As the car cut through Sinai in the dark, I thought about the beginning of my own beliefs.
I hadn’t been captivated by the power and the love of God from the first time I stepped into St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge. But the barrel-vaulted ceilings, the biblical stories told in stained glass, the large crucifix behind the altar, and the homilies of our kind priest, Father Callahan, moved me. The more I learned, the more I trusted in God.
I acted on that belief in the real world, but, having lived through the ungodly horrors in South Sudan, having entertained death in my own house, my trust in God was gone.
Was God real?
Or was He all gilded myth tricked out in ceremony, illuminated by fear and stories and blind faith?
I had to know.
When my driver parked at the foot of the mountain, the sun was just rising. He said, “This is the best time to make the climb, miss. You’ll see.”
I felt very light as I began my slow journey up the 3,750 Steps of Penitence through the morning mist. I’d lost weight. I’d lost love. I’d lost faith. I was hardly there at all. Other, more substantial pilgrims mounted the steps with love for God shining on their faces and cameras in their hands.
Except for a water bottle and Tre’s rattle, I was empty handed. I had no expectations, but I was willing to be moved if God sent me a sign.
The climb up the staggered steps opened an increasingly higher and wider view of the mountainous landscape, lit with pale, slanting rays of sun and defined by deep shadows. And this magnificent view stretched as far as I could see.
I walked around the imposing stone walls of the church with my hands in my pockets, my thoughts on Father Delahanty, the priest who’d come to Kind Hands only to be murdered within his first week. He had asked God for forgiveness, but his final words were some kind of confession to me.
I’m here for you, Brigid. God has a plan for you.
How did he know? Was he speaking to God and for Him?
Or was he just crazy and deluded?
God. Are You here? Got anything for me?
I walked to the edge of the stone staircase and looked down the mountainside to where St. Catherine’s Monastery nestled between the clefts and crags, on a flat patch of stone far below.
St. Catherine’s is a working monastery and a holy place. St. Catherine’s remains are entombed there, miraculously intact after her beheading in the fourth century. It is also the site of the burning bush from which, according to the Old Testament, God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt.
I joined the throng of backpackers on the downward climb from Mt. Sinai to St. Catherine’s Monastery. I placed one foot in front of the other, making my way down the thousands of hand-chiseled stone steps, every single one of them reminding me of the steps that had been the death of my baby girl.
A college-age boy with a backpack tapped my shoulder and asked me to take his picture with Mt. Sinai in the background. After I did it, he asked me where I was from. Had I come to Sinai alone?
He couldn’t have made a worse choice for a pickup.
I said, “Sorry. No English,” and pulled the edge of my hood down so that it didn’t just cover my bald head, it deeply shaded my eyes.
I was a tourist in a place where I didn’t belong. There was nothing for me here.
My driver was waiting for me at St. Catherine’s.
I had a plane to catch.
Chapter 60
MY LONG day had started with a sunrise climb up and then down 3,750 steps carved into Mt. Sinai by penitent monks from St. Catherine’s Monastery in the seventh century. I hadn’t found peace or resolution or revelation, but I hadn’t quite given up.
Now, as the sun set on the Middle East, my plane landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. I was met by Nissim, a driver in a polished Lincoln sedan, who took me to my hotel in the modern section of Jerusalem.
My plan was to steep myself in Jerusalem’s Old City and the holiest sites of its three major religions. I’d been told that God’s divine presence never left the Western Wall and that this site, as well as the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, had been visited by millions of pilgrims over the last two thousand years.
If I couldn’t revive my faith in God in Jerusalem, it was truly lost.
At seven the next morning, Nissim picked me up at my hotel, and we set out for the Old City. Nissim had been a tank driver in the Six-Day War, back in 1967. He was a grandfather, a soldier, and a tour guide who claimed to know every niche in every wall of the Holy City.
We spent the day at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been built over the sites of Christ’s Crucifixion, burial, and resurrection and enclosed five stations of the cross.