II. A Quest for Peace: Spiritual Quest

(Continued)

A Quest for Peace: Spiritual Quest

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

How can we create Peace Cities? How can we create a community in which everyone lives peacefully? How can we create a nation and a world in which everyone lives peacefully?

With just six credits left to graduate from the University of Washington in 1971, I decided to try to find an answer to that question. I sold everything I owned, including my cherished 1970 baby blue Volkswagen bug, and bought a one way ticket to London. That began a six month journey around England, Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and finally Israel.


Every day when I woke, I asked God to lead me. I lived day by day and slept in the Blue Sky motel. I lived on $1.50 a day, cooking my own food on the butane burner that I packed with me. I had a pack that weighted eighty pounds when I began, about sixty pounds books that I wanted to read in college but never had the time to read.

As I traveled Europe and the Mediterranean, my pack got lighter and lighter. After I finished a book, I gave it to a fellow traveler. I belonged to a loose fellowship of international travelers, the global Woodstock generation. We shared what we had, including our time and stories, love and peace, trials and tribulations. We felt a bond that transcended our nationalities, races, and languages. We felt the stirrings of the global community.

In December 1971, I flew from Istanbul into Israel. I looked at Israel through my airplane window, feeling myself swept over by a wave of joy, happiness, and peace. I felt that I had finally come home. I spent the next fifteen months searching for peace in the home of the world's three great monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The search for peace first begins with myself. Although I had been baptized Catholic and Methodist, I had never embraced the Christian faith. Instead, I had embraced Vedanta Hinduism and Zen Buddhism while at the University of Washington. I had studied Christianity but it had just not rung my bell.

I spent my first days in Jerusalem, the city of peace. That's what Jerusalem means in Hebrew. That was extremely fitting for my quest to find a place where people could live together in peace. The Israelis even greeted me with the salutation "peace" (shalom). Lovely.


I traveled around Jerusalem a number of days, walking around the city, visiting the holy sites. I will share one especially memorable experience with you. I walked to the Mt. of Olives from Old Jerusalem. I went to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed, while his disciples slept, that God would let the cup he had been given to drink pass from him. The place where Judas betrayed Jesus to the Jewish soldiers sent by Caiaphas, the High Priest. Olive trees nearly two thousand years old still stood.

I walked to the nearby Mount of Olives Cemetery with a view of Old Jerusalem. The care taker kindly greeted me. He shared with me about the cemetery, about his experience during the Israeli War of 1948. He had been caretaker at that time, twenty three years earlier. His story of bombs dropped, tank battles, machine guns and rifle fire made me realize that Jerusalem, far from being a city of peace, has been a city of war.

The experience of the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives Cemetery war story fresh on my mind, I walked to the top of the Mount of Olives. I looked over Old Jerusalem, onto the Dome on the Rock and the Golden Gate. The words of Jesus came to mind as he wept over the city of Jerusalem: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matthew 23:37)

I began to think of all the suffering in the world; the poverty, war, disease, starvation, racism, religious wars, genocide, abuse of children and women, broken families, broken nations. I began to sob uncontrollably, saying: "Heavenly Father, please send your son to save the world!" At that moment, I had one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life.

I felt a presence come out from me in the shape of my body and saw it move down the mountain toward the Golden Gate. It appeared aglow in holy light. As that figure in the shape of a man moved down the Mount of Olives and toward the Golden Gate, it grew and grew until it became a giant. It approached the Golden Gate as a giant figure of light and passed through the Golden Gate into the temple area. I felt ecstasy and joy. The message had been clear: God would send his son to save the world!

Continued