Field Trips

We have been lucky to join a number of well crafted field trips run by the Tantur Institute's continuing education program (mostly for priests, ministers, and nuns on sabbaticals of their own). They are usually organized around some sort of theme, time period, or biblical narrative.

Our most recent, with pictures on the side and posts below, involved visiting three desert monasteries-- yes, count them, three desert monasteries!-- all in one day: St. Gerassimos near the Jordan River, the Monastery of Christ's temptation, in the cliffs above Jericho, and St. George's monastery, high up in the Judean desert.

Other trips (some posted below) included: Masada, Qumran, and the Dead Sea, all in a day; a walk through three historical periods, with overlapping archeological evidence, of Jerusalem (the time of Kings David and Solomon and the first temple; the time of Herod the Great and the second temple; and the old city today in its present form, dating back to late medieval and later Ottoman times); a visit to Herod's summer palace, Shepherd's field, and Bethlehem (all connected by the Nativity story); and a walk from the top of the Mount of Olives down onto the Via Dolorosa in the old city and ending at the Holy Sepulchre-- so roughly tracing events in the last days of Jesus' life.

We have yet to get North-- into the Galilee, the Golan Heights, or Haifa, but we hope to next month.