Another day of karma-clearing and light-planting, but of course we have to make it fun, and spirit has to show us who’s in charge by upgrading the choreography, lighting, and direction, so that the coincidence-and-timing level is raised from mundane to awe-inspiring.

Yesterday I was ready to head out the door for a trip to Ramala on the West Bank, and I get a text from Jsu that J-R has said no to the plan. So instead I get ready for one of our hanging-out days (which only seem on the surface to be hanging-out days, but are actually carefully-timed chance meetings and setups).

A few of us take a walk to the old city and run into the owner of an Armenian restaurant, one of the big, warm, heart-centered macho types who fall in love with Jsu and can’t do enough for him. He stuffs us with more food than we can handle and won’t let us pay for it. Jsu mentions that he wants to go to Ramala in the West Bank, and the guy insists on picking us up the next day and taking us there.

Jsu has this knack for meeting people and being in the right place at the right time. And his open, childlike quality reels them in effortlessly, with no push, pull, or premeditation. I mention this to him and he says it’s the light and J-R using him, but the light can only use someone who’s open. A few hours after we leave the restaurant I go down to the hotel lobby and he’s in deep conversation with an Israeli singer-actress that he’s just met, who is one of the 750 remaining Samaritans. She tells us all about how the Samaritans follow most of the same religious beliefs as the Jews–the Mosaic law, the Torah, the same holidays, etc. But the Samaritans are the ones who stayed in Israel when the Jews were exiled to Babylon, and they claim a more direct link to the original Jewish religion, and also claim that the Holy of Holies, and the place where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, was not in Jerusalem but at Mt. Gerizim, which is in the West Bank area not far from Ramala.

As you might guess, J-R OK’s the West Bank trip for the next day. The machinery just needed a bit of tweaking. And now we’re having fun dreaming up a drama about finding the real Holy of Holies–our own Jewish version of the DaVinci Code.

Mt. Gerizim turns out to be a beautiful mountaintop archeological site that has remnants of the ancient Samaritan temple, and also later cities from the Hellenistic and Byzantine periods, as well as ruins of a Byzantine church that was erected when they conquered the Samaritans and razed their temple. In between taking selfies in front of the ruins Jsu lies down to meditate and concludes that, yes, this could have been the Holy of Holies, and I suggest that, just like in the DaVinci code, the Holy of Holies might have been the beautiful actress that we left behind in Jerusalem.

But when I close my eyes I just see lots of fighting scenes and figure that, as usual, we’re a cleanup crew and not metaphysical detectives. The history and metaphysics are just a ruse to get us there to do our work of taking out the garbage.

After Mt. Gerizim we drive through Nablus and Ramala. The difference from Israel is striking. It feels more like the third world here, with streets full of graffiti, trash, up-to-no-good young men and why-did-they-do-that architecture. But the graffiti has a political twist adjusted to the locale, with phrases such as “KIlling Palestinians is not kosher.”

As we head through the checkpoint back into Israel, I can feel the trip winding down. We leave in two days. Something in the energy is different. For a moment Jsu talks about going to the Dead Sea, an impractical idea late in the day on this crowded holiday weekend, and instead of his impracticality having the inspired, quixotic madness of spirit, as it has for the last month, this time it feels more like nostalgia for the long-distant past (actually a few hours ago) when spirit and J-R were carefully shepherding us through our preordained adventure.

Something has shifted, and at the restaurant later that day there’s a lot of talk about plane flights. Spirit moves fast, takes no prisoners, doesn’t look back, and doesn’t really know or care about any moment except right now.