Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Final Day in Cairo, return to Kochi & sundry thoughts on the trip We were afforded the rare luxury of waking up at 8am, having a leisurely breakfast and then getting on the bus by 10am. By the time our luggage had been identified and loaded it was a bit after 10:30 in the morning […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Cairo After a good breakfast which was a choice of continental and Middle Eastern food we got on the bus with Mehmood our guide explaining that our first stop is what any person who has heard of the Great Pyramids of Giza would look forward to visit with much anticipation, which summed up the feelings […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Travel to Cairo/St Katherine Monastery/Suez Canal/Cairo We were told that the bus journey from South Sinai to Cairo was going to be a long one, and to be on the bus by 8am. So we started on October 25th, the route was along the coastline of the Red Sea and the last part would be […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Transit to Egypt/Red Sea/Tabha Of the 10 days we were on the Holy Land trip, this day was one of the less productive ones as far as sightseeing was concerned. We were supposed to have been taken to the House of Bethany, home of the two women who took Christ in to their house and […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Mount of Olives/Church of the Ascension/River Jordan/Dead Sea At the crack of dawn we were up at the hotel that we were put up, not due to any time constraints as it was in the previous days but because we wanted to explore a bit of the Palestinian side, and with Shyni’s friend and coworker […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Church of the Holy Sepulchre/Tomb of David/Last Supper/Western Wall As each day passed it became routine for us to start out early, as  our two guides Bindu & Shehadi urged us to do so, after an early breakfast, usually by 6 or 6:30 in the morning. On this day in particular, we had a full […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Cana/Bethlehem/Church of the Nativity We started our day after breakfast early as usual, on the bus the morning prayers and devotional songs were sung and chanted. Our trip for the day according to the schedule sent out to us was going to be first to Shepherd’s Field – as the name suggests it is where […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Amman to Israel Again, an early start to our day after breakfast. Once settled in the bus, morning prayers songs were sung – our bus took us from Jordan to Israel and we started going through what would become routine on our travel security checkpoints, this one was at the Jordanian border into Israel. A […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Amman, Jordan Our day started out early, we had been forewarned by Bindu that this will be the trend for most of the days, the idea being to keep to the itinerary with some of the places that we need to visit being far apart. After breakfast, which was opened by 6 or 6:30 am […]

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Eapen Joseph Panicker on April 20th, 2019

Introduction by Rana: In 2013, we went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and I included several posts on our trip. Since then I have told quite a few people – mostly Indian Christians – that it was one of the more fulfilling trips that we have undertaken. My brother, Peter (Eapen Joseph Panicker) […]

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From Nazareth we traveled to Cana where Jesus performed his first miracle and turned water into wine at a wedding where the hosts had run short on wine. According to John 2:1-11: “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples […]

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From the Sea of Galilee we proceeded to Tabgha to the Church of St Peter’s primacy. In John 21, Jesus appears to his disciples for the third time after his resurrection on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The night before, Peter and several other disciples had sailed out on the lake to fish, […]

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One thing to keep in mind when visiting the Holy Land is that some of the sites most important to Christians are based on tradition as to their location in the context of the life of Jesus Christ. Occasionally, there are differing opinions as to the correct location of a particular site. One such example […]

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TJ on December 12th, 2013

We flew from Cochin to Amman, Jordan. There was nothing remarkable or striking about Amman. It is essentially desert – probably akin to areas like Los Angeles and Las Vegas many decades ago before development occurred and sources of water were either found or redirected to those cities. Jordan is primarily Muslim but Christians live […]

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It has been months since I updated this blog so our visit to the Holy Land seems a good reason to restart the blog. We returned earlier this morning from our tour and I will try and capture the salient parts both in terms of our visit to the religious sites as well as other […]

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TJ on January 30th, 2013

I grew up at a time when men were not supposed to cry …… and certainly not to do so in a public setting. It really was somewhat absurd because the expectation was that it was not “manly” to show such emotions and the thing to do was to repress them. Perhaps it was British […]

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TJ on November 30th, 2012

I am within spitting distance of reaching 67 years and although I don’t by any means obsess about aging, there are articles and discussions about aging that catch my attention in a way it would not have done a decade ago. It is in this context that a recent excerpt from Khushwant Singh’s latest book […]

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TJ on May 14th, 2012

I must confess that I am not overly enamored by some of the holidays celebrated in the US mainly because of the extent of commercialization that occurs. My biggest gripe is about Christmas which has lost all of its real meaning because of rampant commercialization – and I commented on this in in a prior […]

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TJ on March 27th, 2012

During our recent winter sojourn in Kerala, my sister and brother-in-law who live in Australia visited with us for a couple of days. We had an interesting discussion whether salvation is possible for non-Christians ………. and, in fact, whether any one who is not “born again” can achieve salvation. I told them – much to […]

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Life in Kerala – and, for that matter in India – involves a lot more social interaction than occurs in the West. This interaction occurs in different settings but one that occurs with frequency is attendance at baptisms, engagements, marriages and funerals. Birthdays seem to be less frequently celebrated except for special occasions like the […]

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TJ on December 27th, 2011

I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of the “near death experience” – known by the acronym NDE. Perhaps it is my belief in an after-life – even though I am not sure what form it takes – which accounts for this interest. After all, for someone who believes in an after life the […]

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TJ on October 30th, 2011

I am not an Anglophile …….. in fact, I probably have something of a bias against things one associates with the English. My attitude is largely because of the time I spent in the the UK as a student in the sixties when discrimination against anyone who was not white was rife in just about […]

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TJ on February 28th, 2010

The heading for this post is a well-known saying about how numbers can bolster a weak argument depending on how they are interpreted. Add to the mix the use of anecdotal information that can be cited to bolster a point of view and we get to a couple of issues that I have been involved […]

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TJ on February 10th, 2010

Christianity is believed to have come to Kerala in the first century AD when the Apostle Thomas, like other disciples, ventured near and far to spread the gospel in accordance with Christ’s command. There has been some speculation that the reason why St Thomas came to Kerala had less to do with converting the “locals” […]

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TJ on December 24th, 2009

I recently posted that Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday of the year. We are now into the Christmas holiday season and I would have to say it ranks low on my list of favored holidays. This is all the more surprising because when I was growing up in Kenya, Christmas was a holiday that I […]

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TJ on September 25th, 2009

One of the striking aspects about religion in the US is the number of churches, denominations and the high level of church attendance among the American populace. At a time when church attendance in the UK and parts of Europe is declining, it continues to remain relatively high in the US. About 40% of Americans […]

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