For millennia spiritual traditions have associated the desert with a place of encounter with the divine. In Egypt, the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the early church deeply nourished the Christian tradition with their lives, their meditations and their writings, which bore many spiritual fruits for the world.
I have always been fascinated by monasticism and I did not expect my recent travels to take me to a place reminiscent of this ancient desert experience.
As part of my work in interreligious dialogue, I went to Egypt last month with the Gingko Interfaith Fellowship. The fellowship gathers emerging theologians and community leaders from Middle Eastern, North African and Western countries each year for a retreat, with time to deepen friendships and mutual understanding of each other’s faith tradition. This year’s group was composed of 12 fellows, mostly Muslim, Christian and Jewish.
A Jewish and a Muslim colleague and I were asked by the organizers to run a two-day workshop on the topic, “Dialogue in Time of Crisis.” They decided a retreat center in the Egyptian desert would be a good choice to enter into deep conversation on this theme.
And indeed it was.
None of us knew about Anafora before we arrived. The retreat center and farm, located on 127 acres, is a project of Bishop Thomas of the Coptic Orthodox Eparchy of El-Qussia and Mair in Upper Egypt. Construction began in the late 1990s. It has conference rooms, guesthouses, classrooms, two churches and an amphitheater.
“Anafora” comes from the Greek word that means “offering” or “uplifting.” It is also a general term to refer to the eucharistic prayer in the liturgies of the Christian East.
The mission of the retreat center, as articulated by the bishop, is to uplift “every person, the whole person” and to be a place of new beginnings, communicated in the center’s logo, a bird, which is the first letter, the alpha, of the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet.
Cornelia Moposita Telenchana had her new beginning at Anafora. She came to the center from Germany two years ago and decided to stay on as a volunteer.
Twenty Coptic Orthodox religious sisters and one novice who live in a monastery on the grounds operate the center, providing hospitality and formation. Twelve lay women, 10 lay men and two Coptic Orthodox priests live on the grounds as well, forming a stable community that assists with hospitality, agriculture and formation, she explains.
“We also have volunteers from different countries and some girls coming from Quesyya (Upper Egypt) to help and learn hospitality,” says Ms. Telenchana.
At evening prayer, our group discovered we were not the only guests. Individuals and groups of young people from different countries — a regular occurrence at Anafora — had come to spend time in prayer and meditation.
The prayerful atmosphere was very conducive to the experience our fellows were seeking. All day we discussed conflict — and specifically the current conflict in the Middle East — and approaches we could use to navigate these difficult times. We introduced fellows to active listening and modeled a conversation around the topic of conflict. We worked on personal narratives about conflict to give people the opportunity to reflect on how they live conflict, and opened the space for exchanging views and experiences. We followed the well-known Chatham House rules, aimed at encouraging open discussion, and we worked to create what we called a “holy ground” to exchange with respect and faith. Throughout this process, prayer and spirituality were our lifeline, and the center helped us to live this dimension in our diversity.
As part of our retreat program, we organized an Anglican liturgy, celebrated by our Anglican priests, and the Anafora community did not hesitate to open the doors of their church for us. During this liturgy, I was moved to tears by the privilege of carrying a large, leavened bread — which the sisters had prepared for us for that purpose — in the offertory procession. The next day, in the open air, our Jewish fellows led prayer in the afternoon and our Muslim fellows led the sunset prayers.
The two churches on the grounds are open throughout the night. One night I went alone to pray in the larger church, which I had not yet visited. The lights were on; two nuns were outside working on a painting, and they welcomed me. My little knowledge of Arabic helped me start a conversation with Sister Marta, who has been living in this community for more than a decade. She paints murals of biblical stories beyond the well-known passages frequently depicted in churches.
She asked if I wanted to enter the church and I said yes. We took off our shoes. The emotion I experienced when I stepped into this holy place was profound. I was immersed in a place imbued with Scripture, prayer, the hard work of the community inhabiting it, and faith.
Those days at Anafora — touching another Christian tradition, breathing it in — was a gift. I was extremely touched by the community’s openness to our group. I could experience the depth of the Christian East everywhere — in the evening prayer and in the artwork that helped my own prayer. At the same time, our group was warmly welcomed in our religious differences.
To be in this space that emphasizes faith and spirituality while discussing the ongoing conflict in the Middle East was extremely helpful and a blessing. Hospitality was key. The monastery’s open doors modeled the spirit of fraternity and social friendship Pope Francis calls us to in his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” published four years ago today on the feast of St. Francis in the Latin tradition.
Differences are not to be feared; differences open to richness if we are ready to look at them with respect and openness.