Who would think that Luton Airport was the take off point for St Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai? Well it is and here I am in Pret a Manger waiting to go through the departure gate to meet up with Aidan Hart and others who are choosing to spend a week discovering how to read an icon. Our Western eyes look at icons as art, as pictures which can please and uplift but they aren't art, they are word and this is why we call those who bring them to life, icon writers. It is the word conveying through image, the eternal story of man's relationship to his Creator. At St Catherine's Monastery there is are many icons, some familar to you like the early 4th Century icon of Christ Pantocrator, (means Saviour of the World). But there are extraordinary stories depicted: Moses and the Burning Bush, the Transfiguration with Christ elevated and seen with the great prophets but also viewed by the 3 disciples from the world which that Christ came to offer freedom to.
So, you can see that transfiguration seems to be a little way away from Luton Airport! But what is interesting about Luton Airport is the number of people passing through and their different reasons for doing it. Clearly all of us have stepped out of our own homes and we all have expectations of somehow transcending our everyday. The traveller going to sample holiday life at one of the Egyptian Resorts, the businessman looking for new business and the pilgrim searching for a glimpse of a transcendent spiritual reality. We all take our way through the same gates, visit the same cappucino outlets, munch the same croissants, are filled with expectation of a new and special joy.
I haven't used my blog for ages but I will take you with me, via Sharm al Sheikh still filled with the COP climate people, via Dahab where there will be those searching for an underwater odyssey and those just wanting sun, sand and a good time. We will travel by bus tomorrow down to Sinai and there will hope to arrive in time to meet Father Justin, the librarian, an unlikely Greek Orthodox monk who is American and was brought up in the Pentecostal Faith. He picked up a book on the Desert Fathers when he was at university and thought the life of one of these might be the ultimate adventure. He became a Monk in the US but then came to Egypt which was a great piece of luck for the Monastery which needed just such a person of great intellect, an ability with language so he can speak to the Bedouin helpers as well as intoning and knowing the great ancient Greek scriptures. He became the librarian of the Monastery and has overseen its complete renewal.. More of that with photographs in the week.
My flight is called. Off I go! But not just to the sea!
