Just when I thought my visit to the monastery was over, Father Gabriel moved closer and spoke in a whisper, his dark eyes glowing beneath the cowl of his order, "I have one more thing I want to show you." His quiet words echoed off the Refectory's vaulted stone ceiling, "But it is not in here. It is out there. Out beyond our walls." His dark blue cassock swirled as he gestured toward an open window. Moments later the monastery's heavy wooden gates inched opened, and we left its sheltering walls, stepping into the scorching landscape of Egypt's Western Desert. This unforgiving domain of shifting dunes, craggy rock formations, and sodium flats is inhabited by scorpions but not much else. Nothing lives there and little grows except stunted thorn bushes whose claw-like roots cling to rocky outcroppings. But somewhere out there, protected by the blowing sands of a desolate wilderness, was a treasure, and the Abbott and I set out for it wrapped in the stillness of an ancient land. Silence was not how my day had begun. Cairo's air is filled with the cacophony of automobile horns, hawkers and a million radios. One of the most densely packed places on earth, the city is a huge khaki blur of snarled traffic, crowded markets, aging housing, and sidewalk bazaars that tumble into every street beneath a perpetual pall of smog. How many people live there? 15 or 20 million. No one knows for sure. I left Cairo on the Sharia al-Ahram, a major artery that starts downtown, then crosses the Nile before heading westward out of the city. When I told my friend Sahar where I was going she said only an all-terrain vehicle would get me there. The knobby tires of my rented Land Cruiser growled on the asphalt. As I reached the desert, Cairo receded in the rearview mirror, and I felt my body begin to unclench, relax, and heal itself. After a while the roadside dwellings and drowsing hamlets disappeared until it was just sere white desert and cobalt sky, with the horizon's heat shimmer separating the two. An hour later I down-shifted at the 95 km milepost beginning a succession of turns onto smaller and smaller roads. From two lane to one lane, then to gravel, then to dirt. Finally I was bouncing along on a rough track of packed sand. Sahar had been right, and as I put the vehicle into four-wheel drive it kicked up a white powdery plume that hung motionless in the cerulean sky for miles behind me. Had I become lost I could have followed it back to Cairo. When the track dipped into a wadi, a cultivated natural depression, I had arrived at the Monastery of Dier El Baramus. A visit to the most remote outpost of the Coptic Christians, the desert fortress of El Baramus, is a journey back in time. In the first century, the ancient religion of the pharaohs had all but faded, and Egypt was merely a southern province of the Roman Empire. When the apostle Mark brought Christianity to Egypt in A.D. 48 it rooted in fertile soil, and Coptic Christianity (named for its early language) blossomed to become the faith of all Egypt. But the seventh century brought the irresistible wave of the Islamic revolution that washed over Egypt reducing the Copts to a tenuous nine percent of the population. Today the Copts are a small island in a Moslem sea, and although Copts live throughout Egypt, the monasteries are their spiritual centers. When I had arrived at the gatehouse, Father Gabriel was an excellent host, smiling and nodding as he examined the letter of introduction Sahar had obtained from a Coptic Priest. He showed me through the tranquil chapels, courtyards, and sanctuaries of this ecclesiastical village. We walked beneath the gray bell tower of a domed church as four monks passed us hurrying to prayers, and from deep inside a cluster of chapels plainchant echoed. Entering the fragrant kitchen gardens behind the Refectory, we found a pair of monks bent to their task of cutting kharoum (cabbage) soon to be part of midday soup, while the sweet scent of warm lentil bread, aysh baladi 'aads, rose heavenward from the bakery. I had entered a lost world. Like a flower preserved by the desert, the Copts have changed little in 2000 years, and when Father Gabriel ushered me into the beautiful Church of St. Maria I found the images in its ivory-inlayed iconostasis (altar screen) were all from the time of Christ. Copts even maintain the ancient practice of communicating with guardian spirits they call the Immaterial Fathers. But among these revelations, it was the secret in the desert that piqued my interest. Outside the walls, as the Abbott and I continued to navigate between gnarled mineral formations and cascading dunes, he revealed that there were small caves where hermit monks spent their lives in prayer. These were known as The Desert Fathers, regarded as living saints. The monastery sees to all the hermits' needs, food and water being regularly dropped off near each cave. We headed for an unused cave half a mile distant. Father Gabriel, protected by his flowing habit, strode on ahead of me. But after the first ten minutes, I was drenched with sweat. It was a long half mile. The cave was a hollowed-out section of ancient rock formation partially below ground level. Through our little sandstorm I could see it was very small, in fact too low to stand up in, like a tiny closet laid on it's side. It appeared barren and inhospitable, an interior version of the scorching landscape we had walked through. But I was drawn. "Is it permissible to enter the cave?" I asked, and the Abbott motioned me inside. Once I was inside, the cave was transformed. It was cool and calm, and I found the smooth rock walls were lined richly with candles and icons of the Coptic Pope and the saints. I seated myself on the thick blue carpet amid glowing brass braziers brimming with frankincense. A door had closed, locking out the world of heat and activity, and surrounded by prayer books and icons, I was in another realm. More amazing, there was not a sense of confinement, but of liberation. I felt everything I could ever want was at hand. How vast is the mother's womb as a baby is rocked during its months of slumber? The spirit of the Desert Fathers was palpable in the cave and their prayers hung in the air providing a great solace. As I settled into the stillness my senses sharpened. I could hear the slightest trickle of grains of sand, and saw the smallest detail of a brown beetle inching through a shaft of sunlight just inside the cave's entrance. The timelessness was enticing. I was suspended. There were no needs, no demands, no time, only a powerful and direct communion with God as a transcendent feeling of peace settled over me. I felt an exquisite sense of the sacred oneness of all life, of the visible and the invisible, of matter and spirit. Generation after generation of the Desert Fathers had imbued the cave with the great peace of their prayer in an unbroken lineage extending back to St. Mark’s mission to Egypt in the time of Jesus. I felt I could easily remain there for the rest of my life. Presently a deep voice broke into my sanctum sanctorum as Father Gabriel asked me if I was ready to depart. In truth I wasn't. I enjoyed being lost in this huge small world. While walking back to the Monastery for a midday meal of soup and bread, the Abbott paused and asked me how long I had been in the hermit's cave. "About five or ten minutes," I replied. He smiled and used the same sotto voce I heard when he first mentioned the cave, "You were in the cave for nearly forty-five minutes." The twinkle in his eyes told me he had seen the cave's effect on visitors before. We walked back the rest of the way in silence. Sahar had hinted about the possibility of being invited to the caves. Happily she also told me the protocol. "What ever you do don't ask to see the caves. Don't mention them. Don't even acknowledge that you know they exist. If you ask, you will be told no. You have to let them offer it to you. You see, it's a gift." John Hanson is a trained intuitive teaching clairvoyance at the Berkeley Psychic Institute for 12 years. He has traveled widely to thirty countries on every continent seeking spiritual, healing, and transformative influences and people.
• Access The region is called Wadi Al Natrun (Valley of the Natron). There are three other Coptic monasteries nearby, but Dier el Baramus is the most remote and exotic. If you don't have a letter of introduction, you can make a request at the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate. It's in the Abbassiya District at 222 Ramses Street, Cairo. Telephone number: 825-863 or 821-274. • Getting There From Cairo travel north on the Desert Road until you reach a Rest House at the 95 km point. Turn left and descend into Wadi Al Natrun proceeding through the village of Bir Hooker. The four Coptic monasteries are 5 km past the cultivated area, and Dier el Baramus is the one furthest north. • Clothing Long trousers and long sleeve shirts for men, and full skirts and blouses for women. No shoulders, arms or legs showing. Dress as if you are going to church on a warm day — you are. |