A Deserter's Tale on Mt. Carmel

The Deserter's Tale is an account of a young man who walked away in the war in Iraq because of his  disillusionment about the war, the military service, his own future and his country. It is a sad but true story of the author and many young people in our time. I read it in my first year when I was living in Canada in 2007. It reminded me of the hidden brokenness of young generation that we seldom hear about, whether it was an established army in the west or Taleban jihad warriors about whose recruitment stories I heard when I was in Bangladesh.

Living for a greater cause than oneself -- being ready to give up one's life for that greater cause -- is a noble reason for living (and biblical reason too!). It creates paths of life outside the social norms and routines in the minds of young people when their imagination is fed by such noble causes and captivated by the visions of a world that is yet to come. However, the risks of such dreams are costly because the price young people pay is high if the cause they had given their lives for was not the true life giving cause just like the story Joshua Key tells in his memoir, The Deserter's Tale.

Throughout history both in the West and the East, the military service has repeated the same story to young and old, it is not new just to our time. The Carmelite Order began with one such story of disillusioned soldiers in the 12th century crusade. Defeated and wounded, they entered the caves on Mt. Carmel (thus named Carmelites) to pray and live in a communal life in the mountain instead of returning to Europe. Under the leadership of St. Bertold, they dedicated their lives to pray for peace and to live a simple life of contemplation, silence and solitude as a community with the rule of life given by St. Albert of Jerusalem. That's how the first Carmelite order was established and the Discalced Carmelite Order became better known to us by the two famous Spanish saints: St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

Last week my new Israeli friends took me to the top of Mt. Carmel, outside the city of Haifa to the south, where Discalced Carmelite Order Muhraqa Monastery is (click here to see more photos and information on the Monastery website). Mt. Carmel is one most famous place in Haifa that bears so much significant meaning from the Old Testament, especially relating to Elijah (1 King 17-19 chapters). Muhraqa in Arabic means "it burns" or "the Sacrifice" according to the famous story of Elijah fighting against the false prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:20-46).

the Entrance

The Chapel in the Monastery

There were many tourists and we were very surprised to see a group of Indonesian Christians in the chapel! The leader didn't speak much English but we were able to chat a little bit. I was moved to see them there praying because Indonesia is one country that has more serious Christian-Muslim conflicts going on than the Middle East and than what you can possibly know!

Indonesian Christian tourists praying

We then went up to the rooftop of the monastery where it is said that Elijah rebuilt the alter for the Lord and offered the sacrifice. It was quite moving to think that Elijah, the OT prophet, is highly respected by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. Therefore this holy place has been kept well by all.

View to the plain toward Syria standing on the Mountaintop 

Arab village near the Monastery

The story of Elijah in the Old Testament is not simply a fascinating war drama, but the most powerful depiction of how the Lord of Israel, the true God, restores Elijah and many other wounded heroes throughout history.

Elijah in his cave (1 King 19) - St. of All Deserters?
(one of the two Elijah icons in the chapel)

"What Are You Doing Here, Elijah?"

After the magnificent victory over 450 Baal's prophets, Elijah ran away for his own life from the evil queen of Israel. The suicidal prophet encounters the Lord of Israel in a very unexpected way: a small voice in the wind. The simple question of the Lord, "What are you doing here, Elijah?", penetrates into the heart of the wounded and deserted prophet and stirs up his heart once again. The voice restores his soul, ignites a new passion in his heart and captures his imagination again. What a great place to come and pray (and be prayed for by the everlasting Spirit of the living God)?

It is fascinating to me that some of the most influential monastic orders or monastic reform movements in history were led by disenchanted knights and soldiers who later in life became Christians. There's this Carmelites in the 12th century. The famous Benedictine or Cistercian monastic reformer of the 12th century was St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Although St. Bernard himself did not fight in the Crusades he supported the Crusades as the advisor for Pope Eugene III (Bernard regretted his support for the war later in his life). One of the most remarkable achievements of St. Bernard in my opinion was his administrative innovation in the monastery structures of that time in addition to his pastoral gifts and theological writings. He created a lay order within the monastic order to be able to receive returning soldiers from the Crusades so that they could enter the monastic life and dedicate the rest of their lives to prayer and simple life of community. The founder of Jesuit order in the 16th century, Ignatius of Loyola, was also wounded, disillusioned soldier before his dramatic conversion to Jesus by reading the New Testament. Not every monastic order has direct connection to Mt. Carmel and Elijah's cave, but they all have one common characteristics: Search for the quiet, small voice of the Lord who restores all human brokenness and lost hopes, and who is looking for faithful remnants in the midst of great noises of the world.

Perhaps this Elijah's cave has for centuries provided many soldiers, who were wounded by their enemies and disillusioned by their kings, with fresh hopes for a better world of the true King of kings. Out in the wilderness, they found their imagination captured once again for a new world to come. The story of Elijah, not only as a great warrior-prophet, but as a fragile human being as wounded deserted ( and suicidal) as he was in 1 King 19th chapter, has indeed restored many lives. And it still does.

That small voice in the wind. That is one reason I came to Haifa.

(Note: There's another place called, Elijah's Cave in the city of Haifa, which I have yet to visit!)

The Fear of Power and the Power of Fear

The ceasefire agreement was announced Wednesday night a few hours after a terrorist bombing of a local bus in Tel Aviv in the same afternoon. So a little over 40 hours have passed since the ceasefire went into effect between Israel and Hamas. The war ended, again temporarily, eight days after it began. There was a report by an Israeli radio that 20 rockets were fired by Hamas into Israel within first hours of the agreement, but since then it has been calm (at least to my understanding).

International medial again fill the news about how and who is going to provide humanitarian aid to the war-stricken Gaza. Just comparing the headlines of international media about humanitarian aid to Gaza, it sounds very much like the popular song by Abba, "The Winner Takes It All." (and the loser awaits outsiders' help for survival?)

Does the winner really take it all? Or who is the winner in this decades old conflict? It seems easy to think Gaza is the innocent powerless victim who can only survive by international concerns and humanitarian aid, and Israel is the selfish powerful winner. To make the matter even more culturally fit for some of you, it might sound politically correct to support Gaza, the have-nots, and criticize Israel, the haves. Does it really? I think it is way more complex than siding with one or the other. Some smarter people suggest that it might be useful to support an alternative view of "pro-two-states and anti-conflict" as some of the Arab states these days prefer issues of "interests" to issues of "ideology."  I find myself quite sympathetic to the view expressed in this blog, thanks to the author.

In search of deeper understanding on the complex issues in this region, I started reading various local sources of information and I must admit that Haaretz quickly became one of my favourite newspapers of the month. I have been following the news since the first day of the war and I must admit that it is fascinating to read this side of Israeli life and culture that are much hidden to the outside world. Israeli media are busy reporting different issues of aftermath: how much this war is going to cost Israeli people to recover and how to boost "business as usual" in the southern region (click here for an Israeli view on the war costs, and here to read a story concerning the life in the south whether one is a farmer or a business person).

Last night I was on the bus coming home after my small group meeting. Just less than 24 hours after the ceasefire, a little after 8 p.m., the bus was packed with people going home. What really stood out to me was that there were a few children and youth without their guardians accompanying them on their journey to wherever they were going. These Israeli young people on the bus - whether Jews or Arabs - seem to me just like any middle class children. They didn't seem like poor children who had no choice but to travel alone and risk their own safety like some poor children in many countries today. This one fact, no safe urban streets for children, is one development indicator that is often worse in developed countries than in developing countries. So I have developed this anthropological antenna to watch children on street wherever I travel. It took me a while to feel it's normal to see children traveling alone on the bus. It made me feel safe too.

Then suddenly it struck me what someone told me about Israel before I came here. She said in her past travels to Israel, she always felt that it is safer to be inside Israel than coming into Israel. In fact, I have not heard a single petty crime case on the news for the last two weeks since I arrived in Israel.

Today I received a parcel from a friend in the USA. I had to go to the post office to pick it up with my passport to give a full ID report. And this sticker was added on the box after four days of customs clearance in Israel and it says:

Dear Citizen - for your security!!! Do not open this parcel before verifying if you were expecting a parcel from this return address. Should you have any doubts, please inform the postal employee.

The fear of power and the power of fear. 
Perhaps one can measure who has more power between Israel and Hamas, therefore who should fear whom. At the same time, threats and fear of terrorist attack and suicide bombers are real in this part of the world. Again I have to reorient myself about what security concern means in this part of the word.

What Constitutes a Good Life in Israel

Just in case if you didn't know, Haifa is about 150 Km north of Gaza Strip. Just about two hour drive at a reasonable speed. But it seems so far away from what is happening in the south right now. Life seems normal and everyone seems to be calm. People in Israel must have the highest tolerance to uncertainty, chaos and crisis and are able to carry on. At least they appear to me to be that way. Life must go on no matter what.

After some research and conversations with my local friends, I discovered that this extraordinary calmness in Israeli people come from two sources: One is their deep faith in and longing for Shalom, the true peace that Yahweh is going to bring the victory and the final judgement (or I'd validate that by saying Yeshua won the victory on that weekend two thousand years ago). The other is this high level of prudence and preparedness Israeli people have for any unknown crisis. I think these are the two fundamentals of what it means to have a good life in Israel!

So I decided to follow the local wisdom and do some of my "due diligence" according to the local Israeli standard. This actually excited me, partly because of my professional background of helping and training people about disaster preparedness and contingency planning. I take these stuff seriously!

Here is the list of things I started preparing for myself in a backpack:

1. Store enough food (non-perishable items) in the house.
So I went to a local pharmacy to get some stuff. I was pleasantly surprised by the store I went into, first because of the familiar layout of the store, and then the store brand they carry - it is the same one as I used to go to in my neighbourhood in Vancouver. For my Canadian friends who are missing hockey games this fall, here's my attempt to bring a little bit of entertainment for you!

Granola bars from a familiar brand, Life

Super-Pharm, Israeli sister-brand of Shoppers Drug Mart (owned by the same family in Toronto!) 

2. Store enough drinking water in the house. 
I bought an Israeli brand water filter and filled a few bottles in the kitchen. Then I realized I'd never really learned how Israel built the water system in this desert land and be able to provide such good water. So I googled and read some stuff on Wikipedia and found out that Israel has some amazing water engineering and supply systems with the water they get from the Sea of Galilee, the rainfall in the winter, and desalinization. As the water (or lack of water) is a rising global issue soon in the next few years (yes, that will be the case, even more so than human trafficking today!), I am again awestruck by the prudence of Israeli people!

3. Get all your important documents, contact information in one place, easy to reach. Make sure to pack your cell phone charger, not just cell phone! 
Sorry no pictures for this one!

4. Familiarize yourself with the locations of bomb shelters in your neighbourhood. 
One impressive thing I discovered about Haifa is that the municipal government has developed a comprehensive city-wide plan for national emergency and it includes the plan of using the new Mount Carmel Tunnel as the public bomb shelters (click here to read the full article).

This - finding where the bomb shelters are - is something I haven't done yet and I am still very new to Haifa. So I am taking walks and run to places to learn more about my neighbourhood each day. In one of my walks these days I discovered something quite amusing that there are so many safety hazards everywhere and it doesn't take much to die on an accident - here or anywhere!

Propane cylinders everywhere in the streets and overhead power lines  with the sign

Close-up view of "Danger of Death" sign on the overhead power line

Sign hanging over grocery store (refrigerator): See the distance between the power line and the apartment.

The simple truth has just dawned on me again: Life on this side of heaven is fragile no matter what. 

Life is too short to worry about tomorrow. Be fully alive and fully present today, because tomorrow will worry itself. 

Shabbat Shalom, Yerushalyim!

It all depends on where you stand to look at the reality of life.

I was reading some serious reports on poverty in the USA a few days ago. Some 15% of American population live below poverty line and 10.5 million people were considered 'working poor' in 2010. This is a report worth reading (click here to go to Economist and read the full article and be sure to read the graphs carefully!). In a country where over 50 million people have no access to healthcare system, the number, 10.5 million working poor (let alone people living below poverty line), makes me sigh. That is almost 1.5 times bigger than the entire population of Israel and 3 times higher than the number of people in Gaza Strip and West Bank. This number (people living in poverty in the West) will only grow in the short term, though we do not know what the long term future might look like. Poverty, especially in societies where there are rapidly growing gaps between the poor and the rich, is a silent, slow killing of humanity compared to wars that make bigger headlines and louder noises in media news.

The growing poverty and economic decline (and other associated cultural changes) in the West is something I thought worth paying attention to, in this new decade, century, and millennium as we enter yet another civilization, which is still undefined to us. I wanted to look at these things from non-western standpoint, and thought the Middle East might be a better place to do just that than any other parts of the world. That (changing my location to view the reality of life) has been proved to be working for a completely different reason and so quickly!

After the news on Wednesday night that Israel killed the leader of Hamas in Gaza, my gmail inbox started filling with friends' emails with concerns for me because of the growing concerns over the conflict between Israel and Palestine - a decades old problem. Having arrived in Haifa only six days prior to that news, I realized how little I knew about the region and the history of the conflict. I quickly started reading various news sites and learned how many different views portrait not only different political positions, but different emotional languages (of course with visual images to stimulate our minds)! Nothing new that I need to remind you about these media play.

I found interesting to read to compare different views and the choice of language by different media was very interesting. Here are a few links I read/watched:

First, Haaretz, the most widely read daily news in Israel with a centre-left view (according to Wikipedia), has stories of somewhat balanced position, including one on the new military technology, Iron Dome, and how much it costs to have one in this war!

Al Jazeera has always interesting views coming from the Middle East. I found this 25 minute interview with three prominent leaders from Israel, Hamas and Egypt very helpful. Toward the end of the clip, it reports on how the Israeli Army is using Twitter to spread the news updates!

The New York Times has a series of five video clips on 'Challenges in defining Israeli-Palestinian Border' and the historical development of the conflict with views from the both sides.

After being here in the country just for 10 days, what do I say about this conflict?

Go with the local wisdom. 

This is something I learned and found to be priceless in any country especially in times of crises. I saw that during the big floods in 1998, and after 9/11 in 2001 in Bangladesh, and during South Asian tsunami relief in 2004-05 and the military Coup d'etat in 2006 in Thailand.

Yesterday at the Shabbat Service, the worship songs were all quiet, meditative and slow compared to the festive music we had last week to celebrate the Bat Mitzvah. It was because of this war going on in the south and 75,000 reservists were called. That means someone's husband, son, brother, nephew, or friend is called for duty. Several men in the congregation had to leave for the south this weekend. We stood and prayed for those loved ones to be safe and protected and that the peace of the Lord shall be declared in this land.

I wanted to hear more from local people, and their wisdom of living through conflicts like this and still call Israel a home they have chosen to return to. So after the Shabbat Service yesterday, I spent some time with my new friends, German wife and Russian-born Israeli husband (I won't disclose their names here). And I found his comments remarkably insightful and helpful for me to hear.

"The devil's strategy is to steal our attention to wars and fighting from the real issues of life. That (wars and fightings at the borders) is a very small problem compared to what we are facing in the Israeli culture today. We have a silent war going on here that is much more serious and larger. It is the growing problem of drug addiction and this is now killing many more people in Israel than the number of deaths by rockets in both Gaza and Israel together. We have to get our perspectives straight."

He's been serving at the drug rehabilitation centre run by his congregation for several years now. He's met many people, young and old, who are giving up hopes for living and giving into the battle of slow killing of self destruction.

After lunch, he read to me some of the Facebook discussion posts on the Israel-Gaza conflict issue and one particular post stood out to me:

Love your neighbour and bless the enemy. Vengeance belongs to the Lord (Rom 12:19). 

Being part of Messianic congregation and having faith in Yeshua makes all the difference in the land of deep conflicts because of different faiths. Another day of Shabbat ended and I really learned what the traditional Jewish prayer meant.

"Shabbat Shalom, Yerushalyim!"

Rain in Haifa

I love rain. As a child growing up in Korea, I loved playing in the rain (of course mom wasn't happy to see me all wet and to have to do laundry on a rainy day!). I discovered my love for rain, all kinds of rain, but especially the summer monsoon in the tropical climate of Southeast Asia after I moved to Bangladesh. When I lived in Bangladesh (1995-2001) and Thailand (2003-2006), I learned to live with rain and to love it, not simply cope with it. Due to the lack of civil infrastructure, heavy rain during the monsoon causes a lot of "inconvenience" to urban dwellers in many cities in Southeast Asia mostly coming from poor transportation design and poor sewage systems (I won't mention the details). But once you accept the reality and the goodness of the rain, little inconvenience becomes all part of your story!

When I lived in Vancouver, Canada (2007-2012), I also loved the forest we have in British Colombia that the rain forms and nurtures. In fact, BC has the third largest rainforest in the world which makes Canada a tree-rich and water-rich nation. Vancouver has often been named as the most beautiful city or most livable city in the world because of this natural beauty. However, I also learned that "the weather inside your head" can affect your mood, your schedule, your relationships, and just about anything all around you, more than the actual weather. I've never heard more complaint about the rain anywhere I'd lived before than in Vancouver. I've also heard a mental disorder (depression) called SAD (seasonal affective disorder) due to the lack of natural light because of the long hours of night and rain in winter. It is "sad" that the rain has become for many people not only an inconvenience to city life, but also a cause of mental disorder. I am not criticizing anyone who struggles with this kind of depression, but just want to point out the power of the cultures we live in today.

I didn't plan to come to Haifa just for rain, but I became excited when I learned that mid-November to January is the rainy season with January being the heaviest rainfall of the year (they get all the rainfalls during these two or three months for the whole year). And no one could plan such a timing as my arrival in Haifa 3 days ago that the first rain of the year welcomed me!

It's been only three days since I arrived in Haifa, but I am already loving my morning coffee and prayer sitting in my balcony while I wait for the rain to watch! Hopefully I will soon understand the patterns of nature in this part of the world in this Mediterranean rainy season.

Here's my attempt to capture the hourlong-rain-show in the sky today with a few photos from my balcony this morning!

10:01 am. Dark cloud moving toward the city

10:10 am. City centre under the cloud (probably raining)
The tall building with a pointy top on the left is the City government building.

10:15 am. It started raining in my neighbourhood - still quiet and few drops.

10:27 am. Getting heavier and louder

10:29 am. Heavy downfall in the whole city, but white clouds over the  Mediterranean Sea 

10:55 am. Rain stopped. Blue sky with beautiful white clouds. 

If this rain is indeed cyclical, I assume there might be another downfall in the late afternoon and heavier rainfall at night, will see!

My first Shabbat celebration and Bat Mitzvah

Leon's family came to pick me up to join their Shabbath service in the morning. The congregation members are mostly from Russia so the service was bilingual - Hebrew and Russian. 

Sing in whatever language you can read!

Jewish worship includes joyful dance of young and old - all are welcome. 

Today was a special service because one of the girls in the congregation had Bat Mitzvah (see this for more info). We see the traditional event of Bar Mitzvah happening in Jesus's life (Luke 2:42). The modern Judaism included girls in the tradition, so this is now called Bar or Bat Mitzvah, which means Sons or Daughters of Commandments. This is a ceremony of coming of an age: to be responsible directly before God for their understanding of Torah, the law and the commandments. In some protestant traditions like Presbyterian or Lutheran church, it is like 'confirmation' children, who received infant baptism, do to confirm their own faith before God at the age of 13 or 14.

It was a great opportunity for me to learn about the faith tradition of Messianic congregations. Today's sermon was on the life and death of Sarah, the mother of faith, in Genesis 23, from which the girl was reading in Hebrew.

The girl is reading the Torah before the Rabbi and an elder.

Explaining what she read in Hebrew (the Rabbi translating to Russian for the older members of the congregation)

At the end of the presentation of her understanding of the Bible, she included her own thoughts quoting from 1 John (a passage from the New Testament!). What a powerful moment to witness to the faith of the NT-beliving and Messiah-following Jews!  

Elder holding the Torah after the reading.

Mother's testimony of reading a poem about the birth of the girl 12 years ago. 

Giving thanks to the teachers of Shabbath School (like a sunday school).

The whole congregation watching a powerpoint presentation
of the girl's memory of special moments in the 12 years of her life.

Whenever I am in the cultures that care less about 'clock-time' but go with the flow of life events, I find people enjoy themselves in the long hours of worship and fellowship as a congregational life. I feel some mystical sense of rest and relief that I don't have to look at the clock. The cultures where I am from (Korea and Canada) have long lost this culture but we live by the cruel punctuality of counting seconds, minutes, and hours. What is sad to me is that often people's values and identities are determined by the amount of money they can make in these terms! 

With my cultural glasses on I counted the time on what I saw today: we spent nearly an hour, close to one half of the whole worship time to celebrate a girl who was coming of an age and to confirm her faith before God as an independent believer in the presence of the whole congregation. This does not happen where I come from. We say with our mouths that children are special, but we do not live that out in our time commitment. 

Here today I witnessed how Jewish tradition values children and their education without a word being told about it. An ancient wisdom from Africa or some distant land I heard before rang true today for me: It takes the whole village to raise a child.

Russian Jewish celebration never ends without feast! 

My first Shabbath in Israel ended as the Sun went down a little before 5 o'clock in the evening. As we were driving home the road was still quiet and empty. Leon told me that Sunday is very different, much heavier traffic everywhere as people go back to their work on the first work day of the week. I am eager to see people working in the city known for its labourers and industrious people! 

Welcome to Haifa, Welcome to Rainy Season!

I arrived in Haifa, Israel on Friday, November 9, 2012 at 5 o'clock in the morning after 1 hour long train journey from Tel Aviv. And before that, I was on the plane for a little over three hours from Kiev, Ukraine with almost no sleep from 11 pm to 3 am.

This is my first visit to Israel. When I told friends that I was coming to Israel, many reacted with excitement, curiosity and some with envy, especially when I said I was going to stay for six months. The next question people asked me was this: Why Haifa instead of Jerusalem? 

This -- why I chose to live in Haifa, not in Jerusalem wile I am in Israel -- is one of the few reasons I am starting this new blog after my first blog, En Route to Fukushima that I started during my first trip to Fukushima one month after the 3/11 triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami and then ongoing nuclear crisis) in 2011.

I arrived in Haifa 132 days after I left Vancouver, Canada via 34 cities in 9 countries in North and South Americas, Asia and Europe. I came to Haifa with amazing stories of some unknown local heroes of faith in all these places to write about while I try to rest, pray, learn some Hebrew and make some local friends. And of course I shall enjoy the great Mediterranean cuisine that Haifa offers! (then why did I buy Japanese miso at the supermarket yesterday?!)

It started raining when I got off the train at Hof HaCarmel station(yes, this is the same Mt. Carmel of 1 King 18th chapter in the Bible) and it was still dark at 5 am. My local hosts, Leon and Nina, came to meet me at the station.

"It's the first rain of the year that we've been waiting."

What a great welcome, I thought, that I came with a good news of rain. Do people in Haifa feel about the rain still the same way as the people of Israel waited for three and a half years on that day of great victory Elijah won against the false prophets of Baal a few thousand years ago? I don't know. I will find out.

Leon and Nina are one of many Russian-speaking Jews who left the former Soviet Union after the collapse of the USSR and Haifa is the city most Russians have settled in Israel.

People in Jerusalem pray (due to many places with religious significance).
People in Tel Aviv play (due to high concentration of young people and universities).
People in Haifa work. 

Haifa, the third largest city and the largest international seaport in Israel, has gained this reputation of industrial focus with its blue-colour working class majority. Let's see how I rest in the city of working people!

Take a peek! (View to the industrial area from my apartment before the sunrise)

View to the Mediterranean Sea and the port from the balcony of my apartment in the morning 

A main street in the industrial area
(shopping mall in the right, and the hills of Mt. Carmel, residential areas at the back)

I slept for a few hours in the morning and Leon and Nina came to pick me up to go shopping for my apartment before all shops closed for Shabbath. Then we went to a Shawarma restaurant run by an Arab family for late lunch in one of the main streets in the industrial area. Leon said to me, "During the war with Lebanon in 2006, missiles flew back and forth over this road but only a few people (less than ten) were killed." Praying for Shalom does feel different when you are in such a place like this.

For the first time I learned 'pita pocket sandwich' is only for kids, not for grownups!

Nina and Leon at the abundant table of Shawarma and other delicious food!

First rainbow after first rain on the hill in the late afternoon
(Beautiful landscape of residential areas on Mt. Carmel)

View to the port at 10 pm (or the state of my mind at the end of the long first day in Haifa)