Sweet desert

Father Dariusz Kapinski spent a few months at the end of 2009 in Jerusalem and in the Holy Land. A time of formation, a time of profound change in his being: he came back changed.

From the very first moment he decided to send his friends in Poland a daily email, reporting on his stay and his discoveries. He did so with great regularity. His stories pleased, because they were written in a spontaneous and joyful style, but also full of poetry and depth. The idea of bringing these texts together in a book was therefore born.

The book is presented as a diary of a trip to the Holy Land. But the author does not only describe sites. He recounts his inner journey and the atmospheres he perceived with all his senses on the alert. Very contrasted atmospheres.

You have to go deep within yourself to reach the essence of the Holy Land. Father Kapinski evokes the almost daily struggles he had to wage to find silence and peace, in order to reach the places where the heart wishes to meet the trace of light left by divine Revelation. These struggles transformed him, so much so that the notebooks of the sabbatical became the diary of an inner journey.

There are also the contacts, which the abbot loves as much as silence, in a beautiful balance. Among all of them, that of Shady, a young handicapped person met in the port city of Haifa, is magnificent.

I would like to say a big thank you to Father Kapinski for his beautiful testimony on the roads of Israel. Kapinski for his beautiful testimony on the roads of Israel, and to underline his strong profession of faith: "O Christ, you are the only one I do not want to lose. In you I have everything!"

Marc Donzé, episcopal vicar, Fribourg...

(Excerpts from the preface)