Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

xPREFACEinto English. The notes were transcribed and, along with all myother scribblings, input into a computer.With these raw materials, I reconstructed a time line and, frommemory, supplied the connecting tissue of the content. This workis as much a product of the journal-keeping genre as the factthereof. I offer it because the medium of friendship is the properambiance in which to preach, teach, or witness the Gospel. Butfriendship is a medium of self-disclosure and interest in the other.The friends who have heard me preach or teach, and believe mywitness of faith rightly wish to know about this formative and mysteriouspart of my life, otherwise so inaccessible to them.I hasten, then, to insist that this is a journal effort that revealsfar more of me than of the cultural context or religious setting inwhich I sojourned. Coptic readers may no doubt assert that I havetaken elements of their world and repackaged them in terms ofmine. Guilty! I can only reply that a journal, by its very nature,does not have to be an ethnography.Nevertheless, I hasten to assure all readers—Copts, retreatants,or others—that my respect for the monks among whom I lived andthe Coptic people I studied is boundless. I apologize if any remarkor perspective seems less reverent than what I intended. I am fullyaware that cultural differences between Coptic Egypt and the post-Christian West are so great that even the most respectful treatmentof the religion of one by the other will always be problematic. Inaddition, the years have dulled the powers of my memory so thaterrant information may have entered the record; linguistic limitationsand cultural prejudices may even have confused my initialpersonal impressions. While I have tried to minimize such occurrences,this, too, is the stuff of journals!No Coptic prelate has authorized this journal as a reliableguide to his religion, and no pretense is here made that this effortattempts to expedite the ecumenical process of Catholic-Copticreconciliation. Nevertheless, my gratitude to Coptic abbots, bishops,monks, and their laity is beyond measure.I am especially grateful to His Holiness, Pope Shenouda III,whose hospitality opened the doors of the desert monasteries to myvisitation and who took time to visit me there with words of wisdomand kindness. I likewise thank Sister Michele, who gentlyshepherded me through this process of compilation and revision.And I could not complete a preface justly without thanking Abuna