brb and Traveling Mercies

08 Jun

Emile and I walked to dinner on Monday night. Finally, the restaurants were open and the streets were teeming with traffic of all sorts. It was as lively as Campo dei Fiore in Rome on a summer night. Beirut is back!

Walking down the Rue Gouraud, the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque was lit up in front of us. The muezzin called the prayer. It was breathtaking, and my cropped view of the dramatically lit columnar minarets visually reminded me of the turrets of a Bavarian castle. I was thrilled to hear the call to prayer. A drawback of our hotel location deep in the Christian side of Beirut is that mosques are too far away. When I mention this to fellow non-Muslim travelers, many agree that they find prayer call poignantly compelling and deeply resonating.

Beirut is a web of connections and contradictions -- frequently strained, and shred with great frequency. Still, many of its layers of coexistence are as visible as the skeletal structures of old buildings that stand performing their functions despite the loss of their skins to fifteen years of civil war. Emile and I, who met 3 days ago in the freeze-frame of a shared hotel in a paused city, discovered an uncanny connection. This past Memorial Day weekend, my church hosted J. Phillip Newell, who is a scholar on Celtic spirituality. My absorption of his serene insights on the importance of being present to the moment calmed my pre-trip apprehensions. While I jumped at the opportunity to attend the Beirut Exchange, I still had to manage my anxiety at traveling to a chaotic locale. That morning, Newell's words released my worries. Should a calamity occur, I would strive to be present to it -- rather than succumb to fear and panic. It was comforting to have a plan of behavior. Emile asked me to repeat Philip Newell's name, and then told me he had met him on a plane from London to New York recently. We realized that we each had an autographed copy of Newell's new book called Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation. Small world.