Part I: Qadisha Valley

The glory of Lebanon shall come to you—

the juniper, the fir, and the cypress all together—

To bring beauty to my sanctuary,

and glory to the place where I stand.

Isaiah 60:13

Salaam Al-Massih from Lebanon! Though it has been a couple weeks since my last update, I wanted to share stories and photos of one of the central parts of my stay in Lebanon. I was blessed to participate in a backpacking trip into the mountains of Northern Lebanon. However, our small group of Americans were not the only ones participating. After a week with the our original group, we were joined by twenty-seven Swiss Germans who go on annual hikes throughout the world. The group consisted of a range of people, from social workers to engineers to university students. Though everyone was living in Switzerland, there were some originally from Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Hungary. During this time, I was definitely humbled by my lack of language knowledge. Our prayers, songs, and liturgies now included German, French, and Arabic along with English. In return, the Americans taught the Swiss group the newest American slang and catchphrases.

The first gift the Swiss gave us was chocolate. I'm pretty sure they raided a Swiss chocolate factory and brought us the spoils. Obviously, the Americans were thrilled.

Our first outing as a larger group was to Saint Paul's Melkite Cathedral and the shrine to Our Lady of Lebanon. At the Cathedral (which was one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen) we celebrated Byzantine Divine Liturgy and enjoyed the beauty of the mosaics that covered almost every surface of the church. Through experiencing the beauty of the Cathedral, we were able to prepare ourselves to encounter the beauty of Creation and the beauty of God's love that we were already encountering through prayer and community with each other.

Saint Paul's Cathedral. The gold and reflective materials incorporated into the mosaics caught the sunlight that streamed in through the tall windows within the upper dome of the sanctuary. Needless to say, I was completely floored when I walked into this church.

Just a couple minutes away from Saint Paul, we visited the shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who is Notre Dame du Liban (Our Lady of Lebanon). The shrine consisted of a huge church, built in a modern style, and a tower with a statue of Our Lady at the top. The shrine sits on a large hillside that overlooks all of the coastal towns in the area. Mary's statue faces the sea, with her arms outstretched towards the coast and the towns that lie at the bottom of the hill. The Lebanese people have always had a special place in their hearts for Mary, made evident by the popularity of the shrine itself and countless other smaller Marian shrines scattered throughout the country.

Through the pine trees, you can see the towns that Our Lady of Lebanon looks towards. The hilltop that the shrine sits on is peaceful and quiet, despite the many faithful who have traveled in to visit the shrine.

After our first experience with the spirituality of Lebanese Christianity, we drove up into the mountains to begin our hike. We started in Tannourine, a small mountain village an hour north. We woke up bright and early at 5:45 to set out on a 14 mile hike that ended around 6:30 that evening. As we hiked up into the mountains, I was continually wowed by the richness of Lebanon’s beauty. We washed our sweaty faces in mountain streams, sang German and Arabic hymns at mountain summits, and celebrated Mass on huge granite boulders. After many kilometers of hiking up and down through smaller valleys in the mountains, we made our exhausted final descent into a town that was situated between the mountains and a large valley.

The upper mountains of Northern Lebanon were dry, rocky, and breathtaking. During the winter, these mountains are completely covered in snow. In the summers, the sun is quite powerful (something I experienced first hand when I forgot to bring my sunscreen on the first day).

Nothing like a good long uphill, amirite?

After our long and hot hike, our guides made us stretch out before we could do anything else. Even though I wasn't in this photo, I was definitely laying on the ground at this point.

Our guide told us that the valley that laid in front of us, the Qadisha, would be the focus of the rest of our hike. Qadisha is a name derived from the Arabic word for holiness or sanctity, muqadas (مقدس). The Maronite Church, which makes up the largest Catholic and Christian population in Lebanon, has its roots in the Qadisha valley. During various historical persecutions of Christianity in Lebanon throughout the Middle Ages and earlier, believers would retreat to the deep valley and reside in various hidden caves scattered throughout the area. For hundreds of years, the Patriarch of the Maronite Church resided in the same valley along with many generations of monks who built monasteries, some of which are still standing today. Because of this rich historical context, Lebanese Christians see the Qadisha valley as the heart of Lebanon’s historical and faith heritage.

Father Michel, a Maronite priest and one of our guides, told us stories about the monks that used to fill Qadisha valley. At various times during the day, villagers would report seeing incense rising up from the valley as hundreds of monks would pray from their individual caves simultaneously. On special days and feasts, the monks would gather at the larger monasteries by the hundreds. The monks lived an austere life of prayer, fasting, and work, living in tiny caves and eating what they could grow from the land around them. The life of the hermits in the valley was not one simply empty. The men who lived in the Qadisha emptied their lives in order to fill it with the companionship of God. One of our first stops was to the ruins of a monastery that still had surviving frescoes painted on the walls of the former church sanctuary. Fr. Michel explained how the lettering on these frescoes was Ethiopian, providing evidence of the power of the Qadisha valley to draw Christians from many different parts of the world. Believers who desired solitude with God came from far and wide to build a life in the Qadisha.

This was the first monastery we stopped at. You can barely see fragments of a fresco on the back wall. We prayed in this monastery ruin, with the sun coming down through the leaves above us (and one of our guides, Joseph, looking down at us from the roof).

My beautiful friend Avery posing next to a monastery fresco. This type of art covered every monastery we went to, and this particular one was in the process of being restored by a team of artists and architects.

As we continued to hike, stopping at various abandoned monasteries along the way, I was struck by the intense beauty of the valley. Compared to our hike through the windswept upper mountains, the area we were hiking through was rich and welcoming. Fallen figs laid on the path, dropped from trees that grew thick overhead. Tiny streams and waterfalls ran over our trail, rushing down to the river that laid at the bottom of the valley. Even when we had times of silent hiking, the sound of birds and wind through the trees was present. It was easy to see why early Christians chose to hide in this valley; the land seemed to welcome life, making it easy to build dwellings and communities. Former Qadisha residents built terraces out of stones into the side of the valley in order to cultivate grain and other crops. Our stop in the evening, one of the oldest monasteries in the valley, had a view of these terraces and other monastery ruins. The Qannoubine monastery, was founded in 375. For four hundred years, the monastery was the See of the Maronite Patriarch. Now it is maintained as a world heritage site, and became our place to sleep for two nights.

This is us after a long day of hiking, and just after we arrived at Qannoubine! Notice the sweat stains on my shirt from my backpack straps, and the sunglasses that I borrowed because I dropped the ones I brought in a mountain stream :)))))

Our view looking out from the monastery patio. The terraces that former residents built are in the bottom right.

The Qannoubine monastery church was beautifully simple, with traditional Maronite architecture. We were blessed to pray in this ancient church every night after our day out in the valley.

Overall, the Qadisha was the spiritual height of our trip. Though the incense of the monks does not fill the valley anymore, the prayers of the monks who lived there still fill every space within it. Being able to finally understand the biblical praise of Lebanon was eye-opening, and every day I became more appreciative of the heritage of this beautiful country.

(Part II coming soon!)