Mount Sinai: Modern Pilgrims

Mt. Sinai: by connecting the scriptural narrative to a tangible spot, the story became for me less real but more beautiful.

Today I visited the traditional Mt. Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine. We left Dahab about 11:00 PM and arrived at St. Catherine about 2:00 AM to begin our trek to the summit.

It was an easy walk, except for the last bit, stairs nestled among the climbing boulders. The moon illuminated everything with a soft, white light. Many of the tourists carried flashlights and wildly flashed them around, appearing almost like old-time bands of pilgrims with their tapers.  The lights were completely unnecessary, however, and largely detracted from the soft grays and sharp silhouettes of the mountains.

The camels in particular proved picturesque, dark shadows against the evening sky, treading along the ridgelines above and threading their way toward the summit.

I caught myself several times imagining what it would have been like when Moses climbed it (if indeed this is same mountain)—the rugged path he must have followed (prior to the easy, well-worn one that I was climbing), the sights and sounds of the children of Israel spread out in the valleys below, the cloud hovering over the mountain... And then, there was the golden calf: Moses rushing down the mountain, wroth beyond measure and hurling the Ten Commandments to the ground. The stories flashed by, vivid, but disconnected from what I saw.

When I reached the top, the new day was beginning to defuse a red glow on the Eastern horizon. Slowly, the sky lightened; the peaks stood out black and sharp against the soft blue-grays of the valleys. And then, there was the sun, rising steadily and spreading light and warmth (it was cold on the peak) across the world and etching out the mountain tops in a golden light. That sight alone was worth the trip. Mountains spread out in all directions, brown, craggy rocks, given new life by the rays of the sun. On the peak, the light caught the church, highlighting the cross against the sky.

In that moment, all the sights and places I’ve visited in the past few weeks, the Pyramids, the massive Temple of Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, seemed strangely insignificant baubles.

And then it was time to go down. I’ll probably never revisit Mt. Sinai, but somehow I think the memory of it will remain etched in my mind. At least for today.