IV. A Quest for Peace: Community

(Continued)

A Quest for Peace: Community

I. Peace City

II. Spiritual Quest

III. America

IV. Community

V. Kibbutz Sasa
VI. Jesus Christ Superstar
VII. Christian
VIII. Kingdom in Israel
  IX. The Second Coming

I decided to travel south to Eilat, on the Gulf of Aqaba. I had heard that I could get work there and they enjoyed a milder winter. I worked on several construction sites, often with Bedouins. We did hard manual labor together, carrying heavy cement blocks in chain gang style. I earned enough money to continue my journey, continuing to seek for a way and place that people lived together peacefully. I suppose that I hoped to find a place like Thomas More's Utopia.

While in Eilat, I had a life changing experience. Talking with a friend about Goethe's Faust, I said that Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles, the devil, in exchange for knowledge. At that moment, a most startling and amazing phenomena happened. I experienced a little black demon, that looked like a baby, project out of my self in a cylinder and hover in front of me. The demon, standing in the transparent cylinder in full view, realized he had been completely exposed. He looked frantically around him, saw that he had no where to hide, and shot straight up out of the cylinder.

At that moment, I felt a total and complete release, like a geyser. I felt as if I had been liberated from a demon who had been living within me for many, many years. I had sold my soul for knowledge, too. I learned later that St. Anthony, one of the foremost desert fathers who had lived in Egypt, had had a similar experience.

I felt completely disillusioned. I had been following God, I thought, through inner leadings. Now I learned that I had been possessed by a demon, that my love of knowledge had been his hiding place. I needed a few days to pray and reflect in solitude about what happened and where to go from there.

That need for a place of solitude took me to a beach on the Gulf of Aqaba south of Eilat. This turned out to be another life changing time for me. During three days alone, I faced the possibility that I had been guided by a demon on my path to that time. That, like Faust, I had sold my soul to the devil for knowledge. I had to find what is true within me, to try to find God. I started from ground zero, empty and asking.


During those three days of solitude on that beautiful beach I confronted myself. I swam in the magnificent coral reefs, reefs that in 1972 had been unspoiled. Coral reefs that stood hundreds of feet high, magnificent colors, tropical fish of every color of the rainbow abundantly swimming in an among them. Dangers lurked, too. The Clown Fish, Lion Fish, Moray Eel, and shark inhabited the coral.

In addition to marveling at the astounding beauties of the coral reef, I confronted death and my craving for power. Curiously, Faust also sold his soul for youth and magical power. I seemed to have confronted the three most formidable obstacles to knowing God and peace, the three greatest temptations that can sidetrack us from God and God's peace: the fear of death, the desire for power, and the desire for knowledge.

I left the beach chastened, humbled, and determined to continue my quest for the city of peace. I had heard of the kibbutz movement and decided to make my way to the northern coast of Israel and join kibbutz Rosh HaNikra, founded in 1949 by Holocaust survivors. After staying a month, I decided to leave on Easter day, April 2, 1972.

I felt that God wanted me to move on but I had no idea where and God gave me no direction. I felt totally frustrated and abandoned. I recall setting up camp in an apple orchard close by the kibbutz to pray for direction. While in my prayer vigil, I read a book that had a profound impact on me; Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ. Kazantzakis painted a profoundly human Christ, one capable of nearly being tempted away from the path of the cross by the devil through the desire to live a happy family life.


I prayed and fasted for three days without any direction from God. I decided to force God's hand. He would either show me the way to go or I would die! I decided to hike along the Israel-Lebanon border, a dangerous place that usually only Israeli military traveled. I set out in the morning, making my way through the beautiful hills looking on to Lebanon. I had read that during the time of Israel's kingdom, forest of cedar spread across the hills of Lebanon. None of that now.

I came upon an Israel outpost with much activity going on. Talking with one of the soldiers I learned that they had killed two members of the Fatah who had sought to infiltrate and attack settlements across the border. I felt a sadness to be on the site where two men had died just hours earlier.


As I walked along the road, an Israeli army jeep pulled up and stopped next to me. A Israel lieutenant asked me what I was doing walking along such a dangerous road. I said that I am looking for God. He said, with a laugh: "You will find him in heaven when you die soon! You had better get to a settlement for the night." I walked the rest of the day until before sundown. Dusk fell as I approached the guard towers of a settlement. Concerned that they might mistake me for a Fatah, I decided to take cover in the underbrush well outside the town walls and guard towers. As fate would have it, a cold rain fell that early April night. Afraid that any movement in the brush would get me shot, I had to remain still. Finally, with the morning light, I could get up and move on.

Continued