#HolyWomenHolyLand: I Come to the Garden…With a Whole Group of Holy Women

We, ironically, began our interfaith tour at yet another very Christian place: the Garden of Gethsemane.

We wandered into the church at that site and then gathered next to the fence around the garden.  I tried again there to explain the significance of the place, and as I did I suddenly and surprisingly began to feel emotional.  Tears sprang to my eyes as I tried to explain.

Have you ever felt that your vocation demands more from you than you ever imagine you could give?  Have you ever known you had to do something hard, to keep telling the truth when everybody hates you, because it’s part of your calling?

I have.  I have.  I do.

As it turns out, all my friends in the group do, too.  It’s something that, despite our differences, we…all…share.

And it was the perfect way to start our deeply intense time together, because every single day we would find out again and again and again that we share a vocation: the vocation of helping people stay in the messy, difficult conversations that we all prefer to avoid, but that are the only way to peace.

A garden.  A vocation.  An internal struggle. A desperate political situation.  And the question we would be asking again and again and again for the next days together: where is God in all of this?