My father died when I was very young and the Church of England became like a surrogate father in my early years, and I was a choir boy and altar boy. When I went away to sea and travelled the world, I met dedicated, honourable, and sincere people from all main religions and broadened my thoughts on religion in general. Today I’m a supporter of all major beliefs but still maintain my connection to the Church of England. I only tell you the background of my spirituality to put into greater context the following stories, which took place in Israel.
In 1985, I took my family to Jerusalem to stay with very old friends from Hong Kong. The husband was working for a subsidiary of Reuters in Israel and was well connected. During our visit, the Minister of Tourism for Israel was visiting Bethlehem and because of my friend’s connections, we were invited to join the Minister on a personal tour of The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem – on Christmas Eve. You couldn’t dream of a more noteworthy place to be on such an occasion, could you?
During that trip I’d hired a car so we could explore as much as possible including a trip to Nazareth through the Beqaa Valley and a drive up north close to the Lebanese border. At one stage, I got lost. So, I decided to follow a DHL van in the hope of finding my way back to Jerusalem. A few miles passed and all of a sudden we were just outside a secluded, hidden Israeli Military compound. I quickly turned the car around and tried to retrace my steps to Jerusalem. In those days, it seemed as though half the Israeli Army were hitchhiking from one place to another, as we saw lots of them thumbing for a ride. We pulled over for one soldier and he hopped into the back seat, with my children either side of him and his gun between his legs. Normally on long car journeys children tend to get bored and upset, right? In this instance, my children were dead silent for the rest of that journey.
The Golan Heights refers to a region captured from Syria by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. King Herod’s ruined palace-fortress at Masada was hugely impressive to see and comes highly recommended. But to get up there was truly something, especially as we had to walk all of the way to the top and back down.
One of our most memorable experiences on that trip was when I was approached by a tour guide called Mohammad at The Tomb on the Mount. After an initial tour of the mount, he asked how we felt about going through Ezekiel’s Cave – one of the old escape routes out of Jerusalem that was built long before Christ. The cave is also referenced as being where Christ took water to cure a man from blindness. My wife did not want to go but my kids were excited, so I had my four-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter with me when we ventured into the pitch-black cave with only Mohammad’s torch to guide us. The inside of the cave was very narrow and to illustrate that, I could touch both sides without outstretched arms, we were in flowing water. At one point, the water came close to my waist and my son’s upper chest. It took us about fifteen minutes to pass through the cave and I couldn’t help but be reminded who had travelled and touched those very walls. It was a very special and unforgettable experience and I am not sure if you can visit the cave today.
We were brought back down to earth when we got out of the caves and Mohammad suggested that we went to the famous St David’s Hotel for afternoon tea. We did, but we hadn’t thoroughly considered the fact that we were soaking wet. Thankfully we had dried off in the hot sun while walking to the hotel and enjoyed well-earned refreshments.
