One month

While I have chosen to live in the mountains for the past few
years of my life, I do miss the sea. I love the opportunities
that I have gotten to visit the sea in Israel.

I am officially three quarters of the way through my time in Israel and it has truly been a mix of experiences. I know I have learned more about myself then I would have if I had stayed home. I learned how much I miss winter; I've learned what I truly believe; I've learned how to be alone; I've learned how to haggle in the old city; I've learned more than I can relate, and more than I know.

Last week was the end of my internship with the amazing Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD). If you are ever in Jerusalem, look them up, they do amazing work on the best east facing view in the City (at least that I've seen so far). As a part of my work, I completed a fairly in-depth report of the state of environmental education at schools providing clergical learning in North America. It was an amazing project and I am so glad that I got to be a part of it.

View towards Jordan from just south of the Galilee. Straight ahead (East) is Jordan and a bit to the north where there is a
large dip between the mountains, is Syria.

Working for ICSD cemented my commitment to environmental work. Every day, I could feel how my connection to the work was based in my enthusiasm for environmentalism. It was an amazing experience to work within that connection. I also feel as though my spiritual connection to nature has been strengthened.

Ancient cookie presses from Akko, Israel. Because of Akko's
mixed heritage, these could have originated anywhere in
the world. They do look familiar from what I know of
Germanic cookie presses...

Nature is a very different thing here than it is at home. Here forests are a bit scraggaly as the land has a history of having been cleared making the majority of the forested land less than 100 years old. It is too dry for the dense mossy woodlands I am used to. This land has been cultivated for thousands of years, in many places entire forests have been planted in straight lines, like an orchard. The hand of man can be seen almost everywhere.

It is amazingly beautiful, but very little looks truly natural. It is a world of gardens, planted by human hands. And it is a land of stone, laid by human hands. And what stone it is too!

There are places like this in every old city I've
been in in Israel. In this spot, you can see
history in a very different way.Each of the
arches is from a different building, You can
see how they were built one on top of the next.

The majority of the stone I have seen here is pink or pinkish gold. In Jerusalem, every building is at least faced with it, if not built of it entirely. Over this past weekend, I visited Akko, the northernmost Israeli city on the Mediterranean. During the crusades, it was the principal gateway to Jerusalem, even though there are over 100 miles between the two. Currently many of the historic sites for tourists in Akko are from this period.

Akko is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the region (I have heard this several times, but I'm not entirely sure which region they are talking about, Middle East or Mediterranean.) There are Egyptian records dating back to 2000 years ago which speak about the city of Akko. It is an important port city at the northern end of Haifa Bay.

The undercroft at the church of St. John the
Baptist in the crusader ruins and Akko.

And it was a great reminder of my Christian heritage. I often turn away from Christianity and the connection I have to it. Many of my experiences with Christians have been negative, but now I feel like I have to explore that side of my family and life. I need to learn more about my father's family and heritage.

Thinking about these things this weekend led me to the decision to attend Easter services in the the Old City. So next week, you can look forward to hearing about that!

If you like what you read and would like to support my journey, please donate at: gofund.me/joystar