Wadi Natroum

I live in a war zone. I don't see (attractive) women for months at a stretch. I go on an all-inclusive "comfort" tour. The hotel in Alexandria is named "Alexandria Mercure Romance." My room is on the top floor, has a view of the harbor, and a single king size bed. All this would be perfect if I were with a female; however, I'm traveling with my friend Dave, and thus share a room with him. The universe is mocking me.

Today is a light day. We need only visit an historic monastery and check back into our hotel in Cairo. In the van, thrilled as I am to be around an intelligent person again, I babble at Dave. His restraint is remarkable. He does not punch me in the throat to shut me up, though I no doubt sorely tempt him.

We stop approximately half way back to Cairo at Wadi Natroum. In ancient times, Natron, a saline mixture used to mummify, was harvested/mined here. We're not here to dabble with that though. We're here for the monastery.

Monasticism was invented in Egypt. Wildly pious (or possibly extremely crazed...or possibly both) monks would plop themselves out in the desert to contemplate. A cottage industry was born. Monasteries spread like wildfire. We have much to thank monks (and the mendicant orders that sprung from them) for. Their diligent scribbling kept alive literacy and faith in the Dark Ages. Urban II, a former Cluny monk, launched the First Crusade. Friar Bacon gave us gunpowder. Rasputin was a monk. St. Benedict. The Society of Jesus. Trappist beer. Say what you will about the robes and tonsure; men who hate "the world" have had a hell of an impact.

We get our very own monk guide at the monastery, a Coptic monastery. "Coptic" is a corrupted label that means Egyptian. Now all in Egypt speak Arabic, Christians and Muslims alike. "Coptic" also is the name of the ancient Egyptian language, transliterated with the help of the Greek alphabet and five or six extra letters. Coptic survived as a spoken language, in isolated pockets, until the 1800s a.d. Now it's dead save for certain church ceremonies, much like Latin in the Roman Catholic church. Egyptian is *at least* 5000 years old. Latin is 2800 or so. The Coptic faith giggles at the pretension of the Roman Catholic. Upstart punks.

Our monk is bearded and wearing black robes and a black head covering. Indoors. I ask him why the head covering. He misunderstands me. "Excellent question!" he tells me. What I wish to know is why a man has his head covered on holy ground. St. Paul admonishes men to keep their heads uncovered and women to keep their heads covered (a practice which still holds in the South as I was raised to damn well take off my hat indoors). St. Paul tells us we must do this because of the angels. Neither myself, nor anyone else, knows what he's talking about with the angels, but, just in case, I try not to wear my hat inside, regardless of my vanity and soul-stirring dislike of hat head.

So. Our wise monk does not know, or at least know how to answer, about head coverings indoors. He definitely knows why we are supposed to (and do, during the tour) take off our shoes. The Burning Bush told Moses to take off his sandals, for he was in a holy place. Pretty straightforward.

Our monk tells us of the history of the place. This monastery might very well be one of the oldest in Christendom. It holds the relics of St. Bishoy, per se. We see them, sort of, enclosed in a covering over in a shelf in the wall. They're "sort of" relics because, according to legend/tradition/fact, St. Bishoy's body never decayed at death as a testament to his holiness. So, the 1600 year old body in the painted plastic sack that the Coptic laity are praising and praying to sits intact. I see no need to check for myself. Let faith be faith, I feel. I don't mean this in any mocking or New Age way whatsoever. Dave is an atheist; my college roomate Campbell is a militant atheist; my best friend is a Baptist deacon; I am, by birth an Episcopalian, now a nominal Anglican, and a descendant of Huguenots. I follow Matthew 6:5-6 in my visible faith and Matthew 22: 37-40 in my private. The closest I come to explication is that I believe as I do, and strongly, but proselytizing has never been for me.

I'm very pleased when I find out this is the monastery of St. Moses the Black. He was once a notorious land pirate/bandit. He converted to Christianity and, as a monk, single-handedly defeated a pack of robbers (he didn't kill them because he didn't think it the Christian thing to do...they were so impressed they converted on the spot). Later he defended the monastery from attack by Berber bandits. I read about this on badassoftheweek.com. I thought I remembered reading that he thrashed the bandits. The monk tells us St. the Black was beheaded. So it goes.

Knowing church history as I do, I ask our monk if the Copts are still Monophysites. Christianity, religion of compassion and inclusiveness, has long been riven by various doctrinal schisms. The greatest of the early schisms had to do with the nature of Jesus' human and divine essences. Were they separate essences, conjoined in one body, or mixed together? The Egyptian church was famously monophysite. Joined they said. Constantinople said separated. All this came up 400 or so years after Jesus died and was resurrected and ascended, by the way.

Constantinople, seat of power, took the opportunity to persecute. Copts bore it. Until a small ethnic group with a differing faith said, "We don't believe as you do, but we won't persecute you. You only have to pay a 'poll tax' of sorts that is actually much less than the taxes you pay to the Byzantines AND we won't force our faith on you."

That is part of how the statistically inferior Muslim Arabs spread from a pocket of nowhere to damn near to France in about one hundred years. Even in the time of Saladin, four hundred years later, the majority of Egyptians were Christian. Nine hundred years after that, they are 10% and there has been a major bombing of a cathedral here only days before I arrived.