With Palm Sunday, April 1 (2007), the beginning of Passover, April 2, Good Friday, April 6, and Easter on April 8th, we herald a period of holy reflection. Events of thousands of years ago become real as we commemorate triumph and deliverance and seek messages germane to our own life's journey.

The French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922) proclaimed, "The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes." A recent trip through Egypt and Jordan brought religious history alive in a way that only a sojourn in ancient lands can engender.

Another inveterate traveler, novelist Paul Theroux, said, "I sought trains; I found passengers." So it is with any journey. You seek sights and experiences. You find people; those you travel with and the locals that you encounter. Today, it is particularly interesting to be an American traveling in a Muslim country, feeling welcome and unthreatened, while seeking wisdom and understanding. One-on-one contact with warm and gracious Egyptians and Jordanians opens eyes, when sadly, for most American's what we know about Islam and Muslims is reflected in stories of suicide bombings and shouts of "Death to America!"

But if you look closely enough, you will see that what Jews, Christians, and others seek during Holy Week — a quest for peace, deliverance, and salvation — has not changed since the time of the pharaohs. In old Cairo one finds Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest Jewish synagogue in Egypt, replete with legends that link it with Moses. Ben Ezra is in the heart of Coptic Cairo, surrounded by 20 Christian churches and 29 mosques. Coptic Christianity was introduced into Egypt in the first century A.D., and by the 4th century, Christianity was the official religion of Egypt. Coptic Cairo lies within the walls of the 3rd century A.D. Roman fortress of Babylon. A cave beneath the alter of the Church of St. Sergius is believed to have sheltered the Holy Family during their flight into Egypt to escape King Herod's "massacre of the innocents."

A trip into the Sinai Desert reveals an awe-inspiring landscape. Ruggedly barren, and when viewed from the windows of a low-flying turboprop aircraft, a tableau of rocky and sandy terrain, low rise hills, mesas, canyons, and dry washes passes below. One can imagine the children of Israel wandering around, grumbling and uncomfortable, yet asked to trust in Moses and God. St. Catherine's Monastery, isolated and surrounded by spectacular red granite mountains, nestles at the foot of what many believe is Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. The links between the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — become clearer.

Without the Nile River, which flows north out of Africa, Egypt in total would be a barren desert. The Nile brought water and rich fertilizing silt that cradled civilization. From the Giza Plateau and the Great Pyramids south to Luxor and Aswan, and down to Abu Simbel near the border with Sudan, the Nile Valley is "the greatest open-air museum in the world," displaying a mind-blowing array of tombs and temples. On reliefs, carvings, and paintings, ancient philosophies dating back over 5000 years come alive, affirming that appreciation for the quintessential journey of man from conception to birth to death to resurrection and salvation, the very message of Holy Week, has not changed in millenniums.

In a shop at the Mena House Oberoi Hotel in Giza, I purchased a painting on papyrus picturing the final judgment ceremony after death. A famous representation, it comes from the Book of the Dead. The ancient Egyptians clearly believed in accountability and rules. They would be judged on their behavior in this life before being granted a place in the Afterlife.

The deceased had to appear before Osiris, chief god of the dead and the Afterlife, and a tribunal of 42 deities. The deceased made a "negative confession," swearing that he or she had not committed any of a long list of offenses. The heart of the deceased, believed to be the center of thought, memory, and emotion, was weighed on a balance scale against the feather of Maat, the symbol of the goddess of truth, order, and justice. If the heart balanced against the feather, and good outweighed the bad, the deceased was admitted to a place in the Fields of Hetep and Iaru, the Afterlife. Ancient representations do not confirm ideas of torment in a place like hell for the evil and wicked, but a belief that they would cease to exist at all, a terrifying outcome.

Life 3000 to 5000 years ago was short and brutal. But the Afterlife was forever! Palaces were built of mud bricks to last not even 100 years. The great tombs, the pyramids and the amazing complexes at Giza, the Valley of the Kings, Thebes, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Abu Simbel (the Great Temple of Ramses II), were built for eternity, which is why so much labor and treasure was expended in the construction that amazes us today. Life was merely a brief journey to something far more important.

A central truth emerges from such observations, what one might call the enduring force of "traditional morality." Evident in the history of primitive, ancient, and modern man, is recognition that a higher power imposes on humankind and society a moral order, an unbending standard, yardsticks to measure right versus wrong. In my view, there is no "clash of civilizations," but more a battle between the "seeking of absolute truth" versus "relativism." Is there an absolute standard applied by the Divine Power or are we free to pick and choose our own definition of morality?

Islam is a demanding religion, less tolerant of the concepts of "autonomy, individuality, and self-fulfillment as moral ideals" espoused in western or secular liberalism. At the core, the three Abrahamic religions are exacting. That is the essence of the matter, the "now" versus "the hereafter," a moral order and accountability, the heart weighed against the feather. The conflict that counts is the one that resides within us, relative to the choices that we make. That is the message being delivered from pulpits during Holy Week. It is the same message that is reflected in the carvings in ancient tombs, the exhortations by Moses to the Israelites during the Exodus, and the representations in mosaics in thousand year old Christian churches throughout the Middle East.

It is about choices, about "who decides, God or man?" It is about deliverance and the quest for eternal life. It always was, and always will be.

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