Our whole life a path to physical roads, roads of mind and heart. How many and how great favorite tracks, important for me, how many people and how many experiences, come to my mind of my so many visits to projects in recent years, when asked to write about them!
Each trip so precious!! Each destination and a unique project! Each cooperation so important!! Each time written in my memory, pops in mind from place to place through memories and feelings. To talk about the first trip?? Say the first project?? To describe the strongest feeling?? As memories unfold the image that prevails in me is my climb about twenty years ago in St. Top of Mount Sinai.
It wasn’t a business trip but rather an internal need at a difficult time for me where I wasn’t supposed to travel. This trip gave me the strength to begin shortly after my return, the creation of this company who has worked with all the important people, who implemented some of the most important cultural projects in our country.
We started three women. Three girlfriends. My friend S. who had worked there as a volunteer dentist and with her descriptions created the need to find myself in this Holy Site, my friend K who was one of the closest people of my heart too. From the glebe of St. Catherine in Cairo, where Father George welcomed us (I could speak for his great soul for hours) we traveled with a group of students of the Greek school of Cairo to Sinai. We crossed many kilometers in the desert and no photo can deliver the image of the monastery of St. Catherine in the heart of the stone valley at the end of our journey. We were accommodated in a small hostel of the Holy Monastery and the middle of the night we started our ascent to the Holy Top under the starry sky in the company of other pilgrims, Bedouin and camels on a dirt road surrounded by steep rock volumes. The 3.750 final steps of this difficult and laborious ascent, were built by the monks and lead to where God’s commandments were given to the people.
A landscape untouched by time. We reach the time of sunrise, that pops like a flame behind the granite peaks and hear chants of the faithful who had preceded. It was blowing a cool purging air. A dead wasteland full of lively Faith. I felt that since I found the strength to reach this sacred place that would be able to find the strength to achieve goals that only I dreamed.
This feeling can only be expressed with a cry and a strong hug and it can be a great blessing having people next to us in these moments. Our God created us to be robust, strong and filled with His Love. As the bright light of the sun bathes the rock, it is locked within us the blessing that we felt, and begin the return to the monastery and throughout the rest of our lives.
