Our last morning
The morning of our last day together was radically different than all the other mornings, in that instead of waking up at 7:30, as we usually did, we woke up a full half-hour later, at 8:00. What joy...
We ate our breakfasts and slowly gathered for our morning circle where we had our final meditation session and shared our nighttime adventures. Afterwards, we went up on the roof of the hostel for a special group photo, overlooking Jerusalem, and came back down in order to pack our belongings and clean our rooms. Once that was finished we sat down to summarize our whole week’s experience. We started with a little game to warm up and then brought a couple of participants up to the blank board, gave them markers, and together we relayed to them all we had done during this loaded week, so they could write it down. When we were done we had filled the entire board with our many activities, and we observed just how much we had been through together. It was a powerful exercise in reflection.
We then gave out papers and colors and asked the participants to summarize their experience of our journey through drawing. After they had finished, we allowed each participant to share their drawings with the group and relate their experiences to us. Several of the drawings were very impressive, and some very meaningful things were shared. Many of the participants mentioned the great learning experience and the joy of this rare meeting between Jews and Arabs. One of the participants, who had drawn symbols of the three religions in a keyhole, said, “Together we broke the lock, experienced unity between the three religions and got to know one-another better”.
After this exercise, we checked what we had written about our initial expectations for our journey, and allowed the participants time to review them. Did we realize them? It seems that the answer was a big yes, as we had learned new things about our own cultures and those of the others, gotten to know new people and had had a lot of fun doing so. We then asked the participants to flip the expectations chart and write on them what we expected for the future from ourselves, the group, the program and the guides. This gave us some time to think about what we want to take with us of this experience and make of it, as well as giving us, the guides, an indication of the participants’ expectations for the future. Finally, we reminded the group of our meeting to conclude the journey on the coming Thursday and allowed for last comments before departing
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