Cass had left Bali, in what she thought may have been for good last May, almost a year before we found ourselves together there. Since 2021, she had been living back and forth to Bali during her awakening, where her relationship with the waters became a mirror. Each initiation reflecting deeper layers of truth, emotion, and self-remembrance yet she always felt it was never a place she could fully ground.

During our final days at St. Catherine’s Monastery, we pondered this woman who was powerful enough to have this important place named after her. We wondered what her message for humans who would come into a world much different than hers would be. We hadn’t been taught anything about her from the monastery, really, but a quick internet search would bring about a story as great as any which has made its way to the silver screen…

We saw this ladder painted into several pieces of artwork and Bibles on display at the monastery, which we weren’t allowed to photograph, but upon seeing them I was delighted to be reminded of early Mystical Christianity’s focus on virtue. In my experience, Buddhism and Mystical Christianity are religion’s most robust paths for cultivating virtue. The Buddhists are doing just fine, but it seems many Christians today have long left virtue cultivation in the rear view since the body politic of right-wingedness overtook their views on “the good the holy.”

We hiked to the summit of Mount Sinai, along the “Camel Trail” and up the 3,700 “Steps of Repentance.” Near the top is a small cave where tradition says Moses received or wrote the Ten Commandments. The views were breathtaking. The people we met were generous and kind. The camels were hilarious. And the experience felt spiritually powerful — something about being there stirred the heart.

Yet as inspiring as the trip was, it left me with a question I couldn’t shake:

Have the Ten Commandments and the great stories of Abrahamic religion made us spiritually richer — or poorer?

A reset. A rebirth. A recommitment. You can't get through these processes without first destroying or laying to rest a body of something. Maybe that "body" is a bundle of beliefs or a construct with a foundation built deeply within the behavioral bedrock of our conditioned selves. Maybe it's a form created in part from prejudices, assumptions, and expectations which are unverified and undeserved, but when the foundation shows cracks, how do we respond?

It was 6:30 in the morning as the sun was rising upon Lake Atitlan…..