prayers, commencing the holy day of rest and celebration.

In August I was walking through the Old City streets towards the wall among Orthodox Jews, as well as a group of young Mennonites from the United States. As we approached the Wall, we stepped back to gather our observations and hesitations. The mass of men and women clothed in black and white closer to the Wall were swirling, praying, praising and dancing in ways that looked foreign to us, yet beckoned as genuine and holy. Some wanted to approach but wondered, “What will they think of us if we go there to pray if we’re not Jewish?”

After some conversation, we imagined a young Jesus in our same situation, and it seemed obvious that he would have stepped forward. Tim and I decided to put on paper kippot and move closer. Soon we were swept up in a circle of young Jewish men, singing boisterously and dancing in a circle with arms around each others’ shoulders. There was a spiritual energy that I haven’t felt in a long time. Our hesitations were absorbed by the movement of the community.

As we walked back toward where the rest of our group had been curiously watching, an older Orthodox Jewish man approached us and said with a warm smile, “I just want you to know that you are welcome here and that God is not Jewish. And I know this because you are breathing; you are alive here with us.”

The words stuck with me. In Jewish tradition, breath is the spirit of God signified by the Hebrew word ruach, which also has linguistic connections to the wind, soul and spirit. Ancient Hebrew has no vowels, as these sounds represent the breath of God articulating language through the reader’s recitation. As a result, the communicated message is an inspired interaction with God, sculpting the meaning of scripture to speak to the context of the community.

The Holy Spirit invites us to see God moving through each other, whether expressed through our inspired words, the breath that sustains us, or the effects of the wind that fill our sails and drive us to new horizons. As Anglican Bishop John V. Taylor states, this is the “Go-Between God,” the invisible “current of communication” that streams between us when we truly recognize the presence of the other.

Over the past few years, I have felt the wind pulling me across the Atlantic and Mediterranean back to Israel/Palestine, a place that has had significant spiritual influence on the whole of humanity as well as my personal journey. Returning has never been a matter of if, but a matter of when. And now the time has come to make the move.

Next week I will shift my location of residence to Israel/Palestine for the next two years to experiment with new models for how God communicates through all of us. This initiative of Franconia Conference, via Jerusalem, will seek to develop new ways to build a culture of engagement and connectivity through networking, communication and movement within the global Anabaptist community. I will be writing and adding photos regularly to http://via-global.org, so keep checking to interact as the initiative develops.

Let us all take a deep breath and invite the Spirit of God to inspire our lives with new understandings of each other whether on the way to Jerusalem or simply on the way.