Unitarian Universalists of Sterling

Israel has called my mother for years. It has been her dream to walk the old city streets of Jerusalem and wade into the dead sea. I am certain she has imagined, if not the sights themselves, then the way they will make her feel.  My mother is Jewish, and that is some of the call of Israel, but more so she is drawn to the beauty, as am I. When I say beauty, I don’t mean “easy to look at,” or “fine,” I mean the same depth of meaning and capacity that I find in the books of the Bible or the Complete Works of Aristotle. This is the sort of beauty that does not dull with age, but is built of age, of layer of meaning, piled on layer of meaning. I mean the same kind of beauty that I experienced in Turkey when I visited a Church that had been a Mosque that had been a Synagogue.  The beauty grew from the treatment of the interior facade. The remnants of the last holy purpose were not covered over, but left as a testament to the depth of meaning that flooded that hall.