So I am here in Jerusalem… finally… again... 46 years later! Most people don’t even make it here in their lifetime, but this is #3 for me. Something about this city just keeps drawing me. I can touch it: its stones, its people, its memories;  but I can’t really put my finger on it…  it’s tangible but elusive: like humility, right when you say you got it, that’s a sure sign you don’t?!

If you read my 1^st installments of Odysseys, you’ll remember I made it so tantalizingly close to here my 1^st time in Israel, but my mission was aborted almost within view of its fulfillment. A marathon-like race across the Eastern Mediterranean: in 2 weeks on a $45 budget + I made it!

… only to find greater disappointment awaiting me there … and then joy a little further along the road. Unfortunately, many people just quit at the disappointment.

But the journey is ever more spiritual than physical… although I didn’t realize or appreciate this at the time.

I had come so far from Canada … already 10,000 miles through all sorts of tests + triumphs, and then…. ½ way between Tel Aviv +Jerusalem, Lod Intl Airport to be precise, only 15 more miles to go…and I had to turn around, fly back to Athens, and  ultimately return home to Canada.

I’d come so near… but still so far!

That disappointment became an ache, but also revitalized vision over the next 2 years.

Somehow Jerusalem still drew me + I started to make plans almost immediately to return someday soon.

Somewhat like now… 46 years later, a lot of life has happened and I felt the tug to again renew my journey! Something intangible, drawing me into the unknown to become known, to see the revelation of the mystery.

I’ve always regarded myself as a traveler in this life on this earth; definitely not a tourist!

The open road beckoned me early and I wanted to follow:

the adventure of not knowing where it might lead each day, but dedicating my all to discover what it held;

the risk of not knowing when I picked up my packsack in morning where I would set it down again that evening  somehow made it all worth living.
But another dimension to the journey got added during those 2 years in between those first travels.

Something changed + I began to search out + ponder the idea of whether something different from just a traveler was at work here?

A pilgrim?  What’s that?

I looked up the definition: ‘someone who undertakes a journey to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion.’

 – not really me?

‘a wayfarer passing through this world, headed to an unknown destination, confident he will recognize it once he arrives + sees it.’ – I could relate!

I really had little idea of its practical meaning; it was merely an idea in my mind, a fantasy of my imagination.

I remembered reading Don Quixote for the first time: he was hilarious + I identified with this comical, yet admirable, character. I longed for a similar idealism, purity, and innocence, the capacity to not lose hope, but always look beyond what seemed - the externals + to what truly was, to heart values, even + especially when reality seemed to contradict them.

Now I think more of a role model like Abraham who, the Bible describes, looked for a city whose builder + maker is God. He had tired of Babel, its compulsion, confusion, manipulation, forced labour, and longed for relationship + community with love + truth at its centre. So he left and ‘went out, not knowing where he was going.’

We are all pilgrims on this earth, whether we realize it or not, or even consciously choose to not acknowledge it.  Life indeed is but temporary and the temporal neither holds nor is able to yield up the answers in the heart of one who seeks and questions beyond… beyond the horizons of this world and its limited vision.

It’s ephemeral: just when you think you got it, it suddenly eludes your grasp, lurches ahead… out of reach again, encouraging you to take another step forward into…???

And that’s why I set out on my quest.

Even at 24, there had to be more! …or at 70!

How can you make sense of this world as it is? It’s flawed, broken, neither perfect nor sensible. No one has fully arrived at fullness while here on earth (well, except One); and many say they’re traveling the road, but haven’t even boarded the train or  left the station yet!

I chose to leave my old stations behind and again I hitched across Canada.

This time on my own. Perhaps traveling solo would be better; like maybe I have to discover some things personally, for myself, first?

I landed in Portugal, crossed Spain + North Africa (there’re a few other stories along the way here, but I’ll skip them for now and go back to them later)

Next stop: Sicily and after riding a hippie VW van across Italy into Greece, I was back at the place where I’d left off 2 years before. I’d picked up some life + traveling experience since then + thought I knew more about planning, priorities + flexibility.

While I was waiting for my plane to Israel, I wandered around the Plaka, a unique part of Athens, wrapped like a necklace around the Acropolis: a place to unearth both past + future. It was filled with all manner of little shops: skilled artists and craftsmen worked right there on site. As I mosied around, I noticed the antique jewelry, especially some of the simple, but detailed crucifixes.

I didn’t even know where it came from, but I began hearing these words:

‘If you’re really set on this, then you need to do it right, so ‘Take up your cross.’  

I didn’t even know them as Jesus’ words; I just felt that if I was going to be a pilgrim on my journey, then I needed something tangible and  symbolic to carry directly on my person, something that would somehow embody the ideal I was pursuing – ‘cause that’s what pilgrims do, right?

One particular cross caught my attention: silver, neither large nor heavy, but quietly small and light.

‘Russky Orthodox, old,’ the dealer told me. Its simple lines appealed to me: no body of Jesus still on it, and its only engravings had once been set with lapus lazuli, but now much of its blue had worn away over time. And that was another plus: it was old; it looked old! Who knows what necks it had encircled throughout its years?  It seemed to carry centuries of mystery with it!

Once I saw it, I knew it was the right one.

All others just never measured up. It’s like when you know she’s the right one + nothing/no one else is good enough anymore! I continued shopping around, but I found myself  just comparing them all with this one.

However, price then became a problem.

This is usually the problem with crosses: their cost must be counted and paid.

…and I was naturally + spiritually cheap.

I didn’t want to pay more than I was willing, but neither did I want to offer so little that I would lose the deal,  so I made up my mind for whatever I thought I could get away with.

But although Greece is a bargaining culture, for some reason, the shopkeeper wouldn’t budge on this one.

His stubbornness annoyed me; but eventually my stubbornness yielded because I wanted it more than I was willing to risk losing it… and nothing else would do. I guess in microcosm is what a lot of our life is like… in many things.

So I gave him what he wanted so I could have what I wanted.

We made the deal.

I fancied myself a pilgrim.

I bought the crucifix.

I took up my cross.

Many years have passed since then + a verse now comes to mind:

‘Blessed is the man…

 Whose heart is set on pilgrimage.

 As they pass through the valley of Baca (weeping, grief, sorrow),

 They make it a spring (they cause it to sing),

 They go from strength to strength,

 Each one appears before God in Zion.’ Psalm 84:5-7

Little did I know: I didn’t just take up a relic, an amulet, a good luck charm,

but Someone then took me up also, oblivious as I was to all that lay before me.

…and I thought I was just going to Jerusalem?!