Granny in the desert without her rollers! what does she find?

Several Desert Grannies and Grandpas

Our new home!

There were quite a few Grannies in the desert on my desert odyssey plus at least 4 Grandpas! and this, oh you grandchildren everywhere is  a bit about it:
Can you imagine 15 people who didn't know one another, whose average age was probably 70 meeting at an airport, taking a bus to the desert and becoming best friends in under a week.   I'm guessing this average age by adding in the youngest at 30 and the oldest at 83.  Anyway we were well beyond the usual age of the average rucksack carrying, jeans wearing, sun seeking person on the flight to Sharm al Sheikh.  Most of the people on the flight were there for a good holiday in the sun with bikinis and sunblock but we 15 with our average age of 70 and our borrowed (mostly) sleeping bags and mats and rucksacks were quite easy to pick out among the rest of the travellers because we mostly wore our walking boots which were too heavy to go into our borrowed rucksacks.
Our adventure was an adventure into Sinai and an adventure into Silence.  Our guides were two, Sara Maitland whose book Silence had inspired most of us to try this out and Abi from Wind Sand and Stars, a travel company specialising in historical and spiritual journeys.  We were all there in our new togetherness for an exploration of silence as a spiritual journey in a place whose history makes your eyes swivel in your head because it is so remarkable.

More Grannies on adventure

You know I couldn't take my electric rollers (see earlier blog on rollers in the Sinai desert) but hey, who needs rollers when our hair would be covered with it's new black on white keffiyah to keep the sun off our heads.  But were we all prepared for camping out under the stars right there on the sand on our mats with our sleeping bags?  Were we all up for the splendidly basic hole dug in the sand in a rather flappy tent for our basic outgoing needs?  Well, not exactly used to it but definitely up for it and after 5 days we all with our average 70 years could have managed months like this.  What we were prepared for but were still surprised by was the deep deep peace to be found in this magical place and the deep deep companionship we discovered amongst ourselves in sharing the deep deep peace.

Father Justin in the library

On our last day of venturing into Silence, we went to St Catharine's Monastery at the end of the Sinai peninsula, famous for its icons and for being the longest surviving Monastery in continuous praying and living.  We met Father Justin (click on the link to listen to him talk about the ark in the wilderness) an American monk with special responsibility for the library.  Only a totally universal spirit, (aka God) could have summoned out of the whole world a monk with such expertise and knowledge of the texts but also of the technology he would be using to make these texts available, to bring them out of the sandy boxes and shelves of the ancient place and actually put them on line for ANYBODY to read.  He told us about the way some scripts hid even more ancient scripts which had been overwritten but which with the modern magic now available could be read.  This is the magic of the real detective, one who can read hidden messages previously only done by holding texts up to the light or by  dripping ammonia onto the papyrus.   But now it can be done by our 21st century techie magic.   This form of hidden message is called a palimpsest and it made me think that seeing the hidden thing is the magic working and that requires knowing that there might be a hidden message.
I found that the whole adventure was a sort of palimpsest, it magically showed that under every Granny there was an ageless person, that in the desert there is a hidden wealth and that nothing is really just as it seems.  You may have to leave behind some of your old ways of looking as well as your electric rollers if you want to read the secret but it is definitely worth it, definitely definitely definitely!

our bedrooms where we have stars at night