Those
nagging questions..."why are we here?",
how'd we get here?", "why US???"
and the associated issues of faith (the only tool
available to answer them) are still nagging. How
conceited to even carry the notion that a few
days of travel (on Earth) could magically bring
me closer to the answer. What the travel did
bring me closer to however, was the meaning and
purpose of faith itself, and its role in my own
life.
All the reading
and viewing of photos and moving pictures of
these places didn't come close to the impression
they make on you with their proximity (pretty
sure that's what their builders had in mind). And
what is clearly true about the ancient Egyptian,
Hebrew, Islamic, and Christian faiths, is that
events in this region between two and four
thousand years ago were immensely motivating to
have resulted in such timeless works of devotion.
I picked up a
few other wacky ideas too, along the way. It
might amuse you to speculate about the
construction of the pyramids and the temples and
the moving of house-sized blocks of granite
hundreds of miles to these sites. It did me.
Clearly seeing the hairless beings in the art on
the walls of the tombs, and the bust of
Tutankhamun (hairless with an elongated skull) in
the Egyptian museum fueled the fantasy that
indeed, aliens might have had a hand in bringing
some of these construction technologies to humans
here on Earth. Surely a visit from
extra-terrestrials at that point in our evolution
would have seemed like the visit of gods (see the
movie, Stargate).
And then there's
that whole business with the Holy Land, often
referred to as the land of peace, while it's
occupants continue to make war upon one another
for reasons that go back to biblical times.
Judaism, Islam and Christianity have too many
similarities to ignore, and on some level, the
differences are just fundamental dates and names.
So brothers and sisters, "why are we
fighting?"
Yes, my feeling
of belonging to a sub-group of humanity (Jews)
was strengthened by visiting Israel. It
strengthened my own belief in God and the
principles and traditions of our faith. Even a
long-time friend who considers himself an atheist
recently agreed with me that since he cannot
disprove the existence of God, he must accept the
possibility of that existence. But visiting the
Holy Land also made me feel closer to
Palestinians. It brought more respect for the
teachings of Christ. Same for Mohammed. When it
comes to the idea that just because we've been at
each others throats for 10,000 years, there's no
basis (in my mind) for why we have to continue to
do so.
Now that our
technologies have evolved to the point where we
can wipe out every living thing in a flash, we'd
be better off banding together in our common
cause of saving this little marble we live on.
No, we won't destroy
the
Earth. It's such a small part of the universe
anyway, and even if we take ourselves out through
war or depletion of natural resources, life (of
some kind) will reestablish itself here. That
just seems to be the way it works. But we simply
do not have the moral right to wipe out other
forms of life as we do so. Isn't that something
we can all agree on?
In any event, I
meant to ask the two new age mystics who were
deep in spiritual chanting inside the Pyramid of
Cheops how they felt about this, but I didn't
want to get "punched out."
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