V. A Quest for Peace: Kibbutz Sasa

(Continued)

A Quest for Peace: Kibbutz Sasa

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

 

After spending the night in a cold, early April rain without cover outside the walls of a Israeli settlement near the Lebanese border, I spent the second day walking for the entire day. Toward evening, I came over a hill and looked down upon a glorious scene. A kibbutz stretched out nestled in the hills of the Galilee. I felt I had found my City of Peace, Kibbutz Sasa.

 

Safed

Kibbutz Sasa became my home for the next few months. Perched in the beautiful Galilee, overlooking Safed, the birthplace of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) movement, I found the perfect place to experience first hand people attempting to live peaceable together. I recall looking over Safed at night, the stars populating the sky by the billions, while Safed glittered with night lights. I recall thinking that never has a more beautiful, more spiritual place ever existed.

The spring time in the Galilee is most glorious. Whenever I had free time I walked the throughout the hills around Sasa. Every month during the Spring the flowers changed, bringing a new chorus of delightful colors. I recall that the honey taken from the Galilee changed color every month along with the flowers. I often imagined what Jesus must have felt growing up as a boy in the Galilee, walking the same kinds of meadows I walked, through the hills I enjoyed.

I recall walking one day in the early summer heat through a wadis that wound from the Galilee to the Sea of Galilee. My route went through a desolate area. Beautiful grooves of trees thrived along a stream flowing through the valley. I went past Mt. Meron, to the southwest of Safed, past the small villages of Amirim, Kahal, Hukok, and finally to the Sea of Galilee just south of Capernaum. I believe that Jesus must have walked that very route from the Galilee to the Sea of Galilee, as it is desolate yet direct. Jesus' home village, Nazareth lay about fifteen miles southwest of Capernaum. He walked the region often during his too short thirty-three years on earth.

While living at Kibbutz Sasa, I dove into a study of the history of the commune and the kibbutz movement. I learned that at the end of the 19th century, Jews throughout the world began to feel a draw back to Israel. A movement sprang up, the Zionist movement, that promoted the return to Israel and the creation of a Jewish state. By the time of the outbreak of World War II, many Jews lived in Israel along side the Palestinians. When of  war of Independence broke out in 1948, 100,000 Jews had immigrated illegally into the British mandate of Palestine.

During beginning of the kibbutz movement in the early 1900s, the membership immigrating from Europe, the Ashkenazi, brought the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. They believed that the problems people suffer came from having parents, especially from the attachment with the mother, and ownership of property. At first, the community separated the baby from the mother and raised them at a community nursery without ever letting them know their mothers. In addition, the community did not sanction marriage. Every one was married to everyone. They rejected the idea of owning property or owning anything, including the "ownership" of the husband of the wife and vice versa.They upheld total equality between man and woman, making no distinction. The idea of keeping property in common had come from Karl Marx.

Over time, those radical ideas proved unworkable. Mothers wanted to know their children and the parents wanted to be husband and wife. The communal nursery continued but the children would stay at night with the parents. Parents married and lived together. The idea of communal work continued. Women shifted out of total equality of employment with the reality of pregnancy and child birth dawning. A crisis emerged with children growing up and leaving the kibbutz for life in the cities. The religious kibbutzim, which constituted a small percentage of the kibbutzim, had a much higher percentage of children remain on the kibbutz and proved more successful.

After a few months at Kibbutz Sasa, I realized that the kibbutz, although a noble effort and laudable attempt to create peace communities, fell short of the way for people to live together throughout the world. At about that time, during the summer of 1972, I learned of the filming of Jesus Christ Super Star in Israel and that they needed extras. That began the next stage of my quest for the City of Peace.

(Continued)

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

I. Quest for Peace: Peace Cities

Quest for Peace: Peace Cities

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

Finding a way for us to live together peacefully is a big subject for me. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I faced that issue while attending the University of Washington in Seattle. The world looked bleak then, at least to me.

The USA fought a bloody and unpopular war in Vietnam, democracy in a life and death battle with communism. Two of my brothers fought in Vietnam, with the 1st Air Calvary and the 3rd Marines. I belonged to the National Guard manning Nike Hercules missiles in the suburbs of Seattle. Our missiles had been tipped with atomic warheads in a desperate attempt to bring down Soviet ICBM's on their way to targets throughout the USA.

That opened the possibility of another, potentially catastrophic event. Doom's Day. The Nuclear Winter. The end of life on our planet through an exchange of nuclear weapons. I had the job of arming the atomic warheads, which gave me pause as veterans in the missile pits talked about the inevitability of our blowing up the world.

In addition to the struggle between communism and democracy/capitalism and the very real probability of our destroying the earth with nuclear weapons, environmentalists prophetically predicted an end of the world from over population and the destruction of our environment.


That was in 1971. Much has changed and much remains the same nearly forty years later. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Communist nations fell like dominoes. The Soviet Union fragmented, Eastern Europe regained it's freedom, China adopted "rich is beautiful" as their guiding star slogan. Only isolated North Korea and Cuba carry the banner for communism today. North Korea is building nuclear weapons and delivery systems hoping to scare the world into life-giving concessions for their dying totalitarian state.

Many nuclear weapons have been dismantled by Russia, USA, Europe, and China. Yet the nuclear club has been growing. Along with North Korea, Iran is building the ultimate weapon. We are still not out of the woods with nuclear weapons. We still have the prospect of nuclear exchanges, and nuclear terrorism, that could devastate much of or all of the world.

We are still in a dangerous place with the environment. The need to replace fossil fuel with fuels harmonious with the environment is obvious. Over population in Africa, India, China, South America is increasing exponentially. Forty years later, we are struggling to save irreplaceable rain forests, protect natural habitat for species threatened with extinction, while attempting to create jobs for people whose livelihood destroys those treasures.

The collapse of communism beginning in 1989 has given way to another, even more dangerous struggle. Islam has stepped into the void left by Communism's demise. Islam, like Christianity, seeks to convert the world. The clash between Islam and Christianity is as old as both those religions. What makes the clash new is nuclear weapons.

Radical Islamic fundamentalists have determined to spread their faith by terrorism, including atomic, biological, and nuclear terrorism if possible. Unstable Pakistan houses nuclear weapons highly coveted by the Taliban. The Taliban has a cozy partnership with Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda. Iran would make it's weapons available to anyone attacking the democratic world, including Chavez and Kim Jung Il.

So, in this troubling situation, on the eve of 2012, let's consider a new way of life. Enter Peace cities.

Peace cities. A grand ideal. Cities like Walt Disney envisioned when he conceived and created EPCOT (Experimental Prototype of the City of Tomorrow). Walt created EPCOT in Orlando, Florida during the race strife in the inner cities of America. He wanted to employ technology to create a safe, clean, healthy, efficient way of living together in the city of tomorrow. The section of EPCOT that hosts nations in a semi-circle around a lake displayed Walt's hope for a world of harmony among the nations and races and cultures of the world. "It's a small world isn't it" captures the dream vividly, as well.

Can we create peace cities from technological advances and cultural appreciation alone? No. Respect and appreciation are important, even necessary. But that in itself is not enough. We need to join in genuine community with others whose hearts are right with God. We will only find genuine peace with each other when we have God in our hearts. As John Wesley said: "If your heart is right with God, as my heart is right with God, then give me your hand." Peace only comes when we each know God.

Continued