February 23, 2002

Candles in the church of Elijah’s cave.

Shabbat Shalom. Today is Saturday, the Jewish day of worship. We had many shopping items to take care of, and figured that Haifa being the secular city it is would be ideal to finish our list. Wrong. For some curious reason, the malls were open, but none of the stores within them were (Marthame lost the bet).

Elijah’s ascension depicted in artwork on the ceiling.

Instead, we headed up to the top of Mt. Carmel. Marthame had taken his family up there, but Elizabeth had not had the chance to visit the nearby Carmelite monastery and the church of Elijah's cave. The place was more crowded than any of the churches we've visited in our time here, including an Easter-time Holy Sepulchre. The paintings on the ceiling depict many events from Elijah's life, including his ascension in a chariot of fire. Being a Hebrew Bible prophet, Elijah is elevated by the three faiths that predominate here - Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, and all three had come to pay their respects - or to gawk, whichever the case may be.

The view from Ibillin, Israel.

We then headed up to Shefa'amer to meet up with some friends from Scotland. They have come recently to work in Ibillin at Mar Elias College (after the Arabic name for the prophet Elijah), founded by Father Elias Chacour (and chronicled in his book Blood Brothers). These two have come to help found a school of theological education - they are hoping to make it a fully-accredited degree, but have met much resistance from the Israeli government (something with which Chacour is quite familiar) - it seems that, as an Arab institution, it will not be granted Israeli university accreditation. Nevertheless, they will go ahead to create an ecumenical training center for the priests and pastors of this land. They already have the backing of many bishops and seem to be well on their way to gathering an impressive faculty. We spent some time discussing and discerning possible points of contact in our ministries. We left feeling quite energized and recharged, as we often do after such conversations.