Today I climbed Mt. Sinai!!

Today I climbed Mt. Sinai!
I didn’t make it all the way to the top, but I made it up some of the steps. There’s a long hiking path, then at the top, there’s 752 steps. Had they been real steps, perhaps I could have made it, but these were rocks so rugged they made the rough cobblestones of Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa seem like smooth, polished marble by comparison. My desire was strong enough that I would have crawled up, but my concern was that I wouldn’t have been able to have gotten down before sunset. I wasn’t steady enough on my feet to even try to risk it. And I think that was the right decision for me, because we came down and went to a Greek Orthodox liturgy in St. Katherine’s monastery. It was a lovely Orthodox service, I suppose, but we STOOD for an hour, after having climbed Mt. Sinai for several hours. But my point is that when we came out of the liturgy, the sun was beginning to set. It would have taken us another 45 minutes or so to go up those steps, and even more to come down – which would have put us back at St. Katherine’s after sunset. I stumbled enough in the daylight, and actually gave a group of Japanese tourists a bit of a scare when I stumbled once. Either it was uneven rocks, or rocks in the road, or shifting sand… and then there was the camel dung everywhere…


But it was an AWESOME experience! A couple of times I got to be alone, and that was REALLY nice. It’s just a big huge world with no one there. Occasionally you’ll pass a Bedouin rest stop, but that’s about it.


There are no words to sum up the day. We just climbed Mt. Sinai and then went to a Greek Orthodox service. The Orthodox liturgies have been preserved throughout the centuries, so there is that full body worship with sight and sound and smells and bodily movement. While I believe worship needs a participatory element (more than just having someone shake incense at you), I do appreciate that the Orthodox services were designed to present a Gospel worship experience (with a high Christology) to people who were often illiterate. So there had to be other ways to completely engage them besides the written word, or even besides the spoken word, if that got too complicated. I think many modern congregations could probably learn a bit from that – from the idea that one needs to present the gospel message to the congregation in a way that fully engages them. I say that because sitting in this service reminded me of some church services I’ve been in, where there’s just a bunch of people up front doing stuff, sorta at you – you’re allowed to jump in from time to time if you know where and what to do – but if you DON’T, then you’re kinda lost, as is the point of the worship service.


My feet and knees are KILLING ME. I’ve got my feet up now, but both the feet and the knees took a beating. It’s only 3 miles up and 3 miles back down, but it’s an incline the whole way, and the air is constantly getting thinner. Of the 14 people in our group, only 3 actually reached the summit, and they were one guy who does this regularly, one guy who’s retired military, and a woman who has LOTS of excess energy. It’s quite a tough climb. If I go next year, I will skip the morning tour of the monastery and just start hiking up. St. Katherine’s Monastery is only open to the public for a couple of hours each day, so we started the day by going in and looking at all the icons. I did get a picture of the burning bush, which was kinda cool. Didn’t get a chance to get close enough to it to see if it would really burn, but…


So that meant we didn’t start til 10 or 11. With an extra hour or two, I like to think I could have made it to the top. I probably wouldn’t be able to do anything else, but I like to think I could have made it. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to try again. Dropping 30 pounds and doing more cardio wouldn’t hurt, but I know a tennis player who says it’s a difficult climb, too. Still, I know I don’t have to ride a camel up. I just need to take all day…


But I climbed Mt. Sinai today, and that’s a wonderful thing!

Sent some clothes to the laundry; they should be back after dinner. Will head to dinner, and then pack. Tomorrow we head for Israel.

Here's a link to pictures from Mt. Sinai