Egypt Journal #6

JOURNAL: November 21, 2006 - Tuesday - 10:05 a.m.

We are in our hotel lobby in Alexandria, preparing to leave the city after our one-day stay. We will go west into the desert to visit the monasteries at Wadi-al-Natrun before heading back to Cairo. Wadi-al-Natrun is the site of some of the original Egyptian monastic communities, dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries.

Reading Rowan Williams' Where God Happens in preparation for our discussions of it later this week, I have been reminded how important silence is in being attentive to the voice of God and in cultivating an awareness of the Holy Spirit. Taking the archbishop's advice, I have been saying the Jesus Prayer on my breath and in my heart over the past couple of days. The disturbing awareness this has immediately given me is how foolish most of my own words are. I crave the life of discipline and holiness, but I am not willing to be silent long enough to make even a novice's steps in that direction. I cover up my fear with babbling.

I have also realized how much I have begun to fall into a tourist mentality of just taking each day in at a head-level, without thinking about how it relates to my vocation. I don't want to do that. The reason I got excited about this trip as a prospective Th.D. student last spring was because of how it might inform my sense of calling. I should not let the surface excitement of seeing new things interfere with a deep reflection on how monastic spirituality and the contemplative life can teach me something important about faith.

I miss Emily terribly five days into this trip. I also find myself longing for some of the spiritual companions who have meant so much to me along the way, those whom I love dearly and with whom I would dearly love to share these experiences. That said, developing friendships among some of the people on this trip has been a very rewarding way to go about our travels. As we are getting to know one another, we are laying the foundations of our friendships through common experiences in a very exciting environment.

Alexandria is a beautiful city. I wish we could stay longer. It is so different than Cairo - clean and airy and aesthetically pleasing. We saw a Roman amphitheatre yesterday, in use from the 4th-8th centuries (and very well preserved/restored). It was next to the ruins of a Roman bath and philosophical school that are still being excavated by an international team of archaeologists.

We also toured the ancient Roman catacombs, decorated originally in an "Egyptianized Roman" style, which combined elements of both the Egyptian and Greco-Roman religious pantheons. The catacombs were taken over and used by early Christians, supposedly both for burials and meetings. They were sincerely one of the most impressive human structures I have ever seen - deeply mystifying and evocative of historical drama.

Finally, we visited the modern library of Alexandria, completed just a few years ago and intended to eventually rival the ancient one accidentally destroyed by Julius Caesar around 48 B.C. The interior architecture of the present library is one of the best examples of modern design that I have seen. It consists of seven tiered levels, all visible from any floor in the interior (due to a terraced design, which is hard to even describe). The collection is a relatively paltry 500,000 volumes at present, but the (optimistic) plan is to increase it to 8 million. By contrast, one of the students in our group said he had heard that Duke's overall library collection is presently at around 5 million volumes. I don't know what that discrepancy says more about - the tremendous wealth and resources of top-tier American universities, or the poverty of resources in the developing world.

I haven't written much (or anything) about the guide who has coordinated our logistics and accompanied us everywhere we've been. His name is Osama, and he is a Coptic Christian who is originally from Upper Egypt and who now lives in Cairo. His family also has a getaway apartment on the beachfront here in Alexandria, and our very long day ended with supper there last night. Osama's hospitality was gracious and touching. We returned back to our hotel at around 11:30 p.m. Still exhausted this morning!

I witnessed a tragic scene this morning but don't have the emotional energy or the hand strength to describe it right now.

[Note: The "tragic scene" I could not write about at the time was a small, abandoned kitten that was huddled and shivering under a bench near where we had morning prayer. The kitten was clearly not even old enough to be weaned, but when we tore up some cooked chicken and offered it, the kitten devoured it hungrily. The kitten didn't have a chance - much like two similarly abandoned kittens I saw in Peru this past spring - and for all I know the chicken itself might have killed it. But later during breakfast, I looked out the window of our hotel restaurant and noticed a dog working its way down the beach, near to where the kitten had been hiding. One way or the other, it is clear that its suffering was not going to last long.]