This is my entry for #monomad challenge by 
The Judaean Desert is a desert in the West Bank and Israel. It is located at east of Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.
We stopped here to stay in silence with ourselves, to pray and to think about our life.
Festina lente (hurry up slowly): I love this phrase, I don't know exactly why, but I associate it to this image:
Despite some voices, a great silence here.
In this desert Jesus has been tempted by Evil: "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread". Jesus said in reply "It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."
I think our true essence is not only material but spiritual first of all, and the absences of material things could bring us to concentrate more on what really take us alive: a spiritual dimension, and the feeling that God loves us.
An Israeli helicopter is passing in the sky, maybe to control these place.
There is a lot of contrasts in these lands: poverty, richness, faith, hate, history, destruction.
I feel these people is linked to their destiny. You can have very different life if you born in some place instead of others. So, where is freedom?
I don't have answer and I don't want to talk about politics about Israel and Palestine, I have only the feeling that peace rises in the heart of us, but how getting free of our destiny and reaching a way to live in peace together, despite of our 'skin' and religion?
I don't know it, but I think many people here want peace, but government not.
If Palestine can be metaphorically a fishbowl, Israel wants to take away water from the fishbowl, taking them off resources and hope.
Here ancient Koziba monastery:
Here many Palestinians children are selling us some bracelets, they stay in group, someone has a mule, and they live in the villages nearby.
Pictures taken with Sony Alpha 7iii and Nikon D800.
March 2022.
